This file predates facebook, now again (pull vs push) reports my "status" Call it VasBook. We had a warm spell mid-MArch and now 20F. I fired handiman because dog ate something and got constipation. I then got two pallets to build a dog pen in the garage but a week later the pallets seem to have gotten mold. I cannot freeking believe that debilitating five month pain in my toe was a callous - caused by the big toe gout pushing and twisting the little toe. I got into a fury of projects with the pain and the handyman gone. I cured the dog's constipation with half dose of senna + colace which took 15 instead of 6 hrs to take effect but also caused diarrhea 36-48 hrs later. I give him rice cakes for diarrhea, add ketchup when he's not eating, and give him some of my afternoon raw zucchini (which he chews on with all seriously like a bone). He had now started petting me with his paw, something which endeared my former Samoyed to my mom. But he also has started something else which my former dog did in adolescence, really pulling on the leash. Except this guy does it so bad he then gags and spits. He was on collar leash until 5 months, then slip knot, and since 8 months on choker chain. I decided to go to harness and maybe even, since he's a sled board, us a skateboard for myself. So now I am insured again and visiting a slew of doctors at Cornerstone Health. I made the list for a civil service engineering job and am now waiting for two months. I feel worse when it is drizzling at 40F than snowing at 20F. I loved the dry cold in Yamagata and Chicago in the 1990s. Everytime the dog eats something he shouldn't I want to take up smoking again. I wore out the only shoes that don't hurt. Somehow chlorine bleach cuts the pain ten hours, indometacin 8hr, arthritis strength acetamenafen 4 hrs and colchicine ointment 2hrs. I think it is an infection or parasite. My own bowel OCD has flared up along with constipation and hemorrhoids not only because of the cold but also because I am tense as I might be approaching several positive breakthroughs. Plus the meds for the foot cause bleeding. Plus I seem to brake too much and destoryed by front brakes. One of my wonderful neighbors had me order brake pads and rotors and he installed them for me. 19 Jan it was very cold so I had Ektor indoors, locked in his room. I left him chewing on his favorite KONG Teal Dental Squeezz Stick Dog Chew and when I came back less than an hour later, it was gone. The manufacturer suggested an X-ray but he ate and dropped normally so I let him be. But Tuesday night he wasn't eating so Wednesday we took him to the vet. My foot xray cost $126 at the "free" clinic, but my dog's xray cost $350. Well worth it, he is fine, there was no large object, only fragments. And the laxative they gave him really changed his droppings and demeanor as he was tense from being indoors and the intense cold. ca 3Jan24 my NYCB was hacked. My puppy is very clever and behaves just like a three year old human. I've pulled safety rasors, gun staples and ant traps from his mouth. He's swallowed a benzalkonium chloride wipe and chewed on a nearly empty bottle of (fortunately ethanol) hand sanitiser (Which caused me to cry for an hour 12Dec23 because he's all I got). He's punctured my bike tire and eaten the reflectors off my shopping adult tricycle. I found sheetrock and red reflector bits in his feces. My handyman gave me a $25 pair of deerskin work gloves from which my puppy ate one of the fingers. He needs a proper kennel, which is coming not soon enough. But 29dec23 I was walking him and he was chewing something noisy, so I looked in his mouth and it was a red bottle cap; before I could take it out, he swallowed it. I will die of fear for his safety. pictures panix.com/~vjp2/babydog.pdf I do like the people and scenery and want to live out my life in this home in the Appalachian Catskills, but tax, heat/cold and body aches put this in doubt. I should have come here long ago. The reverse mortgage counselor doesn't think I can afford the property tax. My neighbors are extraordinary, fellow nerds close to my own age, mostly IBM orphans, who have worked at the same factory their entire life but the factory changed ownership several times. And they are genuinely very decent people. They do remind me of Whitestone in the 1960s where half my neighbors then worked for Grumann. I was trying to repair a huge crack/leak in my basement, and who walks by but IBM's former hydrochloric acid expert to tell me how to clean the crack. Unpacking 58yrs and 5000 books is emotional torture. So is not having access to my books, papers, computers and tools for two years. When I packed in July, my 1995 computer didn't