Author: Michel McDonald

I live in Bakersfield with my partner of more than 20 years. I enjoy reading, crafts, sci fi, video games, and writing in my personal blog.

Let’s try this weight loss again

On By Michel McDonaldIn Health, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I quit smoking in 1996 because I was trying to be healthy, and I was just getting tired of smoking. I discovered food tasted so much better and I traded one bad habit for another and literally gained 50lbs in the first 2 months, which is the reason so many people won’t quit smoking. Gradually over time the weight went up, and now I am more than 100lbs overweight.

I have tried losing weight in the past and I have logged it here in my blog. I did the Noom app and ate Weight Watchers Smart Ones and one year I lost 70 lb in 6 months. That didn’t last and the weight went up eventually and I gained it all back and then some. I think the problem then was I had lost my motivation because I stopped losing weight and it didn’t seem to want to drop anymore. I just went back to regular eating and eventually overeating again.

In late April we went to the clinic and met our new doctor. She saw from my medical history that my blood sugar has been high and I showed her the “True Manager Air” log for my True Metrix blood sugar gadget and the highs were pretty much 180 to 200 daily. I take a medication called Trijardy for blood sugar because at one point it was in the 500’s. The Trijardy has helped bring it down, but it was still too high. She suggested trying something new.

She told me about a medicine that I can inject into my stomach that will trick my brain into thinking I’m not hungry which will make me eat less and some foods might make me physically sick or give me nausea. I said sure, sounds great. It took a while getting it because the insurance wouldn’t pay for Monjaro, so she changed it to Ozempic.

We went back to the doctor for my follow up appointment which was supposed to be after taking it for a month, but because it was difficult to get the medicine, the follow up was after 3 weeks instead.

Y’all! I cannot even begin to tell you how happy and excited this doctor was for me that I had lost 14lbs after just 3 weeks. She was more excited for me than I was. I really love her. I hope she will be my doctor for a long time. I hate that this clinic goes through doctors like TicTacs.

So she had me on .25 mg to start me out and after she saw I had lost weight, she changed the dose to .5mg. I am wondering if I have not gotten a lot of the side effects on the .25 mg that I might get the side effects from the .5 mg, maybe even more so. Not looking forward to that.

She told me the side effects could be nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation and I forget what else. I can handle constipation and diarrhea because I’ve been dealing with that for a long time anyway. I hate vomiting, but I won’t vomit if I don’t overeat. I don’t mind the nausea because the nausea will tell me hey, maybe don’t eat that. We were actually walking through the grocery store in the bakery department, and something, I don’t know what it was, made me feel so sick to my stomach and I almost retched right there in the store. I couldn’t get away fast enough from that smell. I hope it wasn’t something that I loved.

So, in the past 3 weeks that I’ve been on this Ozempic, I have actually not been very hungry. I’m only eating lunch and dinner because I know I have to eat. So it really does trick my brain into thinking that I’m not hungry. Today we decided to go to Taco Bell and one taco literally filled my stomach. I couldn’t eat another bite after that. Which is great because it was only 170 calories.

I’m eating the Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen dinners again and I’m snacking on low-fat string cheese and I told the doctor that and she said that’s great. Keep doing that if that’s what works for you. We also buy bags of frozen vegetables from Aldi. They don’t have a lot of calories and they will fill me up and the fiber from the vegetables is probably going to help me with the constipation issues lol. At least I think that’s how vegetables work. I’m not sure.

So the doctor told me that some people have lost over 100lbs taking this medicine and that’s great because I am 100 lb overweight. I was 115 lbs overweight, but now I’m only 100 lb overweight. I don’t expect to get back down to 150 which is what I used to weigh because I have built muscle over the years since I used to weigh 150 lb, but I would like to get back down to at least 160lbs if that’s even possible.

