Well, the CT scan showed that the spleen is about twice the size that it should be, so at this point we're pretty sure that it's coming out. I'm OK with it, and once I convinced Mom that I would be better for it, she seemed to be OK with it too. I think it was the doctor telling her that there could be leukemic cells hiding in the spleen that finally convinced her that removing the spleen was OK.
I think I might see if I can't get a Droid with a data plan before I go into the hospital. Hopefully by then my copy of Baldur's Gate will have arrived, and hopefully it will work with PlayOnLinux on my laptop. And who knows, maybe I'll even do some work while I'm in the hospital this time.
There is some good news: I only have to see the doctor once next week (instead of the previous twice-a-week). That means I get to go into work four days instead of three. Oh, except the University is closed Monday. As much as I shouldn't take the time off, maybe I will anyway to spend the day with Ted. That would be nice.
After my doctor's visit today, I was going to try to get our car inspected for emissions and get a prescription filled. On the way to the emissions inspection station, Ted discovered that if the Check Engine light is on, you fail automatically, so I'll have to take the car in to the mechanic again tomorrow and hopefully he can fix that before the emissions inspection deadline on the 7th.
Then I went to CVS to get my prescription filled. First, they had a lot of trouble verifying the prescription. Then when they did, they didn't have the generic version of the drug (tacrolimus). She gave me two pills of the brand name drug for free and told me to come back tomorrow after they ordered the generic stuff. It's only going to be $5 with my prescription coverage (as opposed to the $200 it was before)! I don't understand how health insurance/health care works.
Finally, Ted just got the unfortunate news that the NSA will not be hiring him, so pretty soon he'll be unemployed. If you or anyone you know is looking to hire a math Ph.D., let me know.
Showing posts with label Ted. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ted. Show all posts
Thursday, July 01, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
In and Out
It's been a little while since I've written, because I've been too busy enjoying life outside of the hospital. My chances of surviving the bone marrow transplant are good -- we think 70% -- but it's not a sure thing, so I've decided that I should just enjoy myself with the time I have until the transplant. And I have been enjoying it, just being at home with Ted, relaxing, watching TV, playing games.
In terms of my health, though, things could be a bit better. I knew when I got out of the hospital last Wednesday that my immune system was very weak, so I tried to be careful. I wear a mask when out in public. I sanitize my hands constantly. It turns out that germs are really hard to avoid, and our bodies do a really good job of fighting them!
That brings us to this past Wednesday. I went in for my infusion for the day, and told them that my throat was a little sore, so they prescribed some antibiotics. Later that night, I had chills. I called the cancer center, and they told me to take my temperature. It was 101.9 F at that point, though three hours earlier it had been 98.3 F. I clearly had an infection, and no way to fight it, so Ted and I left immediately for the hospital.
Ted doesn't like driving; in fact, neither do I. Since we don't have a car, we were fortunate that some of our friends were out of town and that we were borrowing theirs. Ted overcame his reluctance to drive to take me up to the hospital, and we made it there without any problems. By the time we were there, though, I was really out of it.
Things happened pretty fast. They covered me with a heated blanket, and gave me some antibiotics. My fever was pretty high at some point; they weren't constantly taking my temperature, but I could feel it. At some point during the night things must have turned around, because I woke up without a fever the next morning. In fact, I felt pretty good that morning, though I got worse as the day went on. But the important thing was that I was safe.
Over the next few days I learned that it was either a bacterial or fungal pneumonia and they were treating both types just to be sure. I had a CT scan of my chest done, which showed some nodules that made them think it was probably fungal, but I hadn't been given any antifungal medication before I started to feel better. In the end, we're not exactly sure what it was, but the important thing is that it has been treated. During my stay I had some problems with low blood pressure early on, but that went away as they infused me with blood and saline. They also took the opportunity while I was there to do another bone marrow biopsy, which hurt a bit more than the first one though only briefly; I'm not sure what Dr. Rapoport is looking for from the biopsy, but he'll have the results when I see him on Thursday and hopefully it will give us more information at least. Then finally last night, Friday night, I was discharged.
Between my new medicine and the medicine they gave me on Wednesday, I ended up having to shell out more than $500 for prescriptions. Two medications in particular were more than $200: moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin, both antibiotics. All told, I now have twelve pill bottles which contain eight drugs. I still take seven of those, the only exception being a temporary stop on dasatinib, a.k.a. Sprycel, for reasons I'll explain in a bit. That leaves me on the following seven medications: acyclovir (antiviral), allopurinol (prevents gout), amoxicillin (antibiotic), moxifloxacin (antibiotic), ciprofloxacin (antibiotic), pantoprazole (prophylactic gastro-intestinal something or other), and voriconazole (antifungal).
It's really this last drug that interests me so much: voriconazole. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you'd see that as a side effect it can cause "visual disturbances" that occur within half an hour of taking it and last for about 30 minutes. My nurses said that I might notice some changes in my perception of color. I only started taking the voriconazole on Thursday, and I didn't notice anything too odd while I was in the hospital. When my mom was driving me home, everything looked way too yellow; in fact, when I got to the apartment I was kind of weirded out by the fact that my blue apartment door looked green. My TV at home looked really strange, like each individual pixel was shimmering. I figured this was pretty standard hallucination stuff.
Then I went to bed last night, and had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep. I would see things even with my eyes closed, but they were most vivid when I stared at the plain white ceiling. It was really a lot like when you stare at something that's red for a long time, and then look at something white and see the after-image of the same thing in green. Only now, I just had a constant supply of changing after-images.
I could snap myself out of it temporarily, but it would start back up again, and it always started in the same place. It started with words, thousands of words, some moving left and some moving right at about the same speed, of varying sizes and transparency. Every time I tried to read them, but it was almost impossible, like chasing an after-image when the original image wasn't in the center of your vision. I picked up a few words here and there. I remember I saw "time" multiple times. I don't remember the other words, but they were all unremarkable. As I would try to focus on the words to try to read them, the image would gradually change, as if I were zooming out to see that the words were just some part of some larger geometric pattern. Then came a bunch of psychedelic colors and scenes a la 2001, but not quite as vivid; again, more like what the after-image of the trip in 2001 would look like if you could view it in real time. Then my vision would return to normal for a second, as if to tell me that the show was about to start. And start it did.
