About the whole shower thing.

During one of the last posts I made, I mentioned the shower/bathing stuff.

Again...

Well, I decided to search my posts to see if I really had posted anything about it.

Looks like I hadn't posted anything that really explains it.

Well, today is the day.

Prepare to be amazed!
(Or disgusted... maybe...)

Several years ago, when my real struggle with Bipolar started, I slowly stopped showering/bathing.

A huge part of that was rolling out of bed straight to work.

Now, rolling out of bed to work was often the result of sleeping in late, or not being able to sleep.

My Bipolar mania behaviors include really bad sleep problems (staying awake for days with VERY little sleep).

With that in mind, if I could get in and out of work quickly, I would have more time to do other things.

Part of my plan to get done with work was to just roll out of bed and start work and shower later.

Well, that was all well and good, but slowly it wasn't happening.

The flip-side of being Bipolar is the depression, where I didn't shower or much care about anything at all.

So showering and caring for myself wasn't really high on any sort of list of mine.

I think the longest I went without showering was about 10 days.  I've read where some people with mental health problem have gone more than a month without showering.

These days, I still have trouble showering & caring for my personal hygiene.

Shower & shaving is better, while teeth brushing still sucks.


As I think about it more these days, it's more along the lines of not wanting to miss things or waste my time showering when I could be doing something else.

Over the last month or so, I started purposely taking 15-30 minutes after everyone else has gone to school to shower, shave & brush my teeth.

If I don't do it after everyone has left, then it throws off their schedule really badly.

Why not do it at night?

The problem there is that when I often finally go to bed, it's REALLY late and I just want to sleep so that I'm not tired for work.

Another problem with the night showers, is that many times the bathroom isn't free until I'm asleep.  Everyone else is just busy with it, trying to get ready for bed.

Over the past month, I think Ellie is starting to realize that I'm not coming to bed until she's in bed.

If I go to bed first, then the lights in the room get turned on as bright as possible (we have a dimmer), then the lights get left on while Ellie leaves the room for 5-30 minutes at a time trying to get the rest of the house in bed.

Lastly, if I'm comfortably lying in bed, Ellie usually finds something that I'm lying on or touch of hers that she MUST move for her to sleep... so I then get thrown out of comfort and rhythm.  I don't usually lie on anything of hers or touch it... It's usually the blankets or sheets.

Did I mention the volume of her voice when she's talking to the Misses during this bedtime process?

It's like she's been outside coaching soccer.

So Ellie... WTF!?

My dearest Ellie, has been...

I don't know how to describe it other than...

Acting way out of character, like a royal pain in the ass and unsympathetic.

Usually when she's not feeling well and she needs to sleep a bit, I just leave her the hell alone.

In the past, she tries the best she can for me, although she really sucks at doing it.

This morning, I was finally sleeping well, and instead of just leaving me alone, she decided right then and there it was time to change and wash the bedding!

When I told her I wasn't sleeping well, she stopped and left for a bit.

Then she came back and started pulling stuff of the bed and woke me up again!

So, WTF!?

Why couldn't she just leave me alone!

Then she acted like it was MY fault.

WTF!?

Well, I got up and went to work instead of just calling in.

I didn't want to be out "sick" with Ellie around.  She normally takes that as "You should be working around the house, since you took the day off..."

Well she finally came into the office and asked me what was "wrong".

With that, I told her that I NEVER did to her what she did to me!

Or rather, I try REALLY hard to not disturb her.

She finally got the idea and eventually apologized, yet didn't seem to think she did anything wrong.

This is the primary reason why I worked today instead of calling in.

I wanted to hide from her because I was so pissed off at how she treated me.

No tooth, no tooth ache... right? (uh!)

Ok, that "(uh!)" is for Big Miss; however, I put it into the wrong phrasing though.

It's supposed to be

I know...
Right?
Uh!

Eh... middle school kids.

I had one of my molars pulled on Friday afternoon, which was fine by me, however, it's become a problem now.

The damn jaw is swollen and hurts REALLY badly.

Thus the title of this post..

No tooth, no tooth ache...
Right?

I suppose, it's not a tooth ache, but rather a

"HOLY SHIT!
My Jaw aches!"

With my dental problems, I don't blame the dentist or anyone else, except for possible genetic markers passed on by my ancestors. (Damn old & dead bastards!)

The real problem is my own lack of oral hygiene.
Or would that be, "Hi, Jean!"?  I don't know her, but ... well.. I'll stop and you can imagine all you want, you perverts!

