My wife called the doctor to find out if any results were in … The Catscan came back and they say nothing has changed since the first one, so everything is all the same as far as that’s concerned … This is good news … Now we wait for the other results …
Category: General
Hospital Visit
So I don’t eat or drink anything after midnight … I got home from Grape St. and watch Slapshot 2 until about 4AM … Wake up and get ready to go … No deodorant for the manogram … Get to the hospital at 8:10AM … I register and get a cool new bracelet with my name and birthday on it … It was free!
Go to the radiology department and first up is the ultrasound of my right side … I got a student in the bargain as well … a young girl with long blonde hair … She is present for the ultrasound … I have to pull up my shirt and they pour the jelly on me and begin sailing around my tummy with the thingamajig … After some deep breaths and holding them, I turn on my side … the same thing … Then the woman that did the ultrasound asked if I would mind having the student check it out for a while … Hey, a threesome! So I was into it … She had me doing deep breaths in no time … Done test 1.
Next up was the CT scan with contrast … I go over to that department and I’m asked questions and off I go … They prick your arm and get a tube going in so they can shoot the dye in for the Catscan … That was a bit painful … I could feel that needle swinging around in there until she taped it down … She did a little test and off I went … The thingamajigs start spinning around and then you get all warm all over … I shut my eyes … A little woozy for whatever reason, off I go back to the other side for the manogram … Done test 2.
Sit and watch Regis until they take me to the manogram room … Off with the shirt I point to where I feel the lump and she marks it with a piece of tape that has like a tiny ball bearing on it … They scan both boobies when they do this test … and they smoosh them up pretty good … I’m sure no matter what size your boobies are, they’re gonna get them in this machine … Squish my right, “don’t breathe”, take it from the side, “don’t breathe” … Then the same for the left … I sit and wait while she goes off to see if they’re okay … (I guess to see if I breathed) … She comes back and says they don’t see anything on the test but I ought to get a ultrasound of the lump … great, I was just there … and they can take me in about 30 minutes … Done test 3.
Over to the other side of radiology where they take you in the big table rooms … Xray of my lumbar spine is up next … A cute little girl calls my name and I’m off into a private room with her … After she assesses my sweatpants that there’s no metal in them, we can proceed … Lay on the table on my back, and we shoot a couple “hold your breath” … lay a little cocked to my left with a pillow or something under me … same for the right … Then have to lay on my left side and get my back perfectly straight … Then off she goes to make sure they’re okay while I wait there on the table … I hear people talking … I hear someone yell “You’re going to die!” Not the thing you’d like to hear in a hospital, but it was followed with something like, ‘You’re going to die … How could you tell such and such that about me’ … She comes back and has to redo the straight one on my left side … She positions me as she pleases … “Hold your breath” … Wait again … I can hear her talking to someone about the length of her hair … She comes back, okay! Done test 4.
Back over to the ultrasound people … We watch Tony Danza talking to Mrs. Brady herself, Florence Henderson … David? … I turn around and there’s this girl that looks at me like she knows me … It’s the blonde student from earlier, but she put her hair in a pony tail … This time I go behind a curtain to get “unchanged” … Put on a hospital gown backwards, with the opening to the front … More goo … The student does all the testing this time followed by the teacher … Was in there a while as they played with my boob lump … Had to stay there again while they asked the people that requested the test if they wanted anything else … Nope, I wiped off the goo and got “unchanged” again … Done test 5.