It felt like I was dreaming, but I was awake. It was almost like the end of a dream, when you're just about to wake up, and your consciousness recognizes the dream but wants to give it a conclusion. You still believe in the dream, but you're aware of what's happening and you can steer the dream to the point of fantasy. It was almost like that in the sense that I had both consciousness and vivid perception, but I certainly was not in control of the things it showed me. And it showed me many things, some fantastical and some mundane, but all of them in amazing detail. I remember an old black man sitting with two of his friends, smiling in contentment. I remember a phoenix flying away from a group of anime adventurers who were protecting themselves with a magical barrier. I remember an old photograph with two men and a woman in it. I remember seeing a young boy throw a magical frisbee into the sky as his entire village looked on in awe, only to chase it up a mountain and discover a golem at the top. And these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Honestly, it's no wonder that a lot of artists turn to hallucinogens for inspiration, because what I saw last night was amazing and beautiful. It was a fantastic experience, which is why I'm doing my best to share it with any readers out there. But ultimately it is just fantasy. Now that the hallucinations are gone, I'm back to wondering about my health and what long term effects, physical and mental, these drugs will have. Right now, I feel mostly healthy and mostly sane, so I'm going to count that in the win column.
I am concerned about one thing, though. My blood counts are low, and they don't seem to be recovering like they should. I don't really know what this means, but I do know that it's probably a bad sign when the doctors don't know what's going on. This is why I've been told to stop taking the dasatinib. I suspect the bone marrow biopsy will shed more light on this particular problem, and I'm not sure that this problem even affects the bone marrow transplant at all, so until I know more we'll just have to wait and see. If all goes according to plan, the bone marrow transplant will happen on or around February 10th.
In terms of my health, though, things could be a bit better. I knew when I got out of the hospital last Wednesday that my immune system was very weak, so I tried to be careful. I wear a mask when out in public. I sanitize my hands constantly. It turns out that germs are really hard to avoid, and our bodies do a really good job of fighting them!
That brings us to this past Wednesday. I went in for my infusion for the day, and told them that my throat was a little sore, so they prescribed some antibiotics. Later that night, I had chills. I called the cancer center, and they told me to take my temperature. It was 101.9 F at that point, though three hours earlier it had been 98.3 F. I clearly had an infection, and no way to fight it, so Ted and I left immediately for the hospital.
Ted doesn't like driving; in fact, neither do I. Since we don't have a car, we were fortunate that some of our friends were out of town and that we were borrowing theirs. Ted overcame his reluctance to drive to take me up to the hospital, and we made it there without any problems. By the time we were there, though, I was really out of it.
Things happened pretty fast. They covered me with a heated blanket, and gave me some antibiotics. My fever was pretty high at some point; they weren't constantly taking my temperature, but I could feel it. At some point during the night things must have turned around, because I woke up without a fever the next morning. In fact, I felt pretty good that morning, though I got worse as the day went on. But the important thing was that I was safe.
Over the next few days I learned that it was either a bacterial or fungal pneumonia and they were treating both types just to be sure. I had a CT scan of my chest done, which showed some nodules that made them think it was probably fungal, but I hadn't been given any antifungal medication before I started to feel better. In the end, we're not exactly sure what it was, but the important thing is that it has been treated. During my stay I had some problems with low blood pressure early on, but that went away as they infused me with blood and saline. They also took the opportunity while I was there to do another bone marrow biopsy, which hurt a bit more than the first one though only briefly; I'm not sure what Dr. Rapoport is looking for from the biopsy, but he'll have the results when I see him on Thursday and hopefully it will give us more information at least. Then finally last night, Friday night, I was discharged.
Between my new medicine and the medicine they gave me on Wednesday, I ended up having to shell out more than $500 for prescriptions. Two medications in particular were more than $200: moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin, both antibiotics. All told, I now have twelve pill bottles which contain eight drugs. I still take seven of those, the only exception being a temporary stop on dasatinib, a.k.a. Sprycel, for reasons I'll explain in a bit. That leaves me on the following seven medications: acyclovir (antiviral), allopurinol (prevents gout), amoxicillin (antibiotic), moxifloxacin (antibiotic), ciprofloxacin (antibiotic), pantoprazole (prophylactic gastro-intestinal something or other), and voriconazole (antifungal).
It's really this last drug that interests me so much: voriconazole. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you'd see that as a side effect it can cause "visual disturbances" that occur within half an hour of taking it and last for about 30 minutes. My nurses said that I might notice some changes in my perception of color. I only started taking the voriconazole on Thursday, and I didn't notice anything too odd while I was in the hospital. When my mom was driving me home, everything looked way too yellow; in fact, when I got to the apartment I was kind of weirded out by the fact that my blue apartment door looked green. My TV at home looked really strange, like each individual pixel was shimmering. I figured this was pretty standard hallucination stuff.
Then I went to bed last night, and had quite a bit of trouble falling asleep. I would see things even with my eyes closed, but they were most vivid when I stared at the plain white ceiling. It was really a lot like when you stare at something that's red for a long time, and then look at something white and see the after-image of the same thing in green. Only now, I just had a constant supply of changing after-images.
I could snap myself out of it temporarily, but it would start back up again, and it always started in the same place. It started with words, thousands of words, some moving left and some moving right at about the same speed, of varying sizes and transparency. Every time I tried to read them, but it was almost impossible, like chasing an after-image when the original image wasn't in the center of your vision. I picked up a few words here and there. I remember I saw "time" multiple times. I don't remember the other words, but they were all unremarkable. As I would try to focus on the words to try to read them, the image would gradually change, as if I were zooming out to see that the words were just some part of some larger geometric pattern. Then came a bunch of psychedelic colors and scenes a la 2001, but not quite as vivid; again, more like what the after-image of the trip in 2001 would look like if you could view it in real time. Then my vision would return to normal for a second, as if to tell me that the show was about to start. And start it did.
It felt like I was dreaming, but I was awake. It was almost like the end of a dream, when you're just about to wake up, and your consciousness recognizes the dream but wants to give it a conclusion. You still believe in the dream, but you're aware of what's happening and you can steer the dream to the point of fantasy. It was almost like that in the sense that I had both consciousness and vivid perception, but I certainly was not in control of the things it showed me. And it showed me many things, some fantastical and some mundane, but all of them in amazing detail. I remember an old black man sitting with two of his friends, smiling in contentment. I remember a phoenix flying away from a group of anime adventurers who were protecting themselves with a magical barrier. I remember an old photograph with two men and a woman in it. I remember seeing a young boy throw a magical frisbee into the sky as his entire village looked on in awe, only to chase it up a mountain and discover a golem at the top. And these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Honestly, it's no wonder that a lot of artists turn to hallucinogens for inspiration, because what I saw last night was amazing and beautiful. It was a fantastic experience, which is why I'm doing my best to share it with any readers out there. But ultimately it is just fantasy. Now that the hallucinations are gone, I'm back to wondering about my health and what long term effects, physical and mental, these drugs will have. Right now, I feel mostly healthy and mostly sane, so I'm going to count that in the win column.
