Archive for the 'medical' Category

Trip the Thursday Fantastico: Moving, Medication, and Other Stories

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John T Davis
on November 30, 2007
in computers, house, internet, medical and rant
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I’m typing this entry on Friday, 30 November. For reasons I shall explain below, no idea when it will actually be posted.

Moving, Continued…

Unpacking of boxes continues apace. What follows is not a complete progress report, but rather some highlights, as I (a) don’t have the stamina to write it all down (b) haven’t even bothered going into a couple of the bedrooms, so I can’t say what’s going on in there, and (c) don’t won’t to bore everyone to tears, which I’ve probably done already, if we’re being completely honest. The kitchen is virtually completely unpacked and set up, save for later rearranging and the retrieval of more pottery and implements from the storage on the coast, and the dining room is well on the way. My bedroom is now mostly free of cardboard containers, save one I’m holding off on until my office is ready to be stuffed full of my assorted electro-mechanical stuff. Clothing and other assorted goodies, like a very fashionable set of leather bound encyclopedias and history and law books, have resurfaced, as well. Like most other rooms in the house, save for one, it’s also free of baseboards (the trim around the bottom of walls), which means we can’t slide any furniture into place until my cousin comes up, probably this weekend or early next week, to install said baseboards, which won’t happen until the painting crew installs the wall paper in the dining room tomorrow morning. If we put my furniture in place now, we’d just have to move it again, which is a nonstarter, as it’s the Heaviest Solid Wood Furniture in the Universe. Our other pieces might not have quite the mass, but would be similarly cumbersome to prematurely move, and no one wants to risk accidental damage to the walls that were just repainted, at any rate. The downside to this being that we are currently camped out in the guest bedrooms, as ours are either filled with furniture stuck in the middle of the floor waiting to be put against the wall, filled with boxes, or otherwise not quite ready to be lived in. It doesn’t help that we don’t have beds for those rooms yet, either. The perils of moving from a place with two bedrooms to four and deciding the beds you already have look better in the guest suites.

There’s other little random stuff, like a floor needing to be fixed where a doorway was widened, some fans needing to be hung, the fact that none of our windows has any dressing except for some giant sheets of plastic hung in the bedrooms for modesty’s sake, but that’s really transient stuff. After all, we have satellite TV and surround sound speakers built in to the walls, so we’re easily distracted.

Painting has turned into a nightmare, but the less said about that the better.

Come and Swim in My Pool…Or Not

I’ve made much over the last few weeks of the pool we’re having installed, going so far as to pimp questionably exciting pictures of said water hole’s construction cycle in this space. Construction ground to a halt after the safety fence mandated by city ordinance apparently didn’t pass inspection, but that was apparently an error or has been otherwise taken care of (and if I sound vague it’s because I really don’t know what’s going on; the pool people didn’t really tell us much, as taking care of inspections and stuff behind the scenes is supposed to be part of the package. Today the plumber came out and turned the gas back on for the water heater in preparation for the final inspection, after which the plaster will be poured and the construction will be complete. So when I post a vague entry in a week or two proclaiming nothing more and nothing less than “IT’S ALIVE!” you’ll know what happened.

Infusion of Comfort and Joy and AT&T/Yahoo DSL (Or: The Time of Ranting is Upon You)

What follows is a brief description of my infusion that devolves into a lengthy rant about the not-quite-fun I’ve had trying to get our internet and phone jacks up and working. Let me preface my griping by noting that while I’m more than a little annoyed with ATT as a corporate service entity at this point, the support technicians I dealt with on the phone were friendly and did their best to help me. I’m ranting at the system, not them. I am also putting the rest of this entry under a cut, because it’s really just an evolved form of whining, and I am aware of that.

[tags]moving, pool, AT&T, at&t, dsl, yahoo dsl, yahoo DSL, yahoo, AT&T dsl, DSL, AT&T DSL, at&t dsl, at&t DSL[/tags]

Continue reading ‘Trip the Thursday Fantastico: Moving, Medication, and Other Stories’

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Foot Staple

Published
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John T Davis
on September 13, 2007
in medical and my photos
. 0 Comments


Foot Staple

Originally uploaded by John T Davis

Hi there. I’ve talked previously in this space about my foot surgery, and I said I’d post a picture of the nail, so here it is. I’ve set it against a standard sized prescription bottle to try to give a sense of scale.

