Bronchitis

I did say I was feeling better, didn't I? Well shortly after going to bed last night, the hack attacks began, and every gut-wrenching cough feels like a cheese grater is being pressed through my throat. I don't want to get too graphic here but things reached a point this morning where my wife insisted I seek medical attention. Wisely. And the diagnosis is the same as her. Bronchitis.



So here's the scenario: She's hacking and coughing up her lungs, which just happens to be exacerbating a back and neck related injury, so just the act of coughing for her is creating pain on numerous other fronts. She's been told to get rest for 7 days. And now so have I. The kids were the first sick and have not gotten sick again, but you can't imagine how difficult it is to have two deathly ill parents trapped on a rainy weekend in the house with kids that need lots of attention and things to do with all their energy. Keeping them at a distance is difficult but mandatory so they're spared getting Bronchitis as well. Therefore, we've resorted to taking shifts where one sleeps for a few hours while the other lies prone on the couch, retching and expelling infectious phlegm every three minutes while reassuring the kids that Mommy and Daddy will be OK, we can't hug them right now, and oh, here's some more Curious George to watch.



We really needed help today and yesterday, but we actually have nobody we can call on. It's dramatic but it's true. We have their grandmother but it's far to much to ask or expect that she'd take them on for a full day while we got rest; they're too much to handle, and they try her patience as it is. It's not something I'd ask or expect. I'd jump on our brother-sister in law taking them for the day but they live all the way up in Roseville; not quite conducive to a last minute 'we need help' call. There's a neighbor down the street that'd likely take them on but they have a 5 year old as well, and with our kids having just been sick and being exposed to us, anybody we had help would be at threat of being exposed and contaminated themselves. So we've had to wing it and will continue to have to do so through the course of the coming days.



We're Quarantined.



I honestly can't say when I remember being this miserable and in this much pain. This is the kind of illness that, as you sit up from lying back on the couch, you find yourself unable to go any further. Walking from one point in the house to another requires stopping and resting along the way. The low grade fever is just enough to make everything seems fuzzy and surreal. My body aches in ways I've never imagined. My throat is raw and coarse. My voice is completely gone... I had to 'whisper' a bedtime story to the kids because I can't talk. I literally took about an hour tonight to get the energy to get up and get something to eat and soothe my throat. And remember, it's not like I can just ask my spouse for help or visa versa.... we're both in the same boat.



It's humbling to be sick like this. I makes me appreciate the energy, drive, mental focus and heath I usually have. It makes me empathize for the people in the world that suffer chronic illnesses and have to try and make the best of each day under circumstances that make me curl up in the fetal position and whimper to myself.



Fortunately I'm on medication now, so hopefully this will be all behind me in a few days. And the codeine laced cough suppressant may allow me to get a decent night's sleep for the first time in days.

The Calgone Curse

I'm on the mend, albeit it gradual, from being seriously ill. I'm still hacking loud enough to drown out the TV and I'm bringing up what appears to be all that paste I ate in kindergarden. But I'm getting away lucky here...my wife has bronchitis, and has another 7-10 days of air-blasting the outer-most layers of skin off the walls inside her throat to look forward to. Oh, and full time twin-care to boot. So, I count my blessings and will do what it takes to help as best as possible. But sometimes, I feel like I'm living under the Calgone Curse.

Example: While on kid-duty today, returning from shopping for food, I entered the house in dire need of, well, some 'quite time' in the restroom. With that pressing need, within a 30 second span, I set the groceries on the counter, complete with frozen goods to store, I received a work related message on my iPhone needing my immediate response, the balloon my son got from Trader Joe's popped loudly in his hand, setting off a stream of tears and cries for my attention, and my bed-ridden wife started calling on the intercom/phone... all this going on while I was indisposed and unable to attend to anything other then the matter at hand.

I have moments like this all the time. It's almost comical, but as I quipped recently, the difference between something being funny or annoying if whether it's happening to you or not. So this, this is annoying. And I know why it's happening. It's happening because I scoffed at all those ridiculous Calgone ads in the 70's. Oh, cursed bubble bath, how you mock me....

