I was surfing Amazon.com a few nights ago and ended up with this rather odd assortment of “items to consider.”   Here are some examples where product reviews and customer photos have become art.

Horse Head Mask – It looks pretty creepy, but then on the product page are over a [...] I was surfing Amazon.com a few nights ago and ended up with this rather odd assortment of “items to consider.”   Here are some examples where product reviews and customer photos have become art.

Time to delete my browsing history?

Horse Head Mask – It looks pretty creepy, but then on the product page are over a hundred examplesof it being worn in the field.

Satisfied customer: "I totally nailed that interview!"

Yodeling Pickle. Because we’re out of sizzling bacon?  The vendor’s product description is fun: Are you sick and tired of trying to teach your pickles to yodel? Pickles can be so stubborn. At last, the yodeling pickle you’ve been waiting for. With a mere press of a button (yes, it has a button) this little pickle will yodel its heart out. You’ll think you’re in the Swiss Alps listening to a yodeling pickle.

With nearly 2100 reviews, many of them utterly hilarious and claiming the Three Wolf Moon shirt endowed them with supernatural powers, the T-shirt needs no further introduction. Many of the original customer contributed images were photoshopped, but newer ones appear legit.
Because so many reviewers have used the initials, TWM, reviewers have also had fun with Tuscan Whole Milk.

For example, consider this ditty by “Edgar”:

Once upon a mid-day sunny, while I savored Nuts ‘N Honey,
With my Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz., I swore
As I went on with my lapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the icebox door.
‘Bad condensor, that,’I muttered, ‘vibrating the icebox door -
Only this, and nothing more.’

Not to sound like a complainer, but, in an inept half-gainer,
I provoked my bowl to tip and spill its contents on the floor.
Stupefied, I came to muddle over that increasing puddle,
Burgeoning deluge of that which I at present do adore -
Snowy Tuscan wholesomeness exclusively produced offshore -
Purg’ed here for evermore.

And the pool so white and silky, filled me with a sense of milky
Ardor of the type fantastic of a loss not known before,
So that now, to still the throbbing of my heart, while gently sobbing,
I retreated, heading straightway for the tempting icebox door -
Heedless of that pitter-patter tapping at the icebox door -
I resolved to have some more.

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
‘This,’said I, ‘requires an extra dram of milk, my favorite pour.’
To the icebox I aspired, motivated to admire
How its avocado pigment complemented my decor.
Then I grasped its woodgrain handle – here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams of Tuscans I had known before
But the light inside was broken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only words there spoken were my whispered words, ‘No more!’
Coke and beer, some ketchup I set eyes on, and an apple core -
Merely this and nothing more.

Back toward the table turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
‘Surely,’said I, ‘surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’

From the window came a stirring, then, with an incessant purring,
Inside stepped a kitten; mannerlessly did she me ignore.
Not the least obeisance made she; not a minute stopped or stayed she;
But, with mien of lord or lady, withdrew to my dining floor -
Pounced upon the pool of Tuscan spreading o’er my dining floor -
Licked, and lapped, and supped some more.

Then this tiny cat beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grand enthusiasm of the countenance she wore,
Toward the mess she showed no pity, ’til I said, ‘Well, hello, kitty!’
Sought she me with pretty eyes that seemed to open some rapport.
So I pleaded, ‘Tell me, tell me what it is that you implore!’
Quoth the kitten, ‘Get some more.’

Wheelmate laptop desk – well, um, the photo on the left was supplied by the vendor. “Customers” have supplied over a hundred other photos of various car, truck and tank wrecks.

The Army is still perfecting the military model. There seems to be a glare problem and they are now considering teflon coating.

For those attending Burning Man or having suppressed Jabba the Hutt/Princess Leia Fantasies, look no further than the ‘Donk. The custom-made vehicle has a 400 watt sound system.

Liquid ass – when you can’t find your own with a map and a magnifying glass?

Everything by Icon Group International. There are over 300,000 of these electronically-produced, subatomic-nichlet subject matters, all priced to discourage window shoppers. According to Dr. Pedia, these works are the output of Philip M. Parker’s version of SkyNet.

Despite scant information on ganglioneuromas (many just repackaging the NIH blurb in a different style sheet), I wasn’t losing sleep while waiting for the pathology report.  However, it was still great to get the official phone call confirming it was, in fact, the most benign of -omas.  Because this sort of thing is [...] Despite scant information on ganglioneuromas (many just repackaging the NIH blurb in a different style sheet), I wasn’t losing sleep while waiting for the pathology report.  However, it was still great to get the official phone call confirming it was, in fact, the most benign of -omas.  Because this sort of thing is pretty rare, no fewer than four pathologists were involved in “Dude, check this out.”  Hey, I would have done the same.

Since all of the earlier indications were an adrenal adenoma, I was curious how this fares in the -oma pecking order.  I found two studies on pubmed that focused on laparoscopic removal of the adrenal gland.  Of the 174 operations studied by Zografos [JSLS. 2010 Jul-Sep;14(3):364-8], three were ganglioneuromas.  Another, more recent survey by Kulis [J Laparoendosc Adv Surg Tech A. 2011 Dec 13] considered 306 cases, of which three were ganglioneuromas.  Youtube (of all places) has a video (the rest shows snippets from an operation – again, not safe for lunch.  The patient also had some complications.) from a lecture where Drs. Edward Pucci and Fred Brody cite incidence of 1:100,000.   Very rare, but still better than lottery.

On a completely different topic, since coming home, I’ve had some interesting conversations comparing surgery experiences that fall under the “Things I would have liked to have known” category.   As I hadn’t seen any discussion of this, I infer that it other people are too polite to discuss in public.   I’m not, especially if it’s potentially helpful information.

Apologies in advance to anyone who’s not had the sense to go read something more interesting and with 100% more bacon-scented airplane prawns right now.

As I was leading up to surgery, the aspect I was most apprehensive about was (cue the Imperial March)…

Scarier in person.

the urinary catheter.  I knew there was a 100% chance that one would be installed – because that’s what they do for patients undergoing surgery.  Furthermore, I understood the reasons: even though I’d be unconscious, my body would still metabolizing.  The lactated ringers needs to go somewhere.

For dudes, this device of choice is a Foley catheter.  It’s like the Internet: a series of tubes within a tube.   One’s used as a balloon to keep the assembly from popping out.  Another is used for safe urine passage.  There may be a third to allow flushing of the bladder.  After reading the first one, I was just grateful that I was sedated during its installation.

The nice thing about a catheter is pee just flows into a bag hanging on the bottom of the bed, close to the floor.   For someone just out of surgery, it’s a better alternative than having to get up every hour, stand in a cramped room, and add a few drops into the toilet.

The downside is every time I noticed it.  The tube dangling out of the second most sensitive part of my body picked up all sorts of wacky vibrations each time I moved that were mostly mitigated by having part of the tube taped to my upper thigh,.  It feels pretty uncomfortable in a “hello, WTF” way.  When I was lying very still, the weight of the urine-filled output tube causes one’s penis to lie on top of the testes, leading to sweaty balls.   When I could, I tucked my robe underneath to give it some space.

One thing I wish I had done differently was consider slipping on some underpants when they were changing out the bag o’rine the first time.  It’s near impossible – and potentially disastrous — to do so otherwise and thread the various tubes in.  In addition to providing more comfort to lying in bed commando, underpants would have also been one less thing I needed to worry about before walking up and down the hall.   Hospital gowns expose half of your body at any given time.  Even though Bryan scored me another to wear on my reverse, I nicked one of the IVs every time I slipped it on to go walking.

When it appeared I was going to be healthy enough to go home, the catheter was removed.  This didn’t take long, nor was it painful, but oh-my-fucking-god was it a weird, not-good over-sensation.  I’d best sum it up as being glad I had an hour of reserve bladder capacity.  Too much stimulation!!

During laparoscopic surgery, they use CO2 to inflate the abdomen, giving them more room to work.  After surgery, the remaining gas needs to exit wherever it can.  One method is burping.  Whenever I stood up, I’d emit sounds I haven’t heard since college.  Burping was a joyous relief of abdominal pressure!

If I were as tan, buff, and unhairy as Matthew McConaughey, this is where they would have made incisions.

