Alin's Site

As usual hit the picture to go to the galleries.

Some of you may know that I spoke at ATIA 2010 on Thursday at 2:35 until 3;35, it was a huge success for me. I did it very well. The auditorium I was in was one of the smaller ones but that does not matter, what matters is I was able to give my advice to more ears who can follow it and who can spread the advice around. I look forward to ATIA 2010 January in Orlando as I might go and speak there too!!! I got some photos off of the show floor but I didn’t get as much floor time in as I’d have liked to. Oh well. Time to work on January’s thing and also get all my stuff set up to hopefully go then. If not I will be definitely planning to speak again at ATIA 2011 Chicago and maybe do a hands on lab… Gotta think of topics.

I was up late last night… well not too late, not as late as some nights! Getting my first 15 DVDs ready to sell, yep you heard me 15 DVDs are now available for IMMEDIATE dispatch! So click the picture above or go over in the sidebar and dclick ATIA 2010 DVD ORDER and order up a DVD! $20 dollars unlike the original $15 I quoted to cover shipping and handling costs for international customers and domestic customers, it’s not that big a difference and every contribution goes right into a bank account register called ATIA Money which is money I will save towards not depending on ATIA to help me out and give me free speaker tickets. In the end I would like to end up paying for my slot like most other speakers. But until then ATIA is there for me to help get me off the ground and help me spread my good word on assistive technology. Next year I might do a speech with video and photos called “Why a mount?” I’m tossing ideas around in the slow cooker.

See that!!! Yay!!! FedEx has posession of my new computer and it’s moving out of China! It’s expected to be here before 10:30 AM on THIS WEDNESDAY! Wow!!! Lot’s to do this week. Sevo on monday then a countdown to my new computer, yay!!! I can’t wait till Monday, and I can’t wait till Wednesday! And then shortly after on November 16th I get my breast surgery, more Sevo YAY!

as shown in the video above… don’t leave a BP cuff inflated on your arm to 300 unless you want some temporary paralysis… But it fixed my shoulder pain issue! Right up until NOW… Time to pull the cuff out again.

Well theres a big boat of news to come after I speak at ATIA today. I will post all that as soon as possible.

PRE ORDERS FOR THE ATIA DVD SPEECH ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED. CLICK ATIA2010 DVD PRE-ORDER IN THE SIDE BAR OR CLICK HERE

Someone had to have lined up some strings and pulled on them really freakishly hard or something. I called up Apple today after calling CDW and CDW saying “It’s still showing that it will ship after December 1st” Apple said “Theres 300 orders for that part, only 17 are available and I have no idea how much are being produced… How would you like a brand new laptop… Free” I screamed “OH MY GOD!!!” and mom thought there was a Code Blue in progress, a major one. Nope, I told her no! Apple want’s to give me a new laptop for free!

So in the next week and a half I will have a BRAND NEW MacBook Pro 15.4 In” screen with a 2.8Ghz Core i7 processor 4GB of ram (Gonna buy 2 4GB sticks on Amazon after I post this so I have 8GB of RAM, Glossy HD display, you know totally decked out. All I had to pay for the laptop was $129 cause I wanted the HD display. Otherwise it’s FREE.

I need to wait a bit because I have to send my old laptop into Apple tomorrow and then they have to send the order to be built as it is a Custom To Order (CTO) laptop.

I am also going to make sure to confirm all of the details with the person managing my case.

I am soooo happy about this, if anyone out there was praying (I am sure you people were!) Thanks!!!

Anyways that’s all I am going to say before I do my big ATIA blog post. DVD’s will be recorded of the event and will be for sale in 2-3 weeks and will ship in about 2-3 business days from order.

Pricing is $15 + Shipping to YOUR address at COST (no upcharges)

Agh!!! I could puke from this whole MacBook Pro thing. I brought it home and the motherboard worked only half. Apparently some sort of short somewhere, the display died the next day, it worked with an external monitor but the motherboard did not report correct battery, serial number, and WI-FI DIDN’T WORK!!! ARGH! So I took it back to the shop and what do ya know, the insurance company, the laptop is totalled! At least I am getting a new motherboard and the display issue was traced down to a bad cable that hopefully I can replace myself, if not then I am going to sell the machine piece for piece and buy a new MacBook Pro, but I’m a gonna need a little help with that. My doctor helped me out since it helps me do my “ADLs or Activities of Daily Living.” and is an Assistive Tech device and signed a long letter that should hopefully get me the machine totally tax free (taxes here are about $250-300 on such a machine once all added up. It helps a lot to knock that +300 off the receipt. You can read the document I wrote at the very END of this post at the MORE tag… down there, click it and it will expand this page… Oh and if that’s not enough to make your blood boil or anything, get this! The new motherboard is possibly backordered as far as DECEMBER 1ST yeah you read it there in BLACK AND WHITE BOLD TEXT. DECEMBER FREAKING FIRST!!! ARGHH!!! I called up Apple and got some facts about the allocation stuff and how the part should ship, hopefully I will be one of the lucky people to get some of the last runs for this month. More news on that to come well… whenever news comes in… GRaah!