I am concerned about one thing, though. My blood counts are low, and they don't seem to be recovering like they should. I don't really know what this means, but I do know that it's probably a bad sign when the doctors don't know what's going on. This is why I've been told to stop taking the dasatinib. I suspect the bone marrow biopsy will shed more light on this particular problem, and I'm not sure that this problem even affects the bone marrow transplant at all, so until I know more we'll just have to wait and see. If all goes according to plan, the bone marrow transplant will happen on or around February 10th.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Having trouble
Lately I've been having side effects. Some are just physical, so they're not too bad. However, others are mental, and they're beginning to worry me. I'll explain.
The physical side effects pretty much started on Sunday when, after a bit of dehydration caused by the disruption of Thanksgiving, I got gout again. It wasn't quite as bad as last time, but it was in the other foot. I also didn't have any allopurinol, a problem I have since remedied, since it is supposed to help with the gout. I drank a lot of water to clear the gout up, perhaps too much at once, which nearly led me to throw up after taking my Gleevec with lunch. Fortunately I was also given nausea medicine, which helped me keep it down.
The gout naturally cleared up during my sleep, but the following day and today as well I was left with lingering joint pain in my left elbow, in the bottom of both of my knees, in my ankles, and of course my toes. Oddly, the hardest thing for me right now is to walk down stairs; it really hurts my right leg whenever I have to bend my foot too far. I'm hoping it feels better soon, because I want to be able to get back to the gym. This stuff always feels better after I work out.
Finally, on the physical side (though not really side effect related), last night was the end of Movember. Before shaving, I tried to dye my mo a nice bright blue. It almost worked, too, except I was a bit careless and it started to dye my skin, too. Frantically I scrubbed it all off and immediately shaved my mo. Unfortunately, I had to scrub really hard, and now have several torn pimples and what looks like rug burn on my chin. At least the dye is gone.
So basically, these physical impediments are distracting, but manageable. Right now, I am far more concerned with the mental effects.
I've been noticing them for a while actually --- pre-diagnosis, even, though things have gotten far worse since the diagnosis (which could be coincident with Gleevec, my changing attitude towards life, or any number of other factors). It's really hard to put my finger on what I'm feeling right now, but I will try. I have to try. I'll start from the beginning.
I was smart. I was really smart. I always tried to be humble about it, recognizing that it was just a coincidence that I had a better natural capacity for learning, reasoning, and problem solving than most. But really I enjoyed being smart, and it was the single biggest motivation for continuing my studies in grad school. As long as I had this ability, it would be a waste not to use it in the pursuit of knowledge. That was my purpose in life. Admittedly, as an existentialist, the pursuit of knowledge didn't have any more intrinsic meaning than anything else, but it's what I chose to value above everything else.
After meandering for several years through grad school trying to catch up to everyone else who had already figured out how the research world works, it finally clicked with me about two years ago. Not long after that, I started to have significant success, culminating with Persona in Sigcomm this year. As much as I want to take credit for that, though, Bender deserves a lot of credit for that paper too, and really Bobby and Neil deserve the most. Without them, the paper would have been a mess. It's hard to write coherently when your thoughts are a mess.
About a year and a half ago, I noticed my coherence slipping. It was subtle though, for a very long time. I was able to function, and I readily associated my deteriorating ability with the nature of research; when you don't exercise your knowledge, it's easy to forget it, and research is typically about a lot more than just programming. During the summer, as I got closer and closer to needing to present Persona, I got very agitated and terrified, because I felt like a fraud. I was hanging on by a thread, completely unsure of myself most of the time. Fortunately, I do still have my lucid moments, and I think stress can trigger them, so I think that I was able to pull off the presentation fairly well. But in reality, something was wrong, and I knew it; I just didn't know what to do about it. I don't know if Neil would even remember this, or even if I made myself clear to him at the time, but I tried to confide in him how I'm feeling. I don't think either of us could have predicted what was to come.
Now I know what has been wrong with me all this time, and I'm finally putting pieces together. I don't know exactly what's wrong --- I mean, I don't know the mechanism by which this is happening --- but certain evidence has made my condition clear. I will try to explain the signs I've observed, along with the possible causes I can identify, an what I intend to do about it.
Lately my research has consisted of three tasks. The first is, well, research: reading existing work to understand the context in which I'm working and to understand the problems that have and haven't been solved already. The second is vision: identifying a problem and sketching a rough solution, which some would say is the hardest part of research, though I would say it's the easiest. The third is execution: actually nailing down the details of the solution, putting forth the effort to engineer everything and validating the solution.
Vision I can handle. Thinking abstractly in broad terms is not actually that hard for me at the moment, I think because it's more about brainstorming and just coming up with ideas. On the other hand, researching related work and actually executing the details of a solution both require structure; to both understand and generate a technical solution, you need to closely follow the underlying reasoning to that solution, from one step to next, in a rigid order. It has become obvious to me that my capacity to do this is significantly diminished. It takes me an entire day --- sometimes longer --- to read a technical paper (although I was able to knock out The Gathering Storm fairly quickly, so light reading is still on the menu). Today really hit home, when I seriously tried to tackle a program for the first time since my diagnosis. I can still do it, but it takes me a very long time to do even the simplest of tasks. I used to be able to keep the majority of a program in my head, to see the connections between variables, functions, structures, classes, etc., but now I can barely remember the variables in the scope of a single function once I look away from them. I just don't know what to do. My ability to do my job is slipping away.
There are a few ways to explain this. The first is that I'm distracted. My physical pain is sometimes hard to ignore, and those distractions can disrupt my thought process. Once my train of thought is derailed, it's easy to start surfing the Internet or do something else unproductive instead of focusing on what I'm doing. But I've noticed that my behavior when surfing the Internet is changing too! I will check the same sites over and over, expecting new content even though I know there will be nothing there. I will read the same news story 3 or 4 times, expecting there to be something new that I missed before. I was not like this before, and I don't know why it's happening.
So, while I'd like to just chalk this up to distraction, I think that the distraction is just another side effect. Others claim that Gleevec can create a kind of fog, which I can attest to. Some examples: I was certain I ordered a #6 at Roy Rogers the other day but Ted and my mom agreed with the cashier that I asked for a #2, I often completely miss something Ted says and require that he repeat it 3 or 4 times before it actually sticks with me (especially when playing a video game, which seems to be the one thing I can still focus on), and one day I was talking to Neil about Sigcomm, and I just completely lost myself in the middle of a sentence, having no idea what I said before or what I was going to say next. It's been a real challenge, and when I get confused like that there's no covering it up. I don't want my performance to suffer, but I don't think it's in my control anymore unfortunately. I can only do my best, and my best may not be good enough anymore.
