IggDawg

Yesterday I went in to see the dermatologist that's been keeping tabs on me since friday. I think I'm a pet project of his since I'm more interesting than the normal grade of skin issues. He said I looked to be bouncing back from everything much faster than he expected, so he backed off on one of my perscriptions. He also perscribed an even longer course of antibiotics though, just to make sure the strep was dead. I whined about this a little since antibiotics tend to make me smell funny. He asked me if I'd rather smell a little off for a few weeks or have another outbreak. Before I could answer the obvious he holds up a finger and starts writing on a perscription pad, "I have just the thing" he said. He tore off the pad and handed it to me... all it said was "axe body spray". Sometimes I miss the ridiculously obvious.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

So about a month and change ago I was diagnosed with strep. No big deal right? Inconvenient but it still pretty much sucks. So I got a standard 10-day course of penicillin and was sent on my way. Jenn even gave me a pro reflexology footrub to make things all better. Everything did get all better, but started to get nasty again a week after my antibiotics ran out. first a cough developed, then a nasty sore throat. this went on till last week when I was starting to think "Hay watup, maybe I should think about getting checked out".

Last tuesday I noticed a bump on my foot. I then noticed one on the other foot as well. Within an hour my feet were covered, another hour had my lower legs covered, and an hour after that it was up to the middle of my thighs. At this point joint pain started creeping from my feet up and I decided "this sucks, might want to get it looked at". I got to the ER around 12:30 and the bumps/rash had spread to about my belly button level, thankfully sparing my more sensitive bits just below the belly button. At this point I was in a pretty good mix of panic and confusion, my health has been nearly immaculate until a month ago or so. Jenn stayed keeping my spirits up (doing a better job than I think she even knew) until 3:00am or so when they started pulling blood and such.

I was diagnosed with Leukocytoclastic Vasculitis. Basically my body got pissed at something and my immune system started attacking my blood vessels. They sent me home stating basically that except in severe cases there isn't much they can treat it with... One just has to wait for the damage to repair. So I went home wednesday and things seemed stable.

Thursday rolled around and I went into work. About halfway through the day I noticed a couple spots on one of my arms and really panicked, it seemed to be spreading still. So I ducked out of work and headed to the rheumatologist that had diagnosed me in the hospital. He went over the test results that had been pending and told me I was still positive for strep. apparently the penicillin hadn't completely killed it and it had been at a stalemate with my body for a month now, not strong enough to trigger a fever and full-blown infection. He stated that this was what was likely triggering my immune system flipping out, and perscribed some more penicillin to fight the rest of it off.

I ate my first dose and drove home around 3:00pm. I noticed my feet were a little tingly. 30-45 minutes later my legs were on fire. 10/10 on the pain scale. It's the worst pain I've ever felt, nothing I've experienced has come close. On top of that my feet swelled up pretty huge. Because I'm stupid and my pain tolerance is pretty high, I held out until midnight or so when I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the ER and was again admitted to the hospital. Apparently I'd developed an allergy, or at least a sensitivity, to penicillin and that was aggravating my condition. This time they didn't mess around. They gave me Presnidone for the vasculitis (I'd made it to a severe case at this point), Percocet for the pain, and a non-penicillin antibiotic to kill the damn strep that was making my body flip out.

I spent the weekend in NH with Jenn and her family at their lake house. This pretty much rocked since I wasn't able to wear shoes at that point, could barely walk for the first half of the weekend, and sort of needed to be displaced from humanity in general. I got to sit around and read, study, and enjoy their company in comfort despite the appearance of my feet and legs (you don't want to know... seriously, it's repulsive). Jenn's tending to me and her family's going out of their way to accommodate me made the whole experience much less dehumanizing. I'm hugely thankful to all 3 of them.

So that’s what’s been up for the last month or so. I’ve been in a constant state of “mostly myself”, and the last week has been kinda bad. I’m looking forward to being myself again soon. I miss me and I think some of the people around me do too. Strep is a monster if left unchecked.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

