Afternoon Fun

It wasn’t like any other day. I worked from home Thursday — starting around 7 in the morning until a little before noon — because my afternoon would be consumed by an affair with another woman… maybe two if I was lucky. The anticipation of the day made it difficult to concentrate, but I did my best to finish as much work as I could.

Finally, it was time. I hopped in the shower and spent a little more time than usual getting ready. No quick armpits, asshole, crotch, and teeth shower for this date. Once I was dressed, I gathered my keys, wallet, and cell phone, and jumped in my truck. I was to meet her at 1:15pm, and there was no way I was going to be late. It was 8 miles to town, and afternoon traffic on the two-lane highway that led to her office was heavier than I thought it should be for a cloudy afternoon on central Whidbey Island. I found a parking space on the far side of the small lot. I was hoping that the the grouping of trees and bushes nearby would hide me from the road so no one would recognize my truck. When I entered the building, the receptionist told me she was expecting me, and she’d be right out. I took a seat and started paging through a magazine that had a picture of a hot blonde woman on the cover.

After a twenty minute wait, I finally saw her. She wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, and maybe she had ten or twenty pounds too many. But who am I judge? I needed this, and I sensed she was more than willing to oblige. She called me by name and motioned for me to follow her. She led me through a set of double doors and down a hallway to her office. She stopped at the doorway and I walked past her. She closed the door quietly, dimmed the lights down real low, and told me to sit on the table. It was fairly dark in her office, and I wondered what was going to happen next. It was all so exciting yet somewhat unsettling. She told me take off my shirt, and I eagerly obeyed. The office had a slight chill, and I could feel the air conditioning on my bare shoulders. I watched as she walked into a brightly lit room off her office. She was only gone for a minute. When she returned I could only see her silhouette in the doorway, but she appeared to be carrying a cord, or maybe a whip. Her sandy blonde hair glowed like a halo around her head. She stepped next to the table I was sitting on, and told me to lie back. Again, I obeyed her wishes. As I tried in vain to prop my head up on my balled-up shirt, she applied lube to my stomach. The lube was not quite cold, but warmed up as she started to spread it around. All I could think was, “Don’t fart. “Don’t fart. No boners. No farts.“

Okay, both hands on your keyboard, you perverts! If you haven’t figured out I was at a doctor’s office, you don’t know me very well. Actually, I was at the hospital. The “affair” was actually a sonographer doing an ultrasound on my abdomen, and her “office” was the exam room. If you recall, I had my doctor draw blood for a cholesterol test in late March. That test showed my cholesterol level was fantastic, but showed my red blood cell count was elevated. Another CBC in early April showed the same thing, so my regular doctor referred me to a hematologist at Whidbey General Hospital in Coupeville.

My first visit with the hematologist was Tuesday. She’s a nice FOB asian lady, but has determined that I have polycythemia vera. I’m not so sure PV is the correct diagnosis… yet. To find the cause, she ordered even more blood tests on Tuesday, and an ultrasound and phlebotomy for Thursday.

I walked over to the Lab where a dykey-looking woman sat me down to tap another vein in my arm. I noticed the lanyard that held her hospital credentials had the Pittsburgh Stealers logo on it and listed their Super Bowl “wins.” I jokingly looked out the door over my shoulder and asked, “can I get a Seahawks fan to draw my blood, please?” She laughed, but I don’t think she thought my joke was funny. She stuck that needle in my vein, and she wasn’t too gentle about it. When she had the SIX Vacutainer tubes of my blood that the doctor ordered, the needle was extracted with a great deal of pain. It felt like she had rubber band around my arm, pulled it as far as she could, and let it go! The was so much pain that I instinctively jerked my arm away from her. I told her that really hurt, and she gave me some excuse of a self-retracting needle that leaves the vein “at warp speed.” Her words, “warp speed.” The next day, the crook of my left arm was all black and blue. Warp speed my ass, you goddamn Steeler-loving Trekkie cunt.

I left the hospital right after that, but had to return in two days for the ultrasound and phlebotomy. I was told to fast for the ultrasound, but they scheduled the phlebotomy first. When the phlebotomist asked how much I had to drink that day, she was shocked that I had nothing. I told her I was under orders to not eat or drink for 10 hours before my appointment. She called the imaging department to see if they could squeeze me in earlier than my appointment, and they could. So off I went to my “date” with the sonographer. The ultrasound was needed to check the size of my liver and spleen to determine if I have hepatosplenomegaly. Say that quickly five times!

When I returned to the clinic — with an umbilicus of conductive gel — the nurses started throwing all kinds of fluids at me. They gave me a tuna sandwich, a bag of potato chips, and had me wash it all down with four 7-ounce cups of water, two 10-ounce bottles of apple juice, and one 8-ounce can of lemon-lime soda. For those with weak math skills, I drank 56 ounces of fluids — eight ounces away from a half gallon — in about 15 minutes. Satisfied that all those fluids made my veins plump, the phlebotomist went to work.

She used a blood pressure cuff as a tourniquet and found a good vein in my left arm. She snapped some kind of alcohol swab that reminded me of a glow stick. She bent the swab breaking a small vial of fluid which seeped through the swab as she rubbed it all around the injection site. It’s supposed to sterilize and anesthetize. After that, she sprayed the site with a liquid that was very cold. This was also to deaden the the area so the gigantic needle doesn’t hurt as much going in. All the prep to lessen the pain was bullshit. A 16 gauge needle hurts no matter what you do. It’s a 1.65 millimeter steel spike being jammed into a vein, people! Call me a pussy, but it hurts! I’m okay with small needles, but ones that quite literally resemble 2d nails are a sonofabitch!

The hard part was done. The lumber fastener was securely in my median cubital vein and taped to my arm. However, my hemagravy wasn’t cooperating and the flow stopped almost as soon as it started. The nurse gently moved the needle around a little, trying to get the blood to flow again, but it was a no-go. So, it was time to start over. The nurse got a new bag and needle, and proceeded to stab me in the cephalic vein in my right arm. Yep, matching holes, one in each arm. After about 15 minutes the bag, which holds a unit of blood, was full. A unit of blood is about 450 milliliters. If you’ve ever had a Rockstar or Monster energy drink, imagine the can filled with blood. Drink up, queer!

