Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Yawn…
Is increased snoring vehemence a pregnancy side effect? Oh my.
Speaking of which, remember my sleep apnea thing? The snoring that was so bad it was often impossible to sleep with? Not to mention how disturbing it sounds at its worst, to hear the periodic cessation of breathing.
I got tested, eventually diagnosed, heard about the results first from the people trying to sell me the CPAP machine, and was given a machine by a wonderful local blogger who no longer needed hers.
All that was left was to get the settings for the machine, pay for a technician to set it and buy a new hose and mask that fits me.
I waited.
I waited some more.
I then learned that the first part of the testing was done, but now there was a titration test needed before they would know the CPAP settings to be used. Yet the first people I heard from were the machine sales people a few weeks after the original test! No wonder I stopped hearing from them, including failure to return my call when I had the machine and called to try to get the rest. They probably figured out they lacked complete info. Indeed, when I called, the woman I got at the place had no record or awareness of me. Thought maybe the guy I’d spoken with had it on the road with him; thus the expected callback.
It has now been several weeks since I learned I needed the secondary test.
I have left the doctor’s office three times with someone there “setting me up” with the sleep lab to get it done. Nothing.
It’s absurd. It’s as if for some reason they now don’t want to know me, or between the two offices - and my doctor’s office is too good for it to be them - they are screwing up royally. Which is something I have heard said of the hospital at which the tests take place.
I haven’t even harassed them about the charge for the original test yet. Mainly because that requires I find the paperwork from the insurance company that says what the charges are, what they paid, and that I was obligated to pay $338 of it. Deb remembers that I got all excited and happy, because I owed the doctor who interpreted the test $162, and the $338 for the test itself was exactly my $500 deductible for the whole year, already used, so maybe this year the insurance would actually be worth having. Then I got the bill for the sleep test and my balance was $600-odd, about $300 or so more than I thought the insurance statement said the balance was after what they covered. Need to figure that out. It’s definitely not a money thing though; they started failing to line me up for the secondary test before I ever got the bill.
All of this comes to mind because I have yet another blood pressure check tomorrow, and another opportunity to mention the lack of said test. It has almost become comical. I haven’t been feeling the effects as severely lately, so I would suspect the apnea has moderated slightly. I know it’s still there though. Too many nights I wake up too many times, in some cases knowing what it was that woke me. I feel miserable and non-functional too many days.
I have decided that if I get no appointment lined up after this in person reminder, the parties in question will get one of my Letters. Those tend to get results.
Stay tuned…
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Poor Mouse
Glue traps are supposed to be humane? Alrighty then…
But they are effective. No sooner did I scatter a few of them on the floor near the mouse’s stomping grounds than he was snagged. Before I was even done with that previous mouse post. But I didn’t notice as I couldn’t see it from here. Neither could Deb, but she heard the frantic squeaking I was completely oblivious to.
The poor thing was so little and struggled so hard that he was half done for by the time we noticed, and that was very little time. Had he gotten into the trap in the empty silverware drawer or at the top of the cellar stairs and gone unfound for several hours, that would have been it.
So here we had a mouse in the trap, but no mineral or vegetable oil as prescribed for loosening the critter into a 5 gallon bucket (2 gallons would have to do). I tried to free him so I could then get dressed and drive him a mile or more away and let him loose as directed (well, as a secondary option to “dispose of properly"). That just made matters worse, so it inevitably became “Mr. Solo, in the kitchen, with a bucket and water.” He was on the verge, so it was mercifully fast. Poor thing. He was so adorable and so foolishly brave. All of maybe two inches long plus tail.
After I was done with this bit of “man of the house” work, and had disposed of the evidence in a hygienic way, I would have let it go with no direct mention of what and how. Deb got curious enough that I deadpan joked about it being “good enough for unwanted kittens.” Big mistake! Pregnant woman hormone alert! She was hysterical at the idea of drowning kittens, which I certainly can understand, having never been able to imagine doing it.
