Category: Uncategorized

Yesterday I took the plunge and bought myself one of those ‘memory foam’ beds – you know, the ones you see on TV all the time – I figure at this point I should try anything to help my back and I spend around 8 hours a day sleeping, if I can.

I also bought myself a nice leather Broyhill desk chair and a new computer desk. No more $29 Wal-Mart chair and kitchen table as I spend way too much time in front of the computer. Lets face it; cheap-ass chairs and kitchen tables are not good for the posture.

What makes this kind of ‘dumb’ is that I’ll be moving in a month or two and having to pack it all across town.

See, I’ve never been one for ‘stuff’ and until yesterday everything I own would fit nicely into my car. A big house full of crap that never gets used is really quite alien to me and I therefore try to have the very best things that I really use on a daily basis – which is the argument I used against myself to buy furniture yesterday…

The ‘memory foam’ stuff really works though – it should for what it costs. If you’ve ever spent a night in a feather bed, then you already know what this stuff is like for it is the twenty first century equivalent. It takes about a minute, maybe two, before you are encased in this mattress and immobilized for the night, and you will wake up in the exact same position you went to sleep in.

*** Begin public service announcement…

For my readers who are really into ‘extreme bed sports’, you’ll find that you will hate ‘memory foam’. This stuff was scientifically designed for sleeping on, not performing aerobics on, and therefore it absorbs ‘all’ movement and a body tends to sink about 5 inches or so into it. You would practically have to bungee you and your partner together to get anywhere on this mattress.

So should you decide to purchase said bed, you should keep the old one around for wrestling mat duty. (chuckle)

*** End public service announcement…

For me this works well as the doctor says I am to sleep on my back to help straighten out my spine, which I’ve never been able to do, as I don’t like it, and I always end up elsewhere during the night. With the new bed it makes it a conscious decision to move once the foam has ‘set’, so as I was on my back when I went to sleep I woke up staring at the numbers on the ceiling from my alarm clock.

The down side to this new bed is that getting out of it takes real work – and I don’t mean this in a figurative ‘get your ass out of bed’ way, I mean it in a literal ‘you cannot move from the form-fitting depression you’ve made in the bed’ kind of way. The mattress is also seriously thick, adding about 8 inches to the height of my old bed, which makes that first step in the morning an eye opener.

But, all in all, I woke up feeling pretty good today – my back doesn’t ‘hurt’, it’s just kind of a dull ache, and I slept a solid eight hours for the first time in what feels like months…

And that alone makes the price worth it.

Well, had another interesting night with Kaiser (my medical provider)…

One would think that being the biggest, most expensive healthcare available would allow them to have some nice, high-tech stuff. One would be wrong in that assumption though.

See, I’ve been having back problems for months now and the doctors have plum run out of symptoms to treat at this point and are finally having to try to figure it out. So I was scheduled for an MRI last night at 8:30 PM downtown.

Now, having all of my hydrogen atoms aligned in a big machine that looks and sounds like a jet engine doesn’t bug me. I’ve been into high energy physics long enough to understand quite well how the technology works and I’ve even done some research on the process from a ‘hobbyist’ perspective.

So I get to the Kaiser offices downtown at about 7:30, fill out the “have you ever even come into contact with a piece of metal” medical forms, and commence to wait an hour. Eventually I’m led back to the machine and am presented with an old GE ‘tomography’ machine from circa 1987… The technology was invented in 1983.

Anyways, so here I am looking over a piece of equipment about two steps up from the one in the Smithsonian and wondering if all the small, enclosed spaces I’ve been packed into will equate to this itty-bitty tube they plan to pack me into. The technician doesn’t seem to be concerned though – little do I know that she’s unconcerned thanks, in part, to the hydraulics that run the table that positions patients in the barrel of the ‘tomograph’.

So I remove all of the metal on my person from the waist up, which is odd because I know how powerful the fields are in these things – but again this is a 20 year old machine that might be able to generate .3 to .5 Tesla… Compared to modern equipment that can generate 2+ Tesla this thing would probably have an issue with demagnetizing my credit card.

So I lay down on the tray and the technician commences to run me into the barrel. This is where we discover that the barrel of the GE is all of about 22 inches across and my shoulders are about 27 inches across. So I contort myself, ignoring the warning twinge from my back, and she manages to pack me into the thing. I’m then told that I’ll have to hold this position for about 30 minutes.

