The Key(board) to Reorganization

You've probably noticed a few tweaks to the look of asisaid for the last few days. Expect some more in the coming hours and days. Right now, I'm mostly still working on the backend, but I'm finally getting around to enabling some stuff that is noticeable on the public side of the interface. Hopefully in a few more days, asisaid will be nicer than it was before the (cue dramatic music) GREAT BLOGGING CRASH OF OH-FOUR.

On the backend side, I must set things up so that I do not have to manually ping Weblogs.com any longer. I'm sick of doing that!

I did get somewhat distracted over the last two days. I replaced my 6.5 year old Dell/Philips monitor with a flat panel, which required cleaning up my desk. While I was doing that, I decided to reorganize the cables under my desk and remove some of the extra stuff before I overload the circuit. I then neatly bundled the cables together and put everything back in place. Just in time to have my keyboard die. sigh At first I wasn't sure it was the keyboard, because it was intermittent and was causing problems with other USB devices as well. But I've been using another keyboard all day today and things seem much better. So now I just need to figure out what keyboard to replace my trusty old one with.

Right now, I'm using a basic Apple keyboard that I had laying around. It was that or and old Microsoft one. Neither one of them is an ergonomic one like my Dell Comfort Key was. Although I think Apple's mechanisms have a better tactile feel, like an old IBM keyboard. But I think I'll need something with a better angle, and perhaps ergonomic shape, again.

Update From the Hospital

I just discovered that the hospital is kind enough to provide free wi-fi to “current patients and visitors.” I noticed this after seeing an antenna that looked suspiciously like a wi-fi one sticking down from the ceiling in the waiting room. After opening Safari and agreeing to the user agreement that appeared in lieu of my homepage, I now have high speed internet access.

OK, so here's the scoop. We were waiting in the waiting room for the cath lab this morning when my dad started having more severe chest and arm pains; his hands also became clammy. They soon transfered my dad to ER, where they gave him some morphine and other stuff and did some tests. One of our pastors had perfect timing to show up at this point and keep my dad occupied until the cath lab was ready. They did do the angiogram as on time as they ever do anything like that. The diagnosis was a bit hard to understand, but it seems that he does not have any blockages worth doing anything for, although one small one did seem to cause a mild heart attack this morning.

They've transferred him to CV ICU now and are going to monitor the situation for awhile. It sounds like any issues will be treated medically rather than surgically — good news! I'll post an update when I know more.

Your prayers over the past week are greatly appreciated. If you can keep dad in your prayers still for the next few days, that'd be great.

I Love "Buy It Now"

A Single Item. I love eBay's “Buy It Now” function. I just bought an item I've been looking for years for, and I “won” it for just $4 plus a couple bucks in shipping. I'll write about what I ordered tomorrow. Of course, if you want to read through my comments and figure out what it was, that'd be 25 tasty points. It relates to something I've talked about in the comments of the last few days. It's sad, but true that you will likely be unable to guess this. There are at least two hints in this paragraph, however.

Get Testy. As a side note, here's a question for y'all. I have my new CMS stable enough that I think I can start using it. It is missing a lot of features I want before I open up the code, such as trackbacks and multiple site support, but trackbacks are the only thing that would be missing as compared to the present asisaid. Do you think I should set up a beta asisaid and ask for some testers or just try it out here and see what happens?

Delay

Time's wingéd chariot came and went today and I didn't get anything written on here. The good news is that you have a whole night and day to take care of the question concerning our friend, Ben. Happy Hunting!

Prayer Request for Dad

Some of you may remember from last summer that my father underwent quadruple bypass surgery. This week he has been experiencing numbness in his left arm and tightness in his chest… he is scheduled for an angiogram on Tuesday. Best case scenario is that it finds nothing, although given the present symptoms, that seems unlikely. Second best is that any blockages can be taken care of with an angioplasty while they are already “in there.”

