Mon, MLK day, Jan 15, 2018 — Oh Rats! Nick posting

By on January 15th, 2018 in Uncategorized

11:15am. Long story short. When I arrived at the facility yesterday around 11am the RT and PA were in the room. The RT had been having a problem with suctioning and the trach and was getting ready to call me. Bob was not in any distress and breathing okay but there was something going on with the trach that I felt the hospital needed to handle.I had them call EMT to take him to the emergency room. The hospital did replace the trach and treated him for a UTI and dehydration. At 5:15 the ER nurse said it would be 10pm before transport was available to take him back to the facility. They were keeping him suctioned and taking care of him so I headed to Frances’ picking up dinner on the way to her house. Al had already left Winston around 2:30 to come up here for the night. It was 11:15 when they called to let me know he was back to his room.
I stopped by this morning to talk with the head of nursing and the RT to make sure we are all on the same page. He was, of course, sleeping after the long day and night.
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Just a placeholder stub for now, I may have some more on rats later.

n

24 Comments and discussion on "Mon, MLK day, Jan 15, 2018 — Oh Rats! Nick posting"

  1. Chad says:

    We got an inch of snow yesterday and so I was out clearing the sidewalks at 9:00 PM and it was 28℉ and I remember thinking it wasn’t very cold at all. So, I wake up this morning and trot outside in just my hoodie and did a quick U-turn back into the house. The wind-chill at 7:30 AM was -19℉. Apparently, some front moved in while I was sleeping.

  2. JimL says:

    I’m glad to hear they had the right people do the work. Knowing their limitations would make me think better of them, simply because it’s a life-saving bit of knowledge.

    I’m glad to hear Bob is sleeping. Rest leads to recovery, and the sooner he recovers the sooner he can get back to doing what he loves. I’m looking forward to hearing him (reading his writing) again.

  3. DadCooks says:

    Barbara, you most certainly made the right call to get Bob the right people to handle the situation. This rehab may not be the right one. Your long story is short, but I read between the lines and sense that the rehab did not feel the appropriate sense of urgency.

    Continuing prayers.

  4. Nick Flandrey says:

    Good call and good catch. The sooner he can get the trach out the better for him and the caregivers. And you’ll have more options if you need them.

    n

  5. lynn says:

    “NAACP Says MLK’s Vision Can’t Be Achieved Without Fighting Global Warming”
    http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/15/naacp-says-mlks-vision-cant-be-achieved-without-fighting-global-warming/

    Wow, what a load of cow manure. I am fairly sure that MLK would not care about Global Warming today.

    Hat tip to:
    http://drudgereport.com/

  6. medium wave says:

    I am fairly sure that MLK would not care about Global Warming today.

    Maybe, maybe not

    Excerpt:

    “All these factors, in my view, had begun to take a toll on King; he aged dramatically in appearance, and had begun talking about issues not directly related to the civil rights struggle, e.g., the Middle East, Vietnam. Had he lived longer, we likely would have seen King becoming radicalized, pushed leftward as he sought to retain control of the movement–but, as noted before, we will never know.”

  7. RickH says:

    Saw an interesting story about the Mustang from “Bullit” https://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/articles/2018/01/14/mustang-bullitt-found-real-mcqueen .

    Ford introduced a new Bullit, and put the original alongside it. Lots of pictures in the article.

  8. Greg Norton says:

    Ford introduced a new Bullit, and put the original alongside it. Lots of pictures in the article.

    Steve McQueen continues to fascinate.

    Here in Austin, we are expecting lows in the teens tonight/tomorrow morning with ice and, possibly, snow.

    Naturally the HEB (grocery store) near my house is crazy. The parking lot is full and people are lined up at the gas pumps. The “gas shortage” meme left over from Harvey refuses to die.

  9. lynn says:

    “Spectre and Meltdown Attacks Against Microprocessors”
    https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2018/0115.html#1

    “The security of pretty much every computer on the planet has just gotten a lot worse, and the only real solution — which of course is not a solution — is to throw them all away and buy new ones.”

    Schneier has a “New Book Coming in September: “Click Here to Kill Everybody””:
    https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2018/0115.html#5

  10. Greg Norton says:

    Schneier has a “New Book Coming in September: “Click Here to Kill Everybody”

    I still have Schneier’s “Applied Cryptography” around somewhere. I forgot to return the book to Death Star Telephone when I left. Oh darn.

    The current version of Firefox features code that attempts to compensate for Spectre and Meltdown, but it does strange things to my Windows 7 machines with Nvidia discrete graphics subsystems.

  11. lynn says:

    Schneier has a “New Book Coming in September: “Click Here to Kill Everybody”

    Best book title that I have heard in quite a while.

    I still have Schneier’s “Applied Cryptography” around somewhere. I forgot to return the book to Death Star Telephone when I left. Oh darn.

    I have a copy here in the office. I wonder if I had read it instead of skimming it, if that would have prevented getting our software hacked a time or two or ten less.

    Their current hack is to replace our public key in the software with their new public key. But they did not find all of them …

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    Our school district just cancelled all classes for tomorrow, due to inclement weather forecast.

    it’s nice at the moment, 59F.

    I was able to clean a bunch of cans, sort thru the ‘soiled’ boxes, sterilize some shelves, and set a bunch of traps. I didn’t get any rats last night, and even the one caught by its tail escaped. I know their paths now, and I’ve set a bunch more traps. We’ll see how well the dollar store glue traps work vs the 3 x more expensive name brand. They certainly seem sticky.

    n

  13. Greg Norton says:

    I have a copy here in the office. I wonder if I had read it instead of skimming it, if that would have prevented getting our software hacked a time or two or ten less.

