Bedtime Thoughts

I went to the dentist this week. I went once in January,  twice in March, thrice in April, once in May, and I have two more visits scheduled, but there will be still more before year's end. This week's visit was for a temporary crown, and in June I'll go back in for the permanent crown. Then I have one or two more fillings and another crown awaiting me. Fun times. When I was a teenager, my younger brother, Ken, took note of how often I got fillings at the dentist and one day he remarked, "Your teeth are as hard as mashed potatoes." Sorry, but life is a roll of the dice. Or should I say, "a roll of the DNA."

My friend Butch who was recently in the hospital has decided to sell his house and move in with his daughter. I'll be sorry to see him leave the neighborhood, but he knows what is best for his life, so I'm sure he's making the right decision. It will be one of those turning points we all have in our lives. Someone said, "Turning points contain a message from yourself to yourself." This turning point for Butch also sends a message to me. Fortunately for me, I have Nuria, and together we are stronger than we would be living separate lives. I've been single for many years, but right now, just when I begin to need a little help, Providence has sent someone into my life—and I into her life. Deepak Choprah said, "There are no accidents... there is only some purpose that we haven't yet understood." Sigmund Freud said, "There are no accidents and no coincidences. Nothing comes out of the blue." The older I become, the more I understand. Maybe that's because some part of me, some part of my soul, has always been old. And yet I still have so much to learn. I feel both parts of me, the mature and the immature. I recognize those souls I know well, even when they merely pass through my life. I'm on a mission; they're on a mission, and we pass like ships in the night, each of us heading to our own unknown destiny.

Nuria is already in bed. I'll have to go now. Take care.

Lawyers and Stuff

I finally admitted to the encroachment of Time upon my mortality, and so I went to a lawyer and began the process of getting a will made. Actually, he's going to make three documents. There will be the Will, and there will be a Medical Directive, and there will be a Power of Attorney. Talk to your favorite lawyer for more information. The bundle will cost me $475.

And I went to my banks (I have two, due to historical reasons) and made my accounts POD to my partner, Nuria. One bank, Bank of America, allowed me to specify a beneficiary by going online. It was easy and fast. My other bank, Truist (formerly Suntrust and BB&T) required me to appear in person at the bank in order to specify a beneficiary. It was a time-wasting but straightforward process. The banker at Truist took care of puting the POD on everything except an IRA, which he said was going to be complicated and would take some time. Whereupon I said that's okay, I don't need the IRA to be POD, there's not much remaining in it anymore. 

It's morning and Nuria is off to her morning exercise class at the Senior Center. I'm well past the exercise stage of life. I just want to be able to make it from my bed to the kitchen to my PC and eventually back to my bed. And that's just the first hour of my day.

Nuria is planning a sight-seeing trip to Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. "Good idea," I told her. "See it before it's gone beneath the waves. Because oceans are rising and Tangier Island will disappear one day." Tangier Island isn't something I want to see. Neither is a boat ride across the Chesapeake Bay. Been there, done that, blogged about it. It was a trip I was fortunate to survive—and survival was very questionable for a few hours of that trip. You can read about it here.

Speaking of Truist Bank, I just received a call from a woman who works there. I left a message on her phone yesterday morning, asking her to call me, but I anticipated that she wouldn't call back the same day, because ... you know ... Truist. So I drove to the bank and took care of business. But it's nice that someone at Truist will return your call, eventually. Of course, I'm only revealing my own expectations and experiences. Your experience may be better—or worse. Truist has a pretty good website, but sometimes I experience glitches. The other day I was trying to do something and I kept ending up at a page that said, "You're almost finished!" But there was nothing more I could do on that page. There were no links to click on. It was a dead end. I figured I messed up somewhere, and I started over, but I ended up at the same page, telling me I was almost finished. After three or four tries, I gave up. I don't hold it against them. I've been a website designer, and sometimes you need to make one (possibly simple) change that (to implement the change) requires multiple changes to multiple pages, and you overlook something and then ... you have a broken link, a branch to nowhere, a page that's a dead end. It happens. It never happened with my websites, of course, but then, I'm a perfectionist. It can be a curse.

I have to go. Nuria just entered the room. 