On a lighter note… err foot? I got some awesome socks from Nancy my cousin. As always she always gives me some of the most useful gifts I get. These were for early xmas since she missed my birthday and feels like she cheated me so she sent me some cash early and then ordered these up, perfect timing as this morning it was 62 in the house. Dang cold outside too!

Thanks Nancy! As always I took photos, click the one above.

Btw I go to the Ophthalmologist on tuesday for my annual eye check.

Alright so you all wanna see the tax exemption document  thingy. HERE it is, click the break

(more…)

Today we went to get my Baclofen pump refilled and as always that went without a hitch. Then we went to my neurosurgeon Dr O’Leary since he changed practices and I am very spastic and having a lot of atethoid episode events where I will like seize up and start making atetoid movements for about 5-10 minutes which severely hinders me from doing anything else until the episode ends, no idea if it is a seizure or a type of spastic response but I am going to place my chips on the latter because I am aware of it. I had my Baclofen pump cranked up by 10% to 722mcg a day now, yum yum more Baclofen! Then we hit doctor Sun to get some pain management stuff sorted out and that’s about it.

My tracheostomy change is finalized and scheduled for November 1st in the OR on  Sevoflurane! yum yum! However I won’t have a time until the day before so as with all trach changes the countdown clock will be a 0 day countdown.

Following the tracheostomy tube change in November on the 16th I finally go in to get that left side “breast” that has been growing to female anatomy removed in a subcutaneous mastectomy, they are also going to remove the duct and biopsy it just to make sure I don’t have ductal carcinoma however there was nothing on the ultrasound so its doubted. But as all people say with imaging modalities like X-Ray, and CT, and Ultrasound,  you might find something out in the O.R that can totally change the route of where things are going by SEEING the actual stuff that was imaged.

That all being said, I’m ready for a bunch of Sevoflurane (two hits) and a whole lot of painkillers after that moob surgery…

BRING IT ON! I WANT MY SEVO!

It’s back, the orders list… and It’s back to stay, I have not updated it in AGES.

Glucose Meter <ACTIVE>

Cardiac Monitoring <ACTIVE>

Trach Change <Nov 1st 2010> COUNTDOWN T.B.A OK

Moob Removal <Nov 16th 2010> COUNTDOWN T.B.A OK

we are also waiting on a few other things to be ordered after the completion of these, the next order batch is. All of the below are considered dead until converted to live orders.

Glasses <WAIT INSURANCE / MONEY>

Spinal X-Ray Series <REORDERED ??? 2010>

In good news today the Tracheostomy site is beginning a massive layoff of Staph members.. *cough* I am trying to be funny, it’s got another staph colonization, does not mean it is INFECTED, but if it stays colonized it will infect. So here we go we are doing the Bactroban jig again for 7 days twice a day. It’s not severe so it’s not much to worry about. Meh.

We also went to CDW and dropped off my computer, we picked it up Saturday and it wouldn’t display it’s Serial Number, Battery Status, and the Wi-Fi chip was shot, another motherboard. This time they are filing the motherboard as DOA (Dead On Arrival) so the new one does not count as a claim on my insurance. Either way in value of repairs 7000+ dollars is being pushed into that machine as of tomorrow so it is a 3000 dollar machine, if it was a car it is as of tomorrow Totalled and one third, possibly more being the fact I clumsily DROPPED it breaking the screen connecting cable, LCD should be fine cause I was able to get the backlight to flicker with the cable just partially working before I totally broke the cable trying to fix it, oh well. So either I am getting a whole new screen (doubt it as I see screen cables available online) or I am getting a new cable. Hopefully I get just the cable cause there is a limit to the point they will consider the laptop Totalled in their eyes and I will get a check for replacement value… whatever that is! I JUST WANT MY DATA, so if for some reason I do need to get the replacement I am going to have them allow me to come in and do my last deed with the hard drive of cloning the ENTIRE drive and partition map to a new drive. Right now this little hackintosh runs a clone of the mac partition.