    The weakest link for crypto on Win32 is the standard C rand(). As bad as that function is on most C implementations, Microsoft’s RAND_MAX is still 0x7fff the last time I went out and checked.

    I believe that the rand() function is sacred because BillG implemented it himself, straight out of Knuth.

    At one time, during my academia career misadventure, I started work on a paper on the limited range of RSA keys possible using Win32 rand() as the PRG, but the preliminary results and real world implications were scary. I like to sleep at night.

  14. paul says:

    The front started thru here, a bit SE of Burnet 20 minutes ago. 10 degrees down since 8:10pm. Now 44F.

    Pot roast thawing for the crock pot tomorrow.

  15. RickH says:

    @Lynn: Put out some D-Con treats for your rats. They don’t die in the trap spot. They wander off in search of water (outside). There they die. No need to mess with glue traps or whatever.

    D-Con has an ingredient similar to Warfarin (which I used to take due to my afib). Effective.

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    If I still hear them moving by the end of the week, POISON it is.

    anyone in Austin please post as the weather changes. I’ve looked at Space City Weather, and he’s now calling for the front to get here around sun up. That will make the wife’s trip to the office interesting.

    I’d like to see how it’s moving.

    n

  17. RickH says:

    @Nick: I always use WeatherUnderground to figure out when a storm will arrive. I look at the radar map, then at the ‘scientific discussion’ (weather guy forecasts). Mostly accurate.

    For Austin: https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/tx/austin/73301

    You might find a weather station close to your house by using the Wundermap – shows all weather stations (most are ‘personal weather stations’).

  18. paul says:

    At 9:10 we are down to 40F and the wind has picked up. I’m a couple of miles SE of downtown Burnet. Which is about 60 miles NNW of downtown Austin.

    Rats. Yeah….

    My Mom and Dad’s house in Edinburg is concrete slab w/ cinderblock walls. Other than pouring the slab, they built the entire house. The house is round. I don’t know exactly why, the reasons never made sense to me. Anyway, it’s stacked cinder blocks coated with some kind of stucco that has fiberglass strands mixed in. Every 3rd or 4th row on the outside wall and the inner ring wall have re-bar dropped in and filled with concrete.

    Round house, inner ring is a couple of cinder blocks taller than the outer ring and supports the roof. The rest of the interior walls, other than the plumbing wall between the kitchen and bath, are stacked and stuccoed cinder block, same height as the outer ring. Nice and private in every room? Not. The dividing cinder blocks walls are open at the top (and that needs to be fixed).

    Clear as mud so far?

    Ok, we moved Mom up here. Made a couple of trips for “stuff” and that was it…. flipped the main on the electricity. A year later a friend needed a place to stay and hey! he can stay at mom’s house, just pay for the utilities. The house had 2 inches of water standing in it. Pinhole leak in the flex tube under the bathroom sink. Mom’s bed? Er, there was a corner of the blanket touching the floor… and the mattress was soaked and mushrooms growing on the bed. The wall of books? About 30 feet long and 7 feet high. The spines on the books were melting off from the humidity. Everything in the house went to the dump.

    Oh, and the place was full of rats.

    The A/C is a big 220V window unit. The plastic accordion filler had UVed and there was a hole. That explains the rats, right? Wrong. There were no bird or wasp nests in the house.

    So Jerry is living in the house. Almost no furniture. Damn rats have got to be living in the interior walls. He used glue traps. Snap traps. Rat shot in his .22 pistol (it’s all concrete). No poison because of his dog. The rats go away.

    Then it rains and hey, he has rats again… and wet. Right about here I decide I’m selling the damn place as soon as Mom dies. Screw the whole vacation house in Edinburg plan.

    The rats didn’t get into the house through the UVed out plastic at the window unit A/C. They came up the toilet. Wet rats wandering around…. said toilet now has a scrap of plywood sitting on the rim and a cinder block on the plywood.

    I’m afraid to go look under the plywood.

    Now 10PM and the temp is down to 38F. This front needs to pick it up if we’re to get 24F in the morning. 🙂

    Ah… it just started to rain. Big fat drops….

  19. Nick Flandrey says:

    Wow, the shortwave bands are pretty open in the low bands.

    I’ve got good time signal on 2.5Mhz… I’ve NEVER heard them that low. Good stations in the low 3.s and time at 5.000 too.

    some stuff in the high 7s…

    cuba coming in good too.

    n

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    CHUDS!

    n

  21. Ray Thompson says:

    D-Con has an ingredient similar to Warfarin (which I used to take due to my afib). Effective.

    Did you also wander off looking for water?

  22. Ray Thompson says:

    Snow here tomorrow. Supposed to arrive about 9:00 AM where I live and last until about 3:00 PM. Right on the boundary line between 2″ and 3″. Should make for an interesting day. I don’t have to go anywhere. Stores are out of milk, bread and eggs. Even though most of the snow will be gone the next day. Roads have been treated. But I don’t care because I don’t have to go anywhere.

    Property tax checks go in the mail Thursday. $1600.00 for city and county combined. I don’t feel too bad about the rate although property values are low in this area as opposed to some place like CA. My place in the LA basin would be about 1.5 million if you could find it, and wasn’t in a fire zone or a mudslide area where homes change zip-codes.

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