Why is it that just before Thanksgiving, I get a flare-up of Gout? I could easily understand just after Thanksgiving, but just before? Anyway, I'm in pain, and can barely walk. It's in my right ankle at the moment. Working today (and covering for others), so can't get to the doctor's until next week. I just left a message to see if they'll call in a prescription for me.
I know that ankles are not prime candidates for gout. My doctor will probably insist on an xray, to prove I haven't hurt my ankle for real. Just like last time. I know how this goes. I spend a couple days with a sore ankle or toe, thinking I stubbed/twisted it without noticing at some point. Then, generally the third day, but sometimes up to a week later, BOOM! Searing, throbbing pain, and I can't put weight on it. Today it's so bad that I got out an old crutch to use so I could get myself to work.

Another question... Why, when I know this is the pattern, do I always spend a couple days thinking that it's just a random injury? I did actually decide last night that this was probably gout, so I made sure to drink extra liquids and such, but this morning it's still worse, not better.

Anyone know any good folk remedies for gout?

It's that time of year again. This year, I'm trying to avoid buying nothing but video games for my boys, and my budget is too constrainted to allow for a PS3 or Wii. In case you don't already know, I have 4 boys. Ages are 13, 12, 10, and 6. The 6-year-old will also have a birthday in December, before Christmas, so that's fair game if you've got ideas. They are all video-game / computer game junkies. Right now, the oldest 3 are hooked on Runescape, and Puzzle Pirates. (I am also hooked on Puzzle Pirates. They take after their Dad. ;) )

The oldest, Joshua, is currently reading the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy. Unfortunately, he knows that I've already bought the Legends trilogy for him, so I can't use that. He's a dragon fanatic, and also likes generic fantasy. He has specifically asked for one or more of the Settlers of Catan expansions, so he's likely to get that.

My second oldest, Caleb, is just finishing "Belgarath the Sorcerer," after reading the entire Belgarion series, Mallorean series, and "Polgara the Sorceress." He's the one least into video games. Frankly, I'm at a total loss for him. He wants a laptop, but that's not going to happen. (They all want laptops. I can't afford 1, much less 4...(make that 5. I want one, too. ;) ) He likes crafts, but really only when someone else wants to help him craft. His mother likes crafts, but I don't, so that's not really the best idea, either.

My third son, Seth, hasn't really gotten bit by the reading bug, yet. He's currently learning flute, and just finished up the youth football season. He's the most outdoors oriented of the four. Last year I got him a pair of binoculars that had a built in camera, but he hasn't used it. He's begging for a Nintendo DS, but that's a little out of my price range, and as I said, I'm trying to avoid video games this year.

David is the youngest. Obviously, he's not into reading yet, either. Video games are his thing, with Sonic the Hedgehog games topping his list. He enjoy's Settlers, too, but he's a little young for it. I'd like to find something more his age range.

Suggestions? I went looking the other day, but I found nothing, other than a Marvel version of "Scene It!" which might be worth getting for one of them. Given my lack of ideas so far, I'll probably resort to video games by the time Christmans rolls around. They're in my price range (about $75 per child, plus another $50 for David's birthday). I'm debating pooling their gifts. I've done that before, buying a X-box that was for all four of them at once. If I do that, it'll be either a cheap laptop or a portable game system, PSP or DS. Then I have to find some small gifts to hand out individually.

Edit: Man... My grammar sucks some days. And I should pay more attention when I preview.