CO2 should also work its way through the other side of the digestive tract, aka “flatus.”  Unfortunately, while my digestive system was making noises like a V8 with three bad cylinders, and I could belch the national anthem, I was unable to pass gas.   For a brief period, it seemed this would be a reason for the nurse to veto my going home.  Fortunately, Kevin decided I had enough other positive signs.  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t actually be able to pass gas until a couple of days later, during the Packers-Giants game.  Read into that what you want, but when I could finally rip a few, I had a wondeful relief from the cauldron of discomfort brewing in my gut.

I have noticed that it’s pretty common for multiple prescriptions, where one’s intended to treat the primary symptom, but the rest deal with side effects.  For example, they gave me Percocet for pain relief from the incisions.  One of its primary side effects is constipation.  Quite honestly, when you’ve had work done on your abdomen, you really don’t want to be straining to poop.  Thus, they prescribed docusate sodium to soften the stool.   Because my digestive system was full of mostly a small thimbleful of sugar-free Jello (still the best Jello I’ve ever had), there wasn’t much potential output.  Number Two didn’t return until late Sunday, during the Pittsburgh-Denver game.  For the record, I wouldn’t mind if Tebow toned down the over-religiosity down a notch or two, but I don’t have any specific problem with him.  For a Bulgarian shot putter from accounting, that was a beautiful TD pass.  (He has his receiver to thank.)

No Pain, No Brain.  During various points of this experience, I was asked to rate my pain on a scale of 0 to 10.  In the engineering sense, I just kind of have to guess that my pain scale works out to be something like this:

• 9+ Being digested by Sarlacc?   I’m glad to have not experienced either.
• 7 – A kidney stone.  I think this is the worst pain I’ve felt, and it was combined with feeling very bloated (as plumbing was backed up), nausea and occasional vomiting.  I wasn’t thinking clearly when I biked home that day.  (And then later, driving myself to the ER?)
• 6 - Coughing up a phlegmball the first time I tried using the deep breath exerciser after surgery.  It was relatively brief and subsided quickly.   In anticipating of the next round of breath exercises, I pre-loaded requests from the PCA.
• 5 — Sitting up after surgery.  This was less quick to simmer down.  My abdominal muscles were really weak after surgery (duh, guess why?), and I felt like an upside-down turtle at times.  Once I was up, I didn’t want to lie down again.
• 3 – 4 — General pain level the first few days after surgery, usually exacerbated by changing position.  Once I was up and walking around, I felt *much* better.   Talking walks outside felt great.
• 2 — Sore knees/ankles after a 12-mile hike on Tiger Mountain with friends.  It’s usually localized pain, relieved by Ice and vitamin-Ibuprofen, and ladled with the satisfaction of having done a 12-mile hike all day with friends.
• 1 — IV, blood draw, or stitches after the Percocet kicks in.  I think I did a pretty good job minimizing the pain medicine intake, but dang, it was so effective to take a pill a half hour before bedtime.  Pain.  Gone.
• 0 — Orgasm.  I’m forty-something, and there are always things snapping, crackling, popping and/or slightly achey.

At today’s two-week follow-up, the doctor asked me what the hardest part of the whole surgery experience was.  Without hesitation: the time in the hospital.  I was pretty lucky to have a half-occupied double room with a glorious view of Seattle and Mt. Rainier, but it was a very noisy, disruptive environment.  I knew this going in, and was thus motivated to get up and walk around to demonstrate that I’d be okay enough going home, where I could actually rest.   When they moved the second patient in, I was doubleplusmotivated to not endure another 24-hours of extra interruptions, translator, or the dude’s wife’s ultra-obnoxious ringtone jacked up at full volume.   I wouldn’t want to spend a few days (as would have occurred with an open.)

Finally had surgery for the thing.  Here’s a recap of the last few days.

Day before (1/11):

8:30 – last solid food.  Though it was slightly tempting to have a celebratory Twinkie, I opted for steel cut oats and bananas.  Going without food the rest of the day was a lot [...] Finally had surgery for the thing.  Here’s a recap of the last few days.

Day before (1/11):

8:30 – last solid food.  Though it was slightly tempting to have a celebratory Twinkie, I opted for steel cut oats and bananas.  Going without food the rest of the day was a lot easier than I thought it would be as I was permitted ”clear liquids” like black tea, Gatorade and all the tap water I wanted.

17:00 – consumption of the evil liquid.  Since the doctor wasn’t insisting on squeaky clean (as would be needed for a colonoscopy), I just had to consume a single 10-ounce bottle of magnesium citrate.   Iced, it wasn’t as bad as I’d heard (though, mind you, I wasn’t sucking down a gallon).  I waited.  And waited.  Read the wikipedia page, waited some more for something to happen, then finally went to bed.

23:45 – The magnesium citrate daiquiri begins the final act in its magical journey through my digestive system.  Oh, my.

Day of (1/12):

6:00 – arrive at the hospital for check-in.  Surgery was scheduled for 7:20, estimated to take 1:43.  If I’ve learned anything from business travel, it’s that the more precise an estimate, the less accurate it is.  This applied here.  My spouse was given a pager that would go off whenever my status was updated, allowing her to check the leaderboard showing my progress.  For surgery performed on kids, they’ll give a halftime update to the nervous parents.   For old farts, they cover the basics.  The patient is fine with the doctor not diverting his attention. 

6:30 – I was led back to a pre-surgery prep room and given a series of questions that I’d been asked at least a half dozen times.  They had me put on The Gown and don compression hose on my legs for prevention of deep vein thrombosis.  Though they repeatedly warn people not to bring valuables or electronics, they checked twice more, just in case I brought something.  My street clothes were put into a vinyl hang-up bag for post-surgery.

6:45 – Two IV taps were installed.  The guy doing these was amazingly good at his job – no pain or blood drips.  I’d later find out that the staff adored him for his sensei-skill.  The anesthesiologist came by for a pre-op interview, confirming answers to the questions I’ve been asked and very patiently answering all of mine.  I was pretty impressed with their thoroughness in identifying potential complications.

The induction phase starts with a shot of Propofol, also referred to as “milk of amnesia” or “forgive and forget medicine.”  The latter is especially good for people like me who are squeamish at intubation (necessary because the general anesthesia causes one’s autonomic nervous system to go trippy) and catheters (because pee happens).   I don’t remember anything after this.

10:40 - I woke up in the post-op room.  For me, this was very meta dream within a dream.  I knew I was groggy and disoriented, yet was patiently awaiting my “reboot.”   Soon, I was feeling coherent enough to start taking in the surroundings.  The intubation (now out) left me with a sore throat and a very, very dry mouth.  I clumsily groped around to determine whether it had converted to the more invasive “open” – there were four blobs of gauze – it was laparoscopic.   Attached to me were an oxygen sensor (tip of index finger), blood pressure cuff (right arm), supplemental oxygen (the thing in my nose), catheter, IV, and a pneumatic device that pulsated my lower legs.  Every half hour, the blood pressure cuff kicked on, ensuring that I’d remain awake.

The nurse showed me the button for the patient-controlled analgesia device.  I love the concept: each press of the button administers a small morphine drip into my lactated ringers IV, dulling pain.   To prevent obvious abuse, the device locks itself out for eight minutes between shots.   The bag is also limited to fifty shots.  The nurses check the meter to determine how rapidly you’re consuming it.  So yes, there is no way you’ll overdose.  Despite this, I was still irrationally  terrified at the prospect of being addicted.  I avoided pushing the button, until later, when I knew I was about to have some serious pain.

12:30 - The room they had planned for me hadn’t freed up yet.  I was not in a condition to care much, but … family members aren’t allowed to visit in post-op.  A phone call was arranged, and my spouse, bless her heart, managed to sneak in my iPhone.  The Internet Gods were smiling as the phone found a free wireless access point with three bars.  I was now able to text and play Disgruntled Avians, Lethargic Post-Op Edition!

I'm even *less* photogenic after surgery.

… mostly.  Operating a touch screen device with an oxygen sensor on a fingertip is pretty hard.   Since it appeared I wasn’t getting out for a while, my spouse went home to attend to the kids.

During next few hours, patients were shuttled in and out of post-op.  It was hard not to listen in and realize how fortunate that I am.  For example, the 74 year-old woman put next to me has some Serious Shit going on involving a radioactive implant to deal with her lung cancer.  In addition to having post-surgery delirium, she was also hard of hearing.  When the staff needed to administer an aeration treatment (because she was oxygen deficient), they’d have to shout instructions.  Nothing improves coherence more than volume.

