about the universe forum commander Shop Now Commanders Circle
Product List FAQs home Links Contact Us

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

RANDOM THOUGHTS #253

Steve Cole's thoughts on several subjects that came to mind at various times.
   

1. If you're taking a bunch of medications, you need to have a written list of them on your person at all times. (This could be written in the back of your appointment book, or typed on a piece of paper.) Anything that happens to you is going to involve a doctor wanting to know what medications you are on, and this way, you have all the answers.
     

2. If you are responsible for a parent or other loved one, you need to have a similar document about them, but include such things as medical history and doctor contacts.
      

3. Recently, one of the software programs I used suffered a fatal corruption and had to be reinstalled. During that process, I had to go back through the "settings file" which I had not seen since 2002. I discovered several places where clicking on a little box would make the program stop doing some stuff that had annoyed me for over a decade. I feel stupid for not having sought solutions to those complaints. Instead, I just grumbled and lived with them.
      

4. Back when I was in college (early 70s) one of the more popular songs (we had record players back then, tapes did not appear until after I graduated) was MacArthur Park. It was haunting and sad and nobody really even thought of trying to understand what it meant. It was (as one might guess) a guy who just broke up with his girlfriend and misses her and the relationship, but knew it was what it had to be. It was 40 years later before I understood that the opening line (Spring was never waiting for us, girl) meant that their relationship was doomed because it lacked at least one of the necessary elements to make a marriage work, and thus could not go on. The songwriter ate lunch in that park with his girlfriend for about two years, and stuff in the song is stuff they saw every day. Families often had birthdays, and the city often had sudden rainstorms. As people gathered their stuff and ran for shelter, now and then some family would abandon the birthday cake which was then ruined by the rain, causing everyone who passed it on the dash for shelter to feel sad for them.