I can only roll my eyes – because the rest of me is wedged quite nicely into this gods forsaken machine.

A few minutes pass then the banging of the MRI begins – imagine being inside a jackhammer – and then stops. The technician comes over the intercom and asks if I can straighten out any.

I laugh and answer “no”.

Shortly there after I’m extracted from the machine and told that I’ll have to be sent out to another hospital with newer equipment that has a larger barrel. Of course there is some confusion on if that will be covered under my insurance.

Oh, and I had to pay them $100 for the privilege of being crammed into their ancient machine.

So, ultimately, I wasted 2 hours of my life that I’ll never get back, caused my back pain to flare up from being crammed into the machine, and spent $100. Comparatively I guess it wasn’t all that bad because it gave me something to write about. 🙂

Today promises to be very odd… See, I’m going in at 4pm to run a test for a client after hours. So, I have the ‘day’ off.

I’m fairly impressed with the amount of stuff one can get done during the day – stores are open and most folks are at work which makes for a much more pleasant ‘out of the house’ experience for me.

Over the weekend I attended my first company function… I’ve officially been working at ‘xXxxx’ (I can’t use the name) for over two years now and I figured it was high time I went to one of the bi-monthly company functions.

The picnic was nice and about half of the folks I work with every day were there. There was far too much food available and Jon worked the grill for about 90% of it. All in all I was there for about 2 hours, which is really the upper limit of my ability to deal with lots of people in one area, and all of that time was hanging out with Jon.

After my time at the picnic I meandered over to Wolf and Lyons place where we watched a few movies, had some ice cream, and generally ‘shot the shit’ for a few hours before I made my way back home.

Well, I need to rotate my laundry and head across town to work.

Have a great day everyone!

I took the day off today to take care of the house and just relax a bit.

So once I had the house cleaned up I decided to gas up the car and head for the hills… See, I got a new camera a while back in the hopes that it would provoke me into getting out of the house a bit more often.

Well, once I’d purchased $40 worth of gas and a bottle of water, I went westward up Deer Creek Canyon.

I spent about 5 hours just sitting on a rock and reading a book. It sprinkled a little bit on the way up, but remained dry while I was there. It was also serious jacket weather up there as the outside temperature, according to the car, was about 40.

All in all it was a very nice trip – I’ll have to do it again some time. 🙂

Well, it’s another week…

Absolutely nothing has happened that warrants writing about, but I should post once a week at least…

I worked, I slept, I bought groceries, paid the bills and rent…

There ya go, the high points of the last 7 days.

Well, ok, I also spent the last few days at work figuring out how to configure a DSLAM (a thingy that makes DSL happen) via trial and error… There’s no documentation for the thing, and it has it’s own programming language, so it became my problem. I did get it working yesterday though, so that’s a good thing I suppose.

I guess I should fix my sandwich for lunch and get moving. Have a good day out there.

I’m going to try to get back into the habit of posting something at least once a week… Probably Tuesday mornings…

I’ve been very busy, as usual. Right now I’m juggling three or four projects simultaneously at work, which isn’t good for me but I guess it makes the marketing director’s commission check look good – oh, and he’s on his third vacation this quarter… Working too hard I suppose.

Anyways, I don’t have a lot of time before I have to head to work so I’ll skip the griping. One thing I have managed to do is get back into the music thing a bit – between Zeze’s loud friends, loud TV shows, and the 1×10^32 other things going on around here all the time I managed to put together a simple piano piece that I’m fairly happy with.

Trail Ridge Road is inspired by a road not to far from here that I remember fondly. If gas prices weren’t so outrageous I’d probably take another road-trip up there just to get away for a while…

It’s encoded with AAC, which means Windows users will need the latest-ish version of quicktime, or iTunes, to play it. If you have QT installed, the tune should play directly in your browser… YMMV.

Anyways, I have to run and make other people rich… See you all in a week hopefully.

I picked up a nice new 20” iMac this last week – one of the new dual-core intel-based Macs – and let me tell you, it rocks!

Not only does it run OSX, which is literally light-years ahead of Windows, but it also runs Windows when I need it.

So I’ve gotten it all hooked back up to my music stuff and have pounded out the basics for another track to my album project already.

