Neurologist results

Went to see the neurologist yesterday. The good news is it's not just my imagination, he's seeing tangible improvement in my feet over last time (before the start of the IVIg therapy). He's going to continue the therapy and have me come back in 3 months to see how we're progressing. I'm hoping the IVIg keeps things improving, because the next step up is immunosuppressant drugs and I really don't want to go there if I don't have to.

Things to look at: more PT, X-rays of my toes to see if they're really dislocated, massage, check on the spa and pool down at the Mission Valley YMCA (their pool's heated, nice when it's too cold for the one in the complex), weight bench and dumbbells to help with strength and exercise in general.

Sleeping, lack thereof

Gah. It's not that I can't sleep, it's just that these days I don't seem to want to. Partly it's just stress. Partly it's frustration with my legs. In large part it's fear.

It's coming up on the 1-year anniversary of my coming out of the induced coma. Though I wouldn't call it a coma, really. I was too aware of things. And I'm finding more and more nights involve flashbacks to that. Why would that make me afraid? Google the product "Dignicare". Warning: NSFW. In fact, probably not safe for your personal comfort in general. And that's not the worst of it. What, you thought just because you were in a coma that your body stopped processing and producing waste products? It doesn't, and hospitals have to have a way of dealing with that in patients with no voluntary motor control. And I remember all that going in and coming out. I... really would rather not, thank you very much, and especially not in extra-vivid Technicolor. Also replays of things like my hallucinations of being parked in an out-of-the-way area by a doctor who had no intentions of asking my consent for anything he wanted to do, nor any compunctions about lying to everyone to keep me isolated. It didn't happen, but that doesn't make the memory less disturbing. And memories of them taking the ventilator out of me, only to have to replace it because I was dying without it. That got mixed up with memories of some of my role-playing characters over the years, all rolled up into a scenario of me being turned into them to save my life. Another one involved my doing a motorcycle tour of the US as a busker at RenFaires, accompanying a couple patently lifted from some locals. That one gradually transformed into a high-tech VR-heavy world where I ended up as a sportscaster (mainly because I could keep track of lots of information streams at once and spot the anomalies, and ESPN was paying well). And then there was the Institute for Advanced Science and Research, which was a thinly-veiled copy of the UCSD hospital right down to people repeatedly asking me if I knew where I was and what date it was. Another part involved research into marine ecology and it's effects on the global economy. Don't ask me where that one came from, I'm not sure I want to know. Scratch that, I'm pretty sure I do not want to know.

If you've managed to stay with me this far, you can understand why having all this shoving it's way through my head on a regular basis, when I know it's all bogus but can't stop it, makes sleep a less than attractive prospect. But I need it anyway, I don't stay sane without it. I'll be happier when it's spring and the sun starts chasing the depression and mental instability away again.

Reasons to mistrust Republicans

Mark Hurlbert is a classic example of why I distrust Republicans, beyond the Religious-Right/Teaparty aspects. He's the District Attorney for the 5th Judicial District in Colorado. He's run for US Senate in his district as a Republican. To quote from his biography on the DA's Web site:

"As an experienced prosecutor, Mark knows it is important not to simply secure convictions, but to seek justice. He makes victims a priority and is dedicated to providing victims a strong voice in the justice system."

To quote from the About Mark section of his Web site (which starts to give hints as to his real positions:):

"It is through his time as the District Attorney that he solidified his belief in a small, efficient government and working with various interests to reach effective solutions."

He's quite happy to charge bicycle racers with fraud when one who was injured lets another one user her registration materials to get into a race.

But what happens when someone rear-ends a bicyclist, leaving them with major and permanent injuries including to the brain and spinal column? Well, apparently they get off with misdemeanor charges instead of felony. The reason? To quote Mr. Hurlbert, "Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession, and that entered into it.".

Hence why I distrust Republicans. When push comes to shove, they're quite willing to put business and money above almost everything else.

Prediction about the 2012 elections

I predict that Republican control of the House will, in 2012, produce the same result as it did the last time the Republicans took control of the House under a Democratic President: remind people why they voted the Republicans out.

Fiscal sanity? Yeah, right, remember exactly which party not only initiated handing out billions of dollars to banks to bail them out of their own bad stupid utterly insane lending decisions, but also vehemently opposed attaching any sort of restrictions to those bail-outs on the grounds that those banks, not the government, knew best how to apply the money.