I decided to go full tilt with my first meal of the day and took a ride over to Applebee’s … I think it was 11:15AM when my wife and I went in there … I told her about the tests and the things I had heard in there … The different things they made me do, etc … The student and the teacher said the most things, and it sounded to me like they didn’t see anything, but who knows? They thought there was nothing out of the ordinary the first ultrasound, and then the one of lumpy was just muscle tissue … But again, I think doctors review the pictures that they take and decide from there … So those were the tests … We’ll wait and see what the results say …
Changed it again
So, I decided to change the look of the site again … Went a bit darker this time … I also saved the old format so if I ever want to go back to it, I can … I changed the fonts around too … If you feel like it, you could let me know what you think of it … Is it too small? Is it too dark? Is it just right? … How the heck would I know … I decided to give up on trying to make MSIE happy … It just does weird things that come so easy to Firefox … If you’re not using Firefox, you’re not seeing the WWW …
Moping Around
So I was moping around about the doctor visit, and I was thinking about this coming Friday (today) … I’m traveling down to Columbia, MD for St. Patrick’s Day … Not the best thing I could think of doing for St. Patrick’s Day, but that’s not my decision … Octane is working at Nottingham’s … They wanted us to load in at 11:00am this morning, but that wasn’t going to happen … Two thirds of the crew have day jobs that prohibits this … The thought of sitting around and doing nothing after we load in besides the fact that it’s over a 2 hour drive just to get down there … Blah! Anyway, so I’m figuring that we won’t use what we normally use there …
I usually bring in my FOH board and run through their system … They’re not normally too happy about me taking up floor space, but there’s a nice cubby hole where I go that works well … I’m thinking that for St. Patrick’s Day and amatuer hour that I won’t be brining in a board that costs $7500 and a rack full of about $10Gs in gear not to mention sitting my $2000 laptop on top … So, instead of trying to fit a place for my laptop in a house system situation, I finally broke down and bought the iPod … I thought it might cheer me up having this thing to mess around with … It didn’t entirely … Money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness … Maybe I was concerned that I shouldn’t have spent that money on the iPod … They aren’t cheap you know … $399 plus tax … Then I got the case for it ($35) and a docking station ($99) … Makes it an expensive toy … The case is justified as I think you need to protect something that costs $399 and is that small … I’m sure it will earn its worth in the future …
So here I sit, just hours away before I have to get into it all … Not looking forward to it, but I am usually optimistic about these things … The situation usually warrants that it turns out to be a good one … Octane is a good band to work for in that they play music that I can get into … If I’m lucky, the music usually takes me away from the situation …
Lost
If anyone sees the traffic that my hosting gets, they will have noticed high usage on my T1 … I was lent LOST season 1 on DVD to watch … I had never seen LOST except for flipping around when something else I watched wasn’t on … So, nothing to watch one night, we pop in LOST and begin … I watched those 24 episodes in 2 days … So I’m hooked … There have been 15 episodes aired for the 2nd season already … What to do?
I was talking with someone who mentioned downloading TV shows that they’ve missed … I have no idea whether it is illegal or not, but I had no problems finding the 2nd season of LOST available for download in DivX format … This was my first experience with a BitTorrent client and using that form of transfer … I got something called Azureus and fired that up … Seemed quite easy, but I had to share my T1 for the period of time that it took to download … I then was able to catch up on the 2nd season and I’m ready for a new episode, but they have been reruns … I also downloaded Fedora Core 4 and Debian Sarge, but did that the old fashioned way, FTP …
Note to Feds: If it is illegal to download television shows, I’m sorry, but I was addicted to the show and had to see what happened next … I am not sharing the files I downloaded, only watched them to see what happened next and catch up so I don’t have to avoid the television on Wednesday nights …
Thunderbird 1.5
I didn’t know it, but a new version of Thunderbird came out … With the new version of Firefox, it does version checking so you know when a new release is available, and you have the option to download and install it immediately … I imagine they have done the same implementation with Thunderbird …
I also got a little creative and tried some themes for Thunderbird and I’ve settled on one called CrossOver 2.2 … It is an Aqua type theme and it is a little more intuitive in its colors than the default Thunderbird theme …