This is very personal and probably not too bright of an idea. I may get the urge to delete the entry, so I apologize in advance to any commenters if that happens. That said, I've had the urge to put this up, so here you are:

Let's start at high school graduation. At this point in my life, I wanted to be a chip designer. I have no idea why I wanted to design computer chips, but I did. I desperately wanted to get into MIT or Carnegie Melon, but I didn't. Probably my lacadaisical attitude toward grades was the problem. I also was definitely not interested in the one college that would accept me, which was href="http://www.kettering.edu/">GMI, now know as Kettering University. This was basically based on the fact that my parents wanted me to go there, it was a business college, not a technical college, and they had no internships available for me (Internships were the one decent draw GMI had.).
So, local community college it is, then. FMCC, the local community college for my community. Work at the local retail store, go to class.
Except that class was boring. I was not really interested in my Elec Tech classes, because I had learned all of what they were teaching in high school physics. I had a very good HS physics teacher. I also disliked colege physics, for the same reason. Math was fun my first semester. Calc 3, because I had taken the AP exam and tested out of Calc 1 and 2. English was acceptable, with a good English professor. That semester I failed both my Elec Tech classes and Physics, due to not completing lab assignments. I did the labs, but never wrote them up. Late in this semester I got my first girlfriend, who worked (for my mother) at the retail store.
Second semester was more of the same. I continued with ET and Physics, because at this point I had "Incomplete" in the first semester courses, and if I turned in the missing work I could have passed them. 2nd Semester English sucked, with a lousy prof. Math was half and half, one good professor and one lousy, but I managed both. Late in this semester, my girlfriend was pregnant, and we were planning a wedding.
No school that fall. Wedding plans came and went. Finally, on Sunday October 11th, Toni told me that we were getting married that Thursday, and we did. (6 year seperation aside, my 14th anniversary was a week ago Sunday.) Moved into a two bedroom rent-assisted apartment, and started working full time. My son was born the next January, and two weeks later, I quit my job. This was due to a profound lack of respect that my boss showed me, but it worked out. Two days later I was called for a factory job I had applied for, and I started working for Hasbro.
A year and a half later, I have my second son, and two months after that I lose my job at Hasbro. I had a lot of missed time at Hasbro. I hated the job. I went to a psychiatrist paid for by their employee counseling center, and found out that I have ADD. It was no contest. In September of that year, I got pnumonia. Two weeks out of work, and the antibiotics didn't work so they switched them to something stronger, and two more weeks out. The day I was supposed to report back to work, my wife got sick, and I had to stay home with the children. Hasbro told me not to bother coming back. Thus began two years of unemployment. Food Stamps and Welfare for two years. I hated it. Most of this time was spent dragging my wife (and sometimes children) to various doctors and hospitals. No one could figure out what is wrong with her, and we went through dozens of nights in the emergency room. Partway through this period, my third son was born.
We had reached the point that Welfare was not really able to support us, and my wife had given up on doctors, so I was back looking for work right after my son was born. I got a call from Kelly services, to interview for a position with the local phone company as an operator.
Or not. Actually, the phone company needed people for their long distance department. I was hired, and got to attend several weeks of training and become a "switch provisioning rep." Which basically was data entry, but there was a lot of technical work, and I learned a good deal. The job was 3 to 12, so I signed up at FMCC for morning courses.
This time around, I was taking Computer Science. No decent programming courses, all intro stuff that was on the required class list. Also, second semester English again (I had failed it before, for lack of work.) COBOL was acceptable, if also boring. Intro to Accounting to round it out. And three weeks into the semester I get moved to day shifts. I try rearrange my school schedule, but it doesn't work, and I have to quit. I did get a break, and my instructor let me test out of my CS classes.
Two years later, I'm still a "temp" employee for the phone company. I've started taking over the responsibilities of my supervisor, and I've generally shown myself to be a good worker. The company announces that my job will be moved to Dallas. My whole department is given the opportunity to move, and I'm told that if I don't take the opportunity, I'll lose my job. As a "temp" employee, I'm not in the union, see. Union workers will be transferred to other departments, but I'm SOL.