They've been "testing" the fire alarm system for a week and change here for some reason. I asked a friend that worked at the company who owns the building we lease space from, and he has no idea why they've been doing it. Basically the alarm will sound and strobes will go off, then abruptly stop. This will happen a half dozen times, then someoen will come on the loudspeaker and state that they will be performing testing. Yeah, makes as much sense to me too. This has been going on all day every day for nearly two weeks. The thought had crossed my mind "what if there was a real fire?". Sure enough a few days ago there were fire engines and stuff outside. Apparently there was a for-reals fire somewhere in the building and they were evacuating. We only found out about it when a coworker came into the ops center and told us that people were collecting in the mini-park out front. The general consensus was that at this point we were going to stay in the building out of spite, and jump out a window if we ended up actually having to leave.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I've been a fan of starbucks for a while. The coffee is good, and it's actually pretty cheap if you don't get the silly flowery drinks with more than 12 words in the name. The only bad thing was the lids on their cups. McDonalds had a lids with some sort of way to keep the thing closed so it didn't spill all over the place. Hell even my Caffeine-Miser brand BadCoffee(tm) at work has cups with little tear-off lids. Starbucks was a little behind the ball on this, their drinks would spout red hot streamers of coffee all over the place if you hit so much as a pebble. It was as if they were engineered to do this. Everyone seemed to have a little ritual to stop the mess. I used to just drape a napkin over the top till I got to work. Other people would stuff straws in the cups. Other still would even use 2 lids rotated against eachother. Any solution still ended up messy.

Today I saw they finally worked out a solution. You'd think they would just make lids with little reseal widgets like Dunkins has. I guess that was too easy. Instead they have little toothpick-like things that you plug up the sippy-hole with. 10/10 for effort, 4/10 for promptness, 2/10 for good thinking. Still, it's great to not have the stuff spill all over the cupholder on the super-smooth roads of Rt.9 here in Mass.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I came across a workplace hazard just a little bit ago. There was a curious package in the freezer at work. It was disguised as something pleasant and inviting, almost too inviting. So I flagged it as a possible workplace hazard to warn coworkers.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

There was recently a big issue with this one customer of ours, and the job to drive the ticket through AT&T fell in my lap. I spent around 90 minutes fighting with them to even get a ticket opened, and finally got to a person who could find the circuit I was calling in. They were reluctant to build the ticket, and I expressed to them that in the time I spent bouncing around in their system the ticket was escalated to a very high level. They asked what level that was. I replied "It's been escalated to puppy kicking status. We have a whole lineup of puppies here, and we're going to have to start kicking them soon if nothing gets done on this. I don't want to kick them, but it's part of their process. So please try and get moving on this".

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

ATTN - Working public: If you use instant messaging at work, please disable sounds on it. Your coworkers hate hearing about it every time you send and receive a message. No seriously, I want to murder you after a solid hour of listening to your IM sounds. I'm only half kidding. Get some headphones if you're still tickled by the novelty of it all.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I had a savant moment just now at work. I fixed this one device by adding a line in its running configuration that wasn't there before because it "looked right". I can't explain my reason for adding the line, I've never messed with that part of a router's config before. I don't know exactly why it fixed it. It wasn’t till after I had done it and was writing an email to the customer that I realized I had no idea why I’d made the change, it just "made sense" while I was doing it. I’m not sure whether it’s a good sign or a bad sign… I’d certainly rather have a clue but I guess I’ll take any flavor of success.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

So I've been going to the gym for a few months now. Just doing 45 mins to an hour after work at either my work gym or the one at the clubhouse back home. For the past 2 weeks though I've been going with Jay since we've been carpooling (he works at the company whose building we lease space from). Usually we're there for at least 2 hours, going with him has really stepped up my routine. I always work out harder if I have someone to pace with. Lemme tell ya... "ow". But also "damn". That kid knows his shit, and it's paying off already after just a couple weeks.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Happy zombie-Jesus day everyone! And Easter as well if you celebrate that. I hope you all have a good time with your respective families, and that your parents still get you jelly beans and shit. Because let's face it, jelly beans are awesome no matter how old you are, even if you have to hunt down little plastic eggs to amuse your parents. Everybody wins!

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Guess who's getting a promotion? That's right... this guy. It's sort of only a title promotion ("Tier 2" of my current position), but not at all really. I say that because I don't think there's any pay raise at all, but I get to do a lot more cool shit. Right now I push a lot of bullshit trash and send anything interesting to the engineers. Now I'll be tackling a lot of that stuff myself. Basically it's a trust promotion, they give me access to a lot more and let me put my fingers in a lot of places the rest of the front line isn't allowed to. Plus I get much higher visibility to management and the customers. Good times.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

New season of Beauty and the Geek started recently . I greatly dislike reality TV, but this show is host to some of the most hilarious comments and most awkward social interactions. Watching the 2 most opposite ends of society crammed into close quarters is too good to pass up. Comedy gold.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I don't usually post video either (Sup, Bri). But this vid has been playing relentlessly on the channel we have on at work today. I don't know what's so amusing about it. Something about watching a viking sing Greensleeves