I have more of those traps out and about, though I suspect this may have been a lone ranger. We’ve decided the traditional snap their backs and get it over with fast traps are a superior option to the terror of being stuck and then slowly dying anyway. That’s just mean.
Let’s hope the mouse adventure is over…
Squeak?
Doh! The mice are obviously not gone. One just ran out into plain sight in the living room computer room. The poor thing was terrified to see us and couldn’t decide whether it was safe to leave the room or not.
Well, until he darted out again and right past my foot as I typed this, which led to a startled yelp as when someone sneaks up on you, and then some chasing around to get a bucket to try to trap him with. I threw some traps on the floor where the marauder was running around. He will no doubt assiduously ignore them.
Until now, I had been convinced the mice were gone. The landlord surmised they were on their way out for the season, even if they had been nesting inside, and our invisible encounters were fairly anomalous.
Yeah, right.
What we ended up getting were some glue traps. They are supposed to attract the critters and then they stick, but stay alive for a while so you can rescue them and deposit them a mile or more away from your house. Of course, freeing them from the traps involves jumping through burning hoops while reciting detailed yet exotic magical incantations letter perfect from memory before hitting the ground on the other side. Or something like that. Probably better to have back-breaking traps armed with peanut butter, even though the brave little rodent is dreadfully cute. Death is a natural part of Grimm’s plan even for the cutest of critters.
Sadly, it appears the intruder has left this room and fled. We hope from the apartment. Argh.
I don’t know if there *is* an appropriate title for this.
I’m talking about poop over at the pregnancy blog.
Hey, I wouldn’t want you to say you weren’t warned. *grin*
Poop.
My poor husband is already sick and tired of hearing about poop. I think we both thought that poop wouldn’t become a part of our lives to actually be remarked upon until after the arrival of the little alien, at which point we still, I think, plan to laugh together over how somebody so little and cute can produce something so voluminous and disgusting. Or we will if our collective sense of poop-humor manages to survive the pregancy, anyway. It’s looking like it might be a close call.
I feel like I could use a twelve-step poop program. Hi, my name is Deb, and I’m constipated.
Hey, at least the meetings would keep Jay from having to hear about it.
Null Needn’t Be Void
I managed to make time to work on the balky beta distribution again, making progress despite my partner being otherwise occupied and my hired help not responding to my message saying come on in.
When we last left this mess, the database was gone and backward movement had occured, rather than progress. I managed to find the correct saved script to rebuild the database, including all the stored procedures, so the program almost runs again as it did before the database got nuked.
My complaint is that it’s incredibly crude to have the program unable to handle a brand new blank database with the correct structure but no data.
I can buy the part about not finding a user. The program logs in the name of the user logged onto the computer. And it handles that gracefully, telling you to see your administrator because you don’t exist. We need an administrative tool for that Real Soon Now if people are going to use the program in other than a test environment.
Easy enough for me to fire up Enterprise Manager, open the table, use GUIDGEN to create a couple identifiers needed for a couple of fields, and fill in the rest with the appropriate data. Voila, now I exist. We just can’t expect users to do this, and it’s not going to be fun even for deploying a beta.
Well, then it continues. Listview can’t use the imagelist and display a case type until there already exist case types. A case can’t be added until there is already a case. It should be able to handle running the first time without data being seeded for it. Jeeeez.
Hey, I didn’t write it. I just get to deploy, support, debug, polish, and market it.
On that note, back I go, to see where else I need to pre-add data to make it run so I can get back to the inability to create a distribution without a hopelessly lame and bogus license error.
Eh.
Monday on Tuesday, right? But of course…
On the upside, the laundry is well underway and the trash is out. On the not-so-upside, I’d like to second this new house requirement of Jay’s:
Acceptable outflow plumbing. Adequate pitch, pipe width, etc. to avoid chronic patience or plunger usage.
Yeah, it really is that big a problem.
Charming, ‘eh?