recognise the drive because the capacitors had discharged from non use. I found my mom kept by baby toys which I tried to trash in 1980. Accuweather predicts single digit Farenheit nights until mid February and freezing nights until mid April. [Elevation, Low Average Temperature: Crestview 1,015 ft, 20F Katavothra (Dad) 2,427 ft 25F Slimnitsa (Mom) 3,766 ft 28F] It isn't that it gets to fourteen degrees Farenheit in February (and that there is often a week of sub-Fahrenheit nights between January and February; but, guess what, my maternal county of Kastoria Macedonia had -5F on 19Dec01) that scares me, it is that I didn't have heat three times due to minor computer glitches on my methane+heatpump super fancy heater. It seems the over limit switch tripped because my air filter was clogged. Home repairs (extreme fixer upper at 25% discount, esp attic insulation and basement cracks, which still leak) are taking forever and really tiring me. Everything, even car repair, requires appointments week ahead due to labor shortage. And none of the NYC agencies want to change my address because thay want to keep listing me on their books (finally relented in November - and I no longer qualify for ANY benefits). Everyone says buy this, buy that, you need it, but it never ends; What next, petunia feather clippers? If I had a job, I could survive as I like the neighbors, scenery and even house design. Less traffic is compensated by longer distances. I don't think I could even afford to move. I would have to sell at a deep discount and lose fifty thousand dollars because this house was unsold for two years. Even apartments in other university towns cost more. I wanted a post 1985 house in a mountain university town. Mercifully, I am mostly still in boxes, esp the stuff that cost the most to pack. Recently deceased George Stephanopoulos' mom told my mom she lived with all their stuff in boxes for thirty years; now I know what it's like. I'm afraid I will run out of money before I get a job. 14Oct23 was fine until it started raining, then I felt the humidity to my bones. Plus a December 1979 hairline right pinky toe metatarsal fracture finally started hurting again - Our priest is a podiatric flight surgeon and thinks I may have broken it all over again working on the furnace and that I keep breaking it by not immobilising it. I refused a cast in 1979. Cherry juice finally quieted it down where indomethacin didn't. This caused me to gain 15#. It really hurts, and I can't wear warm shoes. Now 235#, Jan 2022 was 200#. I have a cough either from coffee reflux (coffee coughing) or from guaifenesin gout uricosuric (marketed as OTC expectorant) Most of my overeating is from afternoon heavy coffee. 11jan24 I went to the free clinic (they still charged me $125) and they found no infection or fracture, but they found gout had obliterated the conch joint of my right big toe (not the one that hurt). About five years ago I got two pairs of Texas Steer work boots from K-Mart; when I replaced the worn out first pair in October with the other unused one, the toe pain started. But I thought it was from kneeling over the furnace. I wanted a post-1985 house in a university mountain town with enough room for three generations of books. I put half the proceeds from the old house into an annuity paying me $1570/mo, which means I no longer qualify for welfare, food stamps, or medicaid. 59 Coventry was unsold for two years and looking at what a neighbor is asking ($230k), I got it on a one quarter discount ($182k). I wasn't told it was unsold for two years and had undergone mold remediation in 2017 following 2007 roof repair. The latter was because the previous owner's teenagers cut a hole in the wall to sun themselves, destroying the soffits. Neither Burch Servicemaster nor Tioga Environmental Health have been forthcoming with records of the mold remediation, but I ran several dextrose agar plates which grew no dangerous molds. I had to reinstall a lot of the wall trim left unfinished by the remediation. There is also a one yard by one inch crack in the basement rear wall which can leak a stream up to a quarter inch wide. Despite repairing it with hydraulic cement in October, it still leaks. 