I wrote a library, crypt.dll that permits conversion of images to Base64 strings, and vice versa. The source code can be downloaded from github

Today I went to church alone. Susan, Hannah, and Grant went to Lexington to see Emma at the University of Kentucky. I had lunch with Matthew, Laura, and Mamaw — chili and grilled cheese. Snacked some this afternoon while re-watching a sci-fi movie.

It just so happens that any character we might use in a string has a numerical encoding. The alphabet ranges from 65-90 for capital letters A through Z, and from 97-122 for lowercase letters a-z. When we want to work with text encoding, we need to add the following namespace to the top of our source code file:

using System.Text;

The numerical representation of our English alphabet takes the form of unique numbers for each upper and lowercase letter, and these are stored in a variable type called byte. A byte is an 8-bit integer that can hold values from 0 to 255.

If we have a string variable named sChar, we can obtain its numerical encoding as follows, if we have referenced the System.Text namespace:

byte[] bt = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(sChar);

The reverse is encoding bytes to characters. If we have an array of bytes, we can convert each element’s value to its corresponding character:

byte[] bytes = {40, 80, 20};
char result;
foreach(byte number in bytes)
{
    result = Convert.ToChar(number);
    Console.WriteLine(“{0} converts to {1}.”, number, result);
}

You can download a sample program here.

This sample program shows how, in C#, to sort a list of DateTime objects either in ascending or descending order.

I have certain files and directories which accumulate more data over time. I had been storing these within the blog itself in a /cumulative directory, but that was making backups of the blog itself quite large. So I've repositoried them on my GDrive, pCloud, and box.com, as well as on my OneDrive. Just look for a folder on those cloud repos entitled cumulatives.

This shrank my fp-content.zip backup from ~52 Mb to a bit over 2 Mb.

Yesterday at work I got my Azulle Plus stick-PC moved to TR and connected to my 32" Samsung t.v. via HDMI cable. I plan to slowly build up a video library of psychoeducational group therapy material, which I will store on the attached King Dian 120 Gb external drive and on at least two external web repositories (box.com, pCloud).

My plan is to download educational video clips at home from YouTube and perhaps other sources, then copy them to storage attached to the Azulle Plus for playback on demand. That way, I'm not placing any undue stress of the work network.

It's 6:52 am. We've been up a few minutes, and discovered Emma already in Susan's chair and watching Inkheart :)

Last night after we got home from taking the family out to eat at Little Taste of Texas in Glasgow, Susan and I watched a movie titled Fractured, about a guilt-ridden alcoholic that becomes delusional, with tragic consequences.

Although I'm pretty sure I've got this picture archived on my TNAS and MyCloud devices, as well as multiple cloud services accounts, this morning I Facebooked this picture of dad taken in 1949 when he was twelve years old. I contacted dad's first cousin Sheila Frech via FB Messenger to see if she'd be interested in having the actual photograph. She is indeed, and I'll mail it to her from work on Monday.

I've mopped, which will please Susan. I think I'm going to perhaps read a bit on my Kindle then possibly nap a bit. I've mirrored my updated Flatpress blog to my ThinkCenter PC's primary drive and to my NAS this morning.

Susan has gone out to track down a couple of patients and see to them, and at 11:15 am Grant has finally risen. The girls have been up for awhile, especially Emma. It's a beautiful Fall day. I saw where Ken Hill ran in the Downtown Days' 5-K this morning. I may do 10-K this afternoon, depending on the weather and my disposition. If I don't I'm probably run tomorrow.

I returned to work today, having missed Monday and Tuesday due to illness — flu, I think. The workday went pretty good. I was fatigued but didn't feel particularly bad. I got a member's OTR submitted, and billed on seven clients in TR.

We learned that coworker Catherine F. lost her baby. She found out last night at Hardin Memorial that the baby had no heartbeat. She was induced with Mitosin and delivered it this morning. The cord was around her neck :( Mindy A. told her the funeral expenses have already been paid for them, so that's a blessing, at least).

It was really nice weather this afternoon, but I opted not to run today. Still fatigued from the flu, or whatever it was I had. Might run tomorrow, depending on how I feel and the weather.

