The Time Sink

The great Evolution experiment... Is on hold for a few. Yeah, I thought I had it, but that last round did hose the MBR on the testbed. ...and the more I did to try to recover it, the worse things looked. So I took a pass and started playing <g>...

Umm... All went well enough except for a persistent hang when YAST2 probed the NIC... Hmm... Okay, let's check on the Win2k side of things... Hosed. Sheesh. No loader. Okay, repairs are in order... No go. Double sheesh. Okay, let's just reinstall the new installation; I need the practice and this round will tell me which drivers I haven't loaded on the second HDD. Trundle... Success. Drivers loaded; Adobe Elements loaded; picture tweaked and posted... Cool!

...and I went to work today. ...and came home. ...and here I am again, staring at the screen at 2230 WT?? No matter; somewhere I have a life...

...and John and John have reprieves! Interesting how two guys who are the lynchpins of their organizations can end up on the edge time and again. Dunno'... Keep up the good work and keep the resumes up to date. I guess that's good advice...

Well, so far so good. It's been a year since my last nuclear treadmill, and I found out today the procedures have changed slightly since the cardiology group bought their own equipment... Last year, the resting scan was accomplished after an isotope injection and a 'high fat' meal in the hospital cafeteria. Today's repast was an eight-ounce can of Ensure...

Let me attempt to explain the one-hour wait before the scan. ...after fasting prior to the isotope going on board. Then again, maybe not. I did discover my stomach knows the difference between 'real food' and eight ounces of liquid. Oh, and I was caffeine-free until after the scan...

...as I will be until tomorrow until the treadmill (and re-scan) portion of things is over, sometime around noon (twenty-four looong hours). Yeah, there's a fasting deal too (unless I want to get up and have breakfast around 0300). ...and no sugared drinks in the morning, no decaf anything, no food, no life, no fun. Maybe I should just stay up, have a late night snack, and then sleep in until about an hour before the treadmill. Yeah, that beats getting up early and going to work and drinking water until 1100...

Hey! Today, I got a Moonpie with my Ensure! Ummm... That was the high point. Well, I didn't have any 'interesting events' occur during the treadmill, so I'll go with that as an okay thing. ...but lunch with Shelley got lost in the still, calm waters of waiting forever for things to happen.

If you recall yesterday's warning, as things get ready to happen around 1100 today, I hadn't had anything to eat since dinner Wednesay and no caffeine since 1100 that morning. Swell. ...also swell is that the office staff is already running behind since the docs kept getting called away on emergencies. I didn't even get to the treadmill room until something like 1230. No big. ...and things went well: they stressed my heart well enough to make them happy, shot the isotope in and then we got to wait. ...as they tried to clear the backlog to the scanner. Like forever, in Optimist years... Shelley hadn't had lunch, and we'd both figured we would be able to enjoy some time in the hospital cafeteria before I had to go back to work. No go; we didn't clear the building until almost 1500. ...and the Ensure had long since worn off, although the Moonpie was still hanging in there.

So Shelley headed off to get the kids and I headed back to the office to get some caffeine. Yeah, Shelley forgot to bring my medication of choice with her. No problem. ...until I got back and found that Janeen had 'borrowed' the only cold can I had in the refer. She paid back nicely though: she had a can of Red Bull ready to go; that held me on the way downstairs to the Dr. Pepper machine. Slamming that Red Bull at least took the edge off...

...and that was sorely needed: I'd planned to take Friday off to handle a few things around the house; but the extended time away from the office was looking to squelch that idea. I needed a way to recover the lost time and Shelley gave it to me: no homework for Daniel! Bingo! I worked until 1930 and came home to relieve her so she could get some rest. She was as tired as I was from the wait and the lack of lunch. ...and she's teaching tomorrow.

Oh, yeah: things looked good enough from the raw view of the scan. I'll get the detailed news late next week when we meet with the M.D. to go over things. In the meantime, I'll just keep on keepin' on <g>...

Hey, Brian, here's some of what you missed last night while you were sleeping!

I just didn't want you to miss anything while you were away!

For those visiting the Daynotes Asylum from a more normal part of the planet, last night Brian pointed his web cam at one of his screen savers and let it broadcast to the world...

Ah, yes a Saturday off... Umm, well, not off exactly; Shelley had the duty at the basketball program, which made me the shuttle driver for the shift change and the pick up service for the pharmacy run we both forgot about yesterday.

...and I had a huge list of stuff that needed doing, but by the time all the other things were taken care of, it was time for the first playoff game <g>. That went as expected and I spent the last half watching some of it in the garage as I mounted up replacement bearings and wheels. ...and later went blading (yeah, it was time to change those bearings). I came back and showered in time to sit down for the Oakland/New England game; I figured once that was settled, I would start on a project or two. Wrong! Settled in overtime after a darned interesting second half...

This should be interesting: me trying to be coherent way too early in the morning. ...and I have to wonder what today will be like. WT??? Well, it isn't a big deal to some people, but we slept through the night last night for the first time in at least a week. No cat fights in the middle of the night, no kids getting up because they were sick or scared, no black helicopters overhead, no nothing. Yeah, the heater kicked on at least once because it's really cold for here (and the blast of heat to sustain the kid's room usually is too much for ours, no matter how I adjust the dampers), but even that didn't wake me up.

...and I was down close enough to midnight to take a horseshoe single point for a change. Dunno', it may have been the sugar wearing off from the cookies Shelley baked while she covered for the neighbors and took care of their kids while they went to visit a relative in the hospital so she decided to bake cookies for our two, those two and the other two from these parts who wandered in and played Nintendo and basket ball and such and wiped out tray after tray of those cookies as they came out of the oven and I didn't even get my mitts on one until about two hours into a baking session...

...or not. Either way, it's interesting putting up a post anytime before noon. ...especially while distracted by the Brian Cam <g>! I do love Biran's latest innovation; I call it "Instant Messaging" (although I understand there may be a trademark issue there...): rather than e-mail, Brian writes notes on cardstock and puts them in front of the camera. ...sure beats pounding on the keyboard, although, I'm not sure I'd tackle that method without a spell checking system of some point. Actually, there's no way in heck you'd ever see a 'morning cam' around this house; the only presentable one around here in the morning is that Optimistic morning person... Ah, well; it's for the better...