Random stuff I can think of no coherent way to piece together.

New domain. Namecheap, my registrar of choice, recently won Lifehacker’s “Best Registrar” poll, and as a thank-you, had a one-day, one-per, limit-of-10,000-uses $0.99 domain sale. I still had some credit left from their last winter/Yule/Xmas Twitter trivia contest, so I couldn’t pass that up, could I? (Answer: no, no I could not.) Besides, I’d been wanting to replace Winterish.net as my domain collective for a while. So, I snagged Colourise.net. What it is now is what it shall remain: a one-page “Hi, I’m Shannon, I do this stuff” page… thing.

Read More ⇒

And so, I move again! I know, I know, I need another domain like I need another limb¹, but when NameCheap finally reached 5000 “likes” of its Facebook page and their $1.99-for-the-first-year com/net/org domain code went live, I couldn’t resist! Plus, I still had (and have) credits from their December Twitter contest, so another free domain, at a drastically discounted price? Too good to pass up!

I initially registered “NerdMonster.org,” which I still love. As I was editing the “Domain” page of this site, though, and listing some of my related monikers, I recalled “nerdosaurus,” and, well… For the record, I did go back and forth on “nerdOsaurus” vs “nerdAsaurus.” Both seem to be “valid” spellings — each seems to have its own t-shirt, to boot — but a Google search for “nerdOsaurus” yielded more results than did one for “nerdAsaurus” (~60,100 and ~26,800, respectively), so in the end, I (obviously) with with “nerdOsaurus.” (Interestingly, Google itself does seem to side with the latter, as the “Did you mean: nerdasaurus” bit pops up each time I search for “nerdOsaurus.”)

I haven’t yet decided what, exactly, to do with Winterish. I do love the name — I love the word “winter” — so I’ll certainly not be getting rid of it. I might turn it into my site collective, replacing Nerdish.me. I do still like that name as well, but I don’t really need two domains with the word “nerd” in them, now do I? For now, Winterish just redirects here. I’ll figure out what to do with it later. I certainly have the time, as it doesn’t expire until November 2012.

Oh, and I still have ~$20 left in NameCheap credit. This after registering several domains (including Voltaged and a domain for the lovely Beth) and transferring Winterish over from Network Solutions. What to do with that credit? I could renew Nerdosaurus, or I could transfer AndRobots.org over (but do I really want to keep that domain?), or I could renew Voltaged… decisions, decisions.

Which brings me back to NerdMonster.org. It’s been registered and already discarded, and it does deserve some love. (Nerdy monsters need love, too!) So… anyone want it? Free to a good home! All one would need to do is create a (free) NameCheap account (if said one doesn’t already have one) so I can push it over. Hosting would be up to the adopter, though, as I already have several addon domains on my Stable Host shared hosting account. (Normally I’d have upgraded to a reseller by now, but that’s a slippery slope for me. Anyone remember Vintaged Hosting? Yeah, not interested in doing that again.)

1. Actually, I could use another arm or two… [↩]

Not much to say lately, so I haven’t said it. New layout, though, so there’s that. Since my last post, I’ve kept up with P365 but decided to turn Voltaged into a fanlisting collective (AndRobots.org just doesn’t work for me anymore name-wise. Maybe I’ll find another use for it eventually), so all of my P365 photos will not just be found yonder at Flickr. I knew the photoblog thing wouldn’t work. Oh, well.

Everything else has been fairly boring. I’m in the process of transferring Winterish over to Namecheap, burning off ~$9 of my credit there. I’m considering a domain giveaway thing — y’know, fill out the form, provide a link back to the page, and after the deadline, someone’s randomly chosen. I did a few of them when I did free hosting, and it was always fairly fun to do. Besides, what else am I going to do with all that damn credit? One can only register and renew so many domains.

As for the new layout, I’m not sure I’m sold on it yet. I couldn’t sleep last night (surprise, surprise) and in between re-watching episodes of seasons three and five of Top Chef (I’ve developed a thing for Blais and Fabio, it seems. Lulz.), I started tinkering around in Photoshop, this being the end result. Not sure how long it’ll last, but it’s better than the previous one — to me, anyway.

Anyway, back to caffeine, sushi (tempura California rolls, nom!) and drowning myself in The Black Keys and Black Country Communion (it’s totally a blues-rock kind of day). But oh! Speaking of noms, I was stumbling around the internet last night and came upon Foodspotting. I’d totally forgotten about that site, let alone my account there. I’m Droid there. If you have an account, throw me the link — I love seeing what other people deem nom-worthy.

