Diabetes awareness

November is national diabetes awareness month. I figure by now most folks knows about diabetes. You know that fat person disease lazy people get from eating too much sugar. Come on, that's your first thought when you think of diabetes. I'm here to tell you that it's not mine.

I'm diabetic, and have been since I was 10 years old. I didn't have the excessive thirst that many get when diagnosed. I was just really sick the week before, and feeling really weak. I had missed school, and my mother threatened to take me to the doctor if i didn't go to school the following Monday, April 1st. Have to say at that point I didn't care, told her to take me to the doctor. A test here, a test there and sent home. By that evening we get a call from the hospital wondering why I wasn't there yet?  Say what?! Guess they said I had diabetes, and the family just figured it was going to be like type 2 with diet and pills. Nope, it was the nasty ole Type 1. Off to the hospital I got to go for a week long stay. It was so boring there. I begged for my homework from school so I could at least have something to do.  

That was over 28 years ago and well I'm still dealing with this disease. I have to say, its not as easy as just take insulin and watch what you eat. Golly, gee so many things factor into EVERYTHING I do regarding this disease. Stress, illness, activity, food, dehydration, sleep.  Normal stuff everyone deals with. But these things can swing the blood sugar pendulum all over the place. Wildy all over the place. There are times when there are just no reason what so ever that it happens. So I deal with it. Constantly looking at that little judgy meter that measures just how good of a person I had been today. Was I bad? The meter will always tell.  Stupid thing can be helpful or rather quite annoying. 

So now after all this time, little things are popping up. Like the blood vessels in my eyes are starting to show signs. They look pretty good for as long as I have been diabetic, but they are concerning. Kidneys are functioning but the wear and tear has been going on for awhile. They are functioning but compromised some what. Think it is about time to have the kidneys tested again.  But now I also have nerve issues. Not sure if that is exactly what it is, but i can get extremely achy on days when the weather changes quite abruptly. Haven't had that issue before, but the last year it has been getting worse. I also live in a climate that the weather can change every 15 minutes. So that really is quite helpful.   Plus there is also all the fatigue issues. The sugars swinging, which they do like young monkeys on a jungle gym.  Getting old and wearing out.  How much longer will I have?

Until the lord calls me home, or there is a cure. I think I will hear the calling long before a cure ever comes available.  Diabetes is a billion dollar industry, actually billions of dollars. But maybe, just maybe there is a chance that I will be free of the needles, finger sticks, glucose and tubing (insulin pump). Maybe.. but I think folks need to be more aware of what diabetes really means.  It means to constantly have your life in the control of your hands. Constantly reminded of the fact that you have this inside of you that is slowly hurting you. So slowly that you don't know it over night. It's the moss that takes years to grow up your leg, into your heart and down to the tips of your fingers.

Duck dynasty - I am second - the Robertsons

This can be a moving film. For those struggling. There is love when you include God. 

http://www.iamsecond.com/seconds/the-robertsons/

Wish my app woud show a preview of this video. 

Write for yourself not just for what others think

Do not write for the approval of others but for the enjoyment of the art. 

Just a thought I had this afternoon after I had randomly blogger earlier. I worry that others won't like my words but I know I blog with the idea, in the back of my mind, that no one reads this. 

I get started so many times on words then I get distracted. What's up on Facebook? Even if I just looked there a few minutes ago. My attention span is quite short. 

Though I know many times we are writing for an audience.  To convey some sort of message be it only 140 characters to 50,000 and up. 

Write More

I suppose that I have given up on writing for November's nanowrimo. Though I can still attempt to get some writing in. So that's what I have been trying to do. I have been writing more. Hence you might have seen me ramble on about my iPod adventures. I know its not something a person would want to read. Though I thought that maybe someone would be googling issues they were having and stumbled upon my crazy time.