I’ve also re-loaded PhotoShop and have been kicking around some art ideas – Though I’ll have to get another drafting table, a scanner, and possibly a lightbox before the art begins to flow once more.

There are also some short stories floating around in my rather addled brain that might see the light of day here in the near future as well.

Life is pretty good. I’ve been working a lot on some rather complicated projects, but they changed the way billing works now and I get a better cut of the miracles I produce.

The car is running great, though gas is too expensive for me to really go anywhere in it so I still spend a lot of time at home… I wind up playing way too much “World of Warcraft”, but it’s the cheaper alternative right now.

I did take some time to drive up to Central City after one of my analyst visits a few weeks ago – too bad Central City is *gone*… It’s nothing but casinos now, even the old ‘main drag’ of the town which had all those really cool little stores has been replaced by multi-million dollar gambling halls.

Zeze, Aryntha, Rai and I also took a drive up to Estes Park a few weeks back hoping to have dinner at “Fusion 451” again – too bad the restaurant has been remodeled into *another* “western steak place”…

All in all things are ok. Time is passing and the things I remember from years gone by are slowly being ‘modernized’ out of existence… I suppose I need to find some new stuff to remember fondly.

So there ya have it – the update. See you all again soon, hopefully sooner than 30 days this time. 😉

One of the Brothers Hildebrandt passed away this week – and so goeth another of my artistic heroes of olde.

Sigh

The memorial page is at: http://www.spiderwebart.com/TimHildebrandt61206.html

(This entry, as you might have noticed, is locked to my friends as I still have to go over all of this with the folks at work and a few of them are casual viewers of my journal, especially with the E.R. visits of late… I feel it will be better if I get a chance to discuss this before they read it here and freak out.)

Well, I had my first visit with my new doctor…

The good news is they were able to induce my symptoms while in the MRI and no know what my problem is. The bad news is they figured out that I’m essentially having a bad response to the stresses I’m under right now.

A good, old fashioned anxiety attack brought on by excessive stress, pain, and lack of sleep.

They put me in the MRI and a psychologist asked me a lot of questions about my day-to-day life and simply discussing my average day right now triggered the attack. Essentially the combination of back and neck pain, lack of sleep, not taking lunches or breaks, working on work stuff evenings and weekends, worry over my current medical bills and other finances, driving myself too hard to get results for things like the last client I worked with, and never being able to get away from it because I seem to constantly be under a deadline for some miracle because I’m the only person who can do it has caused brain issues.

They’re looking over my blood work to make sure I won’t have any compatibility issues with the medications I’ll be on starting around the first of the month. Zoloft was mentioned a few times. I’m not sure how happy I am at the prospect of taking brain chemistry altering medications…

Apparently what I’m going through right now is very common in the software industry and they have plans to deal with it which involve medication and psych visits, of which my first one is on the 30th.

The doctor said I should take vacation if possible, and he looked at me squarely and said “And I mean vacation, not ‘work from home’.” I don’t know if that’s possible though as I’m under a few deadlines right now to produce at least two miracles and I’m the only one who can do it…

Well, another trip to the E.R. tonight for similar issues as the last trip, which were essentially all of the warning signs of a stroke again.

Similar results this time as well; blood pressure and heart rate were fine, blood work came back perfect, etc, though this time they injected me with iodine and ran me though the CT scanner to eyeball the blood flow in my noggin.

Everything is fine there too and they essentially have to guess at this point. They can see the neurological signs of what I’m going through, but they cannot find a physical root-cause.

The E.R. doctor has fast-tracked me with Kaiser, who *still* hasn’t gotten me a general physician and I’ll be seeing someone there tomorrow for an MRI…

At least I got my insurance cards though – Kaiser told our HR person at work today that they never received ZeZe’s information from a month ago and ZeZe should get cards in another few weeks. Too bad ZeZe’s blood pressure prescription is expired and the last of the medication was taken this morning – nice time to loose the paperwork.

The E.R. doctor has also prescribed me an anti-vertigo medication (which is stupidly expensive) as he thinks that on top of the pinched nerve in my upper back / neck that I might also be suffering from a neurological issue between my inner ear and my grey-matter which explains the dizzy spells I’ve been getting, especially when driving…

So this evening’s official $5000 “scientific wild-ass guess” is that the elevated stresses in my job are causing neurological issues in my brain (I’m lousy at handling stress, and I’ve told folks as much) which are throwing off my balance and causing extra mechanical stress on my back and neck on top of the muscular issues of sitting at a keyboard the majority of my waking hours. Then as my back and neck start to hurt I start to loose sleep which feeds the stress and I eventually end up here – which is “right fucked”… Though the 15+ hour day I put in yesterday in the 85 degree server room probably didn’t help either.

