August 16th / 2024 - Home Musing - What Happens When Rick is Bored

I'm awake any where from 19 to 21 hours per day 7 days a week.  What do I do to keep my mind busy?

It's not easy, but here is where my mind wonders on home, ideas and odd research that makes me go huh?

Let's start at home...

Data Entry and My Wife - Why do I need to hear these Rants?

My wife decided to show me a spreadsheet (only took her 3 years to show me this!) that she uses to keep her financials for her business organized. It has a sheet for every month and a summary one as well making a total of 13 sheets.  Each sheet has checks and balances and a long list of categories each within it's own column. If you add a new category then you have to add a new column and change the few hundred formulae that total up the columns.  

To make matters even worst, when she enters the data she needs to scroll all over the sheet left and right a to possibly all the way to CJ just to make a single entry.  She paid a Registered Chartered Accounting Firm $1,000.00 for the spreadsheet.  They should be ashamed of this.

So me being me, and completely against her wishes.. I modified the excel spreadsheet to the point she just enters the total with tax, provides a category/supplier and it then does two things.  

  1. It distributes the numbers properly in the old fashion for backwards compatibility.
  2. It produces a new quick summary on the existing sheet.  If she needs a new category she simply types it in and it asks if it is taxable or not.  Then it produces the code to distribute the calculations automatically to the other cells if needed.  All automatically and all with checks and balances.  

The summary sheet now has a much better layout and a graph to go along with it. No click of any buttons to update it, it's all automatically there complete with backward links to the original data if you she needs to drill down into the detail.  It is much more sophisticated and easier to enter data and follow than the old shitty one she was charged $1,000.00. 

It took me less than 3 hours to make those improvements and now she tells me that Wow that really makes my life easier.  I said it makes mine so much more calm too!

In-Door House Paint

May you know, maybe you don't  but my house doesn't have any light switches. Not one, anywhere. If you don't have lights then you don't need them right? All the walls in the house are painted with electrolyte-luminest paint that is sensitive to near by bodies of water. That's us humans right?! So when you walk into a room it lights up automatically.  Pretty cool eh? 

Okay, I stretched that out a bit, I really don't have any light switches but I do have motion sensors all over the house that control the 61+ led lights in the home.  All but the bedrooms where there are touch panels to handle that.  I'm always looking to improve the house and the monitoring of it all. Yes, each outlet in the house is fully monitored... every single one individually. 

So now that voice recognition doesn't need to go out to the cloud to get interpreted, I can start to build voice recognition circuitry to control the house without it recording conversations - not like other technologies like Alexa.  Also there is technology that will sense human presence and pickup heart beats from afar.  It also has an algorithm that can detect a fall.  

I contemplate on how I can effectively tie all this together to make life easier like recognize a person and determine what they want to do, are they going to go to sleep? Do they want the lights on? The curtains open or closed.... Do they want to take a bath in the morning and should it fill the tub for them?  Warm up the shower perhaps instead?

I'm probably going to far on this - but this in all now possible!

Contemplate on this: Mathematically is real life just a Simulation?

Determining the exact probability that our reality is a simulation is quite complex and not strictly a mathematical question, as it involves philosophical, existential, and technological considerations. However, this idea is often discussed in the context of what is known as the "simulation hypothesis."

The simulation argument, famously proposed by philosopher Nick Bostrom, suggests one of the following three propositions is true:

1. Almost all civilizations at our level of technological development go extinct before becoming capable of creating "ancestor simulations" (high-fidelity simulations of ancestral life).

2. If any civilizations do reach the technological capability to create ancestor simulations, they have little interest in running such simulations.

3. We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

Bostrom's argument does not necessarily provide a strict mathematical probability, but rather a logical structure for thinking about the chances. Some informal interpretations suggest that, under the assumption that advanced civilizations are capable and interested in creating many simulations, the probability could be very high that we are living in one of many simulations rather than the single original reality.
 
Here is a link for you to read more about it: https://simulation-argument.com/

Maybe all the worldly diseases can be resolved with simulations using positive sciences like Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics where AI contains large datasets of known medical knowledge and similarly the same with all the other positive sciences.  In this way the AI can help identify solutions.

What do you think? - It's all a simulation after all right?

Prostate Cancer Research - Lots of Reading

Wow, there is mountains of literature and research on this. Lately I've been reading about Beyond the Basics of treatment.  Some very specific centres in Canada are progressive in clinical trials of Cancer including Prostate Cancer.  But for the most part if you want the very best treatment and not treatments developed 10 to 20 years ago then you need to move to Ontario of BC.  Period.   

If you have Prostate Cancer you might find this an interesting read as it goes Prostate Cancer Staging and  some of the treatments you can expect: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/treatment-for-advanced-prostate-cancer-beyond-the-basics
 
Are you interested in knowing about testing research for Prostate Cancer?  Here is an really super resource in the form of a flip book: https://online.flippingbook.com/view/187941146/

It seems to me - at least where I live and my particular treatments are going is to use all available drugs protocols all at once and nail the cancer so that it doesn't continue to replicate.  At least while I'm getting the drugs. Then what comes after that.... well let's do this - the doctor says.... Man just when is enough? enough?  Well to that point here is an article that discusses this - called deintensify - it is a little long but it gets the point across and I believe Oncologist should read it so that patients like me aren't always pushed to the limits of decision making everyday.  Here is the link: Deintensify Treatment

Now this article, while long and involved made me a little angry!  Yes, read the article, but don't skip the discussion section where it says: "The lack of powerful prognostic markers in prostate cancer leads to sub-optimal treatment stratification. There is a need to identify high-risk nonmetastatic individuals that will benefit from early adjuvant use of new life-prolonging treatments, such as abiraterone acetate38. Conversely, although chemotherapy with adjuvant docetaxel used with ADT may not improve overall survival for individuals with localized high-risk prostate cancer *39, it is possible that biomarkers might identify high-risk subgroups for whom this treatment does produce improved outcomes."  

That could be me! Frig!  Here is the link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43018-024-00787-0

Here is another surprise, 

Oncology strongly suggests I get a Bard Power Port Installed in my chest.   So without any indication of high risks or any discussion of such, I decide to proceed with it as it will make getting the toxic drugs delivered so much easier and painlessly without getting my arms poked with IV needles every time. BUT WAIT! There could be a major problem with it: Read about it in this class action lawsuit: https://cbaapps.org/ClassAction/PDF.aspx?id=23833

This is not the only lawsuit against Bard Power Port products.  A quick search will bring up many lawsuits in the United States as well.  

In Canada:
Informed consent litigation requires that:
1) you were not told of something material you should have been;
2) that it would have changed the course of a reasonable person;
3) that it caused some harm. 

All three must be met.
The nature of the harm is such that a single person seeking litigation is insufficient for a medical negligence threshold.


September is Prostate Awareness Month: Light up in Blue For Prostate Cancer Awareness Month - Get a free blue light for your porch.  https://www.lightupinblue.ca/