Monday, July 28, 2008
A trip to the emergency room
Wednesday of last week was a day of firsts. It was my first time in an ambulance. My first time admitted into an emergency room, my first CAT scan, my first enema… yeah, gross. Here’s what went down…
I was at work. During my lunch break I decided to just play some video games at the office instead of going to the gym. I wasn’t feeling quite like myself, but I thought it was just diarrhea. Towards the end of my lunch break, I was feeling increasingly worse, like I had something uncomfortable going on in my bowels or something. I had already gone to the bathroom once, and it didn’t help anything. The pain was steadily increasing, so I got up to go to the bathroom again, only to become instantly dizzy… to the point of nearly blacking out.
I fell to my hands and knees, smacking my shoulder and head on a chair along the way. I sat there for awhile, leaning against the doorway of the room I was in. I knew I needed help, so I tried calling a coworker on my cell phone. No answer. I was feeling really weak, woozy, and a little nauseous, so I curled up on the floor, intentionally half out in the hallway so someone would find me. I think I was hyperventilating due to the pain because my hands were tingling badly. I was contemplating who to call next when a coworker found me and dialed 911.
I told him I felt like throwing up, so he ran and found a large bowl for me just in time for me to heave up my salad and french fries. Wow that stuff was green. The paramedics soon arrived (someone later said there were like 6 of them standing around while one worked. Dude, I’m not a whale. Two is enough to carry me.) They asked me questions while I grunted out answers. My hands were past tingling and had begun to seize up. That’s never happened to me before, it felt so weird. I couldn’t move them, it was like rigor mortis in my hands.
The surrealism started when they lifted me up onto the gurney and wheeled me to the ambulance. I don’t even remember the elevator ride. I’d never been on a gurney before, whee. That ambulance was the bumpiest thing I’ve ever been in. The paramedic had the potholes memorized and was warning me to brace myself at the right moments. I managed to joke to him that Caltrans should work together with paramedics. (Caltrans refers to the California Department of Transportation, who is responsible for fixing the streets.)
In the hospital I laid in the gurney in a hallway for at least 20 minutes while they sorted out emergencies. Apparently I arrived during a large wave of emergencies. At that point I was feeling better. Whatever my problem was had eased its grip on me. They eventually wheeled me into my own room, hooked me up to some monitors and took some blood for testing. The ER doctor poked and prodded me while asking a battery of questions for diagnosis.
I recently watched all four seasons of House MD, one of the best shows ever. In this ER, I felt like part of an episode, which added to my sense of surrealism. This helped me to be one of the most patient patients they’ve ever seen. The nurses were surprised, I guess because most people are cranky and want to get out as soon as possible. I just wanted them to find out what was wrong with me.
I was told I was going to have a CAT scan, which I actually looked forward to because it looks so neat on TV. Then I was told that they needed to give me an enema by filling my bowels with a contrasting fluid, so they could see my appendix better. Oh. Okay… well… a good cleansing is good for you… right? The surrealism stopped when they jammed the tube up my sphincter and proceeded to pump a cold bag of reality into my bowels. Oh my god it was the most uncomfortable thing EVER. It was like my worst case of diarrhea times 100. I was in agony and had to wait until they were done imaging before they drained me. Holy fuck. People PAY to get this done to them voluntarily?
They were expecting appendicitis, but didn’t see any of the associated inflammation. However they instead found a huge cyst on one ovary. An average ovary is around 3cm… that thing was 9cm! They said it was likely a bleeding endometrioma, caused by endometriosis. Endometriosis is the condition of having some endometrium, which is the stuff that belongs inside the uterus, growing outside it instead. So whenever the hormones signal the uterus that it’s time for a cycle, all endometrium cells start to bleed, regardless of where they are located. They informed me that blood in the abdominal cavity is extremely painful.
After a sonogram, I was finally released at 2am. My next step is to get laproscopy done, which is where they knock you out and stick a camera through your bellybutton to see what’s actually going on inside. This will probably be followed by surgery of some kind.
Basically it was a lot of waiting around. The story-telling sounds more dramatic. But one thing is for sure… it’s a damn good thing I had on clean underwear!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Got herpes?
I saw this banner today:
There’s actually a dating site for people with herpes. Um… well that’s good. This is one kind of love you don’t want to be spreading around. I wonder though, will there actually be people who want to broadcast that they have herpes?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Yee ha.
Let’s take a momentary break from all the geeking around. I’ve got to wait for my processor order to come in all the way from Massachusetts (Holy crap that’s a hard state to spell. I had to Google it. Surprisingly I was only one letter off.) before more computer fun can ensue.
The office where I work is planning another company event. They’re still making it after work hours, but at least they’re letting us out an hour early this time. I hate it when they want you to bond with your coworkers on your time. Hello I have other things I’d much rather be doing than spending even more time hanging around the people I work with all day. You know, like clipping my toenails. My socks are getting holey.
