• Discharged

    I’m not sure how I feel about it, but the hospital is making tentative plans to discharge my mother. This should be good news, right? The thing is, she’s not being released to go home – she’s not well enough. Instead, they’re making arrangements for her to be placed in an assisted living facility.

    If my life had a soundtrack, something foreboding would be playing right now.

    You may recall (or not, she’s not your mother) it was an incident at an ALF that precipitated her extended stay at the state hospital. My fear is this fits the national trend. We run out of places for the mentally ill, so we dump them in nursing homes, or something similar – places ill suited to care for them. The end result is something like what happened to my mother already – or worse, someone gets hurt – and the cycle starts over.

    I’ll be happy to have her nearby, but not at the cost of her safety.

    Maybe she has improved. Maybe an ALF really is appropriate now. I understand there are ALFs with some kind of certification to treat the mentally ill. I’m a little worried though. In this case, I don’t think it’s just me.

    I want to be hopeful. I haven’t seen her in months, but others say she seems a little better – in some ways. Being closer will fix one of my problems (self inflicted though it may be) – the guilt I carry for not visiting enough.

  • Windows again

    I set out to talk computers, causing dozens of people to reach frantically for “the next feed.”

    I didn’t learn anything from defiling my iMac with Windows Vista. I did it again with my MacBook. I wanted to try out Google’s new web browser: Chrome, so I got out my install disks and went at it.

    I forgot there were so many warning messages in Vista. I must have repressed the memory.

    Honestly, it was more than just Chrome. I did it for work too.

    It was a disappointing. The single text field for searching and entering URLs was the only feature I found interesting. Otherwise it was another basic browser – with some apparent integration with their apps (though I didn’t find it terribly compelling).

    Pray tell dear readers… will I ever learn?

    I will say this. Vista with service pack 2 is an improvement, in my experience. Not a big one mind you, but an improvement. It’s a bit snappier on my MacBook (running under Parallels version 4), particularly at start up and shutdown.

  • Political snark

    I liked this.

    TPM Reader BD:

    Remember how during the 2008 campaign a lot of people suggested that Obama could prove to be an excellent role model for African-American men who have often been deemed less than responsible as husbands and fathers? Wouldn’t it be great if white Evangelical Republican men could come up with a role model like that too?