Divemedic

On the Seventh Day, He Rested

The reason that posting has been lacking a bit is that it’s been a busy week. Let me recap it for you:

There are seven days in a week, of course. Three of them were spent at work this week. The first day this week turned out being a 14.5 hour shift because of a stroke patient, a fellow nurse who used to be a supervisor trying to bulldoze me, and a little thing we will talk about in a future post called permissive hypertension.

The second day this week was a 14 hour shift because I had some relatively sick people and the nurse taking my patients was late doing so due to her trying to find a sitter for her Baker Act.

The third day, they cut me an hour early because the census was low and they didn’t want me to slide into overtime.

Then my days off wound up being filled with personal details- the house that we used to live in is now under contract. We first listed it for sale back in early March after replacing the floors and the air conditioner. We tried selling by owner, no luck, only one showing that never called us back. We tried one agent who didn’t even get us a single showing. The second agent had multiple showings, and we finally sold. Now I can use the money to get a pool, an outdoor kitchen, and pay off half of the mortgage on my current house. Speaking of mortgages-

We have been trying to refinance the house we live in, because our original loan was for 8%, and we got a refi offer for 4.8%. We close on that this week.

I have also been working on the network of the house. If you will remember, I wanted to put a UPS on the network. The one that’s in the house as built was supposed to have a 28 inch media panel. It didn’t- it had a 20 inch panel, and that was too small to fit all of the stuff I needed. So I pulled out the old one, put in a 30 inch panel, and wired the network in the house with a MOCA system. That 30 inch panel let me put in the modem, the MOCA converter, the master mesh node, a couple of network switches, and the UPS.

While installing the MOCA system, I had to use a cable tracer to see which cables went to which rooms. There are 8 cables coming into the house- one for each bedroom, one in the living room, one to the media panel, one to the bonus room upstairs, and one that I still don’t know where it goes. I put a cable tracer on the lines, and three of them were showing open circuit. I started investigating, and this is what I found:

The one in the master bedroom was hidden behind a phone jack:

The one in the upstairs bonus room was simply not connected. An inspection camera revealed that the cable was stapled to the studs above and below the box.

Still, I have it all done, and the MOCA system is now installed, so my mesh network now has an Ethernet backhaul, which increases network speed and reliability.

Then I spent a day this week going to my grandson’s soccer game.

All of those things have taken quite a bit of time, and left me quite sleep deprived. There was one night that I had to make do with only three hours’ sleep. So Sunday is a day off. I am going to get caught up on sleep, head to a diner and get a rib sticking breakfast, then spent the day with my bride doing nothing.

With all of that, there was precious little time for blogging or even reading the news. I am looking forward to vacation. I have a vacation coming up, where I am spending a week in Bimini for some well earned time off. Until then, life goes on.

By Divemedic, ago

Angry Rant

Xfinity can lick my taint.

I have been paying $40 per month for 300 mbps Internet since we moved in. I am lucky to get 60 mbps most of the time. So this morning, I saw a deal on their website to increase speed to 800 mbps for $60 per month. I took the plunge.

A couple of hours later, I got an email confirming that I was now on 1000 mbps for the low price of $127 per month. WTF. Even worse? I was still only getting 56 mbps. (The BS clause of “speeds of up to” means never actually hitting that speed, but you would think paying 3 times as much would get you SOME kind of speed increase)

I called the customer service number and got some middle eastern moron who couldn’t really speak English. I got up and drove 45 minutes to the nearest Xfinity location. When I got there, they told me that there was no 800 mbps plan offered, only 300, 500, or 1000. So I told them to put my account back the way it was before they did this.

They said that price is no longer available. I can have the 300 mbps for $60 a month if I sign a 2 year contract, or I can pay $80 a month without a contract. That’s it, and fuck you very much. So now I am paying DOUBLE what I was for the same shitty service. I have few choices- I can stay with Xfinity, or I can opt to pay for Tmobile 5G internet, or try Starlink. The thing that makes me leery of Starlink being my primary Internet provider, because of the service disruptions that happen during thunderstorms, which we all know happen virtually every afternoon here in Central Florida.