The nurses made me sit for about 20 minutes before I could leave. They wanted to make sure I didn’t face plant in the parking lot and sue their asses off. I finally left the clinic and drove home. Having a unit of whole blood drained out of you really zaps your energy. Not that I’m energetic in the first place, but sitting here early Saturday morning and typing this blog entry is about all I can muster.

So, I get to find out what all the blood tests and the ultrasound say on May 19, when I go back for a follow-up appointment. Guaranteed they’ll take more blood. I’m hoping they don’t want to take it out in units! I have more holes in my arm than a heroin addict, and I’m more than a little tired of needles.

Wafwot’s Note: As usual, I either didn’t have the time (or energy) to finish this entry when I started it on May 9… so it got published on May 31. I’ll try harder next time. I see a pulmonologist in Everett on June 1, 2009… so I should have some shit to say about that. Stay tuned.

Cholesterol, fuck yeah!

We have a wellness program where I work. I don’t normally participate in such tomfoolery for several reasons, the first of which is I don’t like doctors and their holier-than-thou attitudes. They’re always asking you questions you’d rather not answer, and they appear to have a perverted predisposition to sticking things in, on, or up places you’d rather not have things stuck in, on, or up. But, when The Company’s wellness partner offered a free cholesterol test, curiosity got the better of me. I’m 42 years old, and never had my cholesterol tested… on purpose. If I could find out my blood is mainly bacon grease without having to spend the $20 co-pay, why the hell not? I was a bit apprehensive about it all. I don’t have the best diet in the world. In fact, starving Ethernopians probably eat a more balanced diet than I do (thanks to our fucking tax dollars… and Paul Hewson). I just knew that Cholestech machine would trigger sound some alarm that would alert the Fatty Blood Police, landing me in a hospital by the end of the day.

They asked us to fast the night before, and I did. By 9:30 the next morning, I was in our conference room, surrounded by women in latex gloves. While that might sound like something you’d pay someone in Belltown an extra fifty bucks for, these women were armed with pipettes, lancets, SpongeBob SquarePants band-aids, and apple slices.

First it was blood pressue. What is it with blood pressure? Everywhere you go, someone wants to know your blood pressure. The doctor’s office, the dentist’s office, the drug store, Wal-Mart. It’s only a matter of time before we’re ordering quad Venti skinny whip caramel Macchiatos with our arms shoved in a sphygamajigometer cuff. Whatever. As usual, my pressure was 138 over 86. In the United States of Expensive Health Care, my blood pressure is in the prehypertension range. In the United Kingdom of Fucked Up Teeth, my pressure is in the normal range. Maybe if I wasn’t so amped up over some mystical cholesterol numbers that will more than likely change my life as I know it, my blood pressure wouldn’t be 138 over 86. It’s always high when I’m surrounded by people in white lab coats. My wrist-mounted, battery-powered, ninety dollar blood pressure sphydoohickeymeter machine says I’m normal… and that’s US normal, not UK normal.

I got up from one chair and sat in another, next to a phlebotomist in latex gloves. She swabbed my finger and stuck me with a lancet. As expected, blood oozed from the hole in my finger, however, not enough to fill the pipette. She felt pretty bad that she had to prick my finger once more. And again, my blood started to clot and denied the pipette. One of the other women got a bowl of warm water. My desk is under a ventilation duct, and my fingers were a little cold. As I was doing my Madge imitation, a more experienced phlebotomist decided to try her luck with my stingy sausage fingers. She had me hang my hand at my side and really pressed that lancet against my finger in order to get a deeper hole. This time, enough blood flowed for the test. They kicked me free with three holes in my fingers, as I refused to put cartoon band-aids on my fingers. Who am I, Corky Thatcher? I didn’t get to wait for the results; everyone’s results were to be revealed, privately, at a cholesterol seminar on April 8.

As I was enjoying my apple slices, saltine crackers, and glass of water, one of the Blood Girls (who has a really nice ass) came back to my desk and informed me their machine spit out my sample as unreadable, and asked if I’d be willing to subject myself again. This time, they pricked my thumb, and just as with the third attempt, the fourth provided enough blood for the test. I wasn’t leaving the room this time until I knew the machine liked the taste of my blood. While we waited, I sweet talked the women into giving me my results right away. It was more like guilted them, after four holes and enough DNA in the sharps container to keep William Petersen happy for a week. But, it wasn’t to be. Again, their fancy cholesterol and glucose sniffing machine spit out my alien blood like a four year old spitting out asparagus spears. They offered suggestions for the failure, telling me that fouled hematocrit levels, iron deficiency, or lack of oxygenated red blood cells could cause the machine fits. Fucking excellent. Now I’m like my old Mustang… in need of an oil change, or some such shit. I don’t need this worry.

I asked them if we could try again, after everyone else had gone. This time, I took a walk down the hallway and back before the test to get my asthma-riddled lungs sucking on some oxygen. I sat down and they poked a fifth hole in yet another finger. This time, blood flowed easily, and the pipette filled quickly. With my blood dispensed onto the cassette, we waited another five minutes only to find the machine still thought I was alien… or dead.

Since I was at work, I had Tina call my regular doctor and make an appointment for some blood work. My Dad was diabetic and died of ESRD and/or MG, my paternal grandmother was anemic when I was a youngun, and I haven’t have had any blood work done since I started seeing this doctor about two years ago. I now know I’m flagged in my doctor’s computer as “near death” or “hypochondriac,” because they scheduled me for the very next day. My bosses don’t like giving time off without warning, but begrudgingly granted it. Hey, it was YOUR idea for this fucking wellness hoopla. I’d rather plant my ass in front of a computer while eating cheesesteaks than have some blood-thirsty medical student shove a spike in my arm.

The next day, LDriver and I left work at one o’clock so I could get home and take another shower before going to the doctor. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like going someplace that might require me to disrobe after spending nearly five hours (2+ in each direction) in leather seats. I’d rather go to the doctor knowing that the note-taking in his laptop was merely symptom entry, and not “he smells like swamp ass and foot funk.” I can’t have that.