I just can’t stand this weight anymore. It’s like carrying around a child and I don’t even have children. Not being hungry all the time will definitely help me lose weight. The method for which getting this medicine into my body is injecting it into my stomach once a week. The needle is so tiny it doesn’t even hurt, I don’t even feel it. I have to press it into my stomach while pinching my skin (and fat lol) and press the button on the pen to make the medicine go into my stomach, and then I have to wait I think she told me 10 seconds, but I can’t remember so I hold it in for 30 seconds just in case. They said to hold it in for a little bit longer just to make sure that all of the medicine gets inside my body.

Suddenly I finally have motivation to lose weight and continue trying to lose weight until it’s all gone because I have something that will make me not feel hungry all the time. And that’s my problem. I’m hungry literally all the time. We will go to a restaurant and I will come home stuffed and literally an hour later I’m hungry again. I don’t like being hungry all the time. My stomach must have expanded so much that it needs more and more food. By not eating so much food all the time, my stomach will shrink down and I will get full faster by eating normal portions. Once that happens and I’ve lost enough weight, then I will be able to continue living my life and eating like a normal person and be full a lot faster than I do now.

So, I was 265 lbs in April when she first weighed me and as of this writing I weigh 248 lbs. I would like to get down to 160 lbs at least. My blood sugar like I said before was between 180 and 200 and today it was 105. Normal is between 80 and 120.

So my weight loss story will continue and I will update my progress.

Xanapus on EverQuest

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuestLeave a comment

I started playing a game called EverQuest way back in January 2002 because my cousin was addicted to playing it, and I guess he just really wanted me to play it too because at the time we were reconnecting, and I think he just wanted to get me into something he was into. So, for Christmas 2001, he bought me the base game at Fry’s Electronics in Burbank. I came home from my visit, and I didn’t install it immediately. I installed it a couple days after New Year’s Day in 2002 and I believe there was a free trial, so I tried that, and I just didn’t get this game. I don’t know what it was about it, it just didn’t click for me. When the trial was about to end, I came back to give it another try and I actually started to like it, so I paid for a month and figured I would just try it out for a little while, and then the addiction hit and I played this game until 2008, but continued paying for it until 2009.

The reason I quit playing was because I had become so bored with the repetitiveness of the game. I was literally playing this game all day and ignoring everyone around me. I would stop playing just to watch my shows, and to eat food and to go to the occasional movies and whatever. But then I would go right back to playing. The guild I was in was pretty much a raiding guild, so I was expected to be in the game every day at a certain time to support other guild members who needed to do their epic quest or progression or whatever it was they needed to do. I would occasionally get support for myself for my epic quests, so I couldn’t expect anyone to help me unless I was going to help them, and that meant I had to help everyone else with their thing if I wanted their help with my thing.

Around the time when I quit playing, they had introduced new expansions and they were slowing my computer down so much that I wasn’t able to play as much. There was too much lag and in some cases the lag was so huge that the game would crash as soon as I got back into the game. I had to click a button in the character selection screen to send my character back to their hometown just to be able to get back into the game. I don’t see that option anymore, but I don’t think I need that option now anyway.

My character is level 85, but I believe he was level 65 which was the maximum level before I quit, and I think what had happened was they added a feature with a new expansion that allowed me to upgrade my character to level 85 for free, and in fact I had upgraded 3 characters to level 85. I upgraded my wizard, my warrior and my shaman. All 3 of those characters were useful for everything I needed to do in the game, and they were also sometimes useful for helping other people who needed those classes for their quests or just little fun groups.

Here I am 15 years later from the last time I played the game with a brand-new laptop that I received for Christmas. I wondered if this new laptop would run the game, and it does, so I figured I will come back and play for free since that is now an option, but I want to start over with a new character to sort of help me relearn how to play the game since it has been a long time since I played. But I didn’t have any open character slots available, so I started on another server with another Xanapus character, but this time he is a Necromancer.