Here is the thing- I have proof that they sold me a plan that they had no intention of actually giving me before putting me on a different plan at double the price. I took a picture of the screen- proving that they DO offer 800 mbps.

On Monday, I am calling Florida’s Attorney General’s office to report this obvious “bait and switch” scheme.

By Divemedic, ago

Racist Left

The left thinks that blacks are too stupid to get on the Internet, and also think that blacks in Florida are all convicted felons and can’t vote.

But it’s the right that is racist.

By Divemedic, ago

On Amendment 3

Have you been to New York, Denver, or Las Vegas? The smell is absolutely pervasive. Even with only “medical” marijuana being legal here, we see a parade of people who are suffering from cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome- a malady where they smoke so much weed that they spend a good chunk of time every day throwing up, yet they won’t take our advice and smoke less weed.

By Divemedic, ago

Christians Not Wanted

Kamala Harris loves herself some Islamists and thinks courting them is all important. The party that she represents says that hate has no home there, and uses a rainbow flag to show just how inclusive it is. That’s why people should be surprised that two young men in the crowd of her recent campaign rally yelling, “Jesus is Lord” were responded to like this:

So it seems that Christians are not to be included in the ‘big tent’ that is the Democratic party, but Muslims are. So are trannies, fags, atheists, child molesting pedophiles ‘minor attracted persons’, and all other sorts, but not Christians. They can just fuck right off.

This astounds me, because candidates are usually pretty adept at spouting a lot of words without actually saying anything. This one sentence emanating from the mouth of HOTUS says far more than anything she has said at the debates or mock interviews that she has participated in. It displays her inner self: she hates traditional America, and sees the beliefs of the 68% of Americans who identify as Christian as being a punchline, some sort of zinger to show what Bible thumping mouth breathing morons she believes them to be.

This should be a HUGE story, but the only play it is getting in the US is from Fox, the NY Post, and Forbes. Big media is a full on propaganda machine at this point.

The Republicans should be making campaign commercials using this clip, and should play them in the Bible belt at the top and bottom of every hour for the next 3 weeks.

Disclaimer: As those of you who read this blog already know, I am an atheist. I also share many of the same values that Christians do. I have more in common with Christians than I do Islam, the sexual deviants of the Democratic party, or the morons in the church of climate change. Just for full disclosure.

By Divemedic, ago

Rights Without Responsibility

Watch this video, then I will tell you my own story.

She claims to be an independent woman while at the same time wants her father to pay for her wedding, because she can’t. That doesn’t sound very independent to me.

When my daughter was 15 years old, she was dating this 20 year old loser who it turned out didn’t have a driver’s license because his had been suspended. When I told him that he couldn’t take her anywhere in a car since he had no driver’s license, he told me to mind my own business. I tried explaining to her that he was a loser who couldn’t date women his own age, so he was chasing younger girls, and all he wanted was to get laid. She told me that I was too old to understand how it is “nowadays” and that they were soulmates, and there was nothing I could do to keep them apart.

See, school taught her that she was a strong girlboss who wasn’t owned by anyone. She could decide for herself, thank you very much.

The young lad sent me an email telling me to mind my own business or he would come over with a bat and teach me a lesson. The next time he came over, I pulled a gun on his smarmy ass and told him that if I caught him coming over to my house again, I would kill his ass and produce the email as evidence in my trial.

I caught them once, having sex on my couch. I called the cops, who did exactly nothing.

Things degenerated to the point where she would just walk out whenever she pleased. Out of the house while I was taking a leak, out of school when he wanted to see her, nothing worked. I even tried getting a restraining order, but the courts denied granting it because she begged them not to. It turns out that the courts hold a teenage girl’s opinion in more regard than that of her parents.