The screen shot I posted here is enough to show you the layout of the screen and the effect that the Aqua type theme has on Thunderbird’s display … It’s also small enough that you can’t make out what it says on the screen without me having to go in there and edit away my email addresses and messages … In addition to this theme, I’ve changed the theme of my desktop to make the window borders small … I don’t like too much screen real estate being taken up by wasted space …
The Crossover 2.2 icons are a bit more intuitive … I now understand what a few of them mean (like if an account is using POP-SSL), and the highlighting is done by color rather than just by boldface … Also viewing messages changes the colors of the quotes and different colors for multi-level quotes …
I don’t know that any of this would simply be possible by going into Thunderbird as it comes and make changes, but just popping in this theme made changes that I’m happy with, so I’ll stick with it … Hopefully you will have desireable results as well …
I can’t stress enough the amazing response I get using Firefox and Thunderbird for my Internet experience … That’s the reason I have links to them on my page here … If you use the Internet as much as I do, these are required for your usage and protection …
AOL Postmaster: Revisited
Spoke too soon? AOL still blocks my FreeBSD mail server … After a third party originally got the ball rolling with AOL last Friday night, and my follow up and resolution Saturday afternoon, the problem persisted into Tuesday morning …
I again called AOL Postmasters and this time they say that the ticket opened that day by the third party was opened and closed at 2/28/06 12:50 EST … They say that whatever happened Saturday was referenced by this new ticket as it did not “take” and that the 48 hour wait time started at this new time of 12:50 …
I asked what they were going to tell me Thursday when I called back …
AOL Postmaster
I recently spoke directly to an employee of America Online whose job it is to manage the ability of outsiders to send AOL users email … The employee said that they are the “red headed stepchildren” of AOL … They are for the simple reason that stopping the ability for a legitimate host to send AOL users email seriously screws up that person’s business …
I blame drunk people … and the reason I blame drunk people is due to the fact that all of my problems dealing with the inability to send AOL email stems from people that signed up on a band or bars email list and then report those messages when they come in to their inbox as a Terms of Service (TOS) violation to AOL … They say that the emails they’re getting are unsolicited email … The fact is, these people requested that they receive those emails … Rather than click on the unsubscribe link (which I never do myself), they shove the email over to the TOS …
The reason I myself never click on an unsubscribe link is because in most UCE, that link is simply a ruse to verify your email address and will do nothing but generate more SPAM … But in the case of the band or bar, I think those users should realize, hey, I was at that bar, or I saw that band, and it’s quite possible that I signed up for an elist that I really don’t want … In this case, having the familiararity of that band or bar ought to be enough to verify that the unsubscribe link isn’t in fact a ruse, but a legitimate way to stop the flow of email to that person … But we are talking about AOL users here, and drunk ones at that …
So, taking this many steps further, those drunk AOL users that willy nilly report these emails as SPAM and get my mail server denied access to AOL’s mail servers completely screw up the ability of a person I host who has nothing to do with bands or bars and don’t even drink that regularly at all … Maybe a cocktail at a holiday party to get warm and fuzzy for a little while … So Susie who hosts a simple site to display the photos of her new children can’t email Mom and Dad (who access AOL across the country) to tell them that there’s Day 5 pictures posted … Why?
Because AOL empowers their users to shut off my mail server even if it’s because AOL users are stupid idiots … What did the AOL employee have to say about that? That AOL receives fees from their customers and will do whatever their customers tell them to do because they’re paying them to do it … Oh! Well, guess we should bake them a cake? … But what about Susie’s parents? They never asked that their daughter’s email be shut off to them … Oh well … The AOL employee agrees that there are certain users that probably shouldn’t be allowed access to a computer …
Here’s another way I get screwed … An AOL user wants their own domain … They now have web space and a mail server … Instead of taking the time to learn that new mail server and all of the wonderful features that it provides, they simply set up one email address and forward all of that email to their AOL email account … Then, when SPAM comes through their domain and forwarded to their AOL account, they TOS that SPAM … Well, where did that SPAM come from? Their domain hosted on my servers, so basically *I* am getting blamed for that SPAM, and again, I am being shut down by AOL due to a stupid AOL user … bah!