So, I started playing this Xanapus on December 30th, and he is already level 60. I actually got him to level 60 in 1 month, and now that I have pretty much learned how to play the game again, I decided to go back to my wizard Xanapus and do some of the things I’ve been doing with necromancer Xanapus. They have a quest system now with a quest window and achievements that they didn’t have when I played. They actually introduced it when I quit. I got to level 60, and I also had earned quite a lot of AA points before going back to wizard Xanapus. So, when I’m not playing the wizard, I have my necromancer in the Bazaar selling stuff I had looted as well as food that I had made to get my baking skill up. Basically, I spent way too much platinum on baking, so I don’t have any money for spells, so I have to sell stuff for spell money lol. But I figured I’d rather go back to the wizard anyway because I had so many years invested in that character.

I’m back in the game, but I’m the only one in my guild. There are, I don’t remember how many, but probably around 300 people in my guild, and I seem to be the only active one. There were some officers who still played up until December 2022 before I started playing again. Who knows, maybe I might see them in the game, and we might play together for old times’ sake.

Anyway, I’m having fun again, but also at the same time not ignoring anyone. I can bring the laptop in the living room and play on the couch for a few hours doing quests for achievements and then stop playing and let my necromancer make some coins.

My Necromancer Xanapus character is on The Rathe server, and my Wizard Xanapus character is on the Xegony server. If you are in the game and you see me, say hello.

Making puzzles with my Cricut

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

So I did a thing. Well, I tried to do a thing and was somewhat successful, and I’ll tell you my mistakes and how I’m trying to fix them.

So I am a member of Design Bundles and they have these $1 deals, and one of the deals was puzzle templates. So I went to Cricut Design Space and uploaded the SVG file for one of the templates and a screenshot from The Elder Scrolls Online. The screenshot above is a second attempt because the first one was too dark, and with my bad eyes, I couldn’t make out what the piece was for.

So, the template isn’t the entire puzzle that you print an image and then have the Cricut cut the entire puzzle on your image. When you go to cut the puzzle, it cuts puzzle pieces. So the only way to cut is to have the image in Cricut design space and slice the image in 250 pieces. It took awhile lol. This is what it looks like on the print and cut sheet.

That was the darker image I was cutting.

So here are the mistakes I made. I printed these on 8.5×11 65lb white cardstock. I put the glue on the paper and then placed it on the Chipboard and then ran it through the Cricut. It was too wet and I didn’t use a thin amount of glue, so it just ripped the paper. Take 2 was to use a glue stick. Unfortunately, the glue would dry before I got it all over the area I had to glue. I decided to use a repositionable glue stick because you are supposed to let it dry before you stick the paper on, but it doesn’t stay on lol. So my alternative is to buy glossy sticker paper because the cardstock wasn’t glossy and sticker paper will actually stick permanently. Not using anything glossy was a mistake and using a dark image was a mistake. Also, I’ll have to print using Best so it prints out with the best graphics it can have.

I haven’t bought the sticker paper yet because I’m having surgery soon on my right eye and I don’t want to risk it coming the day of surgery.

To make the box for the puzzles I will use the same box I use for Paracord bracelets, except I made the box bigger.

I used a light chipboard which is 22pt for the puzzle pieces I did manage to cut, but I would like to try using the 30pt chipboard to see if it would be better. I will use the 22pt chipboard for the box. I’ll also change the text I made for the box lid.

This is just a test to see if I can make a puzzle with a box. I would like to make puzzles to send as gifts. I think people would like that.

Update: I tried and it just didn’t work out with the materials that I have. I bought some glossy sticker paper that I have used to make actual stickers with, but I’m having trouble with my Cricut not reading the registration lines. I have done all the necessary things to make it so that the Cricut can read the registration lines on glossy paper, like putting matte Scotch tape on top of the lines and if that doesn’t work then go over those lines with a sharpie. For some reason it just does not want to read the registration lines. The only thing I can think is to use regular cardstock and hope that the glue stays on the chipboard and then just put mod podge over the puzzle pieces after they’ve been cut out. I can’t think of anything else to do that would work.

This is the most frustrating thing lol. If somebody has any other bright ideas, I would sure love to know them. It seems like the light on the Cricut that reads the registration marks for print and cut isn’t as bright on the lines as it used to. Maybe it’s my Cricut. It seems to read the registration lines on regular card stock though, so I don’t know.

