The benefits of raking leaves

Sure, there are cardio benefits, and there's the feeling of a job well done, but the real benefits of raking leaves come after the leaves are piled up.

A little something to brighten your day.

Fun with resonant frequencies

The rake broke and the handle needed to be re-tapered. This is what happened when I started sanding. The kids made me sand the handle nearly into oblivion watching the little circles march up the handle.

The Wheel Turns

Sixteen years ago today, I took a blind date to a Georgia Tech football game using tickets donated by a friend. The game went well, we continued on to dinner, a movie, and a long conversation at the Dark Horse bar. Ten hours after picking up my blind date, I called my best friend from high school to let her know that I'd just met the girl I was going to marry.

And, a little less than 2 years later, I did.

Tomorrow, sixteen years and one day after that fateful first date, I will be taking my little girl to her first Georgia Tech football game using tickets donated by a friend. It's going to be a daddy-daughter outing with just the two of us. We'll ride a train down to the game, have fun with all of the people in the stands, eat bad food, cheer loudly, and maybe learn a little bit about football.

The wheel turns, and what a marvelous wheel it is.

Are you busy Saturday?

Are you planning to be in the Atlanta area this Saturday? Are you looking for something to do?

I'm coordinating one of the many projects for DUMC's Great Day of Service. My group will be paining the interior of a house in downtown Atlanta. The owner is a very nice woman who is, unfortunately, no longer able to keep up with the maintenance on the house. The inside walls haven't been painted in about 40 years and she would really, really like to have them all done.

Due to an unexpected conflict, my group of 10-12 people has been reduced to about 7, and I could certainly use the help.

To add a it more pressure, here's a photo of the homeowner's granddaughter, who insisted on being in every picture that I took. How can you say no to that face?

Why I don't drink Diet Coke in Japan

Alternate titles:

• Coked up SJP
• New Taste! More SJP in every drop!
• Sex and the Aluminum Cylinder
• Sucking on SJP in Japan
• I don't know why people think Diet Coke is a chick soda
• Diet Coke Fail
  

Extra credit: Guess which of the alternate titles will result in the most erroneous hits from Google searches.

Opryland v. Las Vegas

In a previous post, I made a statement that could be seen as disparaging to Nashville in general and the Opryland Hotel in specific. I have now spent several days at the Opryland. Below is a scientific comparison showing the benefits of each location, provided for your use in determining where to celebrate your second wedding.

Advantage Vegas is indicated via the Elvis icon.
Advantage Opryland is indicated via the Johnny Cash icon.

Vegas	Opryland	Advantage
Large, complicated hotel layout that requires a map to find your way from your room to the lobby.	Check.	Neither
Scads of scantily-clad women running around ignoring the conventioneers.	Check, but that may have been due to the Victoria’s Secret convention being held in the hall one level up.	Neither
Obsequious and helpful employees obviously working on a larger tip.	Same, but more subtle. Score one for southern hospitality.
The slim chance of winning a few dollars at the ubiquitous casinos.	No gambling. This is the Bible belt.
The enormous chance of losing many dollars at the ubiquitous casinos.	No gambling. This is the Bible belt.
Tourists in sequins going out for the evening.	Tourists in sequins and boots going out for the evening.	Let's call that a draw.
Poor television choices – they want you in the casinos.	Adequate television choices, but all of the country music stations are at the top of the dial.
Incredibly expensive room rates and punitive tax adders.	Incredibly expensive room rates and punitive tax adders.	Everyone but the tourists.
Numerous shops inside the hotel complex selling high end items that you can’t afford.	Numerous shops inside the hotel complex selling everything from high-end to junk touristy tchotchkes for the kids.	Singles and DINKs Me
Very fancy and overpriced restaurants throughout the complex.	Not fancy but still overpriced restaurants throughout the complex.
No way to see the outside world so you completely lose track of the time of day.	The occasional window to the outside world.
Pulsating screens advertising night clubs for people much younger and more attractive than you.	Pulsating screens advertising one night club for people much younger and more attractive than you.	(People younger than me and voyeurs.)
Walking on the strip is its own entertainment.	They closed the Opryland Theme Park next door, but the mall is interesting.
Have to fly and take a cab to get to a Vegas hotel.	Within driving distance of my house.

Ford Explorer Gas Mileage 2008

It's been a few years since my very early post on gas mileage and the feasibility of converting to a hybrid, so I think it's time to revisit for my reader(s).

As a certified numbers geek, I record all of the mileage and gas information every time I fill up my car (a 1997 Ford Explorer with very little else to recommend it unless you count "character" dents). Every few years, to the chagrin of my loved ones, I sit down and type all of the numbers into a spreadsheet and make pretty graphs.

Like this one, showing the price of gas over the last few years.


Ah, but everyone has seen those graphs before on the news ... every night ... ad nauseum. What's more interesting for the "trade in for a hybrid or keep the SUV" analysis is how that translates into dollars per week. That one looks like this:


The big spike is from the weekend that we drove a few hundred miles to my 20th high school reunion (old I am indeed). Usually we take the family minivan/mobile restaurant/garbage collector on such trips, but this one was taken sans offspring. The mobile entertainment unit was left behind so that the grandparents could tote the kids around in our absence. Long trips in the Explorer are few and far between due to my wife's insistence that it is "as comfortable as pine bench seats at a Pentecostal tent revival" (paraphrasing).

