It has been a relaxing few weeks. Very busy, but informative, and relaxing.

My experimentation for medication and various health regimens seems to be going well. The only disappointing thing (and of course this is strictly a matter of my lack of personal discipline) is my seeming inability to get the carbohydrate / sugar monkey off my back. I have reduced my consumption, but I have a time of the day, usually in the late afternoon, where it is like my brain, or at least the part that involves personal discipline, just goes on strike. And it only comes back to itself, shaking its head over my weakness, after I have consumed either a chocolate croissant or a portion of a baguette, or a handful of crackers.

I am still experimenting with taking a statin drug to lower my cholesterol, and my first experimentation halving the dose, resulted in exactly the same level of cholesterol, right around 132 (on the regular dose it was at 130). Halving the dose, in addition to having no effect on my cholesterol levels going higher or lower, also brought all my liver function numbers back into the normal range [But it is shocking what the statins did to my liver function]. So now I am moving to taking half the dose every other day. Just to see if that gives me slightly better numbers for both cholesterol and liver function. Because I personally think that a cholesterol number of 130 is actually too low. Cholesterol is actually needed by the body for a number of functions, and I prefer to see something between 160 and 180 if possible. Please see the diagrams below for ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ view.

I did succeed in cleaning up ~80% of all my files on the computer. That was really quite a chore. I had probably close to a dozen backups of various directories scattered over a number of external hard drives. That was the majority of the work. Just figuring out which versions of the files I can get rid of. I managed it. And I think it was worth the effort. Having stuff like that in the background, for me anyway, is like having this vague psychological weight resting on my metaphorical shoulders. It’s always there, I know I have all those backups sitting there, but I don’t know what is what, and they are not organized, and if I ever really needed to find something, it becomes a real challenge. Well, now … not so much. I have managed to get rid of almost all the duplicates and antiquated files and I did feel a huge sense of relief having accomplished that. I am still doing file cleanup a little bit every day, usually when I get bored with whatever else I’m working on.

I ended up going with a company called SYNC.COM, [ https://www.sync.com/ ] based in Canada, for my cloud storage. That also led to me getting rid of the software that I use for backup (Acronis). It seemed to be a complete duplication of effort as far as I can tell. The basic subscription with Sync holds 30 days’ worth of all versions of my files.

I have been using Linkq fairly consistently for language study. It seems to be working well. The tracking does somewhat motivate me to try to keep doing something, at least a little, every day. I have not been doing as much of the extensive reading and listening as I would like. I found another polyglot YouTube channel, an English gentleman based in San Francisco at the moment, called Robin McPherson. [ https://www.youtube.com/@RobinMacPhersonFilms ]  He has served as encouragement for me to continue my language studies, and I must say that I just enjoy his videos. He’s upbeat, calm, and encouraging. I wish I had his energy. But he and Steve Kaufman both say that the most important thing in any language is comprehension. I agree but wish I had realized it years ago. ☹ And they make the point that struggling is critical. I’ve got that part down anyway.

MacPherson also introduced me to an application called Notion ( www.notion.so ). I had not heard of it before, although it appears to have been around for almost 10 years at this point. I tried it and fell in love with it almost immediately. Works on Windows, Apple, and Android.

I’m struggling on exactly how to describe it. It is called workspace software. And I believe it is ideally constructed for people that do work in teams and need to work collaboratively. However, I can also see that it is really nice for simply an individual who wants to stay organized. I have been using Evernote for quite some years. But it hasn’t really been the best package for me, and I have been browsing for something that I could replace it with. And Notion dropped in my lap. One very nice thing which I discovered, like the third day I was using it, was that it has a built in system to import everything from an Evernote account. And it works really well. So, I am thinking very much about using Notion not only for my language course tracking but also as my general note repository. One thing that I noticed almost immediately, is that Notion syncs across devices much better than Evernote does. It also appears to have journaling capability. That would mean my journaling, language tracking, note repository, could all be in one application. I will experiment with the journaling feature over the next week or so to see whether or not that could actually do that. I would love to have journaling software that I can easily import 24 years of journal entries into, and then easily sync across various different devices. The one major shortcoming Notion has is that it is not E2EE enabled. But almost nothing is. E2EE means end to end encryption. Sometime also known as Zero Knowledge Encryption. That means that the company, in this case, Notion, has no knowledge of any passwords as to how your data is encrypted. Now that I’ve subscribed, I’ll add my voice to the cry for encryption.

I had a phone conference with a guy a couple of days ago to revamp my blog site just a little bit. Just a few tweaks, I want to add a page for foreign-language posts, and upgrade the site to the latest version of their operating system. The guy is definitely twice as expensive, minimum, as the lady developer who helped me before. But sadly, she closed her business down and doesn’t do consulting anymore. A shame. She did great work.

Blacklist - I have been wasting a lot of time watching a show called Blacklist. It stars a guy called James Fader, whom I love. Unfortunately, the majority of the other characters are not that well cast. I am not the most introspective person or deepest thinker. What irritates me about the show is the way it portrays the people, primarily in law enforcement, as people who think that the entire world needs to be evaluated all the time under the framework of whatever passes for law and political correctness inside basically the United States, possibly the West in general, but it is very US centric. I am not an anarchist. However, when the framework and content for rule of law is so obviously diseased as it is in many parts of the world, and I think the United States is a fairly egregious example of this, why should it be considered the right thing to do to accept all of those laws without question? I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of imagination. However, it appears obvious to me that the “establishment”, which consists primarily of politicians and or lawyers, combined with a unhealthily high dose of bureaucrats, have no vested interest in trying to rationalize a fetid swamp of regulation. Because, of course, having a morass of regulation, makes it much easier for them to accrete money and/or power. So of course, why would they want to change any of that? And, this is exactly why I don’t like to be introspective about this type of thing very often, because all it does is make me depressed. And there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. Other than what I am doing. Which is trying to lead my life in such a way as to get out from under the most egregious systems as best I can.

And, speaking of that, the final approval on my St. Kitts passport came through on Friday. A minor correction on the name of my birthplace, and I should have the passport in my hands by the end of this month. Yay! 😊