An Accidental Tourist in Filesharing Land
p2pnet view P2P:- The post-op complication I told you about over a week ago was actually a stroke brought on by the bypass operation itself.
Fear not however p2pnet readers, Jon is still himself. A couple of nights ago he was visited by yet another health care worker, this person wearing an iPhone hooked to his belt. One of the things affected by the stroke is Jon’s vision but he had no difficulty picking out the offending item. He may not have pursued his part of the debate with his usual vigour but that will come back.
So, the bypass was succesful. The stroke doesn’t seem to have been very debilitating – apart from his eyes, Jon has reduced mobility in his left arm and leg but things are already improving. Barring any other major developments, once he is strong enough, he is due to have neurological rehab to work on the effects of the stroke. As I said, we can already see significant improvement and Emma and I are hopeful.
As for the Accidental Tourist part, Jon wanted some music and audio books to listen to on his faithful Blackberry. I have never before attempted to download anything and I thought I would do it on my own, without consultation with our Emma. Well, I just entered my search term, “The Dharma Bums + free download”, and pulled up a bunch of links, all of them ending up at sites which require you to register and pay up a membership. It looked like they were all offering the same list of files and soon I had the impression of being in an Internet version of those fun houses at fairs, you know the ones where everything is refracted endlessly in garish colours. I was getting nowhere.
Fortunately, Emma put me straight and pointed me to her favourite torrent search page and soon I had found The Dharma Bums, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the Tao te Ching. Once I got the hang of things, I even decided to look for some of my kind of entertainment and grabbed some Bach cello concertos, Beethoven symphonies and a few German lieder. In the process, I also learned how to rip and burn CDs – I know, pathetic, but I’m quite pleased.
The other thing I’ve been learning in the last week or so is blogging with WordPress. Not the stuff that needs to be done to p2pnet – and here, my thanks once again the Devil’s Advocate, Surfer and Catflap for coming to the rescue with writing stuff and coding it.
I am simply taking care of our hot sauce page. I’ve only had to ask WordPress three times for a new login information 
So there we go. Jon had a little set-back on Thursday with an infection which required them to open him up again yesterday afternoon and I won’t know ’til later today how he is following that. By the way, he is intending to write an article about his operation and all that – he’ll have lots to tell.
Completely off topic, when we were returning home last night, we found the one highway leading out of Victoria to home, the Malahat drive, blocked by an overturned tanker trailer which had spilled oil. For those of you who live on this island, you know what that means: waiting it out or taking the long detour via Port Renfrew. The expected wait was 8 hours at least so we decide to take the hike.
The drive involves an often narrow road along the seafront with frequent tight turnings in the first 100 kilometres, then another 60 klicks on logging roads which climb into desolate mountains whose sides are dotted with millions on stumps. Yesterday we had a cool night with a full moon. The views over the sea were breathtaking, the moon silvering the edges of the clouds. Later, up in the mountains, we encountered low laying mists which blurred the edges of things, making the desolate landscape even eerier, and in the valleys we glimpsed heavier mists, or maybe clouds which looked like glimmering pools. I wouldn’t want to do it too many times but it was worth the hassle.
Over and out.
Liz – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan
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April 17th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
I’m so happy to hear it Liz! My grandmother recently had a stroke and other then a little occasional slurred speech shes still the same old person I know and love and I’m hoping for the same thing with Jon.
I gained a ton of respect for Jon when it came to the Wayne Crooks case. He had every excuse in the world to try and settle or not fight it for the sake of his family. He didn’t though, he took a stand against something that was wrong, fought and won. True role models like this are pretty rare in today’s day and age and I’m glad we have the privilege of having him around for many more years. Look forward to the article about the surgery.
April 17th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Beware of sites that have fake searches that simply offer you whatever you ask for. You can search for the end to world poverty and they will offer you the full download. At highspeed, too. http://torrentz.eu/search?f=the+end+to+world+poverty
April 17th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
That’s good news Liz. Great to hear Jon and yourself are coping with what is a difficult time in life. I look forward to seeing everything return back to normal. Patience lady, it will come.
Best of wishes to all the family.
April 17th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
@Andy:
LMAO (if it weren’t so true!)