I arrived promptly at 3:58, and checked in with reception. The place was packed for a Friday afternoon, but I only had to wait a couple minutes before they called my name. As soon as I jumped up on the exam table, a temperature probe was shoved under my my tongue, and a goddamn sphyhoochamabobometer cuff was strapped to my arm. Again with the fucking blood pressure! When the doctor came in, he asked what he was seeing me for. I gave him the Reader’s Digest version of what you just read above. After a few more questions about my genealogy, I was off to see the phlebotomist. He wrapped a tourniquet around my upper arm, jabbed a hypodermic into my vein, and filled 3 vacuum tubes. The lab sheet said they were performing a CBC, a lipid panel, and a CHEM-7. I paid my $20 co-pay, as my doctor said he’d call me Monday with the results… and to yell at me some more. Sweet.

Monday morning, they called the house, and it went to voicemail. I played voicemail tag with their office for 30 hours, literally, before I finally got to talk to the PA. I was barreling up I-5 at 79 miles an hour at the time, too, and didn’t have anything to write with. She told me my cholesterol was 104, which is great, but my red blood cell count appeared high. She informed me the doctor wanted to do more blood tests to find out why. When asked where I like to get my blood drawn, I told her my arm is acceptable. She laughed, but I don’t think she realized I was kidding. I got the feeling she hears that joke a lot, or other people answer in that manner out of stupidity. I told her having their office draw the blood is fine, and an appointment was made. Of course, I had to cancel that appointment after some bullshit at work would have had me and LDriver driving down in separate vehicles… The new appointment is Tuesday.

One hundred and four? I used my phone to look up what the cholesterol ranges are. Wikipedia indicates that the optimal cholesterol range is 100 to 129… and I’m 104? Whoo hoo! My blood isn’t mostly bacon grease. Wow. My diet consists almost entirely of butter sticks and hamburger fat, washed down with cooking oil. Ya got to love genetics! Since the PA didn’t say my glucose was high, I’m guessing my blood isn’t mostly HFCS, either! I guess I’ll find out why the red blood cell count is so high sometime next week. Doing some cursory homework, it’s probably due to chronic lack of oxygen. This asthma crap kicks my ass during the winter months. LDriver says I should move to Arizona. I would if I could find a job down there… or even had the time to look for one.

Resolving a 20-year regret

When I was a teenager of about 14 or 15, my Mom got a SLR for Christmas, which piqued my interest in cameras. I don’t remember exactly which model she had, but I seem to recall it was an Olympus OM-10, but I could be wrong. I know it was an Olympus camera, though. In any case, when she started buying photo magazines, I started reading them and getting interested in the art of photography. So much so, that I got myself a Nikon FG. I don’t remember if the FG was a birthday or Christmas present, but I loved that camera and it cemented my adoration of Nikons to this day. I even took two elective art classes in high school for photography. I took a lot of art classes throughout high school; commercial art, mechanical drawing, ceramics, painting, ad nauseam… but photography was by far my favorite.

In high school, I learned how to make photographs, not just snap pictures. We shot exclusively in Ilford FP4 and HP5 black and white film. And my school was lucky enough to have a darkroom — complete with about 8 or 9 enlargers — for developing film and printing photographs. I enjoyed those photo classes and thrived at the “hobby.” I spent all my free time in the photo lab. My year book was even signed by a girl who said she’d never forget me using the light from an enlarger in the darkroom to read a book for English class. Good times! After graduating high school, I decided to continue my education and enrolled in “college.” I’ll say college for lack of a better word. It was really the Art Institute of Philadelphia.

Of course, my family couldn’t afford to send me to an institute of higher learning, so I went to see Satan and applied for financial aid. I received some Pell Grant money, then Satan had his way with my virgin anus as I signed on the dotted line for Federdal student loans. Of course, this was the 1980s, and I guess the government was handing out student loans to any deadbeat with a Bic pen and the ability to sign their name… So with tuition paid, for the immediate future, I was enrolled in classes.

One of the first things I did before classes started in July of 1985 was sell my Nikon FG at a camera shop in Philadelphia. I don’t remember what I got for it, but it was not nearly enough to cover the camera I bought to replace it. With some monetary help from my grandfather, I got a new Nikon F3 High Point, arguably the best manual-focus, professional level 35mm SLR camera of its time. I’m going to say it was the best manual camera Nikon ever made, and I never owned an F or F2. So there!

My F3 was awesome! I loved that camera. I babied it like it was made of glass, even though Nikon professional cameras have a world-renowned reputation as being the most rugged cameras ever built. I was only 19 at the time, and it was the most expensive thing I ever owned at nearly $900 for the camera body alone (no lens). That’s over $1700 2008 dollars! But I recall the F3 actually costing more than a grand at camera shops in Philadelphia at the time, which is why I bought through mail order. I always drooled over the multi-page print ads in the back of the photography magazines, for they usually had great deals on gear. So when it came time to buy my Nikon F3, I called the number of one of the biggest print ads around… B&H Photo. We’re talking 1985, people! There was no Internet. Well, there was, but it wasn’t available to us peons yet. There was no ResellerRatings or customer reviews. There was only credit cards and faith, or C.O.D., baby. I used C.O.D. because there was no money exchange until the UPS driver showed up on my door step with what I ordered… and I always opened the box in front of the driver before he got the cash. I wasn’t going to pay nearly a $1000 for a boxed masonry brick. Fuck that! I would use B&H several other times — and C.O.D. — when I bought an MD4 motor drive, two lenses, and a handle-mount flash. I don’t have a picture of my old Nikon F3, but it looked almost exactly like this Nikon F3.

When school started, it was great! I was surrounded by like-minded students, learning and experiencing large- and medium format cameras as well as my own 35mm camera, color, design, visual expression, B&W and color darkroom skills, as well as photo retouching and mounting. I also learned a lot about location and studio photography, you know, with strobes and umbrellas. I really enjoyed the classes, and stuck with it for almost two years.

