Pastor Rick Warren

Pastor Rick Warren is like most Christians- way too accepting and blind to the fallacies presented on the bible.

Leaving Honduras

Just a couple of observations about my recent trip to Honduras....

The airport in San Pedro Sula has several SSID broadcasts indicating free internet like Digicel Internet Gratis and Claro free internet with nice strong signals.  However i have yet to be able to connect to any of them.  My Android ICS phone never gets an IP address and my Windows 7 laptop assigns some unusable IP without a Gateway.  I can't even find a paid connection.  So the internet at this airport sucks.

I am flying on a Wednesday and first class was not completely full- no one sat beside me and coach was not slammed full either.  Note to self: fly on Wednesday when you can.

Church

This is the third time in seven days that i have come to church.  It would be a colossal waste of time if my children were not involved in the service.

Strange Things

Atticus can't sleep with his feet under the covers and if i take a piss in the woods while walking the dog, he will lap up most of my stream before out his the ground.

Dog Smell

The sofa in our living room smells like dog because we let the dog have free reign of the living room.  Keeping him off  a new sofa will be a challenge so we won't be getting a new sofa anytime soon.

Our current sofa is torn, the cushion are worn and it is in pretty abysmal shape.  I can't even stand to sit or lay on it.  Don't even think about lifting one of the cushions.  The last time I did I found half eaten candy, pencils, spoons, hair, partially eaten brownies, rubber bands, a cordless telephone, chewed plastic toys and much more nasty shit.

Just a day in the life!

Insomnia again

Woke up at 3:45 AM and can't go back to sleep.  I can't seem to switch off my mind.  I still have somewhat of a cough.  Sucks...

Insomnia

I woke up coughing up phlegm at about 3:45 AM and couldn't go back to sleep.  Not being able to sleep seems to be happening to me more often now.  Maybe something having to do with age?

So I got online to book my flight to Jackson Hole in February.  I went to the Upromise site like I normally do to earn some money for my kids' college education.  At Upromise I normally book flights through Expedia where I received back 2% of the total spend.  It seems Expedia made a change and now only gives like $0.94 per booking.  Before I was getting $3 to $9 depending.

So now I booked this flight using Upromise and Orbitz which gives me $3.25 per booking- better but still not great.  I am beginning to wonder if it is worth my time is use Upromise.

I tried the Upromise Turbosaver but it sucks because it messed up the view of some web pages that I visit on a regular basis.

By the way, Expedia kicks Orbitz ass.  The overall look and feed of the Expedia site it much better than Orbitz and the deals are pretty much the same between the two sites.  What I really dislike about the Orbitz site is that they don't offer an iCalendar attachment to download into my calendar to automatically put the itinerary information on my calendar.  You would think that a site like Orbitz that has the traffic they do would attempt to make things easier for the user by offering such a feature.

Whirlpool Compactor Part 9871140 Sucks!

I have an older Whirlpool trash compactor model GX900QPHB. I don't know how old it is but it was here when we bought the house in 2007 and it was fully operational without any issues. There are three switches on the front of the panel- "Off", "On" and "Start". You press the "On" button and it stays "On." Then to get it to compact the trash you press "Start" and it will cycle pressing the ram downward to compact the trash and then reversing at a certain point to bring the ram back up. When the ram is fully raised normally the cycle will automatically stop- the motor would stop running. We would not then press the "Off" button, we would just leave the "On" button pressed so you don't have to press two different buttons the next time you want to compact.

In April of 2009, it started malfunctioning. The ram would go through the downstroke and the upstroke but it wouldn't automatically stop. When it got to the top of the upstroke the motor kept running and the ram would be at the top of the cycle at the top of the worm gear that operates the ram. The motor would continue to run and turn the worm gear and since the ram was at the top of the stroke it would just keep dropping back down on the channel of the worm gear and make a continuous thud, thud, thud, thud until someone pressed the "Stop" button. I took the compactor to a local Whirlpool repair shop and they repaired it by replacing the start switch which is the module that contains the aforementioned buttons. This is Whirlpool part number 9871140. The part cost $104.88 and then $65.00 in labor and $7.34 in taxes brought my total to $177.22.