I’ve been looking for a way to educate a few friends on these bogus search engines attached to some (even legitimate) torrent sites. Don’t know why I didn’t think of something like your “world poverty” query. That’s so illustrative!
April 17th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
After my heart problems, surgery and stroke, my vision was also affected. It’s gotten better or back to normal but since then I have a real hard time writing, or trying to concentrate on writing, or reading heavy technical papers and deciphering them. It’s gotten better for sure over a couple of years, but it’s no longer the same. It takes a lot of effort to for a bit of concentration to write that used to come easy for me.
I recall Jon telling me to read this or that and write it up and he seemed to not understand that I wasn’t able to. He seemed annoyed by it. I can only hope this doesn’t happen to him. Jon is a lot stronger than I am though, so I expected him to recover faster and better.
Try and get him writing small things in a week from now if he is up to it. Exercise his brain so to speak by simple writing. A stoke definitely does more than just causing physical handicaps…
April 17th, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Jon doesn’t like iPhones? I would never have guessed it.
Glad he was able to “discuss” this with the offender.
April 17th, 2011 at 7:56 pm
My very very very best wish for a prompt and painless recovery to Jon.
Jon, Liz and Emma are all in our though and I believe you are in the though of thousand of people right now!
April 18th, 2011 at 12:46 am
All the best for Jon, I hope he has a swift & full Recovery.
April 18th, 2011 at 2:23 am
Further update, this time from Jon himself:
“In hospital, you meet interesting people, like an ex-RCA executive such as Wayne, who is also here recovering from open heart surgery.
He has some fascinating stories to tell, so stay tuned…”
Tomorrow I’m taking a VERY LITTLE BIT of ice-cream down to these two gentlemen and Wayne has promised to make us some of his superb shortbread when he gets out.
Thanks for all your good wishes.
April 18th, 2011 at 9:15 am
To Liz:
I’m over 90 who’s had multiple heart attacks about 30 years ago so I think it gives me the right to say it. 
All the best to you and your family. Keep that old/young fart ticking
Love is the best medicine anyway.
Nice adventure in learning land for you.
I do need to say oil spill, any oil spill, will contaminate the land for no less than 500 years. It will keep on killing for that long. You might want to check where it flowed and if it reached water. Hope they cleaned it up properly.
Enjoy
April 18th, 2011 at 10:14 am
“It’s gotten better or back to normal but since then I have a real hard time writing, or trying to concentrate on writing, or reading heavy technical papers and deciphering them. It’s gotten better for sure over a couple of years, but it’s no longer the same. It takes a lot of effort to for a bit of concentration to write that used to come easy for me.”
I took a good blow to the head recently and have been having some of the same problems. It sucks, but luckily I’m young enough to recover in weeks/months instead of years.
Glad to hear that Jon is faring well. I hope to hear more good news soon.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
@EE heh actually I had a lot more than what I stated, but the specialists were at odds at what was going on.
There were days when I would wake up and not know the kids names or my wifes name.
There were days I would be at work and find myself standing in the hallway humming not knowing how I got there.
There were months where I would drive home from work and then realize I didn’t know how to get home. So I would pull out a the cell and then realize I didn’t know my phone number. So the wife just put in the phone book “home”, which I would hit everyday so she would give me directions to get home since everyday I would forget how to get back home :/
There were days where I would leave the house to go to the doc appointments, get in the car and wake up driving an hour away from home and the hospital w/ no clue how I got there and no memory of it.
I’m not sure how long this lasted, but many mornings I would wake up and find Jon replying to emails I have no recollection of sending. Seems I would wake up at like 2 or 3 am, write some emails, go back to bed and have no clue about it.
I would wake up in the middle of the night, empty all the clothes drawers in the house, do the washing and drying and wake up in the morning having no clue about it and having no clothes to wear!
Once I turned the Heat off and did a full maintenance on the furnace at 3-am, went back to bed and had no clue I did it.
Once I woke up (again like 2-3 am), mopped all the house, swept, did the dishes and vacuumed and went back to bed. Woke up and had no clue about it. But the wife liked it.
Once (that I know of) I “woke up” outside at 4-am sitting on the porch stairs.
So many things happened.
