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  • 25Jul

    Wicked was great! Our seats were in the 10th row, center and could see everything. I bought my daughter a tee shirt ($35!!) but it was worth it.

    Health - I have noticed that I am beginning to slightly drag my left foot when I walk. On the uneven bricks outside of my office I often catch my shoe on a brick that’s a bit higher than the others. I’ve read that Lou Gehrig’s friend noticed that Lou was not wearing golf shoes when they golfed, that was a turning point for him. My hands and arms continue to weaken, when I filled my car was gas yesterday ($4.319/gal) I had trouble getting the gas cap back on, but I finally managed.

    About Lou Gehrig’s Disease

    Excerpts and Content Provided By © Estate of Eleanor Gehrig c/o CMG Worldwide

    (http://www.als.ca/lou_gehrigs_disease.aspx)

    ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal disease. The disease had its name coined after a great American baseball player. Following is a brief article about Lou Gehrig and the disease named after the baseball player.


    In 1938, Lou Gehrig fell below .300 for the first time since 1925 and it was clear that there was something wrong. He lacked his usual strength. Pitches he would have hit for home runs were only flyouts. Doctors diagnosed a gall bladder problem first, and they put him on a bland diet, which only made him weaker. Teammate Wes Ferrell noticed that on the golf course, instead of wearing golf cleats, Lou Gehrig was wearing tennis shoes and sliding his feet along the ground. Ferrell was frightened. When asked if he would remove Gehrig from the lineup, manager Joe McCarthy said, “That’s Lou’s decision.”

    Lou Gehrig played the first eight games of the 1939 season, but he managed only four hits. On a ball hit back to pitcher Johnny Murphy, Gehrig had trouble getting to first in time for the throw. When he returned to the dugout, his teammates complimented him on the “good play.” Gehrig knew when his fellow Yankees had to congratulate him for stumbling into an average catch it was time to leave. He took himself out of the game. On May 2, 1939, as Yankee captain, he took the lineup card to the umpires, as usual. But his name was not on the roster. Babe Dahlgren was stationed at first. The game announcer intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, Lou Gehrig’s consecutive streak of 2,130 games played has ended.”

    Doctors at the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Lou Gehrig with a very rare form of degenerative disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is now called Lou Gehrig’s disease. There was no chance he would ever play baseball again.
    You can read more about Lou Gehrig here.

  • 07May

    Yesterday my wife and I visited Loma Linda’s voice experts. A ‘rep’ from DynaVox was there to demonstrate their AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) devices that speak for disabled people. I will probably need one someday since my voice is already slightly affected and will get worse.

    The goal of today’s meeting was to find out if these devices can record my own voice to use within the machine, they can. BUT, the rep just glanced over that function and said to record my voice with my own PC and save the files and then upload them into the device. My voice would not replace the built-in voice(s) but I can pre-load certain phrases into it and assign the phrase to buttons (on a touch screen). By the way, the larger (better) device costs about $8,000 and Medicare (when I get it) will cover 80% of the cost.

    So, I will start recording tonight, to save phrases like:

    1. “I love you”
    2. the names of my kids and wife
    3. “I’ll be in the car”
    4. “what time is dinner?”
    5. “Hon come here please”
    6. “(any name in the family) “will you pick that up please?”
    7. “Tucker, get down”
    8. “Tucker, you are a good dog”

    HELP - what else should I record? I need suggestions!!

  • 23Apr

    Good Grief!  Here I am with an incurable and soon-to-be dibilatating fatal disease and I feel better than I ever have before.  Granted my hands are weaker and my arms are showing atrophy - I feel normal.  The drugs I am taking for the Emotional Liability must be working, no more crying at chick flicks and no more face freezing for something glad or sad.  Also, no side effects from the 4 drugs I am taking must be helping too.  Let’s see how long this lasts!  10-20 years would be nice!