Duolingo’s Dramatic Update

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I have been using Duolingo for almost 4 years. My current streak is 1416. I’ve been doing this for a while.

I don’t remember if it was last year or if it was the year before, but they did an update and they completely changed my entire lesson plan. They added things that I’d never done before and gave me the gold and the purple icons as if I had finished the lessons and mastered them when in fact I had never even started learning those lessons. I felt like I had to start learning all over again.

So more than a week ago, they updated their app again to this new layout which pissed a lot of people off, so much so that there is a petition to change it back. People hate this new update. I am kind of one of them, but, and hear me out, I am doing something to help myself learn.

This new update does not allow you to go back to previous lessons, so that’s why it didn’t work for me because they pushed me so far ahead of the lesson plans that they thought that I had already mastered before, when in fact I still haven’t even gotten to those lessons. So I was supposed to be on unit six, and they ended up bringing me all the way to unit 24. I tried doing the lessons in unit 24, but they were so far out there that I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t go forward. I was pretty much screwed.

So I thought okay, I’m going to click on that broken heart at the bottom of the screen that has the number 48 in the screenshot and practice all of the mistakes that I had already made prior to the update and see what happens after that. So after I did that it said keep going and it kept allowing me to practice mistakes that I had made in the past and it was actually helping me go back to the old old lessons that I had made mistakes on prior to the previous update that changed everything for me. I thought, this is great, I’m able to go way back and keep learning those old lessons that I wanted to go back to learning. But, what is that going to accomplish? I need to go back to learning the regular way.

Since I am a Duolingo plus member, I have the ability to delete a language lesson plan so I can start over, and that’s what I did. But that’s nice for me because I am a plus member, there are people out there who aren’t paying for Duolingo, so they don’t have that ability. They have no choice.

Okay, so since I deleted all of my German lessons and started over at unit 1 in the very beginning with basics one, it has taken me a week and I’m just now in unit 5. I’m kind of glad that I’m able to go at this pace with this new Duolingo because since I cannot go back, I can only go forward and I can actually continue learning where I refused to continue learning before. Because for the last couple of years, all I’ve been doing is my lessons that I’ve already known and not going forward. I’m doing that because I have a learning disability and it’s hard to learn new words and also with German it’s hard sometimes because they switch the words around and I’m already dyslexic and it just makes my brain hurt lol.

So, I have no option other than to keep going forward and hopefully I will continue learning and maybe I will actually be fluent in German one of these days. I’ve been doing this so lazily all this time for the last couple of years by refusing to go forward and now I’m being forced to go forward. This is probably a good thing for learning this language. And maybe that’s the reason Duolingo did that, because they want to force me to keep moving forward.

The website on my browser is still the old website. Someone on Twitter who responded to me about the new update said that the update on their browser is the new update. So they don’t really have a choice, but I still have a choice with my browser. So if I start to get frustrated with the new lessons, I can just go on the computer and do the lessons for as long as I need to because I can go back on the browser. So I’ll just keep going forward in the app on my phone, but I can continue going back on the browser on my computer.

I need to be able to keep doing the same lessons repeatedly to allow my brain to let the words sink in. That’s why I have not gone forward in these lessons because I don’t feel like I’m ready to go forward. But at some point, I have to, otherwise what’s the point of learning a language if I’m not learning all of the language?

So I think that if someone is learning with Duolingo and this same thing happened to them that happened to me and you’re stuck in a situation that you cannot control, you know, just pay for one month and that way you can delete all of your lessons and start over from the very beginning like I did. It’s just one month and you can cancel before your month is over. There might even be a free trial, I don’t know. But don’t give up.

