The Daily Diversion Archive For December, 2003

Tuesday December 2, 2003

So sometime in the near future, I'll be changing over to Movable Type to run this blog/journal thing. Why? Mostly because editing this thing in vi just isn't any fun anymore. It's also a hopeful grasp at trying to post more and more often. I'd like to see more quality and less crapola. I'd also like a "freshening" of the look of this place. I've been calling this blog/journal thingy Coin-O for at least two years, yet I have yet to come up with a .gif or .jpg file as a header for this page. It's pretty much been Consolidated Diversions for a while. I guess it qualifies as an unfinished project.

August hasn't been sleeping too well of late. He's also had more than his fair share of gas. He seems happy enough when he's not wailing, but he does way too much wailing to be good for him. I've found that I can get him to stop by cavorting around the house with him firmly grasped to my chest. I think he likes the movement part of that. I'd never have guessed that having a baby would be an aerobic workout for me.

I'm not complaining, though. He's just so darn cute.

Wednesday December 3, 2003

I had a rockin' good time on the way into work today. My iPod was pumping out the excellent tunes and traffic was flowing my way. It was pretty cool.

I don't have a lot to say, really. I thought that once I sat down in front of this and started typing, something magical would happen. I guess not. I guess something needs to happen to prime the pump.

I guess I do have one thing to yell about. At work, we have a project that is doomed to be tied to this ancient app forever. I suspect that this is a fairly common malady in every corporation. Anyway, this app needs DOS to run. It won't run in DOS emulation such as is found in NT, Win2K and XP. This means that this particular workgroup is condemned forever to the hell that is Windows 98.

It just so happens that the person who's in charge over there needed more processing power. We got her a new machine, but since she needs Win98, we had to install Win98 on a P4, 2.6GHz machine. What. A. Waste.

Sure it's fast, but since '98's multitasking is crude at best, it's really fast at ONE THING. We did get a relatively fast hard drive, but still, it's painful to only be able to do ONE THING fast and if you have to load it off the disk or the LAN, the whole machine gets terribly I/O bound. What all this blather means is that even though it has a terribly fast processor, it pretty much acts like DOS. In fact, in loading stuff up, it's not much faster than her current machine. I hope the stuff she's doing over there will be able to take advantage of the speed available.

Sheesh.

Monday December 8, 2003

First off, Sunday was Dad's birthday. Happy birthday, Dad. I miss you like crazy.

Today at work, I was walking through the Skyway (across 5th between Marquette and 2nd) and I saw our new light rail train coming by on a test run. It went slow and was being escorted by no fewer than 5 trucks and several guys on foot. It was pretty cool, though. It rang a bell and tooted a horn before crossing each street. I wonder if this will be the operating procedure when it starts rolling for real. I doubt it. Too much noise.

Anyway, it looks all shiny, black and yellow and I can't wait to ride it.

I taught my mom how to sell stuff on eBay on Sunday. There's lots to learn about that particular pastime and I hope I did a good enough job to get her started. Something cool happened when we were over there. I saw a book of pictures of me at 1 month and 3 months and up to 6 months. I don't believe I'd seen that particular book before. It was mighty cool and I must say that August looks nearly exactly as I did when I was his age. I can't tell you how cool that is. I'll post a couple of pics up here in the next couple of days.

Wednesday December 10, 2003

This just in...

Everyday Eddie Guardado has just signed with the Seattle Mariners.

I guess I'm OK with that. Eddie had a great closer mentality, but only marginal stuff. Although he was a successful closer, it was always a seatbelt and panic handle kind of show. I hope the Twins can find a decent closer, but I'll be OK with someone other than Eddie.

I've been really pleased with the way the off season has been going. Sure it would have been nice to see Eddie and AJ back for another year, but their moving on makes way for more new talent. As for Milton, he was a huge question mark for performance next year with an equally huge salary. I also can't say I'm sad to see LaTroy go. He had closer-type stuff, but he was a bit of a head case. If you could get LaTroy's arm with Eddie's approach to the closer role, you'd have an absolutely dominant closer. As it was, they were a good setup/closer team, and they worked well for the Twins, but in some ways they were both a liability. I'm very interested to see what Gardy and crew come up with to fill those spots.