The conclusion that the spike is due to miles and not a sudden increase in the cost of fuel is backed up by the miles per week graph, included here to increase the amount of time that you will have to spend downloading this entry:


What is interesting to see in that graph is the effect of moving closer to work at the beginning of 2007. The weekly toll is down from the 150-200 mile range into the 75-125 mile range. If it weren't for those ubiquitous 30 mile trips to the airport every few weeks, the number would be even lower. (Yes, there's a train to the airport. No, I don't take it anymore. Driving is faster. I trade 45 extra minutes with my family for a few microdegrees of global warming. I'll plant a tree.)

Of course, the graph that gets me in the most trouble with the local Green Mafia (they still rough you up, but with organic blackjacks made from recycled tires) is the miles per gallon graph:


That highway-only reunion trip made for some great MPG numbers. The other spike is only explainable by my writing down the wrong mileage numbers one time or by a secret conspiracy by the Ford Motor Company to exaggerate the capabilities of obsolete vehicles. Over the last few months, I've been trying out some of the hypermiler techniques (not the crazy things like turning off the engine or drafting behemoths, but the coasting and slow acceleration stuff), which is why the mileage goes up towards the end. Or it could be a statistical anomaly. I'm sticking with the former, as the latter implies that I'm aggravating other commuters unnecessarily.


Now for the analysis. As before, the two models considered are a low-end Toyota Prius and the much more desirable Acura. According to Kelly Blue Book, the current numbers are:

Model	Price	Net Price + Tax (6%)	MPG
Acura	$30,240	$32,054	30
Prius	$21,340	$22,620	60

I'm using the high-end MPG estimates here to get the most favorable pro-hybrid results. KBB claims I could get about $2000 in a trade-in on my Explorer, but I seriously doubt it. Let's use $0 for the trade-in and assume I'd just keep the truck for hauling supplies to various charitable functions and lugging 2x4s to build play structures in the backyards of unsuspecting neighbors.

Since the last analysis, there have been some major changes. Gasoline, of course, is more expensive. However, due to demand the price for a hybrid has also risen - exacerbated by my now worthless trade-in. Also, I drive about 75 fewer miles a week than the last time this exercise was attempted.



As a result, it now makes even less sense to buy a hybrid for the fuel savings. Even if gas rose to $9 a gallon, it would still take over 10 years to make up the price of the cars through fuel savings. In fact, gas would have to rise to over $42 a gallon to pay off the Prius in 5 years - at which point the country would be in flames and driving to work would be the least of my worries.

I agree that gas is too expensive, and I'll probably be one of the first on my block to buy an all-electric vehicle. But it won't be for the gas savings alone. Those numbers still just don't work out.

Happiness is ... a good travel day

Happiness is	... showing up at the airport to discover that the travel agency forgot to pay the change fee on your ticket,
	... but there isn't a line to talk to the agent,
	... and she gets you a seat in a row all to yourself.
Happiness is	... no one in front of you in the security line so you breeze right through,
	... and your gate is at the first terminal so you don't even have to take the train.
Happiness is	... discovering that the travel agency also forgot to change your car reservation,
	... and the only car that they have left is a band spanking new 2008 white Corvette,
	... and the traffic's light.
Happiness is	... a meeting that starts on time, ends on time, and finishes with everyone happy.
Happiness is	... light traffic for a moment on the way back and a chance to feel what 90mph is like when driving a convertible.
Happiness is	... getting booked on an earlier flight,
	... and having the junk fee waived because you flew with them so much in the past.
Happiness is	... absolutely no traffic on the way home.
Happiness is	... knowing that you won't be traveling again tomorrow.

Numerologists of the World Rejoice!

This is the luckiest minute in your lifetime according to the Chinese. The next will be in 80 years, and you're not going to live that long if you're a numerologist.

That is, unless you're actually in China, in which case you've already missed it. Or unless you're on the West Coast, in which case you've still got a few hours to prepare.

Lightning is alive, sentient, and evil

If you live in or around the Dunwoody Club Forest area of Atlanta and you lost power on Tuesday evening, July 8th, I believe I can point to a cause.

For those of you unfortunate enough to live outside of the southeastern United States, you may not have experienced a unique phenomenon known as the lightning storm. Down here, we have all sorts of storms. We have wind storms, ice storms, thunderstorms, downpours, gullywashers, and the occasional Stormy Waters. In early July, we had one of the worst lightning storms on record.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was driving from Atlanta to Charlotte with 2 colleagues for a business meeting. We were on the edge of the storm the whole way up, alternating between perfectly blue sky and downpours so dense you couldn't see the car in front of you. The lightning was impressive.

About 25 miles south of Charlotte our backseat driver was discussing the quality of the wiper blades and all 3 of us were, therefore, looking out of the front of the car. Immediately in front of us, on a overpass less than 100 yards away, lightning struck a pole on the right side of the road and a transformer on the left side exploded spectacularly. It was the closest I hope to come to a direct strike.

Little did I know that had I stayed home I would have had an even closer encounter.

When I returned home on Wednesday, my first indication that something was amiss was that the alarm system showed an intrusion on one of the motion detectors. This is not something that you want to come home to when you're alone in the house. Bravely brandishing a broom (I don't play golf and my kids aren't old enough for baseball yet) I cautiously established that there were no axe murderers hiding in the house. Then I started to realize that the sweating that I was doing was not a cold, nervous sweat but was instead a steaming response to the 90 degree heat inside the home.

A survey of the home soon showed that we had lost two air-conditioners, one DVR, all of the telephones, the security system, cable tv/internet/phone service, and one outlet plate that had mysteriously blown across the room without any visible damage to the outlet itself.