It’s a company-sponsored dinner… at some place called Union Cattle. WTF. My first thought was, “They’re taking us to a cattle ranch?? Did they forget I’m vegetarian?” I looked it up and it’s supposed to be an “elegant” restaurant… with a mechanical bull. Right. That’s classy. They said they went last year and had a blast. I guess they were drunk or something. You’d have a blast picking up freeway litter if you were drunk enough.
The thought of riding a mechanical bull was intriguing at first. How long would I be able to stay on? After more thinking, however, I became less and less curious about it. I just can’t seem to find anything redeeming about hopping up onto a mechanical bull in front of all your coworkers, flailing about like a rag doll while you desperately cling to the pommel with one hand and feel your shoulder about to pop out of its socket, and eventually flying to the floor, landing on who knows which body part, and crumpling into an ungraceful pile… all in front of people you’re going to see again the next day.
The next day? Yes, this blessed event is happening on Monday night. So those who feel inclined to get blind, stinking drunk will still have to crawl into work the next day. I feel closer to my company already.
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Geeky Dragon Girl on 07/10 at 10:22 AM
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Office Hijinks
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 7 - Processor upgrade
How many parts are there going to be in this ongoing saga where I wildly attempt to make my seven-year-old computer less obsolete? Who knows. As many as it takes. Till I’m done dammit! (Either that or until I’m forced to admit defeat a build a brand new machine instead.)
In today’s misadventure I’ve decided that 1.6Ghz is wimpy. Nearly all the system requirements I’ve looked at for my options have specs that my system is barely able to meet. Which means, although the things will run, they will run slowly. Video processing is pretty CPU intensive, so a CPU upgrade is in order.
The first thing I learn is that my Dell Dimension 4300 uses a socket 478 motherboard. So, like a blindly charging bull in Pamplona, I order the fastest Pentium 4 CPU I can find that will fit. I’m feeling good about it because it’s a pretty good price for 3.2Ghz ($60 shipped). Then… yes, and then I wonder if there are speed limitations I need to adhere to. Why do these realizations come to me so slowly? Hello, basic research would’ve yielded that information, right?
I found out later after only five minutes of browsing through the Dell forums that my system can only handle a processor up to 2.6Ghz and 400FSB. I totally forget what FSB stands for now, but the one I had ordered was 800. That’s two things that’s incompatible with my system. It’s possible I could burn out my motherboard trying to stick that thing in there. Stupid stupid me.
I emailed the vendor, but I doubt they’re going to offer me a refund. Ebay bids are binding. Oh well. I’ll just resell the thing and hopefully recoup my money. These old processors are getting harder to find, so it shouldn’t be hard to resell.
Learn from my idiotic mistakes. Get detailed information about what your motherboard can handle before you rush out and buy something that could potentially fry your old system. 
Monday, July 07, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 6 - Software
Without the Media Center version of XP, I obviously don’t have Windows Media Center. My intention for installing XP Pro SP2 was to install a third party media center alternative, called Media Portal. It’s a free, open source project to make your Windows machine into a home theater PC. I had high hopes for this software.
Initial installation was easy, but configuring the thing is a huge undertaking. Media Portal (MP) is tons more flexible and customizable than Microsoft’s Media Center (MC), but the actual configuring takes a lot of time and research to figure out what’s going on. I’ve gotten to the point where MP is useable, but annoying. Trying to fast forward an AVI movie causes it to skip huge chunks of the movie. It’s most likely something I need configure on the remote, but damn, I’ve spent days on this thing and I’m still not all that happy with it.
Free is always nice, but so much of MP feels like features that are hacked together and barely work. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s got lots of possibilities and a lot of people actually do prefer it over MC. However I’m starting to wonder if it’s really worth all the time I need to put into it to make it act as good as my Tivo. I read that it took one person about six months to configure MP to be stable and exactly how he liked it. Good grief. If I ever have to reinstall the thing for any reason, it would take another several months to get right again!
It’s made me think about shelling out the dough for Windows Vista Premium, with Media Center already built in. I’ve used it on my laptop and it seems very stable, and extremely easy to use. My only concern would be the sytem requirements. Vista wants at least of 1Ghz processing speed and 512MB of RAM. I’ve currently got 1.6Ghz and 1GB RAM, so it’ll run… but how well? Vista includes a feature called ReadyBoost where I can use a USB flash drive to add extra RAM cache, so that could help too. I’m also looking into upgrading the CPU to something faster.
What I’m thinking of doing is installing Vista alongside XP as a dual boot, in case Vista proves to be too much of a drag I can still go back to my XP installation without much trouble. Problem is, if I do decide Vista is too slow for my setup, I can’t get my money back for it. I’ll have to think about this some more.
