Resistence Is Futile

My very first implant device. I'm now one step closer to realizing my dream of being part of the Borg collective. Well, not really. Today I had a "port-a-cath" installed in my upper-right chest area which will be used to deliver "healing drugs" (a.k.a Chemotheray) to my body. They'll also be able to use that port to draw blood in case I'm in need of a blood test. No more IVs through my veins! Yay!

The appointment was incredibly early in the morning - 6:30am. I couldn't believe it! And I couldn't believe that Eric actually drove down from the Valley to see me that early in the morning. Thanks Bro!

When I was all settled on the hospital bed with my very awkward hospital gown (how do those people expect me to tie them when the opening is in the back?! And no, I don't want the opening in the front), one of the nurses started an IV drip on my left arm. I was very impressed with her skills - I didn't feel ANYTHING. She used a local anesthetic that no one else used on me before. Why do people needlessly make me suffer?! Anyways, that would end up being my last IV for quite a while since I now have my port.

Post-op was ok - not too much pain if I didn't move my right arm so much. I was given two tablets of percocet and that went really well - it took effect in about 20 minutes. When it takes effect, you'll immediately know it. It was an 'oooh-ahhh, I feel kinda sleepy' feeling.

Can you see the little bump on my chest??

As I'm writing this the meds I took this morning are wearing off and I feel pretty sore around shoulder, but good thing I got Vicodin! Yippie! Dr. Cameron (my surgeon) says that I should be able to remove my bandage this Monday - I'm hoping that the pain wouldn't be so bad at that point cuz I got work. I kinda miss work..... we'll see how I feel after I start Chemo on Tuesday.

(I'm using the camera on my phone to take my pix)

Weight: 140.0
Pain areas: heartburn, chest area,
Numbness: none, really
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little better than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Percocet (2 tablets), Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

I Finally Fixed The Little Sucker!

Weight: 139.6
Pain areas: heartburn, chest area,
Numbness: none, really
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little better than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

This post isn't really related to my health, but I just had to write it down because it was such an accomplishment for me - I've been struggling with this for months!

A little background: I host my own servers at home using MS Windows Servers. I have a Domain Controller and an Exchange 2003 server that I have under a VM (thats short for Virtual Machine). Both VM are running under my host machine which is also a Windows 2003 server. The problem that I've been for a while was that the clock in the VMs were about twice as fast as real-time.

At first I thought that it was the CPU speed throttling on the AMD processor (their 'Cool n' Quiet' feature) but it still had problems even though I disabled it. I kind of gave up on fixing the clock problem and instead worked around it by having my Domain Controller sync up its time using pool.ntp.org every 20 seconds or so. Under normal circumstances, a server would only need to sync up every couple hours or so - but the clock in my VM was going fast-forward. So I got that to work but not for my Exchange Server. Since the Exchange server is part of the domain, it should automatically sync up its time with the Domain Controller. But that didn't work, and in fact it might have made it even worse as the clock in that VM was going 3 seconds for every "real" second.

After about 4 or 5 hours mucking with the registries and several commands, I changed my tactic back to exploring the options in VMware itself.

It turned out that I had to set these options in the config.ini file:

host.cpukHz = 3000000
host.noTSC = TRUE
pstc.noTSC = TRUE
host.TSC.noForceSync = TRUE
processor0.use = TRUE
processor1.use = FALSE

I think the main problem was that VMware was using the 2 cores of the processor and that somehow caused the timing inconsistencies. Setting it use only the first core works perfectly now.

At last! Now I can finally have my very own reliable email!

New Spam Filter For My Server

Weight: 140.8
Pain areas: just the reflux
Numbness: none, really
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: about the same from yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

I've been getting waayyyy too much spam lately - and even though most of them automatically go to my "Junk Email Folder", its still a pain to go through it just to make sure there was no false positives. I'm also using GFI MailEssentials to help filter spam.

I decided to try "Greylisting" a try. The technique is pretty simple, actually. It works on the basis that spammers only attempt to send mail once (if the mail bounces, they don't bother resending it). The downside of greylisting is that I no longer get instantaneous emails. Oh well, its a small price to pay.

The software that I use is made by Proxmea and its free!! It works great on my Exchange 2003 server.

Another Normal Day

Weight: 139.4
Pain areas: just the reflux
Numbness: none, really
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little more difficulty than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

Another Normal Day

Weight: 139.0
Pain areas: just the reflux
Numbness: about the same as yesterday
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little more difficulty than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

Another Normal Day

Weight: 140.0
Pain areas: just the reflux
Numbness: about the same as yesterday
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little more difficulty than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea

Another Normal Day

Weight: 138.8
Pain areas: just the reflux
Numbness: increase is significant in left hand when waking up
Nightsweat: none, really
General Attitude: Positive
Swallowing: little less difficulty than yesterday
Medications: Prevacid, Vitamin E, Multivitamin, Lemon grass tea