16:00 - I was finally assigned a room!  They transferred me to the new bed using something akin to a human spatula … just as my family arrived.  Thinking that the kids really could do without being traumatized by seeing my immobile, pale posterior wafting in the air, I suggested they “give us a few minutes.”

The previous nurse was ending shift at 6pm, so I don’t recall her stopping in at all.  Erin, who started her shift at around 6pm, took some time to introduce herself and her tech, Bryan.  She was very personable and a great communicator, but she won bonus points for bringing me a glass of ice water.

Since I had expressed an interest in walking around later in the evening, she brought me this device:

Appealing to my inner-competitiveness.

Its purpose is to encourage slow, deep breathing.  Done right, it encourages one to expel any accumulated fluid in the lungs, reducing the risk of contracting pneumonia.  On my third whiff, I hacked up an unexpected phlegmball.  Even hugging the pillow, coughing seriously hurt as it stressed every muscle in my abdomen, especially the ones with incisions.   I made nice to the PCA for three shots in a row… and then fell asleep.

20:00 - With encouragement from Erin and logistical help from Bryan, I was able to get out of bed and stand.  I coughed up another, smaller phlegmball.  It hurt, but I was elated to be vertical.  Then, buuuuuuuuuuurp.   Massive man burps are a side effect of the gas used to inflate my abdomen.

8:45 pm: Victory! (and burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp)

21:30 - After a few more shots of the PCA (and ensuing nap), I summoned poor Bryan again to help me up and out.  Getting up required disconnecting the two pneumatic tubes powering the apparatus on my calves, hoisting the bag o’rine onto the IV stand, and gingerly standing by in case I make a sudden exchange of potential for kinetic energy.   Once I cleared of the door, he let me wobble down the entire length of the hallway.  Being up let out a torrent of burp storms as my body expelled more CO2 gas used in the laparoscopic surgery.  It’s the small things that bring huge relief.

Day one (1/13)

03:00 - With help from my Pandora One feed, I managed to filter out the hallway noise and sleep in 40-minute bursts between room visits.  By 3am, I was pretty uncomfortable lying in bed and decided it’d be best if I try walking around again.  Bryan showed no irritation at being asked, again, to help me get going.  The chatter of the IV cart’s wheels dispels an otherwise quiet evening on the floor.  I mustered five laps — about a third of a mile — before calling it done.

05:55 - I am summoned from the middle of a great dream (involving my spouse, warm climate, and body paint) by a phlebotomist who’s come in for a blood sample.  So begins the entry of random people doing maintenance on things: the biohazard needle tub is purged, laundry emptied, TV remote waxed, and so on.  I abandon hoped of getting any more sleep.

Erin comes in, cheerful that I’ve used far less of the PCA than expected, and was walking around.  After listening to my abdomen, she suggests that my digestive system is waking up and that I might be ready to consume actual food-like stuff when the cafeteria opens at 7am.  In the interim, she brings me the Best Jello Ever.

Jellolujah!

07:00 - During the shift change, Erin introduces Kevin, the nurse who’ll be taking over.   I know the information is in The Computer, but hearing them discuss my condition in front of me pleases me.  She wishes me good luck as Kevin sticks around to make his assessment.  I like him immediately because he asks good questions and clearly has the Organizational-fu to get things done.  He sees no reason that I can’t go home today if I’m up to it.  Before leaving, I’m upgraded from “clear fluids” to “full liquid diet.”  This confers privilege of cream of rice and vanilla pudding.

That's not mayonnaise!

During the next several hours, a lot happened:

• Bolstered by potentially getting out, I did ten laps around the floor – 2/3 of a mile.  This was harder because of all the carts jutting out into the hallway.  Still, I did it and I overdid it.  This was the last I used the PCA during my visit.  Nappy time!
• My surgeon high-fived me on the way in.  Surgery went quicker than expected.  What they found was a ganglioneuroma (versus adrenal adenoma – these are apparently indistinguishable with imaging and much rarer).  Since it was inseparable from the adrenal gland, they removed the entire thing.  There was some adhesion to the kidney.   The staff pathologist they consulted thought it was probably benign.  (Otherwise, they would have removed the kidney (!), too.)  The full pathology will take a week.  [1/23 update: benign.  Because it was a rather rare thing, four pathologists looked at it.]  Given my progress, he said it was my choice if I wanted to stay another night or go home today.  He offered to write a prescription for watching the NFL playoffs.  I accepted.
• The catheter was removed by the tech.  As part of the final tests, they needed to ensure that my bladder was “properly voiding itself.”  What the tech didn’t tell me is my room was soon going to become Grand Central Station as a new patient was being moved in.  Urination anxiety + post-operative coordination with a small container/IV/drooping gown + the cacophony of a new patient requiring a translator made this the toughest ordeal of the visit.  I had to finally seek out the cavernous, handicap-accessible toilet in the hallway.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t expel as much as the tech wanted me to, but she was getting pretty tired of me.
• Discharged at 3pm!  Kevin did a fantastic job of ensuring I had what I needed to go home and that I understood the instructions and contact points if things stopped progressing well.

Sleeping Friday night was a little rough, but I was soooooo glad to be in my own bed.  And: nurses rock.

I started playing with Yelp as a way to track what places I frequent. Its schtick is you can become “Duke” for checking into a place the most times. Completely different from Four Square, which only confers mayorships. While wandering around Issaquah, I noticed this fellow appearing as Duke for most businesses:

Wow, [...] I started playing with Yelp as a way to track what places I frequent. Its schtick is you can become “Duke” for checking into a place the most times. Completely different from Four Square, which only confers mayorships. While wandering around Issaquah, I noticed this fellow appearing as Duke for most businesses:

Wow, royal dominion over 1300 businesses… is a lot of dedication.  In browsing some of the locations, I concluded I do not understand royalty, nor should I trifle with them.  For example, I noticed the Duke has required towing services for the Royal Coach three times:

I am sure it’s completely unrelated to Royal-vice:

after having his nails done at one-star salons:

and a day of local shopping at expensive women’s clothing stores with the dutchess:

Even royalty cannot resist a 50% off coupon:

Royalty is strange.

During last month’s Stone Concert, the CT scan showed two unexpected somethings.

I went into my primary care physician ask what, if anything, I should do about them.  Because I’m generally feeling fine, the gallstone can be ignored.  I will probably have to cut back on the butter fried bacon twinkies smothered in bacon, [...] During last month’s Stone Concert, the CT scan showed two unexpected somethings.

Dramatic reenactment: The noisy TIE fighter? It is the least of your worries.

I went into my primary care physician ask what, if anything, I should do about them.  Because I’m generally feeling fine, the gallstone can be ignored.  I will probably have to cut back on the butter fried bacon twinkies smothered in bacon, wrapped between a pair of glazed donuts, sprinkled with Oreo bits, and surrounded by a moat of heavy whipped cream. (I really have never had such a thing, nor would I really want one. I have my bacon-limits.)  The second unexpected thing is a mass on my adrenal gland, technically known as an “incidentaloma,” because it’s found while looking for other things… like Alderan.

Though I didn’t have any obvious symptoms associated with The Bad Kind of these masses — excessively high blood pressure, thinning of the skin, hypoglycemia, balding — it’s big enough that the doctor recommended checking various hormone levels before forwarding me to a specialist. He did caution that it’d likely need to come out.

I was a little antsy.  The specialist does a day a week at the nearby office, but was booked through December. The scheduler found a mid-day slot at the main hospital in Seattle.  Done.

After running up the stairs to the seventh floor, I emerged in a lobby of visibly sick and worse off people roaming the halls. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad.  The specialist gave me a pretty nice explanation of these, later supplemented by online resources. He drew a makeshift lower human endocrine system on the paper covering the exam table, explaining that the size means it would need to come out. Before doing so, he wanted to get a contrast MRI to better determine its composition. Upon hearing I traveled all the way to The 206, he had his scheduler set me up with the portable MRI machine in Issaquah.

It looks exactly like this:

Oh, boy, breakfast tacos! .... wha?

