HinesSight

Honey-Do is a great Salem handyman service

Today I was impressed again by the quality work that Laine Larson did for us via his Honey-Do Handyman Service. Laine is a neighbor, so during a dog walk this afternoon I took this photo of the back of his trailer so I could share it in this laudatory blog post.

For many years Laine was a State Farm Insurance agent. Now he's into the handyman thing, and doing it very well. My wife and I have used him for several projects that exceeded my decidedly minimal husbandly handyman capability.

Laine is very easy to work with. Honest, straightforward, pleasant, reliable. I'll describe what Laine did for us today, as it reflects why a handyman like Laine is so valuable. 

As I described in a recent blog post, the Space X Starlink satellite internet system  that I was selected to be a Beta tester for is working well for us -- hugely better than the slow CenturyLink DSL that we've had to endure at our rural south Salem home where prior to Starlink there haven't been any viable broadband alternatives (our DSL isn't really broadband, not with a speed of 7 Mbps).

So I phoned Laine and told him that we needed to have the cable secured from the Starlink dish on our roof down to the spot on an outside wall where a hole needed to be drilled into our living room, where the Starlink router was located.

(During our initial test of the Starlink we'd left a sliding door slightly ajar so the cable would fit through it.)

I'd gotten a Cable Routing & Wall Penetration Kit from Starlink, but I'd noticed that the description of the kit started off with, "Designed for customers with prior internet cable routing experience and installation; must be comfortable drilling through walls."

Well, I had zero internet cable routing experience and wasn't comfortable drilling through walls. Which caused me to call Laine.

When he came to our house this afternoon I showed him what the kit contained: a spade bit, drill bit, cable routing tool, silicone sealant, grommets, and wall clips. The screw-in clips were to hold the cable in place along the fifty feet or so between the Starlink dish on our roof and the router in our living room.

Laine took the clips up on the roof, but he ended up not using them. Instead, he had a more elegant solution -- a coax cable staple gun that used an oval-shaped staple. 

This turned out to be the only way the cable could be attached at the top of the slanted roof overhang above our deck, since a cordless drill wouldn't have had enough room to drive in the screw that holds a clip in place. Plus, the clips would have been a lot more visible than the staples,

So not only is Laine a skilled handyman who can do what you want done, he also can come up with better ways to do what you want done. 

When the cable routing kit arrived from Starlink, I looked at the instructions and thought, "Maybe I could handle this." But what I correctly suspected is that complications would arise that I wouldn't know how to handle, and Laine could.

Give him a call if you're in the Salem, Oregon area and need a handyman: 503-931-8822

Our Starlink is working well on its Ridgeline Roof Mount

Eight days ago I was happy with the speed of the Starlink satellite internet system that I'd been chosen to be a public beta tester for, but not with the reliability. 

As I said in "My first Starlink beta test: fast but loses satellite connection," it wasn't a surprise that the connection kept dropping, since I had to put the Starlink on its tripod on one of our decks. We live in rural south Salem, Oregon, and our home is surrounded by large oaks and firs.

So I was eager to see how the Starlink did when the Ridgeline Roof Mount I'd ordered arrived, which it did yesterday. 

UPDATE: I've heard from several fellow Beta testers wondering how I was able to order the Ridgeline Roof Mount since it still isn't showing up on the Starlink web site. That was the case when our Starlink arrived, so I put in a support request to Starlink saying I needed the Ridgeline Mount to be able to test the system in a place with a clear view of the sky. I got a response from the support person saying they could order that mount for me, using the credit card they had on file. So give that it a try if you want one. It might work for you also.

Installing the Starlink on our roof was easy. I'd already gone to Lowe's and purchased 16 5-pound red bricks, which were needed to weight the Ridgeline Roof Mount with the required 80 pounds of stability.

Laying a rubber mat on our roofline was easy, as was carrying the Starlink up a ladder in the bag that was included in the Ridgeline Roof Mount kit. The dish popped into the receptacle on the mount with a satisfying click. Then I threw the cable/power cord over the side of the roof, and thence through a sliding glass door into our living room. 

My wife had figured out how to tape some insulation over the crack in the door to keep cold air out. I'd cut a small piece of wood to keep the door from being opened while we tested the Starlink in what hopefully would be its permanent location, after which we could drill a hole for the cable through our siding.

Then came the big moment. Plug in the Starlink, give it some time to find the satellites, wait for the router to come on line, choose "Starlink" for my iPhone's wi-fi network, and see how fast and reliable the Starlink is in its rooftop location. 

Initially the connection dropped a few times, before becoming highly reliable.

