Well, I wore my contacts Sat, Sun, and again today. Today was the last day of my trial so I had a checkup. Here’s what I think:
Fit — I thought the lenses fit well. Sure, I knew there were there because I could feel the edges of them as I moved my eyes; however, when I blinked they stayed in place and I couldn’t feel them when I closed my eyes.
Ease of Insertion — after the troubles on day 2, I didn’t have any repeat problems getting them in. Although, for full-time wear, I certainly need a concave mirror.
Sight Quality — this is where they didn’t excel. I couldn’t see as well with my contacts. My left eye was fairly good but my right eye wasn’t. I could read fine; however, it felt like things got fuzzier faster than they should have. I mentioned this to the doctor today and….
She did another mini-exam. I’m going to get a trial of 2 different kinds of lenses that may correct my astigmatism better. The lenses have a rotation to them and only come in certain rotations. My left eye was a good fit (I needed 161 and the lenses came in 160). In the right eye, I needed something like 50 and could get a 20 or 90. That explains my fuzzy vision.
The new lenses should be in on Friday or Monday. I’ll post a follow-up here. If we can get the same quality of sight with contacts, who knows….I may be converted :^)
Have you ever taken a taxi somewhere? I have in three different cases: 1) no access to another car and needed to get somewhere farther away than I wanted to walk or 2) I was in a strange city and didn’t have a clue where I was going or 3) I needed to get to/from an airport and public transit wasn’t running.
I only ever took a taxi once in the US…from BWI to my Aunt Grace’s house. In Cacak, we took taxis around town if the weather was bad or we needed to get from the store with a large shop. We took a taxi in London once because it was £4 cheaper for the cab than for a single-ride tube pass. In Belgrade, we took a Mafia taxi ride, went less than a mile, and paid an arm-and-a-leg (and learned how you really get a cab in Belgrade).
Anyway, in the English speaking countries, what this guy points out was true: the cabbie asked how to get there. My response….I don’t have a clue. I expect the cabbie to use his knowledge of the local situation and take the quickest/shortest/most economical route. Anyway, here’s what he says:
I used to drive a taxi. I made a lot of money doing it. I learned very early on to never drive someone to their destination if it was a route they drove themselves, say to their home from the airport, or from their home to work or vice versa. Everyone prides themselves on driving the shortest route but they rarely do. Often people develop a route that is based on need -say going by the day care, or avoiding an intersection where they once had an accident or to avoid driving by an ex’s house or skirting road construction long since resolved- but as they become habituated to it, they fail to reorganize their strategy when their needs change. When I first started driving a cab, I drove the shortest route -always, I’m ethical- but people would accuse me of taking the long way because it wasn’t the way they drove. So, I learned to go their way ending up with a lot less grief and a lot more money. If you’ve ever wondered why a seeming professional cab driver will ask you how to get to your destination, this is why. Going your way means they’ll make more money and they won’t be accused of ripping you off. Not to say that in the beginning, I wasn’t stupid. I’d try to show the customer the route on a map but they’d usually be offended that I was contradicting them. It was to their house, if I’d never been there, how could I possibly know better than they did? In the end, experts they consider themselves to be, people are a tangle of unexamined emotional impulses and illogical responses.
Taking a taxi after walking around town (like in Cacak) was an interesting experience. The first time, I wondered why the guy went the way he did…but then, I started paying attention to signs as I walked. As a walker, I made turns where cars couldn’t or went the wrong way down one way streets.
out = “” for x = 1 to 100: if x mod 3 = 0: out = “Fizz” if x mod 5 = 0: out = out + “Buzz” print out
That’s it. 2 if statements and some string manipulation. If you wanted to make it more expandable, do something like this:
min = 1 max = 100 test1 = 3 test2 = 5 out = “” out1 = “Fizz” out2 = “Buzz”
for x = min to max: if x mod test1: out = out1 if x mod test2: out = out + out2 print out
You could also expand on this with a structure like an array for the loop, etc… It depends on how much one wants to engineer it and make it expansible. It isn’t hard. Frankly, I don’t think I’d hire someone who couldn’t do it. The reason I like the code review/changing requirements test is seeing how people think under pressure and modifying something they’ve worked on.
Isaac is 3 (we are having his cake today). That means he can go to Small Land at Ikea! Cyndi had a church thing this morning so I took them to Ikea. They played for an hour while I had a tea and read.
Oh, by the way, did you know that Ikea has free refills in their restaurant too??
Right. Living in the US, I never thought about this much but what do you do when you can’t get things you want/like? For example, I never would have said I was a root beer “fan” or loved it: I could take it or leave it. But when I got a hankern’ for root beer, I could run down to the store, pick some up, and have it. What happens when you can’t simply run to the store and get it?
This first happened in Serbia. I went online and found root beer flavoring. I asked Cyndi’s parents to pick me up a bottle and send it in the next box. They sent some McCormic Root Beer Flavor. My first effort was to follow the instructions on the package but use Kisla Water (fizzy water in Serbia). Well, the Serbian word Kisla means sour and the water has a slight taste to it. This made the root beer taste funny.
My next effort was to try yeast. I thought I could use a little bit, get CO2 and not much alcohol. Well, by the time the pop was fizzy enough, it also had a fair bit of alcohol in it and was undrinkable. Back to square one. Eventually, I settled on a set-up of two coke bottles connected with aquarium tubing (I had my sister mail me some, I think). I mixed the root beer in one and put vinegar and baking soda in the other. This worked pretty good; however, it took some experimentation to get the amounts right….once I got it wrong and ended up with vinegar in my root beer. Another time, I popped off the connector hose and made a huge mess. Oh, by the way, I put the baking soda in a paper towel…that gave me time to get it in, get the lid on and connect the hoses up (I also let it run a bit to get the air out of the system). Here’s a picture showing the setup.