However, life has a tendency of getting in the way. One thing that burned my ass were a couple of the instructors at the school. I got the impression they were full-time photographers, part-time teachers. If they were hired for some project, they wouldn’t show up. I can recall many times sitting outside a class room or a studio — listening to Howard Stern on WYSP — waiting for the instructor to show up and unlock the door. Several of us went to see the “Dean,” but were told that the school is looking for a substitute. Excellent. We’re paying good money for tuition, and they’re going to find us some Peggy Hill to lern us sum pitcher takin’. But I can’t blame the school completely. I was an impatient prick then as I am now, and didn’t stick around for a substitute. Tuition was expensive. Instead of sitting in a hallway outside a studio, I got a sales job at my local Radio Shack, and never looked back. That was the beginning of the end.

It wasn’t long before I had a second job making signs with computers and vinyl at a place called SIGNprinters (yes, that’s the actual company, still in business). Well, one thing led to another, and before long, I was finalizing plans in 1989 to leave Pennsylvania and move to Washington. In fact, to fund my trip to Washington, I sold my Nikon F3 gear… a decision I still regret to this day, realized when I drove over Snoqualmie Pass on I-90. School was the furthest thing from my mind, so too was repaying my student loans.

Long story short, defaulted student loans have a way of following you forever and fucking up your credit. It took several years — more like ten — but the Federal government tracked my ass down. With the help of a few Nazi debt collectors, they held my feet to the fire until we worked out a repayment plan. I was supposed to enter something called “rehabilitation” after jumping through their hoops, but the assholes at the collection agency never reported my rehabilitation to the Department of Education. Every year they took my tax refunds, and when President Bush gave us stimulus checks, they took those, too. I didn’t think this year would be any different, so when I got my W-2 from The Company, I quickly filed my return electronically. I simply wanted it out of the way, so the quicker I filed, the quicker ED would get his goddamn money.

I had a doctor’s appointment on January 30, which meant I didn’t have to commute to Seattle and could sleep in. Around 6:30 that morning, a text message from my bank woke me up. A deposit greater than $10 was just made. In my groggy, just-woke-up state, I was quite concerned when the amount of the deposit was several hundred dollars less than my pay check. What the hell, man? Rubbing my eyes and looking at my phone again, it hit me; that amount was my tax refund! Holy shit, Maynard! ED let the IRS give me my refund!

Tina and I spent most of that day discussing what to spend it on. I knew I didn’t want to nickel-and-dime it on bills, or dinners, or gasoline. My first thought was tires. My truck is going to need tires pretty soon, and the tax refund would just about pay for them. Tina suggested I spend it on something fun since it’s the first refund I’ve received in a long time, and I deserve something fun. I looked at in-dash DVD players with GPS navigation for the truck, but the good ones are too pricey. While watching a TiVoed television show, Ashton Kutcher graced our screen in a commercial for the Nikon D90 camera. That was it! Buy a digital SLR camera! Oh, the sweet irony of buying a camera with my tax refund that should have gone to pay my photography student loan. Simply perfect! Of course, when I started pricing cameras online, I ended up at bhphotovideo.com, where I ended up buying my new Nikon D90 nearly 24 years after buying my Nikon F3 from them. Good ol’ B&H. Talk about coming full-circle.

My new baby arrived a week ago, nine agonizing days after I placed the order. You can have free shipping or fast shipping, but you can’t have free and fast shipping, bastards. It was all good. I was scheduled for pager duty anyway, and couldn’t be far from a computer. During my UPS-imposed wait, I did a bunch of reading and downloaded (illegally, shhhh) a couple videos about the D90. I also started a wish list, which I’m sure will change frequently over the coming weeks and months. I even joined a Nikon User Community, as well as a few other photography forums.

I’ve been out shooting with the camera only once so far. I woke up early Saturday and drove to Anacortes to capture the oil refineries in the dark. The images turned out okay, but not as cool as I thought they would. Shooting digital — beyond point-and-shoot — is all new to me, so it’s bound to take a while to get good at it. From the refineries, I drove to Deception Pass Bridge to wait for the sunrise. I have no idea what I was thinking. It’s Washington. It’s winter. It was cloudy. Silly me! I managed to get some decent shots of the bridge, though. Then I drove back to town and took some photographs of the Dutch windmill in City Beach Park. You can check out my “First Shoot” photographs at a brand new subdomain of wafwot.com: http://photography.wafwot.com.

Well, that’s the story on my photography school days, and the news of my new digital SLR. You may also check out the few photographs I have left from school at http://www.wafwot.com/blog/photography. I’ll be putting all worthy photographs at the new photography.wafwot.com, so keep an eye out.

Shorter of breath…

…and another day closer to death. Pink Floyd lyrics aside, it’s that time of year for the sickness to befall upon me and make my life hell. In the fall, I went to the doctor and got an influenza vaccine. Apparently I fall into the high-risk (or maybe elderly) category for candidates that should get a flu shot. A lot of good that did me. Long story short, I was illness free until last week when some evil little bug crawled up my ass and set up shop in my lungs. I imagine it looked a little like this. It started out with sore glands in my neck, then sniffling and coughing. I went to work that Monday, but by the end of the day, I was chilled but my face felt hot and I was full-on hacking like a 3-pack a day coal miner. I couldn’t lay down without causing severe rattling in my chest. Every time I exhaled, it sounded like a San Francisco cable car rumbling down Russian Hill, and made me cough. By 2am Monday night/Tuesday morning, with no sleep, a sore diaphragm from all the coughing, and a fever of 102.1°F, I sent a couple text messages. I reluctantly called in sick on Tuesday. I hate calling in sick because I’m so worried my managers will think I’m faking it. But the older I get, the more I realized I’m not invincible, and companies give sick days for a reason.

I wasn’t feeling much better by Tuesday night, but waited until it was time to wake up and get ready for work. I was still coughing, my fever was better but still over 101°, and my head was turning out more snot than a school bus full of crying 5-year olds. I felt miserable. So, out went a couple more text messages saying I wasn’t making it to work… again.

I stayed in bed, covered to my neck in blanket with a roll of Charmin (ran out of Kleenex) and DayQuil within arms length, watching TV all day. After The Price is Right and news, television is teh suck during the day. Luckily my TiVo had recorded I Am Legend earlier in the month, so I watched that. Wasn’t impressed. I tried getting some sleep, but could only string together about 60 minutes worth before ol’ rattly would cause a coughing fit and throw out a slimy wad of lung butter. This went on for the rest of the day and night Wednesday.