Thoughts have been shared in my personal journal as well. Though again not as much as i would want to. I even have spent a little more time writing a couple letters to my grandmother. I figure any words that I have used to get them out with was a good use of my writing skills. (or the lack there of depending on your point of view)

My own insecurities always get the better of me, and I beat myself up about it. Hence another hurdle I have to get over.  Why, oh why do I do this to myself??


Don't know? Yeah me neither but sure would like to have an answer.

Crash report

Again the dumb thing crashed. So went back in. Third time is a charm for it got replaced. Had to update the iOS from 7 to 7. Took my PC in to make sure all the music was sync d just like it should with out a hassle. 

Afternoon update. CRASHED/rebooted again. Seriously, a brand new one. 

The irony?!! There was an iOS update to 7.0.4 this evening. 

So far on this reset, and battery charge -no crashes. I really don't want to mess with anymore updates or resets for awhile. 

Spoke too soon, I have my iPad to update. 

iPod weirdness update

Has worked fine for two days. Battery has been lasting. And shows the usage and stand by time. (Even after shut off for over night) But then it reached 20% battery remaining. That's when it crashed again. Battery usage is reset to dashes again!!!  And after all these resets my account is flagged with Apple as having had too many ids associated with this iPod so I can not have automatic updates or log in as another id for 90 days.  I was going to leave it alone. I can do my own updates. But now that it's crashed I'm going back to the Genius Bar. 

iPod weirdness, crashing /resetting iOS 7 on its own

Adventures in iPod craziness!  Giving some background to what was going on before issues started. Then the steps taken so hopefully issue sue has been resolved? It's still questionable at this point.

Alright I am not a fan of the new operating system that is on my iPod touch 5th generation.

Allow me to share with you the list of symptoms that I have been experiencing over the last couple of weeks. Not exactly order in which they appeared to me, but this is from memory.

I have a large collection of music. At least for me. It was quite large, and really there are so many songs that I have spent way too long listening too that no longer suit my particular tastes. So I had been going through the alphabet list of songs since this last spring. Those I live with do not share my particular tastes in music, so my music is really just for me. But 1500 some odd songs were a bit much. Not all of them purchased digitally. Many are still on their original cd disks. Yes, I do still have CDs. They are dust collectors now that I have them in digital format. Remember the days when you could go to a used record store, they even sold used CDs. I know, such a great long time ago!

So I would delete the song off my iPod I no longer wanted, then added the name to a list in my notes so that I could go onto the laptop and remove the song from the library all together. This method has been working fine, up until the last iOS update 7.0.3 . That was when things started happening, and I had made it to the W's. Some reason every time I paused the song and came back to play my music my iPod would reset back a dozen songs. I do not play my music every day all the time. So there might be days or weeks that go by before I'm playing my music again, so this repeating behavior was not as noticeable.

When I would go to the song list and scroll all the way to the bottom it would tell me I had 957 songs. But when I hit 'playing now' it would say 957 of 968. These numbers changed, but they never matched up. The playing now showed more songs on my iPod than the song list showed. 

Then randomly I started noticing that my iPod would be displaying the apple sign as it sat there on the counter or coffee table. Just in standby but It had just crashed and and or rebooted. (Not sure what apple calls it. To me tut was a crash and reboot, but I'm mostly a PC gal)  This happened often enough I was catching it several times a day.

At this point I had done a reset all settings. Not a complete reset that erased all content.

This did not solve the issue. It was the only solution offered online when I was googling the crashing and resetting itself.

Next thing I happened to notice was under my settings and battery usage since last full charge, was dash marks for both stand by and on time. Was this a symptom or just a coincidence?

The final straw was when I would go to my music and tap on Zombies by the cranberries, Tina Turner would start singing, 'What's love go to do with it?' I would view the play now screen, then go back to the song list. I would scroll up the dozen or so songs, and see the red line indicators that music was playing from that track. I would tap on that song, and it would again take me to the playing now jumping back up the alphabet another ten songs or so.

Thought about doing a complete factory reset, but that was when I noticed my diagnostic log was extremely long. If I did a restore it would delete all that information and apple might need to know it if something was going on with the hardware. Since I am with in a few weeks of my 1 year mark, it was off to the apple store.