 I decided to go with the extractions of several teeth because in the long run they're going to be cheaper than doing root canals again and possibly more crowns.

One of the things I'm realizing more and more in my aging Bipolar-ness, is that I don't always care for myself as much as a should.

See previous posts about showering.

Actually, I did search through my posts and realized I never posted anything about my occasional showering habits.. or lack of it.
I'll create a post about that sometime soon then.

 Getting tooth the matter at hand...

I don't always brush my teeth, which often bugs the hell out of Ellie, but I think she's realizing just as I have, that it's not always easy to want to take care of yourself if you're not feeling like yourself. (I don't know how that's logical, but I've read it more times than I can remember...)

At this time, I'm just waiting for the Pharmacy to to fill the antibiotic prescription the Dentist called in, because the fucking jaw hurts so badly.

In fact, it hurt so bad yesterday that I took a single ibuprofen yesterday, which helped a lot....

Butt
(That's one big butt!)

If you don't remember, or don't give a shit about reading my past posts, I usually pee blood when I use NSAIDs.

This will eventually lead to kidney stones, and the most likely problems with gout.

Well, I decided it was worth a one time risk.

I don't know if that was blood I saw this morning or just darker pee, but things were a tad different...

All I can do is pray to God that I can get relief without causing myself additional problems.

I told you they can smell it! They can smell it? Oh, yeah, I have it. I have a lot of it.

This stinks, yet it's good that I know it.

Being bipolar is very hard already.

Not being able to recognize your moods/states is worse for those around the person sometimes than the person themselves.

Everyone around you has no idea that you're having a problem or what the problem is, will often distance themselves really far away

I consider myself very, very blessed for two reasons:

1. I have great experiences/memories of my life before bipolar kicked my ass with its iron shod boots.
2. I have learned how to recognize the mood changes/states.

So right now I know that I'm in a manic state.

Currently it's just mild and so far not too out of hand.

Then again it's only a few days into it.

Hopefully it'll level out OK, without dropping me into the gutter.

Since being under the care of the "Ogre"  shrink, my swings have been less extreme with better self-control.

Today I got really wound up. Enough so that I knew it and that I should stay away from people.

I didn't really want to keep working today but wound up working on stuff at my desk there anyway.

When I was done trying to work I took a Xanax.

I fell to sleep for several hours today which is good.

In the past when I'm in this state nothing could knock me out for more than an hour.

Well right now I'm getting a bit of a headache and can't sleep again.

So far...

Perhaps I'm going manic again, or insomnia...

Last night I couldn't sleep so good.

Ellie and I had a great intellectual discussion, it'd have blown those in Young Frankenstein away! (Watch deleted scenes for info)

After she fell asleep, I couldn't sleep so I picked up the Fever Crumb book I'd been reading and finished it off.

The Damn Kindle keeps getting me into trouble.

It has a time left in book/chapter feature.

So when I look down, I see 1hr 25min left so I'll keep reading.

Then 20 minutes later, I see 1hr left, so I'll keep reading...

About 2:00 AM I finished the book.

Still couldn't sleep so I listened to a radio program.

Despite all the confusion I felt, I got maybe 30 minutes or more of sleep.

Like usual, I got up and started work early.

I'm practically right on top of the crash happening with the RedHat 7 servers.... But not 100% yet.

It's a dependency problem, but I don't know exactly which file it's in.

After working I decided to lay down and wound up sleeping for a good 4 hours or more.

Tonight, I took my regular meds and half of one of my muscle relaxers.

If I didn't take the muscle relaxer, u probably wouldn't be tired enough to sleep.

I hope I sleep.

Trust me... for safety, they want more of us armed than unarmed.

This isn't about those crazy guys who mutilate their bodies to add/remove body parts or modify what they currently have.

Unless they're the mutants in the sewers from Futurama.

Or they're Zaphod Beeblebrox, who had an extra arm "fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing."
 
What I'm referring to is how politicians are trying to turn our country into a police state, under martial law, where no one can be armed; whether it be guns, knives, pipes, bars, sticks, etc.

Where I live it's a fairly rural area, and it's expected that most adults carry knives & various tools on their belts.

I personally carry on a regular basis:

• Large pocket knife in my back pocket
• Gerber Multi-tool in a pouch on my belt.
• It has a knife on it, but it's VERY hard to get out quickly.
• Leatherman Micro - it's primary tool is a pair of scissors.
• It also has a knife, it's hard to get out, and it's about 1-1/4" long.
• Small multi-tool - it's primary tool is a pair of pliers.
• It also has a knife that's even harder to get out.

All of these tools are used daily.

