[links] Link salad is on the road to nowhere
1933 Walker: Fact or Fraud — Art writing guru James Gurney with a cool little squib on something downright steampunk.
The latest fashion for 1786 — Very early balloonpunk, apparently by Dr. Freud. Ah, airbags.
Intelligence Explained — Tracking and understanding the complex connections within the brain may finally reveal the neural secret of cognitive ability.
Russian historian arrested in clampdown on Stalin era — I find this sad and bizarre, but the political reinterpretations and wilful blindness in Russia really aren’t that different from how our partisanship has devolved in this country. And in truth, it’s no more ridiculous and counterfactual than believing we had to invade Iraq because they had anything whatsoever to do with the 9-11 attacks. (Via The Edge of the American West.)
?otD: Is there a city in your mind? Do you see it all the time?
10/25/2009
Body movement: 55 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.0
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (traveling)
Currently reading:
Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox
Tags: Cool, Funny, Iraq, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, Tech
Posted: 9:48 am Sun October 25 2009 | Comments(0) |
[conventions] SteamCon, day 1
SteamCon has been fun, albeit low key. and I arrived earlier than expected, with a deeply surprising lack of traffic fail given the awful weather and the usual Friday afternoon crowded highway between Portland and Seattle. Ran into Tim and Serena Powers in the parking lot, who were gracious enough to help us with our bags. Ran into Duane Wilkinson just inside, all of which eventually devolved (through some mechanism mysterious to me) in us being invited to dinner by Megan Lindholm later that evening, in company with Tim, Serena, Duane and some of Megan’s family.
After that, it was pretty much barcon, with fly bys from , , , , , and, erm, lots of other people.
(Please note, it can be hard to see people in the bar. The chairs have high backs and don’t face the lobby for the most part, so if you’re looking for us, and you think we’re there, it’s worth stepping in and actually looking around.)
Early to bed, not so early to rise, some quiet couple time and a long walk, and now we’re almost ready for our day. I’ll be reading at 2 pm in a joint hour with , and holding forth on steampunk literature at 4 pm.
See some, all or none of you around here today.
Tags: Calendula, Conventions, Portland, Seattle, Travel
Posted: 9:58 am Sat October 24 2009 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Photographed by me at the old car picnic in San Francisco. © 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: cars, Culture, Photos, zen
Posted: 9:50 am Sat October 24 2009 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad goes to SteamCon
Lucy Knisley is freaky funny with a 1980s casting of Harry Potter
Will there be snow in Moscow this winter? — Freakonomics looks at weather engineering.
The best gay marriage protest sign EVAR
Cutting Pay, Wall St. vs Main St. — Some very good questions about payouts.
?otD: Do you like to head steam?
10/24/2009
Body movement: 50 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 7.0
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (traveling)
Currently reading:
Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox
Tags: Culture, Funny, Links, Movies, Personal, Politics, Science, weird
Posted: 9:46 am Sat October 24 2009 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Friday moment of zen
Your Friday moment of zen.
Walter Jon Williams at about 10,000 feet of altitude. © 2006, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: Photos, zen
Posted: 4:48 am Fri October 23 2009 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad has no bananas today
Moebius and Miyazaki — A short video courtesy of art writing guru James Gurney.
Anatomy of Japanese Folk Monsters
Stop and get your free fag bag — A WWII poster illustrating, among other things, language change.
A Galilean Night — Very nice image from APOD.
Naming the exoplanets — An interesting problem.
Happy Birthday, Earth! — Andrew Wheeler notes the birthday of the world, for the Biblically literal, intellectually stunted among us.
Fox News, the White House and Conservative Hypocrisy — Money shot: And that’s the whole point of the strategy, to get their followers to instinctively react to any news that is inconvenient for them by dismissing it as another example of liberal media bias. It’s an inoculation against reality and it is very, very effective. Hearing conservatives whine about media bashing is like hearing Paris Hilton whine about Lindsey Lohan being shallow.
?otD: How much appeal do bananas have, anyway?