I take a lot of photos. I’m not a photographer. I have no desire to be a photographer. Don’t get me wrong, I admire photographers and the art they create, but it’s just not my thing. It’s just not in me to tinker with shutter speed and exposure settings and fiddle with light sources, all in the pursuit of Getting the Best Shot Possible. To me, a photo taken on my iPhone is just as “good” as a photo taken with a several hundred-dollar DSLR. Why? Because it exists, and it captured exactly what I wanted it to capture. (Usually, anyway.)

For much of my life, I’ve had a strange compulsion to take photos of things. From street signs to shopping carts to anatomical models of hearts, I often find myself compelled to take a photo of a certain thing. Sometimes it’s in an effort to better remember the event later — such as in the case of the photos I took during my stay at Karmanos after surgery earlier this month. Other times, sometime just catches my eye and seems interesting enough to warrant a photo, such as aforementioned models, signs, and carts, and the occasional barn with peeling paint or interesting doorknob. There’s often no rhyme or reason to these urges — sometimes I just need to photograph something. Much of the time, for whatever reason, I’m compelled to take photos macro-style. I honestly don’t know why. You would think, then, that given that I photograph random things at random times, that I would care about things like exposure and depth of field. But I don’t. I’m compelled to photograph things, not to get a Great Shot. Oh, granted, I do try to make the photos as clear as possible, but I’ve found that the array of options provided by simple point-and-shoots — a Canon PowerShot being my current go-to P&S — to be more than adequate for my needs. I’ve bought expensive DSLRs, only to let them gather dust on my desk before finally saying “screw it” and returning or selling them.

Anyway, none of this is my point. My point is that, given this habit of documenting things in my life, when I stumbled upon information regarding Project 365 in late 2007, I jumped on the idea. A photo a day! Of anything! It seemed perfect! And so, I began.

In 2008, I took 199 photos¹ for the Project. That means that I failed. Why? I take photos of random things every day — why, how, could I fail at doing something I do anyway? A mixture of boredom and that I simply ran out of things to photograph. “In 2009,” I told myself as I gave up, “I’ll try again.” And I did, taking a photo each day for 118 days. Again, I failed. This time, though, I failed because I had too many things come up: harder classes, family drama, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I didn’t even attempt the project in 2010… because I forgot. I remember around 20 January, and rather than start late (my need for order wouldn’t let me do that), I decided to wait and try again in 2011. And oh, will I try again. And this time, I’ll “win.” If I don’t, I’ll… well, I’ll just sulk for a day or so and move on. The point is, I’ve added “finish a Project 365″ to my Bucket List, and it’s getting done.

So, less than three days before 1st January, 2011, I’m all set. Given that I still have NameCheap credit left (I won four more times after my last mention, six times in total. I pawned one credit off on Beth and registered Nerdish.me, which I’ll use as a collective, but I still have $42 left, even after this domain!), I registered Voltaged.net. The photos themselves will be uploaded and hosted by/at/in my Flickr account, as always, but having a non-photo-sharing-site site for P365 attempts seems to be A Thing lately, so I thought I’d be a sheep and join in. If you visit Voltaged before 1/1/2011, you’ll notice a “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria” message, obviously because I haven’t added a photo/started yet!

As for Voltaged itself, I tinkered around with a few blogging software options, including Habari and Pixel Post, before settling with WordPress. The former, Habari, made adding custom fields too difficult (a right pain in the ass, really), and Pixel Post is all but dead in the water since development stalled, so, though it’s a little bloated for my needs, WP it is. For anyone curious, I’m not using any P365 or photoblog-related plugins. Instead, I’m using two custom fields per post/day: one with the ID number of the photo at Flickr.com, and the other of the actual URI of the photo (again, at Flickr). The template’s set up to use the former custom field to display/link to the image, and the latter to link the image to the Flickr page. I could just mirror the images every day, and uploading them to Flickr and Voltaged, but that’s a needless bother — not to mention a waste of disk space and bandwidth. Besides, I shell out for a pro Flickr account every year (I honestly don’t know how anyone can use Flickr regularly without getting a pro account: the limitations of free accounts are ridiculous), so I don’t feel “guilty” for direct/hot-linking the images.

