proba tive org archives

Incredibly, I was up at 6:30 am this morning, drinking coffee and making breakfast. I actually felt really normal for a few hours. It was a welcome change but it hasn't lasted very long - I'm tired and sluggish again. Boo. Hiss.

The early morning appointment with my psychiatrist yielded a new sleep aid after we both agreed that sleep and particularly the phase that provides the rest is a basic ingredient necessary for my continued progress toward balance and health both physical and mental. Particularly, he is very realistic about pain and the parameters that affect one's perception and tolerance.

This new sleeping aid is supposed to provide a more normal sleep than the Lorazepam was. In fact, he said Lorazepam interferes with sleep much the same way as alcohol. Both help you get to sleep but not to sleep well.

It's okay to take naps if I'm tired, too. I have been avoiding them unless it was impossible to do so, thinking napping was 'giving in' to the depression, etc. Silly me.

The new sleep 'aid' (or more accurately sleep 'bomb') resulted in 14 hours of sleep last night and part of this morning. Seriously.

A positive effect has been a huge reduction in pain. The negative is a bit of sluggishness for the first hour or so that I was awake.

I'm going to try it again tonight and see if less excessive resting is produced.

I went out for a walk later in the day - in the rain that descended and now has passed over the city to water other parts of the country.

12 hours. Still seems excessive, but it's not as bad as the previous night. I'm not feeling as groggy as yesterday either. I think I'll count this as progress.

Now I just need to get out for some exercise in the sunshine today has brought. Then I'll do some laundry and play around with my web stuff. I can't wait to add more photos, now that I've got me a gallery and all.

I've been enjoying my morning coffee and surfing the web since 7 am. Amazing, don't you think?

I spent way too much time getting my second photo collection set up so I've decided to try to create a better one based on a tutorial I found on the web. As usual: Free ¬= Easy.

Photos from Thanksgiving last year are now viewable either through the Memorable Occasions link on this page or directly by clicking here.

Liver Update: Not as good news today as I was wishing/hoping/bargaining for; but not worse news, either. No change in test results in the past two months. Like I said - not good and not bad. More testing in a couple of months to see how/if things change. Say, that gives me something to ask for at Christmas: good blood tests!

Driver Update: Not *that* kind of driver - automobile drivers. Ottawa drivers, I am extremely pleased to report, do indeed understand the "Move!" directive communicated by the sirens, horns and flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Who knows why - I'm just glad this difference exists between Kingston and here. Other people may understandably not be as glad.

Seems the high cost of petroleum is fueling (or justifying spending for) a University of Illinois research project into more efficient methods of creating an alternative from corn.

Microbiologist Hans Blaschek is leading the project and had this to say in the news release:

"The U.S. has access to significant amounts of biobased resources ... still largely focused on providing raw materials for the food, feed and fiber industries and not on chemicals and fuels."

Blaschek hopes that this research will ... provide the need for an additional 200 million bushels of corn for the production of butanol and acetone alone.

Time to buy a farm...

Thanksgiving Day is upon us again. I am thankful for the love of family and friends that continues to enrich my life and bring me joy. Blessings to all of you today.

My poor brain is currently chugging away on the slow, steep road leading to my very first php programming effort - a photo gallery that is less time consuming to administer than the 'free' ones I have tried. The initial set of functionality has been determined and even a bit of the underlying structure.

The fun part is about to begin: figuring out how to get things coded to do what I want without compromising my own best practices. Exploration of printed and web resources this past week started the osmosis process.

Part of the challenge will be to take regular breaks to, um, eat and get the Jeep emission tested and stuff like that. It won't be easy -- I'll be having so much fun I won't be wanting to stop until it's done. It's been far too long since I've learned new technical skills. Especially non-proprietary technical skills.

At least part of this blog will become software related. A nice change from the health complaints for all of us.

Got tired of the useless display that PuTTY gave me (black screen w/font colours that were almost unreadable). Tried to change it but - surprise! It doesn't save changes on Windows. Forget it -- I'm not changing my OS just now.

Thought about editing on my local machine and FTP'ing to test things. Too many chances to screw up this way I have learned many times in other situations.

So... I installed Apache and PHP and got them happy on Windows 98 instead. Took me ALL DAY, but partly because I woke up feeling rather ill and not thinking too well. Not even eating much.

