Alin's Site

Hyperdock Icon

You probably ask, WHAT IS Hyperdock. Well to make things REAL easy to understand its kind of like Exposè thats built into Macintosh… Only, for your DOCK. And on super steroids. Don’t believe me? Watch the short 2m 30s demo video I made below… Still not believing me, download it and use it 15 Days for free at http://hyperdock.bahoom.de/

Anyways, my feeling on this piece of software personally. Oi, I have been using it for god only knows how long, probably since sometime mid last year? sometime like April or whatever. Either way the utility of moving windows to the top or to the sides is the most useful for me, it helps me work more efficiently and effectively on my tasks. It makes multitasking a cinch and window previews makes it easier to get around whats going on in my mac. Thanks Hyperdock!

Chicago Auto Show 2011 Logo

In other news I received our PRESS PASSES to the Chicago Auto Show for this year. As a blogger in the disability community they with open arms… err.. ticket printers, sent me tickets for the whole family, me mom and dad. We will all be going on February 10th Thursday. I have decided NOT to provide LIVE video of the event due to unpredictability. However there will be RECORDINGS AND LOADS OF PHOTOS available in the late evening, though expect the titles and tags on said photos to be changed, thankfully to Flickr their URL’s will remain static (same)

I look forward to the auto show!

Squeezing my head tight

I got some awesome gifts from my ultra close friend Keith A. in the UK. I opened them with him on Skype and with me recording it with my camera. No tripod this time. I was so thrilled to get this package, he told me it was coming and I knew it was going to be 4 items to do with my autism and stimming. The label from customs said “Belt, jeans, 2 shirts” and that label was so correct yet so wrong. PVC jeans with a thick nice leather belt, so nice and relaxing feeling, very warm and comfortable. Then he added a red satin shirt, not the kind of satin thats ultra delicate, the kind that can stand a warm water cycle. And he also gave me a “Rash Vest” you put it on before you go swimming to avoid Neoprene rashes i guess, either way its really snug and feels good. I took a plethora of photos of all the stuff and me wearing it. I also have a video of me opening it up and wearing it too! The photos are taken at odd times cause I fell asleep relaxing with the belt as I was tagging the first batch of photos. Belt was slung around my neck lightly like a scarf with me sucking on the end on the smooth leather and I fell asleep. I slept great! Today I tried to simulate the dark conditions of night time by closing all the lights and taking more photos of me putting EVERYTHING On all at once and taking it off. Along with the usual pictures of me just being my autistic self playing around with my senses.

Video below!

Me with the brand new washer!

My Dad worked 2 jobs so we could replace our old top load washer. We wanted to replace it for a while but there was an extra push from me for accessibility, so I can do my own laundry. I know times are tough and there’s a lot of people unemployed. But I am really grateful we were able to do this! We were able to snag a Whirlpool Duet washer on sale with some online promo codes and also it was scratched and dented in the shipping process so they further discounted us we saved a LOT of money on the wonderful machine and the scratch and dent are on the very back and barely visible! You actually have to feel the back edges to feel the dent! Dad and Uncle Jim broke their backs getting the new machine in the basement! Thanks Dad, Thanks Uncle Jim. Now I can crawl downstairs and do my own laundry, this is just one more step into me being independent. I am really excited to do my first load of laundry soon. I watched it at work for a whole two loads, autism addiction. It’s just like being at a laundromat!

Rubbing my face on the just opened Neoprene

I know its kind of late to blog something I received Thursday but, I had a little bit of christmas money burning and a friend of mine offered me 20 feet of Neoprene rubber for just the shipping which was 25 bucks. I took the deal! He is a rubber salesman and he has had it in stock too long as he is constantly getting more and more Neoprene of different types of Duro, apparently thats a term for stretchability. The higher the less stretchy or something. Either way this is 40 “Duro” neoprene and its 1/32th of an inch thick, it’s really thick! It’s very nice and warm and sticky and good feeling! I love it. He accidentally sent 24 feet so I cut two 2 feet pieces for me to snuggle up with and wrap around my body / head as you know I have my tracheostomy to breathe through so I don’t have to worry about mouth or nose breathing and the smooth warm neoprene just feels so nice on my face and it blocks out light and sound beautifully and smells great! I also like to use the smaller piece as a pillow sort of on my arm, it’s smoothness against the side of my head is so relaxing along with the smell. I also cut the 20 foot piece into two 10 feet sheets that I can actually use as blankets hahah, it feels wonderful to sleep under the Neoprene as a blanket, it’s very warm and humid as it keeps moisture in, which actually helps my skin to be honest I might start sleeping without a shirt for the help with my dry skin! Hit the photo above for more photos! Video of me unboxing err un-tubing it is below.

