Wednesday, November 25, 2009

O'er The Ramparts We Watched


The "Magic Mouse" sold by Apple is different. The entire top of the mouse has sensors that can tell whether the user is left or right clicking even though there is only one button. Since I've changed from using my right hand to work the mouse, all I had to do to go left-handed was to check the button in the Preference page.

This morning I ran across a review on the Magic Mouse and while reading it I realized I hadn't been using the two-finger swipe that causes the browser to go Back to the last web site or Forward to the next site. To move Back to the last web page I was on, all I have to do is swipe two fingers to the left across the top surface of the Magic Mouse. To move Forward I swipe to the right.

The Forward swipe only works if I've already been to the site I wanna move forward to. Otherwise, how would it know where to go without an address to reference. In iPhoto, however, all my pictures can be accessed by two-finger swiping in any direction including up and down. What I'd really like with this new mouse now is a way to double-click with one click. There is probably a key I can press down on to have that happen, but I haven't run across it yet.

Fortunately, I have a Logitech Anywhere Mouse I bought just before the iMac, and it double-clicks just fine. It ought to. I paid enough for it. I've been having trouble with my old mice, including an old MS roller mouse that came in real handy when I'd worn my index finger out by two decades of daily left-clicking.

Switching to my left hand to operate the mouse has taken a while to adjust to and I'm still in transition. The most noticeable improvement shows up when I institute the redo of the last play in hearts by mashing the Command key plus the Z key. I've watched myself reach for the Command key with my right hand whereas when I'm using my right hand to operate the mouse I reach for the Command key with my left hand.

I've practiced using my left hand instead of my right hand for a long time. Especially when I'm writing with a pen. Yet, I don't consider myself ambidextrous because my natural impulse is to reach with my right hand first. Maybe that will change if I use the mouse left-handed long enow.

When the local people find out I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis they've offered a lot of advice. Yesterday my youngest brother told me that he was chatting it up with a black woman he's known a long time while she was at work at Lowe's, and she started talking about her arthritis as if proprietorial. My brother said she had changed to a vegetarian diet and the pain went away.

Oddly enough, I had been reflecting on this very thing. A lotta strings had to be put together for me to take this woman's second-hand advice (via my brother) seriously. The main facet was my memory of an article I read about some research about the long term affect of a vegetarian diet. and what it concluded was that it lowered the immune system.

Lowering my immune system is what the rheumatologist prescribed me the drugs I take along with reducing the inflammation associated with arthritis. So, I stopped eating meat as of lunch yesterday.

Another little factoid that led me in this direction was the advertising squib I saw on the outside of a carton of yogurt that stated 95% of what makes up the human immune system is located along the gastro-intestinal tract. I'd never heard of such a thing, but it makes sense that would be where one's immune system is located.

I figure this dis-comfort/dis-ease is related directly to my diet. Of course, all my ideas in this direction is speculation, but it's all any physician has to make their diagnosis too. It's my body my bad eating habits shows up in, and I am is the only-est one who gnows what I-am-is put in it. Sadly, a bunch of crap just to shut down the warning system.

Going on that Atkins-like, low carbohydrates diet is probably responsible for the arthritic crisis that literally took me down. I recognize that arthritis runs in my family. My Aunt Elizabeth came down with it after having her second child in a debilitating way that ended up with all the joints in her hands being removed before she entered old age.

This stuff may be directly related to diet in the same way that Rickets got related to a lack of vitamin D and calcium, and the lack of vitamin C with scurvy, and the lack of vitamin A with night blindness. In any of these cases the problem was solved by getting those vitamins in the victims bodies.

I had a number of problems I didn't recognize at the time that were related to the low-carb diet I enjoined rigorously. To keep myself from reaching for carbohydrate-loaded foods I reached for meat instead. As far as losing weight was concerned that did the trick.

I ate a lot of canned and processed meats like tuna, smoked oysters, vienna sausages, and the cellophane-wrapped sandwich meats. All loaded to the gills with preservatives to give them shelf life. At times I ate canned veggies to fool myself into thinking that would offset the affect of all that meat. I'm beginning to think the carbohydrates are not as damaging to my body as the meats.

Previously, I've written that my mother was not a very good cook. Well, she actually wasn't a good cook. She was a good provider though, because she was in charge of the large family garden, and she saw to it that the milk from the cows and the eggs from the chickens made it on to her table. The real culprit was the tradition of Southern cooking. Soul food will kill your body so that all you got left is your soul. Have you noticed the warped bodies of older Southerners both black and white? Arrrrrgh!

Driving that big rig and eating in truck stops made me write mean things about how being a truck driver is bad for your health. If you sit near the door the truckers use to enter the truck stop from the parking area you'll see some more warped bodies (not all Southerners by a long shot).

The fact that I'm desperate to find anything to get outta taking these very serious prescription drugs is no needle-in-the-haystack facticity that I'm trying to hide. What if I should live to be a hundred? I'm not worried about dying. I'm worried about NOT dying.

My family on both sides are long livers. Especially my mother's side of the family. If it is true that how long one will live can be indicated by the length of life of yo' mother's mother, then I'm screwed, blued, and tattooed. My mother's mother lived to be 98 years old. If I live that long, that's 28 more years. Jeez! Talk about paying for my sins! My bodies revenge for the abuse I've inflicted on it (in many more ways than my diet), is to not die so I'll exist only to experience a maximal amount of pain? Whatta drag, man.