Friday, July 04, 2008
What I think of the 4th of July
I like getting the day off.
I hate fireworks.
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Geeky Dragon Girl on 07/04 at 06:00 AM
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Thursday, July 03, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 5 - Realizing you're an idiot
The problems with my video card? For the most part, imaginary. I cannot believe how many hours I’ve wasted on this. I’ve done about three repair installations and completely reinstalled the OS twice. There was no driver conflict. It was just the driver doing something a little unexpected, and I do mean a little.
Why did I wait until my third OS repair installation to go to ATI’s website and look for answers? I dunno. Because I’m a nincompoop. There, clearly explained in two short paragraphs, was my answer. During the Windows bootup, when the video drivers are being loaded up, it would sense two monitors plugged into the video card. I had my monitor and the TV plugged in. During setup, it picks one to be the primary and sends the video there. My monitor kept losing the video signal because it was being sent to the TV, but because I never had the TV on while I was troubleshooting, I never noticed.
What I should have done, and this was what I did before the whole TV tuner business, was to unplug the TV from the video card. After the driver has been set up and rebooted and it looks great, then plug in the TV. So… damn… simple. *smacking forehead repeatedly*
The other thing I spent way too much time on can be categorized as a stupid user trick. I’m almost too ashamed to admit it. While setting up the sound, I wanted output to go to both the TV and the PC speakers, that way we could listen to music without having to have the TV on. So I plugged the speakers into one jack and the TV into another jack. The PC speakers worked perfectly, but there was no sound coming out of the TV. Just to be sure, I cranked up the volume all the way and finally heard a tiny bit of the sound.
It was baffling. All the volume settings on the computer were maxed out. I researched online for a long time and the only solution was to get an amplifier. More time wasted trying to locate the right kind. I picked up a Boostaroo from Radio Shack and it worked a little, but it still wasn’t powerful enough. I needed something better.
It wasn’t until two days later that the light bulb over my head blinked on. The realization hit me while I was plugging a pair of headphones into my laptop. I had plugged the PC speakers into the headphone jack. This causes the main sound output to be muted. I stormed over to the computer, yanked out the speaker cord, and the TV sound immediately started working normally. Oh. My. Fuckingod. I am a complete idiot. I’m just going to go sit in the corner and drool on myself for awhile.
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 4 - The TV Tuner
Also known as Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 4 - Where Everything Goes to Hell.
I was ambitious. I came home with a Hauppauge WinTV 1600 TV tuner card and a brand new Sapphire Radeon 2600 Pro video card. Why a new video card? The Nvidia one I was using was okay, but not great. It was causing the outer edges of the screen to disappear when displaying on the TV. (I learned that HD signals often carry information on the outer edges of its display that are usually hidden by the TV due to overscanning, so when the TV senses an HD signal it will overscan. That video card didn’t have an underscan feature. I spent hours on this problem, and updated drivers didn’t help. Switching to an analog signal like composite outputs would have fixed it, but I wanted the highest quality possible.)
After all this, then I learn that Nvidia cards are superior for gaming, but ATI was best for video. Thus the switch. I put the card in, installed the drivers, rebooted and everything was instantly crisp and beautiful without me having to change a single setting! The display on the TV, while still not perfect, was noticeably better. I was thrilled.
Next was the TV Tuner card. At this point I’ve become quite the expert at cracking open that computer case. I push the card into an open PCI slot and turn on the machine. Nothing happens. It turns on, but nothing is on the screen. It doesn’t even sound like it’s booting up. I look at the instructions again and it says that some computers may require the card to be in the first or second PCI slot. &*$%^# Okay. I move it up to the second slot and try again. Still nothing. Fuckfuckfuck. I was reluctant to move the sound card out of the top slot because the wires plugged into it were pretty taut. Seeing as I had no choice, I swapped them.
Now the computer boots up normally. It detects the new hardware, I install the drivers from the included CD and reboot. So far, so good. The bootup sequence goes all the way to the Windows XP logo before the display goes blank. I mean completely blank, like there’s no signal going to the monitor. In fact, that’s exactly what my monitor told me, “No Signal” before going black. More cursing. Successive reboots yield the same result. Booting to Safe Mode was successful, so I uninstalled the TV tuner driver and pulled out the card entirely. I expect the next reboot to have everything back to normal, but it isn’t. The screen still blanks out after the XP logo.
More cursing. Even more excessive cursing.
I drag my XP installation disc out again perform a repair installation. 40 minutes later it’s able to boot up normally again. This time I try installing the TV tuner driver first, then the ATI driver second. Rebooting after the tuner driver install was fine. Rebooting after the video card driver install was NOT fine. Bloody hell. My guess, and I can only guess at this point because I could find no relavent information on this problem online, is that something about the TV tuner driver conflicts with the ATI drivers. Installing one independent of the other is completely problem free. They just can’t seem to co-exist.