I discuss with my wife. She hates the idea, but agrees to it, since it means going permenant, and getting a raise. So we decide to do it. Meanwhile, several Dallas employees come to my office for training. The one who is supposed to learn switch provisioning is quite inept. All of the people they sent to us for training had very poor work ethics, but she was terrible. We gave her an extra two weeks of training and she still couldn't grasp the job. This woman was under the impression that she would be the supervisor of the switch group when she returned to Dallas. My boss through a fit. She told them that under no circumstance could they make this woman the supervisor, and that if they wanted a decent supervisor, it would be me. This was not taken well. In the end, the switch group was the only group that had no supervisor when we moved to Dallas. Officially, we reported directly to the VP of long distance, while we generally went to one of the other supervisors when it was needed.
The move to Dallas itself was uneventful. However, during this time, my wife changed her mind, and wanted to not move at all. She did come with me, but we argued a lot. Once we got to Dallas, she got a job at Wal-Mart, and spending more time out with friends than home. At work, the woman who didn't get the supervisor job was constantly complaining about me. Her main complaint was that I wasn't doing my share of the day to day work. This was generally true, because while I hadn't been given the supervisor position, I was given the technical (as opposed to HR) responsibilties of supervisor, and spent most of my time on those. That December, the day after Christmas, and 3 months after I moved to Dallas, my wife was attacked after work. She was hysterical, and wanted to "go home." I drove her back to NY, which put me in the middle of a blizzard. It took more than a week for me to get back to Dallas. I called work to make sure they knew what was going on. When I got back, I was told that I had one chance. If I missed any time in the next 6 months, I would be fired. Three weeks later, I was an hour late. Two days after that, I was fired.
The next several months were spent in various temporary jobs. I worked for MCI, as an assistant to the IS department doing data migration to new laptops. I worked for Sprint as the executive assistant to a VP. I worked for BankOne as a data entry clerk. Also during this time, my wife and I were effectively seperated. We lived in the same house, but she got a boyfriend and spent more time out of the house than in it. She also jumped around to several different jobs. She got an apartment in her name, which I ended up moving into when I couldn't pay my rent.
Just before September, I told her I was taking the children back to NY. I hadn't had a job offer in three weeks, and I had an offer at a retail store in NY run by the manager I had worked for when I got married. She agreed to come with us.
We lived with family for a time, and got back together. I worked, and she stayed home. She was sick most of the time again. I don't remember why or when I stopped working this time. Eventually, my fourth son was born. I was out of work for a while, looking for work but not really finding anything that could support the family. I applied several times at the phone company, but never got called.
A couple months after my son was born, I was told that the welfare program would pay for me to return to college, since I couldn't qualify for a job that would support 6 of us. Their last request was that I apply for the phone company again, since they were hiring. This time, I was hired. My wife and I had just split up, and I had moved out of our apartment.
This time I was working for the local phone department. I went through training, and was selected to join the business customer service group. A few months later, I was moved into the "offline" group. This group did special projects, and I was a troubleshooter of sorts. I bounced around a bit in my assigned position, eventually ending up as a dedicated rep for large customers in the midwest. I was also assigned as a tester for several large projects that were being done, and spent some time traveling to the corporate offices in Rochester.
I applied for several company jobs in the Rochester area. I seldom got even a call back, but I did get an interview for a business analyst position. I spoke with my wife, and she agreed that if I had to move to Rochester, I should agree to take the job, and she would come with me, to keep the kids close. I took the job, and was scheduled to start in Rochester on Jan 30th. My wife then changed her mind, and decided to stay in our home town.
I spent 6 months living in Rochester. Every weekend, I drove 3 hours each way to spend time with my children at my parents house. After 6 months, it was too much. I was months behind on my car payments, and struggling just to pay rent. I told my boss that I really couldn't do it any more. Luckily, I had proven myself in that time, and they allowed me to keep my position and work out of the local office. I still work there today.
I spend a lot of time doing things that a lot of my co-workers don't do. I have taken to using python programs and SQL queries to accomplish projects on my own that other analysts need programmers for. I know that my bosses are very happy with that. They will occasionaly make remarks about wanting my coworkers to become more technical, and use me as an example. Unfortunately, this does create some tension within the group. One co-worker in particular has mentioned perhaps finding another job instead of having to become more technical. In her words "I'm pretty sure I never said I want to be a programmer when I grow up."
I'm not sure where to go next. I want to be a programmer full-time. I don't have the money or the time to get the degree I need for that to really be pratical. I enjoy my job, but I think it's a kind of dead end careerwise.

