Useless Conversation

[ghost]

My goal when I started all this was to do academics.  The pay difference wouldn't bother me that much because my wife is a private practice doc all the way, however the politics in the academic world (particularly in a dental school) are pretty much the pits.  It's tough to be idealistic about education when you've got insurmountable bureaucracy staring you in the face.  I'm still considering it, but would only do a half time appointment so I could keep my private practice outside of the school.

[Mrbloodworth]

Since I am going to the Norfolk area for the 4th I am really hoping it is going to cool down some.   Considering the high's here have been the mid 80's (normal years high nineties but dry).     I am not looking forward to the humidity / temp out there.

Its incredibly hot and humid for this time of year here.

[Yegolev]

I'm pretty fed up with what's been happening recently.

The heat?

I smolder with generic rage.

[Chimpy]

I'm pretty fed up with what's been happening recently.

The heat?

I smolder with generic rage.

Not sure many of us would notice a difference from the "normal" you.

[Selby]

Leave the clinic and go to academia.  Once you get over the shock of having to live on 1/4 the pay, the freedom is pretty wonderful!

Freedom in academia?  That must be nice.  Physicists still expect their experiments to get done and their machines to run 24-7, even when they go out of their way to defeat interlocks and end up breaking something.  And I still get called in at all hours of night and day to fix their screwups while they lament that my machine isn't robust enough to handle a simple task like running with no maintenance in the wind and dirt.

Yes, I'm cranky because they called me at midnight on the first day of my vacation yesterday wanting to know why such and such machine had gone down.

[ghost]

I thought he sounded a lot more pleasant than usual, funny enough.   

[RhyssaFireheart]

Oh, time off.  I'm supposed to have that, but at 3:30 Friday afternoon, I was asked if I could extend my contract for another 2 weeks to make sure some of the urgent/critical situations that were going on were covered.  Namely trying to get a SW maintenance PO though the system.  I wasn't planning to really do anything with my time off so I'm still here.  This just pushes my 30-day furlough back 2 weeks and means someone else has to cover the month's end financial work.  *shrug*

On the plus side, I get to be here when the dept. admin comes back from her 30 day furlough on Thursday.  This should be funtiems.  The woman who is backfilling for the admin is a neat person, so all the scattered papers and assorted junk was cleaned up the first day.  Then when we thought the new CIO was coming through for a tour, we started straightening up a few other areas around her desk and the dept. manager discovered that the admin is a packrat.  So he laid down the law and wanted all the extra and hoarded items sorted out and disposed of/put away/used. 

This woman had a stack of 10-15 empty cardboard ice buckets.  We have no idea why.  We found about 15 empty (but not rinsed out) plastic jugs from pretzels (the big kind like you can buy at Costco).  Stuff like that.  Boxes of bottled water and cans of pop that were extra from meetings that had catering brought in.  Instead of putting it out for anyone to grab, she was squirreling it away for "just in case".  Well, now it's all gone (except for about 10 bottles and cans), the cabinets are cleared out and straightened up and I'm just waiting for the big reveal.  I think that makes me a bad person, wanting to see how the admin is going to react.  However it goes, it'll involve too much drama.

[rattran]

I just found out that instead of finishing up here in Colorado at the end of the month and going home, I get to go to Annapolis and fix a ren fair booth and then work there. Which means I will have been gone from January to December this year. Wonder if my cats will remember me.

[ghost]

Oh, they'll remember you and be plotting your death.  But they'll act like they don't give a shit.

[HaemishM]

Just in case you needed any more evidence that people are stupid...

Anyone need a debit card number?

OMG. It's like a roll call of fuckwittery.

[JWIV]

I just found out that instead of finishing up here in Colorado at the end of the month and going home, I get to go to Annapolis and fix a ren fair booth and then work there. Which means I will have been gone from January to December this year. Wonder if my cats will remember me.

have fun in crownsville!

[Lantyssa]

Oh, they'll remember you and be plotting your death.  But they'll act like they don't give a shit.

How is that different from normal?

[ghost]

Oh, they'll remember you and be plotting your death.  But they'll act like they don't give a shit.

How is that different from normal?

 

[Abagadro]

Just took this from my front porch.

[Morat20]

I hate home ownership. Something expensive is always broken. My shower drain's been running slow. Worked fine for a decade, now? It's shit.