On the inside, it felt like any medical facility I’ve ever been in, sans the smell of alcohol. One end has a dressing room, the middle is the technician’s “pit”, and the other end is the actual magic donut itself. While in the dressing room, I was asked a series of questions to identify any potential metallic materials in or on me that would cause problems: pacemakers, cochlear implants, shrapnel, prison tats, piercings, stainless steel rapper teeth, and so on. An MRI is a giant frickin electromagnet, where “frickin” is 1.5 Tesla, or about 35000x more powerful than the than the earth’s magnetic field. Metallic objects become projectiles, credit cards are cheerfully erased, and hard drives are reformatted.

Han. Fired. First. (Photo: Photo By Bonnie Burton -- Starwars.com)

They strapped on imaging coils above my abdomen and sent me into the chute. As soon as my head was fully in, a really awful claustrophobia set in.  Luckily, the machine was open-ended and my head was close enough to the edge.  They advised me to look straight up.  Seeing various distant office furniture eased up the tension, after which I just kept my eyes shut and pretended I was on a tropical island somewhere.

Source: How Stuff Works.com

The general procedure was I’d do a couple of deep breaths, then hold (and remain still) for up to a minute and a half while the machine did its thing. Even with the Ye Old Timey airplane-style headset, it’s pretty frickin noisy inside. There’s a low, rhythmic percussion sound that my feet wanted to interpretively dance to. When the machine was actively scanning, I heard four types of jack-hammery sounds. Here’s one of the noises.

The adrenal gland sits on top of your kidney, ready to rock out on a moment

They ran a bunch of scans: in phase, out of phase, wash, rinse, spin.  At some point the radiologist came in and wanted an additional set of contrast images. The lady running things did the IV and she was top-notch.  It didn’t hurt at all.  The contrast agent was a gadolinium chelate that’s given intravenously.  Before injecting it, they did a quick blood test of kidney (creatine) function to rule out any renal problems.

So, bottom line: that’s no moon…

This is the view as if you were looking at my belly: my left is your right.

And looking down from my man boobs:

Yeesh.

If the blobby thing were under 4cm, they’d just keep an eye on it. However, it’s big enough that they’ll remove it. The reasoning is the larger it becomes, the more likely it’ll turn to the Dark Side.

So far, signs point to having it removed (Warning: NSFL = Not safe for lunch) laparoscopically in January.    Each time I watch this, I alternate between fascination at the technology and creeped-outness that we are self-aware meat sacks.  If they have to take the more invasive route that Ted underwent with his kidney, there will be … a much longer recovery period.

As I write this, it’s penciled in for mid-January.  It’s like bullseyeing womp-rats in beggar’s canyon, or something.

This fall, Stanford has been offering free online classes this fall in three subject areas of computing: Artificial Intelligence, Databases, and Machine Learning.   It’s different from MIT’s excellent OpenCourseWare series in that Stanford is offering a course you can play along with while MIT is providing the materials for self-study.

For [...] This fall, Stanford has been offering free online classes this fall in three subject areas of computing: Artificial Intelligence, Databases, and Machine Learning.   It’s different from MIT’s excellent OpenCourseWare series in that Stanford is offering a course you can play along with while MIT is providing the materials for self-study.

For two of the courses, two tracks were offered: “basic,” in which participants watch lectures and do homeworks, and “advanced,” which adds exams and programming.  Since I have a full-time job, am participating in NaNoWriMo again, and am taking three of these, I opted for the “basic” track of each, though as a stretch goal, I tried to keep up with the advanced track as much as I could.

With the classes winding down, I thought it would be useful to jot down some notes:

I first learned about the Artificial Intelligence class (ai-class.org) on HackerNews before the buzz spread to SlashDot, Wired and other geek venues.  By the time the class started, there were over 80,000 people signed up.  I think they were stunned at the huge interest.

Overall, the course has been disappointing.

• Lectures were a seemingly never-ending series of watching Sebastian Thrun’s hand draw probability graphs for us to interactively answer.  Comments directly on the video hosting site show the same amount of frustration and confusion that I had: it was unclear until the fourth week that we were supposed to possess and be reading specific sections from Norvig’s textbook.  (I have an older edition from a few years ago, I just would have liked knowing this sooner.)
• The website was missing a lot of the infrastructure the other classes had.  For example, there was no official forum.  Instead, people were directed to two external social networking things, or to monitor the fucking overbusy Twitter feed.   But back to the previous point, the section with specific readings was not readily exposed on the site.  I found it through three levels of clicking on random links.   Duh, that’s why these quizzes make no sense.
• As a philosophy, they are focused on grades rather than learning.  For example, only the first attempt on an exercise is considered.  In contrast, the other two courses mix up the questions a bit, expect you to make multiple attempts, and take the best score of the lot.   Though I’m not taking this for any kind of credit, certification, or endorsement, having the score positioned in a positive way is much more motivating.

After  the second exam, I decided I have other things I’d rather do right now.  I have the textbook and the videos are online should I want to revisit the material later.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to audit an excellent Machine Learning course, doing everything except the project (for logistics reasons).  I saw an opportunity for a refresher in Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning (ml-class.org) course.

Overall, the course has been fun.

• The material is self-contained.  While there are links to other references, everything you need is accessible on the site.
• Professor Ng is very personable.  His lectures are presented in topics chunked into 8-10 minutes each – a pretty nice block to sample at intervals during the day.  There are interactive quizzes – but usually never more than two per lecture, and only then to help reinforce the material.  (Whereas the AI class, the quiz was the material.)
• As a philosophy, the course is focused on learning.  The quizzes draw from a body of questions.  You can retake them – and indeed are encouraged to.   Only the highest score is recorded.   (Yes, I know I’m auditing – the overachiever likes to see faux numerical progress.)
• Programming assignments use software that’s available on multiple platforms.  During the course, I’ve run Octave on Windows, Mac and Linux, cuz that’s how I roll.  The first assignment was essentially a tutorial of the software, walking you through the material in the prior lectures.   You were encouraged to keep trying until you got the answer correct.

Though I did the first programming assignment, I had to taper back due to time constraints. I am behind a couple of lectures, but otherwise current on all of the quizzes.

I was doing well until the material started delving into hardcore notation.  I’m soooo not an abstract thinker.  When I see something like this:

I have to pause, deep breathe a few minutes, then think really hard about what the question is really asking.  If the same question is presented with a graph or prose, I do very well.

Finally, the Introduction to Databases course (db-class.org) was something I learned about only a week before it started.  Though I have some SQL-fu, I don’t have any formal training in databases — my university just didn’t offer that sort of thing.

I enrolled, thinking I’d just check it out.  To my delight, it’s been the most rewarding of the courses.

• As with Machine Learning, the course is self-contained.  While there are links to other references, everything you need is available on the site.
• Professor Widom is very personable.  Her lectures are also presented into topics chunked into 8-10 minutes each.  Each week, she organizes a “screenside chat” on YouTube where she wraps up material, administrivia, and calls out any specific learnings from the classes.  It’s low-budget (she and two student volunteers), but it works very well.
• Her class has a similar philosophy in wanting to emphasize learning over a score.  The quizzes draw from a body of questions.  You can retake them – and indeed are encouraged to.  
• The various programming assignments have a pretty novel workbench that shows you the result.  For example, when writing an XML query with specific database schema used throughout the course, you’re presented with the results of your solution and the “correct one.”  This has been invaluable to my understanding of this stuff works.
• The web site has a fairly active forum with a vote up/down option.  The discussions have been very useful because the biggest problems I’ve had with the programming is the syntax, not the logic.  For syntax problems, the workbench hasn’t been helpful.  Perhaps Visual Studio and XCode have spoiled me, but a “Hey, dumbass, you forgot the semicolon at the end of a statement” would have saved a lot of time.

The course has exposed me to relational algebra, DTDs, XML, XQuery and XSLT — not that I want to use them again.  An analogy would be getting the MBA is great for knowing enough accounting to ask useful questions of the lady I’m paying to do it for real. :-)

The SQL-related components are done with Sqlite, though I have access to MySQL and SQL Server.  I was so excited when I discovered a solution that reported different results on each database, and that this was covered in class a week later.

In January, Stanford is offering several other courses online:

Lots of cool stuff!  My big decision will be whether I want to invest my time in trying the three I’ve asterisked, or start the iOS series at UW.