Then a year later it happened again. This time my right ear was affected. It happened while I had the most amazing headache one could imagine. Took many more months for that to subside.
Lots more weird things happened.
Of course there was memory loss, but that seems to have all become better now, that I know of (not like I would know). Days, weeks and months went by and I had no clue what I did the day before, week before, months before. Each day was a unique and new day with no past and no clue what I did the days before. So while this was going on, one of the specialists told me to keep my mouth shut about it and not tell the other neurologists or he would have to remove my drivers license. He plainly said, “Do you want to lose your drivers license”? I said no. So I had to keep my mouth shut. Which was a very hard thing to do.
This is only the tip of the iceberg that I went through, there is more. I don’t know if I could handle a 3rd time. the second time wasn’t as bad as the first though. Though the specialists are split on weather I had a 3rd one or had an untreated concussion from an 8-ft fall I had which led to similar symptoms like what EE stated.
Jon actually helped a lot. When it happened the first time I couldn’t take it, it was too damn rough. Writing was hard, I was only able to do simple sentences. Paragraphs? Forget it. I was writing to Jon in point form. It was all I could handle or the headaches, confusion, shakes, ringing in my ears, pain and dizziness would consume me. Jon kept pushing me to write the best I could and I kept bitching back at him I can’t. I was mad about it back then.
I guess it wasn’t as bad as other people. I have met people who had strokes and are paralyzed or they seem ok but they can no longer write at all. Just putting their name on a piece of paper is a task, if they can.
EE said: “It sucks, but luckily I’m young enough to recover in weeks/months instead of years.”
Jon is 30-years my senior. I just broke 38 when this happened. It can happen anytime to anyone at any age. What it does to you is up in the air.
But one thing is certain. I have the best wife in the wold to have put up with all that.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:32 pm
Yep, way worse than what I have going on. I just can’t write a cogent sentence and felt extremely drunk for about a week straight. This came with horrible coordination, concentration, and memory. (without drinking) Oh, and headaches of course… but I’m on the mend. This type of injury is supposed to completely fix itself within a few months to a year.
April 19th, 2011 at 1:38 am
Anonymous targets NZ Govt over copyright laws
http://www.3news.co.nz/Anonymous-targets-NZ-Govt-over-copyright-laws/tabid/423/articleID/207689/Default.aspx
Google pulled their video… but it apparently stated:
This is a message to the New Zealand Government.
We are Anonymous. We have been watching the actions taken by you and your legislation.
The passing of the Infringing File Sharing bill is both a form of censorship and an invasion of privacy.
Anonymous will not let this go by unnoticed.
Your beliefs that one is guilty until proven innocent is an unlawful and unjust policy.
We do not believe that one, when accused of copyright infringement should be questioned by their internet support provider and eligible to pay a $15,000 fine unless proven innocent.
We do not believe that one, when accused of copyright infringement should be sentenced to six months suspension of internet usage unless proven innocent.
We do not believe that one, when accused of copyright infringement shall be called a criminal in the eyes of the Government for the simple act of accessing information unless proven innocent.
Those opposing the copyright law via online protest – we are with you.
New Zealand, you now have the full attention of Anonymous.
We are Anonymous.
We are legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:26 am
reader’s write:
YAAAAAAAAAAA about time!
maybe soon enough anons will figure out how to use a ‘fee schedule’ and charge government and corporations for lost time and expenses.
there are many such documents out there so i decided to get one from a legal style website [Admiralty website - today's tyrants]: http://www.legalucc.com/notice_of_understanding.html
fee schedule starts at point 67.
you are free to craft your own as you wish and it can be as simple as:
i don’t see the words love and harmony in your so called laws therefore i reject your rules and your system of governance …
my fees for dealing with your system are …
- good idea to run it past someone or men and women who have crafted ones already to make sure you are not being unlawful.
April 19th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
@gabbi
Unfortunately, the oil spilled into the Goldstream river which runs through that narrow gorge and is a habitat for salmon on this coast. Every fall, people flock to the park to watch the salmon run up the river and later in the season, the bald eagles come to feast on the carcasses of the dead fish. Just about now, the salmon eggs would be ready to hatch and it’s a real tragedy that the water got fouled up.