We were asked to re-write a miracle story, but the only miracle stories I know are the biblical ones, and I don't really feel like doing those right now. On the other hand, how do you re-write your life?

How do re-write the converstion you have with your boss, when you tell him that you can't work tonight, because your wife is having a C-section?

How do re-write the day you finally broke down and told someone you love them? For the first time in your life, opening up your heart to someone who wasn't already in your family.

How do re-write the day you stood before a man, and said "I will," to all those questions that spoke about forever?

.

.

.

No, seriously. Tell me how.

Please?

I miss the miracles.

Well, this was written based on "muddy creek", and some old ideas I had bouncing around in my head. It's way too short, because I forgot my memory stick with the story on it at work all weekend, and I don't have time to work on it today at work. Enjoy.

Edward followed the wizard into the brush near the road. Steven harrumped, but said nothing.
        "We need to find a place for the night. I want to set up camp, and it'll be dark soon. I need some water for soup."
        "Can't you just create water with your magic?" Edward asked.
        "No. Now get over here. I hear water back there. It should be as good a place as any. Lead the mule."
        Edward pulled the mules lead, and miraculously, it followed him. The mule was much better behaved than the ones back home on the farm. Which, was more than could be said for Steven.
        "How do you expect me to ride into that?" he yelled to the disappearing figureof the wizard.
        " I don't. Get down and lead the horse. Just like he's leading the mule. It'd do you good to walk on your own two feet for a change."
        Grumbling, Steven dismounted. After grabbing the horse's lead, he roughly pushed past Edward, heading in the direction of the wiazard's voice. Edward followed behind. Soon, they reached a clearing beside a muddy creek.
        "Don't bother to tie him off. He knows better than to wander off. I hope the same is true of you. What's your name again?"
        "Edward, sir."
        "Right. Well then, Edward, I am Lorien. You may call me sir, Master Lorien, or just master, if you prefer. I'm not really the one who is to teach you this stuff, but I see no point in leaving you ignorant for the length of our travel. Go gather some firewood, and we'll talk about it over dinner. Steven, go fill this pot from the creek." As he said this, Master Lorien was gathering rocks to produce a fire ring, and removing various items from his pack.
        "Yes, sir, Master Lorien."
        Edward left the clearing, glad to have a purpose that he understood. As he gathered fallen limbs, he considered his position.
        I can't run away. They'd just find me. Likely they'd take back the guild price from Da, too. Besides, the Huntsmen wouldn't take me now. I'm sure Daryl's heard what happened, and he bring me back here himself.
        By the time he had returned, Master Lorien had set up a cookstand over the fire ring, and was slicing roots into the pot. Steven had taken off the mare's saddle, and was pulling items from his pack.
        "There you are... Bring some over here. That's right." As Edward dropped a few limbs into the ring, a look of concentration came over Lorien's face. A second later, the wood burst into flame, startling the boy. "Oh," exclamed the wizard, "Sorry about that. I suppose I should have warned you. Well, anyway, I'll have some soup ready in a few minutes."
        "Now then, you'll recall that I told you that I can't just create water. Yes?"
        Edward nodded. Steven looked on from the other side of the fire, with a faint look of contempt on his face.
        "You see, magic is a lot like water. You can use magic in a lot of different ways, and you need some just to nourish you and keep you strong. But... You have to have the magic to do it. It has to be there. And to create somethign, there has to be a lot of it. Starting the fire is simple. YOu find the magic, you pull it in, and you turn it into heat. Heat is one of the easiest things to do. Well, for me anyway. Some people have different skills, but heat is easy for most. Where was I?"
        Edward just stared at him, confused.

I'm looking for some recommendations for reading material. I read a lot. I get depressed and anxious when I don't have reading material available. I'm looking to build up a good list of books that I can order from the inter-library loan to keep myself supplied.