The Whirlpool GX900QPHB worked fine until about a month ago. It started doing the same thing. This time I knew what to do so I ordered the part from Searspartsdirect.com costing me $94.45.  I received the part quickly and inspected it.  It was the exact same part I was replacing.

Front of the part with buttons:

Rear of the part with connections

It was very easy to replace.  I just removed two screews on the top portion of the front of the compactor and removed the top face plate.  The switch was attached to the top of this face plate.  I removed connections to the switch and then the screws holding the switch to the panel.  I replaced the switch with the new one using the same method in reverse.

So why does this very expensive part only last three years?  because this is the second switch I have purchased I am beginning to think that this part is defective.  I can't find anything on the web about his crappy part.

Reading Breakthrough

This week Adrienne has had a reading breakthrough. It is kind of weird. It is almost like something just clicked in her. She reads with much more confidence and she seems to be able to read much more smoothly and is able to recognize a significant amount more words than she was able to just a week ago. London had a meltdown because her science project is due in less than a week and there is a lot of work to do. Atticus told his mother that he didn't like her cooking and that the hash brown casserole that she made for dinner tonight was gross. She told him that if he wanted to eat something that he either had to eat what she made or make something himself. He instead went into the pantry and got a Clif bar.

Another way Charter Cable sucks

Charter Cable is a horrible cable company. They keep reaffirming this to me continuously. It took them 8 months to bury a cable that had been stretched across my driveway My cable internet connections drops for an extended period of time every time it rains hard. I pay almost $200 per month to get the channels I want but have to take hundreds of channels of crap with it. And now, I have enrolled in their rewards program since I spend so much money with them. It is called Live It with Charter. Let me tell you that Live It with Charter is without a doubt the world's shittiest rewards program. They have auctions on crap like Mad Men dolls, autographed baseballs and guitars. You can spend your points on awesome valuable stuff like a 7' ethernet cable, a cable splitter and other cable related accessories. If you don't like that you can enter a sweepstakes with your points or get 2 or 3% off at participating retailers- except they don't give you the discount up front... the discount is credited to your cable bill not at the end of the month but at the end of the quarter!!! If none of this suits you, there always is "Charter Days" where they offer you for a limited time more worthless crap. They don't even offer a way to use my 70k of worthless points to donate to a worthy cause. So don't even bother signing up for this worthless program. Trying to spend the points is so difficult and the selection is so limited that it just isn't even worth collecting the points.

Probably not out of the woods

I am in Roatán He beautiful beach weather and diving with my soon to be ex plant manager. we didd a beautiful dive yesterday called Dixie. We saw a nice slow moving beautiful sea turtle. csfthe dive lasted for 4 minutes can I still had 500 pounds of air left when we finished. I am getting better at my rate of air consumption or breathing efficiency. when I was getting ready last night to go out for the evening I noticed that I had a sore spot underneath my armpit. it is red and raised. now I'm worried that my rrrrrrlymph nodes are swn and that it could be something bad

Wall Street Journal Web Site Cookie Handling Sucks

I have a print and online subscription to The Wall Street Journal which is my favorite place for news. I have turned off all cookies in my browser and am allowing only certain specified cookies to be saved on my computer. Wall Street Journal's site will not seem to work this way. I can get all other sites to works properly by turning global acceptance of all cookies, browsing to the site, browsing around the site for a little while to save all the shitty cookies that the site wants to put on my computer and then turning off global cookie access. But not the Journal's site. Sucks! Why should they dictate how I handle my own cookies? Seems unfair and unjust to me. Now I have to turn on global cookie access every time I want to read their site. Maybe I should get my news elsewhere?