No, I'm not voting Republican

Neurology results

Well, I had my appointment with the neurologist this morning to go over the test results. He called it "profound sensory and motor nerve loss" in the lower legs. No duh. He also said it's got to be more than just atrophy from the ICU stay, that should've shown more improvement by now than it has. Indications are an autoimmune response, basically my immune system got triggered by something during the hospital stay and hasn't backed off, and it's attacking the nerves themselves (eg. CIDP). He's going to recommend IVIG therapy, and see if the insurance will approve it. I'm hoping they do, the side effects there are fairly mild. The alternatives are some fairly nasty drugs like prednisone, whose side-effects give face-huggers nightmares. So, more blood tests next week and we'll see what the insurance says.

Summer still?

Looks like it's trying to still be summer, despite being the end of September. It's in the mid-90s here and looks to be getting a bit warmer this afternoon. We've been on the cool side most of the year, I should've been expecting a late hot spell.

EMG/NCS results

I was in for an EMG (electromyography) test and nerve conduction study today. Preliminary results are mixed. Good news: in my left leg the nerves are talking to the muscles and the muscles are reacting, and while the right leg's not showing reaction there's no sign it's got any more neurological problems than the left. Bad news: the muscle reaction's weak (and practically non-existent in the right leg) and there's little strength and no stamina in the muscles. That isn't really uncommon, but it means recovery's going to be slow. All I can do is work on trying to move my feet around, get the muscles to start moving so they can build strength, and wait it out.

Insanity?

I look around at the Tea Party, the birthers, the Sovereign Citizen movement, the Proposition 8 folks, and I have to wonder: Is it just me, or are we seeing more batshit-insane people these days? It's like certain folks just can't handle the idea that someone out there disagrees with them. And it's getting to the point where I just want to slap them. Faugh.

Back from FanFaire

AUUUUGH!

Back from FanFaire in Vegas. I'm a day late, and far later in the evening than I'd've liked. Cause: cascade failure leading to a blown coolant line. More later, I'm too tired right now.

EQ2:X: avoiding a train wreck

[Originally a note on Facebook.]

I think the EQ2:X idea's going to be a train wreck for one reason: the need for Platinum membership to get T9 combined with the one-way wall that allows movement from regular to F2P servers but not the other way. New players aren't going to level up to 80 and then decide to start over on the regular servers, not when they can't move their 80 over. And existing players are likely to migrate to F2P as new people they introduce and want to play with start there.

How to fix things? Remove the wall and apply EQ2:X to the regular servers with just a few tweaks:

1. Remove all stat gear equal to or better than Mastercrafted gear from the SC Marketplace on the regular servers. Appearance items, fluff items, mounts, XP/AA potions, those can all stay, but gear and equipment that affects gameplay can only be bought for money on the EQ2:X servers. Race and gear-quality unlocks, extra character and bank slots also remain available.
2. An active retail or digital-download key and standard or Station Access subscription net you Gold access with all races unlocked and all levels and content unlocked that your keys would unlock and all the character slots you'd normally be entitled to available. This would apply to both regular and EQ2:X servers. So for existing players nothing would change, except you can pony up cash for more character and bank slots if you want them.
3. Transfers are possible between EQ2:X and regular servers. This would be in addition to the proposed one-way character-copy service, which would remain unchanged. Moving characters to an EQ2:X server would move your entire inventory including coin and items, but wouldn't move anything in the shared bank. Moving from EQ2:X to a regular server, any items bought from the SC Marketplace that aren't available at the destination would be removed from your character and destroyed.

In addition, I'd reduce the cost of character transfers from the current $35 to something like $10.

Guillain–Barré syndrome

Guillain–Barré syndrome. The neurologist keeps mentioning this. I really don't need that crap, and it doesn't seem to fit well with my symptoms, so I hope this isn't what's wrong with my feet. But I'm supposed to schedule an EMG test once the insurance clears it, the neurologist wants to make sure the EMG and NCS tests they did in the hospital didn't miss it (they might've been too early to catch it).

Why you shouldn't trust polls

The Daily Kos has been running a series of State of the Nation polls for the last year and a half. Today they announced that those polls appear to have been complete bunk, the results at least manipulated if not completely made up. This was only discovered by statistical analysis of the data about the polls and polling process the Daily Kos published along with the poll results.