We were able to watch an episode of Bridgerton on Netflix with ease, using Starlink wi-fi. It was a joy to see how much crisper the picture was, since our crappy 6 Mbps CenturyLink DSL often forces Netflix to supply us with a fuzzy image, and sometimes no video at all as we wait for buffering to take place.

Eventually we lost the Starlink connection around the time we switch to watching the KGW Portland evening news. When I checked the Statistics page on the Starlink iPhone app before I went to bed, I saw there had been 12 minutes of "Beta Downtime" in the seven hours since our Starlink had been operating.

That must have caused the dropped connection, since the router was showing a red light and wasn't able to reconnect to the satellites. 

In the 27 or so hours the Starlink has been on our roof, download speeds have varied a lot -- from an unusual low of 6 Mbps, to the more typical 40-90 Mbps, all the way to an occasional 140 Mbps. 

I'm beyond happy with both the speed and reliability.

The connection hasn't dropped once due to an obstruction, according to the Statistics I made a screenshot of not long ago. There was no downtime in the last 12 hours due to an obstruction and just 49 seconds when there were no satellites. However, there was a lengthy Beta Downtime of 48 minutes this morning, the price of being a Beta tester. Likely that's an aberration.

As soon as the Starlink app was released a number of months ago, I went up on our roof in the same location the Starlink is now and tried to figure out if these three tall firs and a couple of significant oaks to the north of our house were going to pose an obstruction problem. We own the property they're on, but I wasn't eager to cut down the trees.

Looks like they aren't causing a problem, which is good news.

By the way, that 5 Mb iPhone photo just took 15 seconds to upload to Typepad, my blogging service. With DSL, I have to wait a couple of minutes for a photo to upload. At the moment Starlink has an upload speed of 5.1 Mbps, while our DSL usually is about .75 Mbps.

When I sat on our roof a few months ago in the same place the Starlink is now and checked for obstructions, trying to get the tilt of my iPhone at a more or less correct angle, I was sure those trees were going to be a problem, since they appeared in the lower portion of the Starlink obstruction checker.

But this afternoon I sat next to the Starlink and placed my iPhone alongside the dish at the same angle the dish is at, about 35 degrees, I believe. This is the pleasingly clear screenshot. So I guess the lesson is that it is difficult to tell what, if anything, is going to be an obstruction until someone actually installs a Starlink.


This is the speed test I did a few minutes ago. As noted above, this speed is pretty typical for what we've been getting the past 27 hours. It's great, given that we never get above 7 Mbps with our DSL, and that's on a good day.

 
The Starlink router is generating an acceptable wi-fi signal. It seems to be usable everywhere in our 3,200 square foot house. So all in all, there's little I can criticize about Starlink now that the dish is up on our roof with a clear view of the northern sky. 

Sure, it will be nice to have the Beta Downtime go away, since I don't feel comfortable ditching our DSL until Starlink is more reliable.

But if the outages are limited to a few minutes a day, that's fine. It's easy to shift over to DSL wi-fi, though now that I've experienced the much faster Starlink speed, it is already tough for me to put up with DSL.

A final note: I'm impressed with Starlink support staff. Whenever I've asked them a question, which so far has been limited to the status of an order, they've responded quickly and in a friendly manner. 

My first Starlink beta test: fast but loses satellite connection

Yesterday the long-awaited box from Starlink arrived after I'd been notified that I was able to be part of the public beta test for this groundbreaking effort to bring broadband to underserved areas via thousands of low-altitude satellites. I happily paid for the equipment.

Naturally I was eager to open it up. At first glance, I wondered if somehow they'd forgotten to put the equipment inside.

But no, the goodies were under the cleverly fashioned plastic cover: satellite dish, tripod, router,, and cables.

Showing how old I am (72), I looked around for an installation manual. Then I realized that the sum total of the instructions included in the box were on the sheet that caught my eye when I first opened it up.

So I gathered that you set up the dish, plug it in, then fire up the Starlink app I had on my iPhone. Pleasingly, all the cables and power supply were already inserted into the proper places in the pieces of equipment. 

Since I hadn't gotten the roof mount I'd ordered, and it was nighttime anyway, the only viable option I had for testing the Starlink was to set it up on a small table on our upstairs deck. 

It faces north, where the Starlink satellites are located currently, so that was good. Not good were the many nearby oak and fir trees on our property in rural south Salem, Oregon. Thus I wasn't expecting much from this first test, since our roof has a considerably better view of the sky than the deck.

Getting Starlink up and running was very easy. After plugging the equipment in, and giving the router time to set itself up, I was asked to provide a password for the Starlink wi-fi network. Then I watched the Starlink app as the dish tried to connect with the satellites.

