Caregiver Hints

Wondering what to do with all those old prescription medications? This Saturday, April 30, 2011 will mark the second time that the DEA will host the National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. On this day, people can drop off their unused and expired medication at one of over 4,700 collection sites around the country.

Drop Off Old Meds – AgingCare.com

To find a prescription drug collection site near you visit http://www.justice.gov/dea/

Ok, the podcast is back in iTunes with the correct link, so you can subscribe directly from iTunes again. However, due to the way Apple does things, I had to change the name of the podcast slightly, so you will want to subscribe to the one named Caregiver Hints Audio Podcast. You will also notice that the original listing is still there too. If there is any confusion, just look for the episodes with the newer release date.

Apple should be removing the other listing “Caregiver Hints Podcast” in a few days hopefully. If possible, I may try renaming it back to the original name if I can, but that might just confuse things further. Anyway, now that the podcast issue seems to be resolved, I can get back to talking about caregiver things.

If you’ve listened to the podcast already or about to, you will hear me beam about the arrival of the Caregiver Hints podcast to the iTunes store. I also mention the PodOmatic web site and rattle off an unfriendly URL to get to that page. Well, I managed to mess both of those up. On the plus side, the PodOmatic page can now be found at caregiverhints.PodOmatic.com, but this inadvertently broke the connection to iTunes and I’m in the process of trying to fix it.

In the end, this isn’t too horrible as nobody has yet subscribed through iTunes, and all the other methods of subscribing still work, even the button on the upper-right of this web page, since they are using a different method of subscription through iTunes. Only the store link is broken. If you subscribe through PodOmatic, you can still “Like” the episode as feedback, or comment, but until I fix it, I loose the ratings from the iTunes store.

These are just the bumps in the road that happen when you try something new. Hopefully I’ll have it sorted soon and I’ll post an update when all is working again.

In this episode I start playing with the podcast format by adding some random news at the beginning, followed by a transcription of one of the blog posts. PLUS I announce the arrival of the podcast to the iTunes Store and impending opening of the Caregiver Hints CafePress shop. You can now subscribe to the podcast using the button on the right sidebar of the web page.

This episode’s blog post recital is about Dementia. You can read the original post here: http://caregiverhints.com/?p=15

You can also listen to the podcast from my PodOmatic page here: http://caregiverhints.podomatic.com/

In my further exploration of the podcast format, I’ve discovered some unfavorable side effects. You may have noticed that the podcast player has changed, and not for the better in my opinion. This is due to a change in the podcast file format that I am using. Episode 2 is in a “enhanced” podcast format which allows me to embed chapters, web links, and images when played on any of Apple’s devices such as an iPhone. I’m not sure if other devices are capable of taking advantage of this or not. Unfortunately, when I post the file to Podomatic.com (where the podcast is hosted from) it displays the “enhanced” portion of the podcast as straight video, which in turn makes the player bigger. Unfortunately, none of the enhanced features work in the player. The only way I can change that is to get a Podomatic Pro account, which I cannot afford at this time. So please bear with me while I continue to tweak things. I also discovered that I need to scale down the logo image because it shows up huge in some places and wastes a lot of space.

A friend of mine sent me a link to this video. Not only is it a good chuckle, but it shows how getting older requires a healthy dose of humor to get over some of the bumps. Mary Maxwell, the speaker, delivers her tongue-in-cheek comments like a professional. Definitely take some time to look at the video and check out the two related web sites, CaregiverStress.com and Home Instead. I hope to check these sites out more thoroughly and comment on them later.