And also, don’t worry about losing all of your old progress because it’s all in your mind, right? All that German that I learned before is still in my head, and since I couldn’t go forward in the app because they pushed me too far ahead, then what’s the point if I can’t just start over? I don’t have that hang up of needing to keep everything that I had worked hard for because I can continue working hard and go forward instead of quitting. And also, it still says that I have learned the same amount of words that I had learned before I deleted my lesson. So all of that is still there, I’m just learning from the very beginning all over again and I’m getting now to the point where I’m starting to get into the lessons that I refused to go forward with.

So just pay for a month, delete the lesson, start over and continue working to learn the language that you’re learning and don’t be so frustrated with everything. It’s not going to work if it’s not fun, and it’s not fun if it’s work.

Star Trek Corner to Corner Pixel Crochet Blanket from Two Magic Pixels

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

Well, I’ve chosen a pattern, bought the pattern and then bought the yarn. The yarn will be here later next week.

I decided to use blue yarn instead of purple because I wanted to use the color of one of the uniforms. At first I was going to use red, but then I looked at the color and realized it’s probably going to hurt my eyes. Also, there’s that whole red uniform always getting killed on alien planets thing in TOS, so perhaps blue is the logical choice.

When I made the Betty boop 007 blanket, I had posted some videos on YouTube of the blanket as I was still making it and then eventually I made another video after it had already been finished. Many people asked me to make a tutorial on how to do Corner to Corner crochet and I tried making a video and I just wasn’t focused enough. I just decided to tell people to just go find the video that I used to learn how to make a corner to corner crochet project. But I think that when I get the yarn and I start working on it, I might just try to make a tutorial and see if I can finish the tutorial. It will take me probably a few weeks to make the blanket, so it’ll be awhile before the video is completed. But I will try to do it.

I went into the listing for this particular pattern and it says that the pattern is 100 squares wide by 100 squares high and that translates to 100 inches by 100 inches. The Betty boop blanket was 80 squares wide by 120 squares high. So this blanket will be a perfect square. The G hook is my go-to hook, but if the stitches are too tight, I might use an H hook. That will determine the size of the blanket in inches.

Let me know what you think about the pattern that I chose as well as the colors. I chose Star Trek because I seem to be on a bit of a Star Trek binge. I’ve been watching Star Trek Strange New Worlds and I just decided that I wanted to catch up on the original series which I don’t really remember that much from childhood. I’ve also been watching Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Lower Decks, I’m going to be watching The Next Generation again and of course Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I have also been watching the movies again. I’m literally in the Star Trek world right now, so this makes perfect sense that I would want to make this blanket.

I am going to say that it is a bit hot right now and I’m not quite sure I want to be crocheting anything that’s going to make me sweat, especially since I will probably have to rest it on my legs as I crochet and that will heat me up a bit much. But I would like to work on it before it gets cold when I actually need to use it. I will update this when I start working on it.

Two Magic Pixels C2C Pixel Art Crochet

On By Michel McDonaldIn crafts, Uncategorized1 Comment

I made this blanket for my Aunt several years ago. I found the pattern from a website called Two Magic Pixels. I wrote a blog post about it.

I learned to crochet when I was no longer homeless when I turned 18 years old. Never in my life did I think I would ever make anything like this.

The last few nights I have been going through Two Magic Pixels patterns because I wanted to make another blanket for myself. Last night I went to log in to my account on their website, but I didn’t have my password available, so I clicked “forgot password” and it asked for my email address to send me a link to reset my password, but it said we don’t have an account with that email address. I had only bought a few patterns, and I know I have them on my computer, so I thought ok, that’s fine. I’ll just create a new account. When I did, it said we actually found the patterns you have bought because you used that same email address to buy patterns using Paypal. So yay for me lol.

I bought these 3 patterns and they are all in my account, although I only made the Betty Boop 007 blanket. I bought the Mini Spiderman and Mini Superman patterns because I thought they were cute and I thought I would make them, but I never did. I am considering buying a different pattern to make for myself though. I’m thinking more of a rainbow pattern or something abstract, but I do know I want to buy it from Two Magic Pixels again because they have some really cool patterns. There are a few others I would like to make, like a Buddha or a Star Trek pattern, maybe the Scooby Doo pattern lol. I just cannot commit to one.

