taks

i had an interview once in which i was running a fever of somewhere around 102 or so. it broke 5 minutes into the interview and i started sweating profusely. the guy i was interviewing with, the VP of Engineering, freaked out, opened the door, got me some water... there was humor involved. i didn't get the job, but that interview actually got me to the next one, oddly enough. oh, HIDA scan results were also normal. i was directed to a dietitian. it's not my diet. follow-up tomorrow and i'm going to ask point blank to be put on the antibiotics. grrr... taks

yes. chronic duodenitis which started after i had already been taking prilosec (omeprazole) daily. i've always had GERD, but now i have this inflammation in my stomach to go with it. in the past 3 months i've had a nuclear stress test (check my heart), endoscopy (which found the duodenitis) with a stomach tissue biopsy, an ultrasound of my abdomen (liver, gall bladder, spleen, pancreas, "gut," and kidneys), the HIDA scan and a host of blood tests. everything is normal, but my stomach is a mess even now that i'm on twice a day aciphex (rabeprazole). actually, i've decided that the omeprazole works better, or at least lasts longer, some i'm switching back. unfortunately, unless my GI doc officially diagnoses me with some hypersecretory condition, my insurance will only cover one 20 mg dose per day (though i've met my deductible so all drugs are free now). if i had not already been taking the prilosec (which is a proton pump inhibitor, btw), i probably would have gotten ulcers, which are supposedly worse than what i have. after all this, there are really only two options: i have a gastrinoma somewhere in my stomach that they haven't found (they're usually small), or i actually have h. pylori and the biopsy was negative because i was already taking twice a day prilosec by the time i was tested. the former is cancer, so i'm hoping on the latter. i actually have all the symptoms plus some of the weird stuff from h. pylori. since it is a foreign bacteria, your body does produce an immune response which causes other issues as if you had some illness (like pains in your kidneys, occasional low fevers, etc.). my physician thinks it's related to my general anxiety, but the zoloft has that under control almost 100%. the only test left is a PET/CT scan, which is generally considered less effective for these sorts of things than all the other tests i've already had. i want them to just give me the danged triple therapy consisting of two antibiotics and omeprazole. at least then i'll know... oh, btw, twice a day PPIs totally eradicate GERD. the only good part of all this i guess. taks

kewl. the effects of the scan are now apparent. my gall bladder contracted and dumped a ton of acid into my small intestine. it hurts. i think i'm going to go home and cry. taks

"playable" isn't what i desire in a game, and yes, i have played with the CO8 patch installed. it's still a steaming pile, i.e., broken, regardless of how good the combat is from a tactical perspective (there are lots of broken issues with that as well, IMO). it was always understood that old-skool D&D modules were sparse on purpose, and these guys implemented the game "true to the original module" as if they never knew that. in other words, they had no clue what D&D was about. duh. taks

my "new" (a year old now) car now has some light truck tires with 6-ply sidewalls. is that the same as a big HDD? oh, today i had a HIDA scan done to check liver, pancreas and gall bladder function. it took two hours so i watched harry potter and the goblet of fire while lying there. yawn. i dozed off a few times. the final part of the test involved a hormone they injected to squish my gall bladder, and it has apparently mucked up my intestines. taks

some states have multiple methods i think (or used to), usually it is in the constitution (state version) which to use so they can't just switch unless there are options. taks

AHA! i came in here about to ask if anyone had seen this since it came out on PPV this week (probably today, actually). i recall seeing the adverts back when it was in theaters, but don't recall it lasting long. has a fairly good cast (though i don't care for william hurt, he's almost as boring/stiff as costner) and seems like a good premise. worth renting i suppose? i can get it in HD, too. taks

for some reason, i prefer to have all that crap. it doesn't hurt that i live in colorado where people basically camp for a living (yes, i would like to as well). i like the roughing it aspect of backpacking, too. every time i buy a new toy, i can't wait to test it out. the latest was the new air mats i got. one for my wife (REI basecamp 3.5) and one for me (thermarest prolite 4). granted, mine is over 2 lbs., which is a bit heavy for backpacking, but i'm a big guy and i can still get my gear into a pack probably around 30 lbs. for a 4-5 day trip. i need to move to a lighter sleeping bag... not that my current bag is heavy, it's a 5 degree bag and weighs less than 3 lbs., but i can get a 20 degree bag that weighs under 2 lbs. and actually FITS into my pack (current bag is synthetic and does not compress that well). besides, a 5 degree bag is waaaay to hot for anything between march and october, and i'm one of those portable heater types to begin with. taks

i'm now trying to understand the concept of the complex K-distribution as it applies to sea surface clutter. well, i fully understand the concept: rayleigh distributed amplitude with a chi-distributed - time varying - mean. the question i have to resolve is how to actually simulate this with non-standard radar waveforms (i have a method for standard pulsed radar). given that you've invested in an RV, hurlshot, does this mean that you like getting out into the wilderness, but you're not a fan of tenting? taks