The large pocket knife and Gerber are used more than the others, but they all get used.

I don't carry a hand gun for several reasons.

1. It's legal to open carry where I live.
1. It's also legal for stores & other private companies/properties to deny serving me if I am carrying openly.
2. Many people are afraid when they see my holster and gun.
1. It's a large .44 with an 8" barrel.
2. I like to reach out and touch someone at almost 100 yards with little drop.
2.  I don't have a concealed permit.
1. Many times over the past 5+ years it's been suggested that the list of concealed permit holders be made public.
1. I don't want my  name to be that list.
2. I am also Bipolar, and the way everyone is freaking out about those with Bipolar Disorder (BPD) owning guns is getting out of hand.

Getting to the point of why it's better for me to be armed than unarmed:

1. I might be part of the few people who can and will standup and defend others.
2. Often I can sense and spot those who are acting strange and need to be watched closer.
3. I don't mind fighting with all the force necessary to stop the fight quickly.
4. If needed, I probably could handle ending someone's life.
1. This will be a last resort!
2. I suspect that no one likes the idea of ending a life.

Surely there are many others who can stand up and do the same thing with little regard to their own life to protect others.

 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he...

That comes from the Bible, Proverbs 23:7

But...
Jared Strider, you're a foul mouthed and sometimes seeming immoral person...

 It's true that I swear a lot. (See lots of previous posts where I often discuss my foul mouth.)

As for being immoral, I do admit that I haven't always tread the straight & narrow.

Wasn't Saul/Paul also a not so great person?  After all, he was persecuting and an instrument in the deaths of early Christians.

1. I don't encourage anyone to follow my behavior.
2. I openly admit my past problems.
3. I have sought forgiveness of my past sins and often still feel remorse for them.

Why this post then?

I am still in shock by Ellie's sister.

Until I can forgive her, I probably won't shut-up about it.

If this wasn't her son, I would consider contacting child services and complain that this is "contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

As I noted before, I found thinking about sex a lot just made my want it more.

It's more than just thinking about it...

It's coveting the acts.

Why are so many people in debt?

They covet what they see, so they immediately buy it instead of saving for it, or deciding that they just don't need it.

Didn't I just buy a new radio?

That I did.

When I decided to purchase it, I had been doing TONS of research into the best brand, features and prices for what I wanted.

The $150 for this radio and it's features was the best solution that I found.

Did I have the money to buy it originally?

No.

When did I get the money?

I actually got a bonus from work.

The final justification was a Father's day present and as a congratulation/award for passing the HAM radio Extra class license.

Otherwise, I would have kept saving up about $10 a paycheck.

Sure it'd have taken several months to have the money for it, but I would've bought it without going further into debt for it.

OMG! I can't believe how she's teaching him THAT!

My sister-in-law is a great person and I love her dearly.

She is, however, an airhead and very irresponsible... still...

When she was 18, she got pregnant right out of high school on a one night stand.





Not everyone who does a one night stand or gets pregnant is an airhead.

My sister-in-law, actually has done LOTS of things that have my classifying her as an airhead.

Well, this time, she told us that our 15 year old nephew had some questions about school yard lingo he heard in the school yard.

Instead of talking about it, she gave him the American Pie movies and suggested he watch those to learn about it.

I used to like dirty humor as much as the other teens back in the day.

About 15 years ago, I only saw the first one, and I wished I hadn't.

For me, I believe that watching movies like this only contribute to ill behavior by teens and adults; primarily teens.

Going forward with this, I said that I thought that method of teaching a teen boy was vulgar.

If you want your son to be careful and safe in the emerging teen "sex world", why would you show them a movie that's all about several kids who's only aim in life is to have sex?

I'd rather not go into details about what bugs me about that movie and the possible interpretation by teens.

After all, I was a knowing participant at the time my ex-wife got pregnant.

I can honestly say that listening to a friend's sexual encounters (he wouldn't shut up about it) and watching these "teen" movies that I was more willing to seek out sex.

As I think about it these days...

The only reason why I was interested in my ex-wife back at the time, was to just have someone to make out with.

Pretty damn sorry, right?

I honestly don't want to see any kids taught in the manner of...

"Watch these sexually charged teen movies to learn..."

Bender, no! You'll make God cry!

I've always been told that shaking it more than twice it's a sin...

Now that I've gotten into a topic that I really don't want to explore, I'll stop.

Dear Jared Strider... I never thought this would happen to a poor boy from the city... (again)

Yesterday morning, I was starting to have the inklings of the severe sinus problems.