Mostly, I'd like to clarify what these people mean by a Gleevec "fog". My thoughts used to have connections and structure. I firmly believe that some of the connections in my brain behave like common computer science structures as a tree, or a graph, or a linked list, or a hash map; because of this structure it is easy to think logically, to follow arguments, and to see patterns. One of the most insightful things my father has ever said was that it makes sense that I like computers because I think like one. I don't even know if he realizes how much of a compliment that was in my mind; for all I know he might have meant it as an insult! Maybe I do still think like a computer, but right now I feel as if someone just randomly reassigned all of my pointers, and I'm getting segmentation faults everywhere.
So is it because of Gleevec? Did my super-thick blood do permanent damage to my brain while I was stuffed to the brim with white blood cells? I don't know. I'm a scientist, but I'm not a doctor. But what does it mean?
I always thought I would stay in research, probably in the realm of academia. Now I'm just not so sure. How can I go on to academia if I'll continue to suffer from this debilitating impairment to my thought process? And if I don't go on to do more research, what more will I do? It's what I'm best at, and I'm not really qualified for anything else that I would consider interesting or significant. And if I don't go into academia, it will be a huge disappointment, both to Bobby and to myself. I just don't see it happening. What can I do? Something has to change. Would I be content with just raising children while Ted worked? Would Ted be content with that? Could I actually handle raising children, or would I be forgetful and neglectful with them, too? I'm distracted with so many questions, and I just don't have the answers.
I'll just have to think about it some more. Here's hoping I can.
The physical side effects pretty much started on Sunday when, after a bit of dehydration caused by the disruption of Thanksgiving, I got gout again. It wasn't quite as bad as last time, but it was in the other foot. I also didn't have any allopurinol, a problem I have since remedied, since it is supposed to help with the gout. I drank a lot of water to clear the gout up, perhaps too much at once, which nearly led me to throw up after taking my Gleevec with lunch. Fortunately I was also given nausea medicine, which helped me keep it down.
The gout naturally cleared up during my sleep, but the following day and today as well I was left with lingering joint pain in my left elbow, in the bottom of both of my knees, in my ankles, and of course my toes. Oddly, the hardest thing for me right now is to walk down stairs; it really hurts my right leg whenever I have to bend my foot too far. I'm hoping it feels better soon, because I want to be able to get back to the gym. This stuff always feels better after I work out.
Finally, on the physical side (though not really side effect related), last night was the end of Movember. Before shaving, I tried to dye my mo a nice bright blue. It almost worked, too, except I was a bit careless and it started to dye my skin, too. Frantically I scrubbed it all off and immediately shaved my mo. Unfortunately, I had to scrub really hard, and now have several torn pimples and what looks like rug burn on my chin. At least the dye is gone.
So basically, these physical impediments are distracting, but manageable. Right now, I am far more concerned with the mental effects.
I've been noticing them for a while actually --- pre-diagnosis, even, though things have gotten far worse since the diagnosis (which could be coincident with Gleevec, my changing attitude towards life, or any number of other factors). It's really hard to put my finger on what I'm feeling right now, but I will try. I have to try. I'll start from the beginning.
I was smart. I was really smart. I always tried to be humble about it, recognizing that it was just a coincidence that I had a better natural capacity for learning, reasoning, and problem solving than most. But really I enjoyed being smart, and it was the single biggest motivation for continuing my studies in grad school. As long as I had this ability, it would be a waste not to use it in the pursuit of knowledge. That was my purpose in life. Admittedly, as an existentialist, the pursuit of knowledge didn't have any more intrinsic meaning than anything else, but it's what I chose to value above everything else.
After meandering for several years through grad school trying to catch up to everyone else who had already figured out how the research world works, it finally clicked with me about two years ago. Not long after that, I started to have significant success, culminating with Persona in Sigcomm this year. As much as I want to take credit for that, though, Bender deserves a lot of credit for that paper too, and really Bobby and Neil deserve the most. Without them, the paper would have been a mess. It's hard to write coherently when your thoughts are a mess.
About a year and a half ago, I noticed my coherence slipping. It was subtle though, for a very long time. I was able to function, and I readily associated my deteriorating ability with the nature of research; when you don't exercise your knowledge, it's easy to forget it, and research is typically about a lot more than just programming. During the summer, as I got closer and closer to needing to present Persona, I got very agitated and terrified, because I felt like a fraud. I was hanging on by a thread, completely unsure of myself most of the time. Fortunately, I do still have my lucid moments, and I think stress can trigger them, so I think that I was able to pull off the presentation fairly well. But in reality, something was wrong, and I knew it; I just didn't know what to do about it. I don't know if Neil would even remember this, or even if I made myself clear to him at the time, but I tried to confide in him how I'm feeling. I don't think either of us could have predicted what was to come.
Now I know what has been wrong with me all this time, and I'm finally putting pieces together. I don't know exactly what's wrong --- I mean, I don't know the mechanism by which this is happening --- but certain evidence has made my condition clear. I will try to explain the signs I've observed, along with the possible causes I can identify, an what I intend to do about it.
Lately my research has consisted of three tasks. The first is, well, research: reading existing work to understand the context in which I'm working and to understand the problems that have and haven't been solved already. The second is vision: identifying a problem and sketching a rough solution, which some would say is the hardest part of research, though I would say it's the easiest. The third is execution: actually nailing down the details of the solution, putting forth the effort to engineer everything and validating the solution.
Vision I can handle. Thinking abstractly in broad terms is not actually that hard for me at the moment, I think because it's more about brainstorming and just coming up with ideas. On the other hand, researching related work and actually executing the details of a solution both require structure; to both understand and generate a technical solution, you need to closely follow the underlying reasoning to that solution, from one step to next, in a rigid order. It has become obvious to me that my capacity to do this is significantly diminished. It takes me an entire day --- sometimes longer --- to read a technical paper (although I was able to knock out The Gathering Storm fairly quickly, so light reading is still on the menu). Today really hit home, when I seriously tried to tackle a program for the first time since my diagnosis. I can still do it, but it takes me a very long time to do even the simplest of tasks. I used to be able to keep the majority of a program in my head, to see the connections between variables, functions, structures, classes, etc., but now I can barely remember the variables in the scope of a single function once I look away from them. I just don't know what to do. My ability to do my job is slipping away.