Even though I was coughing to beat the band, I was feeling better. The fever was down to 98.9° (after being over 100° for more than 48 hours), and my nose was no longer teeming quarts of liquid snot. So, I thought I’d give going to work on Thursday morning a go.

Our normal carpool vehicle needs rear bearings, so I picked up LDriver in my newly-maintained, newly-braked F-150 and we headed to work. I was still coughing, but wasn’t feeling too bad. I spent the day at work eating Halls cough drops like they were M&Ms and answering all the “how are you feeling” questions. My manager asked if I’ve been to the doctor, to which I said no. He said go. I said okay, and Tina got me an appointment for the very next morning. In fact, the appointment was in less than 24 hours if you can believe that. They either had a cancellation, or I’m flagged as “near death” in their computers. Sweet.

In the doctor’s exam room, he couldn’t even get a good listen to my lungs. Every time he said “deep breath,” I’d start to cough. I’d be funny if it weren’t so true. Influenza and asthma don’t mix well, so when my lungs start filling up with Satan's semen, walking and breathing, taking deep breaths, even sleeping, take on a whole new complexity.

Doc said I have acute bronchitis. Yay, again? I’m still getting over all this happiness as I type this. He put me on Prednisone and Azithromycin to kill Fry's worms, and changed one of my inhalers when I told him the Qvar doesn’t seem to be preventing asthma attacks. He has me on Advair now. In fact, the picture above of that Ortho Tri-cyclen-looking diskus on steroids is my Advair inhaler, and is sucks! It’s a dry powder that makes my mouth feel like I licked a chalk board. I’ve done about 8 or nine hits off that nasty dust disk, but it seems like it’s helping a bit. We’ll see how it does after a month.

Sometime around the time several terrorist camel jockeys decided to land their hijacked airliners in buildings, I bought a 19-inch ViewSonic CRT. The price was $300, but 19 inches of glass was cheaper than 15 inches of LCD. ViewSonic makes great monitors, and my new 2001 CRT was awesome. Over time, however, that monitor started getting dodgy. By late 2008, early 2009, the focus was so poor, it was like trying to read the screen through a thick fog… or semen smears. And the contrast was crappy, too. It was time for a new monitor. Of course, I didn’t want just one. I needed two. I’ve been using two monitors at work for years, and it’s such a time saver. Although, ever since they upgraded my system at The Company, I haven’t been able to get my dual monitor setup to work properly. I can get the big desktop across the two LCD panels, and the mouse tracks in all of the 2540×1024 pixels, but the one monitor plugged into the analog connector bounces an “Out of Range” message, which is generated by the monitor, similar to the “No Signal” message when it’s not connected to the computer. Yay for run-on sentences!

Anyway, enough about work’s monitors. I spent many weeks looking over all the monitors and reviews at newegg.com. Did my homework on the type of panel, whether I wanted widescreen or standard, HDMI, 1080p, DVI, VGA, USB, E-I-E-I-O. It was tiring. I eventually settled on two Acer H213H 21.5″ widescreen LCD panels that had a lot of positive reviews, and were voted for a Customer Choice Award.

After three days of waiting, a guy in brown shorts plopped my new babies on the front step, like a stork from the Teamsters. It was just before lunch, and I was on my telecommute day, so I quickly set my jabber client to away at lunch, and disconnected the old 19″ ViewSonic CRT, and an even older 17″ CRT. I opened each new LCD monitor, and removed an assload of protective plastic from them, then plugged them in… and nothing. WTF, “No signal?” Great. I sat for 5 minutes thinking about it, getting a little frustrated. Then it dawned on me. Duh, X windows! A three finger salute to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, and xorg was reloading. Of course, my xorg.conf didn’t jibe with the new monitors and xorg wanted to reconfigure. That worked, kinda. At least I had ONE monitor working so I could manually run some commands. And, after about 90 minutes of trial and error, I finally got both 21.5″ widescreens working as one big desktop of 3840×1080.

I can watch a DVD on one panel in 1080p high definition, while working on the other monitor! There’s so much screen real estate, I honestly can’t fill it all. It’s totally balls! I spent the weekend playing with wallpapers, and making one that would work and look well across both monitors. Tina said I needed boobs, one on each screen. Those would be some big boobs. Not that I’m opposed to big boobs in my face all day! LDriver said I should have a desktop of some chick with a leg on each screen… and that was a pretty good idea. An hour search of some porn forums turned up a nice picture that would work out well. Of course, I didn’t want the small gap and the monitor frames between the two screen to make the chick look… “wide,” so I trimmed out a 100-or-so-pixel gutter down the middle and stitched the two halves together. Then, believe it or not, shrunk the width down to 3840 and cropped to a perfect 1080 height. A screenshot doesn’t do it justice, so here’s a photo of my two new monitors with their new wallpaper. Of course, the two screens are so wide, I couldn’t get them fully in the shot, but you get the idea. For those of you reading this at work, or some other semi-public location, the image is SFW, but barely. Enjoy!

Fuck the “Stealers.” That’s all I have to say about that. But I’ll write about another topic that’s near and dear to my past later in February… I promise.

Pimpin’ ain’t cheap

Damn, owning a vehicle can be expensive, even if you own a hooptie! You know what a hooptie is, even if you’re not familiar with the slang. A hooptie is a peice of shit car like Adam Sandler sang about. The windshield has seen more crack than Liane Cartman. It hasn’t been to a car wash for more than a year and some asshole wrote “also available in ‘clean’” with his finger in the dirt. The flasher no longer works, so to indicate a turn, the turn signal lever has to be manually moved up and down to blink the lights. So much exhaust is pouring from the tailpipe, people wonder if the car is on fire or not. The driver has to open the door at drive-thrus instead of rolling the window down. If the driver takes his hand off the steering wheel, the car wants to make a U-turn. The car’s got an identity complex with three different colors of paint. But, for all that’s wrong with a hoopty, it’s got a thumping stereo with a vibrating trunk lid, and 22-inch Dubs, worth about four grand.

