3MF

The cancer resort

For a cancer that lurks within the bones, the spine is an inevitable conquest.

This past weekend, my father began feeling weaker than usual. Eventually he couldn't get out of bed. He went to the hospital where they discovered that a tumor had grown in the spine and was pressing down on the spinal cord. He's now basically paralyzed below the waist. The current plan it so blast the tumor with radiation to see if they can get it to shrink. Multiple myeloma typically responds well to radiation but it isn't the most pleasant treatment. If it works, he may be able to regain control of his legs; however the tumor will still remain lurking there.

For the first few days my dad was in a room on the neurosurgery floor of the hospital because they were considering surgery. This floor was very much like the one we spent much of our time back when he was first diagnosed. When they finally choose to go with radiation, the doctors relocated him to the new Lacks Cancer Center. This place it more like a hotel than a hospital. Each room has a private bathroom with shower, a flat screen TV with internet access, and furniture that turns into a bed. Instead of cafeteria food, they have a chef who will whip up whatever is on the menu. Of the five floors, only one has patients on it. The fifth floor has only a healing garden and conservatory. Even the nurses are more attractive in this building. If you're going to suffer from a painful, debilitating disease, this is the place to do it. It makes you realize just how much money there is in the healthcare industry. i just hope there was money left over after purchasing the granite counter tops of the family gathering room to fund some actual cancer research.

The family is doing well. We're all a bit tired. Nurses pop in to poke and probe my father at all hours of the night. My mother is sleeping in the reclining chair in the room. My sister has been jumping back and forth to take care of the animals back at home. I've been going to school, then the hospital, then home late to do homework. We're tried of waiting to see what happens next.

Grey-t food

Yesterday I had a few friends over to watch the season premier of Grey's Anatomy. We all prepared food inspired by the show.

Katie made some yummy mini Shepard's pies with grey-v. There was also some Preston Pesto bread make by Katie as well. Anne brought O'Malley's in a Blanket (with Merideth under the covers as well). Angie hooked us up with some Bailey's Irish Cream. I made some Izzie Satay-vens with peanut sauce and i also picked up some George-and-Callie-fornia Rolls. For desert, Anne prepared Code Blue Jello. It was a very tasty way to spend a Thursday evening.

Disc-covering

Darn this new version of iTunes. Thanks to the built in cover flow feature, i've lost many hours to updating my music library to contain correct album cover art. I never really cared before so i had a lot of work to do. I was surprised at just how poor the built in "get album artwork" feature is. Sometimes it would be way off. Eventually i got a good workflow down. I'd find the album on Amazon; click the larger version link; option-click copy image; switch to Preview and command-N for new image from clipboard; draw a box around only the cover to get rid of whitespace and command-K to crop; command-C to copy; jump to iTunes and select all tracks on album; command-I to get info; and finally paste the image in the artwork box. I wish iTunes had a better built in search mechanism where i could tweak the search to find the correct art to begin with.

New member of the MacBook club

Well, i broke down and bought a MacBook. Now i'll have no excuse for being unproductive on campus. I've spent most of today installing all the programs and apps that i want to take with me. I realized that most of the apps i rely on are open source or otherwise free-ware. The only app i had to worry about was Microsoft Office but the student edition some with three install license keys so i had some still available.

I do think it's amusing that the laptop comes with an infrared remote. After playing with it for about fifty seconds, i decided that i would probably never use it again. Trying to scroll though my iTunes music library by repeatedly pressing the down button gave me some insight as to what a disaster the iPod would have been without the scroll wheel. Tools like Remote Buddy may make the remote more useful but i'm not sure when i would ever be that far away from my laptop that i couldn't use the keyboard. It is nice that you can use it to click though Keynote presentations out of the box; that might come in handy at school.

The last thing i have to worry about is keeping my desktop and the laptop in sync, especially keeping my school files up-to date. ChronoSync looks promising but i haven't tried it out yet. Keeping track of e-mail is probably going to be the biggest challenge. Right about now i'm wishing my hosting provider offered an IMAP e-mail server.

The nice thing about my purchase was that i got a new iPod for about $100 with one of their student promotions. It's not a new-new iPod, but it's the 60GB iPod Video. I figured it was such a good deal and i was in need of one to replace my recently deceased model, that i couldn't pass it up. I also got a free scanner/printer as well. I'm glad that with my limited income i was able to get the most for my money.

I hope i enjoy this new machine: my first ever laptop and my first intel Mac.

A weekend full of Monty

I've been helping out this weekend with tech rehearsals for The Full Monty which opens this week at Circle Theatre. I think it is the most manly musical i've never seen. It deals with guy themes such as identifying yourself by what you do for a living, pride, best buds, masculinity, and fatherhood; and it does so with humor rather than sentimentality. The show runs through September 30 if you want to check it out.

Scanning for intelligent life

I get a kick out of people walking around the hallways at school sending and checking text messages on their cell phones. They always hold the phone perpendicular to their chest a few inches from their body and stare at the screen while somehow managing to avoid other pedestrians. It looks to me as if they are scanning the area for signs of life with a tricorder on Enterprise away mission or something. I would crack up if someone could get their cell phone to emit those classic scanning sounds.

Crock Hunter croaks

The seemingly indestructible Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, died today at the age of 44. He was shot through the heart by a stingray barb. Ironically he was filming a documentary at the time called Ocean's Deadliest. Perhaps even more ironically, the stingray was filming a documentary called The Human Hunter. [story]

Week one done

I have survived my first week as a 16-credit-hour-carrying, full-time college student. Most of my classes are interesting; only one is dead boring. So far i'd guess that advanced calculus is going to be the toughest (but in a good way). My schedule is really spread out which makes it difficult to make good use of my time. Most students still do their math with pencils but i've grown accustomed to typing mine up. When i'm at school, i really miss my computer. Not just a computer because GVSU has plenty of open computer labs, but my computer. I love using TeXShop and Grapher to put together my proofs. I'm thinking that i need to purchase an Apple portable so i can be as productive as possible when i have to wait around on campus for my next class to start. Now i just have to find some extra money. Currently i'm looking into selling my plasma.