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Play it again, Sam!

For the whiners:

Friday marks the 182nd day of the 45-day deadline for the ombudsman to respond to my complaint about my ophthalmologist's behaviour, so I think I've waited long enough.

The excuses don't make sense, but then again, it's a problem that the hospital realizes can generate negative publicity in these times.

I've been dealing with the same retinal specialist for most of the decade, at the hospital clinic that handles the provinces' worst retinal disease cases. You can't get an appointment - they only take referrals that meet the criteria for severity.

When I first went, my eyes were filled with blood (proliferative diabetic retinopathy, the last stage of retinopathy, fun times unless your job requires sight), and I was told that if I had waited another year I'd be stone cold blind. So, lots of laser burns over the course of years to reduce the growth of blood vessels on the surface of the retina by reducing overall oxygen demand.

That meant destroying my peripheral vision, so no driving a car, which meant no more meeting up with friends (they all live in different cities).

Now blood vessels have intruded on the back of the iris, and the rim, and you can't laser those. The treatment is monthly exams and intra-ocular injections of anti-VEGF to tame the little buggers.

Everything was fine until May, when the doctor had a student with him - fine by me. But when he was describing my case, he continually misgendered me. Not so fine. I corrected him, he continued. I then explained to the student (a woman from a visible minority) that all my legal ID says I'm female, including my hospital card, and my birth certificate.

Did he stop? No. THAT just ruined any trust I had in him. I thought about it for the next couple of days, looked up the professional code of ethics, and found that not only did his current conduct violate both the code and provincial laws, but that his refusal to sign off on my having a chronic disability of at least one year was also a violation.

I would have been entitled to a disability allowance, retraining, and subsidies for any employer willing to hire me, as well as a work subsidy to make up for my lower earning capacity. A 6-figure loss, because he has a hereto-hidden antagonism to transsexual women.

The social workers who tried to help me adapt to my situation kept asking why the doctor wouldn't sign off for a disability allowance and job retraining, because someone who is rated low vision, has a broken back and neck, and can't just go work in a warehouse or other joe job, and now we know.

The ethics complaint process is independent of the profession's ethics board (which is a useless piece of shit, same as the police ethics commission and the other ethics boards). I've waited long enough; the deadline I set for a response is nigh, and it's time to post the details to (ugh) anti-social media and start the search for others who may have run into similar anti-lgbt bias in the hospital system.

And send links to the local conventional media, of course.

I'm allowed to split any legal action between the human rights commission and the regular courts - the financial losses are better handled in the regular court system, with it's higher damage limits, while the acts of discrimination are better handled in the human rights tribunal.

The sad parts

I still like the guy, and I really, really wish he hadn't turned out to be such a dick.

And the more than 6 months of non-treatment have caused a different type of shadow (not floaters from blood) to manifest in the vision of my better eye. Fortunately I was assigned a new ophthalmologist, who I see in a couple of weeks. I know him - he drained my left eye and peeled of the membranes growing in the retina, and while the vision is 20/300 to 20/400, it's a big improvement to "can't see anything at all."

He knows I'm trans; just hope he understands that the doctor's behaviour was say beyond the pale.

Summary

You don't out someone without their permission, and you don't put your student in a position where she's ethically compromised - she had to choose to either follow the law and report the incident and get a reputation for being difficult, or be quiet. Reporting is career suicide. Shitty choices to force on her.

His actions have shown her that guys in positions of authority don't have to follow the rules of the profession when it comes to minorities, and especially minority women. He should be supervised when interacting with patients and students.

So of course my fingerprint refused to register. Repeated attempts, different fingerprints, over a two-month period.

I suspect a lifetime of pricking my fingers 3 times a day to get blood samples may have something to do with it, because, while certain medications are also known to make fingerprints less distinct or even disappear altogether, I don't think insulin or HRT can do that.

So why the beef now?

My bank routinely locked me out because it would time out with a message "It's not you, it's us", and after 3 login fails, I'd have to go to the local branch and get a password reset. Which was really funny because the last time it happened, they couldn't reset the password because ... the server timed out.

So, all of a sudden, if I don't use the fingerprint reader required on their latest security upgrade, I can't log in.

Of course, I never registered (and won't register) a fingerprint and then end up locked out of my own phone.

The app is also an annoyance because it doesn't respond to requests from the OS for a larger font, nor for pivoting to horizontal to get a bigger font. And I'm sick and tired of being discriminated because I'm low vision, so I deleted it.

Also deleted Firefox for the same reason (I will NOT use the screen magnifier tool - scrolling the screen window left and right makes me seasick, one of the reasons I dumped Windows).

And Environment Canada's weather app. And Amazon (never used). And Kijiji (haven't used in years). And any other app that doesn't meet my needs.