10/23/2009
Body movement: n/a (schedule issues)
Hours slept: 6.0
This morning’s weigh-in: 233.4
Currently reading:
Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox
Tags: Art, Cool, Culture, Funny, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Videos, weird
Posted: 4:47 am Fri October 23 2009 | Comments(0) |
[cancer] The price of a single banana
So today’s adventure with the Department of Giant Radioactive Spiders (a/k/a Nuclear Medicine) went fairly sideways. I won’t have the results til next week, but even getting the test done turned out to be a heck of a challenge.
I was up at 5 am to get ready. Headspace pretty troubled, following my plan for the day. I reviewed the test orders from MyChart, the online patient record system my hospital uses, and it said quite clearly, “Eat light meal before two hours NPO.” Meaning, nothing by mouth the last two hours before the tests (scheduled for 8 am), but have something right before that.
This was not how I remembered the PET going last May, as it required fasting. I looked carefully over both sheets of orders, and found nothing contradicting the “eat light meal”. So about 5:45 am, I ate a banana.
Fast forward to 7:45 am or so. I am sitting in the waiting room of the Nuclear Medicine unit with and when they call me in. The banana is a problem. Why did I eat the banana? I produce my printouts of the orders. The nurse (who was very supportive and understanding) looks at them. “Yes, it does say that right here. It’s wrong.” To which I point out that these are, indeed, my written orders, straight from their system. Yes, but the test cannot be performed with a banana in my digestive tract.
The reason for this is that the PET scan involves injecting a radioactively tagged glucose analog into the patient’s bloodstream, then waiting an hour for the sugar to be metabolized. They want to minimize nonessential metabolic activity to prevent the sugars from being concentrated in areas not otherwise of interest — a lot gets taken up by the brain, the heart, the bladder, etc. Hence the hour in a darkened room with no books, conversation or television. This minimizes brain uptake. Likewise the six-hour fast, to minimize sugar uptake due to digestive action.
Phone calls were made. Doctors were consulted. The test could not be run at 8 am, on account of banana infestation. I wheedle, say I’m available all day for a reschedule, but to come back at a later date would be logistically difficult. I do not mention this will also make me insane with more dreadful anticipation. Rescheduling is a serious issue, because the isotopes involved in the radioactive tagging have a short half-life for safety reasons, and cannot simply be held in readiness for a few extra hours. Somebody down in nuclear pharmaceuticals has to fire up the drug cyclotron or something, and this is a big deal.
We finally decided they can fit me in at 12:30, but I must not eat anything or drink anything other than minimal water. Our helpful nurse does offer to fit the IV now, to expedite matters on my later return.
As TV Guide is wont to say, trouble ensues.
My friendly nurse fetches out the IV kit. I inform her that I am the proverbial “hard stick.” This is hard-won knowledge, including a record-breaking 13 jabs to find a live vein one time in a clinic. My circulatory system is laid out rather eccentrically, veins not being where one might expect them. I have a thicker than normal layer of subcutaneous fat, so I show veins about as much as your average basketball does. I have been NPO for some time, so my blood pressure is down and the veins are laying flat. I explain all this. She spends some time studing both my arms, finds a vein she likes in the crook of my left, gets a 20 gauge needle in there, and goes fishing.
Dry hole.
Being a wise nurse, she calls for backup. After a little while, the IV therapist shows up. This lady, very professional and appropriate, was seriously not having any of my sense of humor. She also wasn’t pleased when I asked if she was a phlebotomist, as she was an RN. She shortly gets to work, and this is serious business. Hot packs. Dangling arms. Probing of the veins. Lidocaine to numb the site so she can go in without muscle twitching or pain-startles. (I’ve never in my life had local anaesthetic for a needle stick.) Into the crook of my left arm she finally ventures, and goes fishing.
Dry hole.
