Just saved fiddy bucks!!

It's looking like mitch's diagnosis of blood blister/ecchymosis is likely the correct one, since I was just picking at it and noticed that the splotch was coming off ... so, I dug in there real good with my fingernail and removed the entire offending lesion. Thinking this might also work for the spots on the end, I scratched at those too until I got most of it.


Here's something I really didn't need to post:


I just saved fiddy bucks, and I owe it all to DIODE!!

Now I can go back to using the finger the way it's meant to be used.

Should I get a biopsy?

About a month ago, I noticed some new dark lesions on my left middle finger, which appeared out of nowhere. There wasn't any trauma to the area, and the lesions are non-painful and don't bleed.

They aren't very big, and haven't changed in size since I first noticed them, but their very dark pigmentation and sudden appearance have me a little concerned.

The main one is the black spot in the middle - it is about 2 mm and has fairly smooth, but not perfectly round, edges. There seems to be a little bit of a thickness to it as well.

The other one is the group of tiny dark splotches towards the fingertip - geographical type lesions that are dark brown. (Looks like the Philippines).

It's just odd that they would appear out of nowhere, isn't it?

I made an appointment to see a dermatologist on Thursday, but am thinking maybe I can save a $50 copay if people are like, "that is clearly nothing to worry about." I mean, do you think it's worth biopsying, or is it going to be one of those, "let's just watch it and see what happens in the coming months, bye bye $50" things?

Send your name to Pluto!

"NASA is preparing to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. It will be the first earth device to get intimate with the icy planet. And you can be there too - or, at least, your name. NASA is asking everyone to send them their names, which will be attached in the space device. The New Horizons probe will be launched in January 2006 to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, in the outskirts of the Solar System. It is expected that the probe will return to earth in approximately 50 thousand years."

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ecard/scripts/addSignaturesForm.php

Q Fever! will be there ...

... as will Ouija Cat ...

and ... last, but not least ...DIODE

Hard Drive Hopes

So last night I put the dead hard drive in the freezer for about 2 hours, and after I took it out and plugged it all back in, it worked!!! For about twenty minutes, anyway ... enough to get about 20 gigs backed up. Then it died again ...

I put it back in the freezer overnight, and with high hopes, tried it again this morning ... nope. Dead. Dead, DEAD, D E A D.

I found this site online: http://www.gillware.com/

Their "niche" is people who don't want to pay a lot of money to have their hard drive repaired. You would think this would include everyone, but ... anyhow, my drive is on its way to them as we speak, and for $379 hopefully they can get my data back. If they can't, there's no charge. Also, they don't charge a fee just to look at the drive, unlike every other company I looked at - the going rate was $150 just too look at it, even if it turns out nothing can be done. Sheesh.

Well, I'll keep you abreast. By the way, can I borrow $379 from someone?

I feel ill

My 200 gb external hard drive is dead. Dead. DEAD.

It was working fine yesterday. This morning the light was blinking strangely. Odd, I thought. Just now I checked it. It is not spinning up. Windows XP is not recognizing it. It is whirring and then it clicks and turns off, and starts up again, whirrs, clicks, turns off, starts up, ad infinitum.

No, I do not have a recent backup of the important stuff on there. It was just about full.

YES, I KNOW I SHOULD HAVE BACKED IT UP. I back up my other stuff religiously. YES, I'VE LEARNED MY LESSON.

I tried changing the drive enclosure, no luck.

I found this: http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/metatraffic2/track.asp?mtr=/PDF/200ways.pdf

... and am trying the first thing, freezing it.

I don't have a 'desktop' computer so I'm going to have to find someone's to borrow so I can see if the drive can be recognized by the system BIOS. If not, I am seriously F'D.

Most of those 'data recovery' services charge an arm and a leg ... I just got an online quote from one: $500 plus $125 per gig, up to $2500. WTF. Nice how they gouge a person when they're really desperate.

Booty-licious!

Well, it arrived today, my new "IBM" Thinkpad, direct from the sovereign nation of Hong Kong. It is a thing of beauty ... but make no mistake about it: much like my paperback-sized aluminum cased Treo, it is a behemoth in every sense of the word.

At the lower left of the picture above - look at the size of that transformer brick!!!!

Truly, a deadly weapon:

Not only does the computer appear to be bigger and heavier than my 4 year old Inspiron, it's also thicker than the swamp-like humidity down here in the lowlands:

Of course, it's so worth it to be able to use the glorious nubbin known as the TrackPoint:


So what if the CTRL key and the Fn key are switched, and there's no Windows key? As long as I don't have to carry this monster more than 20-30 yards or so, it's all the high-falootin', bad-ass compootin' I need!!!

Infervesco Reverti: Q Fever! Returns

Well folks, after an almost two-year absence, word in the ghetto is that Q Fever!, once an award-eligible medical humor & satire website, has sprung to life yet again.

Like a Phoenix, it, too, teetered one time too many on the proverbial river's edge, its trajectory cruelly cut short by a lethal combination of celebrity, crack cocaine, and esterified estrogens.

And now, it re-emerges. Or, reemerges. Whichever it is, please refrain from pronouncing it "ream urges".

Beneath the new Q Fever!'s glossy surface lies literally hundreds of hours of work, much of it performed in a haze induced by garden-variety mushrooms and acetic acid.

Enjoy.

medical humor! medical humor! medical humor!
(Spider that, google!)

The Infinite Phat Cat Project

Ouija Cat has made it to the Infinite Cat Project! (He hasn't really accomplished much in life, so this is a big deal for him.)

Here and here.

Wish me a happy bertha-day!

Good morning DIODE - it's my birthday! I am hoping to go to Burger King and get one of those hats. And a Whopper! (no mayo, no onions, of course!)

I was thinking about treating myself to this Thinkpad - what do you think? I know there are cheaper notebooks, but I have one important dealbreaker that only Thinkpads offer nowadays: a Trackpoint. I can not have a laptop that only has a trackpad.

Also, I wanted something that has a Pentium 4 with HT, rather than Pentium-M/Centrino, because I'm not going to be lugging it around much, and the performance tradeoff is real when it comes to video/multitasking.

The other idea would be to get a desktop ... RHS, what model is your dual-core Dell? Was it expensive?

You And Your Research

I was reading this article yesterday called "You And Your Research" by Richard Hamming, and halfway through it I realized I must have read it already, because the printout I was reading already had the margin scribbles and underlining that I usually make when I read. But I couldn't remember a single thing about it ... strange. Time to refill my Aricept ...

Anyhow, I thought it was a nice article in the sense that it talks about ways to approach ideas and problems, such as the idea that "If you do not work on an important problem, you aren't going to do important work." I mean, it's common sense, but makes you think a little.

I thought of DIODE as I was reading it, since research of some sort makes up at least 3/5ths, maybe 4/5ths (I'm not sure) of what the esteemed members of DIODE do on a daily basis. In fact, one of you might have sent the article to me in the first place, or I might have forwarded it already in the past. Can't remember.

Anyhow, I don't agree with everything he says, and some of it, I thought, is a little bit on the pompous side (like when he's talking about leaving social circles as soon as he sees the "top people" in the group leave, so he can find smarter people to hang out with), but all in all it was thought-provoking.

Here is a better link to use if you planning to print it.