    ;-)

  • 13May

    My fave is still Lala of course…

    Lala

  • 23Apr

    I worked for a great company for 11 years, starting as a product manager and getting promoted to marketing manager. I was offered a choice back in 1997 or so to either be a product manager for a mainstream product or to help launch a new cool project. I chose the cool project. There was a team of 5 of us and we re-located our office in a separate office in the same building as the big company to give us some entrepreneurial freedom. This product/project was a ‘thin client’ network product that interfaced to a server via Ethernet.

    The product came from Japan and they would keep changing how it looks and works and didn’t always listen to our US marketing efforts. By the time the product was ready for sales, no companies could afford it. This was 2000 and 2001 and the economy was going down fast. We had marketed this product to family restaurants, baseball stadiums, and other similar places but no one would commit. We even hired a company to come up with a product name for the thing and after about $10,000US we had the name Zeleon.

    We even owned the domain zeleon.com and .net. Japan was funding the project 100% and everything was great, except for the lack of sales. Then 9/11 happened and set the economy heading down fast. In early 2002 I was needing to meet with my boss for things and he called one day and asked me to meet him “tomorrow at 2PM” so I said OK. I walk into the little conference room and there is my boss, and a rep from HR. So, I was let go, with a 3 month severance and a letter of recommendation from my boss. They also provided a 3rd party to give outplacement help - which was TOTALLY USELESS.

    So, I send out 100’s if not 1000’s of resumes for another good job and have about 4 interviews, with no offers. I even took a job with Picture People taking photos of little kids, just for the fun of it. I had to wear a vest and a beanie hat with a propeller on it, but it was good photography experience.

    Then in 2004 I took a terrible job with a terrible company and started there as a temp, and was converted to full time after 3 months. This place was so poorly run, when I was switched from temp to perm, I received an email from the head of HR stating “my conversation to full time”, really! I met a guy there who was an executive type person and we became friends. He only lasted about 6 months, but he joined this software company in Irvine. Once he was stable he mentioned to me that he could use some help, so I sent my resume to him and landed this great job.

    I started here in April 2005 as a Product Manager, earning just under what my last salary was with that big company. I helped this guy with all of his presentations, brochures, data sheets, and webinars. Last November, our company was purchased by a big equity company and was instantly merged with a smaller competitor. The products that my friend was working on were cancelled and the entire group was laid off. I stayed for some reason, and have been doing less and less on a daily basis. Last week, I converted a word document into html. Really, that was about it. I have been here two years already, each day I commute 50 miles, each way…

    Today, I have done nothing but write this. Oh yeah, 2 weeks ago I received my yearly raise, and am now earning more than I did at the other company, (except for the bonus). So, it is hard to realize how difficult it really is to do nothing all day. I expect Mr. Pink Slip to visit me any day now… Me depressed?

  • 30Mar

    This one isn’t too Savant, but it was very cool for me. Back again at college for my BS (in engineering) I took a drafting class to see if I would be any good at it. This may date me a bit, but this is before CADCAM, we used pencils only. Really! Anyhow, every week the instructor would give us a quiz. The quiz was very similar to the diagram below.

    Very similarr to my weekly quizes in drafting

    Each week he would take out one of the 4 images (either the top, front, right, or the 3D one) and put in 4 different images for us to pick/choose from (multiple choice). One was correct of course. I don’t know why, but my stupid mind always knows which one is correct. I NEVER GOT ONE WRONG! During the 10 week quarter, the instructor noticed I was not getting any quizes wrong, so he tried to make them harder and harder. Without success!

    But drafting wasn’t for me - at least back then. The problem was I could not draw a line with a ruler that was the same width from start to finish. I would change the pencil pressure throughout drawing the line and it was not a good line. So, drafting was over. BUT, today, using a computer it would be a different story!

  • 27Mar

    Today I went to a local ATM (in the building next to mine) to get $40 for some cash for lunch and to take my wife to see “300″ tonight.  I have used this ATM before without incident.  I swiped my card, and entered my pin, and went to withdraw the 2 twenties.  I typed in 40, but really typed in 400.  The amount $400 briefly appeared on the screen and I assumed it would fail since I always thought the ATM limit was $200.  But, instead, the 20 twenties came flying out.  FORTUNATELY, we still had some money in the checking account after my checking account draining session.  What a dweeb I am…

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