I’ve gotten into a nice groove where my daughters’evening dance classes have provided an excellent excuse for me to bike to work.  If I leave my car at the park & ride, I’m only 2 blocks away from where I need to pick them up.  I get to bike (versus a commute of similar duration), my [...] I’ve gotten into a nice groove where my daughters’evening dance classes have provided an excellent excuse for me to bike to work.  If I leave my car at the park & ride, I’m only 2 blocks away from where I need to pick them up.  I get to bike (versus a commute of similar duration), my spouse saves 40 minutes of driving, and the kids get their Nutcracker fix for the season.  Everybody wins.

Tuesday, after lunch with a former coworker at the nearby, mediocre Indian buffet, I stopped into the Tully’s that I’m Duke of (according to Yelp) for some caffeinated tribute.   With no meetings the rest of the day, I was looking forward to some great productivity.

About 10 minutes after I sat down at my desk, I started feel a litany of Bad Symptoms that made me regret eaten Indian food then and for the foreseeable future.  After an hour of this, and realizing just how ridiculously busy the company bathrooms are, I gave up and biked home.  Vomiting along Newport way made me feel less bad, but I was glad it’s a downhill trek.

Once home, it was evident that neither laying down, curling up into a ball, nor a hot shower were going to help.  I couldn’t get into see my primary care physician or a designated alternate, so I tried the local urgent care clinic.  To my surprise, they got me in right away and then forwarded me off to the hospital for more tests.  Driving was very painful – every erratic stop (rush hour!) and speed bump sucked.

They did a bunch of tests and eventually narrowing it down to … these:

Left x 3

Right

A relatively tiny kidney stone, which I’ve nicknamed “1mm of pure calcite terror,” was passing through the ureter on the right.  Once it hit the bladder, pain went away.  I can pee!  I can pee!

As I was being discharged, they let me know of an “incidental discovery” — And we’re not talking about the three stones on the other side — that will need follow-up after Thanksgiving.  Thus, this may have been a good thing.  On the other hand, Yikes!

Google’s rolling out their new look and feel to Gmail. After playing with the beta for most of the week, I have two complaints.

1: I would like a more contrast between messages.  Here’s the main window using the current, “classic” look and feel:

A geocaching friend asked me how the Garmin Oregon compares to the venerable 60Csx.  After about three paragraphs on Google Plus, I thought it would be worth just writing up my highly-opinionated treatise as a blog entry.  Lucky you.

A quick glance at the units’specifications directly from the manufacturer…

Behold!

Protection from squirrels with laser eyes and overly cute, terrorist bunny rabbits has its reward.

This was one of the best costumes I saw today:

Even funnier was no one knew who it was until he spoke.

Since I’m starting a new major project, the family wanted to spend a lot of time on a staycation this weekend.  One of the activities was a field trip to Creation Station, a store with, well, bunches of stuff that you would have tossed out, except when you see a lot of them neatly [...] Since I’m starting a new major project, the family wanted to spend a lot of time on a staycation this weekend.  One of the activities was a field trip to Creation Station, a store with, well, bunches of stuff that you would have tossed out, except when you see a lot of them neatly arranged, it starts to inspire thoughts of making random art.  For example, in part of the store are barrels full of, say, wine corks, 35mm film canisters, cardboard circles, ceramic tile squares, rubber straps, braids of wire … stuff.   They’re priced on the barrel – for example, film canisters were 10 for $1 – or you can fill various sized bags for a flat rate.   (My advice: you really want to do this.)  As you wander around, it eventually makes sense: this stuff could be used to make artsy projects.

The other parts of the store continue the potpourri, just not at bargain bin prices: multi-colored pipe cleaners, beads, insect finger puppets, glitter, pipettes, googly eyes, flexible hosing, 2mm sheets of foam, ping pong balls, ceramic emollient jars (sans emollient) … you get the idea.   We left with ~$40 worth of raw materials for an evening of just messing around with our hands.  It’s cheaper than a movie.

My contribution was the thing below.  Being the token male in the household, I had to break out the drill.  The eye stalks are cut pieces of bicycle cable housing that I happened to have lying around in the garage.

An interesting side effect of doing this is I started thinking about other sources of materials that could be used for future projects – because ideally, you just break out the bin O’random stuff, and have at it.

Today, we were in chores mode.  Mine were focused on tidying up the man-cave.  One I’d been putting off freaking forever was dealing with a stack of former hard drives.  These had all been salvaged from ex-laptops, desktops, external backup drives and a modded ReplayTV.  Since I’d lost track of what data was on which drive, I’d just kept them all for fear of the device providing future generations with access to CSI-like techniques knowledge of just how boring I am.

Since I was in art mode, I thought it’d be fun to crack open a drive, show my kids how it worked, and then try to salvage the platters.  If you try this at home, you will need:

• A hard disk you won’t be needing to use again
• Tools: A Torx #6, a Torx #4, and a flat-blade screwdriver.  Just get this set – it’s really nice for small electronics.
• Rare earth magnet.

Step 1: In the next room, put your wallet, working computer, and anything else that really should not be exposed to powerful magnets.

The first rule of breaking open a disk drive: you will absolutely, positively violate your warranty.

Step 2: Using the Torx #6, remove the six obvious screws on the top of the hard drive. Don’t try prying off the cover just yet!

Oh, now you've done it.

Step 3: With your finger, feel around the label for a round indentation or look under the sticker labeled “Remove this and you will void your warranty.” (I’m sorry, I stopped paying attention after “Remove this.”) Using the flat-blade screwdriver’s pointy part, scrape off the label.  My Hitachi drive had two other screws partly obscured by its label.  Dig those out, too.

The topmost screw had a plastic cover guarding it - those rascals!

Step 4: Remove these 1-3 screws.  Now, using the flat-blade screwdriver, gently pry around the side.  There should be no resistance.

It looks very simple, but the engineering tolerances are very, very tight.

Step 5: Grab the center spindle and rotate the assembly.  If it has any resistance — as mine did, because that’s why the drive broke — you may need to gently jiggle the sensor array (the pointy thing to the left). Just for fun … plug the drive into power.   The platters should start spinning up.  In photo 1, the label says the drive is rated at 7200 rpm – moderately fast.   If you’re lucky, you may see the sensor heads trying to seek back and forth.

I had my kids in to see this because I think it’s cool, and I don’t want them to fear taking something apart in hopes of fixing it.  I probably could have come up with a better alternative to slowing down the platter by placing the screwdriver on the edge.

On the top-left is a little plastic arm that prevents the head from moving until the drive is spun up.

When the drive accesses data, the disk is spinning at a constant rate — for this drive, 7200rpm or 120 revolutions per second — and the head moves in and out.  Effectively, what happens is the desired chunk of data will eventually be under the head.  (This is a better representation.)

Step 6: For visibility, remove the upper platter.  This drive has two 3″ platters and a sensor head on each side.  Thus, each platter is 125Gb, or 62.5Gb per side.   It’s about a million times denser than the hard drives when I was a freshman in college.

To remove the top platter, you’ll need to take all six screws out of the centerpiece.  This is pretty hard because the drive wants to spin.  I found (a) holding its edge with a finger, then (b) using a pair of Vice Grips for leverage to rotate my driver tool helped immensely.

It's so easy to get fingerprints on this assembly.

Step 7: the pivot point of the head arm can be removed rotating the inner piece counter-clockwise with a flat blade screwdriver.  Next, pry off the chip from the bottom-left.  The head should just come right out.  Once this is done, the second platter will come out.

That's it?! Yes.

This is a horizontal view of the head assembly.  This is the most fragile piece on the assembly as each head is designed to float just above the spinning platter.

All your disk are belong to us.

Step 8: Admire the destruction.  Rub the rare earth magnet in random circles and directions on each side of each platter.  Data is now erased.

After taking apart four drives, I have a ten platters and several other interesting looking metallic parts for a future project.

WordPress.com has a new plugin package, “Jetpack,” that incorporates their stats and a bunch of other random functions that replace the original WordPress Stats module. While skimming through the list, I came across this:

For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.

WordPress.com has a new plugin package, “Jetpack,” that incorporates their stats and a bunch of other random functions that replace the original WordPress Stats module. While skimming through the list, I came across this:

For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.

That way is… LaTeX, which I haven’t used since the dark ages. Navigating dark and musty mental cobwebs, I took a few baby steps:

Squee!

Unfortunately, as , the first formula, , becomes controversial. Hat tip to John for letting me know this and how the opera in the Fifth Element was done. It’s one of my favorite blogs to read.

Math: it’s not just for engineers, scientists, mathematicians, actuaries, geeks and smart-asses.

