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Paul's Journal

paul
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01/17/2008 19:37 #42933

Quest Diagnostics: Bleeding for wheat?
Category: health
I went to go give blood for so many tests this morning by Quest Diagnostics over at 191 North street. They have the best web site ever. It isn't super pretty or anything but you make appointments online and then they give you a google map to your appointment. not only that if you put in your google acct data, they add it to you google calendar. It is so nice to be able to arrange it all online and I applaud them as the best meical website I have dealt with so far.

I will finally see if I have any food allergies to things like wheat and corn and I think it is a little more accurate than the hold the glass jar with flour in it technique at the naturopath, lol.

When I first got there, the phlebotomist could not read the prescription sheet and told me I would have to come back. I was so angry I stormed out and knocked some shit over by accident but I was so angry I didn't pick it up - which mad it look like it was on purpose.

It was a tense moment but once I was outside I realized I needed to get this done now and that I was not going to fast again and I wanted the test now - so I called the doctors cell phone and got her to talk to him. He had refused to call himself because he said the doctors are really mean when he calls and they yell at him. Luckily, my doctor is really nice.

In the end, it worked out great because he ws the best plebotomist I ever had. I didn't even feel the needle go in my arm or notice as they filled five tubes with blood. I wonder what I will find out, maybe that it is bad to eat 2 eggs for breakfast everyday?

It was amazing compared to the nurse in the hospital that I think stabbed through my vein it hurt so bad and swelled up.
lilho - 01/18/08 10:58
i like getting blood drawn, is that strange?
imk2 - 01/17/08 21:23
our phlebotomists at roswell are awesome.
mrdeadlier - 01/17/08 20:59
I've been going to 191 North every 6-8 weeks for the past 3 and a half years now. It can be hit or miss based on whatever phlebotomist is on duty but more often than not the folks that work there are pretty adept at their profession. I've only run into one or two butchers so far. Glad to hear you had a pleasant experience! :)

01/17/2008 19:16 #42932

Many Buffalo web site's vulnerable
Category: web
A very prominent local technology firm had a flaw in their web based authoring system that put many local buffalo websites at risk. I am not giving any names or details because the flaw is still out here and I don't want to compromise anyones servers and websites, it is amazing if they haven't already been considering the simplicity of this hack.

The flaw was not even a technology flaw but just a very weak security flaw that is totally inexcusable for such a commercial high cost industry. Seriously, I can't freakin' believe it. I wish I could give you more details but it really isn't safe. All the companies involved are at pretty serious hack risk which could effect the integrity of their servers and data, and could infect user computers as well and snoop on data.

God, thinking about it makes me sick. I am so curious to see how they will handle it.
zobar - 01/18/08 12:22
ZOMGWTFONOZ!!! Hmm...

Well it ain't Schneider Digital :::link::: because they aren't anymore... [ps. Zack totally got canned from Clevermethod.]
It ain't VertaSource :::link::: or else their CTO woulda been freaking out at the office instead of hanging from the ceiling of the roller rink playing with a fog machine...
It ain't HLM :::link::: because all they do is repackage MovableType and they haven't had a high severity security update since ... oh.

- Z
jason - 01/18/08 08:28
Haha, gee, "prominent Buffalo technology firm" who have an authoring system? That narrows it down to, oh, about one I'm sure.
imk2 - 01/17/08 20:51
omg, is it who i think it is?

01/15/2008 22:30 #42903

This seems so fishy
Category: web
I am just full of journals tonight. Maybe I am going to go back to full time blogging now that I have a lot of time waiting while cooking. I don't care what side of the abortion fence you are on, this is not about that, but about companies lying.

In this information weekly magazine article about Comcast blocking certain type of traffic they also mentioned Verizon was caught blocking people's text messages based on content but it was an accident.

Verizon Wireless apologized for its blocking of an abortion rights group's messages, said the incident was isolated, and said it changed an outdated policy to ensure messages aren't blocked based on their content.



I don't understand how you are supposed to read this.

1. They had some system that let a rogue employee gain access to some filtering system and stopped that accidental access.

2. They wrote a production level program and deployed it that filtered out text messages about abortion rights, but when then they deleted it, they discovered that they had accidentally programmed and deployed it.

3. They had a verbal policy that used to disallow discussion about abortion rights via text message but then when they realized that the policy was an accident, they had already developed and deployed a system that actively filtered abortions rights information out.


If it is a filtering list system, what other words were "accidentally" filtered and who came up with that list. What do you think?
fellyconnelly - 01/16/08 07:01
hmmmmmm now if only they can filter out the damn spam messages that their customers keep getting...
james - 01/15/08 23:08
That sounds like a very poorly run on sentence.

01/15/2008 22:00 #42902

Crohn's begone
Category: health
So I called the Dr. Visco's office for like the fifth time today trying to get my biopsy results. I knew he probably deals with it everyday but for me I don't and I was really anxious waiting a week to find out. So then when the secretary read it to me she didn't mentions Crohn's and so I said, "Doesn't you mean to say Crohn's somewhere?" and she said it didn't say it anywhere on there. Needless to say I asked the doctor to call me back as I am so sick of talking to secretaries at this point. I think this is the same woman that said IBS when she meant IBD originally and caused the whole unbelievability factor with my former primary care physician.

