Diabetes Update

Last month my doctor gave me a new medication to help lower my triglycerides called Gemfibrozil 600MG that I take twice a day.  I was told to make sure I take them exactly 12 hours apart for it to be effective.  I created a schedule on my cell phone to remind me twice a day, once at 10am, and then once at 10pm to take my pills.  It has worked out so far and today is day 30.  We went to the doctor’s office on Thursday and they drew blood to test it to see if it helped so I will find out on my next appointment which is May 24th.

In the meantime, he gave me a prescription for a blood glucose meter to check my blood twice a day.  He told me to check it in the morning before I eat and before I have dinner at night.  So far it hasn’t been that high.  Thursday night I did a reading and it was 112 then the next morning it was 132, last night it was 100 and this morning it was 112 again.  Why is that so important?  Well, when they did that blood glucose test a few months ago I was near 200, so this just tells me that I have gone way down.  I have been eating a lot of chocolate lately, this just shows me that it hasn’t really affected me as much as I thought it did.  Although now that I have this meter, I have been staying away from the bad foods because I know if the number goes high, it will make me feel guilty.  Perhaps guilt is the kick in the pants that I needed to get me to stop eating so much sugar.

This is my new meter, the One Touch Ultra 2.  I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it because Darrin has a meter, but it’s a different one with different strips.  He couldn’t get the hang of his and he was going to just give me his since he stopped using it, but I didn’t want his, I wanted one of my own because, well I just did :p.

The needles that you use to prick your finger with (in the zippered pouch on the left) aren’t very painful.  The skin on my fingers on my left hand are so thick that even at the highest setting, which is 7, hardly any blood comes out so I have to use my right hand.  I have to really milk the blood out because even at the highest setting it still doesn’t penetrate enough.  So when I say I am thick-skinned, I’m not exaggerating LOL.  My first test was an error because I didn’t milk it enough, but I learned to really get as much blood out as I can so I don’t waste test strips.  The wound heals up so fast that I am only able to get that one little drop, if I try to milk out any more after the test, nothing comes out.  Not that I need to, but I was curious to see if any more would come out for S&G’s.

So this is what it has come to, I have to test my blood every day, as if the constant medication every day for 18 years isn’t enough.  I really hope that the triglyceride medication and the guilt from the meter really helps me lose weight so I am no longer diabetic.  I hope the day finally comes when I no longer have to go through all of this nonsense with health issues, although we both know when that day will occur, and it’s not going to be a good day.  Oh well, life goes on.

R.I.P. Trolls and Cyberbullying on Facebook

I know you have heard of cyberbullying, but have you ever heard of R.I.P. Trolls?  I have never even heard of that until today.  Apparently there are people out there with hearts as cold as ice and as small as a grain of sand, no, even smaller than that, so they troll R.I.P. memorial pages and say something nasty to the deceased person.  As if things weren’t bad enough for them while they were alive, they are still being bullied after death.

I have three examples.  Naturally I had to pixelize all of the names and their images, not just to protect the innocent victims, but also to protect the bully.  Yes you heard me right, I wouldn’t want the bully to come after me for posting their name and then turn around and call me the bully for showing their name despite the fact that they are the bullies.

This “Stay at home dad” decided it would be funny to share a page called Zombie… (the person’s name has been in the news and her mother was not convicted of murder, you know who I mean) with an abortion survivor’s timeline.  Who would create a page calling someone a zombie after they were allegedly murdered by their mother who got acquitted?  What kind of person does such a thing?  Well, I went to click on that page to report it and it was already gone, so one down…

This was posted on a justice page for a child who was recently murdered while wearing a hoodie in Florida.  The message is “Taste the rainbow, (name omitted) I wonder what flavor of hollowpoints got dug out of his chest!”  What sick bastard would post this?  I reported that person for posting that image on that R.I.P. memorial page.  Take a look at some of the comments.  The first one says “that’s not funny bitch” and she replied, but the comment is gone now so apparently she thought twice about what she was saying and removed it, who knows.  The second person asked if this was supposed to be funny and the third person laughed.  What is this world coming to when people laugh at a picture like this?

This person was just downright disrespectful to many R.I.P. pages.  What kind of person does this?

I love computers and I love the internet, but when people sit in their house with total anonymity and post hateful things like this, there has to be some recourse.  You can’t just think that it’s OK to be an asshole and nothing will happen.  You can’t go up to a person and start calling them names without being slapped or punched in the face, so why would you go on the internet and type hurtful comments on their Facebook wall, especially after they died?  You wouldn’t like it if you died and someone typed “LOL u died” on your memorial page would you?  Think about other people’s feelings, put yourself in their shoes before you post negative comments like that, because someday that might be your R.I.P. page.

If you want to see who is posting these hateful things, join the Facebook page “United Against RIP Trolls and Cyberbullies.”  Click LIKE and scroll through their page and start reporting the bullies because that is the only way we are going to rid Facebook of all the hate.  When Facebook see’s that people are reporting them, their accounts will suddenly disappear.  Perhaps one day cyber bullies will be held accountable for their actions.

Check this article out.  It was written/posted on April 3rd 2012.  Anti-bully law could turn trolls into criminals.  I don’t believe in censorship because we all have a first amendment right to free speech, even if it’s hate speech, but where do we put our foot down and say that there is a huge difference between the two?  There needs to be a discussion about where we draw the line with hate speech because I just can’t see why the law would protect people who want to insult other people for shits and giggles.