And yes, I'm very glad they re-signed Stewart. He may not have as good a year next year, but he's still all kinds of fun to watch. I could see the outfield being Torii, Jacque and Shannon. That would be good.

Sunday December 14, 2003

This just in...

Saddam Hussein has been captured just south of Tikrit in Iraq. He's alive, in good shape and was captured without a fight. This is certainly good news.

Apparently, being on the run isn't too nice on a guy. Saddam kinda looked like the Unibomber.

Monday December 22, 2003

So we've finally joined in the lockstep of the converted. Yes, we bought a TiVo. I'd seen it's wonders demonstrated at my buddy Lou's when his roommate had one. I must say I was mightily impressed. I've wanted one ever since.

The time had come. Sarah has been watching a fair bit of TV because it's about the only thing you can do when you're watching a baby with colic. Anyway a time-shifting device would have been worth it just for the pause feature. Being able to pause live TV is essential to the mother of a frequently crying baby.

Now that I've owned a couple of TV cards and a TiVo, I can tell you that a TV card is a TV card is a TV card. They all pretty much do the same thing. The put TV on your PC. There are small differences between the various brands as to what features they have, but the big item, the BIG ticket is what scheduling software they have. The interface is the key. My old AverTV card had pretty rotten scheduling. I could never get it to work right and gave up trying after a short while. The ATI All-In-Wonder card I currently have has a nice Gemstar interface and that works decently, but it didn't come with a remote control interface. That's too bad. I didn't use the one that came with the AverTV model, mostly because I was always at the PC that had the card in it and that the scheduler sucked. The ATI/Gemstar interface is pretty nice and so a remote would be pretty cool to have.

What's my point? Simply this: TiVo does what it does fairly well, but the place where TiVo really shines is its interface. The remote works well, it's very intuitive--to the point that when you hit the main menu page and figure out the arrow buttons, the paper manual pretty much hit the floor in disuse. It's smooth, it has nice feedback through a sorta-goofy in a good way action sound and, best of all, it has correct listings and gets all of the programs. You can tell that there's someone out there in TiVo land who's job it is just to make sure your recorder gets what you tell it to get.

It might be an expensive device and $13/mo might be too much for some people to pay, but it's worth it just to not have to futz with anything but the interface. I must also say that their terms like "Season Pass" for recording all the instances of a program whenever it's on, "Now Playing" for the area where the recorded index of program lives and the other little names it has for its features are good examples of apt naming. The interface is intuitive. There's not much else to say. Except that I love the damn thing.

Really in comparison, it's hardly worth mentioning that I did get a TV card, color photo printer and a couple of cool books.

There have been some really good light shows coming from sunrise light reflecting off the buildings in downtown Minneapolis of late. About a month ago, it was very foggy and all that could be seen of downtown was one of the skyscrapers (1st Bank Place, I think...) outlined in hazy red. None of the other buildings were visible. Pretty cool. Today there was a cold, blue light in the sky and the buildings were all reflecting it brilliantly. I tried to take a picture of it, but being in the car with an autofocus camera didn't make for a very successful photo. I got a stunning picture of the top of my dashboard, but I really wasn't shooting for that. Anyway, having failed miserably at the still photo, I switched to movie mode and took about 20 seconds of footage. It's kinda dim and not so impressive, but the moment was captured.

I could get used to that ability.

August remains kinda cranky, but he's getting along fine. I'm trying to get some more shots up in the gallery, but I made the darn things too big for the program to grab. I'll give it another shot this afterlunch.

Tuesday December 23, 2003

Yay! My sister had her baby! Alexander Michael Conner. 10lbs, 1oz and 22" makes him quite a bit bigger than baby Gus. Heck, I doubt Gus is much bigger than that right now.

Gee, I really wanted to write something today, but the muse has fled. Again.

I did finally update the Maxima's page with some new pics. I've decided that since I have precisely zero free time now the baby is here, I'm going to try to stick some pics on pages that could use them.

