So, the t-mobile Sidekick goes away permanently at the end of my billing cycle, but given it's current state of not keeping a full charge for more than 18 hours or so--and that's in wait state--it's going to be non-functional a long time before that.
This is a phone that was one year old. When I compared the screen to the one on my new Treo 600, I was shocked at how bright and clear the Treo was. It also answered the question as to why I seemed to be developing situational presbyopia--it's not me, it the screen!
Called t-mobile. They wanted to know why I wanted to cancel their service. Well, I can't get or receive a call in my house. Did I consder standing next to a window. No, sorry--I can't run my life by trying to find a place where I can get signal.
I think the kicker was when Chuq and I drive back from Portland last Christmas. I didn't have signal all the way down the Oregon coast, and nothing on 101 going south into California until we hit Santa Rosa. That's about 600 miles with no service. One of the reasons I have a cell phone is to make sure that if I'm caught on the road, I can call someone.
They offered me 6 months free service. On a phone that has had its battery completely crap out in 12 months, with no service areas where I happen to be, and with a screen that's quickly meeting an ambient state of splah grey. Oy. I know this this the script, but really...
I really, really liked the concept of the Sidekick. Love the keyboard. I hope that the system I had was a lemon--the hookup for power went flakey about four months after I bought the beast, along with all the other stuff that just wore down over the year.
But between the lack of signal where I need signal, and the various physical breakdowns, the reality just wasn't pretty.
First round selections I picked:
SJ, Det, Cal, Tor, Tam
First round selections I missed:
NJ/Phl--Esche was hot, Brodeur was just there. Either he's found out he's not 20 anymore, or we'll be hearing about the cartilage removal some time over the summer.
Col/Dal: Turco didn't come back from his enforced vacation. I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to get the same rep Belfour had--gets you to the playoffs, and then implodes. Aebischer keeps surprising everyone-- I thought he had one more year to cook before he was ready.
Mtl/Bos: Theodore got hot just in time. I still see good things for Raycroft. He needs to get some offensive support from Boston, though. Thornton being hurt had an definite impact on this series.
Second round predictions
Tor/Phl: Belfour, and Clarke will make nasty remarks about how Esche isn't the answer after the series
Tam/Mtl: Close, but Theodore will continue his hot streak. You may see Khabibulin swapped out for Grahame by the 5th game.
Col/SJ: Nabakov will take the second round. He just keeps getting more focused. Aebischer should start out well, but will trail off.
Det/Cal: Kiprusoff is ready. Cujo is one tweak from being gone, and Legace is tired.
When checking out Medscape/Medline for lit on when you can expect the digestive system to fully com back on line post-surgery after the intitiation of oral re-feeding , I found that the preponderance of the lit having to do with restarting feeding by mouth had to do with bariatric surgery.
Yeesh
Since the meds that be have moved my blood pressure from pre-hypertensive to hypertensive, I was started on BP meds this past week. As I'm nasty allergic to most diuretics (Stevens Johnson syndrome from sulfa drugs), my doctor put me on lisinopril, which is an ACE inhibitor.
I took the first dose on Saturday. No dizziness, no cough, nothing.
But...
My low grade chronic vascular headache went away, and it's not been back.
Whoa
I checked the lit, and it turns out that in the UK, they are using ACE inhibitors for vascular headaches and migraines that don't react well to standard drug regimens. Well, woo-hoo! I'll take it!
As we've had three new sucralose-sweetened rootbeers appear on the market in the past month, a tasting was in order.
To my mind, there are three kinds of rootbeer "flavours":
1. Heavy vanilla, smooth--A&W has the best representation of this.
2. Spicy, with a bit of a bite--Barq's has this, and it was even better when it was local to New Orleans. Maybe when Coca Cola bought it, the move to corn syrup moderated the taste?
3. "Root beer barrel candy" taste--Dad's rootbeer is a good example of this. Heavy sassafrass flavour.
The three rootbeers we tried were:
1. Jones Sugar-free root beer. This is out of Vancouver, but I think the product in the states comes from Seattle. Bought this at Cosentino's, a local family-owned supermarket. $3.99 for a four-pack of 12 oz bottles
2. Boylans Bottleworks Diet Root Beer. This is an east-coast brand, which has rather spotty distribution out here on the west coast. I bought this at Oakville Grocery at Stanford Shopping Center. $1.29 for an 11.5oz bottle
3. Hansen's Creamy Head Diet root beer. Canned in Southern California. This is the latest I bought this at Trader Joe's in Sunnyvale. $1.89 for a six-pack.