They are doing their best to clean things up but since the accident happened after dark nobody knows how bad the situation is.
Cheers
April 19th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
If they used soap to clean up the spill, the soap causes the heavier oil to sink to the bottom. This in turn hides the fact that oil is still around, it’s just out of sight. The folks that are monitoring the Gulf Coast oil spill are finding a coating of oil on the sea floor. Guess what caused that?
Refined oil is a bit different than raw crude oil. Raw crude contains light volatiles and heavy bits depending on the reservoir it comes from, the life of the oil bearing sands, and the length of time it’s been exposed to the atmosphere. The light volatiles are usually associated with gas and with early extraction. When it hits the water, that part floats right up on top of the water. Given time most of that part will evaporate. The rest of it has a heavier than water specific gravity, especially if it is in emulsion. That doesn’t evaporate. The heaviest (tar balls and the like) sink or float at it’s specific gravity within the water in neutral buoyancy, where it will eventually make it to wash up on some shore. Again what the Gulf Coast residences are seeing.
Refined oil usually contains a soap of sorts to keep the gunk down within the engine, thinning chemicals in the winter cold spots, sometimes a light weight oil or chemical for piston ring lube, and a few other chemicals thrown in for various properties. It’s specific gravity is usually fairly homogeneous. Which means it usually all floats. It will also contain some benzene ring components, which are known carcinogens.
You can thin it and hide it but it is very difficult to retrieve out of the environment. One of the more successful ways is sand thrown on it and then shoveled up and taken to a disposal site if it’s contained on a pavement. Once it is in the soil and water, it’s a whole ‘nother ball game.
I think next year will be remarkable for far less salmon running.
April 20th, 2011 at 1:09 am
@Liz,
The company that owns the truck involved in the crash is offering to compensate drivers affected by the lengthy highway closure.
Columbia Fuels said an adjudicator will consider expenses racked up by drivers stuck on the highway when the only route up and down the island was severed Saturday.
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110419/bc_tanker_crash_review_110419/20110419?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
Per http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/fuel-spills-impact-on-salmon-may-not-be-known-for-years/article1992016/
The driver of the Columbia Fuels tanker truck that lost control and slammed into a rock face on Saturday evening was arrested on suspicion of impaired driving, according to West Shore RCMP. That investigation is underway.
The driver has been suspended by the company pending the police investigation. He also faces charges for assault of a police officer.
How about that :/
April 20th, 2011 at 5:12 am
I’m so happy that Jon is doing better. I used to be a real regular on this site, but between my work at the Autism Education Center and writing my book, I have not had much time to socialize online. Still, p2pnet.net is one of my top favorite websites.
April 21st, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Liz,
Is Jon walking a bit yet? How is the affected side after the stroke?
Any news on when they expect to let him out?
How does it work over there after he is released? Here a nurse is sent everyday to your house to clean the area’s stitched up and to look for infection and to pull the staples out (assuming he was stapled). Normally they come everyday for a month or more.
Do they get you to do it with maybe weekly or bimonthly visits? Or will someone actually take the ferry daily yo your island to do it?
April 21st, 2011 at 9:24 pm
@ Reader’s Write
Jon is walking with the help of a couple of people and they told me on Wednesday that he had stood up by himself. His left arm, which is recovering slower than his leg, is also starting to improve and so is his sight.
Unfortunately, his sternum had got infected so they had opened him up again on Saturday and he still isn’t over the effects of the anesthetic and whatever else they gave him. And they have also double stapled him because some of the originals had pulled loose and they told me it all stays in. That should be fun at airports.
I don’t know when he is leaving hospital. As soon as he is physically and mentally ready, he will be transferred to another hospital for neurological rehab. Beyond that I don’t know. Fortunately our island is big enough to have a sufficient array of trained health care workers. In fact the hospital Jon is at is renowned for its cardiac unit and people come here from the mainland and Alberta even.
April 22nd, 2011 at 3:13 am
ty for the update, Liz.
April 22nd, 2011 at 1:15 pm
I am very sure that jon will make it.
Go! Jon Go!
Our though are with you!
April 26th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Keep goin Jon! sending positive thoughts!