I’ll Tell You What…

I missed Talk Like a Pirate Day! It was Sep 19. I’ve been talking about it all year at work.

The word for the upcoming 2007 year is:

Permanicity - It is defined as the measure of an object, idea, concept, etc.’s permanence.

This was posted just to increase the so-called SE Rank for that word.

Radar Magazine has a list of “the 10 most dangerous play things of all time.” It’s worth checking out.

Well, I came across this site that says that I can get a free Apple product. I chose the Mac Book Pro. I couldn’t help but wonder if this thing would really work so I signed up.

So, what do you say? Would you like to help me out while getting your own Mac product?

Blood clots really hurt. One formed in a vein on the back of my hand where the IV was inserted. Warm compress and Advil to thin the blood was the only prescription given to me.

I’m approaching the 2-day post op mark and I must say that this hasn’t been fun. Of course, nobody said it was going to be fun but I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was.

My anesthesiologist knocked me out while I wasn’t paying attention. Usually they will say something like, “Count back from 100…” I never made it past 93. And the next thing I know I’m writhing in pain in recovery and trying to breathe around my oxygen mask. I heard sentence fragments such as “increase the morphine dosage” and “Let’s switch to Dilaudid.” I also heard, “I’m taking your wallet” but that was just my ex-wife letting me know that since I would be staying over-night at the hospital she would hold on to my wallet. I never doubted I would get it back in one piece because I trust her.

Honestly, I have never experienced pain to such a degree. Even in the midst of my harshest RSD pain, it was never close to the pain I felt post op. It took several more hours to get the pain under control. That was not the highlight of my day!

No, the highlights came in the form of nurses. All three of the nurses that took care of me were wonderful. They were genuine in their concern for me and they made me feel as though I was the only patient on the second floor. I will have to find out their names so I can send them some flowers. I’m sure they would appreciate it.

It’s good to be home.

All blood tests were normal (except for the liver test), CT scan was normal, HIDA scan was normal (except for some pain during the constriction phase), upper GI endoscopy (with biopsies) was normal…

Next stop, appointment with a surgeon to get an opinion regarding gall bladder removal. Yeah! What makes this even better is that I have to wait 3 weeks to get an opinion! Yeah, again!!!

Well, last Wednesday I went to the specialist (a gastroenterologist). All my symptoms appear to point in different directions. I could potentially have mononucleosis, diabetes, a gall bladder infection, any number of liver diseases or a combination of all the above. If this were a multiple choice exam I might choose gall bladder problems since it’s very easy to remove. In around breakfast, home in time for a lunch you probably shouldn’t eat yet.

Anyway, the doc wrote up a lab order consisting of 20+ different blood tests. Yea! The nurses took out eleven (11) vials of blood. Yea, again! Plus, I won wants behind door number two. A nuclear scan!!! Ding, ding, ding! Actually it’s called a HIDA scan. I’m not exactly sure what it reveals other than gall bladder problems and possibly some liver problems. My doctor’s a very smart guy so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.

My doctor’s nurse called me this morning to verify the date of my lab work because they haven’t received the results. I told them last Wednesday. They were going to call the lab at the hospital and give them an ear full. Ha! I really wish I would hear something very soon (like tomorrow) because I’m not getting any better, in fact, I think I’m getting a little worse.

Pray for me. It’s been a rough two weeks.

Thanks.

When I was self-learning C, Pascal and C++ I always did very well until the section on pointers came along. I'm not sure what the aversion was to those things but now they present themselves, with even more nifty little symbols, in Perl. I know they aren't the exactly the same thing but they work very similar in practice. Here's one of the review questions.

What is x in these expressions? ("hash reference", "array of scalar references", etc.)

1. $$x
2. ${$x}[0]
3. %$x
4. ${$x[0]}
5. @{$x[0]}
6. %{$x{"java"}}
7. @{$x}{"perl", "c"}
8. ${${$x{"perl"}}[0]}{"rules"}

Oh boy! Here's a quote from today that is so very true:

Objects will not save the world nor will it save a failing project.

Here's one from the slides:

Perl's OO is fully buzzword compliant

• single inheritance, multiple inheritance, delegation, polymorphism, encapsulation, operator overloading, persistence, multiple dispatch, ...
• every buzzword is optional

The following are all equal:

sub new {
    my %object;
    my $class = shift;
    bless(\%object, $class);
    return \%object;
}

sub new {
    my %object;
    bless(\%object, shift);
}

sub new {
    my $objref = {};
    bless($objref, shift);
}

sub new { bless {}, shift }

Whew!

First day of Perl training and I must say that Tom Christiansen is most impressive. I’ve never seen anyone push vi to the limit as he does. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with what he’s doing because he’s so fast.

He’s a funny guy, too. Here’s one of his quotes from today:

The answer to all Perl questions is “yes.” The more disturbing answer is “yes, but…”

Maybe you just had to have been there.

He called a lot of stuff “icky” today such as the weather. I’m not sure he intended to or not but after a bit it started to get a little humorous.

Icky little cmd.exe in Windows.

Remember, printing a Perl POD is as easy as typing

$ pod2man mods16 | groff -Tps -man | lpr -P


This can sometimes be your friend:

$ cat -v -t -e -n

where -v displays non-printing characters, -t displays tab characters as ^I, -e displays $ at the end of each line, and -n numbers the lines starting with 1. I find it to be a lot faster than typing

$ vi

and then typing “:set nu” and “:set list” when I just want to see what’s going on in a certain line. YMMV.

I travelled up to Sugar Loaf Community and drove around for a long time taking pictures. Checking a topographical map, I think reached an altitude of ~8,000 ft. I could start to feel the effect of low oxygen in the air but it wasn’t too bad. It was just a little distressing when my breathing rate increased subconsciously and yet I still could not get a satisfying deep breath.

According to the Navy, there’s a decrease in oxygen between 18 and 19% in Boulder alone. And at 8,000 ft, there is an oxygen deficiency of 19.5%. That 0.5 to 1.5% decrease in oxygen was very noticeable to me. Maybe that’s because I live at an altitude of 30 ft

Hopefully, I’ll some pictures up on my photo website soon.

The seats on a Super 80 just aren’t as comfortable as they used to be. My left leg feel asleep a number of times on both legs of my flight and because of that I only got about an hour’s worth of sleep. Oh well. At least I made in one piece, thank you, Lord.

The Denver airport is at least 45 miles away from Boulder and it seemed like much more since I wasn’t sure where I was going. To make things a little more anxious, I’d forgotten to bring my map that had the route to the hotel. But, again, the Lord was guiding me it seemed. Once I found myself just coming into Boulder I started thinking that I should take this exit or that exit. But the over-riding thought was to just stay on my present course. The interstate I was on turned into the main thoroughfare (28th Street) which made me to really start second guessing my earlier decisions. But I stayed on 28th and just about the time I was about to turn I found the street I need, Valmont. I found it hard to say it was all just luck so I quit trying.

After I found the hotel and checked in I went to the Olive Garden for some lunch. I think I left there around 2 PM MST and went straight to bed. After a good seven hours of sleep, I got up took my nighttime medicine and went back to bed. Nothing eventful happened that day.