There are a few ways to explain this. The first is that I'm distracted. My physical pain is sometimes hard to ignore, and those distractions can disrupt my thought process. Once my train of thought is derailed, it's easy to start surfing the Internet or do something else unproductive instead of focusing on what I'm doing. But I've noticed that my behavior when surfing the Internet is changing too! I will check the same sites over and over, expecting new content even though I know there will be nothing there. I will read the same news story 3 or 4 times, expecting there to be something new that I missed before. I was not like this before, and I don't know why it's happening.
So, while I'd like to just chalk this up to distraction, I think that the distraction is just another side effect. Others claim that Gleevec can create a kind of fog, which I can attest to. Some examples: I was certain I ordered a #6 at Roy Rogers the other day but Ted and my mom agreed with the cashier that I asked for a #2, I often completely miss something Ted says and require that he repeat it 3 or 4 times before it actually sticks with me (especially when playing a video game, which seems to be the one thing I can still focus on), and one day I was talking to Neil about Sigcomm, and I just completely lost myself in the middle of a sentence, having no idea what I said before or what I was going to say next. It's been a real challenge, and when I get confused like that there's no covering it up. I don't want my performance to suffer, but I don't think it's in my control anymore unfortunately. I can only do my best, and my best may not be good enough anymore.
Mostly, I'd like to clarify what these people mean by a Gleevec "fog". My thoughts used to have connections and structure. I firmly believe that some of the connections in my brain behave like common computer science structures as a tree, or a graph, or a linked list, or a hash map; because of this structure it is easy to think logically, to follow arguments, and to see patterns. One of the most insightful things my father has ever said was that it makes sense that I like computers because I think like one. I don't even know if he realizes how much of a compliment that was in my mind; for all I know he might have meant it as an insult! Maybe I do still think like a computer, but right now I feel as if someone just randomly reassigned all of my pointers, and I'm getting segmentation faults everywhere.
So is it because of Gleevec? Did my super-thick blood do permanent damage to my brain while I was stuffed to the brim with white blood cells? I don't know. I'm a scientist, but I'm not a doctor. But what does it mean?
I always thought I would stay in research, probably in the realm of academia. Now I'm just not so sure. How can I go on to academia if I'll continue to suffer from this debilitating impairment to my thought process? And if I don't go on to do more research, what more will I do? It's what I'm best at, and I'm not really qualified for anything else that I would consider interesting or significant. And if I don't go into academia, it will be a huge disappointment, both to Bobby and to myself. I just don't see it happening. What can I do? Something has to change. Would I be content with just raising children while Ted worked? Would Ted be content with that? Could I actually handle raising children, or would I be forgetful and neglectful with them, too? I'm distracted with so many questions, and I just don't have the answers.
I'll just have to think about it some more. Here's hoping I can.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
HotNets in the Big Apple
HotNets and New York
I'm on the Bolt Bus, waiting to leave New York now. I have about a 4 hour trip ahead of me, so I figure that this is the perfect time to write my entry.
HotNets went pretty well. I was much less nervous about this talk than I was about my SIGCOMM talk, but I think that's understandable since the SIGCOMM one was far more important. I think the talk went reasonably well, and there were a few people interested in the work, but I feel like the community as a whole hasn't really bought the whole "systems on OSNs" idea, and probably won't until it actually happens. In some sense, though, that's a good thing, because it means that when we eventually write that paper that it will be even more important.
There were a few very interesting talks. I think these were my favorites: Michael Walfish's talk about which entities in the future Internet should be able to control the path that a flow follows from a source to a destination (their conclusion is everyone on the path), and Michael Piatek's talk which identified how much performance gain P2P apps could really get from favoring intra-domain traffic to the exclusion of inter-domain traffic (not much, despite earlier work such as Ono that suggested otherwise). Another talk I found very interesting was Saikat Guha's, about serving adds locally for performance and privacy, but I have some issues with their assumptions so I'm not convinced that it's quite there yet. From what I hear, Dave has another, similar solution, so we'll see how that goes.
Perhaps more interesting than the workshop itself was an odd occurance during Bryan Ford's talk. He revealed an (I admit) amusing point about excessive encapsulation in some Outlook protocol, and then all of a sudden my back was completely wet. Someone (who shall remain nameless; he's already suffered enough for this) was apparently taking a drink of water and did a spit-take at the joke, all over my back and the screen of my laptop. On the plus side, I've now memorized this person's name and face. I guess that's one way to meet people at networking events. Maybe I should pay it forward...
Getting back to the more Carmichaely side of things, my side effects became more pronounced while traveling, I suspect because I wasn't as able to keep myself hydrated as well as I usually do. I've had aches, joint pain, soreness, nausea, tiredness, edema, and probably some other side effects that I've mostly forgotten by now. The nausea was the worst, since it comes right after lunch when I take my pill, so it was right in the middle of HotNets. Food usually helps, but the food there was so terrible that I felt better going with the nausea.
After HotNets was over, I was still in New York for two more days, but I knew I would be leaving during the day on Sunday so I figured I should get most of my sightseeing done Saturday. Before I say anything else, I have to say this: I love the layout of Manhattan. It's so logical that I immediately was able to navigate both the streets and the subway, I didn't get lost once, and I was even able to give people directions the four or five times they asked for them.
I started with downtown. I went to Wall Street first, then the WTC site, then down to Battery Park to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, then back up to the Bodies exhibit (my favorite part of the trip), then up a little further to Brooklyn Bridge. Then I stopped by the hotel to change, and went up to the upper east side and made my way down along Central Park. Then I went to Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo World store, and Times Square. I was going to make my way to the public library, but it started to rain really hard at that point so I cut my trip short at Grand Central Station. Then later that evening I thought the rain had died down a bit, so I went and had a drink at the Stonewall Inn. Unfortunately, the heavens opened up again as soon as I left the place, so I went back inside and waited it out with a few sodas. Then I just went home for the night. This morning, I hit Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building before getting on the Bolt Bus. And of course I did some shopping and saw a few other places, but those were basically the landmarks. Here are my impressions:
All in all, it was a fun trip, but it would have been more fun if Ted had come with me. Dinner alone every night without easily accessible wi-fi is not my idea of fun.
I'm on the Bolt Bus, waiting to leave New York now. I have about a 4 hour trip ahead of me, so I figure that this is the perfect time to write my entry.