I had to go into the office for a Macintosh Laptop, so that I can start testing and developing my code for it.

Before I drove into the office, I used my Flonase. (Thanks for making it non-prescription assholes! It was cheaper for me because my insurance plan covered 99% of the cost.)

The air in the office is "OK", but it's heavily recirculated and extremely dry!

After an hour or two of being there, I began to have problems with my sinuses drying out and irritation.

When I got home, I thought I was going to be OK...

Well, it really wasn't.

Since I'm doing a narrative here, I'm going to carry on...

Ellie pulled out some salmon for dinner.

Well, I pulled out our little bbq plate/grill thingy and put the salmon on it, and put it into the bbq at the far end and then cooked the fish by smoking.

It turned out great!

We had some pasta salad & corn to go with it!

It was great!

Well, as things went on and got later, the sinus irritation got worse and worse.

Since we invested in a large bag of Epsom salt, and I read that soaking in a hot bath it supposed to help "cure what ails you", I hopped into the tub around midnight.

When I got out, the nausea started to hit me, so I sat on the crapper resting.

Then it really hit me and I sat on the bathroom floor trying to wait it out.

Finally it came out...

It was extremely thick and solid.

To put it in my best descriptiveness...

I was puking a turd!
No watery substance to it...
Just salmon, pasta and corn!

Seriously, it was the worse, strangest and nastiest cookie tossing I've ever done.

If you've ever seen how sausages are stuffed with those machines, that's exactly what it was like, except it was coming out of my mouth!

Now, who's hungry for pasta, fish and corn!?

Damn you old man!

He's not actually that much older than I am.

Maybe 5-10 years older than me.

This guy is another HAM radio operator that I actually work with, not just another guy I know with a HAM radio.

A while back we ordered some QRP tuners on Ebay.

I'm pretty aggressive about building projects and kits like this, so I built mine first.

It was pretty easy, after watching several YouTube videos.

My biggest complaints though, between the building instructions and videos are the lack of better details about the final touches.

For example it would've been a nice touch to find out the magnet wire's enamel was thick and needed be cleaned off with a planer, ground using an angle grinder and possibly burned off with a blow torch.

Of those, I actually used a knife, sand paper, and a butane torch.

Then I was able to solder the leads of the inductor to the switch.

That's when I found out that the switch was REALLY cheaply made.

The damn thing melted and got ruined.

I finished building and realized that it wasn't working through the inductor.

So, my buddy and I ordered better rotary switches.

They came in today, and he dropped it off this morning because he was on vacation.

I put it on my desk so that I wouldn't forget to finish up the tuner when I was done working.

About an hour later, I had the soldering tools out and started working on it.

There was work going on, since I was building a virtual network environment and installations & reboots take time.

One thing that I did while building, was to test out the inductor switch and found that I needed to connect the wires from the inductor differently.

A little component tester I bought last month helped me to figure out my initial inductor soldering was not working.

I might be wrong with the final wiring, but it seems to work just fine.

What I did was to only solder one end of the magnet wire of the inductor to one side of the tuner network, then left the other one disconnected.

In the center of the rotary switch is a pin.  This, I found, is what actually changes the inductance when rotating the switch.

So the magnet wire around the inductor is only connected on one end, and the side is left open.  The center pole of the switch is connected to the other half of the network.

I connected this inline with my new radio and started tuning it as the "instructions" suggest doing, and I'll be damn if it doesn't work!

Without the tuner, the signals I'm receiving are extremely weak or just not there.

Funny thing, is that the I am using the wrong length antenna for this frequency.

The antenna is .25 meters, when the frequency I was tuning is 40 meters.

Then I also switched up and tune it to 20 meters too.

I'm impressed that these little kits actually work!

Now even more excited to use the radio tonight...

Flip it over, it's not quite done!

So this little radio wasn't fully done yet.

Turns out the CW key jack got melted up a bit during construction.

I know the radio and it's parts are from China, and I accept that parts aren't always going to be 100% awesome...

Yet, it sucks to find out that the jack was messed up after having it all put together.

Since I will not give up on things, especially on a $150 radio.

It's a good thing that for years I kept various computer parts and components around.

I salvaged a stereo jack from the front panel board of a PC case.

This little jack fit the holes perfectly...

Too bad it was just about 2mm taller than the other one.

I had to unsolder and reposition the transistor, since it's mounting screw didn't match up after putting in the new stereo jack.

Testing it out, it recognizes a straight key and paddle correctly now.  It also doesn't stay keyed when I put the straight key plug all the way into the jack.