What's worrisome is that while they successfully did that nineteen years ago on my father, they had tried last summer only to decide bypass surgery was necessary. Worst case is that they would do another bypass — the second of (as I understand it) two possible such surgeries during one's life. Not even considering the risk at hand during surgery, this would be bad also because such surgeries usually only last a maximum of a decade and a half or so, meaning that Dad would be in trouble down the road when he should be “due” for a second surgery.

If you can keep him in your prayers, that would be great.

It Just Makes You Want to Say, "Inside Cheke and Cimble"

Kevin got the answer to the question that has been haunting the asisaid Challenge: it was the Garden of the Forking Paths, a delightful short story from Jorge Luis Borges. (It is much more interesting than the first paragraph — that which I quoted — gives any indication to). You can read it here.

The story is complex and elegantly crafted. The concept expressed inside, well, I won't tell you… I'll make you read it and see if you want to say “inside cheke and cimble” afterwards or not.

Decompression

Two good things happened today:

1. I took my last final today: Brit Lit I. This means that once I wind myself down a bit, I'm back to only doing business-related work for awhile. At any rate, the final had two parts, six quote identification questions (of which you had to write an essay on three) and a comprehensive “matching” section that looked like something I did back in third grade. The essay/identification part turned out to be easy, but the matching was a bear — it doesn't matter what it looks like, it matters what you have to match. There were 23 or 24 items to match to 20 other items (the extra 3 or 4 weren't used), of those, I'm almost certain I got 10 right, I felt “alright” about 15. This part is supposedly something everyone does, and I quote, “terrible” on, is graded on a curve, and is only worth 5% of the total grade for the course, so I'm hoping it won't be too much of a problem.

   If I get a 90 on the essay section (which I think is realistic based on the previous two tests), I should only need a low-middle B on the paper (25% of the grade) to get an A on the course. If I get the same grade on the essays as the last two times, I'll only need a middle-C on the paper to do the same. This paper wasn't my favorite topic of the bunch I wrote, but it had the best result based on the given material, I thought, so I have cautious but high hopes for it.

2. Remember the issue I couldn't talk about that had me down back in October? Well, I think the situation has been remedied completely and even improved beyond where it was before the October issue. I'm thrilled about that. Now I just wait to see how all the pieces fit together. I still cannot talk about the specifics, but hopefully I will be able to eventually.

How was your day?

Draining Myself

This fall has been interesting. Working toward getting out of the computer sector by getting an English and Religion degree is something I've been working on for awhile now (as noted in the linked post), but this was the first semester I was entirely devoted to this rather than meeting general education requirements and the like. Trying to balance obligations has been tough, and some less important projects that I normally work on as part of my business have gone by the way side… at least temporarily.

As I said a few weeks ago, business has been a bit slow, so I was focusing completely on papers. Since the beginning of November, I have probably written between 70-80 pages, about 60-62 on major papers. Now into finals week, I've written 28 pages in longhand over the past 24 hours over the course of six hours worth of exams (hey, that's 4.7 pages per hour). Now I hurt. I have the bad habit of gripping the pen very tightly when writing in such a manor, and my arm hurts from the bottom all the way to my shoulder. Even if I was not trying to work with clients and complete this course work, this has been the craziest semester of any kind, I've ever had. I've felt on the edge of insanity the last few weeks trying to get stuff done — I'm not the kind of person who likes to be working against the edge of a deadline. I feel completely drained.

But, I'm not complaining. It feels good. I can look back and I'm satisfied. I've spent the last four months immersing myself in the things that I love to spend time doing. It will be years before I am able to switch professions, who knows, I may never switch completely — but the point is I know that I am doing what I need to do; what I should have realized I needed to do a long time ago. If you can be so busy that you have no time to catch your breath and still be happy with what you are doing, that is an excellent indicator… I fit that to a “t” right now.

This Week

Will probably be very busy, but after that, I should have a bit more tranquil schedule for awhile. That's a nice thought.

Tomorrow...

…I will rise out of the ashes of too many pages of papers like a Phoenix, err… Firebird, err… Firefox! That's it, like a Firefox!