No need to worry though, they say I’m not going to kick the proverbial bucket any time soon – I’m just going to be miserable, in pain, and not sleeping much till they figure this out.

Wheee!

I blame mtsilence for this one. 🙂

Just a small sampling of my animated movie collection as I have to run off to work:

Create your own Movie List @ HotFreeLayouts!

I’ve now had my first ‘official’ chiropractor session… I honestly didn’t know that I was in possession of some of the places that cracked, popped, or otherwise made sounds the body isn’t supposed to make.

It turns out that my neck is too straight and there’s a spot between my shoulders that curves too much – both of which are pinching several nerves that are causing all of my assorted issues these last few months.

On a scale of 1 to 4, 4 meaning I would need traction, I scored a 2.5. This means I’ll be seeing the doc 3 times a week for the next month or so, and then tapering off to once a week for quite a while.

Of course each trip costs a mere $45, which is an additional $150 a week I hadn’t planned on this summer… Ah well, at least the pain will go away – and here I though maintenance on the car cost too much. Hell, if I was a car I’d recommend replacing me. 🙂

So that’s my update. I’m supposed to not sit in front of the computer for hours so I’m off to go read another book.

Have a good evening everyone!

Whoa! Another post!

I wonder if anyone actually looks at this anymore with my extended absence and all.

Anyways, things for me are busy, hectic, crazy, depressing, exhausting, expensive and painful… Aren’t you glad you asked?

So far the grand total for my trip to the emergency room a month ago has topped $6000 and another bill just came in today for $285 … I’m calculating that my little trip is now in the $1500 an hour range and still climbing.

You’d figure for $6000 they could have at least made up something fancy rather than a simple “We don’t know; go see a chiropractor”…

The real gem in the steaming pile of medical bills is the $2200 for 12 minutes in a CT scanner – $183 a minute.

I’m in the wrong business… Or is that the wrong country?

Oh well, and people wonder why I abstain from routine doctor visits: I’ve had a few in 37 years and –every single time- they simply cannot tell me what the issue is and it winds up costing me right around a year’s worth of car payments for a series of shrugs and confused looks.

Grr…

Ok, so I’ve been busy – really busy – for the last 4 weeks. Between learning all about DSL communications technology (DSLAM to be specific), being the general purpose help desk at work, writing proposals to test the impossible, writing the software to do those impossible tests, and then running those tests for the likes of Coors Brewing Company… I’ve pretty much resigned myself to never doing another creative thing ever again.

Add to this the fact that I haven’t had the time to go to the above mentioned chiropractor till this morning and have been living with a pain in my neck, upper back, and a roaring headache for a month now – it’s obvious that I haven’t been the most pleasant being to be around and you all haven’t missed much.

The good news is the trip to the chiropractor this morning actually did me some good. He poked and prodded, took a series of x-rays to look over this weekend, then put me on this cool bed-thing that was warm and had some high powered roller in it that crawled up and down my back for about 15 minutes. He then did some contortionist thing with me that made the achy spot between my shoulders go off like a shotgun and left me unable to get up for a few minutes, but for the first time in a month the pain in my back went away…

After so long with it, I had almost forgotten what it was like to stand up strait and not hurt.

I have to go back Monday morning, and will probably be there once a week for a few months, but he seems convinced that there’s nothing permanently messed up. This is before he looks at the x-rays though, so who knows.

Oh, and of course now that I have insurance, it doesn’t cover chiropractic visits…

Yeah, that sucking sound you hear is my savings going right into the crapper.

At least the doctor I’m seeing now seems to ‘get’ the crap I’ve been through so far and didn’t bill me for the visit today beyond the $50 to get the x-rays developed. Future visits will run be $45 each though… I can live with that I guess if it makes the pain go away.

Other than that, the car is running fine – though with gas prices these days it runs me about $0.10 a mile to operate the car, so needless to say I don’t drive anywhere but work and back anymore.