So now all I have to do is wait for 1/1/2011. I have no idea what my first shot will be, but I hope it’ll be better than snow on a shopping cart (my first of 2008, as linked above) or a wrapping bow (my first of 2009).

Is anyone else doing P365? I haven’t set up a “links” section at Voltaged because I don’t know anyone else doing it, but if you plan to give it a go, let me know; maybe we can exchange links!

1. many of which I’ve since deleted — I failed, so why keep the truly pointless ones? [↩]

(Non-health related stuff is at the bottom, if my Tumour Saga bores you.)

I had a one-week post-surgery follow-up with my ENT doctor Wednesday. It was less than fun, to say the very least. He removed (read: yanked out with special tweezers) the scabs in my sinuses (sorry for grossing you out! ) and even though he numbed my sinuses with spray, it still stung — and bled. Oof. Fun times. I also asked for (and got) a prescription for Tylenol 3s (Tylenol w/codeine, for those unaware). I usually handle Vicodin (which Dr F had prescribed when I left the hospital, and which I’d gotten after both the first and second surgeries) without a problem, but what with the blood loss and general not-yet-working-at-full-capacity feeling, they’re making me sleep way too much. The T3s work just as well for the ache and don’t make me sleep 18-20 hours of the day. Yay?

At the same appointment, he told me that the patho report came back on the tumour. It was all benign, and the cells in the margins he took (extra non-tumour skin and tissue around the tumour) were all normal, with no signs of dysplasia. Both things are ideal, fantastic, and yay-worthy! Given that my tumour had grown against the skin, Dr F admitted that he’d been a “little worried” that the tumour might have been malignant, but thankfully, it wasn’t. I hadn’t really been worried about that; had it come back malignant, I have a feeling Dr F would’ve had someone call me sooner.

Dr F also told me how exactly he removed bone. He had warned me before surgery that he might have to remove my inferior nasal concha/turbinate, but wouldn’t be sure until he got inside. I forgot to ask after surgery, and he forgot to tell me, so I didn’t have a chance to ask until Wednesday. He did, unfortunately, have to remove it. Apparently, that was one reason I lost so much blood — sawing (SAWING!) out bone is a messy affair, after all. If you’re not sure what a concha/turbinate is, see this photo for a side view and this photo for another view. In the second photo, the structure marked “7″ is what was removed. I still can’t get over the “sawed” part. They took a surgical saw, stuck it in my sinus cavity, and sawed bone out of my skull. I don’t mean to harp on it, but it’s so… surreal.

As I was leaving the appointment (which I went to with my mother — elevators are still making me woozy, and I wasn’t sure I could get up to Dr F’s office through two elevators without her), my mom told me that she’d like to kill my previous ENT doctor, and I… agree. My previous doc, Dr W, partially resected the tumour twice. Partially. The first time I had the surgery in 2003, he removed most of the tumour, but didn’t even attempt to remove it entirely. He did the same thing in 2006 when I had surgery the second time: partially removed by design. Just before I scheduled surgery the second time, I asked him if he’d be attempting to remove it all this time. “No,” he said. “To do so, I’d need to remove a bone in your head, and that would result in some disfigurement. Besides, it’d probably just come back. Having a partial resection every two years for the rest of your life sounds like a chore, but it’s the best and easiest way to go.”

That? That was a lie. When I switched doctors (Dr W stopped accepting my insurance, and I kept putting off finding a new ENT) to Dr C, he seemed surprised that Dr W had never even attempted total removal. After I had a CT scan and returned for a follow-up with Dr C, he told me he’d run into Dr W (they both do surgeries at Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn). “I told him I’m treating an old patient of his. He remembered you, but said he thought he got it all out.” I was, understandably, a bit livid. Had Dr W lied to Dr C, or had he lied to me about the possibility of total removal? When Dr C sent me to Dr F (C didn’t have enough experience with inverted papilloma to feel comfortable with total removal, so he sent me to F, who specialises in my and other tumours and has much more experience), Dr F also seemed surprised that Dr W hadn’t even attempted total removal. “It’s possible,” Dr F said, “and by not doing it before, he’s kind of put you behind the eight ball.” Had Dr removed it all the first time, the chance of recurrence would’ve been 10%. Had he removed it all the second time, it would’ve been about 35%. Since it wasn’t removed until the third surgery, the chance it’ll now come back? 50%. A one in two chance that I’ll have to deal with this again, all because… why? That’s what I can’t figure out. Why didn’t Dr W try? Did he not know how? Did he just want to bilk my insurance once every two years forever? I can’t figure it out, but it makes me angry to think about. In short, here’s a lesson, kids: treating athletes and other famous people does not a good or trustworthy doctor make.

