OT: Spectacles

Or even more powerful, AutoHotKey (FOSS I think?). You have to learn a scripting language, but hell... if you ever wanted to automate your windowing tasks, you can do almost anything with it.

Tim

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You really are illiterate.

It strikes me as a bit odd that you have this marvelous "free" health system but think it's odd that people can actually afford to pay $60 out of pocket for an eye exam or $20 for a pair of glasses - no government permission required.

Kaiser is super-automated, and they nag me on schedule for BP checks, blood chemistry workups, colonoscopies, TB tests, flu shots, tetanus shots, hepatitus shots, shingles shots, eye checks, and an annual visit with Pansy, my Chinese lady MD. But I don't buy glasses from them.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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Kaiser has always been into prevention, which they interpret to mean more testing, screening, immunization, and visitations. Such over-testing is still cheaper than treatment. I discovered that I had prostate cancer from one of those seemingly random screening tests, which I almost declined to take.

When I had corporate Kaiser coverage in the late 1970's, I bought my first pair of prescription glasses from them. They were unable to successfully copy the numbers from the optometrists unreadable scrawl and produce a matching pair of glasses. However, they did get it right on the 2nd try. Those were in the days when glasses were made of real glass and lasted about 10 years. Today's Zenni plastic lenses and "alloy" frames last less than 2 years before I destroy them. Amazingly, Costco still supplies glass lenses. I vaguely recall about

2 pairs on the display were for glass lenses. They've lasted about 6 years so far, but to be fair, I don't wear them often.

These days, I'm with PAMF (Palo Alto Medical Foundation) which seems to be less aggressive than Kaiser at providing reminders. I asked PAMF to NOT call and NOT email reminders as I will pick them up from the reminders pages on their medical records web pile.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

On a sunny day (Thu, 22 May 2014 17:24:36 -0500) it happened "Tim Williams" wrote in :

This is a howto I wrote for myself for Linux, for keyboard keys:

to find key code in X: xev

to assign an F key to keycode: edit /root/.xmodmaprc

to merge it into the keymap: xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

to view the modified keymap: xmodmap -pk

Now install xbindkeys

Edit the xbindkeysrc for commands associated with F keys. edit /root/.xbindkeysrc

restart xbindkeys killall xbindkeys;xbindkeys

make sure xbindkeys is started with X in /root/.xsession add: edit /root/.xsession xbindkeys &

In case xmodmap wrong, correct like this for TAB (see man xmodmap): xmodmap -e "keycode 23 = 0xff09 0xfe20"

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The problem with hotkeys is that you forget them easily... or simply type so fast that you do not need those.

I have a large keyboard with many special keys, and looking at it do not remember what I mapped under those. I am at the command line anyways all day.

All that MS windows is crap anyways, I did see a demo recently of somebody trying to show new W8 on a tablet, outside, all you did see was a reflection of nearby buildings, the unlimited morons at MS did not even put a non-reflective screeen on that pad. Shine sells? But you cannot do anything with something like that, What a world.

to

Thanks for the reply, Tim. There are many free keybinding programs available for Windows. I tried every one I could find, including AutoHotKey. It is available at

It is definitely a useful program, but I couldn't see a need for having to learn a scripting language to use it. Here is one example of the things you can do with it:

Whenever some sends a KeyStroke (i.e. a) it sends a MsgBox.

a:: MsgBox, Get away from my computer. Return b:: MsgBox, Get away from my computer. Return c:: MsgBox, Get away from my computer. Return

etc.

I believe a macro program can be very useful in some applications, such as word processing. Many word processors have macro capability built in, such as Emacs and Borland SPRINT. But I'm not sure if an external macro program such as AutoHotKey would be worth the trouble to learn. For example, what happens if you accidentally press some key combination that enters a bunch of data when you happen to be in a browser trying to fill out a form. An inappropriate response could be messy to clean up.

I just wanted a program to load Windows programs when I press a particular key combination. The Hotkeyz by Skynergy turned out to be the best one I could find, and it has proven to be reliable in many years of service.

Presbyopia is the slow process of losing the ability to vary your focal length, which happens with age. Eyes vary focal length by warping a flexible lens internal to the eye. (The "crystalline" lens.)

The lens is suspended from the ring-like focusing muscle (the "ciliary muscle") that surrounds it with fibers, sort of like a trampoline's deck is suspended with springs from its ring-like frame.

Eyes focus in the distance when the ring-shaped muscle relaxes, and up close(r) when the ciliary contracts.

Presbyopia has two mechanisms. 1) The lens gets hard and stiff over time. That's the usual cause & orthodox explanation. 2) The fibrils suspending the lens grow life-long, which loses mechanical range of control over the lens-shape as the control fibers grow slack.(*)

(*)(The Schachar hypothesis of accommodation.) (A cataract surgeon of some note noticed that he was removing lots of supposedly rock-hard crystalline lenses that weren't. He came up with a procedure that cinches up the fibrils and restores range-of-focus in those patients (for a time anyway, until nature takes its course.))

The lens, in turn, stiffens from cumulative blood sugar exposure--which glues the fibrous sliding proteins of its structure to each other (cross-linking) with sticky sugar-molecule cross-links (a milder version of what happens to a finely-stranded cable's flexibility when you tin it)

--and from cumulative U.V. exposure, which does the same.