They have so many patterns and it’s really hard to pick just one pattern. The reason I have to choose is because it took me a month to make the Betty Boop 007 blanket and it cost me $60 for all the yarn. Not to mention the fact that I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so I can only make 1 blanket, and then I won’t be able to make another one for a very long time.

I really like the rainbow flower one because it reminds me of when I was a kid in the 70’s. I can also use that as a backdrop if I decide I want to continue making videos for my YouTube channel, then I’ll have something fun to look at.

People commented in my Betty Boop videos that they wanted me to teach them to crochet like that and I’ve told them that they should go to the same channel I learned to crochet like this from, which is the crochet crowd.

Anyway, it’s a big decision because I will have to live with that pattern. I can still buy the patterns whether I make them or not, but I still want to choose one. I think I really want the rainbow flowers blanket.

Parotid Problems Part 2

On By Michel McDonaldIn HealthLeave a comment

I’ve had issues with my saliva glands, also known as the parotid glands. In 2013 I had to have the right parotid gland removed because there was a stone in there that was blocking the path for my saliva to enter into my mouth, so the gland was filling up with saliva, which caused it to swell up, which is very painful. Over the years my left parotid gland has gotten bigger, and had occasionally caused issues, but never this bad.

We went to the emergency room yesterday to get some antibiotics, because you can’t just go to the pharmacy for antibiotics. You need a prescription. So they told me to also follow up with my doctor so I can get the referral to a surgeon who will order all the tests so they can determine if I should have surgery and I’ll have to wait for approval from my medical insurance company. This could literally take several months. Several months that I’ll be in so much agony every day when I eat.

Eating is what causes this. So far I’ve discovered sweet and salty foods are causing my problems the most because sweet and salty foods cause you to generate saliva. Also chewing itself causes it to swell up. I googled what I can eat that doesn’t generate saliva and it said breads, fiber and oats. I had some toast and just chewing the toast caused it to swell up. So I had some malt-o-meal, which is not sweet and I don’t have to chew it, just swallow it. We have oatmeal, but it’s maple and brown sugar and I was afraid the sweet flavor works cause problems.

I have a heating pad that I place on my face to bring the swelling down. That worked great yesterday, but it’s not helping that much today. The swelling is so bad that I can’t touch my teeth when I bite down.

Here is a picture from when my right parotid gland was swollen from this same issue.

Here is a picture from after I had the surgery.

So yeah. I’ll go through that again. At least I hope so. I hate the thought of going through this again, but I’m literally going through the pain that led me to having this surgery again. So even though it’s not pleasant to look at, it’s necessary so I don’t have this horrible pain.

And don’t worry. I’ll still have glands under my tongue to produce saliva.

My Elder Scrolls Online addiction vs. EverQuest

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest, Games, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have had this game on my PlayStation 4 for probably 5 or more years, and I played it here and there over the years, but I never really got into it because I didn’t really understand the mechanics of the game.

Last month they introduced the 10 year anniversary of Skyrim and I bought it because I had played Elder Scrolls Online, and I wanted to see what Skyrim was like. It’s basically the same thing, but not an MMO.

The introduction of the 10 year anniversary of Skyrim made me decide that I wanted to at least try to play Elder Scrolls Online again to give it a chance, but my problem was I had too many quests going and I was kind of confused about what I was supposed to do. So I thought, let me go to Coldharbour and finish that quest which ended with me killing Molag Bal. Then it started Cadwell’s Silver, then Cadwell’s Gold which are basically the other factions. But I hadn’t finished my factions quests, so I went on a mission to finish that. It was all so confusing to me, but now I get it.

My necromancer character Ilren.

My website’s name Xanapus comes from a game very similar to Elder Scrolls Online called EverQuest, which I played for about 6 years. ESO is similar to EQ, but also very different. Like we had to download maps for EverQuest, Elder Scrolls Online have their own maps already in the game, and they have markers on the maps that tell you where everything is so you don’t have to guess. They also give you more information like what you have completed on that map, and it has a zone guide.