yes. another curiosity, btw, would be whether or not the "average ticket price" in these calculators (all of which have different numbers as far as i can tell) take into account population biases. you can't just average NYC and STL since many more people go to see the movies in NYC than STL (simply due to a higher population). there's an interesting statistical problem buried in here that i've often wondered about. taks

a little over $2.00, actually. yes, btw, i did mean ticket prices, not the cost to make a movie. the latter wouldn't make sense in context. btw, that chart you provided, jediphile, seems a bit wonky. titanic's unadjusted gross is over $900 million. in fact, you can still find the original 1998 article when it broke the all-time record for most moolah in 1998. unless the figure of $600 M is US only (some quick checking verifies the latter, actually). considering the bias from coastal states, and the addition of IMAX to the mix, even the inflation-based numbers make it difficult to gauge attendance totals from year to year (which is why i'd like to see those numbers instead). oh, and i have always heard that GWTW is the all-time king, with star wars coming in a close second. not a surprise to me at all. i should state for the record that i've never watched titanic or GWTW from start to finish, nor do i plan to. taks

rated R is a death sentence for superhero movies. horror movies almost require it (else they aren't scary enough, or gory enough, or whatever), and comedy movies often require it as well, though it ain't as important. [conspiracy theory]somebody got bribed, for sure[/conspiracy theory]. taks

i should add that this is why i think it would be nice to hear about the NUMBER OF TICKETS sold, not just the dollar value of tickets sold. the production companies don't want this, however, because it will point out declining sales more readily. taks

it should be pointed out that titanic was released when movies cost about half as much as they do now, and titanic ended up with over $900 M globally. taks

that would be ToEE for me, but i just can't bring myself to install it. it's just too broken. oh, i guess i could say the same for PoRII. what a mess that was. well, i guess it wasn't really "broken" (other than the one really, really, bad bug), just that booooooring. taks

don't you just open the crane up and put the wheel in it as if it were a chest? taks

so how do you turn the danged user account control feature off? it does drive me buggy. taks

depends. the price for RAM is extremely volatile, more so than any other PC component. as such, it also has the distinction of yielding the most performance increase for the least cost, even when it is expensive. going from 1 GB to 2 GB makes a very noticeable difference in performance (or even up to 3 GB). much more than that, however, and i'm not sure how much you'll see. taks

if you set to cable select, both drives on the ribbon have to be set that way and the one with a shorted pin 28 will be chosen as "master" automatically. as samm said, if there are multiple drives on a ribbon, you need at least one master to work. otherwise, if you only have one drive, but a two connector ribbon, the master goes in the middle slot. i did not realize this till i checked the wiki (always used a 1:1 ribbon) - search for the term "cable select" to get to the settings, btw. this seems a bit retarded to me since the stub that is left hanging will result in problems. i.e., the master should have been configured to be the end connector. taks

ants, actually. as far as i know, they are the only other species that goes to war, too. taks

i'm reading about synthetic aperture radar (SAR). it's actually rather interesting as far as radar topics go. taks

yeah, the unknown benefit* of owning vs. renting. your payment, in general, stays relatively the same forever other than insurance and property taxes, which don't make up the bulk of your monthly payment anyway. my mother lives in a $200,000 house and has something like a $250/month payment, and it's only that high because she took out an additional HELOC for "just in case" money. i put a * after benefit because most people don't really consider the fixed cost of owning compared to increasing cost of living when considering rent vs. buy. they think short term, but fail to grasp that their rent is going up, probably every year, to stay with inflation. of course, ownership has big initial costs (down payment, closing) and we've already discussed the maintenance issues. the down payment is the reason i still live in my house with a tiny yard, btw. i want land, a few acres at least, but i don't have enough equity in my home to cover the house i'd like to buy. we never had the housing boom so much here in COS, but for some reason we're suffering the crunch anyway. grrr... taks

based on what i've seen lately, i'd say that's a step backwards. they've been ignoring many other east coast teams. oh yes, but i'm seeing more boston than anything. i think that they finally won the series, and the yankees aren't jamming and the three best teams in baseball are all geographically spread out around the country (angles, rays and cubs), has relegated them to only reporting on boston. dunno. MLB has much more money overall, too. i miss the "sports channel" which we used to get while i was working on my second degree in rolla, MO. does it still exist? taks

i'm sure he could have, or at least seriously wounded several others. keep in mind the "mass murder" occurrences are really rare overall, at least compared to the total number of killings that occur every year. the problem of assuming this is about care for psychotics, well, not so much "the problem" as "the issue," is that there may not have been anyone that knew he was off his rocker till the moment he chose to stick his knife in the other passenger. psychotic breaks are like that... there are signs, but usually they're the sort of "hindsight is 20/20" signs, i.e., you don't realize it till after someone goes all psycho. of course, this guy was 40, which is also rather late for a break from what i've read. taks

no kidding. this one makes you wonder, btw. assuming there was no strange history between these two, the Li character must have had some sort of psychotic break. you don't just coldly (and calmly, even more peculiarly) kill someone out of the blue unless something in your head ain't right. taks