Monday, June 29, 2009
Hot Chicks
Just when I thought the house couldn’t get any more crowded, 12 chicks moved in.
You wouldn’t believe the insanely cute peeps they make.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Yes, I’m alive
Yes, I’m alive.
Yes, I had my gall bladder removed.
No, there weren’t any complications.
Yes, I’ve resumed normal activity.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Teh Update
I went ewe too no, ICANN sea threw you’re plain.
Anyhow…
Onion.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Yet another health and wellness update
I know it’s a little delayed.
The endoscopy came back OK. OK in that the only thing wrong with me are the gallstones that have taken up residence.
The procedure, well, I’d say it was aweful. I’d even say it was great. In all honesty, I don’t remember any of it.
I arrived at the hospital, filled out the standard “sign this” forms and waited in a nondescript waiting room. I’m sure I made some jokes about cameras, and offended other waiting room...waiters.
When they called me back, they didn’t have me undress, I just put the gown over the top of my clothes. Up on a stretcher, sit and wait some more. The nurse came to give me my IV, and I directed her to my left arm. My months of selling plasma, in addition to the $40 a week, taught me that needles in my left arm work better, and cause me less pain. She was appreciative, seeing the necessary vessel right away. More waiting. Hearing the lady on the other side of the curtain talk about her shingles on her arm. Watching them bring the same blood pressure machine to me. Hope I don’t get shingles.
A short bed ride into the ambulatory surgery area, and more (that’s right!) waiting. A brief conversation with the assisting nurse, where I assured her I wasn’t allergic to anything except for cameras with fiber optics on them. More waiting. Finally the doctor arrives. Asks me how I’m doing. Tells the nurse to begin. She injects me, and tells me to open my mouth. She sprays in some aweful tast…
..I’m looking at my arm. How did my arm get in front of me? Oh, I’m on my side. How did I get on my side? Where’d the room go? Hey, there’s DW. Wow, good drugs.
The next few hours (ok, the next 30 hours) are pretty much a haze at this point. I remember specific things, but its like they happened years ago, instead of days.
And tomorrow, I get to go back in, and have the gall bladder removed.
I’m hoping for more time warps, and an end to the pain that woke me this morning at 4:30. At least this time, I was only wishing I was dead for 2 hours. 25 hours from now, I’ll be back on a stretcher, and waiting some more.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Because it’s the highlight of my life
Tomorrow I’m going in for an endoscopy. They’re going to ram a camera down my throat, and take a look at the problem.
Wiki and WebMD say that they’ll probably put me under for this, but what’s the fun in that?
I want to drink some mild numbing agent, and watch the whole thing on TV. Listening to the noises my body makes while its being abused by fiberoptics.
Good times!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
It’s what he thought it was
Small update, since I only know a little more.
I have gall stones. Such an old lady disease, yet there I am, struck with it.
Dr. appointment tomorrow to discuss options with the surgeon.
Looks like I’ll probably be going under the knife!
cut cut cut cut, bleeeeeed. Fun times!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Its not what you think it is
So it turns out that I was right, my ex-Doctor is stupid.
A few months back, she put me on water pills to combat my high blood pressure.
Until I saw her, I’d never had a problem with HBP. Every doctor visit was within a few points of 115/60. Almost without fail.
However, I go see this quack, and suddenly I’m at 150/100.
I take her fucking pills for 3 months. I piss every 15 minutes. I dream of pissing. I don’t drink anything for 2 days, and still I can’t stop.
I go back in, after an all nighter at work (drinking coffee mind you), and 160/120. What the FUCK?
She writes another prescription, which I promptly file under “STFU”. I skip my 3 month checkup with the old Schedule conflict excuse.
Fast forward 2 more months to Friday night (saturday morning) around 3am, I’m having pain underneath my right rib. It feels like the worst case of heartburn I’ve ever felt, only slightly shifted to the right and down.
After 3 hours, the pain goes away, and I fall back asleep.
Then, Saturday night, at around 11pm, it starts again.
Only this time, it makes what I’d been feeling before seem like a stroll through cupcake land, with pixes and fairies fellating me.
It goes on, and on, and on. Everything I do makes it hurt worse.
Sitting still? More pain.
Playing Wow? more pain.
Laying down? OMG KILL ME
Playing Rock band? Oh shit, I missed that note because I can’t move my arm, aaaah.
Taking a hot bath? Oh, wow, less pain.
Getting out of the bath and drying off? Oh fuck, take me in baby, Ima gonna die.
So DW drives me into the ER, and bless her heart driving carefully and softly, trying to minimize what I’m feeling.
All I want to do is scream at here to speed the fuck up and get there.
Instead, I clench the seat, and door handle, close my eyes and wait.
At the ER, I get undressed, get in Ye Old Backless Sack, get under the nice warm blanket, and still feel like I want to die.