HotNets went pretty well. I was much less nervous about this talk than I was about my SIGCOMM talk, but I think that's understandable since the SIGCOMM one was far more important. I think the talk went reasonably well, and there were a few people interested in the work, but I feel like the community as a whole hasn't really bought the whole "systems on OSNs" idea, and probably won't until it actually happens. In some sense, though, that's a good thing, because it means that when we eventually write that paper that it will be even more important.
There were a few very interesting talks. I think these were my favorites: Michael Walfish's talk about which entities in the future Internet should be able to control the path that a flow follows from a source to a destination (their conclusion is everyone on the path), and Michael Piatek's talk which identified how much performance gain P2P apps could really get from favoring intra-domain traffic to the exclusion of inter-domain traffic (not much, despite earlier work such as Ono that suggested otherwise). Another talk I found very interesting was Saikat Guha's, about serving adds locally for performance and privacy, but I have some issues with their assumptions so I'm not convinced that it's quite there yet. From what I hear, Dave has another, similar solution, so we'll see how that goes.
Perhaps more interesting than the workshop itself was an odd occurance during Bryan Ford's talk. He revealed an (I admit) amusing point about excessive encapsulation in some Outlook protocol, and then all of a sudden my back was completely wet. Someone (who shall remain nameless; he's already suffered enough for this) was apparently taking a drink of water and did a spit-take at the joke, all over my back and the screen of my laptop. On the plus side, I've now memorized this person's name and face. I guess that's one way to meet people at networking events. Maybe I should pay it forward...
Getting back to the more Carmichaely side of things, my side effects became more pronounced while traveling, I suspect because I wasn't as able to keep myself hydrated as well as I usually do. I've had aches, joint pain, soreness, nausea, tiredness, edema, and probably some other side effects that I've mostly forgotten by now. The nausea was the worst, since it comes right after lunch when I take my pill, so it was right in the middle of HotNets. Food usually helps, but the food there was so terrible that I felt better going with the nausea.
After HotNets was over, I was still in New York for two more days, but I knew I would be leaving during the day on Sunday so I figured I should get most of my sightseeing done Saturday. Before I say anything else, I have to say this: I love the layout of Manhattan. It's so logical that I immediately was able to navigate both the streets and the subway, I didn't get lost once, and I was even able to give people directions the four or five times they asked for them.
I started with downtown. I went to Wall Street first, then the WTC site, then down to Battery Park to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, then back up to the Bodies exhibit (my favorite part of the trip), then up a little further to Brooklyn Bridge. Then I stopped by the hotel to change, and went up to the upper east side and made my way down along Central Park. Then I went to Rockefeller Center, the Nintendo World store, and Times Square. I was going to make my way to the public library, but it started to rain really hard at that point so I cut my trip short at Grand Central Station. Then later that evening I thought the rain had died down a bit, so I went and had a drink at the Stonewall Inn. Unfortunately, the heavens opened up again as soon as I left the place, so I went back inside and waited it out with a few sodas. Then I just went home for the night. This morning, I hit Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building before getting on the Bolt Bus. And of course I did some shopping and saw a few other places, but those were basically the landmarks. Here are my impressions:
- Wall Street: Really cool. I think I'm glad I went on a Saturday when things were so quiet. I especially liked the cathedral at the end of the street, as if it were passing judgment on the street and its going-ons.
- WTC site: Too much construction going on. I didn't see squat. But there was still something kind of eerie about the huge open space in the middle of the city.
- Battery Park: Bleh.
- Bodies: Incredibly cool. It's an exhibit of real human bodies that have been opened up and put on display. Morbid and educational... how can you go wrong? They also have a number of abnormal body parts on display, including an enlarged spleen (it was still small potatoes compared to my mighty spud, though). My favorite part, though, and this is still somewhat related to Carmichael, was the exhibit on the circulatory system. They injected some substance into the blood which was bright red in the arteries and bright blue in the veins, and which after some time would harden. After it hardened, they chemically removed the rest of the body. The result was an amazing display of all of the arteries and all of the veins of an entire body. As a kid, vampires were my favorite monster, and then (somewhat independently) I fell in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now I have a blood cancer. I guess Spike was right about blood (I promise, one of these days I'll get around to talking about Buffy quotes that I find particularly relevant to Carmichael). I wasn't supposed to take any pictures, but I managed to snag one of the enlarged spleen. I just couldn't resist. I'll post it when I get home.
- Brooklyn Bridge: I don't know, it's a bridge?
- Central Park: Really underwhelming. I thought I was going to be more impressed by it, but it felt more like wasted space.
- Rockefeller Center: I bet it would be romantic to go ice skating there if you were in a movie. I'll pass on that, though. It was cool to see 30 Rock though.
- Nintendo World: I liked Nintendo World, but I think Nintendo and I are on the outs right now. Maybe I'm too old for it, but I don't think that's it. I think it's just that they have given up on their original fanbase. They now only target people younger than me and people older than me. I really wanted to buy something from there, but everything was so tacky. The one thing that I found that I could see myself wearing was a wobbufet t-shirt (the t-shirt just had his face on it), but they only had them in youth sizes. At least I got a picture of R.O.B.
- Times Square: Kind of felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy; people flock to this landmark because it's filled with advertisements, and it's filled with advertisements because people flock to it. I don't know what I was expecting though.
- Grand Central Station: To be honest, I was kind of wet, so I didn't really pay attention. The only thing I remember thinking is that the food court reminded me of the food court at Union Station in DC.
- Stonewall Inn: Another landmark where I don't know what I was expecting. It's just like any other gay bar. The people there seemed even more shallow and empty-headed, though that could be due to many factors; I'm older now and disenfranchised with the gay community as a whole, I was kind of depressed at that point from exploring the city alone the whole time, and sampling bias. I went there around 9:00 and was only there briefly, so I only talked to the bartender, two older gentlemen obsessed with finding out my age (I think they didn't believe that I was over 21), and one other person who thought that Maryland was somewhere between New York and California. I knew I'd just be bored back at my hotel room, but the place really had a skeevy vibe to it, so I figured I'd have better luck finding company in the rain. I don't know why I thought that Stonewall Inn, birthplace of the gay rights movement, would be somehow different from the other gay bars and clubs that I've been to in my life, but there you have it.
- Madison Square Garden: I might as well have skipped this.
- Empire State Building: Even though I had a lot of time to kill before my bus arrived, I decided that it wasn't worth it to wait through the line just to have them go through all of my belongings at the security checkpoint. Instead I found the nearest comic shop and got Buffy Season 8 volume 5, which gave me something to do for the last hour or so after my PSP Go's battery died.