The photo above was taken before I'd moved anything other than the pile of books created as I tried to get to the outlet behind the nightstand. The outlet is working fine and has no charred spots or melted plastic. in other word, the lightning managed to come into my home, rip a defenseless outlet plate from the wall, smash it, toss it around the room, and not visibly damage anything nearby. We're talking scene-from-a-movie-based-on-a-movie-from-Japan kind of stuff, here.

Eventually, I worked my way outside to inspect the fallen limbs and other damage. In the back yard, I found several large chunks obviously blown off of a tree, but I could not find the tree that had been hit. Later in the evening, once my family returned, my lovely wife discovered more tree chunks on the roof outside my child's room on the back of the house. However, neither of use could find a tree in the back yard with visible damage.

That was because the damaged tree was in the front yard.

A large branch at the top of the tree was completely splintered, and large gashes were blown off of the tree all the way down. The gashes stop right in front of the spot on the house where the outlet over was blown off inside.

The lightning, now provably sentient and certainly evil, traveled down the defenseless tree and jumped into the house through the window, purposefully avoiding most of the surge protection in the house. If we had been home, there is no doubt in my mind that the lightning would have at a minimum found a way to remove our clothing while we were exposed to the neighbors. This is not your normal "electrical charge finding the path of least resistance" lightning. This is "spawn of Clive Barker" evil territory.

It has been several weeks since the attack. I discovered that cable/tv/internet service outage was due to a blown RF splitter - but not a single blown television - and we now have restored service. The DVR has been replaced, broken again, and replaced again. The air conditioners were fixed very quickly by our local neighborhood AC expert (two blown control panels, one blown user interface ... it was looking for us). The alarm system is back up and running, after replacing a motion sensor and user interface (see, - looking for us).

The outlet cover is in a glass box surrounded by crucifixes and garlic ... just in case.

My 4500 - er - 2000 word article in Lightwave has been published

Lightwave Magazine just published an article I wrote for them on Next Generation PON. They asked for about 2000 words. I wrote about 4500. The longer version will be a nice white paper for customer use.

A few of the 2500 words cut out:

• apparently (17 instances)
  
• washboard
• alliteration
• marketability
• scurrilous
• fanciful
• popinjay
• scoundrel
• wanker (12 instances)
• netherworld
  

As I'm sure you can imagine, the longer version had a somewhat different target audience.

Why there are no fat Japanese people on the trains

I know that I walk a lot more in Japan than at home. At home, I walk around the house and the office, but I drive everywhere else. In Japan, I walk to the train, from the train, to meals, from meals, up stairs, down stairs, and sometimes just around and around the hotel room at 3am.

For a couple of weeks before my latest trip to Japan and for the entire week in Japan, I wore a pedometer to see exactly how much more walking I do in Japan than in the U.S.

In the weeks before the trip, there were a couple of days that I thought I was relatively active. I mowed the lawn wearing the pedometer. I coached soccer wearing the pedometer. I visited a colleague at Georgia Tech and walked around campus. I took a family vacation to Callaway gardens and spent an afternoon hiking and biking around. Surely those active days would be on par with a normal working day in Japan.

Nope. Only the day hiking around the park had more steps than a normal working day in Japan. A normal working day in Japan takes almost three times as many walking steps as an average day in the U.S.

It would be interesting to compare with more pedestrian-friendly cities in the U.S. to see where a normal working day falls for folks there. In the meantime, I need to rest for a while. Perhaps a 13 hour flight will suffice.

Near Miss

Yes, I and my family are OK. We weren't downtown last night when the tornado hit.

The hit area is an area that we visit often and are very familiar with. It is surreal to see areas that we know so well on television in such disarray.

There's another system coming through now. It's expected to be worse. Maybe we'll dodge that one, too.

Collaborative Map of FTTP Deployments Worldwide

I have been collaborating with Benoit Felton, a Yankee Group analyst based in Paris, and others on a map of FTTP (fiber to the premises) sites worldwide. For now, I'm doing most of the U.S. sites as time permits. There are still quite a few to add, since the U.S. FTTP deployments tend to be local municipal or utility networks, with the notable exception of Verizon's successful FiOS service.

It’s pretty impressive, and is something to think about when your local telecommunications provider claims that you should be happy with your 1Mbps DSL connection.

Please feel free to embed this map or a link in your blogs or webpages. The pressure for FTTH deployment needs to be kept up, especially in the U.S., where our access networks are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Green pins are active deployments. Yellow pins are trials or early-stage deployments. Red pins are announced deployments planned for the future.




Click here to access the map directly, download embedding code, and view in a much larger window.

Fat Tuesday

• Pizza fat - now you can track your Domino's pizza on-line.
• Car fat - run a car on chocolate
• Fat school - get your A-levels courtesy of McDonald's
• Fun with fat - the food launcher
• Fat medicine - we'd prefer it if you'd die sooner
• Fat crime - "He didn't bring the salami with him -- it was just lying around in the office"
• Big fat failure - the blog that makes you feel good about yourself
• Fat seals - make yummy treats for flying sharks
• 80s fat - Weird Al
• Geek fat - what is a FAT?
• NAFTA fat - amazing what a difference one A makes
• Famous Fat - "Curse of the Golden Flower" is one of the best ... films ... ever
• Fat sign of the apocalypse - why, why, why, why?!!
• Fat music - the best song ever to glorify fat
• Fat chance - a great name for a belly dancing troupe
• Fat witch - not recommended as a Valentine's gift for your wife
• Fat pipes - a high fiber diet is recommended
  
• Fat cats - the one fat list you should aspire to
  

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and virtual flowers

I usually prefer not to write little vanity pieces in public spaces, but this is a special occasion. The purpose of this note is to (1) thank everyone very much for thinking of me as I went through surgery and (2) tell the whole story to everyone at one time so I can avoid telling it a few hundred times over the next few weeks.