BP done, temp, pee in a cup, get some xrays, get a lovely white pill that makes all the bad pain stop, but mostly, DW and I just sit in the room and talk for 3 hours.
ER doc thinks its gallbladder related, everything else came back normal.
Including my BP.
115/63. Fuck you quack russian doctor.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Mine Chapter 3, part two
She knew then that she was fainting.
Sound returned first, lightly flowing, then louder. A cacophony of indescribable clashing noise assaulted her pre-consciousness, and then her conscious thought. Individual sounds floated out of the din, sounds that while recognizable, didn’t belong in the chorus. A blacksmith’s hammer ringing over cold iron, the cook humming the notes she always did while making bread, a dog growling through a haunch of meat, sounds that certainly existed in the demnse, yet none should be with the others. Thousands of sounds she recognized, her mind slowly picking out the recognizable from the unknown. Turning her head, she recognized the change, realized that this was no hallucination, she was hearing them, actually hearing things from a radius around her. The volume and focused changed as she moved her head, yet she could recognize and correlate the sound, and the location it should be. The smithy, a mile from the stables where she had fallen. The keep’s kitchen, 400 meters to her right. Her brother Stabil and his wife, above the kitchen 3 floors, talking in hushed tones about an heir.
As the minutes passed, her mind took in the sounds, cataloging, remembering, placing, blocking the unknown. The din eased, became familiar. The strident disharmony sorting itself into a recognizable stratum, as her mind accustomed itself with the harmony of life turning around her.
Finally, she opened her eyes. She was again briefly overwhelmed by the input, the clarity and distance which she was now seeing. Perhaps her brain had adjusted to the new sensory overload, for she only took a few seconds to set the sights to order. The blades of grass, serrated edges directly in front her. Beyond them, the keep, the coarse texture of its external stonework apparent to her now, something she’d never noticed before. The colors took the longest to resolve, turning from a motley disarray of shades, turning again to a harmony of light. Differences in shades were now apparent to her, and her mind turned itself to sorting the overload into something familiar. Less than a minute had passed this time, yet she was able to comprehend what she was seeing easily now. The world had taken on a clarity.
The breeze blew on her, rubbing her face with those same blades of grass. Smells and sensations doubly assaulted her, but now her brain had its defense. It only took seconds for those to right themselves, to attune to this new way of being. She licked her lips, and could taste the very air in the breeze. No time at all was required for her mind to catalog out the bouquet, the individual flavors drifting in the breeze.
She sat up. She could still see Humphrey laying where he had fallen. Her heart tore then, knowing that she had caused his death. The assault on her senses brought with it the realization that she was something different than what she’d been when she woke this morning. She could feel the strength of her limbs and she knew that she had lifted the horse, a 300 stone bulk of flesh, with no more effort than she lifted her fork. In her shock, she had dropped the gelding, and Humphrey had just been in the way.
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks then. Humphrey, the stickman busybody that had taught her to count, to read, to cipher was gone. He’d taught her the history of the land, how to act formally and informally, and basically everything else parents would teach their children. He had been like a mother and father to her, in ways even closer than her real father. She rushed to his side, the distance again disappearing in a fraction of a second. This time though, her body was ready, and more importantly, so was her mind. No motion sickness reared its head, only the mourning for a loss so deep it quickly overshadowed any delight in newfound abilities.
The farrier found her there, holding Humphrey’s body hours later, when their absence on stead was noticed. She was out of tears, out of sound, rocking back and forth.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Mine Chapter 3, Part one
The wind blew cold on the upswept cliff walls.
Onieda looked down into the valley, taking in the majestic views. This morning she had broken her fast with her family. This afternoon, she was alone. More than alone, she knew she was different than anyone. Her father looked upon her with some sort of reverence broking on fanatical, not with the loving gaze of patriarch. Her once loved brothers disavowed her name. The friends, the servants, to the one had lost their friendly demeanor, treating her with a coldness she’d never witnessed.
And why? Why had everything in her life turned on its side. Everything in her seeming charmed life had changed into something out of a story. Bereft of any warmth, simply because she…
What?
What had occurred? She’d eaten her morning meal, like she had for every day in memory. Yes, it was her birthday, but there’d been 17 before. After the food, she was supposed to have gone on a ride with the estates chamberlain, one of the duties she performed for her father. Inventorying the harvest, the growth. Tending to the needs of the workers.
Yet, when she had grabbed hold of the pommel, and pulled to vault herself into the saddle, just as she’d done thousands of times before, it happened. Instead of her feet leaving the ground, the horse screamed and was suddenly sideways, held up only by the cinch around it, and her hand on the horn.
