FNFD.BLOG

It seems that in-line skates and patches of mud hidden in the shadows at the bottom of a hill do not mix. Pretty much as soon as I saw it, I knew I was in trouble. Once one foot mysteriously jumped off to the side, the trouble escalated to…whatever it is that is after trouble, possibly missing time followed by assessment of injury.

Judging by the evidence of direction of scratches on my wrist guards, skates and pads and where I’m sore, and where the patches of mud are on what I was wearing, I have developed the following scenario.

I hit hands, knees, and toes first, off center towards the left. As those points caught on the pavement, I rolled over left hitting my left elbow and butt, finishing on my back, crushing the water bottle on my backpack, and since the backpack elevates me, hitting the top of my head on the ground.

No significant damage to anything, just a few scrapes and bruises. There are some pretty deep cuts in my knee pads though, which I’m thankful are not in my knees. Apparently I had a small tripod with me as well. Now I have a mono-pod.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
1 Comment

I’m almost certain there was a story in there somewhere, but it got kind of lost in the “someone put the Blair Witch camera work in a cement mixer.” It probably is pretty authentic of what would happen if you gave a camera to someone who has never seen one before and then had him flee New York, but an authentic documentary of what not to do with a camera may not have been the primary goal. I have a fairly strong constitution, but watching this movie made me feel like I’ve been on a really poorly maintained rollercoaster, suffering from headache and nausea.

Other than that, it wasn’t too bad. There was a big monster, things collapsed and exploded, people acted against their own best interests (ie the interest of not being killed) with predictable results. In general, a monster movie. And one in which I hope that somewhere out there there is someone who was able to watch closely enough, long enough to tell me what was going on.

On the plus side, there as a preview for Ironman, which could very well be an actually good movie based on a Marvel comic.

Filed under: I'm a geek,Scott Complaining
1 Comment

There was a lot of rain last night. That is a pretty good thing, what would be better would be if perhaps the rain would stay outside. A mysterious lake of water formed at my computer desk overnight. Hopefully it was just a one-time kind of thing due to an unusual wind direction pushing the rain in through my door, because while having one’s socks suddenly become cold and wet is a good way to to shake off any remaining drowsiness, it’s not really the best option.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
No Comments

So, yesterday my computer was being very slow for most of the day. After rebooting, I no longer had access to my second drive. Some additional inquires have lead to the conclusion that something very bad has happened to it, and it’s no longer readable in any way.

This is fairly unfortunate, since that was the drive that all of my programs and data were being stored on, so I’m going to need to get a new one and accept the loss of most pictures I’ve taken from the time I switched from my old computer to the new one. I’ve probably downloaded some things too, but that’s not particularly significant, since I can just get it again whenever I remember what it was and why I needed it. Maybe I’ll get two drives and have them mirror each other so that this is less likely in the future.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
1 Comment

Well, it’s been a week of 12 hour days, with things going less than well in the lab, on the opposite side of the country from where I would prefer to be, in the cold with daily rain. But, I don’t feel particularly badly about it as a whole. The hotel was in a mall-like area with a lot of restaurants, so I could eat somewhere different every night within walking distance of the hotel. Not great places, being of the Corner Bakery, California Pizza Kitchen, Joe’s Crab Shack, generic Japanese-Thai variety, but certainly places to go and eat.

One thing comes to mind when I think of the trip, and that is driving around the DC area. Now, as I understand it, the LA area is supposed to be notorious for stressful driving, however, it was a relief to be back into that kind of traffic this afternoon. It’s traffic I can understand, on roads that have obvious names and ordinary exits. As opposed to signs which only list the direction I don’t want to go in, leading to roads with no label which only have a way to get over to the parallel road which has the actual exits every 18 miles or so. Keeping in mind that I’m not good at navigating at the best of times, but adding in darkness and other difficulties it really wasn’t all that surprising that I made the wise decision to take the only exit I could find that was not some sort of toll, and make my way back to Dulles to try again. Had I gone another mile before turning back, I would have been to where there is an exit to get me where I wanted to be.

On the plus side, Radar is home again now, so I’ll have some company. Once he settles down instead of being more crazy than usual. Probably I should do the same.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
No Comments

So, on today’s issue of my luck being legendarily bad, doctors.

Saturday, or possibly Sunday morning, I woke up with some abdominal pain on the lower left side. This was not overly concerning, as pains just happen sometimes. Also, most of the interesting problems hurt on the right side. However, it was still hurting on Tuesday when I went back to work, and if you are going to need to see a doctor, it should be on a day you are supposed to be working and not a day you have off. So I called the number for my doctor on my insurance card.

That number immediately comes up with the “type in the name of the person you are trying to reach” auto-response thingy. Well, my doctor’s name came up with nothing, so I tracked down an operator. As it turns out, my doctor has become injured, and has been out for 4 weeks, or 4 months, or something, I wasn’t listening too closely. So, I had to call in to Blue Shield to see what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to go to my assigned doctor. After several rounds, the situation set in, and she asked me if I wanted to change doctors. Which I did, so she assigned me a new one. The change being effective December 1st. I explained that this was less than ideal, as I am in pain now, I could be dead by December 1st (actually not that second part, if I let them catch on that I might be seriously ill, they’d probably drop my policy). In any case, it turns out that she was able to make the change effective retroactively to November 1st.