My neck, my back, my ***** and my crack? Plus the Best Ice Cream on the face of Earth

The wife left for a girl's weekend and I had the kids to night. After we ate dinner at home I took them to Wal-Mart to buy an ergonomic neck pillow because my neck and back are still bothering me six weeks later. The pain is not as bad- mostly gone but still noticeable. I have been to an ortho doctor and had x-rays but nothing serious showed up on x-rays except some narrowing between my vertebrae and the curve in my neck straightens out a little more than normal. Doctor Campbell says it isn't anything to worry about now. He gave me some exercises to do and sent me on my way.

So I took the kids to Udderly Delicious in Conover tonight after the wondrous trip to Wally World. I always get Preacher's Coffee Ice cream. That shit is so damn good! It has coffee ice cream with chocolate fudge swirls and almonds I think. I only had one scoop but I could have eaten seven.

Samuel Adams Tasman Red

I am drinking a pine tree. At least it has alcohol.

The Crutch

I am at "the beach" with the family- our condo at North Myrtle Beach. The wife took the daughters shopping all day and I hung out with my son Atticus. He wanted so badly to have a skimboard. He saw some other kids using skimboards earlier this week and has since talked about nothing else. So I took him to Ron Jon Surf Shop and purchased him and his sisters each a skim board and wax. Many thanks to the nice man who helped us and advised me on which board to buy. He qualified me correctly and and didn't direct me to the $599 carbon fiber board but the $11.99 wood board for beginners.

We got back to the condo and I took Atticus out and he tried and tried to skimboard but just couldn't quite get it. He wanted to throw it too far in front of him and when he jumped on it, the board had already stopped moving and he wasn't moving fast enough to actually skim on the water.

I realized at that point that he was a little too young to learn from his father and that he may be able to learn faster if he had someone else teaching him.

He kept telling me "daddy, you think it is easy" after I had told him several times that it is hard to learn. Obviously he was picking up on my frustration that he was having a difficult time with him learning. It is really interesting that he can pick up on my frustration. He kept on repeating "daddy you think it is easy" but I never told him that. I guess my body language and tone of voice told him that. Thus, he needs someone other than me to teach him.

So I have consumed some Vodka and strawberry/kiwi sparkling juice (meant for the kids who didn't drink much of it) and Unibrou Trois Pistoles (awesome beer- possibly my favorite) and the Samuel Adams Tasman Red.

After the Unibrou Trois Pistoles the Tasman Red tastes very, very piney. Like a pine tree. I am drinking pine cones.

So now I feel too drunk to write intelligently. Time for me to go to bed.

Adios and Au Revoir.

Good memories

tonight after the kids tennis lessons we grilled out and ate outside. the kids wanted to build a fire in the chiminia. after the fire was blazing really well we all sat around a fire and just chilled. Adrienne crawled up in my lap into my phone and started playing with it. I showed her how to use google sky and a flashlight function and she played with my phone 20 minutes. it feels so good to me when she sits in my lap and talks to me. of course all atticus wanted to do was burn things in the fire. in london brought me a poem that she wrote that the head vertically spelled daddy and for each letter and daddy she made a poem that reads dream always loving daughter darling your daughter who love you a lot, london. it is times like this I would like to remember forever because I know when children never stay the way they are now. everything changes for better or for worse but I just want to lock this day away in my memory and preserve it there forever.

I am sitting outside enjoying the nice fire in the chiminia in trying to listen to nature but being a saturday night and Catawba county all I can hear is the fucking roar of stock car engines from the hickory motor speedway.

I am dictating this post using the speech recognition function on my phone so it will probably be less than grammatically correct but after a bottle of fine winesit really doesn't make a hill of shit to me.

Pain in the Odessa

I am in Odessa Texas for a business trip to see a specific customer. I flew all the way out here and that customer stood me up. Fortunately we were able to see other customers but none as important as the one who I was supposed to see. Things are so busy out here no one seems to know what is going on.

It is difficult for people to find good help because of the economic activity- waitresses in diners are making $15 / hour. So the guy I was supposed to see had been transferred to another job and he had no clue who was going to be replacing the position he left. It would have been nice if he had told us this before we got here.

