Hearing Things, Bath Time

Currently Reading: Mars by Ben Bova

Do you hear that? No wait, listen close. Can you hear that? It's sort of a low rumbling sound, like thunder off in the distance or maybe a delivery truck right outside. I'm not sure if *I* can hear it and that's the annoying thing. Well, let me be more precise. I can hear it, I just don't know if it's REAL or not. That's one of the annoying parts about losing the hearing. Sometimes you hear stuff that isn't really there. It's just your brain trying to make sense of the ringing. The problem with that is, ringing in the ears in the low range sounds more like a rumble.

No wait, I think I felt the floor vibrate that time. And the chair too. Maybe I'm not just hearing things. Maybe the Howard Dean freak downstairs has his TV turned up too loud. Damn, if it's up loud enough for ME to hear it, he's going to end up deaf too.

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Well, I've put this off about as long as I can. Time to face the facts: the dogs need a bath. I've been trying to avoid this for a while now because it burns up about as much energy as running a marathon. Ok that may be a little bit much. More like running a 10k :-)

Katya loves the water. She likes to play in the water. Bathwater is included. Put her in the tub, turn on the water and she's having a ball. That part is fine really, the problem comes in when you decide to add SOAP to the water. She's not a big fan of sitting still long enough to get soaped up. Plus, she likes to shake a lot. Again, not bad in itself but you have to remember, Katya soaks up water like a sponge. When she shakes, she gets EVERYTHING wet.

Guess I shouldn't really put this off. I just figured if I blogged about it, it would buy me a little more time :-)

Right, off I go.

Tell my wife I love her :-)

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Damn . . . I Forgot What I Was Gonna Say

Currently Reading: Mars by Ben Bova

I hate it when this happens. All day I knew what I was going to blog about when I got a chance and now that I have a chance, I have no idea what I was going to blog about this morning.

Let's see, what are the potential items: the start of football season? That's very possible though right now I have no idea what I'd rant about. I am happy that it's started, at least the pre-season, but I certainly don't have enough to say about it to fill up a blog entry.

Peter Jennings? Certainly not. Had no idea he was even a story until mid-morning. I'll admit though, it does tend to point out certain hypocracies. Last week at this time he was among the three most hated guys on TV news. Now, well it's the usual butt-kissing story. Yeah, I know, don't speak ill of the dead but on the other hand, don't sell out either. If you didn't like the guy, fine, just give the basics and move on. Let's not gush. I'm also trying to figure out how some of these poorly written headlines made it past the editors. According to one, Jennings was delivering the nightly news for 50 years. That would mean he became an anchor at age 17. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been THAT long. He probably started his career at 17. Makes more sense. You'd think that people in the business of writing would pay more attention to their words.

Ok, so what else might I have wanted to rant about? Nothing from this morning but here are two items of note. First, rude cell phone people. Honestly, you habitual cell phone users really need to remember that you're out in public when you're on the phone. Seriously, do not give me that look when I'm out walking my dog and she barks. We're all out in the same field. She's a dog. She barks. You're the idiot trying to conduct business from the middle of a field. I've actually gotten the look several times, all from the same field. These are the same people who look at you funny in the grocery store when you happen to be talking to whoever you're with and the person on the cell phone grunts, turns away and mumbles something about rude people being loud. The world is NOT a phone booth. If you decide to make a call in public, expect noise.

Second, and finally, I'm feeding the blog to my website now. Didn't make sense to post to both places. Since I started blogging I haven't updated things over there so I signed up for an RSS feeder. If you're reading this from the site, howdy!

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A Long Time Ago . . .

Currently Reading: Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa

I've been working with computer for a long time. I know this is true because I keep coming across these little lists and human interest stories about old computers and programs and I think to myself, "hey, I had one of those!"

Over on VH1 they run shows dedicated to making me feel old. The "I love the " shows are really the ones that hit the hardest. Those ones deal with pop culture and fads. Some of them are pretty damn funny. Remember Slime? It came in a little plastic garbage can. Didn't really have a purpose. It just felt like snot. I had some of that :-)

I love watching shows where they're trying to be cutting edge. You look at the cell phone and it's about the size of a hand iron. They have remote controls that actually make a clicking noise when the button is pushed. And the televistions. HUGE cabinet TV with a 24 inch screen. Big box, small picture.

We still don't have our flying cars though. We were promised flying cars. Remember? Flying cars and flying motorcycles were supposed to be a staple of everyday life. Robots were supposed to be everywhere by now and there was supposed to be a space station on the moon. That's where you'd always stop over on your way to other places like Mars or some science station in orbit around Jupiter.

Yeah, they got it wrong. No moon base, no flying cars, and the only thing we do in space is haul stuff. Let's face it, the whole space shuttle thing is really just a flying U-Haul these days. They carry stuff to the space station or maybe haul something up and fling it into orbit. They run some experiments too I suppose but they always seem like the kind of thing you'd see at the science fair in high school.



Well at least we're doing a little better in some areas than we thought. See that picture there? That's what a home computer was predicted to look like in the year 2004. Pretty impressive isn't it?

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Speaking of old things, I came across a list of computer fads over on MSN. Yeah, another sign I'm old. I remeber all of them. Actually, pretty funny, BLOGGER is listed as one of the fads. Maybe they should revise that list. If a site is still going strong after this long, maybe it's not such a fad afterall.

Three good ones popped up that had me laughing again. The first one is the All Your Base video. There was a computer game way back in the way-back and, well the programmers were Japanese and the didn't do the best job translating the text from Japanese to English. The result is too damn funny for words. You can find it here.