EverQuest didn’t really have a quest diary or journal like this when I was playing. You literally had to print the quests out and write on the paper to check things off on the quest list to keep track of your progress. I literally have a notebook with hundreds of pages in it lol. Elder Scrolls Online keeps track of everything for you, and even tells you what to do next. And they mark things on your compass which gives you the direction of the person you need to speak to or the item you have to loot or the direction of the place you need to go to.

One thing that I really love about Elder Scrolls online is that I can use a game controller. I wanted to use a game controller so bad with EverQuest, but I could never figure it out with game controllers that I bought for PC way back when. They just never worked for me and were a complete waste of money.

I still have EverQuest installed on my computer and I see that they have a quest Journal now. It’s a bit different from Elder Scrolls Online, but at least they have one. The map is pretty much the same as when I last played the game, but I did notice that they have more continents because they have so many more expansion packs than they used to.

Also the thing that really bothers me about EverQuest is that they disable most of your gear if you’re not paying a monthly fee. Elder Scrolls Online has a monthly fee service that allows you to play all of their expansions, but if you don’t pay for it, they don’t disable your gear. In order to play the expansions, you have to pay for them, which I honestly don’t mind. I’d rather not have a monthly fee. I bought 21000 Crowns which are normally $149.99 for $89.99 during their Christmas sale and I used the crowns to buy some expansions.

Another thing about EverQuest is that you had to buy spells, then memorize them to put them into your spell book, then you had to add the spell gems to the spell gems slots. With Elder Scrolls Online, you just buy your spells with skill points and those spells upgrade the more you add skill points to them.

And I love that I’m getting epic gear for rewards and I can upgrade those epic gear items to legendary with crafting if I had the components. In EverQuest you had to do so many quests and crafting for so many hours, days, even weeks or months to get 1 epic and it was a weapon. In ESO all my gear can be epic or legendary, not just my weapons.

Oh another thing is that the quests are always your level, no matter what level you are. In EverQuest if I went back to do a level 4 quest and I’m level 50, I don’t really get a good reward because the reward is a level 4 reward. Which makes it feel like you’ve wasted so much time. No matter what level I am in ESO, the rewards are always worth it, and if they’re not, then I can deconstruct the item to get the materials for crafting.

I’m not trying to mansplain, I’m just really excited about playing this game and I just wanted to talk about it. I don’t have anyone to talk about it because no one I know plays this game.

Scariest day of my life

On By Michel McDonaldIn Health2 Comments

Yesterday, October 19th, 2021, was the scariest day of my entire life.

I woke up and went to the bathroom, just like any other day. The only difference is I was having trouble urinating. It was like there was a plug in my urethra preventing the urine from coming out. Except, something was coming out. I stood up and looked in the toilet and there was a long dark, almost black stream going down the inside of the toilet. I turned the light on and I could tell it was blood. I continued urinating standing up and blood just poured out into the toilet.

I went to the living room to tell my life partner that something was seriously wrong. He went into a full on panic because this isn’t something that happens every day. I was in a state of shock, and I was more trying to calm him down rather than worry about the blood in the toilet.

We drove to the doctor’s office to see if they could see us even though today is actually when we have an appointment. They couldn’t see us, so we went home and figured we would just go to our appointment.

I had more urges to urinate, and it was painful. I went to the bathroom and continued urinating blood. Suddenly it started sputtering, and I saw several blood clots, but I continued urinating blood.

We decided to go to the emergency room. They did a CT scan and couldn’t find any reason for why I’m urinating blood. No kidney stones, no infection, no obvious visible reason. The doctor told me that it’s possible I might have bladder cancer, but I would have to go see a urologist so they could run a camera through my urethra to my bladder to look to find the issue.

Last night just before bed I urinated one last time and sudden sputtering again, several blood clots, then regular urine with no pain. This morning I woke up at 5 am to urinate and it was fine. I went back to bed and woke up at around 8:30am and went to the bathroom and everything seems to be back to normal.

