[ music | Alanis Morissette – Not the Doctor ]

Ok, so, Monday I had my little surgical consultation about my gallbladder surgery. It’s scheduled for December 8. The day after the day that will live in infamy. It’ll be a laparoscopic procedure, with four small incisions; one for the camera, and three for instruments. that is, it’ll be they “keyhole” operation if things go ok, which they should. The issue is it seems my liver, pancreas, and gall bladder are a little higher up in the abdomen than normal, and thus further up under the ribcage a little more. This means there’s a slightly higher chance of “complication” that would mean it would have to be an open procedure. This would be an 8-10 inch incision through the abdomen, which the surgeon described as “a bitch”. I would tend to agree, despite my limited medical experience. So I’m hoping he can get high enough with the instruments to avoid the “bitch” procedure. We’ll see. Sometimes you just gotta roll the hard six.

I love how with every single medical procedure I have the doctors come back with a, “Well, there’s this little issue…” It’s like nothing in my body is quite average. It’s always, “well, isn’t that interesting!” Although I must admit, when I had the ultrasound exam, it was performed by not one, not two, but three beautiful young ladies, one student, one graduate, and one “skilled technician”, not one of them over 28. Forty-five minutes being palpitated by cute girls? Almost worth it.

[ music | Herbie Hancock – Rockit ]

Awesome. That is all.

[ music | Michael Buble – I’ve Got You Under My Skin ]

I upgraded to Firefox 2, but Prefbar 3.3.1 isn’t compatible yet. Anyone know anything about it?

Update: Dude! The originator of the Prefbar extension commented, and alerted me to some issues with the whole situation. I hope the community can help find a way out of this and bring back an incredibly handy tool.

[ music | Queen – We Are The Champions ]

The secret is out. Firefox beat the pants off IE’s download numbers. From Beltzner’s blog:

Apparently, people loves them some Firefox. Within 24 hours of the official launch on Tuesday, there were over 2 million people using Firefox 2, and we were seeing a peak rate of more than 30 downloads per second from our website.

Schwing.

[ music | Sheryl Crow – My Favorite Mistake ]

I had a call a few weeks ago. So far my absolute favorite call. A customer calls, and I’m walking them through various things, and I have to tell them to type in a specific string of letters and numbers. One of the characters was a zero, so as not to confuse it with the letter O I said “zero”. The customer then replied, “Is that the number zero or the letter zero?” I kid you not.

[ music | KT Tunstall – False Alarm ]

So, I’m reading Lucy’s (Majken) blog post on her introduction to the Credits panel in Firefox. She’s SUCH an attention whore. But her calling me at 3 in the morning mewing like a cat is entirely off the topic. Oh, wait, no, that’s someone else. Anyway. So what do I see? I see this:

Yep. It’s too late for me to make some crucial contribution to get my name in the credits. Damn. Guess I’ll have to wait for Firefox 2.0.0.0.0.0.1.

Anyway, so Lucy (still Majken) has made it into the credits. She’s the other Connor above Mike, but below Mary Colvig. Look closely, you’ll see her name…

[ music | Peter Gabriel – Shock the Monkey ]

Whoa. Pardon me while I have a cup of awesome. This press release from Qualcomm is incredible. I used to use Eudora years ago, and loved it, but switched over to MozMail for the integration in the Suite. When Firefox and Thunderbird hit the shelf, I moved over, and they work great together. But this bit about Eudora now being based on TB is awesome, because we’ll get Gecko goodness with Eudora’s feature set. I just hope they keep or improve on TB’s spam filtering. This is something I’ll be keeping an eye on.

[ music | Depeche Mode – A Pain That I’m Used To ]

So, a couple times in June and once in August I get this near-pain in my upper abdomen. A little research showed that it was in the area of my gall bladder. It wasn’t horrendous pain. I just had to sleep carefully on one side, and it only happened after a couple really cheesy meals, so I assumed it was some kind of indigestion of the fatty cheeses.

Flash forward to last night. About 11:30pm I get the same pain, although it dulls a little. I get a couple hours sleep. The pain returns about 8 in the morning, and I can’t get back to sleep. Still not really bad yet, I waste a couple hours then get ready for work. It’s getting pretty bad now. 1pm rolls around and I feel like I’m being stabbed over and over. This is a little more than I can deal with, so I decide to go to the hospital. Over the next ten minutes it got much much worse, and getting to the hospital on my own is no longer an option. I’m doubled over in agony, pale as death (from what I hear), sweating like a klansman in Harlem, and call 911. By the time the ambulance comes I’m weak, shaking, dizzy, and nauseous as hell. They put me on oxygen and hit the gas to the hospital. I do the technicolor yawn twice during the ten minute ride. We arrive and they start an IV, take blood, give me a wonderful cocktail of painkillers in my IV, and I’m back on Earth.

A few hours and tests later we find out I need my gall bladder removed. I have three gallstones, and they can’t do the ultrasonic crushing like kidney stones. So, I’ll consult with some surgeons, watch my diet, and get it yanked in the next few weeks.

I’d like to take this moment to thank the Republican party for helping make it possible for 44 million Americans to have no health insurance by demonizing every national healthcare initiative as “socialism”, and not raising the minimum wage in over a decade, yet raising their own pay 7 times in the same period. Rock on!

[ music | NIN – We’re In This Together ]

The miniseries was incredible. The first season was so fracking huge it didn’t end until six episodes into the second season. The last 5 minutes of the Season Two finale took my head and twisted completely around.

The season premier of Season Three completely blew me away. Best TV show ever. This is why God invented TV.

[ music | The Ramones – I Wanna Be Sedated ]

Back from the dead. Register.com was actually very helpful. Kudos to them. Still in hibernation though, for now… We’ll see…