This Wednesday, I underwent cardiac ablation to fix a problem know as supraventricular tachycardia. It's a not very fun but not fatal condition that causes ones heartbeat to jump into the high 190s to 200s, something that's happened to me twice in the last 6 months. It can be treated with drugs, but there are side effects; and it's something that may never happen again, but I didn't want to take a chance of being 6 hours into a 14 hour flight to Japan when my heart tried to leave my chest through my neck again.

For those who didn't follow the link above, SVT is caused when there is an extra electrical path between your atrium and ventricle (get out you old biology textbooks and look that up if you've forgotten). The only sure cure is to burn away the extra path. That's what I had done this week. It's really not as bad as it sounds - they go in through your legs - but it's not something I'd recommend you do for fun just to show off the scars.

I'll include lots of excruciating details of my day here because talking about blood makes me queasy and talking about my own blood is significantly worse. My reasoning is that if I put in too many details here it'll keep folks from asking me to relive the day ... which would not be fun for me or anyone in the immediate vicinity.

My parents came into town Tuesday evening to help out (something I appreciate more that I can tell them). On Wednesday morning, I sent the kids off to school in the carpoool and, as Tina prepared for a school meeting, my parents took me to St. Joseph's Hospital Outpatient Facility. All I took with me was my ID, my insurance card, and an emergency overnight bag just in case they needed to keep me. Although I had a cold I couldn't take any medicine, so I was sneezing and coughing a bit.

We arrived at the hospital at 8am, and there was some confusion about where to check in that was quickly resolved. On the second floor, very polite and professional attendants took my insurance information and had me sign 2,468 different papers with titles like "I Promise not to Sue" and "I Understand that Someone is Going to Hurt Me Today" and "I Came in with This List of Valuable Items and Would Like to Leave with This Subset of that List" and "I Really, Really Promise not to Sue". They asked me if I was diabetic, and I said no. Then I waited for a surprisingly short time before a nurse came and took me back to my own private waiting area (if you define private as "shared with dozens of other people, each separated about 70% of the time by some thin sheets on rails"). I had to leave behind all of my things, including removing my watch, so times are estimated for most of the rest of the story.

The nurse instructed me to remove everything except my boxers and put on a standard hospital issue "mooning gown", and closed the sheets o' privacy to allow me some vestiges of propriety These vestiges were to be quickly stripped away later, but at this point I was still in transition phase from "paying customer" to "compliant victim".

The nurse who handled me initially (I believe her name was "Laverne", but drugs have addled my brain a bit over the last few days) was very friendly, professional, and competent and kept me at ease, even as she announced that she had to shave my chest. I told her of my experiences with this procedure in the past, including the multiple lacerations received in an ambulance during the first SVT episode. She assured me that she wasn't planning to perform any ritual bloodletting and was, in fact, going to use an electric razor. The process felt ticklish and odd - cut hair is removed with a medical version of a lint sticky brush - and left me looking like a 13-year-old from the waist to the neck.

She then took my vitals (blood pressure very good, pulse a bit elevated), asked me if I was diabetic, and was finishing up when the lead nurse for my procedure came in and asked if she had also shaved my "groins". That's not a word that I'm used to hearing as a plural, so I was a bit worried about what was to come next. Think more in line with a "groin pull" than anything that would be featured in a Sharon Stone movie. Essentially, the tops of my thighs were denuded as well as my chest.

I was left just a thin bed sheet and set of privacy sheers away from becoming a fascinating story for the octogenarian across the hall to tell her friends about over tea.

A variety of other specialists came through and took EKGs, bloodwork, and my watch (just kidding, just kidding) and asked several more times if I was a diabetic. Someone asked if I was allergic to anything, and I could only think of pollen. They assured met that pollen was not expected to be present in the operating room.

The head nurse installed a fancy IV with three little tails. When she entered the room and asked how I was doing, I explained to her that so far everything had been pretty fun (the shaving was mentioned, I believe) and that I certainly didn't want her to change that by hurting me. She apologized and went about sticking a foot-long, inch-wide needle into my arm. That memory may also be somewhat exaggerated by time and pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Wilson stopped by as well to explain again what I would be undergoing and, fortunately, he approved my taking something for my cold. Instantly, my life and my outlook improved in direct inverse proportion to the number of tissues that I was employing.

The head nurse explained that another procedure was still finishing up, so I might have to wait a little while. She offered to bring me something to read, and I asked if she could bring in my book from the waiting room. Instead she brought back my parents and all of my things (which technically did include the book that I'd asked for). Actually, bringing back family was a better option, as talking was more distracting than reading would have been.

Around 10:30am, Tina arrived from her meeting and traded out with my dad. My doctor's assistant came by to let me know that he was taking a short break to eat and that I'd be up next. Less than a half hour later, I was being wheeled back into surgery.

The anesthesiologist and surgical assistants started out by asking me if I was a diabetic and then sticking circular and rectangular objects all over my barren chest and sides. This represented at least the third time that I'd had stickers attached to my body in the same general area in less than 4 hours. I mentioned that next time I'd ask for them to be permanently installed, and they explained that some machines have different numbers of leads, so each pattern is different. Plus, the leads that they were attaching in the O.R. had to be away from the heart area to allow a better view. Expressed in non-medical terms, this translated roughly as "shut up, we know what we're doing", but in a very polite and professional way.