You say , I say ... wha -- funeral directors?

Long ago, I hit the threshold where the number of accounts I had and needed passwords for exceeded my ability to remember them.  I thought it reasonable, then, to have tiers of passwords:

Ah, cherry season!

Cherry Dutch Baby

3/4 C flour
2 T granulated sugar
3/4 C milk
3 eggs
1/4 t salt
half stick butter
2 C pitted, Bing cherries
powdered sugar

While wandering the industrial section of Issaquah’s Costco last February, I saw this product on the shelf:

Naturally, a $500 toilet seat with a remote control piqued my curiosity. I spent a few minutes poring over the outside of the box trying to understand what function [...] While wandering the industrial section of Issaquah’s Costco last February, I saw this product on the shelf:

You are the Mayor on FourSquare!  Shop online!  Tweet!

Naturally, a $500 toilet seat with a remote control piqued my curiosity. I spent a few minutes poring over the outside of the box trying to understand what function it serves.  The box’s messaging didn’t resonate:

• Easy to use - Toilet seats have a pretty straightforward user interface: raise the seat if and only if you’re going to pee standing up.  Otherwise, leave the seat down.   It was amusing that they would fomplicate it buy adding a handheld control.
• Germ resistant – This one was especially funny because I had recently re-watched the Mythbusters episode where they tested germiness of various things.  The conclusion: toilet seats were far less germy than kitchen sponges or remote controls … like the one that this device comes with.
• Friendly to the environment -  At this point, I tuned out at the attempt at eco-guilt.

I forgot about the IntelliSeat until today, when I was in Costco to buy a cube of printer paper.  What do I see at the end of the aisle?  The IntelliSeat!  Despite the premium placement, its marketing is unchanged.  Savor the vendor’s web site:

IntelliSeat, is one of AMDM’s featured innovations, and after one use you will understand why it is the premiere electronic toilet seat on the market today. Intelliseat is a germ resistant electronic toilet seat that is easy to use and friendly to the environment. Intelliseat also offers a stylish design and a multi-function zzzzzzzzzzaewt;lweasd’asdf

I’m sorry, I fell asleep while pasting that blurb into my blog editor.

Their FAQ is rather bizarre.  For example, consider question #9:

How to you operate the Intelliseat?

Simply turn it on and let the comfort begin.

The first thought that popped into my head: Um… are they talking about the same product?  FAQ #10 is almost as weird, especially the placement of air quotes:

Can the Intelliseat be used by children, elderly, and handicapped?

Yes. Children will love the “fun” of using the Intelliseat and the elderly with limited mobility will relish in the fact that they simply need to stay in one position.

I finally downloaded the manual and finally get it: IntelliSeat is a way to retrofit the standard, North American commode with a bidet.  This could be a godsend for mobility-impaired people or those with hemorrhoids. Why couldn’t they just say that?

Wikihow even offers clear instructions.

Janet and I took a Mediterranean cooking class from Olaiya Land at our local natural foods store last week. It was a very tasty experience. One of the recipes we tried repeating today was the Cilantro-Pistachio pesto, only instead of using it as a marinade/topping for chicken thighs, we mixed it with beans and [...] Janet and I took a Mediterranean cooking class from Olaiya Land at our local natural foods store last week. It was a very tasty experience. One of the recipes we tried repeating today was the Cilantro-Pistachio pesto, only instead of using it as a marinade/topping for chicken thighs, we mixed it with beans and rice, which worked really well and was pretty simple. The recipe:

Cilantro-Pistachio pesto (serves four)


1C roasted pistachios
2C (packed) fresh cilantro leaves
4T fresh lemon juice
1 garlic clove, peeled
2/3C olive oil
3/4t Kosher salt
1C brown rice
2 cans black beans

1. Start the brown rice – 1C brown rice + 2 1/4C water in a pot. Heat to boiling, then reduce the heat to simmer for 1/2 hour until the water is absorbed.


2. Open the cans of black beans. I don’t like the black, syrupy bean goo, so I tend to rinse them out for a few minutes. With a tiny bit of water, put them in a pot to warm up.


3. While that’s going on, in a food processor, add the pistachios, cilantro leaves, lemon juice, garlic clove and Kosher salt. Pulsate until a coarse paste forms.


4. With the food processor running, gradually add the olive oil.


5. Serve! We found mixing a heaping tablespoon of the pesto with a serving of rice and beans is awesome. You can freeze the leftover pesto for another time, or to use as a marinade.

The next recipe I’d like to try is the fennel ice cream on peaches. Why? Because:

is why.

Last night we saw Jet City Improv do their Improvisational Shakespeare, with audience participation. One of the throwaway characters was named Strongtonio, which I thought was The Best Name Ever. As I was typing Pistachio, I kept snickering about it being a minor character from Shakespeare’s lost tragicomedy, The Croutons of Denmark. Nevermind.

As GPS-enabled phones become more popular, there have been a lot of geocaches placed by people using phones.   Many of these will have serious “adjustments” to their posted coordinates because the person placing it just took a single reading, using whatever their phone was reporting and called it good.  Usually these adjustments are anywhere from [...] As GPS-enabled phones become more popular, there have been a lot of geocaches placed by people using phones.   Many of these will have serious “adjustments” to their posted coordinates because the person placing it just took a single reading, using whatever their phone was reporting and called it good.  Usually these adjustments are anywhere from 50-500 feet, but that’s a lot when you consider the cache may be the size of a pinky and located in an area with a lot of hiding places.  Like a forest, perhaps!

I think one problem is people aren’t letting their GPS receivers settle down a bit.  When I first flip on the geocaching application, it often displays a wildly imprecise value.  This is the most egregious example I’ve been able to capture on the screen:

No, we are not lost, I'm not stopping to ask for directions.

What this is telling you is there’s a 95% chance that you are within a circle of radius 39.6 miles from the coordinates displayed.   Put another way: Finding a thumb-sized container “somewhere in the greater Seattle metropolitan area may take a while.

C'mon, GPS, I'm trying to find the Tupperware in the woods (Thanks, SMBC)

More typically, the phone is off by a lesser amount before it starts to settle down to 16-128′ error (flopping around a lot). It’s not just geocaching.com’s application. Geosphere showed me this a few weeks ago:

The existential equivalent of: you are here, but where is here?

This observation, combined with my newly-acquired knowledge on how to do a screen capture on my iPhone led to a puzzle cache titled “My first iPhone hide.”  This will no doubt cause groans in the puzzle community.

The “puzzle” part is to realize that I’m providing three points of reference from which you would then perform a 2D-trilateration calculations.  In other words, plot out a circle originating from each point and radius, then find where they intersect.  And, perhaps a symptom of my being hungry when I created this – all three points have a food-based theme: cupcakes, coffee and a bagel shop that makes a bacon-topped breakfast staple.

Projecting the circles around each radius: click to enbiggenate.

At the intersection is the prize.

When I created the puzzle, I worked out the solution using three separate methods. I also allowed for some round off error, accepting a solution that’s within 30m of what I measured (Update: I reduced it to 10m as everyone who’s understood the approach has fallen within the tighter boundary) . Still, after it was published, I kept checking the audit log, hoping I didn’t make it too obscure or make a colossal mistake in the math. Finally, late morning, someone posted a find. Since then, three other people have solved it. whew!

We like waffles, but have been pining for something with a little more kick to it.  Janet found a wonderful yeast waffle recipe on AllRecipes.com that had been contributed by Janet Morris.  Most of the ground work is done the night before.  The waffles are light and airy, yet very crisp on the outside: completely [...]

That's no moon!

We like waffles, but have been pining for something with a little more kick to it.  Janet found a wonderful yeast waffle recipe on AllRecipes.com that had been contributed by Janet Morris.  Most of the ground work is done the night before.  The waffles are light and airy, yet very crisp on the outside: completely awesome.

Mix the night before:

2 C milk
2 1/4 teaspoons of dry yeast
1/2 C warm water
1/2 C melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
3 C sifted, unbleached, all-purpose flour

The next morning, add:

2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 t baking soda

Toppings:

1 C cream
2 T sugar
Strawberries. Lots of strawberries

Directions:

I get about 12 waffles out of a batch of batter.