Take a look at all that RAM!

Yeah that’s nearly 7 GIGS of available RAM. Mind you that’s just after system boot. As I use it I really load it down and I am down to about 4.5GB free (if you count the inactive as free) and 3.3 if you don’t. Anywho it came today cause I bought it with same day shipping from Amazon. Local Express Delivery rocks, it’s cheap! I am so happy I got my RAM. Got it with some christmas money.

Lots of news will be posting this week, I have many packages incoming so there will be a lot of blog activity this week. Possibly 2 more posts (not including this one) for a grand total of 4 posts this week. Please don’t unsubscribe due to this little burst of posting. Thanks. It’s all temporary.

Martin Luther King Day banner

Well everyone happy Martin Luther King Day. Funny enough I kept going to the mail box to look for mail and yelling “WHERES MY MAIL!!!” Then I came back to the computer checked the calendar and voila, there’s our little problem with the mail service. THERE IS NO MAIL SERVICE TODAY! Enjoy a Bill’less Mail’less day today people but just know that todays mail comes tomorrow so your mail box will be double full

Zapped site healing

Anywho I took another picture of my trach site and that is shown right above this and it looks GREAT! I am so happy with the results that came from dad doing the silver nitrate treatment, he definitely deserved the zappy award! I am so much more comfortable now too!!! It looks a bit dirty in this photo cause I didn’t clean it before photographing it. I was too excited to take the photo! Then clean it!

Granulation tissue. Dad! ZAP IT!

See that image above? The red stuff is granulation tissue on my tracheostomy site. My surgeon didn’t think it was bad enough to need cautery back when I had my trach site but it has gotten much worse so me and dad decided to take care of it using some silver nitrate sticks. They burn the tissue up to allow it to die and fall off. Yay! Anywho that little thing was irritating me so much last night so dad zapped it for me and did a BEAUTIFUL job. see below

Zapping complete

It might look ugly but thats how it looked when I came out of surgery once, that is because the “Zap” is a chemical burn of certain tissue by Silver Nitrate. Silver Nitrate is pretty safe to use as it does not burn plastics easily and only burns certain skin tissue types easily, sure it will burn any skin if you leave it in contact too long but it mainly goes for “wet” tissues like granulation tissue and whatnot. Truly great little sticks. You can buy them online, they are usually marketed for declawing birds but they are the same strength and type of stick that your doctor would use on you just minus the FDA monitoring. That being said if they are defective and burn a hole in your body it ain’t the persons or the manufacturers problem, so like be careful, capiche? and stick to good brands, I recommend ARZOL.

Anyways you might see in the first picture the caption Dad ZAP IT!. Yep my DAD did it! He gets a Zappy Award for this!

Dad got a Zappy award!

The photo above best viewed on flickr, yeah my DAD did it! He is not only a screw salesman but he’s an ear nose throat specialist a fix up guy a just about anything guy. He knows a lot and if you just show him something or tell him how to do it or what you want done he can get it done. I handed him a silver nitrate stick, he got nervous at first but then I explained how the procedure works and he got right to work and then I gave him a second stick. Such a great dad I have, and for zapping my trach I hereby award him The Zappy Award!

So for now I will be doing steroid on my trach site to keep the granulation tissue from coming back. Otherwise I am doing good!

Comcast Business Class Logo

Well Well Well, you may have heard me yell “$*@!ing internet.” and or other things on the instant messenger or phone. I have my own corporation, it does not make any money yet. I hope it does so it can give back to the disabled. Whenever that is, it will be publicly known on this blog. The internet is also pretty much a medical device for me since we use it to communicate mission critical life sustaining medical data to and from the doctors. But anyways we have been using a lot of bandwidth overall too! Comcast residential service as you know uses mainly DOCSIS 2.0 modems, not as fast as DOCSIS 3.0 for one. and also not as reliable. They also limit you to 250GB of bandwidth which the “Average” user will not use in a month but for a household like ours… It’s everything BUT average. Anywho Comcast Business Class is a bit more $ than the regular flavor of internet but it’s faster, more reliable, more DOCSIS 3.0′y and has great tech support staff. Oh and its unmetered bandwidth, so if your trying to run a web server or other bandwidth hog type thing, it’s for you.