I sold my old computer, bought a laptop, sold the laptop and built a new computer in the last 30 days. The new machine is pretty much “stupidly fast”: Dual core 4800+ AMD with a 512M 6800GT and 4 gigs of uber-ram in a case slightly bigger than a regulation lunch box. As soon as I can sit in front of the computer for any length of time without getting sharp stabbing pains in my back and neck I’m sure the video games it’ll run will be impressive.

The little bit of time I’ve spent in front of the computer has been messing around with “Dungeons and Dragons Online”… If you haven’t heard much about it or played it yet, don’t bother – it’s another ‘Turbine Entertainment’ game (the folks who foisted “Asheron’s Call” and the even more horrific “Asheron’s Call 2” upon the world a few years back) and as such it’s missing about %60 of what the average game has these days…

Too bad Turbine got bought by Microsoft and now has infinite money to suck up all the good Intellectual Property rights out there: They butchered D&D Online and the next I.P. on the block for chopping is “Middle Earth Online”. Meh, the world needs fewer 12 year olds who want to be ‘Legolas’ anyways…

Well, that about does it for the time I can sit here and type. Thank the powers of ‘back cracking’ that I was able to sit here at all for any length of time. 🙂

And with that I’ll bid you all a most excellent weekend and see you next time!

Well, had some excitement last night…

At about 4pm I started to get a ‘pins and needles’ feeling on my right side – specifically in my scalp and right arm – and got dizzy. So I went over to my boss who was in a meeting with our CFO and said, “I don’t want you guys to panic, but I think I need a ride to the hospital” and gave them a rundown of my symptoms. Which, to be perfectly honest, seemed like a stroke.

They panicked.

So by 4:15 I was sitting in the urgent care office here in Aurora. They charged me $90 to tell me that they couldn’t do anything for me and to go down the street to the ER.

By 4:30 I was sitting in the waiting room at the ER. They checked my temperature, blood pressure, and a few quick cognitive tests to ensure I wasn’t going to die on the spot, and then I commenced to wait three hours to see a doctor.

At 7:45 I was called back and temporarily put on a bed at the end of the hall and next to a nurse’s station where I got to watch the comings and goings of gunshot victims, suicide watches, security guards on hour 10 of 16, drug overdoses, and a large assortment of other amazing things. As every room in the place was taken up by one of these sorts of people, my room became that bed at the end of the hallway.

About 30 minutes go by before a lady comes up and asks for my ID, which I have, and my insurance card, which I don’t have as I was overlooked in October’s insurance enrolment at work, and she has me fill out all sort of forms regarding the fact that this was going to be ridiculously expensive and I would be obligated to pay for services I didn’t receive. Meanwhile the lady in the room next to my bed is screaming to be un-strapped from the bed and telling the security guard that she’s going to sue him into oblivion…

Another half an hour passes and Doctor Savage shows up to check me out… Doc Savage! How cool is that?

He runs my blood pressure on both arms, hooks me up to an EKG machine, listens to my internals for a bit, pokes and prods me, the decides to run a full blood work and send me over for a CT scan. He then tells me that my heart is fine – heart rate normal, blood pressure normal, breathing is fine – in fact if he wasn’t standing there looking at me with my ‘professional programmer’s physique’ he’d figure I was a marathon runner or something. Oh, as I am a programmer for a living my dress code at work is pretty lax, so yesterday I had my “I’m out of my mind, please leave a message” t-shirt on which won me a chuckle or a “that’s so appropriate for tonight” from all of the staff that walked by.

Shortly thereafter a nurse shows up to draw blood – six vials of the stuff – and she just happens to have a pagan-esque tattoo on one arm of a Celtic looking ‘goddess moons’ design on one arm, so I strike up a conversation with her regarding it and we wind up talking religion for about fifteen minutes while she works. I lead off with a comment that the needles sure have become sharper these days and she agrees, then I mention that when I was a kid they would just shove a straw into your arm and hope which gets some laughter from the other RNs around. Then I mention on vial five that it’s amazing I have that much in me being this close to tax season as the IRS already bleeding me dry, which elicits another round of laughter from the nurse’s station.