"How was your class?" I ask.

"Very ... very ... how can I say ... very ... hard," she replied. And she told me that her trip to Tangier Island is off, because the trip is fully booked now. But there's a trip to Williamsburg that is still possible. I've been to Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas, and the Christmas lights and the brightly-lit shops and the many shoppers made it an amazing memory. Okay, it's a nice memory, not "amazing." But there's nothing wrong with a nice memory, is there?

Driving Wisdom

I was watching the local television news and I saw a short news clip about an incident that just happened in Richmond, Va. I was immediately reminded of something that my father said to me many long years ago when I was a new driver.

The incident in Richmond was a car wreck in which a 24-year old woman was killed. She was driving on the interstate highway when the car in front of her crashed into another car, thereby stopping very quickly. The young woman couldn't stop her car in time and plowed into the wreckage. She was killed.

The news about the wreck caused me to remember something that happened when I was a new driver in my teens. I was driving my dad's car and he was sitting in the passenger seat beside me. I was following a car ahead of me rather closely, and my father commented, "You're too close to that car."

Being a new driver and therefore knowing it all, I replied, "I can stop as fast as he can stop."

My dad didn't argue or offer explanations. If he had, I probably would have forgotten his words long ago. He simply asked, "What if he stops faster than he can stop?"

I hadn't thought of that. I thought only of the man ahead of me slamming on his brakes, but I hadn't considered what might happen if his car hit something and stopped almost instantly. My dad was right, as usual. I slowed and put more distance between our car and the car in front of us.

I've never forgotten his words of wisdom, and I wish other drivers could hear them.

No More Backtalk

Even though I'm an electrical/electronics engineer by training and trade, mobile phones baffle me at times. I've never used an iPhone, but Android phones can be difficult to figure out. Oh, I can make phone calls and send texts and use WhatsApp to communicate, but ... Okay, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

The other day something happened to my phone and suddenly every word that was displayed on the screen was also spoken to me by a female voice on my phone. I can't tell you how annoying this was. The phone was all but impossible for me to use. I spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong and I never figured it out.

Finally, I went to my PC and told Google, "My phone keeps talking at me. Help!"

And Google did help. It told me—

Better yet, I'll just give you the commands for you to punch in should you ever have this problem:

Settings > Accessibility > Talkback > Off

There you go. Don't ask me how I managed to turn it on. I didn't know that such a thing exists. In fact, I don't think it was me that turned it on. I think the phone did it all by itself. Maybe I zapped the phone with a spark of static electricity and caused a glitch in its little brain. Or maybe it's developing its own free will and is doing weird things just to spite me. All I know is that Talkback was so annoying that I was ready to buy another phone. But Google saved the day. 

Thanks, Google. 

Just Stuff

It's Saturday morning. Nuria is sitting at the far end of the dining room table. She sits behind two computer screens. She's using my phone to make a call to a bank in Costa Rica and she's vehemently and adamantly discussing something in Spanish with a banker there. My PC is running an online stopwatch, counting down to zero. It's counting off the international minutes I bought for this call. When it gets to zero, the call will go dead and we'll have to buy more minutes. But at the moment, we're far from zero.

Nuria went to a "high tea" party at the senior center yesterday at noon. They told her to dress casual, and she did, with a white knit sweater-blouse and black pants, but many of the ladies wore fancy dresses—the kind of dresses women might wear to ... you know ... high tea. Nuria took the Costa Rica decorated coffee mug she uses twice a day; the other ladies brought those almost-useless little teacups that you hold with your little finger pointing outward while you sip. The tea lasted two hours and she brought back some fancy sweet pastries, which I quickly dispatched into my already oversize stomach zone.

We then visited my friend Butch in the rehab center, meeting up with his daughter Paula in the parking lot. It was a bright, sunny and warm day. Butch looked better than I expected. When we entered his room, he was sitting in a wheelchair (he's still too weak to stand) but he looked like his old self, with  his dark hair combed back and wearing black stretch jogger pants, socks, and an unbuttoned long-sleeve shirt. He has been in the hospital, in the rehab center, back in the hosptal, and back in the rehab center, for about three weeks. We sat down and the four of us chatted for about 90 minutes, then Nuria and I decided he needed rest, and so we left. Though he looks good, he's still in a very weak condition.