Livin La-Vida Fridga (A rip on Livin La-Vida Loca) Ok whatever, my room ever since we got the AC fix arranged and since I fixed the vent has been like a REFRIGERATOR at night, I close the door to go to sleep and WHAMMO the temperature starts dropping big, last night it was 70 when I closed the door, 30 minutes later my ICU monitors low temperature alarm was going off at 64 and 1 hour later it settled at 62 degrees, GEESH! I slept with my lead apron on, then it warmed up a bit in the early morning hours so I took my lead off and switched to sleeping with my Neoprene shirt on which is what I talk about in the next section of this mega blog post

In this photo you notice that there are some “spots” of the Neoprene torn off and also that the Mystery logo transferred somewhat. this is a result of improper storage, rolled up and folded and stuffed between my mattress and the bed cause I am lazy. It’s the folding that the Neoprene don’t like so I’ll try pure rolling at this point. If that produces issues I’ll have to hang it somewhere. Anyways that’s a follow up to my Neoprene shirt that Nancy K. got me a little over 3 years ago! I say thats some pretty good performance for what I have put this thing through! It’s still in usable condition and I expect it to be so for at least another year or two. Keep it up NRS, ya make good stuff!

slight downtrend in overall visits but slight uptrend in unique visitors in september. which is good.

My Air Conditioning in my room wasn’t working very well and I found out why, the vent blows more by the wheelchair, which is blocked by the wheelchair. So I did some fix it and blocked the wheelchair off with a folder and taped the big leak on the other side of the vent and now it blows into the room not against the chair, yay!

However I am a bit paranoid since my ICU monitors temperature sensor is displaying higher than normal temperatures in my room consistently and I am not hot, so I called them up and they said test it under my arm (axillary) and the monitor was more accurate than my oral thermometer that is ages old 97.4=98.4 vs 98.7! Upon turning on the monitor it acts like a computer where the coin battery for the BIOS is dead, the clock is wrong, the date is wrong, all the settings like alarm limits are stored safely on non volatile memory. So they are going to call me back with instructions on how to replace that battery if I can and I might need to buy a new temperature probe as this ones low spectrum might be bad, so I decided to stick it in my little fridge to find out, nope it’s working, little fridges temperature is 44ish which is right for a fridge. And my room is 72.6 after running the temperature probe to 97.4 then fridging it then putting it in the room… I guess i am just an overly paranoid weirdo sometimes. Also the fact it is getting colder outside and is not summer anymore has a lot to do with it. We had the AC blasting, now we only have it on to regulate the house, not necessarily COOL it.

Onto the laptop of DOOM. It’s going back in cause the Airport card don’t show up and the screen don’t. The Wi-Fi ain’t my fault, the screen, I dropped it when getting it out of the box, clumsy me. SO yeah back in for repairs it goes!

So I got my 3000 dollar laptop back, nice and repaired. And the repair was 2000ish for new motherboard cd drive and trackpad and keyboard and bottom casing assembly thankfully covered by warranties. The laptop has had almost 5000 of repairs done on it so it is totalled and two thirds, and now if they have to replace the motherboard again it will be 7000 because a motherboard runs around 2000. So at that point it will be totalled twice and 1 third.

THIS IS PISSING ME OFF. EXCUSE THE ALL CAPITALS. BUT THE KEYBOARD WORKS THE MOUSE WORKS BUT NOPE, THE MOTHERBOARD IS SCREWED OVER. THE FANS WHIRL TOP SPEED CONSTANTLY, THE WIFI CARD!?!??! WHERE IS IT, NOT RECOGNIZED… THATS WHERE IT IS!!! START UP UNPLUGGED AND ON THE BATTERY, NO FAN ISSUE… BAD MOTHERBOARD!!! AND FATHERBOARD!!! AND SISTERBOARD!!! AND WHATEVER OTHER BOARDS ARE IN THIS LAPTOP!

Oh well, at least I have this laptop (the dell)… I need to figure out skype, it works with some people pretty well but with AJ its really bad. I will have quite some time seeing as how my big laptop has to go back to CDW on Monday.

Grrrrrr.

My computer is READY FOR PICKUP!!!! So we are going to pile me into the van for a short drive to the computer repair center at CDW, pick it up and I will migrate the data off to it’s hard drive. I should be back and running at FULL speed in a few hours. ill make another short headliner post then from my 2/3rds NEW laptop lol! 2000 dollar repairs on 3000 dollar machine.

I started the vest back up as of the night of the 12th, statistics will be done once my big laptop is back. That should be back tomorrow or Monday. hard to blog from this laptop and doing pictures / statistics = a bigger pain.