Dad's home now - somebody tell him to relax

So, we were wrong.  Talking with mom and dad while they were at the hospital and they were saying they would be turfed sooner than later.  Sure he's been feeling better and handled stairs and everything, but he just had 5 bypasses done.  We thought they would keep him for at LEAST A WEEK.

So when we talked to them on Sunday they figured they'd be coming home the next day.  Well we thought if they hadn't said anything to him about going home, that they would probably give him a days' notice so he can get things in order.  Nope - he got the notice Monday morning that he would be out and had to arrange for his Westjet flight home that night.

Thanks goes to auntie Linda for picking them up and taking them to the airport.

So, 1023pm they come off the airplane.  Dad in this double wide wheelchair - which was kinda funny.  Dan Wigg was there and he was saying how this will probably be a difficult time for him as dad's never been the kinda guy to sit back and take it easy.  We got him downstairs and were waiting for the suitcases and he gets up out of his wheel chair and WALKS all the way to the bathroom across the floor.  YOU HAVE A WHEEL CHAIR - USE IT.  yeesh... Dan walked down there with teh chair and dad still refused it when he came out.

Well then it was time to come on out... I had to get the car and pull it around, and got in behind this crazy yank who couldn' figure out the gate thing, kept going up to it and having to reverse as the gate wouldn't go up.  Felt like forever behind him.

Anywho... we then went to the only all night pharmacy 'cuz by this time it was after 11... which meant Shoppers by Intercity.  Yoiks... you can sure meet some interesting people.  Dad had a lot to get refilled so it took a while.  He relaxed in the car, and mom tried to be polite to the wackos.

We finally get him home and I set up his bed on the pull out couch.  He went straight to bed pretty much... well after I had to change his dressings.  Let me tell you -- staples are the grossest things I've ever seen.

A few days have gone by now and dad's still doing good.  Each day is better than the last he says.  But he still tries to push his boundaries, which is good, but I know dad.  "Double Duty Dave" as he used to be known.  He's gonna try to run before he should.

So, yay to me, the kid left at home.  Not that I ever EVER begrudge helping my folks out... just it might have been easier had I moved away like everybody else.

---

Well, just sitting in the staff room at westgate today.  First day REALLY supplying this year.  Phew... this will truly help out with getting my name back on the board.  Just gotta wait for Rory to finish my business cards so I can really start promoting.

Dad's good

So, after almost 5 hours of surgery, dad's come out the other end a-ok.  The doctor's said that there was no complication, no hitches or anything.  They did 5 bypasses in total apparently.  Now they said from the angiogram there were 4 blockages (although I do remember something about how there was a minor one or something...).

So, all's fixed, he just has some recovery time to go through.  Which we hear is typically 2 months.  Now the tricky part is he'll have to stay in ICU till probably tomorrow, which then he'll be transferred to a room.  And, apparently Hamilton General does not have any available single rooms... which is making my dad livid.  He can barely sleep when mom's in the room, let alone some complete stranger.  He got only a few moments when he was back at the hospital at home when he had to share a room ... apparently the guy had a colonoscopy and was up all night farting.

Good time thus far for all involved... dad's fixed, we're all reassured, and Auntie Sharron showed up to help hang out with mom.  Thanks auntie Sharron.

If you've noticed, I've linked alot to the wikipedia site.  This comes from the fact I just watched professor wikipedia on collegehumour.com.  Watch it... and enjoy, ... it's a good break from something serious.

A weekend

Typically when I've tried to catch up on my 'blogging' in a while, I mention how not much has really happened.  I give the 'typical weekend' kinda stuff.

Not this weekend report.  So much has happened this past week, that I've just got to take a min or 2 here to determine exactly what so I don't forget anything.