Now, the polls weren't from some fly-by-night operation. Research 2000 was one of the most respected polling houses in the business. But the one thing that strikes me is that, despite that, they simply had a lousy track record at actually correctly predicting outcomes. To me it seems obvious that if the polls are being done right and are accurate then they should closely match the actual outcome, and if they don't match the outcome then the rest doesn't matter because the polls are useless for prediction. If anyone's reporting those polls knowing about their track record, they're using those polls for something other than simply tracking actual sentiment on an issue.

My advice: never trust a poll unless the data underlying it is published for independent review. And never trust a poll or the use of that poll when the polling house doesn't have a good track record of getting the outcomes right.

SOE FanFaire in Vegas

OK, FanFaire's handled. Drive up Wednesday evening, stay until either Sunday afternoon or Monday morning depending on what's going on. Dean and Lia will be going with me, so whether I can handle the gas and brakes on the car isn't an issue.

The failure of Ponzi

Everybody knows Facebook has games. One of them I've been playing is Ponzi. It's a fairly fun, fairly addictive game. The gameplay itself is simple: you set the employees of your company to doing jobs to earn money. You use the money to buy bigger offices and furnish rooms in them, and to hire more employees. You compete against your friends to see who can earn more money faster. It's fire-and-forget: once you set the jobs running you can go away and not come back until the jobs are done and you need to collect your money. Early on jobs take minutes to run, but fairly quickly you graduate to jobs that take an hour or two and then into the 5/10/15-hour jobs later in the game. So, while it's fun it's not going to eat up a lot of your time. And the competition is addictive. You start playing it, and pretty soon you're hooked and having fun. And after playing it for a few days, you'd find yourself thinking (as I did) that this is worth $10-15 easy.

And that's why it's closing down: because I'd only spend $15 on it. It's not big enough to justify my spending even $5 every month on it. And the addictive part comes from the competition with others. This game works only because it's networked. If I couldn't see how I was doing relative to my friends and interact with them in various ways (eg. send them a parade to brighten their day, or leave Mr. Dino snoozing on their lawn), it'd be dull as dirt. That networked aspect means central servers with their ongoing costs, but players aren't going to be willing to set up Yet Another Subscription and pay enough every month to be worth it.

So, R.I.P. Ponzi.

Mage cloth armor

Note to game designers out there: THIS is mage armor.

Obama extends Federal benefits to same-sex couples

Obama widens the range of Federal benefits extended to same-sex partners. I'm sure the Religious Right is going to go ballistic over this. Me, I think they need to get over this nervousness about their inherent attraction to members of the same gender, loosen up and get on with more important things than trying to ban their temptations so they won't be tempted anymore.

SOE FanFaire

I'm hoping I make FanFaire in Vegas this year. We're trying to get a bunch of our EQ2 guild together there. I've got my membership bought and my hotel room reserved, the problem will be my feet and driving. If Dean gets sent up it'll be no problem, I can have Lia drive up with me. If Dean doesn't get sent, I have to decide whether it's worth 2 round trips worth of gas. I don't want to fly up because my feet just aren't going to handle the airport/airline bullshit involved.

If I go I want to see if I can wrangle Toraneko into coming to dinner one night. Especially if Tiff and Brea make it, Tora might have fun talking renfaire shop with someone who fights with live steel (and appropriate armor).

BP knew about DH well problems 11 months ago

Ouch. Apparently BP knew about indications there were problems with the Deepwater Horizon well up to 11 months before the incident occurred. IMO the government should simply find BP negligent in ignoring all those indications and hold them 100% liable for all costs of repair and clean-up. And then slap the industry as a whole with regulations requiring all those things that BP ignored or didn't want to do that could've prevented the blow-out, plus increased inspections and oversight. And give the inspectors the power to order the work done directly, with the company being billed for it, if the company doesn't want to do it on their own.

Cleaning and dust

One thing I've noticed about the new apartment is the dust. Here there's very little, even with the doors and windows open, and it's all a light-grey dry powdery stuff. The old apartment always had lots and lots of a nasty black stuff that accumulated fast. In a week it'd be as if I hadn't cleaned at all. And this stuff wasn't dry, it was kind of oily and adhered to things so you needed soap or a cleaner to get it off (plain water just pushed it around and made a mess). I thought it was carbon from cars in the city, but down here I'm right beside a fairly major road and I'm not seeing any of it. Makes me wonder more about the building I was in.