Bully and the National Day of Silence

I have been invited by two groups here in Bakersfield to see the movie Bully at the Maya Cinemas theater.  I think Bully is an important movie that everyone needs to see because it shows the reality for the victims of bullying.

I myself was bullied in junior high school.  They called me a faggot and a queer and many other horrible names.  Being a bully does not show me how cool you are, it only shows me what an animal you are.  It wasn’t just the kids in school who bullied me, no it was my step-father who began the bullying when I was less than two-years-old.  I suffered at the hands of an abuser throughout my entire childhood so I know all about being bullied.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8kNYV5EAVw

April 20th isn’t just a day to go see Bully, it is also the National Day of Silence.  You don’t have to be silent the whole day, just remember those who were kept silent when they were killed for being gay.  You can celebrate any way you want to, just as long as you remember the innocent victims of bullying.

I finally got to watch Battlestar Galactica

I like to consider myself a science fiction nerd because I like shows like Star Trek and movies like Star Wars.  I actually love anything space related, but I don’t always get to watch them because if I miss even one episode, I feel like I am lost so I just wait until I can watch the series at a later date.

Battlestar Galactica originally aired on the SyFy channel (Sci-Fi back then) from 2004 until 2009 and I missed every episode.  I think the reason I missed it from the beginning was because I just didn’t think I would like it.  Also, if I have a show on the same day at the same time, I’ll watch the one that I was already addicted to and skip everything else.

I got a second chance to see the show from the beginning when BBC America announced that they were going to start showing it every Saturday night and I took advantage of it and I am so glad that I did.  They started out with 2 episodes at 7pm.  Our BBC America HD channel is from the eastern time zone so I got to watch it three hours earlier.  If I missed the episode then I had a second chance to watch it on the non HD channel at 7.

I kick myself in the head for not watching this show when it originally aired because it was such a good show.  I guess it doesn’t really matter that I missed it when it was on because now I have seen every episode from all four seasons.  I feel like I am better educated when it comes to science fiction television so when I am asked a question I will be able to respond with a semi-intelligent response, maybe, probably not.

Hulu has all four seasons of this show, but you have to pay to watch them so that is why I watched it on BBC America.  I also don’t like to watch 8 episodes of a show per day because that is just way too much information for me to take in all at once.  I feel like if I watch too many episodes in one day that I might not remember what happened before, if that makes any sense at all.

Hulu has Caprica too and I could have watched it months ago when they had the full season, but I wanted to watch BSG before I got into that so that I wouldn’t be confused, but apparently they aren’t even in the same timeline so it didn’t matter.  Now they only have 5 out of 18 episodes available.  I don’t see BBC America airing this so I will probably be forced to get Netflix just to watch it.  I really don’t mind, I just want to see it now.

The only thing that I regret about not watching this show when it aired was that I didn’t have anyone to talk to after every episode.  It’s cool to talk to someone about what happened and to get different perspectives and opinions on what we just saw.  Oh well, maybe next time, well, you know, with another show.

Oh well, I look forward to watching Caprica when I get Netflix.  I would love it if they came out with another BSG related show or a facsimile because I am in love with space dramas like BSG, Farscape, Star Trek etc.

Unable to Load The Lord of the Rings Online (SOLVED)

I don’t know why but The Lord of the Rings Online just won’t load for me.  I load the game and the launcher checks the files and let’s me type my password and then choose my server and then it finishes that and my screen is supposed to turn black so the game will load.  It hasn’t loaded in maybe a month and half or 2 months.  I couldn’t figure it out.

The only thing that was worrying me was that my house would get locked and they would start charging me fees, so last night I decided I was going to download the game files again and reinstall it.  I installed it over itself, but that didn’t work so I uninstalled the whole game and reinstalled it as a fresh installation and still nothing.

Out of frustration I was about to email the company because I just wanted to get this resolved so I could play again.  Their website gave me a list of links to see if I could find my issue, and I did.

Here is the thread “LOTRO will not launch and there are no error messages” which is the exact problem I was having.  I clicked “Graphics and Performance FAQ’s…” So their advice was to find the User Preferences configuration file which is loaded in My DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings Online.  I double clicked the file and it showed me a text file with all of this gibberish that I don’t understand.  They warn not to change anything because you might screw it up more.  I wondered if I just removed the file altogether if it will create a new file and let the game load, and that worked.  I didn’t delete it, I just moved it to the desktop and there is a new file in its place that has way less information than the original file.

The game launched and I hit C for my character screen which shows my gear and I clicked the House button.  There was an icon of a lock in the bottom right of my screen along with an icon of a letter which told me that my house was locked.  In the character screen I clicked House and paid the fee and then paid the maintenance for my house for 5 more weeks, you know, just in case.

So now you know, if you have issues getting into The Lord of the Rings Online because the game won’t load after you launch it, just remove the User Preferences config file and  load the game.

 

Robin Tyler

Last night was the monthly PFLAG meeting here in Bakersfield.  Robin Tyler, who is the first out lesbian comedian was the speaker.  She was talking about the history of gay rights and she wasn’t just very funny but also informative.

After she finished with her speech, everyone wanted to have their picture taken with her and luckily I was able to get her to pose for one with me.  I personally hate taking pictures, but I am very proud of this one because it was with a legend.