I also told them that I still had a cold. I wanted to make sure that this wouldn't impact the surgery or the drugs. They both told me to be sure not to give the cold to them. I explained that largely depended on what they did to me while I was unconscious. To my relief, they laughed and didn't do one of those conspiratorial wink things that happen in bad Robin Cook movies.

It just occurred to me that everyone that I dealt with at St. Joseph's from the moment that I checked in until I was discharged was a woman - with the exception of my surgeon. Interesting that I didn't notice that at the time.

I was instructed to sit on the operating table while they attached the leads and some cold packs. They made comments about my not flinching from the cold packs, and I let them know that if that was the worst that they were going to do to me today I was in for an easy ride. They promised to make the rest of the day as close to that level of easy as possible.

The big surprise of the day was when they saw my shaved chest and said "why is your chest shaved?" Oops. Apparently that's not required for my kind of procedure. I'll be sure to remember that as I'm scratching at stubble for the next few weeks.

I was told to lie down and they started the cocktails flowing. The drugs used were "twilight" which meant that I wasn't completely out. In fact, during the procedure I remember distinctly thinking that I was awake the whole time. I remember pieces of conversation, I remember the sensation of something being injected or inserted, and I very distinctly remember a very uncomfortable feeling of something being threaded past my diaphragm. In reality, there's no way that I was conscious or even semi-conscious for most of the procedure, since it lasted over 2 hours.

I kept my eyes closed the whole time - even when I was more awake - since I wasn't all that interested in seeing what was going on. See the reference to blood in the first paragraph.

At one point, I heard comments about removing everything and felt things being taken away. I remember hearing something about "he's not going to be able to help" and at that point I asked if I needed to roll sideways. Someone told me not to, that they'd take care of it for me, so I just kept my eyes closed as instruments were pulled off, my body was rolled back and forth, and stickers were peeled away.

The only nearly unbearable part of the process came when they had to put pressure on the wounds to stop the bleeding. The hole on my right side had apparently bled under the skin, and someone was trying to push that out. The pressure was right on the local veigle nerve, which meant pain, nausea, and an urge to get far away from the offender as quickly as possible. I must have made some noises to that effect, because the pressure was eventually moved to another area (and the bruise was allowed to form).

I learned later that a total of 2 catheters had been used on my left side and 4 on my right. That's the main reason that my right side then - and now - is in worse shape.

Once the bleeding stopped, I was wheeled into recovery where I was to remain still for the next 4 hours. I arrived at 2pm, which meant no moving until 6. My parents had returned to our home by this time to take care of the kids, but Tina was with me for the rest of the evening.

I slept for much of the first 3 hours. Lunch was brought, but I didn't want to eat much without being able to get up. I drank some water and faded in and out.

After 3 hours of deliberately not moving, the main thing that I wanted to do was bend my knees. Try sitting extremely still for a long time - it helps if you're afraid you'll bleed to death if you move your legs - and see if you can make it 4 hours. It's not comfortable. At the end, I was willing to trade an overnight stay just to be able to turn my feet sideways for a few minutes. At 3 hours and 45 minutes, I snuck in a slight knee bend. It felt wonderful, and nothing broke loose.

Dr. Wilson came in for a few minutes early in the 4-hour wait and explained that the problem - the short between my atrium and ventricle - wasn't where he'd expected it to be. Based on my symptoms, he was 90% sure it was in one place, but it was actually in another. However, he did find it and did zap it. He also explained that there was a small chance that the surgery wouldn't take ("it might just be stunned"). Great - I'd really love to do this again. He asked me to schedule a follow-up in 2 weeks to see.

At around 6pm, dinner was brought and I was allowed to sit up and put my feet over the side of the bed if I wanted to. I chose to just flex my legs a bit until after I'd eaten. I hadn't eaten since dinner the night before. The Chicken Tetrazini was pretty good, as were the pears and salad on the side. It was certainly better than your standard-fare hospital-food punchline.

Then it was time to walk. I had to spend an hour walking a bit and resting a bit before I could be discharged. No one wanted me to get home and spring a leak. At a little after 7pm, I was wheeled out into a waiting car.

My instructions were to avoid stairs, not to pick up anything more than 10 pounds, not to squat down, and to be sure to get up and walk around occasionally to avoid blood clots. Stairs weren't going to happen anyway. Even now, two days later, stairs are a challenge to be met slowly and methodically.

Fortunately, our house has a drive-around driveway with a door to the basement. I went into the basement and collapsed onto the couch and watched TV while the cocktails worked their way out of my system. I wasn't feeling very chipper, and wasn't much of a conversationalist. Around 10pm, I shuffled into the basement bedroom and slept through the night.

The second day was a little better, and today is better still. I'm still very sore and have trouble going up or down stairs, sitting up straight, and standing for any long periods. My skin reacted to the adhesive on all of those attachments, so my torso looks like I've been nursemaid to a family of remoras. I didn't get any prescriptions for painkillers (although they were offered), but I will be taking an aspirin a day for the next 60 days to avoid blood clots.

Overall, it appears that everything went well, and I expect to recover quickly. Hopefully I'll be up to coming back to work on Monday, but maybe not for a full day. And I'll be taking the elevator to the second floor.

