Paul's Journal

01/02/2008 22:58 #42731

New Year's Eve 2008
Category: holiday

On New Years Eve we went to my mother's for dinner before the estrip party. I found these yummy sugar eyes in my mother's cabinet.

New Year's eve we ate lots of sea food.

Smelt are kind of like little fried gold fish that taste like potato chips.

I bought crab legs. I just bought the normal Kind crab legs.

Wegmans also had collosal crab legs or about $25 each. They were as big as my wrist. The small ones in these pics are the normal kind crab legs I bought.

Afterwards, we had the party at our house (e:jim,42704) (e:metalpeter,42717)

We dropped the ball down the stairwell again.

I think we wore (e:mike) out - the last people left around 6am. I had a really good time at the party. I spent most of the night hanging out with (e:kookcity2000)

james - 01/03/08 12:41
"It's like a meat french fry"

SOLD!

jbeatty - 01/02/08 23:26
I love smelts. I just made them for the first time a few weeks ago. It's like a meat french fry!

12/31/2007 14:35 #42695

Ulcer Me This
Category: work

I am having the most stressful nerve wracking day ever. It started out getting my tooth drilled and filled and went right into a high stress work day without even getting a chance to eat. I seriously hate my job right now.

Then I sit here babysitting the new application while everyone else is gone until I have to go to a dinner party at my mothers followed by a party at our house. I hope it was the kind of party where someone brings me valium, please serenity now.

So "they" decided to launch the new version of the system I was working on today. A live system that lots of people are using, with high priorty, and serious security risk if it fails and. We switched in the middle of the day , while people were using it, just before a holiday. It is about a 60% re-write based on new technology and data sources we have available. I am going to go out on a limb and say it seems FUCKING RETARDED to launch something like this right before a holiday. We even have some sort of policy against it I think.

Normally, we don't do this but apparently someone higher up was promised it would be ready for the New Year and here we are launching it today. The person that promised them was supposed to test it and barely did, which left me doing all the development and testing - most of the testing I can't even do because I don't know enough about the data in the application to know if it is right or not. I don't even have any test cases to work with.

Now if there is a problem it will be super compounded by the time I get back. Hopefully, we can bank on my skills and it will just work.

pyrcedgrrl - 01/04/08 23:36
Okay, I'm going to try to remember all of this b/c it was about 3 years ago. When I was having my tummy pain my first attack had be doubled over. I went to the ER and it subsided--the doctor glanced at me and said, 'I don't even need to do any tests. You have gastritis" and gave me Nexium, which my insurance refused to cover. 3 days later- had a sonogram which showed nothing. another week later- another attack, could barely move, slept on a heating pad b/c the pain went through to my back. Went to the ER 3 times in 3 days and was sent home each time b/c the first Dr. had told me NOT to take painkillers, so as soon as they gave me painkillers I felt better. :)
Finally, Christmas day after working a midnight while unable to hold even water down, I went to the ER again. They did a CT scan which showed "a small bile duct stone" which they deemed able to stay in until my doctors office opened 2 days later. Gave me a prescription--pharmacy was closed. :) FINALLY called my surgeon that had performed my gastric bypass years earlier from the empty parking lot of Rite Aid, bawling my eyes out. He told me to go to Sister's Hospital. (which is where I had the surgery performed)

Went to Sister's a couple hours later. The Triage nurse took one look at me and told me I was being admitted. I had jaundice. (apparently yellow skin and eyes was not enough indication that I needed help for St. Mary's Hosp.) I had bright orange urine, which was fun. :)
A small partially-sedated procedure 2 days later and i was perfect...except for the itchy jaundicy skin which lasted for 2 mos. YUCK.

I have NO idea if this will help you in any way, but you need to DEMAND some kind of a scan, first off. CT, sonogram...SOMETHING. An x-ray will not show most of what could be wrong w/ you (IE: your guts). I was told after I had my blown ACL ligament x-rayed that that is does not show soft tissue. (have no idea if this is true)

You need to KEEP CALLING THE DOCTOR. Keep on their asses. There is NO REASON why you should still be sitting there in pain with no relief after all this time!!!!!!

You need to DEMAND BLOOD WORK. This should have been one of their first priorities. It can show them so much and help with diagnosis.