All three were chilled in the garage mini-fridge for a day before tasting. Since flavour when chilled was important, the root beer wasn't removed from the refrigerator until we were ready to taste it.
We rated the root beer on a number of aspects, including:
1.Does it taste like "diet" anything? The root beer was rated down if there was a pronounced "diet" taste. Sugar vs corn syrup taste was preferred.
2. Creation of a "root beer head". Not only should a head form when the root beer is poured, the head should have a soft appearance and should not be ephemeral.
3. Root Beer "flavour". For the purpose of the tasting, any of the accepted root beer flavours were allowed. Off-flavours or overwhelming flavour were rated down.
Results:
1 )Jones Sugar Free Root Beer: The only area where this root beer was rated down was its total inability to form a good head. Even after pouring into the middle of a glass, the foam was small, indistinct, and disappeared within a few minutes.
The flavour was of the "root beer barrel candy" type, and fairly pronounced. However, it was not overwhelming, and left no aftertaste. This root beer had a very clean finish.
2) Boylans: This suffered in comparison with the Jones, as the flavour was not nearly as pronounced. In fact, it was difficult to discern what variant of root beer flavour it had. It had better foaming than Jones, and had a very nice "sugar-sweetened" taste to the root beer. It left a slighly sweet aftertaste. If someone is not a fan of the "root beer candy" flavour of root beer, this would be an acceptable choice.
3) Hansen's: The only two items we could think of that were positives for this root beer is that it's lots cheaper than the other two, and it had an impressive head. The flavour was something that approached root beer but wasn't root beer, a similar problem we've found in the past with Hansen's sugar-free ginger ale. Not recommended, unless you're looking for something cheap to mix in with other flavours.
Conclusions: If you're going to drink a good sucralose-sweetened root beer, you're going to pay for the privilege. However, prices are consistent with aspartame-sweetened small batch root beers, such as Stewart's. However, the root beer afficianado should be assured that what there is, a lot are highly drinkable.
I was looking for something to wear before I wandered off to the Sharks game this morning, and the wander through the drawers brought up my fiarly old, really cool Calgary Flames jersey.
The sweatshirt has "Campbell Conference Champions" on one arm, "Stanley Cup Champions" on the other, and a nice imprint of Mike Vernon in goal on the front. We're talking the 88-89 season, so this was bought while the Sharks were still a good idea, but not having yet shown up.
There's a good story that goes along with the sweatshirt. The day I had my right kneecap put back in place, I wanted to wear something warm. The sweatshirt, once I pulled it down, went down to about mid-thigh. I hobbled out wearing that sweatshirt, athletic shorts, and standard jock shoe and sockwear.
Not being gifted with loads of patience regarding surgery and being darned bored, I decided later that day to wander in to work. Still wearing that gear, and a big honking chunk of elastic bandages and tape over the knee, I grabbed my cane, drove to work, and limped on in.
Who do I run into while in the lobby of IL6 at Apple but Michael Spindler. If looks could kill, I wouldn't be writing this right now. Obviously I wasn't dressed to properly give Apple all my professional attention. Yeah, right.
I gave him a hearty, "yo, dude!", and got into the elevator.
I outlasted Spindler by quite a few years, and when I left Apple, I left of my own volition, I didn't expect them to pay me to go away.
And I still have a way cool sweatshirt.
Well, at the ripe old age of 46, I finally have a name for what's going on with me, and it only took a DO (osteopath) who asked the right questions and who had the right knowledge to figure it out.
Background--for those of you who know me, you know I have really, really flexible joints. I've probably shown you the "turn all my fingers 90 degrees and cross them all over sideways" trick. Or you've seen me with my shoulder rotated in, my elbow rotated out, and my hand resting on my thigh, pointed towards me. That, I have learned, is something that somewhere between completely freaks or grosses most people out, and I was just unaware that it evoked that reaction. Sorry--for me, that's a natural pose.
I may have also mentioned that I am an absolute terror to get blood out of, because my veins roll, wiggle, and otherwise utterly refuse to stay in place for the needle. And since I have very thin, very light skin, you can see the veins, and you can see what happens when it takes five sticks to get a bleed.
Maybe I didn't mention the multiple dislocations. Or I may have bitched that when Tatiana the cockatoo slides down Chuq's arm, it doesn't leave a scar that takes a year to fade. Me? I end up with big pink streaks that makes it look like I'm in a constantly losing battle with overgrown rose bushes. Hey, it's just that effing celtic tissue paper skin, right? And those bruises--more of the same, right?