In calling my new doctor, it turns out the office has moved, so I got a different number to call. After calling, it turns out that my doctor will be out for 4 weeks. On the plus side, another doctor is covering for him, so I decided to take the risk that maybe Blue Shield won’t find out I went to someone other than my primary care physician, and all will be well.

He poked me for a while, and we determined that, yes, I do have pain where I thought I was having pain and that I have a slight fever. Other than that, there isn’t much other than a list of things I probably don’t have due to being younger than they normally show up (Well, look at my day, things that should not happen to anyone happen to me regularly, so I probably _do_ have something that only appears in the elderly)

Today, I’m feeling a bit better, and also got to give samples of various bodily fluids for tests, so next week I’ll have a better idea of what I don’t have, also what I do have in terms of cholesterol. If you are taking my blood, you might as well give me something useful.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
2 Comments

You know, any day where the phrase “A vacuum cleaner fell on my head” comes into play may not be the best day.

The vacuum doesn’t work very well on the stairs, it’s just too wide to really get any suction, but it does have a flexible tube with a wand for just such a thing. The first step went pretty well and I was almost done with the second one, when there was a flash of yellow and a fairly significant whack on the top of my head.

Quite frankly, the top of the stairs can just stay unvacuumed for all I care at this point.

Filed under: Scott Complaining
1 Comment

Over the last few months, my computer has been having more and more problems of the “freeze up and then refuse to boot anymore” type. So, it’s been getting time to upgrade, and since I don’t do that very often, when I do, no new component is compatible with anything I already have, so I have to do everything at once.

This leads to the problem of trying to figure out where the problem is if (or more accurately, when) it doesn’t work, since I have no way of testing the individual components.

Which leads us here:

The bare minimum bits of the old computer needed to run so that I have something to use while I fight with the various problems that have taken residency in the case they used to occupy.

I’m going to have to remember to A) Not put my feet in it, and B) Turn if off when I’m done so the cat doesn’t lick it.

In other, less home bound news, I went and played some whiffleball with some MeetIN people yesterday. I’m not sure 2 on 3 with copious use of ghost runners is regulation whiffleball, but it was a pretty good time. Particularly considering that I was on the team of 2 and we won quite handily during the almost complete inning we actually played. It was very hot, and we had other things to go do.

Like watch a modified version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a park in Sierra Madre. The essential change was of the “What if it was set on 1950′s Georgia college campus where the Dean for some reason has the power to execute students who don’t marry who their father wants them to marry?” Even if I do make fun of the premise a bit, it was a good show, and now I want to see a more traditional version to see what is in it and what was added for this version.

Filed under: I'm a geek,Scott Complaining
No Comments

Well, I get to spend the evening through early morning hours at work today/tomorrow. In the dark.

Edison gave notice on Monday that they are taking our power away from 8PM to around 3AM. Thus endangering well over $1million in projects going on, but fortunately we got a hold of some portable generators to patch in to power the critical systems. Someone from my group has to be there to take care of monitoring and verifying that things that should be working are working, and since I’m a fairly nice guy once in a while, I volunteered. Primarily since I have the least going on tomorrow that I need to be fresh for, I’m pretty much just wrapping up documentation for some projects right now.

I feel kind of sorry for Radar, since he’ll have to spend a night alone tonight, but I get the feeling that he’ll just sleep and won’t notice I’m gone until 5:30AM when it’s time to eat. Which I could very well be home for.

I’m going to take some flashlights that are powered by cranks so I can just recharge them and set them up for some light. Probably I’ll spend most of my time reading, and if it looks like there are some long stretches of nothing, sleeping.

Update: Then again, maybe it will go really smoothly on the initial transfer to generator power and I’ll be able to go home and wait to be called back when they are ready to switch back to normal power.

Filed under: General,Scott Complaining
No Comments

Coming home from the vet with an empty carrier just brings back some bad memories. Now, Radar is most likely going to be fine, he just needs to stay in the hospital for a few days. Which unfortunately means that he’ll need to be picked up while I’m in Indiana, but, I’ll figure something out.

Yesterday I’d changed his litter out, and today I noticed he was spending a lot of time in the box to, shall we say, no result. Since it was fresh litter, it was pretty easy to tell that he hadn’t peed for at least 24 hours. Which is bad, so I was pretty sure he had a urinary tract blockage, and called around to the various vets who couldn’t fit him in today, before finally going to an emergency place in Tustin.

So, I was right, and he has a blockage, so they took him in and put in a cathoder and will drain him out, then remove it tomorrow and see how he does. Without complications, he should be ready to be discharged Tuesday.

Poor guy.

Update: He’s resting comfortably (ah yes, the wonderful medical terminology for “He’s ok, don’t call us”) and doesn’t have any stones, so it should be a fairly straightforward recovery. 24 hours with the cathoder, then 24 hours observation after to see if things are flowing freely. Of course he could clog up again at any time, or never again, you never know. There is some surgery that would help prevent problems in the future, but as a guy, I don’t really want to think too hard on it, as it is the removal of a certain part of the urinary tract, that, while he doesn’t really have a use for it, it’s just common curtosy to leave intact if possible.

Filed under: Meow,Scott Complaining
2 Comments