So eventually I’m wheeled down to radiology where I start cutting up with the radiologist about all things nuclear and glowing as they put me into the CT. While I’m laying there having a revolving beam of neutrons stream through my grey-matter (which I actually felt and could tell the radiologist where the beam was at any particular moment though he tells me that’s not possible) I was cracking Incredible Hulk jokes and actually got the poor guy laughing so hard he messed something up and had to rescan me…

I’m then wheeled back to my bed and another half hour goes by as the radiologist reads my CT and forwards the info on to Doc Savage who tells me I have a beautiful brain, pronounces my noggin safe, and decides to have my upper back and neck x-rayed. While I’m there he also shows me the results of my blood work: my cholesterol is perfect, my electrolyte levels are perfect, my kidneys are like new, etc, etc…

So off I go, back to radiology where they put the lead bib over my lower half and shoot more radiation through me from four different angles, then roll me back to my station at the end of the hallway. Another half an hour goes by and Doc Savage shows back up to tell me I’ve slipped a disk in my neck which is pinching a nerve that goes over the top of my head to my right eyebrow and down my right arm.

I’m told to relax, take 600mg of Ibuprophin every 6 hours for ten days, and he makes an appointment for me Monday with a neck and back specialist down the street.

After all of this I’m released at about midnight and Jae comes and picks me up.

So, all in all I spent about $5000 (which they’ll give me 50% off if I pay it off in 30 days) to have a full battery of tests and find out that I’m actually in amazingly good shape for 37 and sitting hunched over a computer all day… Let’s hear it for those German Super Soldier genetics! (Chuckle)

And now I have to get back to work…

Have a great day out there folks.

Well, I have successfully completed another trip around the sun…

In three more years I’ll hit Human half-life. So far it’s been pretty fun. 🙂

Well, back to work…

Been a very busy few weeks for me, but here’s a little bit of news I read that simply had me laughing all the way to work:

---

LONDON (Reuters) – Too busy to get to your shift at McDonald’s restaurant? Don’t worry — send someone else in your family to go along for you.

The world’s largest restaurant chain said Thursday it had begun trialing a new scheme in Britain whereby two people from the same family who worked at the same branch could cover each other’s shifts without giving any prior notice.

“By giving our employees the freedom to manage their shift commitments, we will increase their motivation and enjoyment of work,” said David Fairhurst, the chain’s vice president.

McDonald’s said the first users of the new “Family Contract,” which it believes to be unique in Britain, were two sets of twins.

McDonald’s said it would look to extend the scheme if it proved to be popular and successful.

“It may be just the beginning,” Fairhurst said in a statement. “In the future we may even look to extend it beyond the family to include friends and extended family members such as cousins.”

---

Sorry, this isn’t new, it’s called “feudalism” and William the First used it in England after the Battle of Hastings, which happened around 1066 ACE.

Of course McDonalds, named after a Scottish Clan, may simply be getting their just revenge on the English after so many years.

It’s been a busy week or two here…

Zeze has joined the ranks at iBeta and it sounds like he will be taking over as the Director of I.T. once the hand off from Jon is accomplished.

Jae is doing well. Now that he has a car again he’s taken up an old hobby; hanging out at Village Inn for hours and hours… I remember my days of hanging out at Denny’s for hours and hours – though we were building a role playing game universe and system at the time and Denny’s was the biggest meeting room with coffee we could find. 🙂

My new car is still a high point for me right now. Cost and performance wise it’s up there with the 1988 twin turbo 300zx I had for a while back in the early 90’s, but at the same time it’s a bit more of an ‘adult’ vehicle as it’s a 4 door and sort of a station wagon… The PT doesn’t require that additional friends, beyond the one in the passenger seat, curl up in a ball in the little area between the rear tires like the 300zx did (sorry JJ).

I had the oil changed on the PT Saturday and, as the PT requires synthetic oil, it cost me about $70. Then there’s the fact I *have* to put mid-grade or better gas in it coupled with the 19 gallon tank and the 20MPG on the highway makes the regular stop at the gas station a bit more painful than the Toyota… The Toyota will go 300 miles on 9 gallons of gas while the PT will go 300 miles on 19 gallons of gas…

The biggest difference is with the PT I can merge on the highway without having to stop at the top of an on ramp and I can go the speed limit in the mountains. The Toyota gets passed by semi trucks in the mountains… And the sound system, leg room, and leather interior of the PT is really, really nice.

Why can’t I get performance *and* good gas mileage? Oh well, I’ll just drive less.

And with that it’s time for me to trundle off to work. Take care out there folks.