Since my watch’s battery died about two and a half years ago, the watch has been sitting in the back of a desk drawer with my vast collection of hotel conference pens, soaps and mints.  The clock on my phone has been fine, except during a conversation last week when I really needed to know [...] Since my watch’s battery died about two and a half years ago, the watch has been sitting in the back of a desk drawer with my vast collection of hotel conference pens, soaps and mints.  The clock on my phone has been fine, except during a conversation last week when I really needed to know what time and could not surreptitiously whip out the phone. A wristwatch would allow a brief, furtive look without committing a major social faux pas.

Amazon.com’s Gold Box was taunting me with discounts on designer watches, but I couldn’t find anything in my price range.  The last time I had a new battery put in, it cost $20 because the watch has one of those funky “special tool required” backs.   Cheapitude and free time compelled me price out a Jaxa tool: only $8 on Amazon. Add another $2 for a pack of five batteries.

Owning specialized tools like this flux capacitor calibrator is a perk of being forty-something.

Ten bucks to fix my watch, and I get a new tool out of it?  Prime me, baby!

Oh, and I get to use my new... 'bit me' ... tool set again.

The Jaxa tool arrived today. The only hint of instructions was a link to a vendor’s web site clumsily stenciled on the side of the case.  The site was completely useless.   Paraphrasing:

• Step 1.   Purchase the tool from us
• Step 2.  ???
• Step 3: Profit!

I had better luck searching online.  Being a handy guy, I figured it out eventually: round pins for the square slots on the back.  Cast a +2 spell of … I’m getting ahead of myself.

A Jaxa tool, known to pros as a Binford 2000 Thingamajiginator

The next was to put the watch in a soft vice as a lot of effort is going to be required to get the back off.

Sales wants us to ship a beta for the "special prospect" but pretend it's the shipping product? Just another day in the product manager vise.

Profanity is a must-have requirement during this exercise as invariably the pins fell out because gravity kept pulling them down.  (Were I to do this for a living, I would put some rubber cement in the holes to make them a little more grippy.)

A dramatic reenactment, sans audio commentary

With the back off, I … am thinking I should have gone for the Dora the Explorer watch… er, I mean, pop the old battery out.  It’s important to remember its orientation.  Time travel to the past is not allowed.

There was also a Lady Gaga watch made of bacon. Mmmmmmm... bacon

Reassembly is pretty straightforward: don’t pinch the rubber gasket while I spin & tighten the cover on clockwise.  Pop open the vise, set the time and date (resisting the use of DOM), push the button in and…wait for it… wait for it… Yes, we have time!

Woo, the little analog thingie is exhibiting kinetic motion!

And finally, because Susan felt gypped last fix-it article, an extra tricked-out flame decal.

This top quality Lethal Threat Bio Skull is from Rock Artist Studios. Dokken soundtrack available separately.

“Hey, we have some time before the flash mob thing starts, let’s run through the (water art thing)!” And I snapped a photo “before.”

And shortly after I got back to my chair, my Nikon N40 wouldn’t power on. It got a little wet, but not the worst I’ve done. Still: crap.

Once home, [...] “Hey, we have some time before the flash mob thing starts, let’s run through the (water art thing)!” And I snapped a photo “before.”

The last thing my camera took a photo of...

And shortly after I got back to my chair, my Nikon N40 wouldn’t power on. It got a little wet, but not the worst I’ve done. Still: crap.

Once home, I set the camera on one of the floor heater vents to air out. The next day, it still wouldn’t power on, nor was it responsive to plugging into a computer. Judicious Googling yielded nearly universal advice: take it into a repair shop. A simple estimate was about $125.

Both of my readers know that I have a past history of taking things apart, just in case I could actually fix them. Furthermore, since I had received an awesome toolkit from my kids for Christmas, I was morally compelled to at least take a look inside, right?

Prepared for the worst, I started with the basics: pulled off the lens, memory card and batter. Popped the case open and noticed a really teeny, tiny indentation on the side:

Huh - I wonder what this does

My camera’s owner’s manual [page 108], mentions this as a hardware reset switch to use if “a strong external static charge [causes] the camera to stop functioning.”

Reading the fine manual again...

What the hell. To my surprise, the camera powered up (with all its settings lost, of course). I blew dust off the mirror before reassembling everything (not much, as it turns out), and it’s functioning again.

w00t!

So in summary, for a wet camera situation:

The other day I came across Stefan Wehrmeyer‘s very interesting tool, Mapnificent, which estimates how far you can go by public transportation in a specific period of time (defaulting to 15 minutes). There is an option to indicate you have a bicycle available. Obvious uses of the tool are looking at [...] The other day I came across Stefan Wehrmeyer‘s very interesting tool, Mapnificent, which estimates how far you can go by public transportation in a specific period of time (defaulting to 15 minutes). There is an option to indicate you have a bicycle available. Obvious uses of the tool are looking at commute times and evaluating a tradeoff of living in the ‘burbs versus rural. Another interesting use is trying to find a location that’s within reasonable travel distance to a group of people.

Because it’s maps and data, I had to test it out on some scenarios. First, here’s the reach from my home using public transportation only and with a bike. On each map, you can click to enphiliplait:

Places I can reach in 15 minutes relying solely on public transportation

Places I can reach in 15 minutes by bicycle

The immediate radius around my home includes up to 15 minutes of walking. As you get further north, the circles are a combination of bus and walking. They get smaller as you go north because the bus is taking some time to move along its stops.

The map on the right represents the radius reachable with a bicycle, including putting the bike on the bus for a few stops. From the starting position – uphill — this seems to be a reasonable estimated radius. According to the Walkability Index people, we are 42 – Car Dependent. Yep, I’d agree.

Next, I wanted to look at the distance from my former employer.

Factoria Square, Bellevue, WA

Factoria, Bellevue, WA

This area is interesting because its walkability index is high — 82/100 — despite being rather pedestrian unfriendly (heavily congested, near the nexus of two Interstates). Left and right are public transportation (and walking) only, right includes with a bike available.

What is a little strange about the data is there are at least three bus stops near the corner. The one just north of I-90 is the major launching point for express buses into downtown Seattle. Intuitively, I would have expected there would be a large jut west.

Next, I wanted to look at accessibility from a former former employer in Seattle. I’ve always thought of Seattle as having a pretty regular bus system. Indeed, its walkability index is extremely high — 94/100 — walker’s paradise.

Seattle – just south of lake union

Seattle – south of Lake Union, but with a bicycle handy.

I’m getting hungry just thinking about all the good food that’s available within 15 minutes of south lake union.

Just for fun, I wanted to see what it suggested for my alma mata. Since graduating last century, they’ve added a light rail system through the Texas Medical Center. The walkability index here is somewhere in the middle at 62/100 – “somewhat walkable.”

From Rice University, by foot or public transportation

From Rice, by with a bicycle handy.

Mapnificent is a pretty impressive tool, and one I wished were around when I was looking for a home umpteen bezillion years ago.

I like to keep my GPS pre-loaded with as many geocaches as possible so if I’m out and about with a few minutes to kill, I have info on what’s nearby.  The phone application seems like it would be ideal for this, since it can query on-the-fly, but the implementation has a lot of problems, [...] I like to keep my GPS pre-loaded with as many geocaches as possible so if I’m out and about with a few minutes to kill, I have info on what’s nearby.  The phone application seems like it would be ideal for this, since it can query on-the-fly, but the implementation has a lot of problems, the subject of another blog entry.  I’ve run into some technical issues keeping my caches up to date.  Put simply, I want to avoid looking for a geocache that’s known to not be there.  I also want to keep updated on new caches that pop up.

The premium subscription of geocaching.com permits me to run five pocket queries with up to 1000 geocaches in each.   My Garmin Oregon 450 GPS will theoretically hold 5000.  (In practice, more than 4000 angers the Garmin deities, who passive-aggressively show their displeasure by silently omitting random waypoints.)

Queries radiate from a specified point — home, another geocache, or coordinates.  They can be filtered by difficulty, terrain, state/country, cache type, container type, how old it is and whether I’ve already done them.  If the cache owner has set attributes of their cache (and often they do not), there is a rich set of attributes to filter on. Filtering is the data geek’s playpen.

Wait – there’s a cache that requires maracas?

One of the first things I tried was creating a bunch of radius queries based in different areas I expected to visit:

North Seattle	South Seattle

Because it gets dense in some places, I had to fiddle around to cover the region I do most (95%) of my obsessive Tupperware hunting.  It takes 8-10 PQs to cover this area:

A Ninja would do it in two points before silently killing you.

