That line from Top Gun rings true today.  I have joined the ranks of people who have intentionally let their doctors poison them.  Yea!  Treatment has started, and then came to an abrupt halt.  I’ll fill in that portion later.

Last night I made a list of stuff that I would need for treatment today.  I was prepared to be there all day, as I was told.  I had my laptop from work, several DVD’s, portable hard drive with more movies, ipod, magazines, books, my chemo blanket…I was set.  We loaded up and left a tad late and showed up more than a tad late, but 15 minutes was not a big deal to them.  Read the complete article »

This is the last of the South Beach updates for awhile.  We are in transition from the South Beach Diet to the chemotherapy diet.  I should be on the chemo diet for somewhere between 4 - 6 months.  If I still need to lose weight after that, I will go back onto the South Beach Diet.  I do not know how chemo will effect me.  I will no a little bit more 24 hours from now.  I should know a whole lot more 72 hours from now.  I lost a total of 30 pounds on South Beach, which I am very pleased with.  The new clothes that I am buying are four inches smaller in the waist.  I have gained back 6 - 8 pounds the last couple months due to travel, apathy, cancer etc.  So, my original goal was to lose 56 pounds, the new goal is about 32 more pounds or so.  I am sure I can reach it, I just need to be diligent in my pursuit of that goal.  Chemo has been such a wildcard that I have backed off of a proper South Beach Diet.  Chemo update Number One will be tomorrow, if I am feeling up to it.

“I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life, as it has been, is over. From this time forward, you will service us.” Jean-Luc Picard as Locutus, Star Trek TNG

Locutus of Borg

Today was assimilation day.  I took the second step to becoming Borg.  Step one was having lasers reshape my corneas over eight years ago.  We had a little communication error and left a tad late.  I was a tad stressed.  Traffic was not good and we had to re-route due to a wreck on the Tollway.  We showed up about seven minutes late.  That is not too bad.  I was pretty happy with it actually.  The first half hour was just hospital check in and insurance type stuff.  Read the complete article »

What do you get when you cross the apathy diet, the coping diet, and Thanksgiving?  Weight gain.  How much?  Enough.  The chemo diet had better pull me through….Yikes!  I get the port installed on Teusday and first treatment the following Monday.

Yes, this South Beach update is six days late.  Ask me if I care.  The beachhead is secure, the front is miles away.  So business at the beachhead is normal.  We don’t war here, we just plan wars.  So my plan is to rely on chemotherapy to help fight this battle.  It may not complete the battle, but I expect it do the Yoeman’s share of the fighting.  Some might say I have fallen off the wagon.  My respnse is, “What wagon?  Is there a wagon around here?”  My focus is on other areas right now, the diet has been thrown under the bus and that is the way it will be for a while.  I use to be apathetic, but now I just don’t care.

Well, maybe not Lazarus, but my server has come back from the dead.  After two trips to CompUSA and one trip to Fry’s, the server is back in service.  While I did have a hard drive fail, the fix was not as simple as replacing a hard drive.  That is the way I started.  I put a little bit of thought into server design and what that means for future expansion.  It also meant a complete wipe of the good drive and a complete reinstall of Windows Home Server.  I now have a smaller 160 GB, but dedicated, drive for the OS.  I will eventually have two 500 GB drive for the storage pool.  Right now it is just one drive.  I will add the second once I get it back from Seagate.  This will leave two bays, and SATA ports, for expansion.  I had originally filled thosw with two new 500 GB drives.  That was CompUSA trip one.  Once I knew my data was lost I started rethinking the design of the server.  I had a greater understanding of how WHS worked and decided it was best to have a smaller IDE drive for the OS.  That was CompUSA trip number two.  That would leave all four SATA ports to be part of the storage pool.  Two of those are initially filled.  The last two are expansion as I fill up the server.  Those drive will most likely be 1 TB drives, but time will tell.  The Fry’s trip was to get a converter to hook up the drive via a USB port.  It is a very handy tool that has already been used several times.  I will need to return to CompUSA a third time to return the first two drives I bought there.  Sorry guys.  I plan of getting a KVM switch while I am there too.  I had a spare keyboard and mouse for the server diagnostics, but I did not have a spare monitor.  Next time it will not matter.  I will have the switch.

The local computers are now attached to the server and have been backed up.  That is the most important thing. getting the computers backed up.  Everything else is just gravy.

I should have a lot of time on my hands pretty soon.  I plan on delving more into the WHS OS, taking online courses at the University of Phoenix, passing my MCSE, solving the Arab - Isreali conflict, and the energy crisis too.  Afer doing all that I’ll see if I can manage to paint a couple rooms in the house, finish painting Crisana’s furniture, and a few other odd jobs Debbi has in store.  I think we better start picking colors soon.