I guess ever since Matt introduced me to Amon Amarth, anything viking related has been funnier to me than usual.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I found this on the interwubs

http://www.iggdawg.com/junk/pEngine246.swf

It's cut down on my productivity quite a bit, and my AIM friends seem to like it. So I'm releasing it to you lucky people. Originally stumbled from http://home.planet.nl/~borst595/ . I mirrored it to save him the bandwidth.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

We use AIM at work for internal communications quite a bit. We do this not only for the sake of convenience, but because cut/pasting ticket or device information is a lot easier and more reliable than dictating it over the phone. I've noticed and interesting trend lately. A lot of the middle aged people talk on AIM as if they're in highschool. I'll get an IM from one of our engineers "Hi Ian, r u there?". I want to slap them. I'm guessing it's because "aim-speak" has been popularized along with the advent of the instant messenger itself (and text messaging as well in my opinion). So to someone for whom this is a relatively new innovation, they must think "this is just how people talk on IM"... Completely forgetting this is a workplace, and they are an adult speaking with another adult. It's not really irritating as much as intriguing since these people are usually very professional when speaking or writing emails. it's only on IM that they talk that way.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Love internet radio. A good friend of mine lives in Calgary. We'll both be doing our own things in our own way, and randomly one of us will IM the other "dude, I love this track", and the other replies "I know, man". Then we'll talk for a few minutes about it, and go on about our business. At X:YZ time of night we're both usually listening to afterhours radio (ah.fm). Various flavors of trance. It's good lovin. Another favorite of mine is the synthpop stream over at di.fm . Either way, I love internet radio and can't wait till they devise some scheme to get it into cars or portable music players of some flavor. I've seen what satellite radio has to offer and I'm not impressed. But get me di.fm and ah.fm in some portable form and we'll talk.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

I was in an airport yesterday and, despite my best efforts, overheard a clip of a speech Obama was giving somewhere. He was rebutting against some sort of rumor that he was a Muslim, and stating he was brought up as a good and proper Christian of some flavor. At which point the audience cheers. If you're a politician, have any faith you want. Faith isn't a bad thing. But it has no place in a political setting. I shouldn't know what faith a politician follows unless I do some digging and look it up. It's a firm opinion of mine that faith and religion should not be allowed to be mentioned during a political campaign. Decisions that affect everyone in a city/state/country should never ever ever be brought about with influence from one's faith or the faith of those it will affect. So electing someone should not have anything to do with their faith or yours. Yelling "Christianity!" in the deep south is like a rock band yelling "Boston!" when playing at the Garden (or whatever bank it is that owns it nowadays). You're looking to buy votes with your faith. And that's not cool. It degrades your platform, and (in my humble opinion) makes the voter's ballot worthless.

I'm going to keep writing people in on my ballots until a candidate comes along who declares he's an atheist, or never mentions religion at all. I want the decision maker I elect to make decisions based on what is best for the people, as decided by logic. This year my vote is split between Feynman (don't care if he's dead, I'd still pick him) or Cthulhu. I really can't pick. Any feedback on this is appreciated.

PS - I know I'll get some flak for not picking a real candidate, but I can't pick among any of them in good conscience. Please do "bring it" though, it should be talked about imo.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

My apologies, internet. I've neglected you. I'm usually pretty busy around the holidays and this year has been no exception. My parents gave me the gift of green this year, which is becoming an increasingly reasonable gift to give. I tend to want stranger things the older I get. This year I embraced my inner geek and got some New firewall hardware. The device I was using worked more or less fine, but was an abomination. I was tired of being asked "oh god, what's that thing?!" every time someone saw it. Ok so it's not that ugly, but this is LESS less ugly. And I was tired of running a separate wireless device.

I've been geeking out a little more than usual lately, and it's partly to blame for my absence. At home I've set up a monitoring system similar to what we have at work. Why would anyone want to bother with something like that? It makes a nice sandbox to learn in. I need to get pretty ninja at what I do if I really want to end up where I'm headed at work. So I'm teaching myself all kinds of ridiculously nerdy stuff in my spare time. I like my field and I like my career path, so I need to make sure I kick it's ass and don't fall to the side in a mess of mediocrity.

That's all I've got for now, internet. I hope we're cool. I'll be around, you know I will.

PS - The car isn't fixed yet, but I've narrowed down my shop choices. It drives more or less fine. no big.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

Merry Christmas internets, and all those who dwell within. All the best.

So I got t-boned last night. Some delightful fellow smashed into my driver's side, towards the rear (picture their drivers side headlight would have hit right where I was. Most of the damage is to the rear of the car though. I was most of the way through the intersection and this guy either flew through the stop sign or couldn't stop. Either way he didn't stick around. I don't think I have rental coverage, so I guess I get to burn some vacation time on a xmas vacation. This must be my "happy holidays" message from the powers that be.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.