Yeah, I can’t believe something that big was in my foot, either.

(This post is also testing the Flickr blogging feature, and my new Fujifilm F31fd, which I barely know how to use.)

[tags]flickr, surgery, table nail[/tags]

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Surgery Followup.

Published
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John T Davis
on August 27, 2007
in medical
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It’s been two weeks since my procedure to have the surgical nail removed from my foot, and I went back today to have the stitches removed.

There was a lot more string up inside my scar than I ever guessed. And he had to dig it out. Not exactly pleasant, but overall not too bad at all, compared to some of the stuff I’ve had done to me. It bled a bit, my foot’s sore, and now I’ve got “tape stitches,” those little band-aid things that fall off on their own in about a week. I’ve also got permission to get my foot wet/submerged again, so no more grooming gymnastics in the mornings. I should also stop feeling odd shooting pains like I felt whenever I stretched the stitches. Glee.

And no, I didn’t keep the string.

As a side note, I was surprised just how much surgical twine resembles fishing line. It even feels the same.

[tags]stitches[/tags]

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Graduation and Law School.

Published
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John T Davis
on August 23, 2007
in law school, medical and university
. 2 Comments

Wow. Two-and-a-half months without an update. So much for putting up something at least once a week, hmm? I’m still not sure anyone actually reads this space, so I could very well be burbling into the void, but that’s hardly an excuse. I could say not much particularly blog-worthy has happened, but that wouldn’t be at all truthful, though I’ve certainly been less active since graduation. I’ve spent the last few months just kind of decompressing after the conclusion of spring semester. Which brings me to my first point.

University Graduation

On Saturday, 12 May 2007, I graduated from my university with a BA magna cum laude in Computer Science, with a Political Science minor. The day was tiring, as I got to the ceremony at noon and it didn’t finish until five* (counting the photo session in the 95 degree heat, which was less than pleasant since we were all in black gowns, but I digress). My high school councillor was among the guests and one of the first to arrive, which was very fortunate, as after four years of intensive liberal arts education I proved myself unequal to the task of properly dressing myself in my graduation robes without help. In my defense, I had lots of attachments to worry about (honor cords, medallions, flaming swords, etc.**).

It was a lot of fun, especially since most of my family and a good number of my friends showed up for the after-party in my apartment. I’ve got lots of pictures. Someday, I might post some of them if I can get digital versions. I think someone’s got them on CD.

Odd things: We were never instructed to flip our tassels, so we never did. There was some reason this was done, but I can’t remember why. No one threw their hats in the air, either. I’m not sure if it was because we were just sedate, or because that was the only part of the whole gown ensemble we were actually allowed to keep (aside from honor cords and medalions) and people were being sentimental.

*The ceremony itself didn’t start until two, but I was allowed to come early and get situated since I have some mobility issues, which was really great. I’m really glad they let me, but I was a bit stiff by the end. I also kept getting my robe tangled up in my walker. Thankfully, there were two very nice people standing near either ramp to/from the stage that helped me get untangled. No Dick Van Dyke moments for me.

**One of these things does not belong.

SMU and Health Updates

I was granted deferral status from SMU for health reasons. I won’t begin attending until August 2008, which will give me time to work on some health stuff I’ve put off for a while. I’ve already started, as on August 10 I had a very large surgical table nail removed from my right foot. It’s left over from a Triple Arthrodesis in 2001. When I had the surgery done I was told the nail could stay in even after all the bones fused back together, forever if I wanted. Which I liked, since the idea of having another surgery so soon after the last one was not appealing. For the last several months though, it started to bug me and be more than a little painful. It was easier to see under the skin than it used to be, too. I can only guess it was starting to shift loose. Anyhow, I decided to have it removed. Really painless surgery, all things considered. No cast (just an ace bandage), and no weight for five days. I’m still not getting it wet, but that’s no problem. If only every surgery could be this easy. As soon as I find a camera, I’ll post a picture of the nail. It was much bigger than I expected it to be.

[tags]triple arthrodesis, SMU, graduation[/tags]

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Tripping the Rift: Law School, the End of Senior Year, and Other Things.