All hard drives die.  That is just a rule.  Some die earlier than others.  The hard drive in my old 486 is still kicking.  Well, it would be if it was still running.  It is serving as a door stop now, or some other form of modern art.  An eleven month old drive is failing.  I bought it last December for the new home server.  I do not know if it has completely failed, or it just happens to have a couple of errors in the wrong places.  So, I know have two more 500GB hard drives.  Thank you CompUSA.  The MTBF is something like 1.2 million hours, or a failure rate of 0.34%, depending on what you read.  Apparently the eleven month old drive did not get the news.  Its’ MTBF is around 8,000 hours.  So if I round, it is about 1.2 million hours short of reaching its’ goal.

My goal tonight is to get the server down, and ready to be operated on tomorrow.  I need to line of a spare mouse, keyboard, and monitor for it.  The first two are easy.  The monitor will have to be pulled from another machine.  I do have a spare 19″ CRT boxed up, but I don’t want to lug that thing out.  It really needs to head into the donation pile.  I have other stuff for that pile too.  Tomorrow I operate.

The drive home on I-45 was similar to the drive down, just not as pretty.  The sky went from blue to gray to black.  Not really any pretty colors like during the sunrise.

I left the hotel parking garage at about 2:10 and got home at about 7:23.  I had two stops, one for gas, and one for dinner.  I ate at a Subway (thanks Life Group) near I-20 and I-45.  The only problem was that it was 5:30 or so.  I stopped to let traffic wind down a bit.  It was less than a 30 minute stop and got into downtown at about 6:10 or so.  That is when the traffic started and it could have been worse.  It took about an hour to get home from downtown during rush hour.  I did not think that was too bad at all.  I just would not want to do that every day.

MD Anderson went well.  The shuttle dropped me off with over an hour to spare.  So I did some more exploring.  This time I stayed away from nuclear medicine.  I found a couple of new lobby areas. One was the ‘fountain’ and the other was the ‘park’  MD Anderson also has the aquarium, sundial, and the gazebo.  I also found another gift shop, florist, and many places to eat.  I also explored the patient library there and checked out a book too.

The time with the doctor confused me because I remembered something wrong from the last time I was there, so that threw me into a tailspin.  I was wrong?  She did confirm the diagnosis, and that was the main point of me going down.  The next step is to get treatment lined up.  I have place calls to the local doctor to get that started.  I also hope to hear the results of the bone marrow biopsy.

I weighed myself this morning and I was a half pound down.  Not anymore after tonight’s meal.  I have not kept the entire South Beach diet the last month or so due to cancer and vacation.  I keep hoping that chemotherapy will take off the rest of the weight.  I may have a few South Beach conflicts with this meal.  Please note I did not eat everything.

• one (1) margarita (not South Beach approved)
• chips & salsa (not South Beach approved)
• guacamole (not completely South Beach approved)
• two (2) cheese enchiladas (not South Beach approved)
• one(1) queso taco puff (not South Beach approved)
• one (1) soft taco (not South Beach approved)
• Mexican rice (not South Beach approved)
• refried beans (not completely South Beach approved)
• one (1) Butterfinger (thanks Life Group) (not South Beach approved)
• TUMS (thanks CVS)

So, the healthiest things were the salsa, guacamole, and the beans.  I still anticipate being only one to one and a half pounds up when I get home.  I can’t complain too much about that.  The food and the company were great.

This has been quite the day.  I backed out of the garage at 4:20 this morning heading to MD Anderson in Houston.  That is about a 270 mile drive.  10% the way there, or 27 miles, I was at 75 and Mockingbird.  Go figure.  Ennis was just past the quarter mark on my trip.  My appointment was at 10:00 am, and I arrived at 9:30.  Not too bad.  I did hit some Houston traffic, but the Dallas traffic I deal with seemed worse.

Sunrise was right around Buffalo, Texas.  It was kind of fun to see night turn into day.  The sky went from black to a real dark blue to a purple to a light purple to sunlight right in my eyes.  I stopped in Madisonville for breakfast with the lights on.  I left with my sunglasses on.  I also had a pit stop right before hitting the worst part of the Houston traffic.  That was timed well.  I did not know how smart that actually was.

My two test took about an hour and a half, I spent about an hour exploring different parts of MD Anderson.  The people in nuclear medicine seemed a little cranky.  I guess they don’t like explorers.  All I wanted was some isotopes so that Trey would have something cool at show-n-tell.  Sheesh!

After that I drove to the hotel, unfortunately it is a different one from last time.  It’ll do.  I had lunch at Subway (thanks Life Group) and saw the new James Bond movie.  The movie was $7.50 (matinee price) the theater parking was $3, and a small popcorn was $5.75.  I skipped the popcorn and drove four blocks away, parked at a strip mall and walked.  I still had to pay for the movie though.  I then got a cafe mocha grande from Starbuck’s after the movie.  I have Starbuck’s card, so the mocha grande was essentially free.

Tonight is Mexican food with Cousin Di then Clone Wars!  ttfn