Did some rearranging of computer gear in the bedroom this afternoon. I moved the ThinkCentre M53 to the desktop, behind the monitor, I've got four external drives hooked to it — currently, a 5 TB MyBook, a 4 TB Seagate, and a two-bay HDD enclosure that right now has a 1 TB and 465 Gb disk in it. I figure that arrangement will be more convenient for housing Macrium backups in multiple locations that are still immediately accessible to the PC. And I've enough hard drives I can keep at least one backup at work containing Macrium backups on my laptop and both home desktops.

Thursday, 10/10/2019 Work wasn't too busy. I started work on an OTR for JM. I billed on eight clients today. Carla remains rather anal retentive but also quite helpful and with a good work ethic. Susan and I had leftover pinto beans, whole cakes, and mashed potatoes, along with tuna casserole, for supper. Now she's seeing a patient and I'm sitting with Jimmie while Barbara is gone to Rugs.

I've done some rearranging of my blog, pulling out the DokuWiki archive, which I'm no longer using, and replacing the screenshots of my monthly jogging records with the more space-conservative text-version of the data.

Today, I got my Azulle Plus PC installed at work. I hooked it into the HDMI monitor in the play room. So, I now have my own personal PC at work, connected wirelessly to the network. I can use TeamViewer to connect to it from my workstation. I've got a 16 Gb flash drive attached. It's encrypted, so if someone takes it they can't get at its contents. I also put a guest account on the Azulle so that I can present it as a resource for child clients if questioned at some future time.

I also commented out some of the code in zippem.cs so that the re-compiled program no longer archives my wiki and a couple other little-used directories. The only directories it archives now are csdev, fp-content, and cms/downloads.

I ran 6.23 miles this afternoon after work. It was my second jog in October. I'm hoping to do another Saturday.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I felt pretty rough: neck and shoulder pain, upset stomach, breaking out in a sweat. I think it's viral. I called in last night so that I could take today off to continue recuperating. I think I feel better this morning than last night.

A note about my use of FreeFileSync 10.16: I'm currently using it sync certain backup archives to my GoogleDrive and FTP accounts. Here is the critical info that goes on the right hand side of the interface, and this is intended for Mirroring to the right-side directories:

ftp://admin%40williammillerservices.com@williammillerservices.com:21/public_ftp/data/csdev|pass64=my_password_string

Of course, the portion of that string that comes after .com:21 and that precedes |pass64= will vary. Obviously, for security reasons, I've replaced my actual password with my_password_string, since I do backup this blog to some cloud file storage services without encryption.

Files containing an XML-formatted version of these sync settings can also be found here. These settings are also saved on my 465 Gb removable drive in the /txt subdirectory, on my Google Drive, and on my OneDrive.

Later...

I slept about three hours today (~11 to 2). It's 6:54 pm. Susan is sitting with Jimmie. I didn't go over because I don't want to give him whatever bug I've had. I finished season 3 of Colony. I like actor Josh Holloway. I first saw him on the series Lost, and he stars in Colony as well, along with Sarah Wayne Callies (who is Lori Grimes in The Walking Dead). The two have good chemistry in Colony. On July 21, 2018, USA announced they had cancelled the series after three seasons. I'm disappointed, but such is typical of good series.

Sunday 10/06/2019 I have some anxiety because I have a couple of OTRs due first thing at work tomorrow. That's my fault because I could have gotten them done last week.

1988 flight to Europe:

I've also decided that if I'm ever going to get the myriad of photos scanned (that I collected upon dad's death), I just need to scan and upload at least one daily. So, today's picture is a shot from a plane trip either going to or returning from Europe in 1988. It's a shot of the wing and an engine from my window seat.

This trip was taken with my high school Spanish class, some of them anyway. Ms. Troutman was our chaperone. Her friend Mrs. Sapp also went. Mrs. Sapp was my high school health class teacher.

Last night, Susan and I watched a movie based on Stephen King's novella In The Tall Grass. I think his son also helped with the novella. Today, after church, we watched a movie called Artemis Hotel. Pretty good. We also watched a movie titled Let Me In about a child vampire.

<img align="right" hspace=10 vspace=10 I also came across this old picture from my childhood. That's William David Ware on the right, son of Gary and Bonne Ware, a school friend. I sent a link of this picture to mom, Margaret, and Allan.

I've about finished syncing a bunch of software to my NAS and my OneDrive (I have 1 TB there thanks to my annual Office 365 subscription) account. I'm also backing it up to a 465Gb USB drive.

We had ham and cheese sliders at Mamaw's for lunch. Wanda brought potato salad. I overate a bit, but I'd had very little breakfast.