New House Checklist
No shower doors on a shower/tub combo. Ever. Period. A nice rod to put up a curtain like civilzed folk, instead.
Vital Information
Since there are, as far as I know, no milliners who specialize in tin-foil hats, most members of that brigade are left to construct their headgear without the aid of a professional. Luckily, the same Internet that feeds their wacky fantasies also offers instructions for the proper building of this essential protectve device.
Many thanks to McGehee and Tiger for spreading the word.
I’m blue…
Or at least my toes are. Frostbite in June? Why not?
I exaggerate, but only slightly. It’s the first of June, and it’s 50 degrees and cloudy here, well on its way to the expected high of 53.
Days like this make me wonder how bad global warming could really be. Oh, wait...this is global warming, right?
New House Checklist
Living quarters all on one floor for the same reason we got a first floor apartment and would prefer the washer and dryer not to be in the cellar. Deb has an injury unfriendly to stairs, and I am not getting any younger.
New House Checklist
A cellar, not a slab. It’s unnatural otherwise. But if there’s no choice, then something to substitute for the space a cellar implies.
New House Checklist
Washer and dryer on the same floor as the main living space so doing laundry is easier and doesn’t require stair use by anyone.
Things That Drive Me Crazy
Someone left? Great! I will give their P4 2.4 to a guy with a P3 1.0 so he can get the new version of Dragon and run it effectively, then his machine will replace her Pentium 100 machine. Yes! Another obsolete computer down, a few to go.
Sounds good to me! Oh by the way, could you setup an account for this new person who started this morning so he can use the computer you already have allocated to someone else? Sorry we didn’t tell you about this person ahead of time.
Yes!!!
I knew I liked Glenn for a reason! He knows the Ketchup Reference Standard. It happens to be one of my most loyal of brand loyalties. I’ll pay a premium, but it has to be the good ketchup.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Sore, Busy, and Presumed Light Blogging Alert
Tomorrow promises to be insanely busy. Yet in a way it will be a break from the weekend. We built Deb’s computer, plus one for the big client, moved my desk and computers to the living room that is now the computer room, vacuumed a lot and did a bit of other cleaning in the process of all this, put down a rug that takes most of what will now be the living room, moved my monster recliner (when I got it I had no idea I was getting a “daddy chair"), moved the coffee table, took the sleep sofa completely apart, moved the parts and reassembled it, assembled Deb’s desk and put it in place, setup her machine there, fixed the dead phone jack in the new computer room, got both machines on the DSL, moved the TV and associated peripherals, and in there somewhere rearranged other odds and ends. I’m sore, tired, and very pleased. The new living room is perfect. It’s cozy, neat, and looks like we actually live here, as opposed to having crashed temporarily.
There is more to do, but a lot of it can be chipped away in the evenings when I (eventually) get home during the week.
Left to my own devices tomorrow (now today, according to the computer clock), I would do billing (the month is over, yay), run to the bank, take care of a nagging issue for big client, handle the inevitable random issues that crop up generally, and more so when a new hire has started, and it wouldn’t be too bad. However, I already know I will probably need to add to that problems at another client, and my partner will be there at some point to work on the problems creating a distribution of the beta we should actually be installing rather than mired in this day. I won’t really be at liberty to hire help until he’s had a crack at it, else I would have someone coming in and just turn them loose with minimal participation needed on my part. The thing is, one way or another, that has to be ready to install at the test site Saturday, or worst case, Monday. This is likely to be too busy a day to do any billing, and so the cash flow madness happens.
Much as I would like to sit here blogging and ignoring my back, right wrist, and left hand while they give me heck for abusing them, I should really go to bed and set the alarm. I fully expect to be paged first thing so I may as well be ready, and even if I am not, I ought to be at the office early to start on things.
This means light blogging tomorrow unless things go remarkbly well or I get especially riled. I’ll try to sneak in another house post or two, as I already have some more and they are fast. I don’t anticipate being in a house for at least five years, but hey. Added focus can’t hurt.