If I've missed anything in the story above, it's probably not significant and certainly not worth making me repeat the entire sordid tale in person, although I will try to be polite if anyone has questions. I do genuinely appreciate your concern - every one of you - and I look forward to getting back to my old, obnoxious self very soon.

RIP 99X

Much has been made in the local (Atlanta) press about the demise of what was once the most popular non-R&B station in the area. Yesterday, the local (Atlanta) paper ran an editorial entitled "99X's demise means loss of unique Atlanta lifestyle" in which the columnist waxed nostalgic and apoplectic about the cultural loss that this represents.

I have a different point of view. I think 99X died years ago and it's finally being put out of its misery. I'm not proud to say that my response to the news was "good riddance", since 99X played a huge part in my life for many years.

Most folks don't remember the predecessor to 99X at 99.7 FM. It was called "Power 99" and was one of the worst examples of top-40, limited playlist, cultural dreck on the radio. At least that's how I saw it as a college student in the late 1980s. The only redeeming factor was that they brought U2 to the Georgia dome somewhere around 1987, and for that I will always be grateful. I wasn't a Power 99 listener, but I did pick up a sticker and put it on my footlocker (between the free Georgia Tech bumper sticker given to freshmen and a misprinted UNC "I bleed" sticker missing the punchline).

When Power 99 changed formats to a "new music" station a few years later, I was one of the first converts to the new 99X. I was an "Album 88" (Georgia State college radio) listener. But here was a station playing my kind of music that wasn't a low-power, inconsistent station manned by amateurs. I vividly remember turning over to 99.7 and hearing the "Red Hot Chili Peppers" playing. I was hooked - and stayed hooked for years.

In the early 1990s, I volunteered with a 6th grade group at a local church. When we went on trips (ice cream, retreats, high-speed pursuits) there was always a lot of wasted time while they determined which social cliques were going to ride in which van. My solution was to hold up my keys and say "the radio in my van will be tuned to 99X". It was a quick wheat-from-the-chaff technique that enabled me to play music I wanted to hear loudly enough to drown out any bickering and bloodletting in the back of the van.

However, I also vividly remember when I started tuning out. As the years progressed and the station gained popularity it made the unfortunately common mistake of believing that they needed a morning "zoo" crew to bring in the right demographic. Over time, the stunts got more ridiculous and the chatter more pervasive. This culminated in a wager between two personalities in which the loser promised to remove a part of her pinkie - on the air.

Yes, it was a stunt and it was eventually shown to be fake. However, I knew how much those 6th graders had looked up to these personalities and I thought it was irresponsible. And inane. I and many others wrote and called the show to tell them that we would never listen to them again if they went through with the stunt. For all I know, I'm the only one that actually followed through. I never listened to the morning show again.

However, I still very much enjoyed the music and the other shows - retro shows, local shows, new music shows - so I still listened in the afternoons. But as I started roaming the dial in the morning I found other interesting stations, and more and more I didn't go to the trouble of changing back to 99X. When I did switch back, it seemed that the playlist was starting to shrink as the same songs kept showing up day after day. By the time I moved out of Atlanta in the late 1990s, I was only skipping past 99X once a week or less.

When I returned to Atlanta a few years ago, I thought I'd give 99X another shot. I still liked (and still do like) the type of music that they ostensibly represent. I turned into the morning show to discover that it had fallen even further, putting in a personality named Fred Toucher that was so offensive that he made the original crew look like choirboys. In the first week I heard uninformed tirades against religion (Christianity in particular), celebrities, politicians, and anyone unfortunate enough to wander by. The tone of discourse was so low that it was difficult to determine who they were trying to reach. 13 year old boys raised by delinquent parents? Seems mighty thin and not exactly the type that would be a fan of the "new music" genre.

At that point, I stopped listening to 99X altogether. Maybe I'd matured and the station wasn't all that different, but I don't think so. I think that they catered to lower and lower standards at the expense of the music that brought them their fan base. I can't imagine that I was the only one. In fact, I had a conversation with a local radio executive who expressed a very similar sentiment (especially about the personality choices) 18 months ago. He predicted that 99X would be an all-country station by the end of the year. It seems he was off a bit in the details but not in the end result.

So that's why I wasn't sad when I heard that 99X was no more. That's also why I think that the histrionics over its demise are greatly overdone.

The 99X that really mattered died a long time ago. They're just pulling out the tubes now.

Amazon's DRM-free music

Amazon has, for the last few months, been offering DRM-free music downloads. That means that a song or album that you buy from them comes in a standard MP3 format, not some proprietary, locked format that only plays on specific hardware. This is important to me because (1) I use my Treo phone as my music player and it only plays MP3s, (2) I like music and listen to it often, and (3) I have a conscience that won't allow me to download illicit MP3s. That means that I was left to purchasing actual CDs and ripping songs (which, despite RIAA arguments to the contrary, is still legal). The biggest problem with Amazon's music was it's extremely limited selection. That's all changed now that Warner has added their library to the mix. They now have music that I would pay - and have paid - 99 cents for. Therefore, as a public service, I present for you a few easy listening pieces from my current playlist. The list to the right was specifically created to put you into a productive mood whether it be working, studying, or driving down a deserted highway at night with the windows open. The Amazon solution isn't perfect yet. There are no tracks by Rage Against the Machine or (surprise!) Metallica. You'll just have to make do with the few hundred other options available now. Happy listening!

Supraventricular Tachycardia: An Unedited Stream of Consciousness

One minute you’re reading a bedtime story to your kids. The next minute an EMT is intentionally stopping your heart.