On the day she turned 18, my daughter came out of her room and told me that she was now an adult and could do whatever she wanted. I pointed out to her that part of being an adult is understanding that adults have responsibilities, and one of those is to learn that there are consequences for every action you take, meaning that you can’t always do whatever you want.

She replied that she was done with my “bullshit rules” and she was going to live with her soulmate. I told her that, if she decided that she was an adult, then she needed to understand that, as an adult, she would have to provide everything on her own. Don’t come back here and ask for any handouts, not even a single dollar. She walked out.

I didn’t see her again for four years. That was when she came to me and asked for money for her wedding. It appears that she had broken up with her soulmate six months after moving in with him, and he stalked her to the point where she had to get a restraining order. She met this new guy, they were in love, and wanted to get married. She wanted me to pay for the wedding. I told her no.

My ex-wife (her mother) called me to tell me what an asshole I am, before telling me that I should pay for the wedding AND the honeymoon to Alaska, a bill that came to over $20,000. I said no. She is an adult, and I am not going to have her turn her back on me, only to come crawling back whenever she needed money.

The biggest lesson that she learned was just a few months after my grandson was born. Her husband ran off with an only fans porn actress, leaving my daughter and his kids high and dry. That was what she needed to grow up. The responsibility of having children of her own taught her lessons that she was unable to listen to when I tried to teach them.

Our relationship has never been the same as it once was, but we have slowly come to terms with what happened.

All because society and our kids’ schools fill these kids’ heads with ideas about the rights of being an adult, but don’t bother to teach them about the responsibilities that come with it.

You can’t be an independent adult if you need someone else’s money to pay for it.

By Divemedic, ago

Fire with Fire

The left is all butthurt because Trump apparently closed a McDonald’s so he could have a photo op of himself working there.

The thing is that they are conveniently ignoring the Astroturfing being done by the Harris campaign, where she stocked a closed restaurant with adoring fans before visiting it. The thing is that Trump is simply doing the “work an ordinary job” thing that was started by Florida’s Lawton Chiles back in 1970, then copied and repeated by Bob Graham beginning 1977. The basis of the plan was that Chiles (and later Graham) would spend a day performing the job of one of their constituents to show that they understood what ordinary working people were going through.

By Divemedic, ago

Fall

This week has been pleasant in Florida, with temperatures being typical for a Florida Autumn. The highs have been in the high 70s to low 80s, lows in the upper 50s and low 60s. Pleasant breezes carrying air that is, for the gulf coast, rather low in humidity.

It has triggered some strong, pleasant childhood memories. I remember most vividly a fall day spent watching my mother decorate the house for fall with expanding paper pumpkins and other assorted fall and Halloween decorations, the windows open and cool fall breezes blowing through the house as dinner cooked in preparation for my father coming home from work. It is one of the more pleasant memories from my childhood. I still fondly remember those decorations to this day, 50 years later.

Now, the child is gone. My mother and father are gone, the paper pumpkins are gone. The country that I grew up in is gone. All that remains are the memories of a time that no longer exists in the head of a man who now is old enough to get free coffee at Denny’s and has grandchildren who are older than I was in those memories of an autumn long gone.

I had a tough week at work. Because the weather has been so mild, people haven’t been coming in to the ED for the stupid reasons that they usually do come in for, so we haven’t been as busy as usual. I have been in the critical zones, and my patients have been truly sick. More than half of my patients have been admitted to the ICU, and that makes for a heavy workload and a lot of thinking about life and death.

Combine the battles with death and the upcoming anniversary of my mother’s death and father’s birthday, and you have what I suppose is the reason why I am feeling a bit- nostalgic.

My wife, without even knowing the memories and thoughts in my head, has decorated the house for autumn. It makes me content. I don’t think of myself as an old man, yet. I’m not old enough to be a boomer, but I still feel older every day.

It’s a perfect metaphor. I am in what is probably the October of my life, and missing the time when I was a child. I can feel the chill of an approaching winter, can you?

By Divemedic, ago