First is, I'm exhausted.  I've been biking to work all summer, and for the longest time I really enjoyed it, but I haven't been losing any weight.  Though, I did noticed that my clothes felt better.  Anyways, I weighed myself and it turns out I had lost 15lbs so far.  Not bad.  Only 7 more to get me to my first goal.  Doubt I'll hit it, but I doubted I'd get this far.  Good motivation to keep going as long as possible.  Until there's snow on the ground I guess.  Now the whole point here is that I'm exhausted.  When I started biking I noticed it got easier, and it felt better as I went on and on.  Now, maybe it's because the mornings feel cooler, and the afternoons have more wind, but I'm coming home in just buckets of sweat and sore as heck.  My legs ache, etc... maybe I'm not getting enough sleep or something, but I'm definitely having to soothe my legs when I get home.  Could be my tires, I've gone and filled it with air a few times each week... maybe it's time to look for something new -- next year tho'.  No point now.

Band welcoming back came this week.  We had only 5 new students come out to the info session.  We'll see how many stick around in a few months' time.  Means I've got to go and get the modules worked on so it looks very good when I start next week.  And I should probably find my chanter.  Hrmm... I checked at LU... nothing at the Elk's... where could it be?  The band also held a general meeting to help get a picture of where we all stand and what's in the offing for the upcoming season.  Part of it was to hold a statement from the pipemajors... and Ror and I worked together for a while to get it right... and then the day of Rory forgot his speech... so he got all upset... and then got somebody to pick it up for him.  And then, when it came time to give the speech it turs out I had forgot mine.  Luckily I decided to bring my laptop ... and I had the speech on there... so mine just looked horrible.  Ah, well... point got across I think.  It was really nice to see the band members come out and wear the green shirts.  Makes it really look like we're together.  And Andrew now standing in the circle has been reat.  He's coming along well.

What else.. well, obviously, lots of work stuff.  Sometimes I just have to shake my head.  Anywhoo, next topic.

My dad has his date picked.  They let him know like Wednesday that it'd be the Tuesday.  Mom and him have their tickets booked, and hotel reserved... so I think they're set.  They keep saying they don't need anything, but I hope they realize that it will be ok to ask for it.  I mea I have done the lawn mowing, but I'm sure they could use more.  I'll just have to keep bringing Dean over.  I think he'll be a key component in my dad recovering.  Now to ensure that Charmane stays at bay... not saying that her coming is a BAD thing, just as mom and dad have said that it's unnecessary.

Oh, Mandy's gone off to her parents.  They decided to go to Minneapolis at pretty much the last minute.  That's good... they love to travel... not far, but travel still.  So Mandy's watching Kasey, and decided I can look after Dean all myself.  I think this is the first time it's just Dean and I (Mandy says there was one other, but this would be the first WEEKEND).  Just as I said earlier, I'm exhausted after each day, and now having to handle Dean 24hrs a day makes it that much more tiring.  But we've enjoyed ourselves.  A guys' weekend.  We I've been watching UFC's ultimate fighter marathon for season 1.  Can't believe that's like over 6 years ago.  Like where Forrest Griffin got his start.  Pretty cool!

Well that's enough I think.  I'm tired, it's late... just the Shamrock v. Franklin fight to go... I know who wins, so should I wait, or just get a start on sleep now?

Oh, last bit... I've been finishing the Wheel of Time #11 book (Knife of Dreams).  Disappointing how part way through I find out that Robert Jordan passed away.  I didn't know!!!  So research has shown that it's being passed on to somebody else to finish book 12... but not until like September of NEXT YEAR.  oi... I guess I can read the series again.  I've been starting to cheat in this book, using various wiki to get some hints at what could happen.  But 11 is a much better book than the middle books.

LHC Rap

Hilarious...  people never cease to amaze me.  As much as I've known that some misinformed people were wary of the new LHC, I had no idea to what extent.

Funny, my last post was just all about how people ignorant of a fact can be so stubborn and refusing listen to reason.  But the brew-ha over this LHC is waay over the top.

Here we are, on the cusp of a scientific breakthrough that will help us discover more about the world around us, and people are going nuts.  The reason why?  'micro black holes'   Among many other things that the LHC will hopefully shine some light on, one will be the production of micro black holes.   Now, people are mistaking a micro blackhole, for a full size black hole.  That these blackholes will consume the world.  Yeesh... people are really scared.  Scientists at CERN have even received DEATH THREATS.