This is the scariest thing that has ever happened to me in my life, and I’m 51 years old. I’ve been through a lot of drama and trauma, but this one thing that happened to me yesterday was the worst thing to ever happen.

I don’t drink soda, or alcohol. I drink coffee in the morning and then I drink water the rest of the day. That’s all I drink. So I don’t understand why this happened. Now I can’t even drink coffee because the paperwork from the hospital said no caffeine for awhile.

We go to the doctor today and I’ll show him the pictures of the blood in the toilet on my phone and give him the papers and the CD from the CT scan from the hospital and I’ll have him refer me to a urologist and get that taken care of as soon as possible. That’s not something I want to mess around with. I’ll update this blog when I get new information.

Thank you for reading.

Update October 24, 2021: I woke up this morning, went to the bathroom and it wasn’t painful, but there was blood. I went 4 days with regular normal urine, then it was back, but it was only that one time. I’ve urinated several times since then, but I just wanted to update this to say it happened again this morning. Tomorrow I’m calling the urologist to find out if they got my referral yet and if so, could we make an appointment for as soon as possible. I don’t want to wait too long to fix this issue.

Update November 1st, 2021: I saw the nurse practitioner at the urologist today. He said the CT scan shows I have an enlarged prostate, which the ER doctor apparently didn’t tell me about. I’m now taking Flomax. Not looking forward to those side effects. Anyway, they’ll run the camera to my bladder in december.

Update December 15, 2021: I went to the urologist today and they put the camera into my urethra to my bladder and there wasn’t anything wrong with my bladder. I was able to crane my head so I could look at the TV monitor and he showed me a big lump that was inside my bladder, but he said that that was my prostate pushing on my bladder. Other than that there is really nothing inside my bladder that would give anybody any worry to believe that there is anything wrong with me. As he pulled the camera out, you could see that the urethra was getting smaller because my prostate was pushing on my urethra. So no cancer. No problem.

Style Me Up i-Loom Disabled App

On By Michel McDonaldIn crafts2 Comments

Today is a very sad day for me because I just discovered that the i-Loom app on my Samsung Galaxy tablet has been completely disabled. This is what I see when I open the app now. I can no longer log in to the app and use the more than 40 patterns that I have bought over the last few years.

I had a strange feeling this would happen. When I noticed that they stopped posting on all of their social media accounts, then their website was completely gone, I had a feeling that all of my patterns would eventually just disappear, or they would block me from accessing my account. And that just happened to me.

I know that a year or maybe 2 years ago they discontinued their app on Android, and it was only available on iPad. But I was still able to use the app that had been installed on my tablet, so I didn’t really see it as that big of a deal. I recently asked people on Facebook who had an iPad if they could do me a favor and install the app and see if they could create a new account. One person did install it and she told me she got this notice that you don’t have internet access, which I have gotten when trying to connect to the community and the boutique.

So, even though it is only available on the iPad now, you can no longer create an account, and I have a feeling that whoever still uses the i-Loom on their iPad will no longer be able to sign in as well.

Style Me Up has completely abandoned their brand, their app, their product, which you can still buy online. I would say that they have completely abandoned all of the people who have spend money on their product, only to take it away from them. I would imagine because they weren’t making any money on their products. I tried to do a Google search to find out any news about their company and I can’t find anything. It’s like they just disappeared off the face of the Earth.

This really sucks because I thought this was an excellent product and they had an excellent app that gave you step by step, row by row instructions for making a bracelet. There is nothing else like it anywhere in the app store. The only thing I can find is an app that allows you to create your own patterns. There is also a PC program called FBD which stands for Friendship Bracelet Designer, which I have been using for many years and I had copied all 40+ patterns that I had bought from i-Loom onto FBD, so I didn’t really lose them. I had a foreboding that this would happen and if I didn’t copy all of the patterns to the computer, then I would lose them forever.

So I am sad that they have blocked access from using their app, but I’m glad that I copied all of the patterns to the computer. Always have a backup plan.