PolarLava::Blog

So today marks the first time in roughly two months where I've actually not been doing the "working lunch".  On two days a week I have standing lunch meetings.  On the other days I have…well, interuptions!  :)  But today I'm actually relatively caught up.  Nobody is bothering me.  And the weather is decent —sunny and 50°.

So basically this provides me a choice.  To blog or go for a walk.  And the fact that you're reading this probably leads you to the conclusion that I've opted to blog.  That is true, but I have another option that I'm going to exercise.  Literally.  I'm going for a walk now.  :)

I've been busy and unable to comment on this situation, but my friend Alan has a very good discussion going on regarding this recent issue.  If you read through this you should be able to easily derive my point on the matter.  In short, we're setting an unfair double standard.  You can't have it both ways America.

A couple of weeks ago I (finally) received my laptop from work (Dell Latitude D610) after waiting nearly six months.  My company pretty much rolls around the clock so often things transpire during off hours.  I generally work fairly normal business hours, but a lot of the people I work with do not.  Having the laptop allows me to check-in from home in the evening with very little effort and thus avoiding getting blindsided in the morning.  It also allows me a lot of flexibility when working from home or wherever.  That is, once I got a wireless connection working for it…

I've had reliable DSL service since that finally was resolved.  But that was one computer connected straight to the DSL modem (Westell 6100).  Thus the first thing was acquiring a wireless router.  In an amazing stroke of luck, one of my employees was looking to unload a LinkSys WRT54G…for $20.  A great deal as most of the used ones I saw were selling for at least $40.

Cool, lets hook it up.  Wham, bam, uh, not quite ma'am.  Got my desktop system connected, and I could get to the configuration interface, but no internet access.  Thus begins a number of rounds of connecting and disconnecting the router so I could access the internets for some help.  After a bit of searching I learned something important about my DSL connection that I didn't know…it's running PPPoE and the modem is also a router.  This means that I needed to run it in bridge mode and let the WRT handle all of the connection details.  Which then meant I had to find out how to do that.  Thus more searching, more forum reading and I finally found a couple of answer that were similar and promising.  Using the tried and true trial and error method I finally got the Westell configured, the WRT connected and internet access working.  Actually I should say I got it mostly working.  …more

First off congratulations to Sweden and Finland for their competitive and hard fought Olympic final.  I can only hope that your gold and silver metals respectively will be appreciated for what they are.

But my main point of this entry is primarily to laugh hysterically at the United States and Canada and their prima donna players and their lame attitudes.  You were "supposed to be" the big gold metal showdown.  Instead you flopped miserably.  All I can say is HA HA!  :)

2/23/06
And this little adventure continues…

As the week has progressed my runny nose and coughing continued to increase instead of subsiding.  With my wife proding me, I finally called the doctor today who has now put me on a course of a different antibiotic and back on the cough syrup.  sigh  I'm so tired of being sick and tired.  And pulling an all nighter at work last night and again (at least from home) tonight certainly doesn't help me rest up at all.  From the looks of it though, tonight might be shorter than last night.  Such drama.  ;)

——

About a month ago I caught a cold.  Not terribly suprising because I seem to get sick at least once or twice a winter.  And when it lingered around for more than a week I didn't think much of that either as I often have a hard time shaking a cold.  So after two weeks the runny nose and coughing subsided…for about two days.  sigh

So another round began.  This mostly just pissed me off because it was preventing me from working out as I would like.  It started to become apparent that I might have to breakdown and go to the doctor.  Last week I was busy and had plans to go ice fishing in Michigan with my son, brother, father and other family.  I wasn't going to skip that so I figured I could just go to the doctor when I got back.  After the first day out on the ice I was exhausted and knew I needed to go to the doctor when I got home.  The second evening I was pretty well wiped out and the coughing was getting worse.  The drive home on Sunday was mostly an attempt to keep a lung from coming up.  By the end of the day whenever I coughed, sneezed or breathed it felt like my left lung was attempting to expel itself from my body.

Thus this past Monday, I opted to work from home and go see the doctor…at the end of the day of course.  So after (willingly at this point) waiting over an hour to see him, the verdict was in.  I was indeed sick to a point that it was time for some serious drugs (antibiotics and a codeine laden cough suppressant) and a chest x-ray.  The verdict was "walking pneumonia".  I'd like to say this was something new and unfamiliar, but I've had it before many years ago.  :(

The remainder of my week was spent working from home and resting as much as possible as I was feeling pretty miserable.  The drugs seems to have the situation under control and things are getting better, although I'm still pretty tired.  As such it appears that I won't be riding for while yet.  And I've also not done any work on any of my projects for about two weeks now and that just annoys me.  It's been a pretty long miserable week and it appears that it's not entirely over yet.  Hopefully things will continue to progress and life can get back to normal.

So if you've been wondering why you haven't seen much going on around here, now you know why.