I was determined to get things ready for more serious work asap and stuck with it tonight. You know - so near, yet so far - and I didn't want to lose my stack pointer.

Made an appointment for my 15 year old Jeep to get the mandatory emissions testing done tomorrow morning. She passed with flying colours 2 years ago... hoping that's the case this time around, too.

Not a new psychiatric term. Just what is needed to negotiate the health care system here in Ontario (and perhaps elsewhere). Doing your homework and requesting second (and possibly third) opinions are part of the toolkit. It's all about being an aggressive patient.

Much like the people in your life, the health care system won't give you what you don't ask for. Today I heard a second opinion regarding the surgery to alleviate some, if not all, of the symptoms my neck problems are causing. I said 'problems' because all of the specialists I have consulted this year do agree on at least one thing: that there is not just one thing wrong with my neck; although to date they each have different opinions about treatments and outcomes.

The orthopaedic surgeon I saw today was not opposed to the traditional treatment. He told me the risks and statistical incidence of all of them and some individually. He even gave me a tour of the MRI images, explaining what I was looking at. Very cool. The images and the fact that he took the time to explain them to me.

The traditional approach to treat a bone spur (osteophyte) and/or disc protrusion (herniation in my case) is much the same. Remove the disc; remove the bone spur; use bone harvested from hip to fuse the adjacent vertebrae. In my neck, there are three discs that appear to be either herniated or degenerated which would mean up to three fused parts of my spine. This is what the neurosurgeon didn't want to proceed with but to which the ortho surgeon is not adverse at all.

The downsides of this approach are many: loss of flexibility, additional stress on remaining discs (which is thought to accelerate degeneration), recovery from bone harvesting and immobilization of the neck during recovery. Recovery time and immobilization techniques are negatively affected by multiple fusions

But wait. In the two weeks between these consultations, I have done some research and unearthed something that addresses many of these issues: disc replacement. The same idea as joint replacement, but different. Clinical trials in the US (and maybe Canada?) are ongoing as a matter of fact. A sign that it is gaining acceptaance.

When it appeared the discussion of the standard surgery had ended and replacing the discs hadn't been mentioned, I asked about it and received a referral to a doctor in London, Ontario. Surgeons in London were the first in North America to do cervical disc replacements as a matter of fact.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons has just published two articles (PDF*) from London researchers on this subject in NeurosurgicalFocus (September 2004).

[ * Medical terminology translation: arthroplasty, kyphosis, lordosis, myelopathy, osteophyte, radiculopathy, spondylosis. ]

With a bit more luck and persistence, I am hopeful I'll benefit from this new method of treatment. Right now, though, I'm taking some pain meds to help with the after effects of the examination. Not that the paces I was put through required any significat effort. Just that they were enough to irritate my problematic nerves.

50 years ago today this cutie blew into my life, making me a sister for the first time. For the next two weeks we'll be the same age. He thought this was pretty nifty when we were young, delightedly reminding me that we were "twins". I was just plain perplexed for many years.

Occasionally we were called "Irish Twins". Kind of made sense - we were Irish on one side of the family. But someone neglected to explain that it was rather derogatory.

Shh. Don't tell Dennis that, okay? He inherited a real Irish temper along with those eyes.

This is the part of winter "north of 49" that I dislike even more than the weather and I am exceedingly unfond of the weather. Now that I think about that, I am most unfond of the lack of choice with respect to living in cold climes that comes with Canadian residency. (I know, I know, Vancouver is the exception - but I don't live there.)

Anyway. It's 6:30 pm and it's dark. It's not cold (yet) but it will be shortly and then it will be dark even earlier. Now, cold and bright is a lot easier to take. This I know from living in northern Alberta eons ago. Yes, it was dark even earlier there. That's not the point. And warm and dark is not bad either. That I know from living in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.

Something ought to be done. Either warming the country up - perhaps that global warming thing can help; or brightening it - no idea how that might be achieved. Bah.

I've been fighting to stay awake all day and happily about to give in and head to bed. This is a reversal of my recent progress. I haven't discovered any good reason for this, though. Yesterday I put it down to the pain killers I took, but today I have refrained from that and I'm still not with it.

My PC has been acting up since I started downloading and deleting various applications in the last few days. It now likes to play frozen tag in the middle of the night, requiring a hard reset to get it back in the game. This afternoon I defrag'd the drive in hopes of helping it get back to its usual self. Tomorrow will tell.