Published
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John T Davis
on May 5, 2007
in law school, medical, movies and university
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Law School

It should be taken as an indicator of how hectic it’s been here that it’s taken me a full nine days to post about this after finding out, but I’ve been accepted into SMU Law.

I cannot put into words how excited I am about this. WHen I heard I literally laughed like a crazy person, and my chest was hurting at the end. My mother told me I was going to be the only person who had a heart attack when they found out they got into law school. -_-

What follows is a transcription of how I found out, as I want to be sure and get it down before I forget. It was, as things usually are with me, sort of strange. My application was received February 15. They sent me an email notifying me of this and telling me that my decision would be mailed out no later than April 30, and that they would not give out decision information over the phone or email. I quote: ” SMU policy does not allow decisions to be given out over the telephone or e-mail.” Reading this, I quite naturally believed it, and resolved to wait.

And wait. And wait.

By 26 April, I still hadn’t heard anything, and I was starting to get nervous. Now, I knew that when a law school decides to reject you, they let you know immediately. So the more time that went by, the better I felt I was doing. At the same time, I never expected to have to wait so long to find out, so part of me was seriously wondering if something had gone wrong. Had they lost my application? Mailed my results somewhere else?

So on the 26th (a thursday), I decided to call SMU Admissions. From what the e-mail said, I wasn’t expecting to be told my results, but I wanted to make sure everything was okay–that a gerbil hadn’t escaped from the biology labs, scuttled across campus and devoured my application, or something. It could happen.

Anyhow, the woman who answered the phone was not my admissions councillor, but I explained that while I knew they couldn’t give out information over the phone,I was nervous, having not heard anything, and wanted to make sure all was well. She pauses for a moment, and asks me if I’m in Austin. Well, I’m not, but I’m only 30 minutes away, and I tell her so. She then reads off a Social Security Number, asking if it is mine, and when I respond in the affirmative, she says “you’re on our list of people to call today.” So I immediately think to myself, “they don’t call people to decline admission,” and sure enough the next thing she’s telling me is that I’ve been admitted. She congratulated me and and said a few other things, and I got off the phone and cackled like an insane person. Literally. It was Joker-quality laughter. I immediately called my parents, both of whom screamed with joy in much the same way.

I must admit, I can’t really remember much of what was said in that first phone call after she told me I was accepted. It’s all sort of jumbled up in a fog of glee. So much so I was actually starting to wonder if I’d hallucinated the whole thing, as I literally couldn’t remember half the conversation. After about 40 minutes of this, my admissions councillor called for the aforementioned official notification, which I was on the call-list for. Needless to say, this wasn’t nearly as shocking a conversation, and I remember it clearly. She told me my “admit pack” would arrive by Tuesday at the latest.

Well, Tuesday rolled around, and no package. I was anxious, of course, as it’s one thing to hear it over the phone and another to see the full admission materials. It didn’t help that I knew I had to get a deposit in by the 7th, but had no idea where to send it. The University post-office can be slow sometimes, as it’s less a real post office and more like a gigantic office mailroom, so I was willing to wait till Thursday. When it hadn’t arrived by Thursday, I called my admissions councillor back, and she checked their computers. Turns out somehow my zip code had gotten input wrong, and the package was sent to Austin somewhere. (For once, this wasn’t my fault. I went back and checked my application, and I put the address in correctly, despite Adobe Acrobat’s attempts to thwart me, on behalf of the universe.) She reissued me another package, with the right address. It’ll be here Monday or Tuesday. She also pointed me to the web address for doing deposits online, so all is well. :)

The End of The End of the Beginning (No, That’s Not a Typo.)

Ah. The final twilight of senior year. Well, everything but Capstone is done, and that’ll come to a close on Monday. I’ve got one last independent study meeting, but it’s after grades are turned in, so it’s more an informal wrap-up than anything else. I had made a list to illustrate how busy I was over the last seven days, and I was going to post it here for your amusement, but in my glee of finishing things, I threw it away after checking off the last item. I will say that I was lucky enough to be exempted from what would have been my only written final exam. It was a take home, which would have helped, but it was also due yesterday, and as of Thursday I’d not had time to work on it very much, aside from doing some rudimentary planning, so this worked out great. :) I look back at the last several days and sort of boggle at the amount of stuff I managed to do.