Apple connected my iPod wirelessly to their diagnostic software, and found that was no issues with the hardware. Everything was testing just fine. Really? Um what about the battery? Oh, for some reason we don't know why it's not showing up on our system. Him, imagine that!?

So let's do a factory restore, what we will do is a little deeper than just a normal restore. It's possible the software is not talking to the firmware of the hardware. The components have their own software, and with this iOS update already up to 3, I could see where something could be messed up. 

Apple guy did the reset, but then I said how am I supposed to test it with out my music and apps. Duh?! So did another reset, but this time from iCloud back Up.  The cloud doesn't have all my music, I think I have about 150 songs on iTunes cloud.

Started the new reset, but was taking so long so took it home to finish.  Had no problem what so ever putting my music back on. I synced exactly 933 songs. While going through this process I bought one more song. 'Bezerk' by Eminem. Did a sync, but didn't show up on my song list. Went to iTunes on the desktop and looked at what was on my iPod and it was listed there but greyed out. Then I'm scrolling through some more songs and many of them are grey, there are someone listed a couple of times, greyed and blackened duplications, some with a grey circle, or a grey ! 

Could these grey songs be the ghosts of the songs list vs playing now list?

Hours of working on it I gave up and just went to iTunes on my iPod and downloaded the song and listened to it a few times before I was really about to go bezerk on this iPod.  A day later, the darn thing crashed and reset itself yet again.   Ughhhhh!!!!

Frustrated, I set up an appointment at the apple store yet again.  This time the gal thinks it's my back up that is corrupted. Great.  Yes I have everything syncd on my computer, go ahead and reset it. 

Btw: syncd to the computer does not create a back up on the computer unless you mark back up to computer. If you back up to iCloud that's where everything will be. Including the 357 pictures I have taken over the last three years. In one of the updates to iTunes, and unknown to me, my computer no longer was backing up on my pictures to the computer.  There is a setting you can sync your pictures to a folder on the computer when you sync your device.  However, so onto the case here, They were gone!

Oh but wait?!  My iCloud storage states there is still 2.5gb of data.  Will a back up get them? Nope, didn't restore the pictures, but also didn't delete them -whew!

Great what do I do?  I got it, do a restore from back up, get back all the pictures. Copy them from the iPod to my computer and then do another erase and restore.  And yes again for the umpteenth time reset all my accounts!

Part of my plan worked. All the pictures downloaded to the iPod but my computer was only being allowed to view from May of this year and back two years.  Nothing since may. So I started sending my pictures to myself via iMessage to my iPad. Can not do the air drop to an iPad 2. It does have iOS 7 but not the air drop feature.  There wasn't many pictures, but alas the iPod crashed again. After restarting, all my pictures were back and viewable on the computer so I copied them off the iPod to the computer. And then yet another reset! I lost count how many times now.

Got all my apps back. 310 pictures, copied back to the iPod. The videos followed later to total 357. Those videos sure use up a ton of space, need to think those over.

Clicked sync music from selected tracks.  (0) songs selected! What!!? Over and over it would not sync my music. Are you flipping kidding me?! My selected 934 songs, including the 1 new purchase won't sync.  After trying so many variations I finally got it to sync 'all music from selected tracks.' Huh!? All music is now 968 songs.

So my pictures are removed from my iPod and at least safely backed up. I have 968 songs showing up on my iPod in both songs and on  the 'playing now' screen.  When I view my iPod content thru iTunes, it says I have 968 songs and none are greyed out, with ! Or (0) next to them. 

So my guess is that some how my music got corrupted on my iPod library. Hopefully my library on the computer isn't messed up. (There needs to be an mp3 library fixer app.)

And battery usage since last charge 47 minutes 3 hours and 3 minutes on standby time.

I still have a few weeks to test this out completely while I still have  my one year warranty. I wrote this lengthy blog in case someone googles ipod weirdness they can have some further insight that isn't found on apple.com