Month: August 2010

Categories
medical MS

MRI round 2

Had my second round of MRIs this week. I had my first one early in 2009 when they were trying to diagnose me. The experiences were quite different. I was a little apprehensive about the first one since I had never had an MRI before, it turned out to be no big deal. The machine resembled an industrial press (think of the machine that killed the Terminator in the first film). I laid there, staring at the top plate and listened to the best of the 70s radio station they were playing.

I should have known this was going to be a little different as soon as they told me to put my earplugs in. I did so without thinking. They then strapped my head into a brace to prevent it from moving. It was quite a bit  more sophisticated and tighter than the first one. They then fed me into the tube and started the scanning.

Man, even with the plugs in, it was loud. It was loud but interesting.  Anything that is regular has a rhythm and therefore reminds us of music. the first sounds resembled an electronic digerdoo with a mechanical, industrial rhythm section behind it. That then morphed into various sounds that kept me entertained for a little bit. Recordings of noise are never the same as experiencing the sounds directly and I was genuinely captivated for a while.

But only for a while. The trouble with MRIs is that you can’t move. You have to stay absolutely still in order to get the clearest results. The brace helps, you would really have to try to make a  big movement with it. The thing is that there is nothing to distract you, there is nothing really to look at, there is nothing to hear except the clanging and gyrations of the machine. You end up dividing your time between the merest physical sensations and your thoughts.

My main physical sensations were the myriad itches you get when you can’t move. Little itches on your nose become incredibly annoying once you can’t touch them. those were nothing as compared to the other one though. About 20 minutes in (out of an hour or so) I really had to pee. That started to become an issue fairly quickly but there wasn’t anything to do but gut it out and hope I didn’t wet myself. Let me tell you, once they rolled me out of the tube and undid the harness I was on my way to the bathroom. The nurse said I had to sign something before I left. I still have no idea what I signed…

The other thing you can’t escape is your thoughts. I can tell you that hour was spent thinking more about MS than the combined year before. I mainly go about my day ignoring, or trying to ignore the effects that MS has on me. There’s no running away from it when they are scanning your brain for damage and you can’t move a bit. Time drags on and you get so wrapped up in why you are there that you get a little nuts. I can understand why some people would flip out. If you’re predisposed to thinking the process is going to be awful, there are plenty of things that can reinforce that. I didn’t flip out, but I was left with a real morbid aftertaste to the experience.

I’ll talk with my doctor next week about the MRIs. We’ll discuss treatment options then. I might need a vacation to lighten my mood…

Categories
politics technology

Net neutrality paranoia

Once again, the specter of government regulation of the internet rears its head under the banner of net neutrality. Once again, people seem to have their stories confused as to why this is an important topic. We are told that corporations are plotting to give priority to certain types of information speed-wise over others. The networking companies claim this is the only way they can efficiently use their networks, by separating VOIP, streaming video, and email from each other and then charging people for the bandwidth they actually use. Somehow, this is supposed to lead to them filtering information so that people only get what the corporations want them to get.

Tell me that doesn’t sound paranoid, go ahead. It also doesn’t make any sense. It actually does make sense from the networking end of things to give different types of traffic different priorities, but let’s ignore that for a second. Are the companies greedy or not? Do they try to make as much money as possible, do they try to outdo their competition for subscribers?

My question is this, who would subscribe to a service that blocks content? Or to put a different spin on it, how long would it take for a company to advertise that they do not block content or restrict speeds regardless of content? Do you think that would give them a competitive advantage?

See, that’s the thing, net neutrality laws are totally unnecessary assuming that there are at least a couple of companies actually competing for subscribers. As long as one company offers non-discriminatory speeds, all of them have to. As long as one of them does not restrict content, none of them can. I say go ahead Comcast, try to implement some content filtering and see what happens. Verizon/cox/everyone else will be licking their chops waiting for your ex-customers.

On the other side of things, allowing congress to get a foothold in the workings of the internet is a very dangerous precedent. Would you want Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, or Jesse Helms mucking around with the internet? No? Then you can’t allow Pelosi, Franken, and Frank mess with it either. Leave the internet alone. We will be taken care of, not because the companies want to, but because they have to in order to survive and beat the competition.

Categories
economics

Financial cognitive dissonance

I am buying silver bullion with my Amazon credit card rewards. Put another way, I am using the rewards I get for indebtedness to save long term.

 

Actually, this could make a lot of sense as long as bad inflation were a certainty. If you knew that the dollar would be devalued, it would make a lot of sense to wrack up debt in dollars to buy commodities (especially gold and silver) that will rise in value with a worthless dollar. It would be the best of both worlds, your debt would be reduced as inflation climbed, and your assets would climb as well. What could go wrong?

Well, the inflation might not happen, that’s what could happen. So for now I will still pay off the credit cards every month but use my rewards to sock money away…

Categories
music

25 albums I could listen to all day, any day, all the time…

Got this from my friend John Carson off of Facebook, here’s my list, in no particular order…

 

1) Trinity Sessions by the Cowboy Junkies

2) Help by the Beatles

3) Cookin’ by the Miles Davis Quintet

4) The Shape of Punk to Come by Refused

5) Waitin’ for the Night by the Runaways

6) Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen

7) Goldburg Variations (1981) by Glenn Gould

8) Let it Bleed by the Rolling Stones

9) Sarah Vaughn with Clifford Brown by… well, you can guess

10) The Lion and the Cobra by Sinead O’Connor

11) Chapter Two by Roberta Flack

12) Live in London ’69 by the Beach Boys (my very first album!)

13) Surfer Rosa by the Pixies

14) 20 All TIme Greatest Hits by James Brown

15) Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy

16) Three Feet and Rising by De La Soul

17) Bach the Sonatas and Partitas by Paul Galbraith

18) The Best of Bill Haley and the Comets

19) Live at Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash

20) Elephant by the White Stripes

21) Burnin by Bob Marley and the Wailers

22) Retrospective by KRS 1

23) Sounds of India by Ravi Shankar

24) The Lexicon of Love by ABC

25) RIO by Duran Duran

 

There’s plenty more of course, these are the first ones off the top of my head. I haven’t bought any albums in a long time, mostly just singles. I’d like to see some of your lists!