It took a few minutes for a connection to be established. That was exciting, since given the rather crappy location of the dish, I was worried that no connection at all would be possible. 

The app asked me to do a speed test. I did several of them.

They ranged between 26 Mbps and 14o Mbps. Here's a screenshot of the fastest result, which thrilled me -- since our horrible CenturyLink DSL is hugely slower. The second speed test screenshot is from this morning when I was using the DSL wi-fi.

Starlink

CenturyLink DSL

Aside from the much faster Starlink download and upload speeds, it's interesting that the Starlink latency (definition here) is so much lower than the DSL latency, even though obviously the Starlink signal has to go into space and back.

I guess having our internet connection start and finish via copper phone lines isn't so great, something I already knew after suffering through many years of DSL.

Unfortunately, the marvelous Starlink connection only lasted a few minutes before, I assume, a satellite signal was obstructed by the trees. Sometimes the connection was restored quickly, but sometimes it took quite a while. This wasn't surprising, given the location of the dish on our deck and the proximity to the afore-mentioned trees.

The Ridgeline Roof Mount I ordered a few days ago should arrive next week. That will allow me to try placing the Starlink dish in various places on our roof, since the mount is secured by the weight of concrete blocks or bricks rather than being fastened in place by screws.

I suspect the reliability of Starlink will be greater once the dish is on the roof. However, I've checked for obstructions via the Starlink app. One oak and three firs appear to be obstructing a totally clear view of the northern sky, so there's a decent chance we still will have connection interruptions.

Starlink support FAQs say that as more satellites are launched, obstructions will be less of an issue. If we still have a problem with losing the connection after the dish is on the roof, my plan is to ask for advice from Starlink support staff.

Should we have the large trees cut down (they're on our property, a benefit of living on ten acres), or is there a decent chance that upcoming satellite launches will cause any dropped connection problems to fade away? 

Regardless, I'm confident that Starlink will become our conduit to genuine high speed broadband. I'm beyond tired of having to deal with CenturyLink DSL. I've enquired as to whether we ever will get fiber optic out here in the "wilderness" five miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital. 

A CenturyLink manager said, no. The day we can ditch CenturyLink can't come soon enough for me.

My routine for using a pre-lubricated catheter

Since May 2017 I've used a catheter after having a urinary retention episode that showed my bladder had become atonic, a fancy word for not working any more as it should, likely due to my lengthy history of an enlarged prostate.

I haven't written a whole lot about my experiences with a catheter. Recently I decided I should, starting with a post that has a rather plaintive title, "I've learned a lot about using a catheter. But does anyone care?"

In that post I listed some questions that I wanted to address in other blog posts, regardless of whether anyone cares. If even one person finds what I have to say useful, that's good enough for me, even if I can't be sure that this person exists.

Question #2 was What routine should I use before inserting a catheter? Here's my answer.

This depends on whether a pre-lubricated catheter is being used. Early on I discovered the Speedicath Flex Coude Pro catheter, which I wrote about in my answer to the first question in my list.

It makes inserting a catheter much easier than the basic red catheter that I used for a short time before the Flex Coude Pro came into my life. That required the application of lubricant, a process I never felt comfortable with because I worried about contamination from my hands or whatever.

So I'd put on disposable plastic gloves, which further complicated the catheter insertion routine. This is my current routine, a much easier one.

(1) I pick a Flex Coude Pro from a drawer in the bathroom and place the sterile packaging it comes in next to the sink.

(2) I see whether I can urinate some on my own. Usually I attempt this while sitting on the toilet, since this was recommended by a physical therapist I went to who specializes in pelvic floor exercises, back when I had more hope than I do now that my bladder could recover quite a fit of functionality. Sometimes I pee standing up, if it feels like that is doable.

(3) I close the lid of the toilet, placing a towel over the lid. I do this because I like to have the urine resulting from a catheterization go into a plastic container with marks on it showing how many cc's of urine are in it. This helps me keep track of whether I'm drinking enough water and other liquids during the day. Obviously I don't do this when I have to use a public restroom, which is rarely. I put the container in larger containers, to minimize urine splashes on the towel or elsewhere. Here's a photo of that setup.

(4) I wash my hands with liquid soap. I've gotten into the habit of counting to 30 while I wash my hands. This isn't as crucial as when I had to apply lubricant to a catheter, but still important.

(5) I use a Handzies wipe to clean the end of my penis, using circular strokes that move away from the tip/urethra as the goal is to be sure that the catheter doesn't touch anything dirty when it is inserted. I like that Handzies are soap and water-based, as I got skin irritation when I was using alcohol wipes for a while. I count 40 circular wipes. Probably overkill, but I haven't gotten a urinary tract infection in over three and a half years of catheterizing, so I must be doing something right.