30AUg23 I got a 3 month old Samoyed puppy. His transport arrived 2am, leaving us both sleepness on Wednesday. He bites a lot (everything, tiring) because of teething pain (still at seven month) but else is wonderful. He came straight from his mom, whereas my 1975 Samoyed was much more subdued, having lived in a cage at the Kissena pet shop a month. We didn't know him then, but we spent that month building him a luxurious dog house and kennel, whereas the new guy lives in the garage. A free range puppy, the new guy did not want to step on asphalt or laminate for a while. Like Dr Scholl's Shredda, he enjoys my old smelly shoes. His puncturing my bike tires also caused me to gain weight. He is Ektor III. 1975-1985 Samoyed was Ektor II. My granpa Peter Bluhos had Ektor I in the 1930 who was a mutt that looked like a Basenji. My life collapsed after Ekotr II died in 1985. I had no OCD issues when he was alive. See panix.com/~vjp2/vigato.pdf for fotos of new digs. What I miss most from NYC is access to libraries and seminars and networkers. I download seminars from youtube and listen to them at home. I do the same with my favorite radio programs from Bloomberg and Ancient Faith. I have to admit the best thing about the homeless shelter was being fifteen blocks from Niarchos NYPL library. I only have local landline telephone service and go to the Apalachin library for internet. Apalachin library is part of the Finger Lakes Library System. Decoding Binghamton for NYCers: Crestview Hts is like Great Neck, Tioga is Suffolk, Endicott (birthplace of IBM, Fr Tom Hopko, Macintosh Stereos) is like Flushing. Tricities airport is like Flushing airport. Johnson City is like Long Island City. Maine is Jamaica (airport). Binghamton was built because of the Chenango Canal connecting to the Erie Canal and Great Lakes; and was originally the base for Johnson Shoes. The Apallachian Mts separated the French Mississipi river colonies from the British Atlantic colonies and were originally inhabited by fiercely independent Scotts Germans who largely opposed slavery. A lot of folks in Binghamton migrated up from Pennsylvania coal country. Binghamton University is the top public university in New York State, like Berkeley or Chapel Hill. Finally making some progress learning the elementary parts of ElmerFEM.org, getting it to replicate Kuhl's EKG model is still a steep climb. But maybe I can get it to help me do CFD models on upwork.com to support myself. I managed to get all the sample SIF files off github, and even study the comparable ANSYS manuals. But I am so distracted, I haven't been able to focus since I saw my godfather's death certificate in August - it was so final. Plus all the issues with fixing the house. My godfather and mom's middle brother passed away 7jan23 of pneumonia sepsis from a lung mass. I don't know what kind of mass (only 1/12 are cancerous and could be caused by various illness, including his history of legionella from the church vestibule air conditioning - downwards instead of upwards like the rest of the church, allowing bacteria to accumulate - and the mildew in the house) I added his obit to my parents on panix.com/~vjp2/par.htm I also put my family tree on that page. We sold the Whitestone house on 5Jul23 and I moved back in for seven days post closing possession under order of protection. My godfather had shut the gas to my oven and stove when my dad died so the realtor for the buyer wanted me to open it. So when he came, I told him the movers discouraged moving the piano and he changed the buyer's story and said to leave the piano and the electic garden equipment. The first two days I sorted out my stuff and put the junk into the two biggest rooms, one on each floor. Saturday the movers came and took two trucks of junk and put the rest into boxes. On Monday, they came and took everything away, and I went to wire money for annuity and new house. The main NYCB in Flushing didn't want to do it, complaining about intermediate banks and time limits. I was going to go down to Maiden Lane when the realtor called for the keys (the movers packed them and I just mailed them back 26jul23) so I went back to the house, and decided to try the College Pt branch where the Afghan assistant manager was spectacular and took care of all the wire transfers. I travelled by Fitz bus from Washington Hts to Binghamton and stayed at Motel Six, where I ordered things from Walmart, but they (for ten subsequent attempts) refused to acknowledge my NYCB debit card because of address differences, until I got an M&T one that works. When the trucks arrived we had to pay them $600/hr to wait hours while the seller of my new house signed the preclosing possession. Oz moved 283 cu ft (8 cubic meters) 116 mi for $20k plus $4k tips. I had to wait because her lawyers took too long a vacation for the Fourth of July. I finally owned the new house on 19Jul23, when I began uncovering problems. The trim for one of the bedrooms was off the walls, costing me a thousand dollars to replace. It turned out that fifteen years ago the sofits collapsed because the teenage daughters cut a hole in the wall to sun themselves and the house was vacated by the government