Frustration all around. I am informed that my veins are scarred, presumably as a legacy of the last 18 months of medical intervention of various sorts. I invite repeated sharp object penetration of my arms in favor of IV to the hand, which hurts like crazy. The final decision is IV to the right wrist, which apparently annoys the CT team, but they’re running out of options. I briefly divert the energy in the room with a question about why the needle gauges are rated as they are, which neither nurse can answer. Meanwhile, , thoroughly distressed by all the sharp pointy bloody bits, has left the room. Eventually, and with more than a little pain (and a second lidocaine injection), I wind up with an IV taped down to my right wrist.
We depart for the cafeteria, so my support team can eat while I look on in idle hunger. At some point, the banana seeks repatriation with the outside world, so I head off for the bathroom. Where I find that my right wrist is bound almost immobile, and certain necessary sanitary functions are improbable unless I plan to return to the Nuclear Medicine unit with feces smeared all over the Coban covering up my IV port.
Let’s just say my left hand will need occupational therapy, and I used more toilet paper than a carload of teenage girls on a Mountain Dew binge. The curtain of good taste will be drawn over further elucidations of this issue.
We wound up reading our books in a nice lobby by the upper terminal of the funicular, with a spectacular view of the Willamette Valley. Eventually we return to Nuclear Medicine, where things proceed more or less as planned. I drink contrast dye, which makes me queasy. I get shot up with the glowjuice in the tungsten-jacketed syringe taken from the lead box. I spend an hour largely sleeping in the dark. I get strapped to a table for 45 minutes for the PET scan, whilst and look on, and my bad shoulder makes itself known. I get shot up with more contrast dye, which makes my face, genitals and anus feel like someone is holding a match to them. I get strapped to the table again for 15 minutes for the CT scan. Finally I am released. We are informed that the problem of the bad orders in MyChart has already been escalated several levels of management, accompanied by “a lot of yelling.”
I won’t have the results til Monday, but I am a lot more relaxed than I was before the test. The oncology consult is much more the inflection point on all this stress, but it is the test that gets the attention of my lizardbrain. And had we been forced to postpone the test date due to the banana incident, the logistical and emotional disruption would have been incredible. So I’m very glad the OHSU Nuclear Medicine people came through, I’m very sorry I ate the banana, and I’ve learned my lesson about following written orders.
Tags: Calendula, Cancer, Funny, health
Posted: 5:35 pm Thu October 22 2009 | Comments(3) |
[child] Happy Birthday, kiddo
, celebrating her grandfather’s birthday last weekend.
Today is my daughter’s 12th birthday. I plan to celebrate by ensuring with the help of medical science that I’ll be around to see her grow up, graduate, build a life, and one day decide again that maybe I do actually know what I’m talking about.
Love you, kid.
Tags: Child, family, Personal, Photos
Posted: 6:24 am Thu October 22 2009 | Comments(2) |
[photos] Your Thursday moment of zen
Your Thursday moment of zen.
, about age 3, up on Mt. Hood. © 2000, 2009 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: Child, Oregon, Photos, zen
Posted: 6:20 am Thu October 22 2009 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad wishes the Child a Happy Birthday!
Thrush — Art writing guru James Gurney with a lovely little piece of visual and print poetry.
42 Essential 3rd Act Twists — Hilarious.
A feisty embuggerance — Humorous academic neepery with respect to Google Scholar.
Green Genes — Inheritable transgenics. Wow.
HD 209458b: Comparing Exoplanet Atmospheres — More wow from Centauri Dreams.
No Vaccine? A Different Risk — Yep. Antivax borders on criminal behavior, and it’s stupid besides, because the risk being transferred away to other people’s kids is being replaced by a far more significant risk to the antivaxer’s own kids.
America — A WWII vet and lifelong Republican talks about gay marriage and equality in a very sensible way. (Via Making Light.)
?otD: What would you tell today?
10/22/2009
Body movement: n/a (prepping for PET/CT scan)
Hours slept: 6.0
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.2
Currently reading:
Dragon in Chains by Daniel Fox
Tags: Art, Child, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, Writing
Posted: 6:16 am Thu October 22 2009 | Comments(0) |
« Older Posts | Newer Posts »