With coding comes satisfaction
I’ve been coding an update to a web application I developed in mid 2001. I originally wrote it in ASP and since I’ve scrapped that proprietary language for the more versatile PHP, this is the direction I’ve taken … Along the way, cleaning up the code is happening as well as adding more features to the application … I’ve already implemented a completely new user authentication system … While working on this code as a whole, other things have come up that required me to implement them into other projects, so I go off on tangents a bit … The overhead flourescent got turned off and I’m back in reflected off the ceiling incandescent bliss … My kids and wife came to the dungeon and asked why I had shut the light out … Each one of them individually … I told them that I didn’t shut the lights out, just switched which lights were on …
Anyway, I have already begun using the application although not finished … Handling receiving of payments has been completely rewritten so it is much easier on me … This is normally what held up the completion of each month’s cycle in the past … Due to this update, that should not ever be an issue again … I also merged the application … Whereas I used to log into a system separately and let the registered users into their own version of the code, I am merging the purposes of the files to serve those privileged and those that are not … I am also asking for input from the wife as I hope she can start to get into doing things on the computer rather than the occasional lookup on the web for driving directions or something … Would like to get her into full fledged email and computer understanding …
Finally what will happen is that I will write system level scripts to be run automatically by the computers … This way things that need to be run at a certain time or date will happen … I will also add the running of these scripts to run more often and I will start bugging people more often than I have in the past … This should help me in many ways … Along with those scripts revolving around this application to be run on a scheduled basis, I will also have the scripts within the application leave breadcrumbs around for other scripts that will be run on a schedule act according to those breadcrumbs … This should take a bunch of administration out of my hands and automate it for me … I should have done this a long time ago … How crazy I get with it has yet to be determined … I don’t know what snags lay before me …
D.I.Y.
So our home phone no longer had a dialtone … We called for service and they came out … I was asleep at the time … Wish I wasn’t cause the guy royally screwed it up … He told my wife that things were screwed up outside … That he hooked it up properly and didn’t know why it wasn’t working … He traced some of my internal lines and couldn’t get to where some of them went and marked where the line came in and was working … That I would have to take it from there … What this guy did was rewire it at the pole so it came in on my defunct DSL connection … WRONG! … Being that that’s where it was, I figured out how to mount those wire in the demarc and get the line working internal to the house … I’m not happy about the connection now coming in that way as it’s now accessible on the back of my house whereas the other 7 or 8 lines come in on this big black cable … I’m not using all those lines anymore, they were for the now defunct BBS I had running when I moved in … The Internet took care of that …
This past Wednesday, February 1st 2006 Octane opened up at the TLA for Pray for the Soul of Betty which is Constantine from American Idol‘s band … Considering all of the concern prior to the show, it went fine for me … I made Octane sound good and everybody was happy … I didn’t meet the guy, but I was in his presence and that was interesting enough for me … I didn’t attempt to meet him either as I wouldn’t have had anything to say to him except that I saw him on TV … Still the highlight of my Octane career has been meeting Gene Simmons whereas I did have a conversation at length with him and he signed a copy of his book for me …
ICUHost.Net Billing went out and I also sent out a newsletter … After reading the letter and rereading it, I emailed it out and I missed a blatant misspelling … Damn! … I have started developing a replacement billing application that will replace the ASP one I wrote years ago … I am writing the new one in PHP … I am also using a different authorization system than I normally use for other sites I’ve secured up … This one does hash checking as well as email address verification through links and stuff … Pretty cool … Needed something like this for keeping tabs on customers and verifying new ones … I can’t tell you how many people I just didn’t set up because they were from out of state … Even though they signed up and everything, when I didn’t get back to them, they didn’t get back to me, so I guess I was pretty good in sniffing out the fakers … So hard to trust anyone on the Internet these days … Anyway, along with the new authorization methods, the new billing application will be able to verify domains via different databases and I’ll have a way better handle on billing and domain management … There have been domains that I’ve set up but never assigned to a user and they got a free site for months … When I started verifying DNS against accounts, this won’t happen … I’ll be able to check balances and anything past due I can update the DNS records and inactivate the site … Writing it in PHP allows me to utilize the command line and schedule the billing to run as I see fit … I think I will end up running something weekly if not daily … It will check many things for me that I have not been able to check on a regular basis … Right now, I have someone who moved their site, name servers and everything, but I see that they’re using my mail server and other stuff that I haven’t inactivated … I don’t think that’s right, and with automation, these things won’t happen …
Anyway … no time … need more time … We didn’t win PowerBall … We will this Saturday though …