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Mother-in-Law update
Well, I’m back. I drove through the night rather than getting up early to get home at a reasonable hour. The sugary went well. No surprises for the surgeons. We were hoping she wouldn’t need a LVAD put in, but she did. It will be a little adjustment to learn haw the LVAD works, and get use to always having a battery pack strapped to her. Now she just has a long road to recovery. She will be in the hospital for two more weeks, and then she needs to stay near the hospital, in an apartment for a couple more weeks to make sure she can handle the LVAD on her own, and be close for checkups. She is also now on the transplant waiting list. She will need a transplant sometime in a near future. So if you’re not a donor, why the hell not? I have been a donor since I first got my license at 16. If I’m not going to need my parts, might as well give them to someone who does.The bad thing is the price of all of this. They are probably lucky that they don’t have any money or health insurance, otherwise this would have probably bankrupted them. Since they have nothing, there are programs out there to help them out, which is great. There will still be a bunch of costs that us, and the rest of the family is probably going to have to chip in to cover.
The loss of my Mother-in-Law’s income is really putting them in a bind. My Father-in-Law just has some crappy $12 an hour job, while that was still more than my Monther-in-Law brought in, they really miss her paychecks. I couldn’t imagine living on $12 and hour. We probably put more into savings a month, then they make a month. It almost make me feel bad.
Okay, that’s the update, now time to get back to my RSS feeds. The hospital wifi was down on Wednesday, so I got way behind.
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Surgery day
Tomorrow is my Mother-in-Law’s surgery day. She is having a quadruple bypass, so it’s a little scary, but doctors nowadays are pretty amazing, so she should be fine. I’m heading out to Minneapolis in the morning and should get down there shortly before she is out. Then it’s a long and boring week in the hospital. I’m not sure how long I will be down there, but I won’t have much internet access. I think the hospital has wifi, but nothing at the relatives’ house that we are staying at. I am already getting the shakes. I wish I had my iPhone already because the wifi hotspot would be nice, but I still have 37 days left of my contract.
I am hoping that I can sneak out early since most of the family is going to be down there all week. Not that I don’t want to be with my family, it’s just that once she is out and fine, I don’t feel the need for me to be there. I would rather be someplace with internet. Yeah, I might have an internet addiction problem.
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Supporting independent artists
I love supporting independent artists who release there stuff online as “pay what you want”. I just bought Wil Wheaton’s new short story Hunter, and Molly Lewis’s new song, “An Open Letter To Stephen Fry”. I love them both, and am more than happy to throw a few bucks at them for their hard work.
I would like to think and hope the “pay what you want” model works. I support it whenever possible, and always throw in a little extra. I would think most fans would chip in, and if they weren’t fans and downloaded it for free—Well, they may become fans and buy future works.
Wil Wheaton said he would probably get $125 for selling his short story to a magazine. With his fan base, I can almost guarantee he will make much for than that selling it online. It would just take 42 people to pay the $3 that I did. The best part is no DRM. I don’t have to crack the DRM like I do when I buy from Amazon, and it also feels good knowing that 100% of the money—after PayPal takes their cut—goes into his pocket.
And if you don’t know who Molly Lewis is, you can watch her on YouTube, and buy her music on BandCamp. I honestly listen to her music all the time, and am always looking for new stuff. Here is her video for her latest song that I just bought:
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How to solve a Rubik’s Cube! rap
This is a genius rap about solving a Rubik’s Cube. I would find it difficult to follow though. Dan Brown makes it easier to solve your Rubik’s Cube—although not quite as entertaining.
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Flight of the bumble bee on an accordion
via youtube.comAlexander Dmitriev plays Flight of the bumble bee on an accordion. How anybody can move their fingers that fast is beyond me.
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Who doesn’t love Pi?
Another great t-shirt at Shirt.woot.com. This one sold out on me, but it’s probably for the better. I have too many woot! shirts the way it is.
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The amazing universe
via youtube.comI’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. I’m about halfway through it, and it’s a great book about the history of science. It got me thinking of this video. I saw it a while back, and may even blogged about it before. The video is nearly as old as me, but it’s still great and illustrates how amazing massive the universe is, and how insignificant our pale blue dot is. It also shows how amazing small atoms are. It always amazes me to think that you and everything around you, including the air, is mostly empty space.
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NASA’s STEREO reveals the entire sun
How frickin’ cool is that? NASA can now see both sides of the Sun at the same time. Science is so frickin’ cool. I just love learning about all the new stuff they discover, and the internet makes it so easy nowadays.
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My geek cave
Currently in my geek cave I have two desks. The one I mostly sit at usually has three computers on it, sometimes four if I am playing around on my netbook . I have a Windows 7 machine, two Macs, and my netbook runs Ubuntu Linux.
Across the room is my Wife’s old desk. Once she got a laptop she didn’t have a use for it anymore. I have two more computers over there hooked up to a KVM switch to share the keyboard, monitor, and mouse. One is my main Linux system running Ubuntu, and the other is an old junker that’s running console video game emulators. If I ever have the urge to play Super Mario Brothers, or Pitfall, that’s where I do it. I can play any Atari 2600, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Nintendo, or Super Nintendo game I want. All the video game systems of my youth.
In the near future I am going to upgrade my desk. I’m getting rid of the two I have and getting one big one that should house all five of these computers. I have looked around town, and haven’t found crap for computer desks, but I have found some pretty sweet ones online. I am going to switch from a corner desk to a L shaped desk with two keyboard drawers. It should give me plenty of room after I upgrade that big ass 19” CRT monitor.
I am so eager to make the upgrade, but I kind of have to wait until I make room on the garage for my old desks. The garage is a pretty sloppy mess now being winter, and having the snowblower and other crap in there.
I hope I will be able to sell my desks quickly on Craigslist. They are both high quality and in pretty good shape. I love them both, but it’s time for an upgrade. Once my new desk is in place, then I will have a whole half of room to figure out what I want to do with.
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100 famous rock guitar riffs – one take
via reddit.comJust try to name them all.