Tried to delete Safari, because it has the same problem with refusing to resize text and reflow pages, plus it doesn't handle CSS properly to half the time text entry is off-screen, so I just moved it to the page where I stick all useless apps I can't delete.

I've been with the same bank for almost 20 years, but unless they come up with a way to access my account that doesn't use the internet, the local credit union will get my business.

But the arrogance of designers who don't take into account customers who can't see 20/20 and have perfect colour vision is just begging for a complaint to the local human rights commission for discrimination based on a physical handicap.

I'll put it in the queue, after the complaint against my ophthalmologist and the one against the cops and the city.

Hate to say it, but I need to find others in the same situation, so probably have to use Failbook as a point of contact. I figure I'll post my phone number there and tell people that I won't respond to anything but text, phone calls, email (preferably not through data harvesters like gmail), and in person.

We used to have everyone's name, phone, and address in a big free phone book, and I've posted it elsewhere with no negative consequences - people are smartening up to the fact that "tracing a phonecall" on TV is bullshit - the switches have all the caller data before you hear the first ring, and telcos routinely query their switches to locate crank callers IF THE COPS ASK (but most cops are too stupid to know this, and too lazy to ask, so you really have to push).

Since fingerprints don't work, what next, ask me for a DNA sample?

That won't work - people shed DNA all the time - but that probably won't stop them in 20 years when it can be built into a phone.

When you sell your vote, you are no different than the person that bought it.

You all should quit bellyaching about the damn money. It's effects are a reflection on you. You're a soft target, an easy sell, and the reaction to that is classic, and tragedy is the result.

In one fell swoop the prez eliminated all barriers between the two. Whatever military honor there was went up in smoke. They are merely the president's button men.

You people gonna get serious yet? Or will denial of what caused this with the resultant blame passing remain the rule of the day?

An new epoch of smart spinners have arrived.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flynova-the-most-tricked-out-flying-spinner--2?#/

What now? Make it BIG! A slow-fall device may have wide spectrum of usage outside of entertainment: from bombs able to deploy mine fields to controllable parachutes for vehicles.

I have simplified the way I make kimchi and made some improvements.

All soaking and mixing is done in a 5 gallon food grade bucket. The initial fermentation starts in the bucket for 7-10 days, and then I transferred it to sealed wide mouth quart-sized mason jars for about 7-10 days. Then I put them in the fridge to slow down fermentation.

4 cabbages
1 cup salt for soaking 4 cabbages
~2-4 lbs carrots

1/2 to 2 cups red pepper flakes (I used 1 cup)
1 can crushed pineapple
soy sauce
fresh ginger or paste
garlic
1-2 onions
MSG
some brown sugar

1. Clean the bucket. It helps if it can fit in your sink or you have a sink sprayer.
2. Cut the cabbage stems off, cut the cabbages in half and then a ~1 inch square pattern. I used 4 green cabbages this time.
3. Add them all into the bucket as you go, add the salt, add hot water, stir, and let soak for a couple hours or overnight.
4. Drain it. Clutch the lid on to keep cabbage from spilling out.
5. Add carrots. I cut them into cylinder segments and then fourths lengthwise, but you can do any kind of cut you like or use pre-cut. Stir.
6. Use a food processor to blend the sauce ingredients.
7. Spread the sauce on top. Use a stiff spoon (e.g. bamboo or metal) to stir as much as possible. Mash down the cabbage until liquid creeps up. Use a wide plate to compress the kimchi until the liquid is nearly covering the plate, and leave the plate in the bucket. Add some additional warm/hot water if you need to.
8. Put the lid on and ferment for 7-10 days.
9. Start transferring to mason jars. Stir as you remove kimchi to keep things from settling at the bottom. You want to minimize the amount of liquid that goes in, but compress down the kimchi until liquid covers the top of the contents. Hand tighten the rings. The lid will pop up as it slightly pressurizes/carbonates over the next week, but it shouldn't explode.

I filled about 9 quart jars instead of the 13+ I would get from not compressing it down. Having less liquid and more cabbage per jar also helps make the kimchi less messy to use. I put one jar in the fridge immediately so I could try it with less fermentation, and the other 8 are fermenting now.

Notes

4 large cabbages mostly fills the bucket when soaking. I wouldn't use more than that.

I made a soup out of the leftover kimchi liquid at the bottom of the bucket. Basically just take what you don't want to put in a mason jar (liquid with pepper flake debris a small amount of cabbage and carrots left in it), add chicken broth, sauteed onions, white beans, tomatoes, etc. and boil or pressure cook. If it's too sour or spicy, add more broth or water+bouillon. You could also add some rice or pasta. Basically, I was going for a minestrone.

Wash your hands or rinse them with hot water repeatedly during the process, and have the bucket lid loosely covering the bucket when you aren't interacting with it.

I used an entire 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple because I didn't feel like using it for anything else or storing it in the fridge. I don't think you actually need that much in the sauce.