(6) I open up the Flex Coude Pro packaging and take out the catheter. Most of the lubricating liquid is supposed to be shaken out prior to use, so I hold the catheter over the sink with the non-insertion end down. I cough while doing this, which (perhaps) helps to relax the muscles that the catheter has to pass through.

(7) I stand in front of the toilet and insert the catheter slowly. My left hand holds the Flex Coude Pro in place, while my right hand pushes the catheter, enclosed in a sleeve so the hand doesn't touch the catheter itself, into my urethra. I hold my penis out at about a right angle to my body, or slightly lower. That works best for most men, given the curvature of the urethra as it connects to the bladder.

(8) After a successful removal of urine, I put the catheter back in the packaging and throw it away. I use a small cotton square moistened with tap water to clean the soap off the end of my penis, to avoid any possible irritation. I take a glance at how much urine was collected before dumping it into the toilet and flushing.

Should Oregon seniors get a Covid vaccine before teachers?

There's little debate about who should get the first doses of Covid vaccines allocated to Oregon: health care workers and long-term-care residents/staff.

These groups are at high risk of being infected by the virus. Plus, the older someone is, the more likely they will die after falling ill with COVID-19. Those 65 and older account for the vast majority of Covid deaths, with people 85+ accounting for about a third.

So it makes sense that both the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and Oregon health officials agree on who should be immunized initially with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

After that, though, who should be next in line?

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has said that she wants teachers and school staff to be a priority. Reportedly ACIP has a somewhat different idea.

Regarding who will be next in line for the subsequent rollout phases, the ACIP has named as priority groups “workers in essential and critical industries, people at high risk for severe COVID-19 illness due to underlying medical conditions, [and] people 65 years and older.”

Those ACIP priorities obviously need to be refined, as the way they're stated above is much too general to be useful. So who exactly should come next? Essential workers such as teachers, people with underlying conditions, or seniors 65 and older?

Here's my thoughts, which I readily admit are biased by the fact that I'm 72 and my wife also is over 65 with an underlying condition, asthma. I'm well aware how anxious our friends are about getting COVID-19, most of whom are about our age or older. 

Our chances of having a severe case of Covid are high, much greater than, say, a 35 year old teacher. 

But it's reasonable to take other factors into consideration, such as the desirability of reopening schools to in-person learning as soon as possible. Governor Brown now is allowing local school districts to decide when to reopen -- a controversial move that is making many parents happy, but disturbing many teachers.

Especially if a school district reopens before teachers and staff have gotten vaccinated. 

Again, I'm biased because of my age. Even so, it's a plain fact that dying from Covid is something that can't be reversed, while falling behind in school because of distance learning likely is temporary. And you're still alive, regardless.

To me that argues for prioritizing those 65+ over teachers and other essential workers, most of whom are younger. This happens to be in line with an August Harris poll of Americans cited in a CDC presentation. (The poll defined seniors as 55+.)

Those with preexisting conditions apparently are "immunocompromised people." They deserve to be a vaccination priority, though here's a good reason to have seniors be an even higher priority.

Age is clear-cut. It is on Oregon drivers licenses.

Since pharmacies like Walgreens and Rite-Aid are going to play a large role in getting people immunized, it would be easy for health officials to announce that currently those 80 and older can go there and get the vaccine. Then lower the age to 70 and older. And so on.

This eliminates the complexity and confusion of people having to prove that they have an underlying condition. Perhaps those people are best served by getting vaccinated at their doctor's office, since the doctor knows what health problems they have. 

A key thing is to make the priorities for vaccination simple and fair. Oregonians shouldn't have to worry about people cutting ahead of the line, so to speak. A vaccine free-for-all has to be avoided at all costs. 

I'm reminded of the Vietnam draft lottery that took place on December 1, 1969, when I was a senior in college.

The lottery was intended to reduce the inequities of who got sent off to possibly die in the Vietnam War. I remember sitting around with friends in front of a TV, watching birth dates drawn one by one from a glass jar. My birthday was the 234th chosen. The first 195 were later drafted, so I escaped by virtue of chance.

This was a fair, though nerve-racking, way of choosing who was put at risk of dying in an unpopular war. I'm not suggesting that Covid vaccines be prioritized this way, but some form of a lottery could make sense in determining, say, when those aged 65 get to head off to a pharmacy to get their shot 

Rather than having everybody that age compete for vaccinations at the same time, birth dates could be chosen randomly and publicized by the media. Maybe this wouldn't be necessary, but it would help promote a sense of fairness among the public.