Or at least that's how I remember it all. YMMV.

Cheers, James Arthur

Are you diabetic? When my sugar is off my eyes don't work properly.

Rick

Yes, Kaiser is trying to be more preventive. If I understand it, Kaiser makes more money if you are healthy, since they are a HMO, but PAMF makes more money if you are sick and die? You probably will dispute that about PAMF, but most doctors make more money if you are sick and dying. It's a "duh" fact about medical care. The elephant in the living room that everyone pretends not to see, the crazy aunt in the attic no one hears, is the total power of preventive medicine that has emerged over the last 30 years.

Several factors have cloaked this break-through. First, flim-flam guys like Kevin Trudeau have poisoned the well. Second, the Lame stream media get billion$ from Big Pharma, so a slanted story gets out.

But the "alternative" preventive medicine is catching on big. If you try to get an appointment with a preventive doctor these days, or a non-allopathic one in the current lingo, since you have cancer for example, you will find they are booked up 6 months out.

j

Just for fun, some bad ASCII art:

.-----. 2. fibril .' | '. / / \ .---./ ./ , / 1. \ /, |--: lens :---| ' \ / ' \ /'---' \ / `. | .' \ '-----' 3. muscle

1. crystalline lens
2. suspensory ligament
3. ciliary body

Cheers,

James Arthur

Kaiser doctors are salaried. The guy who saved my eye told me that he could make

4x as much in private practice, but he couldn't help as many people, and he doesn't care about the money.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation

Nope. Not even pre-diabetic, despite the fair quantities of sugar that I eat. My best guess(tm) is the general lowering of blood pressure over the last 10 or so years has gradually let the eye fall back into it's normal shape. High blood pressure, or hypertension, can cause astigmatism by placing too much stress on the blood vessels of the eye. However, that's only my uninformed guess(tm). I'll ask the body mechanic the next time I go in for a tune up.

When I don't have my daily fix of sweets, I become irritable, irate, ineffective, belligerent, occasionally violent, and tend to write poetry. I need my sugar "fix" to function.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

#2 above was what I was referring to. In any case, blood sugar (or even hypertension) isn't the reason that almost everyone will get presbyopia and all at about the same age.

When I was with Kaiser in the 1970's, that was their motto. It's nothing new. What is new is the large number of diagnostics, screenings, and hypochondria enhancing tests that are offered. It's not just Kaiser, but everywhere. About a year ago, I decided to waste some money on myself and run a QA test on myself. I signed up for one of the rather cheap screening (I forgot the company name). I wanted to see if my cardiologist had missed something mostly because I haven't been paying for regular checkups. No problems found. However, it was obvious that it was a sales pitch to promote doctor visits. The report was full of "maybe", "possible", "indications", and other vague terms intended to provide FUD instead of results. Actually, there were two sets of results, in different English dialects. One for me, and one for the doctor. They demanded to send the report only to my primary care physician, until I arranged otherwise, claiming that I wouldn't understand the results. I sent my doctor a copy, for replied that I had wasted my money. Oh well.

Incidentally, two of the three doctors that I deal with have left private practice and joined PAMF. Of course, I asked why. The problem is that the cost of maintaining an office has climbed sufficiently to look for an alternative. They both indicated that it wasn't the money, which was actually less at PAMF, but rather that they didn't have to deal with the staff problems, the army of "drug detailing" salesmen, the constant litigation, and the lack of adequate backup so that they could take some time off. I can see their point.

Agreed. I used to sell service contracts for 2way radio systems. The constant complaint was that if I do my job successfully, and prevent problems before they occur, the customer perceives this as paying for nothing. It's a difficult sell, until of course, something goes wrong. It's much like selling insurance, and in this discussion, like selling preventive medicine. If preventive medicine really worked, we wouldn't need as much medicine. Can't win.

That's nicely balanced by the amazing ability of the American public to ignore those benefits and continue living in a self destructive manner. This is reinforced and aided by products and activities that are generally unhealthy. Also, can't win here.

Yep. However, the patent medicine dog and pony show carnival barker has been around since the invention of civilization. They don't bother me much because anyone with brains can see through the pitch line. More insidious is the tendency for the pharmaceutical to promote "lifestyle" treatments instead of cures. There's certainly more money in a pill you have to take daily to suppress symptoms, than in a treatment that gets rid of the problem (and the pills).

The other potentially big thing is if and when the insurance carriers will being paying for offshore medicine and medical tourism. When I didn't have any insurance, and was paying cash for elective surgery, the dramatically lower cost of offshore medicine was very tempting. I even hired an advisor (based in India) to work out the details. In the end, I had it done locally, but under similar circumstances, I would consider it again. I'm sure the insurance carriers have noticed the cost differential, and are salivating at the prospects of lowering their costs. Why they haven't jumped is unknown.

Been there, done that, and you're correct. Such doctors are very selective as to whom they accept for treatment. I failed to qualify. However, a friend is being treated by such a doctor for a variety of age related ailments. In general, I would say his methods are successful. However, the doctor micro manages the patients diet, exercise, medications, life style, activities, and anything else he can gain control over. That method of prevention is not for me.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I was hoping you would post a picture of yourself with a ruler taped to your forehead. I wasn't so lucky. Mikek :-)

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