Category: Health

birthday glasses

whbeebe8 Comments

Today I turned 71. As part of that celebration I received a new pair of glasses I’d ordered last week from Visionworks. I had a full eye exam at Visionworks, which showed that my very bad nearsightedness (20/700) had improved dramatically over the last two years to 20/400 in the right eye and 20/350 in the left eye. I figure if I live long enough I’ll die with 20/20 vision, assuming some other eye-related disease doesn’t strike first. What I’m watching is farsightedness fighting nearsightedness.

I was treated to the latest eye examination device, where the doctor photographed the inside back of each eye. That eliminated the need to have both eyes dilated, and allowed me to walk out without any visual impediment. The doctor told me my eyes were in perfect health, with barely an indication of cataract development. Blood pressure and diabetes contribute to physical eye problems, and I keep mine under tight control with exercise, diet, and medications. Every six months I have my blood chemistry checked to make sure everything is where it should be, and it is. I hope I can keep it that way for as long as possible.

I can tell a difference between the new glasses and the pair from two years ago. At the rate my vision is changing I’ll need to check again in two years, and I’m certain the prescription will change again, necessitating a new pair. Right now things are wonderfully sharp again.

The frames are all metal with very little plastic, and with a light bronze coloration. It’s a low-key look I much prefer over every other glasses frames I’ve ever worn.

Corrected and clear eyesight; the best birthday present I could have asked for.

meta-less

whbeebe1 Comment

Back on 22 August I finally scheduled my Meta/Facebook account to be deleted. Note that you have to schedule the deletion, and then wait 30 days for it to go into full effect. That’s so if you have a change of heart and decide, for whatever reason, that you don’t want to leave. All you have to cancel the deletion is log back into you account. I would have written about this back on the 22nd, but I wasn’t up writing about anything. I was coming out of the worst of COVID at the time. I had just enough presence of mind to find out how to delete my account.

That’s what I find most aggravating about Facebook (and that’s what I’ll continue to call it). I had to search externally via Google (meta delete account) before I found the correct set of instructions within Facebook. If you try and search within Meta/Facebook, you will be led on a wild goose chase and never delete your account. That constitutes a dark pattern of the worst kind.

This isn’t the first time I’ve deleted a Facebook account. This is, in fact, the fourth. I’ve been on Facebook starting in the early 2000s. I remember wasting tremendous time playing Farmville. I never spent any physical dollars, but in hindsight time is certainly money so I wasted quite a bit. In the end I dropped it because Zynga kept updating the game to make it ever more difficult to play without spending real money in-game. Changes would also wipe out progress I’d made up to that point. After that happened twice I just walked away.

That makes the last of the Really Big Social Media platforms I’ve dropped. I still have an Instagram account, but I’ve not been on it since sometime last year. I can’t stand to be on Instagram because of all the ads and accounts I don’t follow overwhelming my feed.

The only new social media accounts I’ve joined in the last twelve months have been Mastodon and Bluesky. I don’t spend any time on them anymore. The idea of wasting time on any social media platform has become anathema to me.