An instant of confusion, and fear laced her every thought. She let go the pommel, and the horse fell. It lay for an instant, and then bolted. Bolted over the chamberlain. A slight man, he was crushed to death instantly beneath the strider’s hooves. She took a hurried step to lend aid to the bloody corpse, not knowing him already dead, and found herself across the field.
Again, the moment of fear, the confusion, and another feeling raced through her. This time…sickness, both physical and mental played across her. Slowly she turned to look back to where she had been standing a second earlier. The sickness felt like she had first felt riding in the manor carriage, the movement inside not matching the movement outside the small windows. The mental pains resulting from a complete lack of comprehension, “how is this happening?”
She could clearly see the chamberlain laying. Humphrey. From this distance, he should look like a tattered pile of cloth, yet she could easily see every line, every detail. The trickle of ocher running from the corner of his mouth, and eye. The caved in appearance of his chest. The lack of and motion. She knew then that he was dead.
She knew then that she was fainting.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Success!
That’s a big win for ddrescue.
PC recovered, seems to be in full working order so far.
Now, for some memory.
My only wish is that I could buy memory as easily for my own brain.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Just a little geeky
I’ve been working on DW’s mom’s computer tonight. I’ve had it sitting in my office for the last 6 months or so.
It’s not that I can’t fix it, or that I’m lazy (at least this time it’s not about being lazy) it’s just that the couple of times I poked around on it, it came with the click of doom.
I’ve tried a couple imaging utilities (ghost, paragon) and both of them fail out around the same spot. I manually copied off the most important files (according to her), so I figured I could give something else a shot.
Enter ddrescue. It’s a Linux based tool that basically skips over bad sectors while copying, then goes back and does smaller and smaller reads until its recovered as much as possible. I’ve been meaning to give it a try for a while now, so we’ll see how it goes (about 70% done copying the drive to a new one at this point).
For the Linux neophytes, like myself, SystemRescue is a Linux (Gentoo) boot CD with ddrescue (and a bunch of other tools) installed in a live CD environment. Just boot, run the tool you want, and go, no install or real configuration skills involved.
Thus ends my recommendation, at least until I can see if it actually worked.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
No Power
Last night, I logged into WoW for the first time in a month or so. I was in game for about 3 minutes, and we lost power in the house for ~10 minutes.
So I logged back in, and the second I got back in game, we lost power for 2 hours.
Should I take that as some sort of sign?
I know I’m not going to log in during a blizzard again, that’s for sure!
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Another Wednesday
It’s Wednesday again, and you all know what that means!
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Nothing.
I’m on autopilot today. Work has been just worky for the last couple weeks, no excitement, no fun, just...work. I’m sure it will continue this way for the next 3 years.
I’m thankful that I’m employed, having had a few friends recently, and currently, get hit with the economy in the face.
Although, if I just stop paying my bills...then I can stop working. Right? I’ve said it before, maybe someday I’ll mean it. I’ll be that hermit, in a hand hewed cabin in the woods, squatting on some forester companies land.
Sound nice, doesn’t it?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Blended, not stirred.
A touch on the hand. A soft scent. A slight upturn of the lips. Then she was gone.
He didn’t watch her walk away. He knew there was nothing there. Not even a hope of anything.
He couldn’t feel the touch. Once past the side of his face, he couldn’t see her.
Why did he try to live a normal life?
The waitress was like the rest, pleasant, but reserved. There was no person that mocked, or teased. No hushed whispers behind his back, at least none that he could hear.
His life was the chair he lived in. Quiet, responding to slight movements of his mouth. This was all the life he’d had since waking up in that hospital bed.
Since falling asleep in the cold.
The doctors that attended him then, and in the months that followed counseled him to not dwell on what he’d lost, but to seize what remained, and make a new life for himself. The chair, the months of therapy, both physical and mental only drove home the point in his own mind. No matter what life he made, it was only a fraction of what he had lost.
The accident, the momentary lapse had robbed him of his own life. All he had now was this shell, this pitiful existence. He wasn’t poor, fiscally. He’d done well for himself in the dot com boom, and doubly well in the housing boom. Both bubbles, he’d ridden early, and gotten out at the crest. Unnaturally lucky, his friends had said. His friends. Not friends, acquaintances. Business partners. One of them had increased his wealth exponentially after the accident, suing anyone that could have possibly been involved. The car manufacturer, the highway department, the maker of the guard rail, and they’d all paid.
It didn’t matter to him though. All the money in the world, and he sat at this table, in this dive. Unable to eat anything by himself, unless it fit in a straw.
All this dwelling, he didn’t notice someone take the seat across from him.
“Mr. Tarry. I have a proposition for you.”
Monday, October 20, 2008
Matchbox
A wooden spoon.
A leather belt.
A hand.
A metal spoon.
A length of clothesline.
A rubber spatula.
A plastic spatula.
A piece of matchbox track.
In other words, listen to your parents.