Except for three events, only one of which will effect a grade, next week will be devoted primarily to social engagements and chilling out before the big event. Glee. I … I really don’t think it’s hit me that it’s ending yet. For four years, this has been my home for most of the year. All my closest friends are here, and either I’m about to leave them if they’re staying behind, or like me they’re graduating and scattering on the winds. I’m going to do my best to stay in touch with them, but–I’m not really sure I have words to describe it. Everything’s changing, and it’s wonderful and exciting and a little sad at the same time. Now, I’m going to stop talking about this before I start feeling truly old.

Other Things

Had an infusion on Friday. The last one I’ll have at the Austin clinic. Already feeling better. :)
Spider-Man 3’s out. Looks to be awesome. I won’t be seeing it for at least another week, as I want to let the crowds die down a bit.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Published
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John T Davis
on February 20, 2007
in current events, dreams, medical, rant, television and university
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The Good

I have just received notification that my request to join Pi Sigma Alpha, the scholastic honor society for political science majors/minors, has been approved. Now I just need to send in my one-time membership fee. I had originally planned, about four years ago, to make sure I got into this and Upsilon Pi Epsilon (the computer science honor society). Now I’ve done it, and I’m quite happy. Getting in Alpha Chi, a general scholastic honor society, and Omicron Delta Kappa, a leadership honor society, were both instances of unexpected yay. The four of them together cover every aspect of my life here at SU, so I guess I did something right. :)

The Bad
Last night, a form of the Norfolk virus (that bug that gets people on cruise ships en mass) attacked my roommate and I. Needless to say, I was not only insomiacal, but fevered and suffering from various bodily malfunctions I don’t think I need to describe here. It was really quite horrible. I’m finally starting to feel a little better, though. I’ve been able to sip on gatorade since about 2 without my stomach cramping so bad it feels like I’m going to explode. I haven’t eaten anything today, but since I’m doing better, I might try a Popsicle later.

The dreams were a doozy too. My favorite was the one where I was Ibn, the adulterous exhiled warrior from The 13th Warrior played by Antonio Banderas. I was trying to run away after cavorting with someone (I assume there was cavorting…the dream starts with me completely dressed except for my feet, but we’re both sure panicked while I’m trying to put on my boots.). Long story short, I don’t escape in time and am attacked and fatally wounded by a jealous lover’s dogsnake.

Yes, a dogsnake. It’s a creature that apparently exists in my mind. Think of a giant sized Yorkshire Terrier, but with snake fangs that spit venom. Seriously.

I’m not even going to try to analyze this dream. Yikes.
I am somewhat consoled to remember that in my second dream, which was basically me and some friends yelling at some jackalope in the computer lab who had the nerve to insult my sense of humor and tell me I was a horrible person (yes, I know, weird), I seemed to have a girlfriend.

Incredibly freaky, but way better than having the dogsnake go after my crotch. (This happened, but he missed and got me in the leg. Yay…I think.)

Yeah. Fever dreams are the awesome. ::twitch::

The Ugly

Lord, I wish they’d test the paternity of Anna Nicole’s baby already. This whole thing has gone from interesting to annoying to just plain sick. Do we really need live in-courtroom footage of what is essentially a private matter. I mean, really?

By the same note, all these talking heads who are using Britney Spears’ emotional crisis to belittle her and have experts on to speculate about why she’s going insane and how funny it is, when essentially no one knows what’s really going on, is downright disgusting. I’m specifically looking at you, Tucker Carlson, but I’m sure if I bothered to watch FoxNews or CNN I’d have a bone to pick with some of those guys too. Tucker, if someone in your family has an emotional/mental crisis are you going to call them pathetic?
Idiot.

Also, James Brown is still not buried. WTF?

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I am returned.

Published
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John T Davis
on February 5, 2007
in medical, television and university
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Bonus geek points if you pronounced the subject in a really goofy/deep movie announcer voice when you read it. These points are redeemable for … for … look! Monkeys!