I'm also going to try to post a few more pictures of Gus over the holidays. Speaking of which, I wouldn't expect too many updates until sometime in January. I'm going to try to do a little maintenance around my house here so that things look a bit better and so it's easier to navigate around. I'd love to get to move over to the new blogging system so that I didn't have to type these updates in vi, but again, that might be a while off yet. I've still to learn the ins and outs of CSS and all that other crapola. Once I've done that, I'm going to acutally think out the theme of coin-o and hopefully get it looking better than it does.

If I don't post before then, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you readers out there.

Monday December 29, 2003

Okay. Although the Vikings don't suck, they sure as hell choked today. Losing to Arizona and the Chargers in the same year pretty much means the team isn't very good. The playoff spot was the Vikings' to lose and they lost it. Their performance this year has been the very definition of inconsistant.

The worst thing about this loss is that Green Bay is now in the playoffs. There were a couple of good things about this game. First, the Vikes have no-one else but themselves to blame and that includes that bonehead move in the first quarter going for the TD instead of kicking for 3. Second, my TiVo only alotted 3 hours for the game so I didn't have to watch anything after the lost on-side kick. Note to self--next football game put on custom recording length. Third, since I recorded the whole debacle on TiVo, I only spent about an hour watching it. I feel far less sore about chucking an hour down the toilet than chucking three.

On to other things.

Before Christmas, I said I'd probably not be posting until after the new year. Well, events of late have been so notable that I had to say something.

Baby notwithstanding, this has been the worst Christmas ever. To those of you that gave us gifts, it's not your fault. We got some lovely gifts. As a matter of fact, we got some of the best gifts ever. No, not even the best gifts ever and the fact it's August's first Christmas was able to save this honker.

Allow me to elaborate. Christmas Eve was spent at my sister's place. We had a lovely time hanging out and doing the Christmas thing with my mom and my Sister's family. We went home fairly early and were into bed before midnight. Christmas Day was was spent with rough stomachs but no biggie. We ate a lot of ham and such and it was good. We had the day to ourselves and we spent it just hanging out. I took the day after Christmas off and the only thing we had on the schedule was to hang out at my Stepmom's place that evening. We were supposed to be there about 6 or so, but at about 4 I started feeling sick. I mean really sick. Gut wrenchingly, head splittingly sick. By 6 I was going at both ends. Hard. After about 5 bouts of the runs and 6 puke sessions, the pain in my guts was so bad we called the nurse line. Since the Urgent Care clinics close about 10PM or so, we were referred to the ER over at Regions.

At the same time I was getting sick, Sarah was getting sick as well. She didn't have whatever it was nearly as bad as I had it, but she was feeling terrible as well. Since we both were getting sick at the same time, it was either food poisioning or some kind of virus. I don't know nor do I care. What was pertenant to the nurse line woman is that I had bad pain in the gut. We called my mom to take care of the baby and off we went to Regions at about 10:30 PM or so.

By now, my guts hurt so bad I couldn't stand up straight. Sarah drove and we were all checked in by about 10:45. Needless to say, it was busy. Friday night in the ER was pretty much prime time. Worse, I wasn't bleeding or psychotic, so I sat there and rotted waiting for a room. My guts hurt so bad I couldn't even sit in a chair so I hit the floor using my jacket as a pillow. I laid there for about an hour and a half. The finally called us to our little exam room and there we sat.

The ER nurse came in and gave me this vile GI Cocktail. It was Maalox and lidocaine. This was supposed to get my stomach to stop hurting. I knew it was my guts that hurt so I didn't have a lot of hope. I was right. It made my mouth numb as hell, but didn't do much at all for the pain. It did help with the nausea a bit, although by that time I had far less nausea than I had gut pain.

One came and went. At about a quarter to two, I HAD to go to the bathroom. I was going to do some business and spent about 5 minutes in there dry-heaving. When I got back, Sarah informed me that the doc had came and went.

SHIT!

SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!

Dammit.

Disappointed!

At about 2, Sarah had to leave to get home to feed Gus. We'd only left one bottle and she didn't want to wake up Gus and my mom calling home to see if all was well. On her way out, she paid the lot machine with a twenty and got back $17 in quarters. It took her four minutes to gather up all the quarters and four minutes to get home. Go figure.

