Tim In a Nutshell

It’s a busy week for me as the big work conference is this week and some of my friends were married this past weekend on RI. I wasn’t able to make it out there for the ceremonies, but they are having a reception this weekend I am really looking forward to. Congrats you two!

The other big news on the home front is we have a new pet. Yea, another one… Though this one is all L’s doing. The newest furry edition to the house is Q (Queens) the cat. A rescue from the humane society who is a little too hissy for my tastes, but for some psychotic reason loves me. When I sleep at night, he sleeps right next to my head or almost on it. He was sick when we got him with a cold so it was lots of trips to the vet and one very very messy cat. He’s better now, though I still refer to him as Snot Face.

As if we didn’t get enough of the vet taking Q to see them, we got in another trip this week with one of the dogs, Freyja. At the dog park yesterday after day one of the conference, she starts limping and not putting weight on one of her back feet. Freyja did not get the best in the back leg department as she has already had knee surgery on both legs. Now with the limp, it got me thinking she wanted to go in for a three-peat. Turns out it is just a pulled muscle so she should be as right as rain in about a week. In the mean time, it’s leash rest for her. The saving grace this time is that I don’t have to carry her up and down the stairs like when she had her knees redone.

Last week I completely forgot that this past weekend was memorial day weekend. Shows you how zeroed in on the calendar I am. Fortunately, Leah did remember it was a holiday weekend had plans for us on Memorial day to spend some time with her family up at the lake house.

The start to the weekend… well… sucked. On Thursday, I got dead sick at work. Dizzy, sneezing, could not breath through my nose, and super drained. Went home over lunch and was down and out for the rest of the day and the next day and part of the day after that. Still didn’t feel 100% up until this morning. So I’m back at work banging away the computer problems and trying to figure out what is wrong with my laptop.

The big highlight, Ulric Von Kenai! We have a new puppy in the house, Ulric. He’s a rescue from the Twig project here in Madison. An awesome rescue group that we will do more foster work with in the future. Leah and the director got along to a freakish degree.

Ulric is a Siberian husky/German Shepard mix, about 12 or so weeks old, and all of 8 pounds. He’s a small little guy, but feisty. Makes sense that he is so small since he had a bad start of things. He was surrendered to animal control in Milwaukee by being dumped in the trash cans behind animal control along with his litter mates. A rather shitty way to start life.

Despite the hard start, he’s a great little guy. He loves being around other animals, and has become Sebastian’s shadow almost. He loves both Sebastian and Freyja and runs all over following them and trying to play with them. The only issue he has is with people. He is very people shy and runs away from folks when they come near. He is getting a lot better, but it does take some time to be able to get near him to pick him up. He is becoming more trusting and coming closer to us every day, so he is on the road to improvement.

Coming soon are more pictures of Ulric with his black tongue, funky tail, and his small furry legs jetting him across the lawn. For now, here’s a pic of him.

Now where does the poop fit in to all this? Well, when transitioning to a new house, puppies have a tendency to lose some training and have loose stools. Combine that with a puppy’s need to go bathroom every 2-3 hours, there’s been my fair share of poo to cleanup. (The poo makes Leah sick, so yours truly gets the cleanup duty there) Being sick and cleaning up loose poo is a great combination for a weekend. Though Ulric is worth it.

Greetings from IMified! This is a test to see how blogging through IM works. For more details, see www.imified.com

There’s been a few changes on the Tim front recently. A new job, 2 new
cats, and one ever-present sleeping problem. I’ll fill folks in more on
the new job and cats later.

Now, let’s talk about the build up & let down of the sleep study.

I have not been able to sleep well for some time now. It has
progressively worsened. Even when I was in top shape, I would be wiped
out and could barley stand. Now when I go to sleep, I wake up more
tired then when I went to bed. It rather defeats the purpose of sleep.
I fight going to sleep now because I know it will be of no help. Rather
annoying really.

Leah mentioned to me a while back after she got a sleep study that I
should see about getting one too. I snore a lot when I sleep and have
spasms too when sleeping. That could be the things that are keeping me
from sleeping. Makes sense really. Sleep apnea will make you feel tired
and drained and sleep doesn’t seem to help at all.

I went to the doctor and he mentioned that my airway looks a bit
smaller than normal so that could be a factor. He also mentioned when
folks get put on a cpap machine to help them sleep, the difference is
striking. This fact was confirmed by my Uncle Mike who mentioned that
using the machine was like night and day.

Needless to say, I was excited. I wanted to actually be able to sleep
well at night and wake up refreshed for once. I scheduled a sleep study
to get evaluated and setup with a cpap machine. That study took place
last night. This morning, I felt horribly let down.