Back on campus now. Nice drive, even if the sun was in my face for about an hour (at least). Slight headache aside, I can still see, so no complaints. Saw a really neat tree on the side of the road, but didn’t have a camera. It was these two skinny trees that had, like, fused together towards the top and bent almost completely over, without looking sickly. Wish I had a picture.

I just realized I typed a sentence with the pause-like-pause structure without even realizing it, or doing it on purpose to be funny. I’ll have to flog myself after I post this.

Urologist visit on Friday was … interesting. He wanted me to have a CT scan on Saturday at 9:15 (blasphemy!) and a bladder scope thingie on Monday. Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly how I envisioned spending my saturday and monday mornings. I went to the CT place and they got all huffy when they couldn’t get an IV line to inject the contrast agent to light up my innards, and ended up taking the scan without it. (I was actually secretly pleased with this. I lost all enthusiasm for having iodine injected into my circulatory system when the technician asks me, “Are you allergic to iodine,” I say no, and she responds cheerfully that we’ll soon find out. Thank you, veins, for your prompt and skillful insurrection.) At any rate, nothing evil showed up on the CT, so he cancelled the bladder scope. Victory!

Remember the Teach for America thing I mentioned a while back? Aside from my awesome skill in directing people around campus, I suppose I should briefly explain what it was about. The organization selects a number of recently graduated (or about to graduate) students with varying academic specialties, places them in a rapid, intensive course on education, and sends them out as teachers in various socially disadvantaged areas. Corps members are given a generous stipend in turn for a two-year commitment and hired on as teachers in their districts, receiving full salaries. From what I understood, aside from helping the underprivileged, one of the main purposes of the program is to acquaint those who will go on to be doctors and lawyers and business people with the educational plight in certain areas, so those most equipped to work for change will be motivated to do so.

It sounds like a really great program, and I really like the idea of what they’re trying to do, but given the time commitment involved and other factors, I won’t be applying. Still, I was chosen as a potential applicant because of my involvement with ODK, so that’s pretty cool.

Before I bail, I just want to remind anyone that it’s Covered in Chocolate Week on the Food Network, which is decidedly less kinky than it sounds. :P Right now I’m watching my man Alton Brown make a chocolate mouse. I love watching him because I really feel like I’m learning something. When I watch other cooking shows (that I also love) I just feel like I’m watching a really great performance that will end up making me hungry in the night if I watch it too soon before I go to bed.
Mmm. Chocolate.

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That’s a really nice tie. (Or: I spend too much time watching the Food Network.)

Published
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John T Davis
on January 24, 2007
in medical, misc, television, the merch and university
. 0 Comments

The Dinner Impossible guy has a really nice silver tie I wish I owned. Also, I get the impression if I looked at one of his soufflés without the proper respect, he would kill me using only a dinner napkin. Such is his power.

As a (very brief) addendum to my last post, I have not in fact lost all tolerance for cold temperatures, but was suffering from an infection. Antibiotics were thrust upon me, and I feel much better now.

So, my first full week of second semester is almost over. For those interested, my classes are as follows.

Monday, Friday: No classes. Seriously.

Tuesday, Thursday:
9:30-10:45: Guerilla Movements in Latin America
2:30-3:45: Senior Seminar in Software Engineering (Capstone)
4:00-5:30: Computational Graph Theory

Wednesday:
2:00-4:30: Communication and Memory

So far, it’s pretty cool. I’ll admit to being less than thrilled when I realized I have two substantial research papers and a project this time around (not including Capstone, which appears to be just one giant project–not that I have any idea what it’s about: clarification is to come later. I can’t shouldn’t complain, though, as I pretty much brought this on myself. I picked the courses. I have resigned myself to the fact I am incapable of creating a course schedule that’s not academically vigorous. Personally, I blame El Nino.

In the I’m-a-Good-Capitalist Department, I just bought one of these to replace my aging MX900 Bluetooth mouse. They’re 20 dollars off at Amazon. Also, over at Buy.com they’re having (had?) a seven dollar DVD sale. Dig it.

Also, because I wanted this post to be a little longer, today is Neil Diamond’s birthday. Congratulations, sir. For another bit of trivia, here is a list of gun myths in popular culture.

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Prison Break.