Wether or Nut I Catch A Typo

I often find out too late that I've allowed a typo or two to slip through on a post. Thanks to the diligence of some of my good friends I'm typically advised of the issue within a few days or so. I also have spell checking turned on and scan for them, but a typo's only flagged if it's not correctly spelling something else. Such as "Of" or "Off". "Walt" or "Wait". Or as in the case of the prior post, "Whether" or "Wether". But since my typo of "Wether" didn't set off the spell checker, I used the built in dictionary to find out just what the hell "Wether" means.







All the separates the definition of a choice and a castrated ram is the letter "H". Perhaps something to keep in mind if you're ever offered a job as a weather man by a shepherd.

Surviving The Current State of Health

How I ended up in the icy tidal waters beneath the northern side of the bridge is almost as much of a mystery to me as is how I managed to make it all the way back, across the bay, to collapse on the rocky coastline by Fort Point. But somehow, I did. Exhausting every muscle in my body and blessed with some unbelievable stroke of pure luck, I was able to fight the tides, using the reddish hued shadow of the massive steel and cable suspended construction above as a beacon, a guiding force, and a challenge to my survival. As I fought against currents attempting to drag me westward, beyond the golden gate and into the depth of a watery grave, I had to remain relentless in my struggle to stay on course. I gagged, retched, and convulsed alone in the water as I worked to keep the fluids from amassing in my lungs, weighing me down and limited the modest buoyancy while the fat in my body, fat that I've ironically cursed for so long, served to aid me in keeping afloat and avoiding hypothermia. My screams of despair and my loudest cries for help all fell silent but a scant yard or two beyond me, absorbed into each ebbing and cresting wave of the turbulent waters, as I inched my way across and towards the southern most point of land, until my voice, horse from the repeated rasping, was completely gone. And unbelievably, well past the point of being heard and struggling just to be recognized amongst the rising and dipping white capped peaks of water, I seem to have encountered and been struck directly in the head at numerous points by the wooden oars of passing rowboats. My body limp, my head pounding, my leg muscles straining to acquire enough oxygen to avoid cramping and knotting into massive welts of clenching pain, I've miraculously managed to haul myself to within a foot of the shore and within an inch of my life.

At least that's how I feel right now. Perhaps this is a bit over dramatized. Yes, I've walked the length of the bridge on more than one occasion and yes, I've ventured to the waters edge on each side, but making the aquatic quest from one side to another, well, that's actually a bit of an exaggeration.

But it is how I feel right now.

The kids have been sick. My wife has been sick. And until last night I've managed to skirt any visible signs of ailment. But the time put into helping on the home front and staying up late to maintain some sort of presence and hold on various projects on the work front clearly weakened me, and the coughing began in the early hours. It's not stopped. My throat must look like a tube of cotton that's had a melting strawberry popsicle dragged through it. I can hardly speak, and when I do, I sound like Barry White. My body-aches alone gave me the motivation to draw the analogous visualization of having swam across the San Francisco Bay, because I certainly feel as if I've just done so.

And it's not as fun as it sounds.

Feats Of Clay

Black History month continues through February, and without conscious effort, I continue to find myself watching "Eyes on the Prize" while working in the evening. But I've also been watching the DVD documentary set Muhammad Ali - The Whole Story. This is an amazingly detailed retrospective on an amazing personality. The man has such a dynamic presence and he's highly motivating to watch. His confidence and humor make for great viewing. Along with this documentary, the film "When We Were Kings" remains a personal favorite, and a wonderful look at his return to the ring after being exiled for speaking out against the Vietnam war. Amazing stuff.



I stumbled across a great quote of his recently that makes me look at the last few decades of my life and appreciate where I am today...

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

I've not preached for awhile, and fortunately for you, dear readers (all three of you), I won't have time to do so again here. So I'll let somebody else do the preaching on my behalf. Annie Leonard's got an extensive background in global and eco-related efforts. This 20 min. video is very well done. Without being condescending, it's as dumbed down as I think anything of this magnitude can possibly be without being insulting and easily discarded as trite.

