August 8, 2012, I woke up to the realization that something was terribly wrong -- the left side of my face felt paralysed. This is from my phone calendar:
At breakfast discover I have partial paralysis to left side of my face (can't blink left eye or lift left corner of mouth). Stroke? Net search suggests Bell's Palsy related to ear infection. Wow!
The next day a clinician examined me and sped me on my way to a hospital, saying it was all arranged: I would immediately go on an antibiotic drip, and would probably need to stay overnight. I hunted up a place to store my trailer and pedalled over to Mount Saint Joseph's Hospital.
I went in through Emergency as instructed at the clinic, and, of course, they had no idea who I was beyond being another walk-in. A doctor diagnosed me with Bell's Palsy, and wrote four prescriptions; apparently I would have to pay for them myself. I had the presence of mind to have the on-site social worker to write a note to the pharmacist on hospital stationary, excusing me from having ID. Lucky for me, the pharmacist at a Shopper's Drug Mart in Fairview looked at me, looked at the prescriptions and declared they were all covered, meaning, apparently they were free -- well three of them were -- one hadn't been manufactured for quite a while.
Back at the hospital to see if I needed a substitute for the unavailable med. Enter doctor number two (I hope he was; he was there. I think he had a name-tag). He explained the fourth drug the other doctor had prescribed wasn't necessary, and no, Bell's was not caused by chicken-pox, it was herpes. He leaned in towards me from his side of the table, and declared in a confiding tone, "It's in the air Stanley," I again noted the singularly confidence-inspiring effect of his manner, not to mention his open white lab coat over T-shirt, over pot-belly. He declared it a clear-cut case of Bell's -- the fact I couldn't blink my left eye was conclusive. Yes it was connected to the ear infection. I noted the two sores I could feel in my ear -- he described them as scabs. Basically, he instructed, I take the prescribed medicine for seven days, and that's it. It might go away in a week or five months, or never. Leaning in towards me from his side of the table, he declared in a confiding tone,
"It's the worst case I've ever seen Stanley."
In fact, I have some question whether it is a case of Bell's Palsy, after reading of Olivia Chow being diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome.
Sometimes I feel like Jonah Hex, a DC comics character, I liked so much when I was younger.
Five months later, I find that I can blink my left eye again, but my mouth still doesn't work right. And when I close me left eye, It's hard to close the left side of my mouth, as if there's a string connecting the two. Apparently I will never again know the joy of properly pronouncing the letter "B." But, or should I say 'ut, I'm not drinking coffee through a straw,
At one P.M. on December 24, 2012, I was on the West side of Oak Street in the alley between 15th and 16th Avenue. The weather, by the way, was nice and sunny. Looking East into the lane on the other side of Oak. I saw a fellow bring a bike out of a garage, lean it against a dumpster and go away. He came right back and put on the bike what looked like a piece of cardboard. I was on the other side of Oak before you could say "free," which, coincidentally, is what was written on the piece of cardboard stuck on the bike -- I'm sorry, My bike!
It was not a junker, it was a good quality Norco. Sturdy aluminium frame, side-pull brakes, and even a mega-range gear. It needed new brake pads, some air in the tires, and most of the steel parts showed rusting. I talked to the fellow about all this. He just wanted to get rid of it all the same. He didn't ride it, It was just taking up space, he figured someone else could make good use of it. I thanked him sincerely; my 1990s Rocky Mountain, which I'd paid $185.00 for about a year previously, was far past it's sell-by date.
The Rocky Mountain went in a dumpster minus useful parts, and I put cartridge brakes on the Norco ASAP. I still need to get a longer seat-post. It's covered in union stickers, which I've decided to leave on -- I'll post a picture when I get a working camera.
I do feel that many people -- if they see me as a binner, but especially as homeless -- will at least allow for the possibility that I've stolen the bike. Should I even wonder how many people think I've stolen the laptop I'm creating this post on? A homeless binner, laptop-owning friend of mine was accosted in McDonalds not too long ago by a complete stranger who not only expressed his suspicion that the laptop was stolen, but actually took a photo of my friend (getting the incriminating laptop in the shot I suppose).
I know my friend didn't steal his laptop, because I helped him get it. I didn't steal my laptop, or my bike, or anything else I have. Honest.
It was not a junker, it was a good quality Norco. Sturdy aluminium frame, side-pull brakes, and even a mega-range gear. It needed new brake pads, some air in the tires, and most of the steel parts showed rusting. I talked to the fellow about all this. He just wanted to get rid of it all the same. He didn't ride it, It was just taking up space, he figured someone else could make good use of it. I thanked him sincerely; my 1990s Rocky Mountain, which I'd paid $185.00 for about a year previously, was far past it's sell-by date.
The Rocky Mountain went in a dumpster minus useful parts, and I put cartridge brakes on the Norco ASAP. I still need to get a longer seat-post. It's covered in union stickers, which I've decided to leave on -- I'll post a picture when I get a working camera.
I do feel that many people -- if they see me as a binner, but especially as homeless -- will at least allow for the possibility that I've stolen the bike. Should I even wonder how many people think I've stolen the laptop I'm creating this post on? A homeless binner, laptop-owning friend of mine was accosted in McDonalds not too long ago by a complete stranger who not only expressed his suspicion that the laptop was stolen, but actually took a photo of my friend (getting the incriminating laptop in the shot I suppose).
I know my friend didn't steal his laptop, because I helped him get it. I didn't steal my laptop, or my bike, or anything else I have. Honest.
After recently wiping out a perfectly good installation of Ubuntu 12.04 while playing around with DiskDump, circumstances led me to install Ubuntu 12.10. I promptly installed MATE, and then uninstalled a few MATE-related applicationss, and logged out of the MATE session. And then, oh, boy -- talk about curiosity killing the cat!
I was unable to login to Ubuntu or MATE; in fact, the MATE option wasn't there. Entering my password brought me back to the login screen; I could only do two things: start a Guest session, or start a terminal session (Ctrl-Alt-F1). The Guest session was frustrating as I has no access to the sqw user's files and the Guest space was only about 500 MB (?) -- I was unable to reformat a flash drive, or run Unetbootin, which I attributed to a Guest's lack of privileges. In the terminal I could start an x-session; this gave me a kind of access to my files but without Unity elements; launching Nautilus allowed me to somewhat navigate files but disks did not visibly mount and applications had to be launched from the terminal.
Ctrl-Alt-F1= terminal session from login screen
Ctrl-Alt-F7= back to login screen from terminal session
In C-A-F1 terminal session I tried a few things that I found in Ubuntu forums. I also removed the MATE installation -- none of this seemed to make any difference.
In C-A-F1 terminal session you can theoretically launch sessions from the prompt $ (after authentication):
startx -- default desktop
unity -- this failed; lots of compiz warnings
unity-2d-shell -- This option not recognized in 12.10 terminal
gnome-shell -- terminal responded there was no gnome-shell installed but could be via sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
sudo service lightdm start -- will start the lightdm Unity greeter login screen; this case terminal said it was already running
It seemed to me that it wasn't a permissions issue; I hadn't so much lost the key as missplaced the door. I crossed my fingers and installed the gnome-shell. At one point in the terminal install a graphical screen came up for the user to choose the window manager GWM or DM (which was checked) I left it that way. Install was very fast. At the prompt, "gnome-shell" resulted in an error. I restarted, and the login screen showed both Gnome and Ubuntu session options; I was able to login to a Gnome session, and then an Ubuntu session. Seemingly installing gnome-session had replaced what was missing.
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