(Yeah, yeah, what else is new - right?) Actually, I had been doing pretty well until the pain threshold was passed on Friday and then I was doing rather foggily even without pain meds, so I cut back on the number of sedatives I am ingesting and then - I was awake due to pain at 4 am. So I gave in and took Tylenol 3 and was very surprised at how quickly it worked. Like almost immediate pain relief. Must remember to remember that pain is not a good thing if it can be addressed. (I have long and short term plans for doing just that.)

Last week I took the trusty Jeep in for testing and was aghast at the terrible results compared to the first time it was tested in Ontario in 2002. For instance, CO went from 0.02 to 2.19. Really! 100 times worse. And HC (HydroCarbons) from 2 to 91. The CO reading caused the FAILURE, but the HC was pretty close.

Because my Jeep is possessed (See continued below), during the emission testing the coolant started leaking. They informed me that it was doing this and I said that it does that sometimes. They continued the test and it wasn't until they were backing it out of the bay that I saw (on the remote monitor) steam coming out of the engine compartment! Overheating is a bit different from leaking don't you think?

And it failed the test.

Most times this summer the coolant bubbled out and the engine wasn't overly warm. I started to regard this as a non-urgent problem. A weekend or two ago I drove to Perth and back and no overheating or overspilling was to be seen.

After a bit of pondering and some babying of the beast I went directly to Japan Auto Services to consult with the owner there about what may be the problem. He thinks he knows. I'll find out tomorrow. But in the meantime, here's some things I have learned about emissions testing in general and in Ontario.

The Drive Clean program in Ontario has a Repair Cost Limit program with some disagreeable (to me) requirements namely that the repairs must be done at a Drive Clean authorized garage and that a Drive Clean diagnostic must be performed before the repairs are done. The diagnostic alone costs $175.

After waiting for the engine to cool off, adding fluids, driving a few blocks and having to repeat this not once but twice I figured it was now reproducible and headed for Japan Auto. First to finally fix the overheating and then to get advice on the emissions problem, thinking a good mechanic armed with the old test results and the new failure might be able to fix it for less than the RCL ($450) and without my forking out cash immediately for the diagnostic test. (It helps that I have all the repair invoices for the past 13 years.)

I'm glad I thought that way because, despite the demonic spirit deciding to depart so I couldn't get the overheating to repeat, I learned:

1. The testing should have been stopped when the overheating started.
2. The abnormal emission results are very likely due to overheating.
3. The culprit may be as simple as the cap on the reservoir not sealing anymore.

Tomorrow's the day. Fingers crossed.

For a couple of years now my baby has been having a problem with intermittent and undiagnosable fits of spewing coolant with and without concomittant overheating of the engine. The first time this was looked into THIS mysterious piece of plastic was dislodged from a hose.

Nobody knew what it could be. I wasn't too happy about something falling apart inside my cooling system, so I kept it, planning to scan it and send an email to the Car Talk show on NPR and see if they knew. (These guys are hilarious BTW. If you get a chance to listen to them - do.)

The problem seemed (seemed, mind you) to be alleviated, so the scan never got sent. Understandable given the other things that were going on in my life then. And then the problem reappeared this summer and nothing was found that could be causing it.

When I consulted my Haynes repair manual (everyone who owns a car should have one IMO) I recognized the mysterious foreign object as the post that was previously attached to the bottom of the reservoir bottle with indicators for FULL and ADD levels. (No wonder I was never sure whether I had enough or too much fluid!) Very poor design that omitted a screen above the outlet from the bottle into the cooling system.

I also noticed that there appeared to be little pieces of this 'thing' missing. Not to mention whatever it was that held it on the bottom. The conclusion reached was that there was some stuff floating around that once in a while managed to clog up the system. I resorted to carrying around jugs of coolant and water and kept an eye on it.

Driving in Ontario? Apparently there are few enforceable rules at the moment.

I've spent more time exploring things to do with PHP programming and wasted some time trying out a couple of free things, too. They weren't as well documented as I might have hoped and I got neither of them running. Things that you just can't know until you give them a try. Sigh. Back to the drawing board...

I did manage to eliminate the freezing up of my PC earlier this week. Yay. And the Jeep's ready for me to pick up tomorrow. Double yay.

My trusty Jeep is back. I must get out and drive it a bit to make sure the overheating has been banished and then get it retested. Just a few days remain before the plates must be renewed.