There's plenty of numbers, metrics and data points thrown about during this presentation. I'm partial to fact checking and I've not done so, but numbers aside, there's simply no denying that the commercially driven world we live in is completely out of control, with little or no mindfulness into the end result. And we're feeling the impacts. It can't go on.

Posting this and 'pushing' a great consciousness on your part of the commercialism we're all a part of is a bit tough, given that i work for a product manufacturer depicted in the video, and in the hand of the presenter in the opening of the movie. But they've been working aggressively to be as green as possible and made great strides in doing so. But we're still a part of the 'bigger, better, faster, cooler' cycle that needs to be re-examined. I'm hopeful that it'll happen soon. After all, just because your iPod is not the coolest, newest, slickest one on the market, it doesn't mean you can't use it for what it's intended for, right?

. I do love my "Stuff". But I also don't have THAT much that I'm attached to. I like to think of myself as a minimalist. I've long rallied against the marketing machines that attempt to convince us that our 2 year old car is an eyesore, that clothes really do make the man, or that using a specific brand of breath-mints will result in your being laid by a set of swedish twins. It's just bullshit. Believe me. I spent lots of money on breath mints learning that lesson. ;-)

Ultimately, though, i'm becoming more and more conscious of what goes into my trash, and what get's recycled or reused. I'm trying to trim down our power consumption if not for the cost alone, but for the bigger picture as well. I'm taking only one napkin at the cafe. I'm using a coffee mug instead of the paper cups. We're using green products in our home cleaning. But there's more things we can do still.

I really liked the part of this where she mentions the 'happiness' measurements. I have to say that one of the greatest joys of the new neighborhood is that there's been lots of socializing involved. Like 'the old days', before people came to a point where they just work their butts off, come home, watch TV, buy into believing they need more stuff, go out to spend money on stuff, then go back to work in order to pay for it all.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P56-zWupDcI&rel=1]

We've bought into the dream, but we're creating a nightmare. It's time to wake up and take back control. Visit the Story Of Stuff website to watch this video and perhaps you'll get motivated as well.

PC load letter?!!

I actually had to send a fax today, then receive a response back, by fax. It took three attempts at three different fax machines to finally get it to send, and I had to resort to calling the recipient in order to confirm that. The response has yet to fax back to me. A simple task, one would think, but 20 minutes and multiple phone calls later, and it's still not complete.

Yes, the universe saw fit to screw with me once again. By doing what? Forcing me back to the late 1980's, that's what. Hell, I might as well have been carrying around a VHS tape, a hand held calculator and a cell phone the size of a carton of cigarettes. When in the hell will the medical community catch up to the technological advances and, once and for all, allow us to abolish the concept of a fax machine once and for all.

Sometimes I think doctors offices and real estate agencies have some vested interest in fax machine supplies.

Foo Fighters Hold No Punches

I know I'm sounding old when I start to kvetch about the noise level at a concert, but Saturday night's "Foo Fighter's" show at the Oakland Arena was deafening. Seriously; it was so loud it'd make Pete Townshend wince. Having not thought of ear plugs in advance, I had to resort to stuffing tissue in my ears to help avoid the 4-hour post-show ringing that would have otherwise occurred.



The show had two opening acts; the first, "Hello Stranger", was already on stage when I arrived. They were fronted by a thin attractive woman wearing low cut white spandex and leopard-fur boots. Think "Quarterflash" meets "The Donnas". They closed with a cover of "AC/DC"'s "Thurderstruck". They were actually a decent band, and the choice in selections for the end of their set was a wise one. They were followed by "Against Me!", another thrashing rock band, equally loud, but strong players and performers with what sounded like good garage-band music. Their stage banner looked like something from a football game, but that aside, they were a strong band as well.



Foo took the stage and launched into a thrashing version of "Let It Die" followed by about 6 or 7 more thrashing, pounding versions of some of their best songs. The sound was so loud and so thrashing, however, that in comparison to the original recordings, they were heavily muddled, at least in my opinion. I hate to say it but had I not known the songs, I might not have liked them based on the live versions, and I was wondering what some of the suite guests thought of the band, knowing some were not too tapped into Foo. Now, because I was in a suite, perhaps the acoustics therein was the issue, but it's not been an issue on prior events I've seen from the same suite, so I think it was just the band and sound settings.



