I had a post here earlier today, but removed it for legal reasons.

If you missed it, I’m not gonna say what it was about.

If you saw it, I wont comment on it for obvious reasons.

This is a trying time for me and I’m not sure what to do. If I do go down the path I suggested in the earlier post, the last thing I need is for the recepient of my anger to know ahead of time.

I’ll update to this when I can.

I can’t express enough how frustrating it’s been to deal with my neurosurgeon.

He wouldn’t see me and didn’t return my doctors repeated calls (he claims that the note to call somehow got on the bottom of the list… whatever).

Then, from out of the blue, his scheduler left a message on my phone saying that he wanted to see me and made me an appointment for today at 3:30. I called them back last friday because I had another appointment at the same time with my physiatrist (pain management). They rescheduled me for today at 9:15 in the morning.

So… my wife drove me down, parked the Durango in the parkade, and we walked into his office at 9:05 am. When I attempted to check in they told me that my appointment was for yesterday, and that he was in surgery all day today. WTF!! When she called me with the damn appointment, she said Tuesday. When I called back and had it moved, she still said tuesday the 17th. They set me up with an appointment for next week and sent me on my way… no apology, nothing.

But that is par for my experience with that office so far, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised.

On a brighter note, Valentines day went very well at Casa dé Tone. I got my wife a lovely box of chocolates from Hallet’s Chocolate Factory (the box was heart shaped but decorated with pink silk and black lace… like a teddy), a red devil bear, a card (of course!) and a set of sapphires (earrings, pendant, and ring). She got me slippers.

So…. she took me out for lunch and then purchased me a new bed. I’ve had the old one since 1986… and it wasn’t helping with my back problems. We picked up a Simmons Beautyrest Exceptionale World Class (which is apparently the best bed they make). It’s absolutely pronominal!! Last night was our first night on it and I slept like a baby! Of course, for the price… I damn well better have! It was normally $2,699… but we got it on sale for $1,599. The delivered it for free the next day and took the old one away.

The only problem with the bed is finding sheets that might fit it. The matress is just over 15″ (38.1 cm) deep and most “deep pocket” sheets are 14″ deep. We did fine one pair at an affordable price, hopefully we’ll find more soon.

Apparently, my neurosurgeon called me on Wednesday. I found his message on the answering machine last night (I really gotta check that thing more often). Wonder of all wonders, he wants to see me on Tuesday afternoon. The problem: I already have an appointment with the back pain specialist then. Hopefully one of those appointments can be re-scheduled.

My eldest son brought a couple of his friends over last night for a sleep-over. The rapture of a house full of 14 year old boys is beyond description (as is the smell). They have some weird concept in their minds that I’ll be building them a catapult today. Um… probably not. My son mentioned it to me but hasn’t given me enough details on why exactly he needs it (“it’s for school”). Knowing how deviant he can be, he probably wants it to launch rocks at the interstate. Insert caution here.

Work also made my life easier on Wednesday. They gave me a spiffy new laptop. 1.6 GHz Pentium M processor, a Gig of ram, 40 GB drive, ATI Mobility Fire GL display, and integrated WI-FI. Schweet!! Unfortunately, my Cisco SoftPhone seems to be screwed up, but hey… It sure beats the POS they gave me before.

Well… gotta hit the update button and get this sent up to the site (as I have a conference call in a few minutes… joy!).

Until next time: Shop as usual, avoid panic buying!

So… I’ll be hiding in the NOC all day.

I hate these types of things. All those questions… making me sweat… etc. So… I’ll be unavailable as much as possible today. I’ll post Officer Todd outside the NOC to run interference for me.

     No one shall pass!

In other news, I have an appointment with a Physiatrist on Tuesday. They’re gonna figure out how to make life more livable for me. I hope it works, because I currently live in two worlds: drugged out of my skull (can’t think or function) or in intense pain (can’t think or function). The novelty has worn off and I’m pretty much sick of it all.

And that about wraps up this edition of wwbd. Tune in next week when we build a particle accelerator out of a microwave, some pvc tubing, and a gopher.

It’s monday, and I’m in the office.

I need to install and configure a server today. So, I’m printing about 1,000 pages of documentation, downloading 800 meg of files, and burning it all to cd.

Wheeeee!

The weekend was nice. We killed a couple of bottles of tequila between friday and saturday night. Margarita’s are your friend! (and tasted oh-so-good!)

We also played a few games. Delta Force – Black Hawk Down, Far-Cry, Classic UT, and Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit 2 were the games of choice. There was deathmatch and team deathmatch-o-plenty! I have a rather large handicap (the drugs), and playing Need for Speed was yet another indication on exactly why I don’t drive my car any more.

I did get a referral letter from my HMO on Friday. I now get to book an appointment with a pain management specialist to help deal with the problems I’ve got. Hopefully that will mean less pills and more comfort.

Jess is currently setting up an absolutely groovy hit and statistics package on the server. We should be able to have it implemented today for a number of domains. I’ve asked him to hit this one as well as slackerunsensored and supercommon to start.

That’s about it for now… I’ve finished the downloads and need to burn a CD so I can install this crap here at work.

– fin –