The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

  • Surgery Update

    Just got a phone call from surgery, Ana is stable and doing well and the surgeon has started working on her (roughly 25 minutes ago).

    On a side note, there’s gotta be a better way to notify me of updates.  The waiting room librarian walking over and saying she’s going to forward a call to me, scared the HELL out of me.  Honestly, it felt like my heart was going to jump staright out of my chest.  Damn, gotta calm down now.

  • The Wait Begins

    Well she’s in surgery now.  In roughly 2 hours that evil spleen will be no more!

  • Pre-surgery Platelets

    184,000, IV getting started and the surgeon is en-route.

  • Checked In

    Hi everyone –

    Ana is all checked in here at St. John’s Hospital.  The splenectomy is scheduled for 3pm so we’re waiting in a little hallway with curtains called pre-aenestesia. 

  • Easter Dinner

  • It’s 10:30pm… FIRE UP THE GRILL!

    Since Ana has surgery tomorrow at 3pm and they told her that she can’t eat anything after midnight, the only logical thing to do is to have a feast around 11pm the night before!

    So, Jay and Katherine are here and we’re getting ready to throw some steak and chicken on the grill.

    This is our Easter dinner, since our typical plans got interrupted when the doctors told her she had to get another treatment of IVIG today.

  • Laugh Track

    David gave me this this morning while we were playing around on the floor.

  • Walgreens or CVS

    The current poll Which do you prefer – Walgreens or CVS is getting an interesting result, yet one that I suspected.  9 votes so far for Walgreens and 0 for CVS.

    I cannot explain it but I just don’t like CVS.  Taken at face value, the stores are identical.  They have red lettering, similar store size, and God knows they’re always within 100 feet of each other. Yet when faced with the choice, I choose Walgreens time and time again.

    So I ask, what is so much better with Walgreens?

    After spending a few minutes thinking about it (yeah, I can’t believe I actually sat here trying to quantify this), I have come up with the following:

    • Walgreens has cursive writing – it has a warmer/friendlier feel to it (?)
    • CVS has the big ugly hard block lettering.
    • The CVSi (the “i” is for plural folks… come on..) I have been in recently have horrible doors.  They feel narrow and constricting.
    • In CVS, the isles are really crammed together.
    • Every Walgreens in the universe has the same floorplan. (does CVS do this? I don’t know, I hate CVS remember?)
    • Oooh!  And who can forget the Walgreens brand products:   Wal-tussin anyone?

    Any other ideas as to why Walgreens is superior to CVS?

  • Splenectomy

    Ana has been seeing a new doctor for her ITP these past couple of months.  His recommendation has been to get her spleen removed since it appears to be the source of her platelet issue.  In preparation of the surgery, which was to be in a couple weeks from now, she has been weaning off of the prednisone and getting her immunizations.

    Last week, since her platelet counts were low (12,000ish if I recall), the doctor ordered several days worth of IVIG.  At the end of the week she was well over 100,000 and it was expected that that would last for a few weeks until the surgery.

    Bzzzzt.  Wrong.  She got tested this morning and was at 8,000.  So she’ll be getting 3 more days of IVIG (this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) and then go in for surgery on Monday.  Wow, that was fast.

    We’re still learning details, so I’ll keep you up to date as we learn more.

  • Bye Bye SWREG

    A little over a year ago I posted about Payment Processors for taking payment for Chef. Shortly thereafter I went ahead and signed up and integrated with SWREG.  Over the past year I have been pretty happy with them regarding the capabilities they provided, as well as their prices – I’ve been able to accept payments for Chef licenses and successfully ship new customers their registration keys without any intervention on my part.

    So why Bye Bye SWREG?  It has come to my attention that they have started doing some shady (at best) things.  In short, they try to upsell my new customers into buying something unrelated to my software – that charges a $9-$10/month recurring fee.  And they make it look like it’s me doing the selling.  I’m ashamed to say that I learned of this just a few months ago but hadn’t gotten around to switching everything out to a competing service.

    Well that changed this weekend.  After some shopping around and some coding, I am now a (trial) user of E-Junkie and have accounts setup and working with both PayPal and Google Checkout.  I hope that I’ve tested everything as thoroughly as I feel like I have and don’t delay getting any new Chef customers their registration keys!

    SWREG and Digital River – goodbye and good riddance.  You’ll be getting no more commission fees from me.   To anyone using Digital River for eCommerce – I urge you to take your money elsewhere.