Published
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John T Davis
on June 6, 2006
in mac, medical and university
. 0 Comments

I’m done. Completely and totally, unequivocally, done. At least until late August. The Astronomy final was more difficult than the mid term, but I still think I came away with an A. We shall see, I suppose.

My body continues its active rebellion. Last night I was struck with some sort of bladder infection/demonic entity, and it’s proving quite annoying. I’m hitting it hard with Oregano and Uvaursi leaves, both in pill form. Amazingly, it seems to be about gone, and I must say, thank you. Seriously, without going into detail, just, ow.

My new glasses are in. They are indeed awesome, though I think I’m gonna have to go to a glasses place and get them to adjust the arms so they have a bit more of a bend at the end and stay up on my nose. I tried to find a picture of them to link to, but all I’m getting is stuff about the hotel and fine leather.

I downloaded Delicious Library a little while ago. It’s book/movie/CD cataloguing software with a twist. If you’ve got an iSight camera plugged into your Mac, you just turn it on, hold up the book’s barcode to the camera, and the information is automatically downloaded from Amazon. All the info you could possibly want on a book. I went through 20 DVDs and 3 books in about 15 minutes. Doing that by hand would’ve probably taken me hours. (Probably the reason I don’t have a meaningful catalogue of my books, DVDs, etc.) Unbearably cool. I’ll probably end up going on a mad spree and putting in the info for all my books, comics, and movies later.

Those who have been in charge of Proteus, the multi-protocol IM client for Mac, for the past few years (and doing an awful job, IMHO…no major release in years, and it’s still not a Universal Binary and doesn’t support group chat and other critical features) are finally admitting they’ve botched it and preparing to open source the whole project, with a firm development team in place. Yay.

I’ll probably be splitting it out of here tomorrow afternoon, barring some unforeseen disaster.

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And down from the heavens, descended Chuck Norris…

Published
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John T Davis
on May 30, 2006
in medical and university
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I’m apparently somewhat ill. Low-grade fever and everything. Bother. Nevertheless, May Term continues to rock. Got my first test (of two) back today: 97. So far my lab grade is an A, with the one we did today not graded. Tuesday’s lab (also the last day of class and the day of the final, noncumulative, exam) will simply be assembling a Galilean telescope. (Galilean telescopes are the refracting sort, with the viewing lens at one end and the magnifying lens at the other.) Not sure how that’ll be graded, but it could conceivably be fun.

I’ve also made excellent progress on my report. Should have it finished by tomorrow or thursday at the latest. I would really like to get it done before the weekend. Would’ve already completed it, but I haven’t been firing with all thrusters since Friday. Bummer.

That’s really all I’ve got right now. Later days.

[tags]medical, university[/tags]

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Friday Night Highlights.

Published
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John T Davis
on May 26, 2006
in comics, medical, movies and university
. 0 Comments

“There’s a bald guy in a wheelchair waiting outside the delivery room to talk to you.”
-One of the Signs Your Baby Might Be a Mutant, from TopFive.com.

Figured I’d start with something to honor the release of X-Men 3: The Last Stand. The comic geek part of me is insisting that in the majority of all cases (primarily first generation mutants), the X-Gene doesn’t activate until the onset of puberty*.

At the same time, a good number of second-generation mutants were born with some, if not all, of their powers. Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) being the primary example people should be familiar with from X2.

At any rate, I’ll not be going to see the movie for a week at least. I really want to see it, of course, but my wish to not to die in a stampede of X-fans at the threatre outweighs my desire. For now.

I feel like I aced the Astronomy final. Gonna attack the paper tomorrow.

Phasers on stun. Good luck. Liquid Engineer, out.


* I can remember scads of random trivia like this, but for the life of me I never could get trig functions and the like to nest in my long-term memory. Oh well. At least I know Wolverine’s approximate upper strength limit (800 pounds, comparable with mainstream Captain America), and the current Phantom, active since 1930 (and still in his mid-thirties … gotta love how people age in comics), is the twenty-first.

I mean, that’s useful information. Right?

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The sun is dying. And also BSD.