All in all, it was a fun trip, but it would have been more fun if Ted had come with me. Dinner alone every night without easily accessible wi-fi is not my idea of fun.
Labels:
gay,
HotNets,
networking,
New York,
side effects,
Ted,
travel,
work
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Paranormal Activity
Well, I don't think I'm going to get back to sleep any time soon, so it seems like a good time for a blog entry.
Things have been pretty quiet here ever since my last doctor's appointment. I've been preparing for my Bond Breaker presentation at work, and I'll be heading up to New York for that tomorrow afternoon. At home, I've mostly been trying to play as many video games as possible because I have had a serious backlog ever since the PSP Go came out. I'm currently working on Wild Arms XF (which is pretty good!) and Demon's Souls. The latter really bothers me because the title is so stupid and they really made some terrible game play decisions. Unfortunately, it's for the PS3, so that means I'll need to keep playing it until I get the platinum trophy (or risk breaking my current streak!).
This weekend was somewhat busy due to a day with Ted's friends on Saturday and then lunch with his dad on Sunday. The biggest thing of note was that we went to see Paranormal Activity with Kevin on Saturday night. I really enjoy scary movies, so I had little doubt that I would enjoy it, but I'm pretty sure that this movie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. It's not that there are a lot of things jumping out at you suddenly (though there are a few). Instead the movie relies on a steady build of tension as the events unfold and escalate to an inescapable conclusion. The part that makes the movie really scary, though, is the fact that it seems so realistic and that it all takes place in a fairly normal couple's bedroom.
After watching the movie, you're left with a bunch of haunting images of events from the movie that would freak the crap out of you if they happened in real life. Then when you try to go to sleep at night, your imagination gets the best of you and you really start to think about those events and worry more and more that something like them could happen to you. You remind yourself that the paranormal isn't real, but it's a small comfort since you can't shake the images from your head and they seemed so authentic.
So, that being said, I've had trouble falling asleep the past three nights. Not a lot, mind you... eventually I find a new topic to occupy my mind and have no trouble falling asleep. But the movie is usually the first thing that comes to mind and so it takes some time to get past it.
Tonight, on the other hand, I had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep. On the past three nights, as is typical, Ted fell asleep before I did, but tonight I fell asleep first. I think that could have been the difference. I'm not quite sure what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself bolt upright in bed. Ted was already sitting up and screaming in genuine terror. I grabbed his shoulder and arm to try to calm him down and he started looking at me and continued to scream, at me, for about five more seconds. I finally calmed him down enough to get him to tell me what was happening, and he said that he must have heard Shabby knock over a glass or something. Vaguely in the back of my head I felt as if I had probably accidentally tapped my night stand, which has three glasses on it sitting side by side so they would clink together, enough to make a noise but not enough to wake me up at least.
Needless to say, this whole incident freaked us both out quite a bit, but I think we're calming down enough now to go back to sleep. Immediately afterward my heart was racing really fast and I was actually a little worried about it, but it's fine now. I guess I'm just surprised because I didn't think Ted was really having any after-effects from the movie like I was, but I guess he must have been...
Things have been pretty quiet here ever since my last doctor's appointment. I've been preparing for my Bond Breaker presentation at work, and I'll be heading up to New York for that tomorrow afternoon. At home, I've mostly been trying to play as many video games as possible because I have had a serious backlog ever since the PSP Go came out. I'm currently working on Wild Arms XF (which is pretty good!) and Demon's Souls. The latter really bothers me because the title is so stupid and they really made some terrible game play decisions. Unfortunately, it's for the PS3, so that means I'll need to keep playing it until I get the platinum trophy (or risk breaking my current streak!).
This weekend was somewhat busy due to a day with Ted's friends on Saturday and then lunch with his dad on Sunday. The biggest thing of note was that we went to see Paranormal Activity with Kevin on Saturday night. I really enjoy scary movies, so I had little doubt that I would enjoy it, but I'm pretty sure that this movie is the scariest movie I've ever seen. It's not that there are a lot of things jumping out at you suddenly (though there are a few). Instead the movie relies on a steady build of tension as the events unfold and escalate to an inescapable conclusion. The part that makes the movie really scary, though, is the fact that it seems so realistic and that it all takes place in a fairly normal couple's bedroom.
After watching the movie, you're left with a bunch of haunting images of events from the movie that would freak the crap out of you if they happened in real life. Then when you try to go to sleep at night, your imagination gets the best of you and you really start to think about those events and worry more and more that something like them could happen to you. You remind yourself that the paranormal isn't real, but it's a small comfort since you can't shake the images from your head and they seemed so authentic.
So, that being said, I've had trouble falling asleep the past three nights. Not a lot, mind you... eventually I find a new topic to occupy my mind and have no trouble falling asleep. But the movie is usually the first thing that comes to mind and so it takes some time to get past it.
Tonight, on the other hand, I had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep. On the past three nights, as is typical, Ted fell asleep before I did, but tonight I fell asleep first. I think that could have been the difference. I'm not quite sure what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself bolt upright in bed. Ted was already sitting up and screaming in genuine terror. I grabbed his shoulder and arm to try to calm him down and he started looking at me and continued to scream, at me, for about five more seconds. I finally calmed him down enough to get him to tell me what was happening, and he said that he must have heard Shabby knock over a glass or something. Vaguely in the back of my head I felt as if I had probably accidentally tapped my night stand, which has three glasses on it sitting side by side so they would clink together, enough to make a noise but not enough to wake me up at least.
Needless to say, this whole incident freaked us both out quite a bit, but I think we're calming down enough now to go back to sleep. Immediately afterward my heart was racing really fast and I was actually a little worried about it, but it's fine now. I guess I'm just surprised because I didn't think Ted was really having any after-effects from the movie like I was, but I guess he must have been...
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Another lazy weekend
Ted and I just had another lazy weekend. I'm still feeling great, but rather than take advantage of that fact I spent the entire weekend playing video games. I didn't even get any work done, as I had planned, so I'd better just buckle down and really work tomorrow in the lab. I'm pretty sure Bobby will be expecting a report from me about our SIGCOMM plans -- and possibly also about the Bond Breaker slides which I haven't touched -- so I'd better be ready. Maybe I can think about SIGCOMM while I work out tomorrow morning. I'm planning on starting my Wii Fit workout routine in the morning as well.
As for this weekend, I finished "Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?" and have moved on to Wild Arms XF for the PSP. It's pretty fun! Also this weekend, Ted and I have started playing LittleBigPlanet again. We previously took a hiatus because our PS3 memory was wiped, but over the course of this weekend we've unlocked most of the items in the game. Really, the hard parts are over, so now it's just a matter of time. When we're done, we'll be able to make some stages again, so I'm looking forward to that. It really is a fantastic game.