So as I'd said before, I really wasn't nauseous any more. I was in huge amounts of gut pain. Finally at about 2:00 AM or so, the doc came back. We talked about this and that and he ducked out. He said he'd get something worked up for me for the nausea but he wanted someone else to check back in with me before I left. About a half-hour later, another doc came in and asked me a bunch more questions. It sounded as if he was going to give me something for the nausea but nothing for the pain. At this point I kinda felt helpless, but I'd felt that way the entire time I was there. It was becoming clear that I was going to be getting nothing for the pain and something for nausea I didn't have. Great.

The doc ducked out, the nurse ducked back in with the release papers and a big blue prescription slip for anti-nausea suppositories (!). Resigned, I had her show me to the pharmacy and she bid me a nice farewell.

The Pharmacist at Regions told me that it would be another 20 to 30 minutes or so for the prescription to be filled. I told her that I'd just be over there on the floor, resting. She calls me back up to the little window after about 10 minutes with some bad news. She said that the stuff I was prescribed is only covered by my insurance company in its generic form. Which, as it happens, they didn't have. They did have the brand-name stuff and if I'd like to pay $40 for it it would be ready shortly.

Hmm. Let me see. $40 out of pocket for medicine I didn't want and really didn't need? Tempting...but no. Not now. Not fucking ever. Nicely, I declined her generous offer even though I thought about telling her where to shove them. Four and a half fucking hours in the ER in bad pain and I get a prescription for suppositories I don't need. What a fucking joke.

My guts hurt exactly the same when I went into that place as they did when I left. Wonderful. I walked slowly past the guard, for that was all the speed I could muster without passing out from the pain, sweats and dizzyness to the free phone for taxicabs. I called for a cab and went out into the cold night air.

There was a ring of squad cars around the entrance to the ER. Apparently one of the numerous codes I heard called on the intercom was a good one. Anyway, the cab came withing about 5 minutes. At last! Good service without a wait!

The cabbie was cool as most cabbies are. He got a big tip from me as he dropped me off at my front door. It was 3:30 AM.

I went upstairs and choked down a couple of pain pills from my broken ribs a couple years back. Acetominiphen with Codeine. 20 minutes later the awful pain in my guts was down to a manageable level and I was able to drop off to sleep. Now was that so hard? I spent most of Saturday in bed taking pills every 4 hours and drinking water. By Sunday at noon, I felt good enough to do laundry and dishes.

Although I appreciate the fact that I wasn't bleeding, the ER should have figured it out that a guy my size laying on the floor of the waiting room might just be worth a quick look. I really resent the fact that I was in a large amount of pain and nobody did fucking anything. Towards the end I even asked about giving me something for the pain in my gut, but I got jack doodly squat.

I understand that they're a bit shy about giving people pain pills at the drop of a hat, but it really chaps my ass to know that celebs like Rush and all the other perps that show up at thesmokinggun.com can get pain pills seemingly at will for maladies real and imagined and I can't get pain pills when I'm in pain. I once went 19 days with broken ribs without knowing it and probably two weeks without pain pills for those two broken ribs when someone at my clinic dropped the ball and didn't get my x-ray results back to my doc in due time. I toughed it out. I once went two weeks with a broken leg without knowing it. I walked on it for 13 days before I went in. The ski patrol said "If you're skiing on it, it ain't broken." The statute of limitations had expired before I figured that could have been a big payoff for me. I think I can handle a few pain pills.

So to Regions ER. Thanks for nothing. I appreciate your efforts, but my waiting in pain for almost 5 hours for jack squat pretty much assures me that I'll be lambasting you everytime I get the chance and also assures me that I'll not ever go there if given the choice again. We could have gone to St. Joe's that night and that will be the destination next time, I assure you.

UPDATE

Just to make sure my whole weekend was good and trashed, I've managed to put my back out. Nice. My wife has also informed me that I busted a blood vessel in the white of my right eye from vomiting. Yes, I vomited that hard.

Wednesday December 31, 2003

Happy New Year, everyone! No big plans here.

Not much to say, either.

Here's wishing you faster computers, less traffic, more booze and more free time in the coming year.