Published
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John T Davis
on May 25, 2006
in humor, medical, politics and university
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"Now, we talked to Joan Hanover. She and her husband, George, were visiting with us. They are near retirement—retiring—in the process of retiring, meaning they're very smart, active, capable people who are retirement age and are retiring." —President George W Bush, Alexandria, Va., Feb. 12, 2003

I make no secret of the fact I’m not a fan of the policies, practices, or much else about the current administration. And if asked (and I rarely allow myself to be asked outside a political science class, as discussing politics is generally as enjoyable as humping a porcupine*), I try to provide good reasons for why. And those reasons are in fact more complicated than “Bush is an idiot-puppet.” In fact he’s not. He’s very committed to a very firm set of ideas and competent as a CEO-style manager (whether this is a proper way to manage the country is up for debate–I believe it’s not).

Having said that, the quote above is real, and it’s one of many. I think, and I’m completely serious here, a good part of the reason so much crap has been allowed to happen in and through the executive branch is about three quarters of the President’s remarks are so stupefyingly bizarre in terms of syntax and semantics a lot of people are too busy going “What did he just say?!” to ask the proper question: “He just said he wants to do what?” Honestly, as a nation we’re too busy pointing and laughing ("Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." -—Sept. 6, 2004, Poplar Bluff, Mo.) to pay attention to the really important stuff until it’s too late to stop it. That trend has only recently started to roll back, but at the expense of a horrific quagmire of a conflict in the Middle East and severe erosions of our civil liberties and freedoms at home.

But I swore not to get into a true political rant when I started writing this, so I’m gonna cut it off there. I think it’s a good decision, and shows my mastery of strategery**.

In Astronomy news, we a had a viewing on Tuesday. Got to see Saturn and Jupiter through a 16000 dollar telescope, as well as a globular cluster of stars. Actually hada good view of the ring system on Saturn and the Galilean (the five largest, as seen by Galileo) of Jupiter. So pretty. Tres cool, and not just because I got extra credit just for showing up and looking through a telescope. Test tomorrow. Fifty questions, 35 of which are multiple choice. I’m anticipating an easy victory. It’s so wierd being in a class that’s actually easy. After the last couple years of this-course-will-make-you-raze-a-city-block-with-a-flamethrower level difficulty, it’s a welcome and refreshing change.

As a bit of a rant, does anyone else get creeped out when astronomy texts devote significant time to what the solar system will look like as the sun burns out, the galaxy as it dies, and so forth? This stuff is freaking depressing. I know it won’t happen for billions of years so I should (hopefully) be dead by then, but still. It would help if they could be a little bit more clinical about it and write less in the style of emotive prose.

At least they don’t devote a lot of time to the far more likely near term cause of the the end of humanity: comet or meteor extinction level events. It gets about a page or two max and is framed solely in terms of past events. So…um…thanks for that.

On a somewhat wierder note, I also find the Jovian planets in general somewhat depressing. Giant gas balls with no real surface where things just keep sinking forever. Seems like the kind of thing you’d find in an Inferno-esque description of hell. Apparently, I’m the only one who thinks this way, as when I mentioned this to my professor (I left out the comparison to Dante’s work) he gave me an odd look.

Infusion tomorrow to keep the HS from getting worse. My doctor’s also started me on monthly cortisone injections to try to beat down what’s already there. Let us hope it works.

Kind of in a wierd mood. My lower brain is trying to be anxious about my paper over telescopes and related tech (which I’ll be doing this weekend) even as my upper brain knows that this is probably the easiest paper I’ll ever have to write as a student here. The only concrete requirement is that it be 3-5 pages.

In current events, I must say I’m thrilled with the Enron verdicts. Here’s hoping they’re held up on appeal***.

Later days.


*There are a number of documented cases of people trying to fornicate with porcupines and other such potentially damaging animals. Ignoring for the moment the whole sickness related to animal fornication … Darwin at work? Not necessarily, though they certainly want you to think that. More likely an alien plot to prevent the coming of the next great generation of humanity by using mind control to force the forebears of that generation to sterilize themselves in bizarre and distracting ways so no one catches on to the conspiracy. You be the judge.
**Not really a Bushism.
***Why is it the really guilty people, at least in the world of white-collar crime, are the ones most able in terms of fiscal and legal resources to successfully appeal their convictions. There should be a name for this paradox. It should be a palindrome, because they’re awesome.

[tags]humor, medical, politics, university[/tags]

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