I was online for the last moment of our Insight Communications internet connection. At 12:05am we lost connectivity, and as of this morning we are now on the Comcast network: c-98-215-177-37.hsd1.il.comcast.net
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Jericho
Ana and I have been pretty big fans of the tv show Jericho since its pilot episode last year. For the uninitiated, it’s about a post-nuclear-attack United States, focused on a small town in Kansas’ tribulations. The show was dropped at the end of the season, but due to overwhelming fan support it was brought back for a second trial run this season (6 episodes). I find it to be a very interesting and entertaining show, one in which I’m able to easily ignore some of the usual tv/movie technology stupidness.
But so far this season there are a couple things that have started to tarnish the show for me. The part of the story so far this season is that a new government has formed in the Western US and is starting to spread further East. They even have a new/modified US flag being flown everywhere, and the military has this flag patch on their uniforms. In tonight’s episode a local teacher was given new “US History” books to distribute and teach in her class – it’s clear the new government is a veiled dictatorship. This is all something like 6 months after 20+ bombs have taken out large cities all over the country.
6 Months. A new flag was designed, chosen, MANUFACTURED, and distributed all over the place. In 6 months. With what you can only assume would be a dramatically reduced capability to produce anything. Then, they even got tons of military patches made. Again, in 6 months.
Then comes the textbook. History was literally rewritten in 6 months, and again they were able to get them mass produced in a country with a destroyed infrastructure. It occurred to me as I was typing this that maybe the story would end up showing that all of these things were planned before the bombs, all part of the unfolding conspiracy. But I find it even harder to believe such history-rewriting could be done “in the clear” without any one of the million failure points letting the secret out.
Arrgg!!
I know, I know, it’s just a show. I’ll shut up now.
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Dwight, meet Edward
Now, before you think being at home has already made me go crazy – please note that my plant has been named Edward McConaughey for about 2 years now. What’s amazing is not that Edward is related to the infamous Matthew, but that I’ve kept a plant alive for 2 years!
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First Day
Cue smiling baby…
Today is Ana’s first day back to work, and at her new job nonetheless! Good luck Ana, you’ll do great! Accordingly, today is David’s first day at Gradma Johnson’s house. As you can see, he’s all ready to go.
It has been pretty hectic this morning as Ana tries to get out the door. I’m trying to figure out when, where, and how to help her out in the most efficient manner – like dressing him (not bad, eh? *nudge*). It’s a little rough around the edges but I’m sure by the end of the week we’ll have some sort of routine down.
Still distracted by that smiling baby picture? Here, look at this one (taken a few short moments later) – no more smiling baby:
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NIU
Dave pointed me to this:
alias: skazmie2 name: Kazmierczak Steven Phillip pretty_name: Steven Phillip Kazmierczak first_name: Steven middle_name: Phillip last_name: Kazmierczak email: skazmie2@express.cites.uiuc.edu student_department_name: School of Social Work student_program_name: MSW:Social Work -UIUC student_level_description: Graduate - Urbana-Champaign student_major_name: Social Work address: 1207 W. Oregon : M/C 140 : Urbana, IL 61801 office_address: 1207 W. Oregon : M/C 140 : Urbana, IL 61801 title: ACADEMIC HOURLY department: School of Social Work type: person phone student staffThat’s right. The shooter at Northern Illinois University yesterday was a current student at our alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
😦
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2 Month Photo Shoot
We’ve got a few more pictures here for you tonight. David is 2 months old today!
And here’s what may be my favorite…
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Vista System Restore
I know a lot of people that disable the System Restore feature of Windows (XP and Vista), and I just don’t get it. Whenever an update is applied to the system, a checkpoint is created of the system configuration (some registry keys, services, system dlls, etc.) and if something goes wrong with the update you can quickly rollback to a checkpoint.
This has saved me on more than one occasion from an errant Windows Update and even regular software install. Case in point, this morning I went to upgrade my copy of VMWare Workstation 6 from 6.01 to 6.0.2 and the install sat there for 30 minutes before I had to kill it. That left VMWare in a completely toasted state and wouldn’t start. Greaaaat.
After looking around my system, I saw that none of the app’s files had been removed. It just looked like one (at least) of the services that it depends on was removed from the system (just a registry entries). Whew, a system restore to a checkpoint of just an hour earlier (due to a Windows Update) fixed the problem and I’m back up and running.
I highly recommend leaving the System Restore feature turned on.
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ITP Update
We had the second meeting with Ana’s new hematologist today. Some good things and some less-desirable things came out of it.
Good things:
- Liver and Spleen scan came back negative for any abnormailities
- 4 or 5 other tests came back negative
- Test for blood platelet antibodies came back positive
- This doctor knows that a 9:40am appointment means 9:40am, and not 11:40am.
He describe, as we’ve known, diagnosing ITP is done by ruling out other causes. Unlike the previous doctor, he is actually actively running tests and ruling things out. As expected, everything is ruling out ITP and getting her prepared for a potential treatment by the spleenectomy.
Not so good things:
- The prior hematologist has had Ana on a dosage of prednisone that doesn’t really follow the recommended treatment pat for ITP.
- She needs to be on a higher dosage and THAT will provide a baseline and determine the next actions. 4 Months of her previous prednisone usage gets tossed out essentially, as far as determining treatment path. That’s depressing.
So she’ll be on the full dosage of prednisone for two more weeks. If her levels go down, it’ll indicate that the steroids aren’t doing anything and she’ll be weaned off them and the next step will be the spleen removal. If after two weeks her counts are stable, they’ll ween her after 4 weeks and keep testing. If once she’s off, her counts drop, the spleen will be removed.
The Johnson Blog 