Odessa Texas is an interesting place. It is extremely busy right now with all the oil drilling. The city seems to be abuzz with activity. This is essentially a desert- it seems that there are virtually no trees- only oak scrub brush and millions upon millions of plastic bags stuck in the scrub. It is flat so the winds always howl and blow everything away and around.

Enough about that- the pain in my back has moved to my upper arms and to my spine. It has not subsided and has been affecting my sleep and work. If I were going to self diagnose I would say that it is Cervical spondylosis because I seem to be exhibiting the symptoms. This really sucks! I am tired of the constant dull pain in my arm, back and neck. It is annoying and interfering with my life. I pop Naproxen but I don't really think it works.

I go to see the doctor on Friday. I hope she gets me an MRI to find out what the hell is causing this.

Still hurts

My right back and shoulder still hurt. The pain has moved more into my right shoulder and into my neck. It still hurts all the time but the pain has subsided just a little bit. I am hoping tomorrow it will be gone.

Adrienne's first lost tooth

I was at a meeting tonight and I missed Adrienne losing her first tooth. She has been so excited about losing the tooth. Mommy wrapped dental floss around the tooth and yanked it out. Adrienne didn't cry but was thrilled.

Moving pain

Now the pain has moved from my back into my upper shoulder. It hurts constantly. The pain is interfering with my work. I am finding it difficult to concentrate on work. The muscles in my shoulder are spasming.

I took 2 hydrocodone to help with the pain and now I feel pretty drowsy but the pain is still noticeable. It isn't a sharp pain but a dull constant pain.

Physical Wreck

Four days ago I went to see my Financial Advisor who was having an open house. I chatted with him and drank a very small glass of red wine. He had a massage therapist set up so I got one of those chair massages. This was last Thursday.

Friday I woke up with some pretty substantial pain deep in the right side of my upper trapezoids or possibly in the muscle underneath that the serratus posterior superior. I rode my bike 50 miles on Saturday without it hurting to much. At this stage it just hurt when moved certain ways.

Yesterday it really fucking hurt- even when I was sitting completely still it still hurts. It is noticeable all the time. Now the pain seemed to have moved to the right some into my shoulder (deltoid) and I am finding it difficult to concentrate at work and I have to prepare for a board meeting tomorrow.

Sucks!!!!

Nothing wrong with me

I went to Duke for an appointment at the Bone Marrow Transplant Center. When you arrive at the front you go into a room before you enter the building. In this room my must wash your hands thoroughly and then put on a mask. The people in the waiting room have either compromised or no immune systems.

The first thing that you do when you check in is to see the Financial Counselor. He sat us down and told me that he had already talked to my case worker at United Healthcare (my health insurance company) and that I was pre-approved for a bone marrow transplant.

What?

I was just there to get checked out and they already had me pegged for a bone marrow transplant. I kind of shook it off.

We then met with the doctor, Mitchell Horowitz, who told me that he thought that I was just taking longer than "textbook" to get over some sort of unknown viral infection. My CT scan showed nothing really abnormal (slight scoliosis and a 5mm cyst on my right kidney) and all my other bloodwork besides my WBC was normal. So he told me to get checked in another 3 months and not to worry about it.

So hopefully all this shit was much to do about nothing. Better to know than not.

Old and Tired

I went bike riding yesterday with my neighbor. I noticed that my heart rate was about ten beats per minute faster than normal for me throughout the entire ride. I just didn't feel up to par. Normally I don't have days like that. That gets me thinking. Did my performance or lack thereof have anything to do with the iodine from the CT scan I had on Friday? Is my issue with my white blood cells contributing?

I have felt kind of lethargic and out of energy today. Tamara had rotator cuff surgery on Thursday and thank goodness her mother and my mother have helped a lot with food and the kids. I had the kids all day by myself today so, my bother and his family met me at the Catawba Science Center today, we ate lunch and then went bowling. I just felt tired all day.

I have a doctor appointment at Duke Hospital this coming Thursday to see if someone can tell me what the hell is going on with my immune system. It sure would be nice to have some answers. To be honest it is pretty damn scary. I don't know whether I have some rare form of cancer or if it is something far more benign. Besides being a little more tired than normal, I feel pretty damn good.