And thus begins another year.

Jae, Jae’s brother, Zeze and I went over to Jon and Jen’s house for the prerequisite party last night and had a lot of fun. That’s the first time in many, many years that I was awake for the New Year festivities.

Other than that, it’s just another day around here. Jae is asleep after staying out all night, Jae’s brother who was here for a few days has returned, Zeze will probably watch some TV and fiddle with the internet and I’ll play some Warcraft or something.

I’ve signed the Toyota over to Jae as a sort of Christmas present and since then he’s been out and about almost continuously. Meanwhile, my new car is really nice and I’ve had to talk myself out of doing the same as Jae and just driving to drive. 🙂

So that’s about it for the first post of the year. Have a happy holiday, enjoy the day off, and I’ll catch up with you all later.

Well, I made it… Not without incident though…

Sunday morning, 3 am, my latest adventure began and it ended at about 9:15 pm, which means I spent about 18 hours either in a plane or at an airport yesterday. What fun!

I made it through security without issue and got on the first plane, from Denver to Cincinnati, as soon as they would let me: 6:50 am. As my seat was –way- in the back, between the engines where no one else likes to sit, I got settled in with my ipod shuffle and determined to sleep for the next two hours…

Nope.

About twenty minutes into the flight a loud ratcheting sound coming from the engine next to my head woke me up, followed shortly by a flight attendant stopping to listen then phoning the cockpit. Then the plane then banked hard to the left and dropped to about 10,000 feet, followed by an announcement that we were returning to Denver do to a mechanical failure.

This elicited all sorts of panicking on the plane: Kids hollering, old ladies praying… A real circus…

Joy.

The pilot limped the plane back into Denver at about 8000 feet and 300 knots, which is about 70 knots over stall on an MD-88 jet, thanks in part I’m sure to only having the left side engine running.

The plane landed way out on the end of one of the runways at DIA and was met by lots of fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and guys in aluminum coated ‘moon suits’ wielding thermal imaging gear who were looking for the fire.

As it turns out it was only a hot air line from the right side engine that is run into one of the air conditioning packs that are used to pressurize the plane. The mechanic figured he could replace the part, test the engines for about ten minutes, and get the plane back in the air…

So, at 10:15 the 10 to 12 of us remaining, who are brave enough, get back on the plane and head once again to Cincinnati.

And once the plane hits 20,000 feet the ratcheting returns followed by another hard bank to the left, another drop to 10,000 feet, and another return flight to Denver.

So now it’s a little after 11 and they’ve decided that the plane isn’t going anywhere for a while, so they book me first class on another airline which has a flight at 1:10 pm. So I slog across DIA, grab a burger at McDonalds, and board that flight…

Everything is going smoothly until, during the passenger loading where the isle is full of people trying to cram their overly large carry on into a bin while wrangling their three kids, someone in the aft end of the plane realizes that they boarded the wrong plane… This guy, two kids in tow, manages to get on a plane headed to Charlotte North Carolina when he –and his tickets- were bound for Arizona. So much for all the PITA security I guess.

So after a lot of pushing, shoving, and general anger they get him off the plane, get everyone else on the plane, and get us in the air… About 20 minutes late.

The flight is uneventful and I land in Charlotte with about 12 minutes to get to my connecting flight to Richmond, which leaves at 7:10… So I blaze through the airport and arrive at the next gate to see that the flight has been delayed till 8pm.

Sigh.

So I sit around till that plane shows up and eventually make it to Richmond at a bit after 9pm.

What a day.

Well, I’m using Zeze’s laptop to write this and we’re going to try and get rolling early so I’ll sign off here and get rolling.

It’s now less than one week till I’m on a plane to Virginia… Have I mentioned I hate planes, flying, and all that ‘plummeting to your death in a mass of twisted, burning aluminum’ stuff? Well, I do…

This particular trip is going to be, quite simply, the worst possible. See, I’m flying one way, on Christmas morning, with no checked luggage, on a ticket that someone else paid for, on a plane that flies over Washington D.C. to get to southern Virginia, and I have long hair… All of this comes together to make me – according to some computer somewhere – ‘the mad bomber what bombs at midnight’.

I’m fully expecting a full body cavity search at Denver International come Sunday morning.

Sigh…

Anyways, time for me to trot off to work. Have a great day out there folks.