You need to pretend you're an IRATE ITALIAN like me to light a fire under their asses. ;)
--I give lessons--cheap! :)

I truly hope you feel better soon, I just think it's totally moronic that they have not taken care of the basic, bottom line procedures before moving on to a colonoscopy. I think I missed what happened before..the last post of yours i read you were drinking that phospho soda crap. Did that procedure show nothing? Grr.

I hope your doctor gets his head out of his ass soon. You're in my thoughts.

~Dana

mrdeadlier - 01/01/08 02:31
2007 is behind us. Better circumstances in 2008, I promise!

leetee - 12/31/07 18:49
When we were at New World Record today (just waiting for our chinese food next door, actually), i saw a bin of stuffed toys. They were germs... one was a stomach ache. Almost got it for you... but i wasn't sure what they were stuffed with and what kind of allergic reaction you might have to that. Still, i thought you would find it amusing to get a stuffed stomach ache germ with plastic eyes...

paul - 12/31/07 17:10
I just left work. Miraculously, (okay a lot of care and time from me) it looks like it is working and people are successfully using it - at least according to my log files.

metalpeter - 12/31/07 16:46
I wish I had those drugs you needed if I did I would bring them. In terms of the computer stuff I don't really know what it is. But I know it shouldn't be changed in the middle of the day. I could see having who ever does it come in early or at a time when what ever the program or system or what ever it is will hardly be used. Then send out a memo to everyone with an e-mail or some other kind of in house mail system so that everyone knows that if there is a problem or if something has changed who to get in contact with for help or for there issue. It sure would be nice if they could have done it on say friday and then had an entire day to test it and then the weekend also. I don't deal with much software doing my job. But every year there is a new form of UPS software and when we last got Fed Ex software it said that it wasn't compaitable with vista. When they updated some stuff in the office I was hoping that they weren't going to change my computer on me and ad vista on my day off. I have no idea what the changed on the office computers. But when ever things are changed I get a little Nervous. Part of my job if the computer doesn't work there is no way to do it by hand. I hope that at both parties you are able to have a good time. Hopefully at your place some crazy fun stuff happens and that will make you feel better. Then the next time you are having a bad day you can look at the pictures and brighten your day.

jason - 12/31/07 16:31
I am pretty shocked that "they" would even be willing to release the new version under those circumstances. We would never ever ever do that.

james - 12/31/07 14:44
Well, happy new year to you. Man that sucks.

12/31/2007 00:51 #42688

The Party And The Server
Category: stuff

I hope to see everyone at the party tomorrow night. Come by around 10PM @ 24 Linwood for our annual New Years Even Party.

I worked on the new version of estrip a lot today. The flv video uploads now make thumbnails and I wrote a much better video player that lets you forward to any point in the video without having to play the video sequentially.

12/29/2007 13:17 #42673

The new OLPC
Category: computers

The One Laptop Per Child computer came today for (e:terry). I think the whole thing was a great idea but I kind of wish we donated two of them because it is so slow. The first thing (e:terry) wrote was "I am an American using a 3rd world computer" on it. It has lots of potential and hackability and actually some of the programs are fun but the processor is so slow. I forgot what that is like. It is like slower than the processor on my phone. Maybe it is a lack of ram. I will try adding a memory card and see if that helps. The music mixing and programming programs are fun - and you get a terminal and zero configure wifi, a web cam and a mic - so it does have potential albeit slowness.

kookcity2000 - 12/30/07 21:28
does the American version come with the little handcrank generator?

jim - 12/29/07 14:18
I tried one, and it was pretty cool but my fingers are too big for the keyboard.

12/29/2007 13:17 #42672

Food and the drain
Category: food

Here (e:imk2) is a pic of what I eat now. It is really plain.

At least I can eat fish. This is a new kind of fish for me called monchong

It came from the coop. It tastes kind of like lobster a tiny bit.

Last night after work I had a family party. I have yet another family party today. This whole week has sucked. Between being sick and working ridiculous hours on this last minute projet at work and then family events with Holiday food - I kind of feel on the brink of death.

I feel like this pumkin on our porch.

Thursday night I came home from a 12 hour work day and wanted to take a shower but the tub had apparently not drained from earlier that morning. No one else ever fixes that which makes me fucking crazy considering it is a long hair and dirt from potted plants thing that I pretty much have nothing to do with.

Once I got the hairball out by prying it out with a coat hanger, I used a plunger to dredge up the dirt. I couldn't believe how much black dirt there was.