My ride isn’t as sweet as a hooptie. Nope. Mine is simply a 2005 F-150 4×4. I got it last February, and I love it. But just like women, trucks require upkeep, and upkeep requires money. Ya know, I got a new truck because my old truck was starting to cost me a lot in repairs. First it was tires, then then a tune-up, distributor cap, and serpentine belt, followed by transmission work. So instead of throwing good money after bad in maintaining an old truck, I made the decision to get a newer truck with less problems. And my 2005 has been problem free… until recently.

Actually it’s still trouble free, but it’s been expensive. Part of keeping a warranty valid involves scheduled maintenance, and my truck was due for it’s 90,000-mile maintenance. Let me deviate a little here and talk about my mileage. By the weekend before Christmas, I knew I had about 800 miles left before the odometer rolled to 90,000 and asked The Company if I could sell some vacation time back in order to afford it and get it done before I went over 90k. They agreed, but it took a while to process, and delayed scheduling an appointment. On top of that, I had to drive to Seattle three times right after Christmas, and various other chores chewed away over 650 miles. Four days before my appointment, my odometer was sitting at 89,910 miles. But working from home two days saved me some mileage, and I was able to drive to my appointment with one mile to spare, as evidenced by the picture above and this one. (Wafwot’s note: without a tenths indicator on the odometer, the invoice shows “in” mileage at 89,998, and my photo was taken at the dealership before driving away. Since the dealership only drove the truck into the service bay and back, my “in” mileage must have been 89,998.9 and it rolled to 89,999 during the trip to the bay)

The laundry list of shit they needed to do to my truck told me it was going to be expensive… Change automatic transmission fluid; change engine oil and replace oil filter; inspect and lubricate all non-sealed steering linkage, ball joints, suspension joints, half and drive-shafts and u-joints; inspect brake pads and rotors, brake lines and hoses, and parking brake system; inspect complete exhaust system and heat shields; inspect engine cooling system and hoses; perform multi-point inspection; replace engine air filter; replace fuel filter; rotate and inspect tires; check wheel end play and turning noise. Tina called around to all the Ford dealers within reasonable driving distance for price quotes, and I was right… it was expensive. The prices ranged from almost $1500 in Marysville to $450 in Snohomish. After several emails with Becky in the service department about my rechargeable K&N air filter and Mobil 1 synthetic oil, I scheduled my maintenance for January 17 at Bickford Ford in Snohomish. They did a great job and got me out the door in 5 hours.

A couple things burnt my ass, though. Once of my questions to Becky concerned the transmission fluid. The Ford schedule says “change automatic transmission fluid.” I asked her if that included a flush of all 14 quarts, or just a replacement of the 5.5 quarts of that drain out when the filters are replaced. Her reply back was “the service DOES include the trans flush and it is a total flush, it is the best way.” When I got home and looked at the invoice, the part about the tranny read, “AUTO TRANS SERVICE PERFORMED. NEW FILTER INSTALLED. 5.5 QUARTS OF MERCON V ADDED.” They didn’t flush the transmission at all. Nice. Real fucking nice.

They also told me the front brake pads needed replacing. That surprised me. The dealer said the rear brake pads were at 7mm, and the front pads were at 2mm. Not wanting to just have the service done just because I was at the service shop, I declined. But I asked for a quote. When I paid for the service, the quote on the brakes was $375 for new pads and calipers up front. They also said that after resurfacing the rotors, they may need to be replaced as well at a cost of $135 each. Jesus! Six hundred and forty five dollars for front brakes?!

On the way home that afternoon, I drove by the local Les Schwab Tire Center with a large banner draped across the front that read, “FREE BRAKE CHECK.” There could be no better sign. It was like ol’ Les himself was telling me to c’mon in, have some popcorn. I’ve been buying tires at Les Schwab for years, and their great work and customer service always keeps me coming back. But I’ve never used them for brakes. When I was driving the Mustang, I always did the drums and shoes myself. It was a ball-busting job, but once I did it the first time, it was pretty easy each consecutive time. Anyway, I walked in and asked for their free brake check. One of the Les Schwab techs ran out to my truck with a red blanket on his back, like a retarded tire jockey with a Superman complex. He pulled my truck into a bay, and fifteen minutes later he’s got the wheels back on. He said I was in need of front brakes. Crap. The quote was considerably less, though. They only want $272 for the pads and calipers, and didn’t mention a damn thing about rotors. I would have had them do the work right then and there… if they didn’t need to place an order for the calipers. More than 939,000 F-150s sold in 2005, and Les Schwab didn’t have the parts? Okay. See ya next Saturday.

Next Saturday was yesterday. I walked in promptly at my appointed time, and began firing questions at them. Why did they need to replace the calipers? The truck is less than 4 years, for crying out loud. The reason? Warranty. Les Schwab warrants the brakes for 25,000 miles or 36 months, and they want to make sure the parts they put on check out okay. I also asked about ceramic pads, and again they said they put OEM-specification replacements on for warranty purposes. That’s pretty gay, but I gave them my key and took my seat amongst the soccer moms and their screaming axe wound escapees.

An hour later, the tech came out to the waiting area and told me that after resurfacing, there wasn’t enough material left on the rotors and needed to be replaced. Bickford Ford said this could be a possibility, but Les Schwab broadsided me with it. Knowing I had about $605 in my bank account, I asked how much new rotors would cost. The tech ran a new quote which came out to $515. I wasn’t looking forward to scrimping on $90 for the next week, and tried to get the tech to forgo the calipers, or delay replacing the rotors. No go. In fact, I got the impression they wouldn’t let me drive the vehicle off the property without the work being preformed and the new parts installed… for safety reasons or some shit. Reluctantly, I gave the go-ahead, and within another hour, I was on my way home, sans grocery money.

My truck is running great. It better for the more than $970 I spent on brakes and its 90k mile service. I didn’t think there was anything wrong before the service, but I noticed the transmission shifts much smoother now and the wheel alignment and tire rotation gave me a straighter hands-off-wheel drive. New brake fluid, new synthetic 5W-20, and about 40% new transmission fluid add to the good feeling that my truck is in top condition now.