Then there's that dancing hamster. I'm sure you remember it. Everyone was sending it or the link. It's still around. You can find it here.

And of course, no list like this would be complete without the Star Wars kid. It's a home movie really, of some kid pretending to be Darth Maul from the first Star Wars prequel. Seriously folks, be careful what you put on video. Good or bad, naughty or nice, there's always a chance it's going to end up being sent out around the world and end up here.

I think I'll add these links to the sidebar in case anyone wants a little reminder.

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Rear Window Observations

Currently Reading: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

My neighbors can't park. Seriously, I'm sitting here on the third floor looking out over the parking lot and they REALLY can't park.

Oooo, that's gonna leave a mark. Old lady parks her car in slot #2. Silver car in slot #1 gets a tap from her door. Hard to say who's to blame in this one. On the one hand, the old lady DID let her door swing out too far. On the other hand, that silver car is parked more crooked than a Memphis politician and it's riding the line too!

Not that the old lady is perfect. The front of her car is about 2 feet from the curb so it's sticking out quite a bit. And she's not the only one. A few slots over there's another car doing the same thing. Good thing the parking lot is pretty wide.

But you know what the really bad part about all this is? There are only FOUR cars in the lot right now and one of them hasn't moved since last night. Three cars. 10 available slots. It's not like we're crowded here or they had to dodge anything. These people seem unable to manage a simple 90 degree turn into a parking space.

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The kids down in 204 are pigs. We're not sure if they're girls or boys yet. About 2 weeks ago I saw two guys coming out of the place and heading down the stairs. I've also seen a guy hanging out there on the balcony. On the other hand, I just saw two girls heading over to the dumpster with their trash bags and last week we saw a girl over at the car washing area washing her dogs. She also came from that apartment. Lord I hope that doesn't mean there are FOUR of them crammed in that two bedroom apartment but it would explain some things.

CC noted one morning that there were three garbage bags in front of their door, all covered in ants. I guess they were too lazy to cross the parking lot to the dumpster that day. There are also a large number of cigarette butts around their door and in the stairwell outside it too. I'm thinking at least one of them smokes and isn't allowed to do it inside. Fortunately they're on the other side of the building so we don't have to walk past them every day. Never understood how people can live like that. Doesn't take much energy to clean things up a bit.

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It's back to school time here. Kids start up on the 8th. You can already see it in their eyes. They know it's coming.

I remember what it was like. The last week of summer you just want to cram in as many things as you can, especially since you didn't do ANYTHING you said you WOULD do over the summer. It gets worse the older you get too. High school, assigned summer reading. Show of hands, who actually did it? Ok, there are a few of you out there who were teacher's pet, the rest of us freaked out that last week and tried to at least get SOME idea of what those books were about :-)

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For the record, CC parked WAY better than everyone else in the lot. She just got home.

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CSI: Spike

Currently Reading: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Do you watch CSI? Not the spinoffs, which are pretty good too, but the main CSI, the one from Vegas. Do you watch that? Ever since we got cable I've been watching it a few times a week. I'm not sure what time it's on CBS or what day, but it's always been on opposite something else I watched so I missed most of the episodes when they first aired.

CC and I were watching it last night on Fox and we discovered something rather interesting: the head CSI guy, Gil Grissom, has the same problem with his hearing that I do. You find this out in the last episode of season 2 (I had to look that up). Now, I've seen a few episodes after that when they first ran and characters would remark about him having surgery or if he SHOULD have the surgery. I knew it was about his hearing but I never saw the episode where he was diagnosed so I always wondered if he had the same thing.

Ok, so for those who don't know, Grissom has otosclerosis. Basically it means the bones in your ear harden. Since they can't move, they can't convey vibrations from the ear drum properly and thus you slowly lose your hearing. Fixing it, there aren't many options. You can get by with hearing aids for a while but eventually the bones will get too hard for even that to help. There's a surgery where they actually remove the bones and replace them with graphite. How well it works really depends on the person. For most people you get at least SOME hearing back. Of course, there's also a really good chance that you'll lose it again. The same thing that caused the bones to harden in the first place will go to work on the graphite replacement.

There are risks, naturally. Like any surgery things can go wrong. You always have the risk of infection and since you're dealing with the part of your head that deals with balance, you certainly don't want an infection there. There's also the risk that your head is wired funny so maybe your nerves aren't exactly where they're supposed to be. If the surgeon nicks a nerve you can lose your hearing entirely in that ear. There are also interesting cases where people lose feeling in parts of their face. Not sure what causes that. It's either infection or nicking a nerve.

Pretty interesting isn't it? Me and the main character from CSI have the same problem. Of course, since he's ficitonal, I'm sure HIS surgery was SUCH a success that you'd never notice the difference :-)

It was handled quite well in the show though. Grissom is sitting there consulting with his doctor about it. She tells him the problem and you can see it sink in on his face. Oh I know that look very well. I've tried it on myself. It's the look that tells you that you're going to lose your hearing and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. At best, you can only slow its progress.

-- Somebody hand my wife a tissue please. She's probably about to cry :-) --

I'm going deaf.
I can't stop it.
It's quite depressing.

You know, it's actually a bit of a release typing that out. No tears please, no pity either. I've never been fond of that. I'll be just fine.

Funny how things work out.
It's very comforting to know I'm not alone.
Thank you, everyone, for helping me get through it :-)