I've been somewhat challenged in my pursuit of a script or application that would analyze the access logs for this blog space. But I think I've found one. Got sidetracked when I investigated the error log for proba.tive.org, too. Found a problem that I created when I was experimenting yesterday - I left some code in my index that called a script I'd deleted because I couldn't get it working properly. Oops.

Fixed that and then realized the fact that I didn't have a favicon.ico was generating errors, too. I never said I had one, but that didn't stop the browsers from expecting one, apparently.

So I have installed one. I'll find or make a better one later.

Tomorrow I'll get my statistics generating script running. Promise. And then a link to the output even, so you can see it.

And then I'll get back to the creation of a photo gallery application using php. Such things are called scripts sometimes which causes me some confusion but probably makes sense to everyone else.

Got some log analyzing software set up. I think it might be lying a bit, though ... seems nobody accesses my site using IE. Maybe that's because IE 6 doesn't play well? Anyway... Here's what my reporting software says happened here during October. Pretty interesting. Slightly nasty presentation.

If I had access to a database, there are some other, better (IMO) tools out there, but I don't, so it will have to wait.

In the Unbelievable Patent department: Exercising A Cat

So much for "novel" and "non-obvious".

Wonder when we'll be sued?

Being a surgeon was never one of my dreams as a child. I dissected the prerequisite frogs and worms in school but without relish. I cannot imagine opening up a human - dead or alive.

So I was surprised when the recent (goreless) tour of my spine turned out to be more fascinating and educational than gruesome. I've become familiar with the medical terms surrounding the causes of my symptoms. Picturing how it all fit together in my neck was still a bit fuzzy (perhaps because every doctor and radiologist seems to see different things when they read the diagnostics).

This image helped immensely and still fascinates me. Partly because it gives me an understanding of the degree of difference between normal discs and degenerated or herniated ones; partly because of the detail that is available with this technology and partly due to the fact that I can view it on my home PC.

There are other cool 'views' on the CD of this MRI scan, but they are more fun when they are played live and you can see the changes in the spinal cord as the bad discs are approached. (I described it as "squished" during the tour and my guide agreed that was a good word for it.) Those are the cross-sectional frames.

In other news, I am starting to get uncomfortable with the number of drugs I am taking at the moment and wondering if cumulatively they are the cause of my difficulty in being productive vis a vis my technology learning curve. Not sure which and how I ought to discontinue and a little apprehensive of upsetting the applecart. I'd like to change in the direction of fewer drugs with no increase in negative symptoms.

I'd like to get my day started a little (or a lot) earlier than it has been the past few weeks. And I'd like to not be in pain upon arising and while trying to sleep at night. Too much to expect, I suspect. At this point in time anyway.

A friend brought to my attention a comic take on voting machines that's worth sharing. Here's the link to it. (The web site is in the Netherlands and was a bit slow to load, but it's worth the wait - honest.)

On the "too many drugs" side of my world, it occurred to me today (or maybe late last night?) that this is a temporary thing. I've been coping with the neck problem for so long that I have to remind myself that it's not going to be a permanent part of my future. I do want to get all of this resolved so I can be free of most of the medications that are keeping me chugging along.

In better news, I managed to arise a couple of hours earlier than was the case for the past week. I'm heading to bed as soon as Law & Order is over.

Oh, I had a really odd dream the other night. Something that hasn't happened for quite some time. One of the more memorable parts was when I found myself standing at the storm door of a house in what was until then a normal middle-class subdivision. With me was the woman of the household. As we were looking out and she was describing the area to me, a huge pig (hog?) came barreling down the walkway right towards us. My expectation of the door being destroyed and the two of us trampled dissolved into amazement when my companion confidently told me not to worry, he'd stop before he got to the door. Which the beast did. Next I was told that he does this once in a while and the hog was told that he wasn't getting anything so he may as well go home.

I picked up a piece of mail from my car insurance agent today. They had tried twice in the past few weeks to get it to me, both times with exactly zero success. The address is correct. My name is correct.

Wherever it was delivered to, the people who received it:

1. did not read the address information
2. wrote on the envelope that I was "not at address anymore"

Which caused Canada Post to:

1. open it (?)
2. put a "return to sender" sticker on it

All of which caused my insurance agent to:

1. (first time) call me to verify that I hadn't moved on them
2. (second time) call me to tell me it had been returned

This happened last month as well, with the difference that the second try for that piece of mail (from another business) succeeded. Well, I should say I know of this happening once last month. What I don't know is whether it has happened to any other mail where the other end has not informed me of the problem. (Like OHIP and the MTO folks!)