I generally read science fiction and fantasy. I also read non-fiction, but not as much. In non-fiction, I tend towards science and technology as well. I read plenty of programming manuals, but here I'm really looking for more pleasurable suggestions. Technical non-fiction with a good story line would work (I'm thinking of "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Clifford Stoll). Popular science books like GEB or "A Brief History of Time" are good, too. I occasionally branch out to military fiction, mostly when it's got a technological side to it as well.

Recently, I've been looking to read some of the older sci-fi classics. I'm reading a Phillip K. Dick novel right now. Luckily, when I was growing up, the local libraries were not well stocked with science fiction. I exhausted their supply (which is not much recovered, even now), but I did not exhaust all of the old masters. I'm also interested in new stuff, of course.

So... What have you read that you liked, and what would you suggest?

I should know better, but I tried to have a discussion on another site today, and got accused of poor basic math skills. Being generally thick skinned, I shot right back, but the other person insisted on being wrong. Can someone answer a question for me?

So imagine that each person has three kids on average.

Given this, would anyone care to tell me how many siblings an average child has? Assume for the moment all children survive.

• Being alone does not mean being lonely.
  But sometimes it does.
• Being with other people does not mean not being lonely.
  But sometimes it does.
• Being a parent does not mean you won't be treated like a child.
• Loving someone does not mean you are loved.
• Life is pain. When the pain stops, you better check your pulse.

Apologies for the depressive mood. Sometimes I think I'm an optomist in a pessimist's world. Other times, I'm not an optomist.

Wow... Two journals in two days. That's unusual for me. FYI, Memtest confirmed that I've got bad memory sticks, and of course... I'm just outside the 30-day return window. So, $70 down the drain, and I've got to scrape it up again to get a stable machine. It'll be a few weeks.

Anyway... POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. This is apparently a new diagnosis out there amoung cardiogists. Those who've read my journals far enough back will know that my wife has been sick for almost 12 years. During that time, she's been variously diagnosed with a ton of problems, both mental and physical. None of the treatments for said problems have ever provided her any relief. Looking at various web sites describing POTS, many of the symptoms match what my wife has been complaining about this entire time.

We brought some printouts to her cardiologist, to see if this was quackery, or an actual possibility. After several weeks, my wife was getting very upset that perhaps it was quackery, but her doctor called her last night. He spent a lot of time researching POTS, because the existing literature is pretty scarce. On the other hand, it's not quackery, in his opinion, which is encouraging. At this point, there's no really effective known treatment, but even a provable diagnosis is a step forward.

I've noticed before that some of the zoo have health problems with symptoms in common with my wife. If that includes irregular heartbeats, I encourage you to take a look at some of the POTS information, and talk to your cardiologist, if it sounds likely.

Google Search for POTS

OK, so fate and finances have determined that I won't be building myself a new PC anytime soon. What I did do is get myself some new memory, replacing my 2 256M PC2100 chips with 2 512M PC2100 chips. I would have gone higher, but my current motherboard tops out at 1G. Now for the weirdness:
 

I leave my PC on for hours and even days at a time. My habit is to turn it off while I'm at work, but it stays on all night, and sometimes is left on during the day for Azureus to do its thing (Azureus is a Bittorrent client). A week ago, I came home one night to find that Azureus had crashed. Everything else worked, but trying to restart the Azureus failed, so I rebooted the PC.

Or tried to, anyway. It failed to reboot. Before reaching the pretty blue Windows XP screen, it would flash a blue screen error message, and immediately reboot, so I couldn't read the error. Safe mode, in all its various flavors, did the same. I tried booting from my XP CD, hoping that I could get Recovery console to work. I'd get the Windows Setup screen, and it would load for a while, and then give me a page fault error.

Looking on the internet, I suspected some hardware failure. I disconnected everything except my primary harddrive, CPU, and memory, but no change. I removed one of my new memory chips, and it booted, ran an automatic chkdsk, and worked. After replacing everything except my modem and floppy drive, neither of which I use, it still worked.