Once I got this much down, there are three more problems:

GC.com lacks a convenient way to maintain alternate coordinates for a cache. My most pressing need for this is in maintaining solved puzzle coordinates.  (It should be no surprise to anyone that knows me that I am even more obsessive about solving puzzles.  Currently, ? caches are an abnormally high percentage of puzzles caches found. I have another few hundred solved-but-unfound.)  The only practical alternative is to maintain a separate, offline database, and use bookmarks (or the “notes” field) to store updated coordinates in case the database has issues.  The database itself isn’t a problem, since it’s a lot faster to work on locally.  Ideally, I would just make the entry in one place.

While I can directly query for caches that are inactive, I cannot search for caches that have been archived and permanently removed from play.  (Caches are archived when there’s a maintenance issue that are not being addressed (the owner’s inactive, over-committed, etc), the owner wants to free up a spot, there are placement issues (with new caches, this is most commonly it being on private property without permission), or the owner commits geocide.)  The only mechanical solution is induction.  Because archived caches are excluded from pocket queries, caches that aren’t updated after a week are likely down for some reason and you’d just delete them from your offline database.  An alternative approach is to set up email alerts, but these are only per cache type and for a specific radius.

Caching outside the polygon. On longer trips with other my friends, like to Bellingham two weeks ago, we planned it. With more frequency, we’re finding the collective will want to hit, say, a cluster of caches south of Auburn, just beyond my polygon.  To address this, I’ve been looking at ways of extending the polygon, eliminating the overlap among cache circles without adding additional queries and affecting the frequency that the entire database gets refreshed.

An idea I got from another cacher is to do range-based queries, filtered by placement date.  This is a great idea because it completely eliminates overlap (caches can have one and only one placement date).  Furthermore, I don’t have to guess a good centerpoint – I just use my house.  I just need to the date ranges to keep the query results below 1000 caches.  The older queries will always decrease

25-, 50- and 80- mile radius from my home

I experimented with three different radiuses, shifting dates as necessary to minimize the number of queries and keeping the caches below 1000 (so I could be certain I had everything).

Using a radius of 25 miles from Issaquah (the blue circle, aka “baby bear”) I can get everything (~3500 caches) with four queries:

     Date range              # caches
     05/01/00 - 04/30/07	971
     05/01/07 - 06/30/09	972
     07/01/09 - 08/31/10	959
     09/01/10 - present	575

This is doable in a day – and good for a quick update of the most local caches. The downside is I have whacked my radius of interest on two sides.

For fun, I looked at an 80 mile radius (the red line, aka “papa bear”).  This covers a huge swath of Puget Sound, some ~11,400 caches.  It can be done in twelve queries:

Date range              # caches
 01/01/00 - 10/31/04    983
 11/01/04 - 02/28/06    986
 03/01/06 - 02/25/07    999
 02/26/07 - 12/31/07    993
 01/01/08 - 08/31/08    999
 09/01/08 - 04/15/09    992
 04/16/09 - 09/25/09    995
 09/26/09 - 02/24/10    997
 02/25/10 - 06/29/10    999
 06/30/10 - 10/09/10    991
 10/10/10 - 03/20/11    991
 03/21/11 - present     471

Fun, but it’s a lot of wasted querying, especially since it’s fetching stuff on the peninsula.   With a 50 mile radius (the green line, aka “mama bear”), I use nine queries for ~8,300 caches:

Date range              # caches
05/01/00 - 07/31/05	984
08/01/05 - 03/30/07	997
03/31/07 - 01/31/08	994
02/01/08 - 01/31/09	969
02/01/09 - 08/31/09	996
09/01/09 - 03/17/10	989
03/18/10 - 09/03/10	988
09/04/10 - 03/27/11	990
03/28/11 - present	362

This seems like a good compromise, since it’s >99% of my cache radius and can be completed in less than two days, especially if I rerun the last query (3/28/11 – present) every day to pick up the most recent entries.  Since I can manually filter out the peninsula, my polygon now starts to reach near Tacoma while still staying near 4000 caches in the GPS.

Since the phone tracks where I’ve been, I thought it’d be fun to map it out using Pete Warden’s iPhoneTracker application.   I spend the most time in the Pacific Northwe’t:

I had forgotten about my trips to San Jose:

While I was in Houston and New Orleans (separate trips), there was some [...] Since the phone tracks where I’ve been, I thought it’d be fun to map it out using Pete Warden’s iPhoneTracker application.   I spend the most time in the Pacific Northwe’t:

I had forgotten about my trips to San Jose:

While I was in Houston and New Orleans (separate trips), there was some opportunistic geocaching, spreading it out a bit:

My kids were feeling somewhat left out each time I dropped a Star Wars reference in conversation – something I apparently do a lot.  Hoping to shore up this gap in their cultural education, I rented and watched all three(*) movies from Netflix with them.  Parenting can be tough!

(*I am, of course, referring to My kids were feeling somewhat left out each time I dropped a Star Wars reference in conversation – something I apparently do a lot.  Hoping to shore up this gap in their cultural education, I rented and watched all three(*) movies from Netflix with them.  Parenting can be tough!

(*I am, of course, referring to A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  I’ve heard rumors that there is another trilogy using the Star Wars name, and it even had Samuel L. Jackson asking “ ‘What’ain’t no planet I ever heard of.  They speak Bocce on What?“  But the ones I saw were CGI-frenzies.  (There’s also rumor of two sequels to The Matrix.  Yeah, riiiiight.))

Best Star Wars Reissue Ever.

Having seen these films more times than I should ‘fess up to, I was struck by how much crap George Lucas has added in the DVD version.  (And I understand there’s even more in the Blu-Ray.)   I can sort of see the motivation in adding Jabba the Hutt’s conversation with Han Solo just before Han leaves Mos Eisley space port.  But throughout the movie, I kept noticing buttloads of CGId stuff added for no apparent benefit.  The oddest were robots zipping in between Storm Trooper legs in random Death Star corridors.

At the end of the DVD Return of the Jedi, there’s a more ornate celebration before the scene pans to the three ghosts: Obi-Wan, Yoda and Annakin Skywalker, except instead of an old Sebastian Shaw, we see a sprightly Hayden Christensen.  At least it wasn’t Jar-Jar.

But I digress. I let them enjoy the movies without offering my historical perspective.

And enjoy they did.  They readily identified scenes based on the lines I toss around:

• These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. = This isn’t the {ice cream|potato chips|chocolate|pumpkin pie|…} you’re looking for.  (with Obi-Wan hand gesture)
• The emperor is not as forgiving as I am. = I hope you can finish cleaning your room before mom comes home.
• Let the wookie win. — used when (child) is getting frustrated at a game and about to go into meltdown; it’s time to ease up on the game play.

They were quick to observe how inept Stormtroopers seemed to be — poor aim, easily Jedi mind-tricked, and kind of lazy.  In A New Hope, we discussed just how useful a strategy of “If the door’s locked, go onto the next one” would not be.

Droids in Disguise, by Wai Fong Fung. Used with her permission. Visit her Flickr Gallery, you shall!

The two favorite characters were Yoda (for obvious reasons) and Darth Vader.  I found the second choice interesting since he seemed a lot scarier when I saw the original movies in 1977, 1980 and 1983, respectively.  Then again, I have been talking about the Darth Vader management style, especially his use of field promotions.

After the movies, we started delving into various parodies and references to the Star Wars characters and universe.  They were rolling with laughter when we watched the Improv Anywhere Subway Scene (because it was so easily recognizable) and episodes of Chad Vader (who uses all of the good lines).   Later, they had found and watched most of the Star Wars Musical.  (Wow, they put a lot of time into that… and it’s really good.)  The oldest has even tried playing John Williams’Imperial March on the flute.  I couldn’t be prouder.

I’m still trying to decide if these are age-appropriate to show them (but I think maybe not):

• Philosophical discussions like who was most responsible for the Death Star being blown up, other characters who dropped the ball.
• Death Star PR andDarth Vader twitter feeds are pretty funny.  (But I’m not comfortable with them on Twitter… and especially Facebook – though that’s because I’m not, either.)
• A Darth Vader diary.
• Robot Chicken’s Emperor Palpatine segment (“What the hell is an Aluminum Falcon?”)