About half way through the show the band moved to a center stage where they did an incredible accoustic set. And my friends with ticketed seats were well positioned for this part of the show, making the 'luxury' of being in a suite overshadowed by being front and center for this segment. It was a great set and I regret not having caught their full acoustic tour back in 2006.



The San Jose Mercury News had a good write upof the show online today. One point they made, which want to echo here, was the stage presence of the band and Grohl. He really played his heart out and played with a rock-legend intensity. On top of that he had a casual charisma in his interactions with the crowd, which gave him a sense of 'everyman' accessibility.



But what else would one expect from the guy that let himself get 'punched' on SNL?

Angry Young Man

I've always enjoyed this particular song, something from his earlier catalog, for it's dynamic piano-driven opening and for the pace of the lyrics. But while driving into work today, with thoughts of the current political climate running through my head , this started playing on my iPod. It was perfect timing. These words eloquently echo my own thoughts about the upcoming election, as well as my many own opinions about government, religion, the media, science, and the dramatic reduction in the size of an ice cream 'drum-stick' over the last two decades.

There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
And he's always at home with his back to the wall.
And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost,
And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on his cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.Give a moment or two to the angry young man,
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand.
He's been stabbed in the back, he's been misunderstood,
It's a comfort to know his intentions are good.
And he sits in a room with a lock on the door,
With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.I believe I've passed the age
Of consciousness and righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight.
I once believed in causes too,
I had my pointless point of view,
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right.And there's always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he's never been able to learn from mistakes,
So he can't understand why his heart always breaks.
And his honor is pure and his courage as well,
And he's fair and he's true and he's boring as hell-
And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man.

The bridge, in particular, sums up my overwhelming sense of futility at times, in the lines "I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view, And life went on no matter who was wrong or right."

Sigh.

And yet as I age, interact with my own children and see them reflecting my own behavior, I long to ensure that I don't "go to the grave as an angry old man."

Holding My Breath and Gasping For Air

Through a turn of events on the work front, I've found myself taking on a role related to the recently released MacBook Air. And as such, i've been given one. No, not the 'ultimate' version, but the 80GB version with 2GB of memory and a 1.6mHz Core 2 duo processor. Sure, they're cool looking when you pull it out of an interoffice envelope, but I'd balked at the concept of using one for a number of reasons. Drive space. Processor speed. Screen size.



So, when one was dropped in my lap late last week, I have to be honest, I didn't know what to do with it. I'm obligated to use it in some capacity, because it's essential to be intimately familiar with a product that you're supporting or working on. I've done the same with other products I've worked on as well, and it's been quite useful to be intimately familiar with bugs being fixed or features being enhanced.



I decided I'd use the Air as a tool for walking about the campus and attending meetings. Using IMAP for email and accessing web or server based tools I use daily, there's no firm dependancy on having a "real" computer in meetings. An Air would be fine. Then I could leave it at work, let it recharge overnight, and take the MacBook Pro home at night when I need to do more ambitious work.



Then I made the mistake of taking it home and using it there. And having a light weight option for doing work from home is pretty awesome. I mean, that thing is SO thin and SO light, it's insanely convenient to work with. Unlike a heavy 17" system that makes the process of getting up and moving about a bit cumbersome, the AIR snaps shut and travels along almost transparently.



After getting everything setup to sync between the two computers, I've found myself greatly tempted to shelve the 17" and go AIR all the way. I've got a 2nd Mac at home that is capable of providing the "power features" I might find myself wanting on occasion, but in reality, there's very little I do daily that the AIR won't do quite satisfactorily. Sure, it's a slower machine, but it's not like I'm using it to make movies or render complex Photoshop files. I'm writing, emailing, and doing web stuff. And I can use my iPod 160GB as an external HD to hold my entire music collection and any occasional extras I might want on hand.



I'm still not certain. I do love the larger display of a 17" system. And I've gotten used to using memory and processor speeds that are beyond top of the line. So I've been spoiled in that respect. Now I'm spoiled in this other realm, and I think I'll try living on the Air alone for a week or two and see if this excitement lasts.