Again I uninstall the TV tuner, pull it out and throw the damn thing back into the box in came in. I do yet another repair installation of XP, then reinstall the video drivers again. Inexplicably, the problem still remains. I am dumbfounded. Could there still be remnants of the tuner’s driver still hanging around somewhere? This. Seriously. Sucks. I know the ATI card can work normally because I saw beautiful displays after its initial installation. It was after the Hauppauge tuner installation that things started to go south.
Time to flatten the partition and do a clean installation. Again.
Moral of this story:
- Always warn your significant other in advance before undertaking such a project that there may be long bouts of sailor-cursing and that absolutely none if it is her fault.
- They say money can’t buy you happiness. I disagree. Buying an entirely brand new machine would make me happy right now.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 3 - Setting up Netflix streaming
One thing we really want to be able to do is watch instant movies from our Netflix subscription without having to sit in front of a computer or laptop. Streaming movies from Netflix is usually pretty simple. The first time you try to view it, it asks you to install a few things. First it installs the Netflix Player, then Windows Media Player 11 if you don’t already have it, then an update to that installation. Afterwards, you’re good to go.
Not so with my setup. For some reason, every time it tried to install Windows Media Player 11 it would tell me I have an incompatible operating system, that I needed to have Windows XP Media Center 2005. Well I had 2004, but it still should have worked. Something was giving the installation false information. After much research, I finally found out that SP3 was to blame. My Windows installation came with SP3 already bundled, but the media player installation didn’t recognize it and kept looking for a separate installation of Security Rollup 2. It was infuriating. The workaround that seemed to work for most people was to download the media player installation file onto your machine, open it up with WinRAR, extract the contents, and then run two or three of those files. Which files and how many seemed to differ from article to article. Well none of that worked for me, and I couldn’t uninstall one of the components either.
Seriously. Why me? It was enough to make me say FUCK IT! and flatten the entire partition, reformat and reinstall… Windows XP SP2 this time. I installed some of the security updates while carefully avoiding SP3, then went to set up Netflix again. Not a single hitch. I love Windows XP SP2. SP3 is the devil.
On the bright side I fixed the whole mixed up drive letter issue while I was at it, so I now have the OS on the C: drive again. Yay.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Turning an Aging Computer into a Media Center - Part 2 - The hard drive
My Dell came with a 40GB hard drive, plus I have an 80GB drive I got a few years ago because our music library seems to grow exponentially. (This is mathematically untrue, but it seems true.) For Media Center purposes, it isn’t enough. I’ll need tons of room not just for TV recordings but for ripping my DVDs as well. It’ll be nice to be able to browse through them without dragging out the massive movie folder.
The biggest IDE hard hard drive I was able to find was 750GB. I lucked out and managed to find one on sale for $109 at my local Fry’s Electronics. I felt triumphant, especially when I looked the next day the price had jumped back up to $189!
Installation should have been easy. In a way it was. But all the unsuccessful and unecessary putzing around I did to get the stupid PCI video card to work really screwed things up for me. What did it was upgrading my BIOS. The version I had was A02. I thought maybe a more recent version would offer better video card options, so I upgraded to version A06. Imagine my disappointment when it looked almost exactly the same with only a couple of minor differences. Instead of helping me, what it did was cause my two DVD drives to no longer be recognized. They were now “unknown devices”.
I didn’t realize this until after I swapped out my C: drive for the new one and was ready to install Windows XP Media Center 2004. Imagine my consternation when I pushed the button for one of the drives and absolutely nothing happened? It was weird. What I ended up having to do to correct it was to unplug all my IDE drives from the motherboard, turn on the PC, clear the NVRAM by hitting Alt-F, turn off the PC, plug in the hard drives, turn it on… oh fuck it. I followed the steps here, though I skipped the stupid part about the hard drive jumpers (what the hell is “cable select”?).
So I did all that and finally my DVD drives were working again and I installed Windows. The end result? Somehow my 80GB music-filled hard drive became the C: drive and Windows got installed F: drive. WTF??? One stupid thing after another! FUCKING DELL BIOS I BLAME YOU. What I should have done was plug each hard drive in individually instead of both at once. It likely recognized the wrong one first, which doesn’t make sense to me. The new drive was master and the 80GB was the slave. At least I think so… jumpers are annoying. I’ll have to check that.
Anyway, I renumbered the drives so that there is no C: drive at all now, to save confusion later. It’s really fucked up and I’m tempted to redo the whole thing. Will having no C: drive cause me any problems? It hasn’t yet, but I don’t know.
Moral of this story? Never upgrade your BIOS unless you are absolutely sure it is needed to make something work.