Dr F, on the other hand… I can’t say enough good things about him. Besides being more knowledgeable and experienced (comparing their credentials is hilarious), he’s vastly more compassionate and much friendlier, and puts Dr W’s version of “follow up” to shame. With Dr W, after surgery, I saw him one week post-surgery, and then once every six months. With Dr F, I saw him one week post-surgery, have another appointment in two weeks (three weeks post-surgery), then another appointment two weeks after that. Then he wants to see me every month for three months, then every three months for a year, and finally every six months onward. For the first 1-2 years, he says, he treats benign tumours as if they’re malignant. One wouldn’t see their ENT every six months if they had a malignant tumour, so why would they if they have a benign tumour with the potential to become malignant?

Between Dr P (my primary, non-nasal doctor), Dr R (lady-stuff doctor), and Dr F, I have three incredibly awesome, talented doctors, and I ♥ them all. This is the first time I’ve actually had doctors I feel totally comfortable with, and it’s pretty awesome.

Other Stuff

There’s no way to tie the rest of this in with the above, so… have a list of stuff.

• I won two domain credits from NameCheap via their Twitter Trivia Contest, and I have no idea what to do with them. Sure, I could transfer AndRobots and Winterish to NC from their respective registrars, thus renewing them for another year, but that’s a pretty boring use of free credit, no? I’ll still likely do that with one of the credits anyway — probably on Winterish, since the renewal rate for NS will skyrocket next year (the downside to the awesome $1.95 code) — leaving one credit for a new registration. The question is: what do I register? And what do I use it for? I’d first wanted to register WhenIAmQueen.net (from a Jack Off Jill song of the same name, tied with “Nazi Halo” and “Star No Star” as my favourite JOJ song) and use it as a site collective. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that WIAQ has already been registered. The .org is still available, but it’s not the same. I wanted the .net, dangit. I’ll probably still go the site-collective route, but now I need to think up a new name. This shall prove difficult, methinks.
• I watched part one of The Alzheimer’s Project this morning on HBO before leaving to get bloodwork done. It was incredibly depressing. Alzheimer’s Disease runs in my family, and the thought of one day talking to a woman in the mirror or seeing snakes crawling up my wheelchair scares the shit out of me. I couldn’t help but cry — something I very, very rarely do — during the scene in which one of the profiled sufferers dies, because it mirrored the recent death of my 93 year-old Great Aunt Alma so closely. Alma died this past November 22nd, after suffering a massive heart attack. She had been battling Alzheimer’s for several years, and had been living with my Aunt L. Alma had her moments of clarity, and most of the time at least knew where she was and with whom she lived/etc, but sometimes she’d space out and ask things like “Now where am I buried? I forget…” And that’s not even getting into her habit of seeing dead strangers and relatives. It’s just… frightening. My maternal family is a strong bunch, and aside from a predisposition toward cancer on my mother’s father’s side, we’re pretty healthy — except that Alzheimer’s is unusually common. My mother watched the documentary with me as well, and at one point, I said “Please don’t ever make me dig rocks out of your mouth.”¹ She, true to form, laughed and said “I promise nothing. If I’m going to go out like that, I’ll go out driving you insane by eating rocks and saying ‘Oh oh oh oh oh’.”² Oof, my mom.
• I need to buy some new scarves. I have to cover my nose when outside — cold air + healing sinuses = OW — and I hate-hate-hate those full-face hats, so scarves it is. I have several, but I can always use a few more! Any recommendations? I love big, thick, soft scarves, but any recommendations are appreciated. I especially love scarves with pockets near the ends, but those are increasingly hard to find lately, for some reason. Halp?

At some point, I’m going to have to post my insurance rant (nothing against my own insurance specifically, mind, just insurance in general), but this entry is getting long enough, so I’ll save it for another day.

1. If you’ve ever seen the doc, you know what I’m referring to. [↩]
2. Again, if you’ve seen it, you’d get it. That scatting thing would’ve driven me batty. [↩]