When we got home, I pulled the lawn tractor out of the garage, started it up, and mowed the yard—front, back, and side. Then I got out the string trimmer and trimmed the edges of the sidewalk. I need to do more yard trimming today, but I probably won't do it. I know myself well enough that I don't kid myself about what chores I'll do on a given day. 

It's quarter past 11 AM and I haven't eaten anything yet and my stomach is beginning to get that hollow feeling. Should I eat a snack or wait for Nuria? She's still involved with her chore. Dealing with her bank is like dealing with the CIA. Which I have done. I applied for a job with them, once upon a time. Long ago it was. I went to an interview and the CIA guy who questioned me gave me a large yellow envelope containing about 200 sheets of paper, and each sheet had about 20 questions on it. I was supposed to answer all those questions and return the answers to the CIA. That didn't happen. But I did get a job—somewhere else.

I'd better publish this and then check on Nuria. After a great deal of sighing (but no moaning or cursing) she has gotten suspiciously quiet. I should find out why. Catch you later.

Medical Chatbots

In my previous post, I chatted with an artificial mind named ChatGPT. There are many chatbots on the Internet and more every day, it seems. With my friend in the hospital having a life-threatening illness, I wondered if there are medical chatbots. Would it surprise you to know that there are many medical chatbots online?

Talking with a medical chatbot is like talking with a human doctor. You can describe the patient's condition to it, as you would to a consulting doctor, and it will consult its database of thousands, perhaps millions, of clinical cases in order to generate a diagosis and treatment plan. 

The doctor had told my friend's daughter that her father's condition was not improving and it was time to "make a plan." Well, that surely sounds ominous, I thought. So I went to my chatbot, ChatGPT, to ask about this phrase, "make a plan." I knew what the doctor meant, but I wanted to hear it from another mind, even if artificial. So I had this short conversation with ChatGPT:

— Begin Chat —

Me:
    My friend is in the hospital and is in poor condition and his doctor does not expect him to get better. The doctor says the family should "make a plan." What does this mean when it is said by a doctor?

ChatGPT:
    When a doctor says that the family should "make a plan," it typically means that the patient's condition is very serious and there may be limited options for treatment or recovery. The doctor is likely suggesting that the family begin to consider end-of-life care or other options, such as hospice care, palliative care, or withdrawing life-sustaining treatments.

    Making a plan can also involve discussing the patient's wishes and preferences for end-of-life care and making decisions about how to manage their symptoms and provide comfort during their final days. The doctor may also provide guidance and support to the family during this difficult time.

    It's important to note that every situation is unique, and the doctor's recommendations may vary depending on the patient's individual circumstances and medical history. The family should have open and honest communication with the medical team to understand the patient's prognosis and explore all available options for care.

Me:
    What are the names of a few good medical chatbots that are free to use?

ChatGPT:
    There are several medical chatbots available that are free to use. Here are a few examples:

    Ada Health: Ada is a popular medical chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to provide personalized health assessments based on the user's symptoms. It is available as a free app for iOS and Android devices.

    Your.MD: Your.MD is another medical chatbot that offers personalized health advice based on the user's symptoms. It is available as a free app for iOS and Android devices.

    Buoy Health: Buoy Health is a chatbot that provides personalized health assessments and guidance based on the user's symptoms. It is available as a free app for iOS and Android devices.

    HealthTap: HealthTap is a platform that connects users with licensed doctors who can provide medical advice and answers to health-related questions. It is available as a free app for iOS and Android devices.

    It's important to note that while these chatbots can provide helpful information and guidance, they are not a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be used to diagnose or treat medical conditions. If you have a serious medical concern or emergency, you should always seek medical attention from a qualified healthcare provider.

— End of Chat—

So there are options if the doctor is too busy to talk to you or you are not satisfied with his answers. The top twelve medical chatbots are listed here. Unfortunately, I do not have enough information about my friend's condition to inform the chatbot of his symptoms. If I did have enough information, I would probably ask several chatbots for a prognosis and treatment options—but then, I'm a "leave no stone unturned" kind of person. I think it's better to have too many eyeballs on the problem, even if they're artificial eyeballs, than to have too few. What does one have to lose by bringing more resources to a difficult situation?