It just reminds me of that joke about the 8 monkeys:

*Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.*
**
*Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.*
**
*Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up.
Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.*
**
*One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder.*
**
*All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.*
**
*A second original monkey is removed and replaced.
The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who is grateful that he's not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he's attacking the new monkey.
**
*One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.*
**
*This is how any company's policies get Establish.***

The best we can hope for is it to fail, at least according to Stephen Hawking.  What can we, as enlightened people, do about this inane hysteria?  Well, Kate McAlpine (great last name btw!!) has done her part.  Check it out.

on behalf of scientists everywhere Kate, thank you!

Mojave

So, as my list below states I have several things that bother me.  I don't know if that's a sign of me getting older or just discovering my personality.  Who knows...

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that I've listed 'ignorance' down there as something that annoys me.  People who make statements about how much they hate this or that without any real reasoning or research.

There's plenty of these cases to talk about - 'chemicals' (ie. BPA), food, Dixie Chicks, math, etc...

My most recent addition is the smack about VISTA.  Seriously, many people have not even seen how it works and yet they'll swear they saw it eat a kitten, blow up their printer and rob that bank. I had a client buy a new computer who said that she just bought and yet Vista (preloaded) broke it... not the fat that this person enjoyed going to all those online gaming sites.

But I digress... or not, I still want to talk about Vista.  As a nice turn of fair play I've recently come across an ad by Microsoft (no, not those Seinfeld / Bill Gates disasters) called the Mojave Experiment.  Very reminiscent of the Whopper Freakout, where a group of unsuspecting individuals are put on camera to help make a point.

The point is that you can't make rash accusations based on the say-so of a friend of a friends nephew's dog sitter's brother, or timid tongue-in-cheek tv ads (I sooo hate those ads).

Watch the video, I think it speaks for itself.  No matter what the people say the stats are, Mac has done a good job on scaring people off of Vista before anybody gives it a chance.  I won't even describe what happens in the video, I'll let you watch.  You will need Microsoft's new version of FLASH (called SilverLight) to watch it, or you can do a video search for it on Youtube or Google.

Watch your fingers

So for a while now Dean's been the drool monster.  Literally emptying buckets of drool, especially when he's happy.  (once we put a plastic bib on him that had pockets, they were nearly full)

This is a sign that he's starting to teethe, or so the books say.  This has been going on for some time with very little indication... sure you saw ridges where the teeth might be, but still, no hard evidence (pun intended).

Well the other day I noticed what might be called a flap on the top of his 'ridge' of gums.  And then today I looked at it and there were white marks... looked like plaque or something.  I put my finger on his bottom gum, and by gar, thar be a tooth! 

I'd have taken a picture, but
a) hard to see
b) he doesn't sit still long enough, let alone his tongue moves like crazy

I'll have to send something later on if we can get it.

So on to the next step in Dean's growing up.  On his 7th month birthday he has 1 tooth (or would you say he has the tooth when it's fully out?... hrmmm).

GOOGLE CHROME

Okay, I'm a bandwagon jumper.  But I just think GOOGLE has really got some talent over there.  That and I love the name... (you know it's taken from a math term... googol is 10^100).

Anywho... So I downloaded CHROME after reading the comic book on it (you gotta love a company that instead of a press release or manual, they release a comic).  So, it looked really appealing, and while I had a bit of a slow day at work, I decided to install it.  It took less time to install than firefox (but it was bigger) and I was using it in minutes.  Now, keep in mind I do my work on my asus eeePC, and the performance of Chrome was very slow... I chalked it up to I had done some heavier work that moment and the eeePC is pretty slow near the end of the day, no matter how much I tweak it (still haven't monkeyed with any ramdisk yet).

A little disappointing, seeing as it looked so promising - but I decided to give it another shot on the PC at home.  WOW, what a difference.  Pages were loading lightening fast, the tabs were super easy to navigate and no slowing down.  There were some pauses when you'd load a page with a youtube setting on it... but other than that it worked amazingly.  I got rid of Safari off the PC and FireFox off the eeePC.  I'd take off IE, but I still like it, and it's what I'm used to, plus Windows won't like it if it's gone.  Hmm.. oh, well.

So, browsing in a different browser yet again... but it's good.  Hopefully since this is day one, there'll be some improvements (like for some reason I can't scroll UP pages with the touchpad on my laptop).