Sorry to keep it so short, but I'm tired and I'd like to get some sleep tonight (unlike last night). I'm currently looking forward to Thursday so that I can get confirmation that my CBC is looking good...
As for this weekend, I finished "Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?" and have moved on to Wild Arms XF for the PSP. It's pretty fun! Also this weekend, Ted and I have started playing LittleBigPlanet again. We previously took a hiatus because our PS3 memory was wiped, but over the course of this weekend we've unlocked most of the items in the game. Really, the hard parts are over, so now it's just a matter of time. When we're done, we'll be able to make some stages again, so I'm looking forward to that. It really is a fantastic game.
Sorry to keep it so short, but I'm tired and I'd like to get some sleep tonight (unlike last night). I'm currently looking forward to Thursday so that I can get confirmation that my CBC is looking good...
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Normal Again
I felt pretty normal today. That probably wouldn't sound like an accomplishment to most people, but this is the first time since I was diagnosed with Carmichael that I've really felt that things were normal again.
Today was a lazy Sunday, just like any other lazy Sunday I've enjoyed with Ted for the past 5 years or so. We got up around 8 o'clock (that's late for us), and Ted graded papers while I played "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?" on my new PSP Go, which of course I played with a PS3 controller on our nice TV. At 10:00, I switched to just the PSP Go while Ted watched This Week. Then we took a shower, and then I played more of my game. Around noon, Ted made lunch and we watched a DVRed Saturday Night Live together. Then I played my game for a long time, until right before dinner time when we started watching Across the Universe. We took a break in the middle for Ted to make a delicious dinner, and after we finished dinner and the movie, Ted watched 60 minutes while I did the dishes. Then I just played "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" for the rest of the evening since I had finished my other game.
It was nice. The only time I really thought about Carmichael was when I took my pills, and that was pretty brief. I've had no side effects to speak of today, although I have had some cramps in my hands; while this is a side effect of Gleevec, it is much more likely that this was caused by the frustration of playing "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" It's fun, but frustrating.
I'm hoping that tomorrow will be just as good, because I have a lot of work to do by Wednesday. Wish me luck.
Today was a lazy Sunday, just like any other lazy Sunday I've enjoyed with Ted for the past 5 years or so. We got up around 8 o'clock (that's late for us), and Ted graded papers while I played "Holy Invasion of Privacy, Badman! What Did I Do To Deserve This?" on my new PSP Go, which of course I played with a PS3 controller on our nice TV. At 10:00, I switched to just the PSP Go while Ted watched This Week. Then we took a shower, and then I played more of my game. Around noon, Ted made lunch and we watched a DVRed Saturday Night Live together. Then I played my game for a long time, until right before dinner time when we started watching Across the Universe. We took a break in the middle for Ted to make a delicious dinner, and after we finished dinner and the movie, Ted watched 60 minutes while I did the dishes. Then I just played "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" for the rest of the evening since I had finished my other game.
It was nice. The only time I really thought about Carmichael was when I took my pills, and that was pretty brief. I've had no side effects to speak of today, although I have had some cramps in my hands; while this is a side effect of Gleevec, it is much more likely that this was caused by the frustration of playing "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" It's fun, but frustrating.
I'm hoping that tomorrow will be just as good, because I have a lot of work to do by Wednesday. Wish me luck.
Labels:
Carmichael,
domesticity,
Gleevec,
Lazy Sunday,
NISA,
PSP Go,
Ted
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Screwed up my sleep cycle
So I did something stupid last night. I decided that now would be a good time to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04. As a result, I stayed up until 2 AM, and it still wasn't done.
Then the upgrade process was interrupted by a family gathering. It was nice to see the Baden side of my family, since I don't get to see them often and I hadn't seen most of them since I started hanging out with Carmichael. After our lunch together, I went back to my brother Billy's house and spent some time with my niece, Betsy, and nephew, Drew. We all (even the kids) ended up taking naps for whatever reason.
Fast forward to tonight. It's now 3 AM. I had a perfectly working version of Ubuntu 9.04 in time to watch Saturday Night Live, but I wasn't content... I wanted to clean my system up a bit. I ran baobab and noticed some file duplications. What I failed to notice was that during my upgrade today, I tried to install boxee, which involved a hack to run the 32-bit version, which created some hard linked directories... Long story short, I practically did rm -rf / (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T TRY THAT AT HOME), effectively ruining both all of the progress I had made and bricking my system. And people complain when GMail is down for an hour.
Fortunately, I didn't have anything too important on there... I'm mostly living in the cloud these days, after all. I don't know what I'd do with out Google. Cry, probably.
I'm thinking I'll just not go to bed tonight and instead take a nap in the afternoon. That should reset my sleep cycle, right? Ted gets back tomorrow evening, and he'll get to see my brand new side effect: fluid retention! It's pretty gross. My legs feel like plump hams right about now, and I have really weird things going on around the edges of my clothes. Still, here's to another day. :)
Then the upgrade process was interrupted by a family gathering. It was nice to see the Baden side of my family, since I don't get to see them often and I hadn't seen most of them since I started hanging out with Carmichael. After our lunch together, I went back to my brother Billy's house and spent some time with my niece, Betsy, and nephew, Drew. We all (even the kids) ended up taking naps for whatever reason.
Fast forward to tonight. It's now 3 AM. I had a perfectly working version of Ubuntu 9.04 in time to watch Saturday Night Live, but I wasn't content... I wanted to clean my system up a bit. I ran baobab and noticed some file duplications. What I failed to notice was that during my upgrade today, I tried to install boxee, which involved a hack to run the 32-bit version, which created some hard linked directories... Long story short, I practically did rm -rf / (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T TRY THAT AT HOME), effectively ruining both all of the progress I had made and bricking my system. And people complain when GMail is down for an hour.
Fortunately, I didn't have anything too important on there... I'm mostly living in the cloud these days, after all. I don't know what I'd do with out Google. Cry, probably.
I'm thinking I'll just not go to bed tonight and instead take a nap in the afternoon. That should reset my sleep cycle, right? Ted gets back tomorrow evening, and he'll get to see my brand new side effect: fluid retention! It's pretty gross. My legs feel like plump hams right about now, and I have really weird things going on around the edges of my clothes. Still, here's to another day. :)
Labels:
Betsy,
Billy,
Drew,
edema,
side effects,
sleep cycle,
swelling,
Ted,
Ubuntu,
water retention,
work
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