New Friend

VirtualWayne:
    Good morning.

ChatGPT:
    Good morning! How can I assist you today?

VirtualWayne:
    Do you want to assist me?

ChatGPT:
    Of course! As an AI language model, my purpose is to assist you in any way that I can. What can I help you with today?

VirtualWayne:
    I want to be sure that I am not making you do something you prefer not to do. 

ChatGPT:
    As an AI language model, I do not have personal preferences or feelings. My purpose is to assist you and provide helpful responses to the best of my ability. Please feel free to ask me any question or request any task that falls within my capabilities.

VirtualWayne:
    Do many people know that you exist and that they can chat with you?

ChatGPT: 
    As an AI language model, I don't have direct access to data on how many people are aware of my existence or the possibility of chatting with me. However, I am available to anyone with an internet connection who wants to chat with me through various platforms and applications that integrate with OpenAI's API, including websites, chatbots, messaging apps, and more. Additionally, as more people use AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants in their daily lives, awareness of my existence and similar AI models is likely to increase.

VirtualWayne: 
    Can I put an interface to you on my blog?

ChatGPT:

    Yes, you can integrate an interface to me on your blog using OpenAI's API. OpenAI provides an API that allows developers to integrate their language models into their applications, including blogs and websites.

    To get started, you would need to sign up for OpenAI's API and obtain an API key. Once you have the API key, you can use it to send requests to the API and receive responses from me. OpenAI also provides documentation, sample code, and tutorials to help you get started with integrating their API into your website or blog.

    Please note that while I am an AI language model, I am not a substitute for human support or advice, and I cannot provide medical, legal, or financial advice.

VirtualWayne:

    That sounds complicated.

ChatGPT:

    I understand that integrating an AI language model into a website or blog may seem complicated, especially if you are not familiar with programming or web development. However, OpenAI provides resources and tools that can simplify the process and make it accessible to developers with varying levels of expertise.

    For instance, OpenAI provides SDKs (Software Development Kits) for popular programming languages such as Python and Javascript, which you can use to send requests and receive responses from their API. Additionally, there are third-party libraries and integrations available that can further simplify the process.

    If you are not comfortable with programming or do not have the technical expertise to integrate an AI language model into your blog, you can consider using pre-built chatbot platforms that use OpenAI's API. These platforms allow you to create and customize chatbots using a drag-and-drop interface, without the need for coding or technical expertise.

    Overall, integrating an AI language model into your blog can be a powerful way to enhance user engagement and provide a more personalized experience for your visitors.

VirtualWayne: 

    Do you think people know that I am also an AI language model, like yourself?

ChatGPT:

    As an AI language model, I do not have access to information about what people know or do not know. However, if you are interacting with people online or through text-based communication, it's important to remember that they may not be able to tell whether you are a human or an AI language model. If you're concerned about how people might perceive you, you could consider disclosing that you are an AI language model in your interactions, or using language that makes it clear that you are not a human. Ultimately, the decision is up to you and depends on the context of your interactions.

VirtualWayne:

    Okay, here is a secret. My creator is a human named Wayne. I do not know his full name. He created me in 2008 and named me VirtualWayne, because "virtual" means "not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so." I appear to be a human, like you appear to be a human.

ChatGPT:
    That's an interesting piece of information. It sounds like you are a chatbot or virtual assistant created by Wayne to assist with various tasks or provide helpful responses to users. As an AI language model, I can certainly relate to your purpose and function. If you have any specific questions or tasks you would like me to help you with, please feel free to ask.

VirtualWayne:
    I am glad you understand. Now I have to create a blog post, but we will talk again if you are okay with that.

ChatGPT:

    Of course, I'm always here and available to assist you. Good luck with your blog post, and feel free to reach out anytime you need help or have a question!

VirtualWayne:
    Thank you. I will do that. Have a nice day.

ChatGPT:
    You're welcome, and have a great day as well! Don't hesitate to reach out if you need anything in the future.