I’ve written a lot over the years about the nail fungus I have. Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned. For a lot more, you can search my blog.
I hope that even if this doesn’t solve your nail problems, it let’s you know what’s going on. That can be a relief in itself.
Over-the-counter topicals at your local pharmacy for about $20 sometimes clear up nail fungus, maybe 30% of the time. The ingredient in those products is usually undecylenic acid. Lamisil (or the generic terbinafine) topical ($30) or oral ($2000) is one drug that has better than average results. Going to a podiatrist and getting drugs, or getting your nail ripped out, or both ($50-$3000) might work. There are a couple types of nail fungus, the main classes being dermatophytes and candida. Drugs for one type usually don’t affect the other so it’s helpful to keep a list of what you’ve tried. Laser treatments seem to be about 25% effective; many report a clearing in the first year and then a return after 2 years or so.
For me, oral Lamisil cured most of my nails with 6 months of treatment in 2006 (13 years ago). My right big toe nail still grows wrong and hurts every few months. To remedy, I shorten the nail (with some pain) with nail clippers and the pain goes away in a few days. I make sure to spray a lot of Lamisil topical on me and the equipment to hopefully keep the possibility of spreading the infection to a minimum. I don’t actually know if there is still an infection under the nail.
There’s lots of home-brew topicals that seem to work moderately well… probably a 30% chance of curing your toes. They might work for you, or not. In my case, all of the following appeared to “help” but none got rid of my infection: undecylenic acid, Selsun Blue shampoo, tea tree oil, vinegar on a cotton ball, vapo-rub (I haven’t tried), grapeseed extract. The Selsun Blue helped a lot because it’s inexpensive enough to rub on my whole foot to knock out athelete’s foot and possibly the nail infection.
Sadly, modern science doesn’t have a guaranteed cure for nail fungus. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you snake oil.
This always gives me a peaceful, easy feeling!
Three happy words, “No new mail!”
A friend I haven’t seen in almost 20 years died last week.
Tim, your light of a smile and perennial cheer echo in my eyes and ears these nearly 20 years since our meeting. I miss you. You are with me, always.
His obituary
Dear Lazyweb,
I fill out about 10 web-based time-sheets every day, taking notes on each of the clients I see with a clunky mix of clicking, tabbing, and copy-pasting. The website simply wasn’t built for easy data entry. Do you know of a program where I can write my data in a neat format, for instance, a spreadsheet, and then the program does all the ridiculous click-type-click-tab-type-typing for me?
Megan, Abigail, and I will be moving from our apartment in Berkeley to a much larger house in El Cerrito on January 2nd!
We’ve loved living here with the quiet street and long driveway (we’ll miss jumping in Avery’s Puddle when it rains!), the short walk to Monterey Market, and especially King Park. But we’ve been feeling growing pains in our apartment for a while.
Just ask and I’ll tell you our new address!
Merry Christmas to all! All the presents under our tree! Abigail will wake to a wondrous sight!
Some tidbits worth remembering about this photo…
See the ice cubes in the base of the tree? That’s how we water it! We’ve been fostering a tree from Mount Shasta for the last 3 years. This is sadly the last year for our beloved Fiona. She’ll be planted in the spring to run and play with her friends.
Megan made the stockings! They are beautiful. There will be three but one is still just pinned together. The finished ones are just gorgeous!
The boxes behind the sliding glass door are part of our move! We’ll be moving to a new house at the beginning of January! Berkeley has been wonderful, hello El Cerrito!
There’s lots of wonderful presents for and from family under the tree. The bike is from Noni (my mom)! Thank you Noni!
To make my workload a bit more manageable, I’m changing the schools I’m working at. Good bye Tara Hills! I’ll miss every student there!
I had a pretty awesome conversation with the co-chairs of the department where we talked about how they’re giving me a little head-room to become the best OT possible.
In the next few weeks we are planning on moving… twice! Three times if you count our vacation!
– We will be moving my mother-in-law Penelope from Napa to Albany.
– Then the three of us will take a little break to a snow park near Strawberry, California. This will be the first time Abigail has seen real snow!
– Then we are planning on moving to a bigger house just up the road!
All this before the end of holiday break!
These instructions work! Hurray! I tried a while back and it didn’t work.
This tip came from my friend Tim A. He added, “I found that it seemed to stop me downloading the apks directly, so I put them on the SD card and installed them from there.”
https://boingboing.net/2017/10/11/quickly-add-the-google-play-st.html
ClickmonitorDDC lets you set up keyboard macros to change the brightness and volume on your computer. I initially got this freeware it to set the brightness on my new portable monitor that had no buttons, the AOC I1659FWUX 15.6″ USB-Powered Portable Monitor. I’m very happy with having this extra monitor too!
My favorite thing about using ClickmonitorDDC is that now my work computer and home computer now have the same controls for changing brightness and volume. It’s a little thing, but it makes me happy enough to send a donation to the author!
I set my hotkeys like so:
Update 11-19-18: I told the author about this blog post and he pointed out a typo I had made on my hotkey choice above. I have since fixed the typo. Thanks Martin!
He also pointed out “…monitorname should not contain spaces or use ” “. Theoretically you do not need to write full monitorname, normally a few chars will do, for instance B156X would work too. There is a new version 5.5 on my homepage: https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net”
UPDATE 12-2-20: The author’s site isn’t maintained any more :-(. You can get the software from various freeware sites online. Here is a local archive: ClickMonitorDDC_6_0
Update 12-8-20: To get my second monitor to work well, I used to run the Displaylink drivers but with a recent update to… something… I don’t know… they weren’t working well but the Intel drivers started working. I used the Intel Driver & Support Assistant to automagically install and update the right drivers.
