The Captain’s (B)log

(I don’t talk about my professional life very much, and I don’t intend to make a start at it, but this is just too interesting to pass up.)

The other day I agreed to be a member of a panel discussion about various health care related goings-on at public health clinics in the state where I live.  The panel discussion was about the various information collection systems I design, but it was the meetings that I attended before this occurred that were most notable, including those on OB/GYN examination procedures, which involved both videos and/or demonstrations.

I was the only male in attendance in a crowd of about 80 people (me being the representative from the IT department).

I had two separate women come up to me and personally “apologize” for what I had seen, which was apparently something horrible.

I must’ve missed that part, because I had no idea what they were talking about.

Well, I’m finished with my Prilosec regiment — just got done with it a week ago.

Taking the pills was a bother, like I mentioned before — you have to take them immediately after waking up (or at least before you eat anything in the morning), and optimally not eat until about an hour afterwards.  Little to say, this was a rule I often ignored.

After 14 days — well, almost;  I forgot one day and had to skip it, but the information I found on the US government’s Medline Plus site told me that it was perfectly fine if you forgot to take a day’s pill.  Either way, after about 14 days I was done.

As far as I can tell, it’s working… the other day, we had a “chili cook-off” at my workplace, and not only did I try every type of chili there (four different bowls), I followed it up by drinking a Coca-cola.

If you’re a heartburn sufferer, you probably winced a little bit at that description.

So, I waited, and… nothing.  Not heartburn, no gas — nothing.

Am I cured?  Do I still need to “take it easy?”  I still will, probably, because of one semi-unrelated thing I discovered during my regiment.

You know those boxes of “Instant Brown Rice” you can buy in stores, under various brand names?  (I just buy the Wal-Mart brand, myself.)  Yeah — my stomach, really, really, really doesn’t like that stuff.  It’s happened several different times now, with several different meals, and it’s the only common denominator — one time the pain kept me up all night.

I guess it’s got something to do with the rice’s natural “quick-cooking-by-absorbing-any-and-all-water” properties.

A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

Technology | Change.gov.

I’m gonna hold ya to that, Barack.  That’s one campaign promise I’m not going to forget about when 2012 comes around.

(Just for the record, this is not an announcement of who I voted for/will be voting for.  That usually always remains a secret with me.    Though, I won’t be hesistant about publicly supporting an Obama presidency in 2012 if he’s been a good president.)

I’ve been on a regimen of Prilosec for about a week now (been pretty good about remember to take the pills each morning, too, except for this morning!).  I figured that it was getting pretty ridiculous — I can hardly drink a coke anymore, of any sort, without getting bad heartburn for hours afterwards.

It’s not like I’m trying to down dish after dish of spicy food and washing it down with chili powder — there’s no rhyme or reason as to why I’m sometimes afflicted with heartburn.  So, I figured, why not try and do something to prevent it, instead of just constantly treating it when it happens?

It’s weird — you have 14 days worth of pills, one for each day, and you take them as soon as you wake up and before you eat anything.  After the 14 days are over with, that’s it — no more.  The package specifically states to not take anymore for at least 4 months.

Makes me wonder why they sell 28-pill packages in Wal-Mart.  (By the way, I’m taking the generic Wal-Mart version — it’s ridiculous what the name brand costs for this stuff.)

I’ll have more to write about this when I’m done with the regimen!

Roger Ebert talks about political-correctness and “history revision” gone insane in his latest article: Thank you for smoking

This stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from “All About Eve.” Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where’s her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. We are all familiar, I am sure, with the countless children and teenagers who have been lured into the clutches of tobacco by stamp collecting, which seems so innocent, yet can have such tragic outcomes. But isn’t this is carrying the anti-smoking campaign one step over the line?

And a New York Times article that still makes me sad, even if I know what it talks about is inevitable: A Power That May Not Stay So Super

AT the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London’s big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain’s schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book — a fictional history, set in the year 2005 — appeared under the title, “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”

The crisis of confidence led to a sharp political reaction. In the 1906 election, the Liberals ousted the Conservatives in a landslide and ushered in an era of reform. But it did not stave off a slide from economic or political prominence. Within four decades, a much larger country, across an ocean to the west, would clearly supplant Britain as the world’s dominant power.

The United States of today and Britain of 1905 are certainly more different than they are similar. Yet the financial shocks of the past several weeks — coming on top of an already weak economy and an unpopular war — have created their own crisis of national confidence.

Ever read a book that was so good you felt like you didn’t want to read any more books anymore?

As if there was no other book that could possibly meet the standards of the one that you just read?

I remember watching this when it was shown in its entirety back in the mid-90′s on MTV (back when MTV was still cool ). And, you know… there are undertones to this story that I missed completely when I was just 13. :\

The tale of the Maxx is a deep, deep, deep story, and is seriously a work of modern art (and not “modern” art like Andy Warhol’s trash, but more like “recent” art).

Here’s a promo to the series — you can see most of it on youtube, as well:

Left: toilets. Right: sinks.

Well, folks, just wanted to tell you about plungin’ toilets.  No, no — I know you probably don’t wanna hear about this, but it’s really important.

See the plunger on the left?  That’s for a toilet.

See the one on the right?  That’s for a sink.

Use the right one for the right job, or else you’ll look like a dumbass. -_-’

I got a flat tire going home on Friday of last week (well, it was more like I had a tire explode on me…), and had to put on my little wimpy space-saver spare in a parking lot. (It was a church parking lot, too!)

So, I get online and order up some tires real quick from TireRack.com, get ‘em shipped to my house, and wait until today to put them on my rims — I just take the rims off the car and bring them up to the tire shop directly, since I hate anyone else driving my car.

Well, they were real busy there, so the guy just told me to leave my rims and the new tires there, and I could come back in about an hour and pick them up. Well, I come back and they’re not done with them yet, so I wait around for about another hour or so (it’s a Saturday, so they were real busy, and I overheard the manager guy saying he had someone quit just that morning), and then the guy tells me to pull my car around so he can give me the the newly mounted tires.

Well, to make a long story short, he didn’t make me pay anything! Yay! Said he felt bad that it took so long — it’s not a tiny gesture, either, since it’s like $40 to mount two tires at this particular place (they do a good job, usually).

I won’t say what the guy’s name was, so he won’t get in trouble or anything, but it makes me feel good to know that there’s still people like that around — lets me know that I can bring my car there in the future and not feel bad about it. Repeat business, and all that.

Sleep sleep sleep.

Drive drive drive.

…

Eat eat eat.

Do you realize that for the past year and a half I’ve had two peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch?

What the hell is that doing to my system? Probably nothing. It’s very bland food, so it’s probably not having an effect one way or the other — kinda like if I ate rice or jello every day for years as well.

I eat it because it’s cheap and it doesn’t go bad. (I don’t know how the people that I work with can eat out every day for like $10 a pop. That’s like $50 a week. $200 a _month_. Just on their lunches. In a month, for my lunches, I spend about $20.)

Walk walk walk.

I walk about a mile every day just walking between where I work and where I park my car.

Climb climb climb.

I climb up eight floors worth of stairs because I don’t like elevators. The people really cram into them in the morning. Also, it’s good exercise, though during the summers it can get a bit hot walking up them.

Stare stare stare.

I stare at a computer screen almost 10 hours a day. Thank god it’s an LCD screen or else my eyes would be shot by now.

Read read read.

I read a lot at work, conicidentally enough, to give my eyes a break from the screen.

Earn earn earn.

And then I get paid and it’s all worth it.

Bills bills bills.

And then I wonder where all the money went.