Unfolded Mind

Last night, I spoiled my foster daughter’s seventh birthday party. I was at the Mall of America (Gasp! Horrors!), with my wife, my foster daughter and my niece. We were having awful food at the food court before we turned the girls loose on the rides at the indoor amusement park, when my asthma started acting up. I had no inhaler, the car was parked on the seventh level of the lot at the other end of the mall, and there was just no way I was going to be able to run home and get it.

I tried to just power through it, but by the time the girls had been on two rides, my wife was getting really worried about me. ( After getting mad at me for not having my inhaler with me). She went over to the guest services hut inside the park and called the mall cops on me.

I went into the guest services hut, a mall cop found their first-aid bag, and got an oxygen bottle and a mask. It didn’t help much, and it made things comically hard when three other mall cops, and two Bloomington city cops came over to stand around, and practice trying to remember the proper dumb questions to ask me. I finally just handed my driver’s license to the guy I’d been dealing with, and ignored the others.

Paramedics came, with the sweet relief of the nebulizer. They told me that since they were treating me, they’d have to transport me. I said okay.

Meanwhile, My wife put the girls on the carousel, and got to work with the mobile phone. She got her brother to come pick up the girls, and her friend Mona to come and help her with D, our one-year old foster son. The paramedics took me out the door right past her, and I didn’t get to see her again for about an hour.

I got a second dose of nebulized albuterol on the ride, and stated to feel better. The paramedic also hooked me up to EKG with two ‘trodes on my chest and on on each ankle. I get to the hospital, they get me into a bed, and a hospital respiratory tech come over, notices that by neb isn’t stealing, and gets me a fresh one. Nurse come, introduces himself, finishes getting my history. Insurance card guy comes, introduces himself, gets my insurance info. We joke about me getting an early start on my new, higher deductible for the year.

Doctor comes, introduces himself, asks some questions, and we decide to get me some nice IV steroids. He leaves, I get out of bed for a minute to take a leak, and by the time I get back, my wife and Mona are changing D’s diaper on my bed. I settle back into the bed, we all get caught up on what went on while we were apart, and the I get taken in for a quick chest Xray. Margaret having calmed down a bit agrees to let Mona go, and the remaining three of us hang out for a while.

I get an iv put in, and a bit later get some salumedrol, a steriod. a litle while after that, an ER tech gets me up, takes me for a walk, and then checks my pulse-ox. More waiting. My IV is taken out. More waiting while paperwork is done. A final consult with the doctor, then the nurse gives me a nebulizer to take home! A nice one, too. I get my instructions, a couple perscriptions, and we’re off.

Then it’s drop off the scrips, fetch the birthday girl from my briother-in-law’s in Apple Valley, tghen pick up my meds and home.

Zoinks!

As I’m getting into bed, I notice the electrodes.

Klortho
I got a small C program working, that acts as a FastCGI, fetches XML with libcurl, extracts the xml-stylesheet PI from the result and applies the transformation using libxml and libxslt, then returns HTML to the browser. Yay!

Still TBD:

• extract all headers, and pass them through libcurl
• handle POST, HEAD and PUT
• handle HTTP authentication
• pass response headers through transparently
• proxy non-XML requests, and XML without a stylesheet PI
• clean up the C
• fix the autoconf/automake stuff
• test portability

Still, I’m pleased, and inspired to actually do more work on this.
Anyone want to help?

I’m on th’ facebook now, as (oddly enough) “Eric John Gustafson.”

I found a few folks from high school on there, and to save myself the trouble of recapping  28 years to each one individually, I made this.

Damn right, I voted this year!

Sucks to be 45 and out of shape. Just rode my bike, and it KILLED me.

I know I need to do it more, and it won’t be so bad, but I’m just not good at forcing myself to take a step like that. We’ll see how it goes

Has it really been that long? 19 fucking 81? I graduated from high school that year. First year of the Reagan blight, which was made easier (for me anyway) by the release of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. By this time, I’d allowed my young mind to be scorched by some pretty advanced shit, for the time…Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Velvet Underground, Zappa, Devo: this was something else. It sounded like the future of music, like shit was seriously evolving, like nothing would be the same again. Turned out to be true, in ways that only W. S. Burroughs could have imaged; but I digress…

Eno and Byrne have a new album out! Wubbada wubbabda whah huh???? Yeah I know, it’s quite different, yeah it’s “proper songs” and not audio collages with found sounds, but who the fuck cares: it’s Eno and Byrne together for the first time in umpty-billion years!

Plus, there’s a tour!

Holy shit, the world is NOT a COMPLETE pile of suck!

Nobody will read if I don’t post. Even if I do, it’s no guarantee, but if I don’t, then they won’t.

My wife just started on of these blog thingies, and she’ll leave me in the dust if I’m not careful.

Zuzu was out in the yard this morning, and wouldn’t come back in, so I investigated. She was in the side of the backyard, just barking at this

(That’s a rabbit’s nest, with four babies in it.)

Here’s one of them…

…and another shot.

I got on Jeopardy, America’s Favorite Quiz Show ®.

Maybe. More on that below.

Went to the mall, found the tables they had set up outside Sears, waited for a seat to open up, sat down and answered enough of the 10 questions to get invited to round two.

This was on Saturday, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. There were about 60-70 people there, or so it appeared to my eyeball. We got a general rundown of how things were going to work, then took a 50-question test, much harder than the screening test of the previous day, and with the questions presented on a computer projection screen, looking just like on the show. While the tests were being scored, we were kept busy by Sarah of the “Clue Crew”, who told some stories from the show, and did a question and answer session.

I was one of nine chosen to stay. We were given some training on how to use the buzzer, and then we were brought up in groups of three to play a mock game. The game was very mock, I think they were just making sure we could buzz in correctly, and speak up when answering, and then snappily choose the next category.

We got to do a simulated little interview, to get us used to when Alex does his little human interest break, and to make sure we weren’t going to just stammer and drool.

So the deal is, I’m now in their active file, and will stay there for 18 months. they may call me, they may not. I guess the only sane way to approach it is to choose to believe that it just won’t happen, and be pleased if it did.

Oh yeah, by the way…

I got a job back at the beginning of the year.

Here

I’m rewriting some PHP web applications into .NET and SharePoint. That’s right, I’ve gone to the dark side, and I’m having fun.

Oh yeah, my company is responsible for these guys.