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http://www2.trekbikes.com/bikes/bike.php?bikeid=1218601&f=28

Yesterday I got on the Internet, per G's request, and ordered a tasteful flower arrangement to be delivered to the funeral home in Rego Park, NY, for his sister's service today. If anyone would like to see a picture of it, go to http://aflowerpale.com/product.asp?id=34867Read more... )

G's sister, J, died today, apparently late in the afternoon or in the early evening. He was upstairs, taking a nap, when the phone rang; it was a woman with a strong Indian(?) accent who identified herself as a doctor at the hospital in NY where J was taken yesterday when her temperature hit 103. It was a case of massive multiple organ failure, ( Read more... )

The term "severe" hardly does justice to the thunderstorm we had late last night - it was a sockdollager if ever there was one! It took out the street lights for a little while, and very briefly interrupted our power so that the clock radio had to be reset and the computer had to be powered up again. I personally enjoyed it all very much, but ( Read more... )

Mostly I like our students and Community Users, and usually enjoy helping them accomplish whatever they need to do (after all, "if people didn't help, we wouldn't have jobs," as the head of IT's Client Services at the college once put it). However, I get massively fed up with people who won't leave promptly when we're closing the lab, and last ( Read more... )

G compares Sunshine with Paris Hilton; he claims that no one ever expected either of them to do anything that involved learning and discipline. Yesterday evening I put Sunshine on a leash and chain collar and took her on the usual 8/10 mile route, and spent a lot of time and energy yanking back on the leash every time she lunged after something ( Read more... )

That's an apt, if not at all original, simile for dealing with the medical bureaucracy at the hospital where J is being cared for. She was moved out of the ICU, but is still on a ventilator and is still comatose and unresponsive although she can make facial expressions. It occurs to me that when the medical people want permission to do things to ( Read more... )

So, today the balloon went up, metaphorically speaking. A little after one PM almost everything stopped happening in the lab: printing, databases, phones, intranet and Internet. Almost the only thing that did work were the local programs such as games and MS Word. Oddly, it was sort of fun, a bit like being sent home the day of the blizzard back ( Read more... )

AS I wrote earlier, I e-mailed the sibling and asked about possibly sending Mother some candy, and got a very civil reply, to the effect that I should send it to her place, and she will bring a few each day to Mother in the nursing home. It seems that they'll allow some candy, but she's not to chow down on a whole box, which is what she'd been ( Read more... )