The other day I wrote to Canada Post (via email) explaining my problem and asking for their assistance. To my astonishment, I received a reply from a real person within half a day's time. An investigation is being done.

As a public service though, I'd like to encourage anyone who gets mail that's not for them to please check that the address is the same as where they received it before marking things like "not at this address" on it.

If the address is not yours, putting it back in the mail for redelivery is the right thing to do and takes less time.

Thanks.

The Jeep failed the retest yesterday. Many readings have improved since the cooling system fix, but CO still is too high. So I'm going to have to play the Drive Clean game which starts with diagnostics by a certified facility.

My mechanic has faith that the folks he's recommended will be able to figure out what needs doing. I suspect the catalytic converter, even though it was replaced not long ago. The good news is that it's still under warranty. Which will probably mean it won't be the problem - right?

Indoor bad air from cigarette smoke disturbed my sleep last night. Or maybe my sleep was disturbed by the upstairs folks coming in and after that I was aware of the smokey smell. In any case, our apartments share a forced air heating system so if they smoke, we breathe it.

The noisy comings and goings at ungodly hours isn't new, but smoking indoors is. Earplugs have done pretty well on the noise front. I'm not about to plug my nose though! One incident isn't worth complaining about IMO. Two will be.

Turns out the Jeep needs an oxygen sensor which will be installed tomorrow and what I hope is the final retest will be done. Darn thing was replaced for the first time ever about 4 years ago but the manufacturer (Jeep) only warrants it for a year. Nice.

I've spent most of the day mucking around with my php stuff. Got a tiny bit of code working and of course - decided to change it. For the better, naturally.

Other than that, not much is new.

Indeed, the Jeep passed with flying colours with the new oxygen sensor. You can take off the gas masks now! I think there should be a way to get this tested more often than every two years. I suppose I could just go and get it done. I'll think about that. Next year.

According to the maintenance manual I have, I should be getting better mileage now too. Which is good news what with a litre sitting at 85 cents right now.

When I got the plates renewed the lady there managed to give me a temporary license with my corrected address on it. I was on a roll, and my health card is going to expire tomorrow so I called them to find out what's up. After 15 minutes on hold they told me what I'd suspected - the new card had been returned to them. I expect the updated vehicle registrations and a license are also among the missing mail items.

I might have to move just so I can get mail again.

After a really incredible, so close to normal, day yesterday today was the slow achy rebound and tonight seems to be the end of that. Why's that happen exactly? I crashed in front of the TV at about 6 too tired to eat even and now I'm more alert than I've been all day.

The news is just plain depressing, too. Free access to non-existent medical services is going to get worse as doctors retire. That's not news. We already know that. News would be that the system is improving. Bah.

I guess I'm a bit cranky after my day of dealing with other less than accessible government services. Deal with it.

To be honest, some of it is irritation at myself for being undecided about whether to do something. I'll just do it. There - now I've decided.

Exactly one year ago I first posted an entry on this web space. Back then it was just one page. Getting to the latest version has been fun albeit frustrating at times.

I'm also a year older today. (Officially, not just because it's been a year since...) So much has happened I'm not sure what I think about it all. Let's just say I'm glad I'm at this end of it, shall we? Good.

In keeping with the birthday picture tradition, here's the webmistress at 10 months.

So far it's been a good day. The weather is gorgeous: bright and sunny making the fall colours even more splendid. My wonderful (and beautiful) daughter called to wish me a happy day. Thanks, sweetie.

My sister sent me a gift that actually made it to my door. Thanks again.

[Update] My truck driving brother called me in the evening, too. This year he was in Wyoming. Good talking to you, Dennis.

Got an opinion but no voice regarding whom the US electorate should choose to lead them next week? Sure you do.

www.globalvote2004.org is giving the rest of the world (granted the rest of the connected world) the opportunity to weigh in.

Whether the first 'election' influences the real one or not, comparing the results should be interesting.

I made that word up, eh?

Happy 20th Anniversary - to my sister Linda and her partner Ben!

Who knew? Not me ... I just happened to have called today.

To pagans everywhere: Happy Halloween!