It's "up"... Too bad Viaga couldn't have made it easier...

The other day, I finally got my little radio kit.

Before I went through winding the inductors, soldering, etc....

I did an inventory of all the parts, and ensured that they all fit into the holes drilled on the PCB. (Printed Circuit Board)

There were three holes that I had to clean up.

Then I went through and wound the inductors and the one transformer.

Winding inductors & transformers is actually pretty easy and calming.  People often tie flies to relax, so this is similar to me...  Although, I won't display them, I'll install and use them.

This radio has a double-sided circuit board, which meant that I had several of the parts that needed to be installed on bottom while all the others were on top.

With the "complexity" of construction, this was actually very easy to work on and relaxing to do...

You'd think I was winding this all up to be easy and fun...

Then came installing and putting together the case/enclosure..

HA!

I suppose I should've tried to put the case together first of all!

The holes of the front/back plates didn't match the holes of the top/bottom/sides.

Let me step back...

I didn't know they didn't fit at first...

Using a phillips screw driver to put things together wasn't just going to cut it...

The screw heads were threatening to strip out.

Since I was a PC builder from way back, I had a small peanut butter jar of PC screws.

The smaller M3 screws are the same as the screws that came with the kit.

As noted, using a phillips screw driver was going to strip the heads, so I used a socket to twist the screws in...

That wasn't enough!

I also had to go and get my metric taps, so that I could get a good starter hole going so that I could use the PC screws & socket wrench.

Let me recap a bit here...

I had all the soldering done in about 2 hours.  This I expected.

Working on the case... well..

It took me more than 2 additional hours to finish the case, and that's even wolfing down my dinner and going with Ellie's blessing so that I could finish things.

With the radio finished, I hooked up a buddy's Antenna tuner, as he said it'd work as a signal generator...

I generated a lot of shit to hear on the headphones, but it did provide me with feedback the little radio was able to pick up some signals.

At last, I finally hooked up an antenna to the little radio.

First off...

Compared to a little Pixie 4.1 kit I bought and have used for the past 4-6 months, this was VERY quiet!

It also was able to dial right in on the frequency of a signal I picked up last night!

Playing with the RIT (Receiver incremental tuning), I was able to tune onto the frequency of the remote station for transmission, then flip back over and tune/adjust the signal to a tone that I could easily hear/listen to.

This is what I wanted this little box for!

Something more robust with features that will allow me to enjoy working with CW (Morse Code).

I'll post more info how my radio contacts with the new radio are going...

Last night, I was tired by the time I was done, and didn't have patience to play with it.

Freaking A!

On June 9th, I ordered a YouKits EK1A radio from Vibroplex.
(http://www.vibroplex.com/contents/en-us/d57.html)

I ordered it from them for several reasons:

1. On the YouKits website,  they indicate that Vibroplex is their USA retailer.
2. ARRL has indicated that they were the place to buy them.
3. I figured it would be faster to receive it from them.
4. Shipping was cheaper.

My order was placed on June 9th.

On the 17th, I sent a follow up asking for an ETA for shipping.

Turns out that they were out and would be shipping one out the week after.

On the 25th, I sent another follow up asking about the radio.

This time the reply indicated that their shipment was in California and that I should get it this week.

Today, I sent another email asking where it is at, and that it's been almost a month since I placed the original order.

I explained that I ordered from them expecting it to be here quicker and that their shipping was cheaper.

Then I asked if it would've been faster if I had ordered directly from YouKits in China...

In the message, I told them that I expected some delay as the ARRL published a good review of these radios in the June QST magazine.

There are approximately 150,000 members of the ARRL, and possibly 100+ individuals might've wanted this radios and placed orders around same time as mine.

I'm getting pretty pissed about the shipment of this freaking radio.

Maybe they should send me a fucking free Vibroplex key with the damn radio!

After all, they said their shipment was in California last week!

Vibroplex is in Knoxville, Tn.

This shipment should've been at their facility by now, if it was in CA last week!

Part of my anxiety about this, is that I'm tired of trying to make CW contacts with my little QRP Pixie 4.1 radio.

The Pixie radio works... but...

It's hard to tune it for me to both send and receive.

The tones that I can't hear well, fall into the range that is usually need to "Zero-beat" the CW frequency of a sending station.

Well, I'll just have to keep playing with the Pixie until they can get me my freaking radio...

It's just turning me off from wanting to do any further business with Vibroplex.

Even though they're a major CW key maker.

My attitude would probably be different if they'd have sent me emails or what not about the status of the delivery they told me about last week!

so...

Freaking A!