Last night I was awoken by the sound of my PC repeatedly re-booting. It had apparently shut down, and could not get back into Windows. Symptoms the same as before. This time, I removed my secondary IDE cable and second memory stick only. Reboot, chkdsk, and everything seems fine again. I was getting ready for work though, so I haven't really tested it yet.

Opinions? I suspect my new memory may be bad, but I thought memory problems were either always bad, or very erratic. I don't understand why I couldn't even boot from a CD, unless the memory is totally worthless. But... if the memory is that bad, why does it work fine after the chkdsk has completed, at least for a while? Maybe it's a hard drive that's likely to die soon, but why would removing one stick of memory and a couple optical drives fix that enough that it can get to chkdsk, when nothing else does? I'm stumped, but I really need to figure out what the problem is so that I don't lose this PC.

[Edit] - Looks like RAM issues is the consensus. I've got a Memtest CD around somewhere, so I'll run that tonight. Thank You, everyone.

I'm hoping to put together a new PC. I'm hoping to build it myself, mostly because I want to have an upgrade path available, and I hate trying to fit my big hands into those tiny little cases you get from Dell and HP. I'm am, however, more interested in power than upgradability, so if I get a big increase in power for my cash, I could conceivably go with a pre-built system.
 

What I'd really like to find is a good website that can help me plan the system. I don't follow this stuff closely enough to know all the ins and outs of compatibility. I know I need a motherboard that matches my chosen CPU. I know I need to match my video card and memory to my motherboard. I need a case that will fit all that, and either has a power supply beefy enough to run it all, or get myself a seperate power supply.

My big problem is that every time I try this, I'll pick a CPU, then find that motherboards to match it are too expensive, so I'll pick a motherboard, and then not be able to find a CPU. I need help mapping it all out. Even a good guide on how to pick what I want without getting lost in circular dependencies would help out.

So. Any suggestions: Web site, systems, or just general hardware? I prefer AMD to Intel, but mostly because of price/performance ratios. I've got a 250GB IDE HD I'll be moving over, but nothing else that won't be new. I want to be able to experiment with Linux without losing my ability to surf the web, but that's way down on my list of priorities, and WinXP will be the primary OS.

This will not be a political rant. We've got a good showing of political journals in the zoo, and I'm not one of them. But I did find this article interesting, and while not terribly surprising, it does make you think. Gives more support to my personal conviction that what we really need is a Constitutional Convention.

David Brin's American Democracy: More Fragile Than We Think

As I've mentioned twice in comments now, I participated in the 2-question quiz. Unfortunately, it did me no good. While I actually answered "BZ", I was pretty much flipping a coin between B and C, and again between X and Z.

I think I know why, though. And it's not just because a 2 question test is so uselessly general as to be no more than a game. In fact, it has a lot to do with who I am, as opposed to who I think I am.

My self-image is of a very shy man. The guy who doesn't talk much in groups, and never joins in the office gossip. He has few, if any, friends; and doesn't make new ones easily. He spends more time reading than talking to people. He loves his wife, and can't imagine living without her, even though she doesn't love him.

And most of that was true, as recently as 5 years ago. Maybe even 3 years ago. But that guy wouldn't be writing a journal on slashdot. He'd be pretty unlikely to even post a comment that wasn't anonymous. I'm not that guy anymore. There are a lot of old pieces of him still in here. And the biggest piece that is still hanging around is that image. I don't have a lot of friends, but I'm a lot closer to even my acquaintances than that guy ever was. And I've been living seperate from my wife that I can now accept it, even if I can't want it. And I'm happy not being that guy any more. I was happy being him, but I'm glad I'm not him now. I think it's good for me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that guy could have never gotten the job I've got, and it's the best job I've ever had.

So... Who are you? More to the point, who do you think of yourself as, and how is that different than who you really are every day? Are you happy about the difference? Do you want to be more like your self-image, or less?

I saw this on SciScoop today. Didn't see any mention of it on the /. front page. I know there are at least a few people in the zoo dealing with MS, so I thought I'd share.