Anyway at around 2:00 I made a new friend, his name is Derek, great guy from Comcast. Came out to install the new internet and well it was a really easy job for him! I swapped the modems plugged in the power and coaxial and the network cable waited for him to push a few buttons on his PDA to activate our service and voila we were up. We then spent about an hour talking and tweaking things. I also helped him fix up his Windows Phone that he said “I hate this piece of crap, so slow” hehe. He now subscribes to my blog! Cool!

I really am thankful for Rachel in Comcast Business Class sales and account management. She really did a great job of setting us up under my company name and setting up the bill so that we can still pay with our own checks and not have to get company checks and all that. Wanna talk new internet service over with her, take a gander at her info below.

Rachel Gallucci Currier, Business Account Executive

Comcast Business Services,

Office: 603-222-7770

Mention my name Alin S and Thetek Inc. as your referral.

Anywho that’s all for tonights news. im having a nice DOCSIS 3.0′y night of SPEED

We left to go to the hospital at 10:00 and arrived around. 10:35 my procedure was set for 11:15 but doctor Walner was delayed so I had to wait until 12:15 to get in to the pre op after that I went into o.r at 1:30 or somewhere in that frame of time . Then I woke up around 2:30 and was out of the hospital and home and on this computer posting this blog post at 5:20 PM. We stopped and got some Slurpee. Calms the throat irritation from the tubes being swapped, not exactly something fun let alone something I want to deal with having to do while awake for some time. I mean heck just after waking up I get into the “yellow-ish” area of my anxiety, especially today since my throat decided to not co-operate nicely and get irritated so I was limited on talking. Thankfully the hospital gave me lots of popsicles which got things under control. And now I am guzzlin’ the Slurpee like a Hummer guzzles gas LOL

Take a oogle (or puke) at the following 4 pictures of my tracheostomy. First one marked STOMA is obviously the hole in my neck where the tube goes, second one is my trachea leading to my bronchus and third is the bronchial enterances. The fourth one is actually a surgical towel because the machine REQUIRES 4 pictures before it will print so he had to cheat the machine. too bad he didn’t just point it at himself and say cheese! then again through such a small lens I question if his whole head would show up in the view…?

Anyways other than the throat nuisance and slight soreness I am doing perfectly fine with a new trach. Heres to hoping Shiley made another good trach tube and the cuff does not rupture early. Also to hoping my throat heals fast. Ugh!

Aunt Alicia & Family card

Got another christmas card and as usual scanned it into the computer. I got this one a few days ago but decided to wait to scan it till today since I want to try to make things more compact on the blog and not flood the place with posts. Which I will end up doing anyway’s probably because I have some late xmas packages due here from a friend in the UK!

And now the all famous or infamous Sevoflurane countdown!

No more countdown its DONE

And people can you believe it, I made it this time without my cuff blowing! Whatever Shiley did on this tube they didn’t eff it up.

Great, off the steroid!

Well this picture is taken as of about 6 hours ago during my trach cleaning. My trach site is off of the steroid and now on regular maintenance cream and looking good. I am happy to see this.

Falling asleep

Well it looks like I forgot to post a photo gallery relating to me sleeping with my headrest, it’s heavily viewed in this blog post and even a video about it HERE. Anyways I love sleeping with my headrest since its quite comforting for my neck and also just feels good with my sensory section of my autism! So check out the other post and also check my pictures out for yet another look into my autistic life.

Emily S's card

Well Well Well, looks like my friend Emily S. from Washington sent me a card, she is in the same state as my buddy AJ. I think I will have to visit that state sometime soon! So I can see all my great friends there! Ain’t she cute?

December 2010 Statistics

Can’t read the statistics text, click the picture for a big one. Oh and remember. December we had to RESET the statistics services therefore we might have had some overcounting then.