I went into the study last night extremely tired. I was exhausted on
Saturday and went to take a nap at 7pm. That nap turned in to a full on
sleep and I woke up around 6am on Sunday. I was still tired. More tired
then I was when I went to take the bloody nap. Because I had the sleep
study, I had to stay awake during the day. That was a big battle for
me. It’s hard to stay awake when your entire body is screaming to
sleep. Somehow, I managed to make to the study.

I was really excited to have the study done. The tech wiring me up was
very friendly and had me try out a cpap machine when I was awake just
to try it.  Wow. When I had the machine on it was so much easier to
breath. My nose always clogs no matter what I do, and it was amazing
being able to breath that deeply without having to force the air in. I
had it on for a few minutes and I could feel myself relaxing at the
ease of breathing it had granted me.

Though I had to take it off before going to bed. They need to measure
how you sleep without the mask to see if you qualify for one. I forgot
to ask what makes someone qualify for one. So wired up I tried to get
to sleep expecting them to wake me up in the middle of the night to
tell me I qualified to hook me up to the wonder that is the cpap
machine.

Getting to sleep took a while. This was the worst time to have a
migraine, so of course one shows its damn head. I tried to get to sleep
on my own, but that was futile. Finally I asked for some pain killers
and after about an hour after taking them, they kicked in. I was
finally off to sleep.

The tech then wakes me up hours later. Not to fit me with the cpap
machine, but to wake me up and tell me the study is over. I made it
through the night and didn’t qualify for the machine. I did have some
apnea, but it was apparently mild and did not qualify me for a machine.
Though over the years, the tech said it could get worse and then I
would require a machine. With my current state, the insurance most
likely would not cover the machine.

Bloody hell. That was the worse thing to wake up to. All this build up
to get the cpap machine to only find out I don’t bloody qualify for
one. Then what is making my sleep so crappy? Why do I wake up so
freaking tired? I’ve tried just about everything I can find and nothing
works. When I have been thin, fat, in shape, out of shape, on a regular
schedule, taking sleep medicine, trying to relax a lot before bed,
nothing works! I always feel tired. So hearing that I don’t qualify
really hurt. I’m sure the tech saw I was really disappointed. He
mentioned some ways I could try to find a cpap machine on my own. I
might be able to use Leah’s, but I am sure she needs it more.

What makes the results even more disappointing was the nights sleep was
not even close to a normal nights sleep. It was much shorter due to the
migraine and my nose was actually not stuffy for once (happens only
about twice a month it seems). I hope there will be a follow up study
once they analyze my results more, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.

I’ll have to wait to the follow-up appointment and ask the doc what options I have open. Something has to be able to help. :-/

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I took some time and found a great use of the http://fenrir.us site I have not been using a whole heck of a lot.  I found a great solution, reBlog!

reBlog lets me see all my favorite sites and news stories, then post the really interesting ones for everyone to see.  Wander over to http://fenrir.us to find out a bit of what I am reading.

For more random entertainment, http://fluffy.fenrir.us

Cheers,

Tim

If you are on My Space or Friendster, make me a friend!

My Space:   http://www.myspace.com/uwflatlander
Friendster:   http://www.friendster.com/profiles/uwflatlander

WoW has been a great destressing tool for me. It’s a fun game and I am able to play with some friends from work. If you are a Wow player with the Horde on Hellscream or an Alliance player on Uther, drop Earthbane on Hellscream or Weatherwax on Uther a line.

When watching the American Idol auditions, the mute button becomes the most important button in the world.

Yikes. Really… Yikes.

Thought I would throw this out there, a picture of Pasha. He was an old family dog from when I was born. Pasha has made me today really want to get an Alaskan malamute. Hopefully, Leah and I will be getting one soon. Stay tuned!

I have been wanting to get a flag from Madison for some time now, looks like I will be able to do that now! From an article in The Capital Times, I have found a place to go to. I have a quest now.

J Taylor’s Rare Maps, Notable Books and Antiquities on North Carroll Street
Source Article from The Capital Times

After a few server moves and multiple servers, I have two spare domains I need to do something with.

Madtown.cc is my old RSS news feed site. All the sites I normally read were fed to that site so I can see everything in one nice page. Though, now I use Bloglines for that, so I disabled the old software I had running. The old software also really slowed down the server at times. I never tracked down why it did that. I just became fed-up with the performance issures and went to Bloglines.

Fenrir.us is a site I registered for a new server I leased. The one you are connected to right now.  The Fenrir.us site just says hi, and nothing more.