You’ve just said goodnight to your kids (another chapter in the latest “Harry Potter” book) and you’re sitting down in front of the computer to look for images of sheep to use in the preschool puppet show this week when you notice your heartbeat suddenly kick into high gear. You sit back and try to relax for a minute. Maybe this is just a temporary thing – stress-related or something, but it doesn’t go away. So you carefully stand up and walk down the hallway to let your spouse know that something’s not right. Mainly she’s annoyed that you’re disturbing her, but she eventually figures out that something a bit more serious might be going on.

The heartbeat is incredibly strong. You can see it pounding through your t-shirt. You lie down on the bed to try to relax, and it only seems to get worse. It starts to hurt a little in your neck.

This has happened before. The last time was at work and it really freaked you out. You thought you were going to die. When it didn’t stop that time, you had the office manager call 911. But it stopped before the EMTs got there. There was no evidence that it had ever happened. They took you to the hospital anyway, but there was nothing to be done other than a standard battery of tests. The longest lasting side effect was a badly shaved chest that bled profusely and turned into a set of nasty-looking circular welts like crop circles on your stubbly abdomen. The PA told you that this whole episode was nothing to worry about. That if it happened again, you could probably stop if by coughing or performing Veigle maneuvers or putting your face into a bowl of ice-cold water. In any case, it would stop by itself in about 10 minutes. It may never happen again, but if it does it’s certainly not an excuse to get a ride in an ambulance. You’ve dismissed the whole series of events and are a bit embarrassed to have put others through such a messy ordeal. And you’re tired of the “how are you feeling” questions at work. And you’re no longer polite when people ask.

So here you are, 3 months later, and it’s happening again. So you try coughing, but that just hurts and your heart keeps up the tempo. You get your spouse to bring up a bowl of ice and you pour it into the sink with water and you force your face into the cold. You emerge, sputtering and cold, and realize that the pain is a bit lessened, but the beat goes on. You’re starting to feel dizzy, but you’re not sure if that’s a result of the heartbeat or of the rising panic that you’re desperately trying to rationalize away. You try coughing again and try the water torture again. The water’s colder this time, but still no effects outside of clammy skin. And that may have been there before.

You lie down and try to relax. And you decide that maybe another call to 911 is justified. You take a aspirin – they always tell you to take one – and it doesn’t seem to help the pain much. You’re starting to feel really bad. You’re neck and chest are really starting to hurt and your stomach is in knots and you’re not sure if you’re going to pass out or thrown up or both simultaneously.

Then you realize that your son is in the bed next to you. You open your eyes, and he’s kneeling there next to you with his eyes closed and his head bowed and his hands pressed together in front of his face. He’s quiet for a long time. Then he says “God, please help my Daddy to feel better soon. Amen.” And you close your eyes again so he doesn’t see the tears. You take a deep breath – as deep as you can manage – and you reach out and touch him and tell him that everything’s going to be ok. And you smile a genuine smile and try to laugh so he doesn’t see what you’re really feeling.

Your spouse tries to get you to take deep breaths. She’s read this on some on-line article unrelated to what’s going on, but close enough to make her feel that this is the correct behavior. You try to explain that deep breaths aren’t an option here. Deep breaths hurt. A lot. More than you can believe that they should. And that adds to the panic and now you’re really starting to feel bad.

The EMTs are on the way, so you move downstairs to the couch so that they don’t have to climb the stairs. No need to make them carry you down on the inevitable gurney. No need to wake up your daughter, who’s sleeping soundly through the entire ordeal. You start worrying that maybe they won’t show up in time to take a reading of this episode and it’ll all be another waste of time for the EMTs, the doctors, and the insurance processors who will have to sort it all out once more.

But this time your heart’s still pounding when they get there on their big, flashy fire engine. They hook up the monitor and make the type of raised-eyebrow faces that don’t translate to “not a big deal”. One of them is a rookie who asks “Is that really a heart rate?” You’re at 190 beats per minute, plus or minus. Mostly plus. And the EMTs call for “a bed”.

You’re poked and prodded. They insert an IV and hook up the EKG. This time there’s going to be a nice printout as evidence for the doctors. And then the one in charge pulls out a needle and fills it with a clear liquid.

“This will convert you,” he says, “but you’ll probably feel woozy for a minute or two.”

Thanks for the warning. He pumps the drugs into your IV port, and you don’t feel woozy. You feel like you’re dying. But it works, and the heart rate monitor drops to the 90s – a reasonable number for someone in your situation.

“I didn’t want to tell you before,” says the head EMT, “but what that just did was stop your heart for a minute. I don’t like to tell people that beforehand, because it scares them.”

And then your heartrate jumps back up to 190 and he has to do it again. And this time you know what to expect, except that this time they double the dose. As it enters your bloodstream, you can’t breathe. You gasp for air, but nothing happens. You feel worse than you’ve ever felt in your life and you believe that this must be what a heart-attack victim experiences in the last moments of their life and you panic and you pray and you fight for life as you’ve never had to before. And it’s all over in a second or two, but it seems like it was much longer. Your heartrate’s back into the 90s and you feel better.

Then you start shaking. Maybe it’s the cold from the front door that the EMTs left open, or maybe it’s some chemical reaction inside your body from the drugs or the panic or the near-death experience. The shaking gets worse. Your legs are jumping off of the couch on their own. Your hands are so violently shaking that you’re afraid the IV will pull out. Your teeth are chattering. And you feel very, very bad. Not like you’re going to die, but bad enough that you’re convinced something else has broken loose inside.