So, when I had a physicial yesterday, and the DO started asking me questions like "so, can you touch your thumb to your forearm?" Well of course, that's why I was such a bear to spar against in Kung Fu classes--there's not a hold that you can't put on me that I can't "turn around in my skin" and get out of.
I scored 7-9 (the test for bending back the pinkie finger was unclear--does that need to be bending over 90 degrees backwards at the proximal joint?) out of 9 on the "do this" test. I also scored "at least one major and at least two minor" in the dislocation derby (shoulders, knees, right hip, and all multiple times).
And then he took out the stethescope and listened to my heart. And then he made me lie down and listened to my heart. Hello, benign idiopathic murmur--oh, you caught it--yeah, it's not always "there".
And he turned to me and asked me if there were other people in my family who could do the joint tricks. Yup--I could trace it straight up my father's side of the family--my father and his brothers were, as my mother would say "a bunch of bloody contortonists, the lot of them". And a couple of great-uncles who could used to do the escape artist tricks by dislocating their thumbs, elbows, or shoulders as needed. So yeah, familial, inherited, and I seem to be the only one in this generation who does the same "tricks". Oh yeah, a number of the same people made it nicely into their mid to late 80's, only to suddenly drop dead.
And then he asked me if I had heard of hypermobility syndrome, specifically Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Um, no.
You mean all this stuff has a name? And it all goes together?
And why the heck are you so interested in that murmur, anyway?
So, I win a trip to rheumatology for lots more testing. Mainly, they want to see what sort of hypermobility syndrome I have. The guess is Ehlers Danlos, of which there are a bunch of variations on. Upshot? My connective tissue isn't as tight and strong as it ought to be, because I don't produce collagen correctly.
The murmur? It may still be benign. It may also be a pointer towards mitral valse prolapse, which turns out is one of the worries with this syndrome.
Oh, and the other is aortic dissection. Think John Ritter.
Well, *that* sucks.
So, on the one hand, I'm rather relieved to have a bunch of this stuff tied up with a nice bow. At least now I *know* what's going on. I look at my family tree and see that since I don't smoke, and I don't have a bad habit of testing supersonic jets or ending up on the wrong side of a revolution in South America, I fit in with the group who lasted into their 80's
But if the diagnosis goes in the direction indicated, given I don't walk in front of a bus, I've pretty much been told how I'm going to make the exit. That just has me saying "huh" right now.
I guess it's going to be an interesting April....
Today's brekkie--fried eggs on a tortilla, covered in Thai sweet chili garlic sauce.
re: Stanley Cup playoffs--I'm going to do this a different way. I'm going to pick the winners based on who I think has the hotter goaltending crew *right now*.
East
Ott/Tor: Tor--Belfour's in better shape than anyone Ottawa currently has
Bos/Mtl: Bos--Raycroft will get them through one round
Tam/NYI: Tam--Either Tampa goalie is good for one round
Phi/NJD: NJD--C'mon, it's Brodeur
West
Van/Cal: Cal--Kiprusoff is ready right now. Cloutier hasn't impressed me.
SJS/StL: SJS--I just don't think that Osgood has the extra oomph needed
Dal/Col: Dal--Definitely Turco over Aebischer
Det/Nas: Det--Legace can carry Detroit until Cujo is back
Why does this remind me of those "grand and glorious" battle stories from Arthurian lit, where we get to hear about the various brave knights and such, but they always fail to mention all the peasants who get trampled in the melee?
I was watching the Bruins/Devils game yesterday, and while listening to the explanation of how many ways the eastern conference teams could match up in the first round, I though how this could make a really great first semester coding assignment.
I mean, does anyone even play Mastermind anymore? I think I must have helped out hundreds of students trying to figure out that one. Give them something where they might make a connection to something they actually think about. For extra credit, give them the line, have them play with rand, and go through all four rounds, with the appropriate reshuffles.
Of course, the graders who are grading for the one true answer are going to actually have to *look* at that code.
You'd think Seattle was dripping with moss, given all the commercials about moss removers I've seen while watching KOMO this morning. The gardening shows have had pieces on how to remove moss.
Is there some fascination with moss in the PNW that I'm missing out on? Yeah, I can see why you'd want to get it off the steps--it can get slick, and it will break down the concrete. But blasting it off of everything?