In new year, out the other

It’s that time again, to sit down and put into words what I did for the past 52 weeks. These summation missives seem to come around all too quickly any more… but just like last year’s annual holiday post, and the year before that, I give you a pair of great tits. It was a toss up between tits or boobies, but the boobies were too difficult to envision as “zeros” in my “2009″ theme. Either way, enjoy!

Yeah, I know. Lame. Last year I received a friendly complaint. I can’t remember if it was an email, or a jabber, message by Carrier pigeon… maybe it was a smoke signal. The point is, someone complained about titties on my blog because they read it at work. I won’t mention who, but I used to work with him, it’s not the guy who looked like Jesus, and his name rhymes with Lyle Goddard. So, in the interest in keeping the image for this update suitable for work, you get a picture of birds. Thanks Kyle! Oh shit…

Alright, let’s see what I was up to in 2008. Going through old posts on the blog, I am the most boring sonofabitch in Washington state. I’m still working in Seattle and suffering through a soul-crushing 165 mile round trip commute. It’s wake up at 4:30am, do the three S regimen, dress, commute, work, commute, home at 7:30pm, eat dinner, watch a couple hours of TV, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. Finding time to write in this blog has become a chore with so little time.

In January 2008, I asked The Company for pay raise. At the time, I had been with The Company for three and a half years and only got a one dollar per hour raise in May 2006. Then in October 2006, they gave me a 25% raise because they were transferring me to Seattle. I don’t consider that an actual raise, though. The cost of living and working in Seattle is higher than Oak Harbor. While I had failed plans of moving down there, the additional pay covered gas to commute and higher food prices in Seattle. In fact, by the time January 2008 rolled around, and it was just me and LDriver making the daily commute, that additional 25% increase was just about completely spent on travel expenses to and from Seattle… then gas became a precious fluid, garnering four and a half dollars a gallon. Excellent!

They agreed to a pay raise, and gave me more than I expected. I asked for a 6.6% increase, they gave me a 21.6% increase. The only caveat was I had to move from the Hosting department to Systems Administration. I liked Hosting. I knew the job well, I liked my managers, and enjoyed the work. While I got my promotion and raise in January, it didn’t take effect until March. Moving into Systems Administration was a promotion that put me in a group of cerebral people with a different manager… and after nine months I still feel like I don’t fit in.

I started looking for a new truck last January when Capital One approved me for one of their Blank Checks with a limit big enough to afford a much newer model year.

If you’ve read this waste of time before (or know me personally) you’ll recall I bought a used 1994 Ford F-150 in June of 2006. That was a nice truck and I liked it a lot. However, about three months after I bought that truck, The Company closed the Oak Harbor office, and a few months after that I was driving that ‘94 truck to Seattle once a week. I think that weekly 200-mile trip was the begining of the end. I started to have a lot of troubles with the old 4×4. It was running rough at temperature, so I had it tuned and scoped. It got new plugs and wire, a new rotor and cap, even a new serpentine belt. After all that and more than $500, it still ran rough! The next month, I was driving home from Seattle, LDriver was with me, and the transmission started slipping. We were at highway speed when the tranny slipped out of gear and the engine raced. When I let off the accelerator, the gear re-engaged. We limped to Mount Vernon where LDriver’s wife met us. We poured a quart of Mercon into the tranny, and I gingerly drove it the rest of the way home. A couple weeks later, I took the truck into the shop, and spent several hundred dollars more to have the transmission fluids changed, bands tightened, and filters replaced. That helped, but the mechanic told me the fluid was very burnt and contained metal dust, indicating the transmission was in serious need of more attention than just filters and fluid. When the lower radiator hose blew out a couple of weeks later, I knew it was time to get out of that ‘94 truck fast or be buried in repair bills and a busted-ass truck!

That was the back story which led to me buying a new used truck in February. After searching the dealer web sites in Western Washington, I finally settled on three trucks at three different dealers that I wanted to go test drive. My first stop was Ford of Bellevue where they had a white 2005 Lariat. I called the salesman before driving 100 miles, and he asked me which truck I wanted to see. Apparently there was some confusion on their web site with two different trucks getting the same price and inventory ID number. Several other callers were disappointed to hear that another white 2005 F-150 with over-sized tires and a lift kit was not on the Bellevue lot. Lucky for me the “other” truck with the same inventory ID was still available. I really think that’s why the price was a couple thousand lower than other Lariats of the same year and mileage at other dealers. If you want to read the full story of the day I bought my 2005 F-150, the original post can be found here.

March… Promotion. I stayed in the Hosting department for about six weeks removing all ties to a domain registrar (which The Company owned then sold). I also spent that time resolving my outstanding tickets, after which I relocated my desk to a cubicle near the sysadmin offices in true Milton Waddams fashion. To The Company management (which I’m sure read this occasionally), don’t worry… I don’t have any plans to burn the place down… yet.

The only part of being a sysadmin I don’t like is pager duty. Being on-call sucks. With over 4,100 services being monitored network-wide, there always seems to be something that will wake you up a couple (read: ten) times a night. The very first night I was on pager duty, I was awakened by a loud beeping. Still half asleep, my brain said “FIRE?” …and my heart started to race. But I quickly rubbed away the eye boogers and realized it was the pager. From that point, whenever I have the pager, I change the alert tone to something that doesn’t sound like a smoke detector, or a FedEx truck backing up into my bedroom. Jesus!

The rest of spring was pretty much status quo: sleep, work, sleep, work, pager, work, sleep, work, ad nauseam. I was sick and tired of the Primary elections, and gas prices were higher than Heath Ledger. Holy hell, man! At it’s peak, the cheapest gasoline price I could find was $4.30 a gallon. It was costing $28 (or 6.5 gallons) a day to drive to work and back in LDriver’s 1997 Mercury Sable. Do the math, people, that was about $600 a month in fuel costs! Who am I, Donald Trump? I don’t make that kind of money! Somehow I paid for it, though I maxed out credit cards. Seems stupid to ruin a good credit rating for the sake of driving to work… especially when I can work from home just as easily… but ya do what ya gotta do to pay the bills.

