Day 1584

I feel like I'm locked in my own personal Ground Hog Day. I've been trying to resolve a website problem for almost two weeks now. I call technical support every morning and talk a cheerful person who seems to understand my problem. He, or she, always says the problem seems easy enough to resolve, but that it will need to be escalated to the next level of support, because they don't have access to the information I need. The next day I get an e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed. I then go to the website in question and discover that nothing has changed at all. The problem has definitely not been resolved. I then call tech support again and explain the situation to another friendly person. They apologize for the mix up, telling me that they have reopened my service ticket and that the problem will be resolved properly this time. The next day I get another e-mail saying that my problem has been solved and my ticket has been closed again. Once again, nothing has changed. This has been going on for weeks.

I'm trying to solve a different type of problem with another client and have contacted a developer who supposedly knows all the answers. Today, he sent me detailed instruction, telling me exactly what to do to make the changes my client requested. So far, so good. At the very bottom of the letter was a final paragraph telling me not to do anything to the website during business hours and to be sure to back everything up before I attempt to make any changes. The developer concludes by telling me that if I follow his instructions exactly, I still might crash the entire site. WTF? I was hoping that thy guy would give me an answer, not a roulette wheel.

I went to my hepatologist for another blood test this afternoon. From now on out, these periodic tests are somewhat of a formality. By all indications, the treatment has already worked. These guys are just playing it safe. I will continue to get bi-weekly blood tests until June, and then probably once a year thereafter. One thing I have learned during Dash's cancer treatment and my own Hepatitis-C treatment is that doctors tend to take the amount of medication necessary to resolve a serious problem and then double it, just to make sure. This is especially true with cancer, since there is no definitive way to prove that the cancer will never return.

Maybe I'll have time to get the lawn mower battery replaced tomorrow. I can't put this off too much longer, since the grass is still growing. Dash has another radiation treatment in the morning and I have an appointment with an egg at my favorite restaurant. I hope I can get some of these ongoing website problems resolved soon. It's way too late in the year for Ground Hog Day.

Bella is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1529

It was an absolutely normal Friday. Normal is good. There was no dog crisis. There was no impossible deadline crisis. There was no crisis at all. The dogs are enjoying the Springlike weather. We had a great walk this morning and my shoulder has finally gotten strong enough to try walking both dogs together again. Maybe I just got lucky today when I walked Dot and Dash together for the first time in weeks, but my shoulder gave me no problems. Knock on wood.

I had time for an enjoyable breakfast at my favorite restaurant and picked up some tasty food for the weekend at Central Market afterwards. Since I got started early this morning, there was still plenty of time to finish all my assignments.

I was finally able to get my tree trimmer to commit to a date for cleaning up the broken tree limbs from  last December's ice storm. I don't know why this has taken so long, but everything seems to take a long time these days. There is quite a bit of damage and I'm sure the tree guy will try to convince me to saw down the entire tree. I don't want to do that. The large old Oak has been around for over 100 years and I think it's got a few years left.

My liver doctor called this morning and told me that the initial test results looked good and that I should continue taking the pills. Jeez, I wouldn't think stopping was even an option. When I first received the medication, I read right on the bottle of the expensive pills that if you didn't complete the entire twelve week treatment regime, the virus would just become more resistant. We definitely don't want that.

Dash acted so normal today that it's hard to imagine that he still might be very, very sick. I'm dreading the appointment with the oncologist on Monday morning. His assessment of the situation could snap me back to reality very quickly. For now, we'll concentrate on having a nice weekend. The weather still looks good, so he'll get a trip to his favorite dog park. Unfortunately, he'll also get a bath. If Dash has to have surgery, he might not be able to have a bath for a long time. Janet says we might as well make sure he's clean now.

I learned something new about LED light bulbs today. Unbeknownst to me, most of the electrical energy supplied to an LED bulb is converted to heat rather than light. I guess this explains why most of these bulbs have large metal heat sink fins around the circumference of the bulb. At any rate, even though these high-tech bulbs use far less energy than a normal incandescent bulb, they must dissipate lot more heat than an equivalent incandescent. So, where does all this heat go? Well, it often goes straight to the thermal protection switch inside the fixture and ruins it. This is basically why the can light in my bathroom has started blinking on and off and why a similar fixture in my office burned out a few months ago. So the "last forever" LED lights don't last forever after all. And they burn up your fixtures in the process. Is all this advanced technology even necessary? I was perfectly happy with my land line phone, cassette tapes, and an IBM Selectric typewriter.

Lizzy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1374

Why do doctor visits take so long? For every minute you actually spend with the doctor, you spend an additional ten minutes sitting in the waiting room. Sometimes, just to create the illusion that something is happening, you are moved from the outer waiting room to a second inner waiting room. It's still a waiting room though, complete with three year old magazines and posters on the wall detailing the symptoms of diseases you never want to catch.

I guess today's verdict was worth waiting for though. I'm still hanging in there. No biopsy required. Just some blood tests and the doctor telling me to keep on doing what I'm doing. The new treatment I've been waiting for won't be approved by the FDA until January 2014 at the earliest. I'm apparently good to go until then.

Since my doctor visit took twice as long as I thought it would, I got behind on everything else. Although I managed to get quite a few things started, nothing really got finished. I dropped some things off at the storage warehouse on the way to see my hepatoligist and got some prescriptions filled at the pharmacy on the way back. That was about it. I'll get caught up on my website work tomorrow. At least I hope I will.

Someone wants to buy my Defender before I trade it in on a new car. Although I might make more money selling the car to an individual, the whole idea makes me uncomfortable. I guess I've heard too many Craigslist horror stories. The dealership knows the car well, since they've been the ones who've worked on it all these years. What they're offering me is realistic. I've afraid that an individual would have buyer's remorse as soon as they discovered the realities of living with a car that has 112,000 miles on the odometer. The truth is that I wouldn't even be considering getting a new car if driving
the Defender was as cool as some people think it is. It's a very old car.

Dash almost caught the armadillo in the yard this morning. I don't know what he'd do if he actually caught the thing, but I don't want to find out. So far, I haven't figured out an effective method of keeping the critter out of the yard. It can dig its way under the fence with ease. Maybe the rain will keep the armadillo away for a while. It's pouring outside now, and of course, Dot is under my desk, convinced that the sky is falling.

Rhett is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day