I dropped the green onions from the latest batch. I'm not sure they add that much and they kind of turn into mush. If I were to add them again, maybe I would cut them differently or just process them into the sauce.

I didn't have enough fresh garlic, so I used a lot of granulated garlic. That was probably a mistake and I might add the full ~3 bulbs next time.

I didn't bother using previous kimchi as a "starter".

On the last batch, I used 1 red/purple cabbage and 2 green. That created a deep blue/purple kimchi (all of the liquid was dark blue as well).

Someone asked about smell in a previous journal entry. Because things are sealed up pretty well as compared to alternate methods, there isn't that much of a smell except from the initial saucemaking. Glass mason jars can be cleaned thoroughly although their metal lids might retain a bit of smell. There should be some smell/stain in the bucket but not too bad if you rinse it enough, and you can put the lid on to block it. You might not realize how much raw carrots can stain things until you cut pounds of them and start touching stuff, like the bucket lid.

I'd rather store this in quart jars than pint or half gallon. The bigger cabbage chunks could take up too much volume in a pint jar, and the half gallon can be unwieldy.

The bucket lid probably does not need an airlock (the bucket is not going to explode). I have never had a contamination issue with any batch. Keeping things immersed in liquid (an anaerobic environment) or sealed probably helps. This advice makes sense.

I use the kind of bucket lid that can be pressed down easily for a nice seal and doesn't need to be pounded with a mallet or whatever.

Things you can use kimchi for: kimchi fried rice, stir fry, yakisoba, spicy reubens or grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, tacos/burritos, soup, curry, pizza topping, eating it straight out of the jar, etc.

I'd like to try fermenting just the sauce portion on its own (which is predominantly blended red pepper flakes, pineapple, and garlic).

Previously: 4 Gallon Kimchi Ferment
Kimchi Update

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the FBI employee being investigated for altering a document worked underneath former Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok. The employee was a low-level lawyer in the Office of General Counsel and did not report to the deputy assistant director.

I haven't followed this part of the show [who's Peter Strzok?], so I don't know its meaning in the grand scheme. Seems more like one of your regular fake news stories, but somebody took interest, so maybe you guys can clarify if this shit's for real.

Have fun

Turns out the cops don't have common sense. They told me to walk on the sidewalk, I refused, pointing out that they were clearly covered in ice.

So they told me to stop and produce photo ID, which I did. They asked for my drivers license, and I told them I no longer drive because I'm half blind, and produced a second ID, a hospital patient card with my address. I told them to give me the ticket and I'll see them in court. So, a ticket for "while being a pedestrian, walking on the street beside the sidewalk."

I had pointed out that the sidewalk was not safe, and that their demand that I get back on the sidewalk was contrary to the law (we actually have a constitutional guarantee of security of the person, which trumps all other laws), but they really wanted to "teach me a lesson."

"You probably wouldn't be getting this ticket if you had said you were sorry and agreed to walk on the sidewalk." "Give me the ticket. I'll see you in court." Why would I want to argue in the street,,or be coerced into doing something unsafe? I'm too old for that shit."

"I could arrest you for failure to obey an order." "I stopped and produced ID when you asked me to. Your order to use the sidewalk was illegal. I'll see you in court."

They're going to have problems proving the sidewalk was safe, especially for someone visually handicapped. I have pictures, they don't. They blocked me with their police car, and the sidewalk is clearly covered in ice. They were aware I have to exercise extra care because I told them I'm half blind (actually, more than half, official diagnosis which I will produce in court along with the pictures of the icy sidewalk and ice-free street beside the sidewalk.

They aren't qualified to give a professional assessment on sidewalk safety (they're not civil engineers or materials scientists), so it's a question of whose judgment is better based on ordinary experience, and I'm twice their ages.

Dirty tricks It was only when my sister questioned whether the ticket was for jaywalking instead of walking on the street instead of the sidewalk that I took a photo of the ticket, and looking at the address (easier to zoom in on the phone) that I saw they put a wrong address. An old trick - you want to really jam someone up and keep them from making you look stupid in court, make sure they never receive the summons. They will assume the matter was dropped, you get a default judgment against you, and the fine just grows and grows. By the time you find out the truth, you probably don't even have your copy of the ticket, and they will claim that was the address you gave them.

So I have to go to the city clerk, File my contestation, get the address corrected, and see them in court.

Everyone I showed the pictures to has the same reaction - "Don't they have anything better to do?"

This crap happens too often here. And the police ethics commission is corrupt - a woman tapped on a police car window, 4 cops jumped her and broke her arm, and the ethics commission refused to even hear the complaint. Right now the noon news is reporting on the latest report on police discrimination of minorities and how they are again refusing to accept any wrongdoing. We need mandatory body cam use for police interactions with civilians.

"Did you know that Rudy Giuliani has private business interests in Ukraine?"

Devolution! And so quickly!