I was having some serious knee troubles in late June and early July. I went to the doctor, and he told me it was Patello-femoral Pain Syndrome. Whatever it was, getting plenty of rest and staying off my knee, coupled with a liver- and kidney-killing cocktail of 400mg of ibuprofen and 1000mg of acetaminophen seemed to help a lot. It took about two weeks before I could bear full weight on my knee without a great deal of pants-pissing pain. My knee still stiffens up in the car during my commute to hell, but it’s much better than it was in July.

In September, I started getting interested in the Presidential Primary elections. I marveled at my apparent maturing into a Republican. I guess age has a way changing people. Whether it is for the better is yet to be seen. For now, I’m comfortable with being a Republican and not at all pleased with the election of King Obama. All of His rhetoric about needing change, not more of the same, is a load of shit. In the two months since the general election, we’ve seen nothing but the typical Chicago political corruption we’ve seen for decades. Change indeed!

That’s about it for 2008. Sorry for the delay, too. I started this post on December 31, but four days of pager duty — which started on New Year’s eve – lasted nine days due to a birth in The Company’s family. Happy New Year! Let’s hope 2009 is better than 2008.

Holiday Jeer!

I hate the holidays, and glad they’re over… for a minute. Only 279 days until the start of the 2009 Holiday season, and 364 more shopping days left ’til Christmas, bitches! Deck the malls!

Yeah… maybe I’m a Scrooge or a grinch, but I say bullshit. There’s no such thing as Christmas spirit anymore. There’s just buy buy buy! Sale sale sale! Now 30% off this shit, and 50% off that shit! Cities and towns decorate their streets not for the spirit, but to entice consumers to consume. Fuck each and every goddamned television and radio commercial for whoring themselves for our money. Fuck every newspaper ad and insert offering an insane discount on that must-have lead-laden crap made in China. Fuck the goddamned throngs of inconsiderate, mindless assholes that crowd every mall, department store, and curio shop in search of the perfect gift… or a gift that will suffice.

I’m not a religious man at all, yet I can’t help but laugh at how a religious event has been twisted into a reason to buy things. Whether you believe December 25 is a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, or a Christian celebration of the approximate birthday of Jesus, the roots of Christmas are based in religion not capitalism.

Back in the 1650s, Puritans in Massachusetts banned the celebration of Christmas for nearly three decades because they saw it as a throwback to their Crown roots. They couldn’t take time off from work, have a big feast, decorate their homes, etc. Even when the law was overturned, the disdain for Christmas continued for many years. In fact, Christmas in America attracted about as much attention as Kwanzaa does today until the mid 1800s. But, just after the Civil War, retailers realized they could use the Christmas season to market their shit we gotta have. Their first hurdle was getting Protestants to let go of their hostility towards Christmas. Then President Ulysses S. Grant designated Christmas a federal holiday in 1870, promoting the secular aspects of the holiday. Ever since then, the holiday season of advertising and commercialization has gotten out of hand.

If you’re less than 80 years old, you grew up with the heart-warming story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer who saved Christmas with his nose so bright. But that entire story was made up by an employee of Montgomery Ward. A national Christmas icon created by a department store in order to sell more crap, then immortalized in songs, television, movies, and comic books. While Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa Claus, they definitely “standardized” the image of a jolly fat man, with rosy cheeks and a flowing white beard wearing a gaudy pimp suit.

Now that same happy image sits on thrones in department stores across the country, surrounded by “elves” in curly-toed shoes and long lines of selfish, greedy vaginal vermin begging for Red Ryder BB guns and dolls that piss themselves. I offer a hearty fuck you to all you parents and your children who have infested our retail outlets with incessant screeching and crying. We should pass a law that outlaws these prepubescent shitstains from throwing a fucking tantrum in a public store, and punish their non-confrontational, tree-hugging, soy-eating parents for not smacking the fuck out of their misbehaving brats!

Christmas is all about the almighty dollar nowadays, as evidenced by the non-stop holiday ads in every form of media. It’s ridiculous. It’s like driving down skid row looking for a hooker. They’re all dressed provocatively, as if to say, “pick me, pick me!” C’mon, you know it’s true! Especially when you realize you’re looking for the best deal for the least amount of money. “Sucky sucky five dolla? Me love you long time.” Or, “Garmin GPS hundred dolla?” No difference.

The recent economic recession seems to made things worse: holiday email spam, television ads, radio ads, junk mail, “Christmasized” logos on retailer’s web sites… It’s a constant barrage of holiday marketing that retailers hoped would make a bad economy a bit better. Christ! There’s over 50 shopping channels broadcasting 24 hours a day, and late-night television is lousy with paid programming. Who the fuck is buying all this shit in the middle of the night? If the economy is so bad, why haven’t all these sleep-deprived materialistic fuckwads with credit cards and a shipping address heard about it?

Of course, the holiday ads don’t stop on December 25. Oh no. There’s the “After Christmas” sale, the “Post-Christmas Sale-abration” sale, the “December Clearance” sale, the “New Year” sale, the “Boxing Day” sale, the “Everything Must Go” sale… whatever the time, the retailers have a sale for it. If there was truth in advertising, there’d only be one kind of sale — the “Buy Our Shit So We Won’t Have To Be Bailed Out By The Government” sale. Fuck TARP and fuck Prince Henry, too!

Why do they always pin the hopes of their bottom line on four to six weeks of holiday discounts? Doesn’t it make sense to market like it’s the holidays all year long? Maybe if they did, so much attention wouldn’t be paid to their economic well-being at Christmas and we can get back to the real reason for the season.

But the holidays aren’t JUST about capitalism. Even though it’s only for one week a year, families put aside their differences and get together to celebrate a tradition. People are usually more generous during the Chrismahanukwanzakah season, and the shear amount of alcohol consumption makes everyone appear happier. However, the impending debt, crowded stores, stupid greeting cards, ungrateful phony attitudes, and endless drone of the old tired Christmas songs just makes me hate the time of year all the more…. which leads to posts like this. It’s more predicable than the first snow.

Fuck it. That’s all for today. Tina’s already shot me several disapproving glares for writing yet another annual “I hate Christmas” post. I’ll have my annual year in review post sometime before the new year… hopefully.