My Bone Marrow Biopsy and Aspiration and subsequent diagnosis

Ok, so the Oncologist performed a bone marrow biopsy on me about on February 3. That was none too fun but it wasn't really all that bad. They made me lay on my stomach and they gave me a local in my back around my left hip bone. After it was numb enough he used a tool that essentially cut and removed a core of my bone and bone marrow. Tamara watched him do it and said it looked pretty severe. Apparently the tool looks like a wine cork screw and he really had to bear down on it while turning to get the sample. It was mildly painful and was over pretty quickly. There were really only two times that I felt a good bolt of pain.

I had another appointment with the Oncologist today to get the results. The lab that analyzed my bone marrow printed a multi page report that is very technical and I suspect that an Oncologist would be the only one to really understand it.

My diagnosis is as follows:

Atypical CD8+ T cells with aberrant immunophenotypes (17% of total cells) and atypical natural killer cell lymphocytosis (23% of total cells) are present

My Oncologist said that this is pretty rare and that it is beyond what he is willing to attempt to treat. He has referred me to a doctor at Duke University Hospital.

This is pretty damn scary. The report is extremely complicated and inconclusive about malignancy. What is amounts to is that I am freak of nature and have some strange rare condition that may or may not be benign. I just hope that someone at Duke can start to determine what the hell is going on with my immune system.

The funny thing is that I feel great and don't have any symptoms of anything that would point to problems.

We will wait and see.....

A Reminder

I had a meeting tonight and got home after the kids were asleep. I turned off all the lights left on in the house and then checked in on the sleeping children. There is something about my children sleeping. I stood over Adrienne and London as they slept and it reminded me why I live. My life is for them. I exist, I breathe, I survive only for my children. I have never known real love until they became part of my life.

Everything else doesn't matter. Only my family is of true significance.

Why am I so tired?

I just returned from a five day vacation in the Dominican Republic. Friday while on vacation I noticed that I was getting a sore throat. Seeing that I have a low white blood cell count, this kind of concerns me. Now that I am back at work I feel so tired and drained. On top of this I am having very frequent PVCs which are pretty annoying. My motivation level is abysmal so I am not getting anything done at work and I have plenty to do.

I went home for lunch and the wife was in bed not feeling well from diarrhea. No rest for the wicked.

Fear of the Unknown

In November I went to my general practitioner doctor for an annual checkup. I got the fun digital exam and they took my blood. The bloodwork came back all good except for a low white blood cell count. He told me that I might just have a viral infection and asked me to come back to have my white blood cell count tested again. I did so at the beginning of this month and it still was low.

He sent me to an oncologist whom I met with Monday this week. They took seven vials of blood from me. I still have a low white blood cell count but all of the other factors in my blood look good. So what could it be? He doesn't think Leukemia is it because the other readings of my blood look fine but this Monday he is going to do a bone marrow biopsy just to rule out Leukemia. Another possibility is an autoimmune disease. There are many, many of those. An autoimmune disease is one where the body attacks its own white blood cells. It also could be something as simple as a vitimin B12 deficiency- which I hope to hell that it is.

Needless to say all of this is pretty damn scary. But right now just not knowing is pretty shitty. I really really want to be around for my children because they need me and I love life. Nothing to do now but just wait.

I love me some Adrienne

Adrienne is such a tender hearted cute sweet five year old. When at home she always wants someone to go to the bathroom with her. When she asks me she points to a specific area on the floor just outside the bathroom door and says "Daddy you stay right there until I am finished." Sometimes she will close the door and tell me that she needs her privacy and sometimes she just leaves the door open and talks to me as she tinkles.

She doesn't like to go downstairs or upstairs by herself. She always asks me or Tamara to go with her. She tells me every time "Daddy, you know I don't like to be alone."

Tonight she told me that she wanted to study so she wouldn't feel like she doesn't know anything - school is starting back tomorrow morning. Sometimes her brother and sister make her feel inadequate