Hey everyone. As you can see, there’s a new sidebar here at Phaysis. And it is most definitely true. I am quitting smoking. After smoking a little over a pack a day for the past eight years I believe it’s time to give it up and grow up (um, did that sound a tad trite?). After a few days last week of existing just above the level of a walking bronchial spasm, I had had enough, so Wednesday night / Thursday morning, July 31 at 12:30am I smoked my last cigarette. I’d like to say that it’ll be my last smoke forever, but it’s infantile to say something like that; anyone who’s made car or mortgage payments knows that the future is completely unpredictable. So all I know currently is that after being a heavy smoker for 8 years, 4 tiny little days have been kinda rough.
On a related note, if my health insurance gives me the green light, this wednesday I’ll go in to the cardiovascular specialists’ office for a stress test. They’ll inject me with a radioactive dye that binds to my heart muscles and then do radiography on me before and after a few treadmill sessions. I some small way I hope they find something; in a big way, I hope they don’t. All I know is that I get heart flutters on random occasion (sometimes once every two days or so), and if it’s my heart, god-dammit I’d like to know. If a kidney fails, I have a second one. If my heart fails, I’m dead.
During my cardiology referral appointment, my doctor prescribed for me an order for some Prilosec. He seems to believe my chest tightness could be heartburn, acid reflux, or whatever. I dunno. Sure, I get a little tight after a good meal, but who doesn’t? Sure, I chew some calcium bicarbonate antacids every now and then, but who doesn’t have a sour stomach on occasion? Sure, my stomach clenches and gets nauseous on occasion, but who doesn’t get the urge to wretch or sleep with a trashcan by the head of their bed? I’m thinking the good doc is on the rock (oooh, I like that rhyme) by giving me a scrip for Prilosec. Hmph. It’s just really convenient that there’s a placard and some pamphlets for the stuff in his waiting room (What?! Physicians get kickbacks from drug reps?).
Actually, I would be willing to wager that my chest problems are neither cardio, pulmonary, nor digestive, but a combination of all three. It’s highly possible. Since moving here, my smoking has increased, I’m living in a slightly higher pollution and pollen count than back home, I lived a super-sedentary lifestyle for a long while, and started eating hot and spicy foods just for kicks, as well as dropping peppermints on a more-than-rare occasion, but I mean who hasn’t “lived the life”, eh? :)
Some day, my fishizzle will be strizzaight.
I think I have hammered and nailed down the problem with the HTML and CSS for this site. Some of you using Internet Exploder may have experienced my menu items to the left disappearing and reappearing whenever they felt like it. I edited the menu file to wrap each link inside its own div tags, and boom problem solved.
In adding the sidebar to the site design, I played around with several different layout schemes, many of which were unusable and unreliable, especially in IE, and finally settled on one thursday night. It looked ok, but for the most part it stank, so friday night, in lieu of going out, I worked and hacked away on the code and came up with this compromise. I really like how the sidebar docks inside the journal box and forces text to flow around it. Very nice looking, and it works in Mozilla, IE4-6, and mostly in Opera. Mozilla users will also notice a little feature where any box will light up if the mouse is hovering over it. Mozilla’s the only browser that supports that feature in CSS. Hopefully everyone else will catch on soon because it’s rather snazzy.
After taking a needed vacation from coding for a few weeks, I’m thinking of getting back into it. Some things are starting to make sense, other things are looking possible, and code optimism is on the upswing. Now that I’m not smoking, I can code for a good while uninterrupted.
And today, for the first time in months, I cracked open a few of my [Glass Door] project files and started playing around. It was nice to play with sound again. Getting kinda hopeful on finishing or mostly finishing this album before year’s end. I mostly worked on my track “Long Drive Home, Part I (Short Circuit)” — did some mixing tweaks, effects adjustments, played with dynamics and track placements, and I can see a few things I could do that’ll make the track shine; I’ll add them soon. I also touched lightly on the first track on the album, “The Fool”, mostly getting to know the software a little better. I can’t wait to get a decent MIDI controller keyboard ($$$) so I can start recording music live — drag-and-drop on a piano roll editor totally sucks ass.
On a work note, Coworker V got unceremoniously FIRED!! After several weeks of having us, her coworkers, bringing her laziness, slack, and innefficiencies to the attention of the bossman (and with him watching her timecard) he wrote a note on her timecard to tell her to not clock in friday morning. YES! So, knowing this, I prompted my friend “BC3″ to take his application in post haste and dutifully he did and dutifully he got a full-time job. Yes! He starts tomorrow. Coworker V, make way for Coworker B.
Well, here’s to rapid and accelerating change.