because of mildew, while some drywall was replaced or encapuslated and the ducts cleaned (2017). And being a granite mountain, there are radon gas issues. After my dad died I had met Dr Andreas George at the Whitestone AHEPA dinner honoring my dad's doctor; he discovered the hazards of radon, the second most frequent cause of lung cancer after tobacco and before asbestos. It seems the problems we left in our old house have followed me here. My godfather didn't repair the roof after my dad died and the new owners made his wicked widow pay seven thousand dollars for roof repairs, and me pay six hundred for new bathtub wall tiles. Then the new owner in Whitestone suddenly wanted me to pay for moving the piano which he asked me to leave - and the bookshelves which the realtor told me to leave because they were fixtures. Now I need to rebuild the shelves for my five thousand books. I bought a minivan off craigslist for $3000 and got a 1957 Balwin Acrosonic piano for $500 (found one free off craigslist which was junk but mover wanred me and sold me better. I found a great local handyman that is helping me a lot but then he went AWOL for two months because he broke three vertebrae in his neck and his son needs chemotherapy for a venous growth on his spine. I've only opened one third of the boxes (my more pedestrian self), not yet the books, study/office, computers, china, silverware or better clothes. I just got a land line to use with my plain text dialup shell account. Reshelving my mom's kitchen, untouched for a quarter century, was traumatic. My folks bedroom and living room is upstairs, my library/study on the main floor, and I will make the basement into a lab/workshop. I am currently sleeping on an army cot as I left behing all soft furniture. I plan on getting pews on grounds folks won't overstay on hard seating. My neighbors are mostly nerdy engineers the same age as me, so having moved into Whitestone when it was mostly Grumann engineers and had more chickens and horses than people, I feel at home. I really want to get a Samoyed soon. The Susquehana river (longest on east coast) is three blocks away (but am mercifully twice as high above the 2011 100-yr flood line, the worst neighbirs had was a quarter inch from rising water table in basement) and the forest literally starts in my back yard. There are plenty of underground streams just like Whitestone. The topography is very similar to where my mom's folks were born but my dad was born at double the altitude. I feel so energised viewing the Apallachian Catskills that Spitzer was ignorant of. In the mid 1970s my godfather frequently brought me along to nearby Wellsboro where his employer, Mergenthaler, had their factory, and I loved this area ever since. Instead of squirrels, we have rabbits everywhere. I live in Tioga County NY, Wellsboro is contiguous Tioga County PA. Uncle George is buried one hour east on Highway 17, Southern Tier Expressway at St Nectarius Monastery, Roscoe, NY. I pled guilty to half in exchange for year of psych, failing that two years upstate, if successful (yes), misdemeanor only remains. My rap sheet was "Elder Abuse, Pled Guilty, Sentence pending". I lived in homeless shelters (Januray 2022- JUly 2023) by order of protection because my uncle's wife (who never learned English in her forty years here and tormented and insulted my parents) insulted my dead mother. I spent the first ten days in the psych ward of NYC HHC QGH, then Bellvue, Jardin (110 St), Greenpoint BRC and W25 St BRC shelters. A picture of my BRC bed is at panix.com/~vjp2/brcbed.jpg I am trying to use UpWork, but don't quite feel confident. I need to learn to use elmerfem.org and dwsim.org and zoom.us to be competitive. My 2017 ex-facebook timeline is at panix.com/~vjp2/vpfbtl17.pdf The gem and thorn of my work portfolio (esp 1990s) is a firm involved in smaller/better x-rays and chips and genetics. I have had no contact since the pandemic. Also involved in bringing advanced engineering design and analysis methods to high-end dentistry with my very first professor. My mom died in 11/98, my dad in 10/02, my godfather in 1/23; Being the only child of elder parents was only fun the first quarter century. I had nervous breakdowns in 1975, 1987, 1995,and 2009 because of OCD lead, asbestos, mildew and bowel obsessions when I spend half my days in the shower. For a third of my life I spent a third of my day in the bathroom. Dorsai internet flaked me off in Y2K (I felt the recession begin thusly on the 1st of April, 2000!) causing me to lose much e-mail (both directions). The real Vasos disappeared after my dad's 1985 heart attack, and made a brief reappearance 1989-1993 but hasn't been seen since.