What should I do… a few ideas:

1. Move my photo gallery to one of the sites
2. Set-up something to collect all the comics I read on a daily basis to one place.
3. Some random weird random quote generator… Hmmm, that sounds like fun…

So guess what. You know that person who has been extreemly afraid of needles his whole life? Do you know what he did on Friday?

That’s right, He gave blood!

That’s right, I gave blood for the first time and I only got a little dizy during the process. Overall, it was a flying success! Here’s to hopefully one of many.

Welcome to my new server!

I am moving from my old server with Server Beach to Layered Technologies.

I was very happy with Server Beach, but I wanted to cut my costs a bit. Layered Tech is a bit cheaper. I wasn’t using the server enough to justify the cost. With Layered Tech, it should be easier to justify the cost for my little hobby.

With the server comes a new website, Fenrir.us. There’s nothing there right now, but I will get something worked out.

If you are curious about the name, my server at Server Beach is named Loki. In Norse mythology, one of Loki’s children was a wolf named Fenrir. Since the new server is like a child to Loki, thus came the name Fenrir. Here’s some more information on Fenrir.

Should be outlawed.

Let me reword that, intersections/streets without a left hand turn lane should be outlawed. It is rather annoying waiting for an intersection where traffic is so busy only one or two cars get to turn left when the light is green. If you get caught behind one, bugger to you! Even worse is if there is not enough room to get around said left hand turning cars. Arg! Don’t people study traffic flows to prevent the traffic stoppage from happening? Why do cities not hire these people and pay them tons of money (if they do their job right). It would make the city so much better and help reduce stress in the city.

Seriously, having a left turn lane makes things go so much faster.

Oh yea, having a 4 lane road that magically goes to 2 lanes since people park on the road (even where it is not legal), is down right illogical. Defeats the purpose of having 4 lanes if for only one hour in the morning you can use all four. I would gladley take a two lane road with a middle left turn lane over any 4 lane road.

For clarification, this is for residential roads. Always a bugger to navigate at a steady pace.

YAHOOOO!

Looks like the Evil Dead series is coming back with another video game version of the movies. Evil Deal: Regeneration

IGN Review

I have to get this game. In addition to the new Zelda game coming up.

It will be a good video game season.

Can you fit into one week? That seemed to be the focus this week. What big happened?

First off, I got married! Yeppers. I got married to Leah. I have the ring as proof! Pictures to come and damn they look good.

Second, we bought a house! We found one house, but the owner lead us around a lot. We went searching for more places and found a second place we really like. A nice two bedroom place with a good yard for a dog. Plus, it was much less than the first, so lots available to do our own projects. Excellent! We close May 27th. We’ll spend the next two months before our apartment lease runs out getting the place fixed up with new hardwood flooring and pain jobs.

Stay tuned for more! (All one reader.)

The sad news was that my old Palm Pilot, a Zire 71, was stolen. I initially thought it to be lost. Though at work I heard some reports of things missing from other’s desks in the area. It could be either. Any way you cut it, it sucks. I am out a damn fine Palm Pilot plus the memory card that was in it.

There is a somewhat good side to this. I do have a full backup of my plam pilot that was lost/stolen. Plus, the very important stuff was encrypted, so no worries there. The big bad part of it all is getting a new one to replace it.

I decided to go with the new Zire 72. http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/zire72/

It is a bit pricey, but I got a $40 break and a $50 mail in rebate from Circuit City, so I saved some cash there. I also got the hard case for it. The soft cases have a bad habit of pressing on the screen. That makes the palm not shot down and drain it’s batter, losing everything on it.

It’s hard to swallow that much to get a new one when the wedding is in only 2 weeks (Yahoo!), saving up for a house, etc. Though I have been rather lost without it. I keep forgetting appointments, todos, almost everything! I am glad LEah has such a good memory, cause mine is failing me more often than not. :-/

Ok, off to get the last of my laundy then bed. I have to teach at 8am tomorrow morning. Teaching on a half day sucks. I need more time to work on the training tools I am developing. Oh, that reminds me. I need to get some books on VBA, Access, and Word. More and more it seems I am becoming one of the main developers for the training team. I don’t mind it, though more time to work on the projects (without sacrificing personal time) would be nice.

You don’t actually have to take the quiz. Just read this straight through, and you’ll get the point (an awesome one) that it is trying to make!

Take this quiz:

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.

But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten.

Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier?

The lesson:

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards.

They are the ones that care.

Pass this on to those people who have made a difference in your life.

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”

Charles Schulz

All Recipes | Bread | Golden Sweet Cornbread

Again, Thanksgiving Recipes.

crockpot herbed turkey breast roast recipe | turkey recipes | thanksgiving turkey recipes

Recipe I will be attempting for Thanksgiving. I love slow-cookers.