Then you notice that the EMTs aren’t panicking, and that helps. They are professionals, bringing in the gurney, watching your vitals, and doing what needs to be done to get you into the ambulance. They’ve moved your coffee table – for some reason that seems important. They help you into the gurney and strap you down. At some point they’ve hooked up oxygen, and it’s pulling on your ears. They put the tank between your legs and it’s cold and you’re wishing you were wearing more than a t-shirt to go out into the cold. But you’re feeling better.

Your neighbors have arrived. You realize how lucky you are to have moved into a neighborhood filled with so many remarkable people. They are here to watch your kids for you, to offer assistance in any way that you might need them. It’s after 10pm on a Saturday night, and they’re out there in whatever they threw on and they’re willing to do whatever you need. And you realize that you’re wearing a t-shirt that says “God’s Helping Hands” and you know that you’re seeing them all around you. You’re loaded into the ambulance and your spouse gets into her car to follow, and you’re on your way to the hospital.

The ambulance driver won’t turn on the lights or siren, though, even when you ask. Those are reserved for the real emergencies. It’s nice to know that you’re not a “real emergency”. You’re starting to even believe it. You watch out of the back of the ambulance as the EMTs call in your vitals and ask personal questions like “Have you ever taken Viagra” and “Do you smoke” and enter the results into their laptop computers. This is your second time in an ambulance and you’d really like not to ever do it again.

At the hospital, you’re handed off to another group of professionals who continue to make you feel comfortable and confident that this isn’t your last days among the living. They put on new monitors and remove old ones, removing patches of hair as they go, but you really don’t notice that pain very much. It’s a relief to be noticing anything other than your heartbeat.

This time, you get a chance to talk to a doctor, which turns out to be the most beneficial conversation of the entire experience. The MD explains that what you experienced is SVT. It’s an electrical problem, not a blood-flow problem and it has nothing to do with the kind of heart attacks that killed your grandparents. It’s not life threatening. There’s an extra electrical feedback path in your heart that isn’t supposed to be there, and sometimes it gets activated. The signal starts running up and down your heart, causing the rapid heartbeat. It’s treatable, although it’s probably a good idea to confirm this with a cardiologist. And he gives you a name of a cardiologist to call and set up an appointment. And he explains that it may never happen again … or it may happen again 15 minutes after you leave. And he discharges you from the hospital with nothing more than paperwork to take home with you.

You call home to let your neighbor know that you’re on the way and she asks if she should send your son to bed now. It’s 11pm, and he was supposed to be in bed 2 hours ago. He’s told her that “on Saturday nights I get to stay up until 10:30,” and he’s been so convincing that she’s believed him. Her daughter has been over and they’ve been playing and watching television. (The next day, the only thing that your son will tell your daughter about the evening was that he had a play date all night with the neighbors.) You tell her to send him on to bed, and by the time you get home he’s already asleep.

You go to bed and wake up at 3am and you’ve sweated completely through your shirt and your heart is racing and you’re convinced that it’s all starting again and you get up and go to the bathroom to throw up and realize that you’re heart’s not quite beating so fast and maybe this is just panic setting in. And even though that’s true, it’s not a much better feeling. You wash your face, change shirts, and climb back into bed and try to think about anything other than heartbeats, blood flow, electrical paths, doctors, hospitals, or ambulances.

Eventually it works and you fall asleep.

On Monday, you call to set up an appointment with the cardiologist. Because of the holidays, it’ll be 2 weeks. Meanwhile, the panic is getting a little better, but every time you start to do anything requiring exertion and your heart starts beating a little faster, you stop and rest a bit.

Just in case.

Ben as Goddard the Robot Dog (Halloween, 2007)

This year, son Ben wanted to be Goddard, the robot dog in "Jimmy Neutron". He never wants to be a simple ghost or pirate or anything.

Here's a video of the final costume. Sorry it's sideways - I forgot that my camera can rotate stills but not video. It's a shame you can't see the glowing and blinking lights inside the clear dome on his head. They really made the costume.



The body is a box covered in strips of duct tape (so they look like metal strips). The head is constructed from a cardboard box, mangled and shaped and cut and taped and screwed and painted. The arms and legs are dryer vent tubing with aluminum pie pans on the end (painted copper, since Goddard has copper-colored feet). The clear dome on the head is a plastic bowl with a bolt and taped cardboard circles for the antenna. Inside the dome were glow sticks and a blinking fiber-optic toy that looked quite awesome in the dark.

Ben won best costume at the neighborhood block party. This will only encourage him. I can't wait to see what he comes up with for next year.

There are more photos at our Shutterfly page. I may try to copy them over here later.

Stress Test

The following was sent via email (it is not an original creation). I am not sure exactly how it works, but this is amazingly accurate. Read the full description before looking at the picture.

The picture below has 2 identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital. Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that , in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical , a person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins .

The more differences a person finds between the dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.

Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you may want to take a vacation.




Click here to reveal the image of the two dolphins.

I married a girl from Tennessee

From: me
To: her
Subject: Meal idea

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From: her
To: me
Subject: Re: Meal idea

disgusting! reminds me of home ec at my high school. we really did cook a rattlesnake.

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From: me
To: her
Subject: Re: Meal idea

After 13 years, I’m still discovering things about you.

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From: her
To: me
Subject: Re: Meal idea

it tasted like chicken.

Buy my dad's camera

Selling my dad's old camera on eBay. Wanted to see how this gizmo works.