The root beer is inverted so the gas flows through it when it enters to maximize the surface area exposed to the gas. You need to eliminate as much air as you can before you start. Oh, and while the gas is generating, you need to shake the root beer. The agitation will allow more gas to dissolve…to a point. And the root beer needs to be cold too.
Here in England, I have a Soda Stream. Here’s how I do it: I add about 800ml of water to the bottle and 1/2 cup of sugar. I shake it up and let it get cold. I then add 1 tsp flavoring and fizz it in the soda stream. The result is good stuff and cuts the hankern down right quick.
I bought this book because I had heard of the TV show. I’d seen a few adverts for it. I liked Lord of the Rings and Sean Bean (I think) as Boromear. I’d also read some articles talking about the accents. In short, I was interested. And I like to read. So, I bought this first book. Sure, I could have bought the whole series at once; however, I would have been out more if I didn’t like it. I started small. So, here we go.
First off, the book is hard to read. The author uses words that aren’t in general use, and so I had to read it. Normally, I can read 3 out of 5 words or skip a sentence or two and still follow what is going on. I couldn’t here. I’m also bad a remembering character’s names. I remember them as who did what when sort of thing. Until I was 1/3 of the way through the book, I found myself flipping back to try and remember who was who.
Chapters. The book doesn’t have chapters per say. Well, it does; however, they aren’t numbered 1, 2, 3, etc… Each chapter focuses on a different person in the story and a different place. So, rather than progress linearly, it jumps around. Until I got used to this, I found it hard to follow.
Language. There’s bad language in the book; however, I don’t remember it being any more than one might find in The Plainsman about Titus Bass. In a way, I see it less as gratuitous language and more reflecting how real people might talk in a situation.
Violence. Sure, there’s violence in the book. There are sword battles, fighting, and the like. What one might expect in a fantasy book. Again, very similar to the Bass/Scratch books.
Sex. When I was in Thailand, I had thought about getting the TV Show but a colleague talked me out of it. He said there was lots of sex, etc… in it. I don’t know about the TV Show, but there is sex in the book. Not detailed porn sex, but people do have sex. I expect that HBO played this up quite a bit for the TV Series. In book form, it is easy enough to read over.
Now for a short summary. At 800+ pages, you’ll want to know a bit about the book before you start reading it.
The plot of the story is a good one; however, it took me a while to get into it (because of the words and style of writing). By the end of the book though, I want to see how the story continues. I expect I’ll get the second book sometime.
It starts off with Ned Stark living in the North of a fictional land on an island (think the UK). His friend Robert is king. Ned became king because of a series of battles that were fought against a previous king whose family is almost extinct but in exile across the sea (think the English Chanel). They are trying to get an army to reclaim their kingdom.
Robert asks Ned to move to the south and help him rule as the Hand of the King. Ned goes; however, along the way, discovers a nefarious plot that involves the queen and her family. The kingdom degenerates into anarchy because of some situations that happen (spoilers so I won’t detail them)
The book ends with Ned’s son–left to rule Ned’s lands while he was gone–marching off to war with those in the south. Along the way, the exiled family gets some power but then looses in a dramatic way. It looks like they’ll get it back though.
Well, I blogged about me getting contacts. Included was a 5 pair trial. We used the first pair that first day, and I have to wear a pair back with me on Monday. That gives me 3 more pairs to wear until then. Cyndi and I decided that I’d wear them Fri, Sat, Sun, and Mon. That means yesterday–Friday–was the first whole day I had worn my contacts. Here’s some impressions.
I still don’t think I can see as well with contacts as I can glasses. I’m unsure if this is because my vision with glasses is corrected so well (to 20/10) or it is just a mental thing.
The contacts themselves weren’t hard to get used to. Yes, I can feel it when the lens bumps against my eyelid when I move my eye, but I can’t feel them when I blink, etc… This is very much unlike the gas-permeable contacts I had 15 years ago. With them, it felt like every blink drug them up my eye only to have them fall back down.
Inserting them was a pain. Probably because I don’t have a good place and the bathroom was hot after my shower. It took me a good 6 tries to get the first lens in. If I keep this up, I need to buy one of those parabolic mirrors. The actual finger in the eye thing was easy…but I taught myself to overcome that last time.
I wore them all day. And by all day, I mean all day. From about 6am or so to 10pm or so. When I took them out and put in my glasses, I had to adjust back to glasses.
While I don’t think I see as well with contacts, I can read with no problems (the text is perfectly clear). I can also use the computer just fine.
I really like the fact that if I pull something out of the oven or breathe on a cold morning, I don’t have to worry about my glasses fogging up. That is super convenient. I imagine I’ll keep it up just to have them for when/if I go skiing, etc…
I don’t think I’ll wear them every day. I’ve worn glasses since I was in the 3rd grade (about 8 or so). I just don’t mind it any more. Heck, I don’t remember ever minding glasses since I’ve been an adult. Being a kid was a different story, I’m sure. Heck, the first pair I got were when we were in GTMO and I got 2 pair of BCGs (although they appear to be “in style” today). I do remember it taking me forever to get used to wearing them then.
I still haven’t figured out what I’m going to do. My first thought was to buy them outright at £40 for 30 pairs. And then I was going to just get more when that was gone. I would also pay for my glasses outright. But, everyplace here offers a plan where you pay monthly, get lenses, and get discounts on eyewear and follow-up exams. And since I picked daily wear contacts, I have an option. I can get 10 pairs per month, delivered, all of my follow-up care included, and 50% off on glasses for £14/month. I can then pause it (if I’m not wearing 10 pairs per month), increase it, or pause it. All with no commitments. Sure, the lenses work out more that way, but 50% off glasses is a super deal.