So Dr. Visco calls me back like 4 hours later to say that the biopsy was consistent with their findings that I had ulcerative colitis but I am sure that he told me Crohn's before, (e:terry) remembers it too. He wants to see me again in four weeks. Seriously, even though Ulcerative Colitis can be life long and really bad, and you can lose you large intestine - it stops there - unlike Crohns which can kind of go anywhere from you mouth to your butt and can wreck you small intestine.

He also said I had crytptitis or something like that where the cells in my intestine that mature into normal intestine cells where messed or inflamed. I wish I understood it better. Frankly, I just wish he described it better.

Is this good news? I wish I knew.

jenks - 01/16/08 10:26
haha, oops. I am so full of stupid abbreviations that I forget they are not all standard. Yeah, f/u is follow-up.
paul - 01/16/08 09:02
Yes, thank god they are the same mostly at the level I am at - so no mis-medication
fellyconnelly - 01/16/08 07:04
are the drugs and diet that are associated with crohns the same as with ulcerative colitis?
jbeatty - 01/15/08 23:01
Maybe not to paul, but its slightly amusing that you refer to follow up as f/u.
jenks - 01/15/08 22:50
he definitely said crohn's to terry. and to me.
Ask him about it at your follow up.
they're not HUGELY different in my book.
Yes, you CAN get small bowel crohn's, but it's really rare. They're both pretty much colon disease.

I totally understand you wanting to know, and I hate that path always takes so long.

But aside from your sanity (not to say that doesn't count for anything), it probably won't make a huge difference- in your treatment- at least for right now. i.e. until you go back to see him. So just pin him down at f/u.
jim - 01/15/08 22:14
Seems like good news! Unless they're still telling you wrong things.

01/15/2008 20:03 #42898

Did someone pass wind
Category: apple
or is that the new macbook fart - I mean macbook air? I am glad I have no interest in it. I have had so many apple computers and this has all the feel of the few freakshow apple hardware items that I have now as museum pieces.

image



The powerbook duo 280c 1996 . Retail price like $3500ish - no usb - it did not exist and no optical drive, and no ethernet - you needed a dongle. I don't have the dongle or a CD that works with it so it still have a really pretty system 7 setup. I could never network it other than over telephone once I lost the dongle.

The ibook blueberry - one usb port for everything. That port died right after my apple care did. Before it died it was so annoying to unplug the usb mouse everytime. I wanted to charge something. It seems liek every computer I ever had starts to lose a usb port over time. Even my newest top of the line macbook pro has one that doesn't work as well and requires multiple plugging ins sometimes.

Sad to see no firewire or ethernet. Apple made firewire target disk mode which I think is one of the best things about apple laptops when you want to save them from some problem or copy data but this system doesn't have firewire either.

What about when there is no wireless and you want to plug in. Is that a dongle too. What if I want to stream movies to my TV and use a mouse. Now I have to carry a usb port splitter, a vga usb cable, and mouse and a usb ethernet adaptor. Couldn't have just been 3.05 lbs.

CONS
1. no firewire
2. one USB port
3. no ethernet
4. no optical drive
5. no built in graphics card
6. Price point $1799!!!! That seems so crazy when compared to the low end macbook pro for $1999
7. 2GB of ram
8. no dedicated graphics
9. 4-5 hours battery life - that is so super fucking lame. That is the one thing that laptops need to update right away. Battery life is so out of date with the other technologies. How can this laptop remove everything else and still not have a longer battery life. Is it better with the extra $100 for the solid state drive, lol.?

PROS
1. 3lbs
2. sexy design

This is so similar to my complaint with the iphone. It seems like design is really starting to trump functionality with apple. Liek why didn't they release copy and paste with the update. Or how about streaming radio or mobile ichat. I mean it is only software between it existing or not, not like it requires much of an investment on their part. That reminds me too much of Sony, I hope it stops.

If someone gave me one I would still play with it.
paul - 01/16/08 09:07
Lets add some more crap to the make this a disposable computer list.

CONS
1. Built-in battery is not user accessible
2. Apple's site indicates that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard.

UNREAL:
The Solid State Drive option carries a $999 premium for a 64GB drive
mrdeadlier - 01/15/08 23:59
What entity would EVER allow design to dictate functionality? That concept is so completely foreign to me. Thank goodness I've yet to ever experience this firsthand!
jim - 01/15/08 22:13
I think it's cool if you're on the go and your main computer is some beefy desktop somewhere. On it's own it's lacking for sure.

I know I only want one computer - syncing multiple computers sucks.
jason - 01/15/08 21:40
wtf? vga/usb exists? Hell if I knew. I'd love to know how that works.
joshua - 01/15/08 21:32
See? There we go. My list of complaints was rather short in comparsion, hehe.