Day 3 summary

I started the day with the cath procedure. The results were unexpected. I have significant blockage throughout the blood vessels that feed the heart. Based on the results the decision was made not to proceed with installing stents (since 8 or more would have been necessary).

The next step is bypass surgery. I’ll need multiple bypasses, and there’s two approaches to consider. Here at UMMS, one of the best minimally invasive heart surgeons in the world is now in residence — Johannes Bonatti, M.D. While his process is limited to 1 or 2 bypasses, there’s an opportunity for a hybrid approach involving minimally invasive bypass and stents installed via another cath procedure. If this approach is viable, the recovery time would be minimized. The other approach is a traditional open-heart bypass. Considering my age the Chief of Cardiac Surgery has a plan that involves maximal use of arterial grafts from around by body to provide the necessary bypass material. The results would be superior to the use of large amounts of material harvested from veins.

Both options are scary. Both options are risky. Neither option would be available until next week, and I’ll be in the hospital until then (just in case my condition deteriorates). I’m talking to the minimally invasive surgeon tomorrow, and I’ll make a decision after I get more details on the hybrid approach. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you updated.

End of day 2 in the Hospital

Thus ends another day in the hospital. Missi showed up again today with my iPhone charger (yea!), the laptop (yea!), and chocolate covered peanuts (I knew I loved her). Things here are now passable enough for me to spend a day or two more.

I have a cardiac catheter procedure scheduled for tomorrow. They’ll run a tube from by groin to my heart, inject a dye and do some imaging of my heart. If necessary/possible, they’ll install a stent (small spring-like tube) to open up any blockages.

More updates when available….

Out of service

While on vacation in Jamaica (sorry I meant to blog about that before this) I started having a hard time with rapid heart rate, shortness of breath and mild chest pain.

At the moment, I’m in the University hospital in Baltimore for observation. Everything looks normal at this point, but I’m being admitted overnight for diagnostics and a stress test.

Dealing with Spam

I get too much spam. Specifically, my home account gets close to 500 spam messages a day. Normally, I rely on SpamSieve on my Macbook Pro to filter all that noise, and it does a pretty good job (on average 1 spam a day makes it through). But now that I’m also getting my e-mail on my iPhone, SpamSieve is no longer meeting my needs. Since SpamSieve depends on my Mac to be running, and often the Mac is: off, alseep, or just not on the Internet; all that e-mail has been showing up unfiltered on the iPhone.

So this weekend I’ve moved my spam handling back to the server-side. The first step was to starting removing as many bogus connections as possible. To do that I implemented fake MX records, and SMTP transaction delays. Next I started greylisting (using milter-greylist) all incoming e-mail. You can read more about these spam fighting techniques here

The results over the last 24 hours: approx. 10 spam messages were logged in SpamSieve

I plan to start using SpamAssassin again to handle those few messages that still make it through the new server-side spam tools, but life is now much better on the iPhone.

Bought an iPhone 3G

So I finally got an iPhone. After waiting a full year (and desperately trying to get a 16GB black), I ended up buying an 8GB iPhone. Which pretty much means I’m only a GPS chip and a bit of speed ahead of the previous owners.

Some quick notes on the iPhone. It kicks my Motorola Razr to the curb in terms of call quality. Whereas I could barely make a call from the top floor of my house, before, the iPhone is handling it with aplomb.

Calling this thing a smartphone is seriously undervaluing it as a computing/information platform. It’s really an ultra-portable computing device. Many of the apps I’ve loaded serve to extend my full desktop environment into my pocket. The always accessible nature of the apps and associated data is pretty powerful. Where some people think it’s great to be able to use Word or Excel from a handheld device, give me the whole Internet any day of the week.

Wii owners == stupid sheep

wiifit.jpgI should point out that not all Wii owners are stupid sheep, just the ones paying huge markups to get the latest widget from the folks at Nintendo.

The Wii has been in (artificially?) short supply since it’s release almost 1.5 years ago, and this week Nintendo released Wii Fit; which is apparently also hard to buy… at least in stores. At Amazon and eBay you can get a Wii Fit for prices as high as $500. In fact eBay currently lists almost 7000 results for Wii Fit.

While I understood the rush to obtain the Wii console itself (christmas season), the Wii Fit doesn’t deserve this kind of hype. Currently only 2 games support the peripheral: the bundled game and We Ski (which is supposed to be only OK). Furthermore the packed in game is probably of only limited entertainment for most younger gamers. If the Wii itself is any indication it’s going to take game developers a while to make more than cursory use of the Wii Fit Balance Board as a controller, so I don’t see this situation improving in the next 2-3 months.

My intuition is that the majority of stock in Wii Fit has gone to pre-orders and a significant number of those are now up on eBay. Driven by scarcity and hype people (parents?) are paying stupid prices to get a device that will probably languish in their basements within a couple of months.

I’d like a copy of Wii Fit. I need to lose weight and any gadget that gets me to focus on my health is good. But I’m not going to pay more than MSRP ($90 is already high for the device), and I encourage others to do the same. As long as people are willing to shell out premium prices for the latest gizmo, the speculators (and manufacturers) are going to create artificial market conditions to their benefit.

Someone new

lovers.jpgI’ve been seeing someone new for a bit, and it’s going pretty well. For the time being let’s call her Miss I (or just Missi). She’s not cool with her identity being on released here, but if you get a chance to hang out with me anytime soon I’m sure you’ll meet her.