I've had nothing but problems with the whole plumbing setup. Got the piping (water pipes, not sewage) fixed about five years ago -- before that, the water pressure was for shit. 30 year old pipes, hard water -- you couldn't get a pencil through some of the lines they were so built up.

Shower -- well, I had a period of about a year where I had the city out three seperate times for cracked line/tree roots breaking the drain line. It was the dirt backed up into my shower that was the first clue....and the toilets that wouldn't flush, etc. They got that fixed three or four years ago.

About eight months ago, the shower backed up. Didn't drain at all. Toilets flushed, but plunging it didn't work. Called out roto-rooter, the guy cussed at it for an hour, finally removed a giant plug of hair. (Three long-haired people, no real hair catcher or anything in the drain). So I figure "fair enough". Three months later? AGAIN. Another wad of hair, but not nearly as much.

Three months later? Slow drains again. I've tried plunging, I've tried chemicals, I've tried cussing. I can't decide if there's some build-up further down that's causing the slow drains or what. Nothing freakin' works for long. I think the hair wads are just a symptom -- it's too narrow somewhere, probably from buildup (calcium maybe? Dirt and crap from when it backed up when the line broke? Narrow pipe?), and it's catching the hair. So they'll remove it, but not fix the actual problem.

So I'm calling out an actual plumbing company (the guys that repiped my house) and just telling them to fix the damn thing, even if they have to send down tiny people with pick-axes.

At least it's before the lines merge -- toilets and sinks work fine.

[Merusk]

If they're good they'll have one of those fiber optic cameras on a snake so they can view the problem.   I'd bet you're right that it's dirt built-up or a narrow pipe.

Then again, with 3 long-haired people in the house it could be built-up hair product washing down the drain and getting caught in one of the traps.  I just replaced the taps in our master bath a month ago and the pipe on her sink from the drain to the trap was COATED in that black sludge women's cosmetics/ hair spray seem to leave on pipes to the point it was nearly closed.  I know it was that because my sink had nothing beyond the usual drain ick.

Do you have a tub/shower or a straight-out shower?  You can get covers for hair for either and you might want to look in to it.
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?sku=13708878&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CPPshK2J_7ACFQed7QodYCAT-Q

I hope you invested in a softener after fixing the pipes or you're going to discover the same problem down the line.

[Morat20]

No, I don't have one of those but I'm darn well gonna get it -- that's a good idea. (The hair stopper) Yeah, it's a straight up shower. It's got a crack on the floor as well -- I might get that replaced at the same time, if I'm already shelling out.

You're probably right about the hair products, though.

As for the water, supposedly the pex stuff I have doesn't calcify nearly as easily. I keep looking at a water softner, but I'd have to replumb the house a bit to put it in anywhere near a convienent place

[Lantyssa]

Just took this from my front porch.

Looking towards Colorado?

[Abagadro]

Utah is on fire too. Not quite as bad but we have had around 11 fires so far (this isn't even fire season here which usually starts in August).

[Morat20]

Utah is on fire too. Not quite as bad but we have had around 11 fires so far (this isn't even fire season here which usually starts in August).

Last year it was Texas -- thank god we finally got some rain, but we lost a ton of plant life (and a lot of century+ trees) to the drought, and a lot more to fires.

I don't expect it to get any better in my lifetime. More likely a lot worse.

[Soln]

nice view otherwise

[Chimpy]

So I have been in the hospital since about 130 PM on thf 4th. Just got out of surgery to remove my gall bladder. Funny thing is, they gave me morphine for the pain pos surgery but I really haven't had any so far since getting out of surgery.

[Merusk]

That sucks, Chimpy.  Hope you feel better soon.

My understanding is the pain comes as you move about.. if you've been abed the whole time that might be why you haven't needed it. 

Side note: pain meds after surgery never totally make sense to me.  Pain is your body's "stop doing that fucker" warning in addition to the "something's wrong" warning.  You should have pain because you don't want to pop stitches/ tear mending flesh.

[Reg]

Heh, you haven't experienced real pain have you?

[Merusk]

I haven't had surgery pain since I was 10, so it's fuzzy.  It also wasn't on my abdomen, which, yeah, gets tricky in the pain dept.  Last severe problem I had was a broken hand that didn't hurt all that much.  I've got odd pain tolerances, though. (Not high, just odd.)

[Reg]

Yeah, pain hits everyone differently. When I had my wisdom teeth out they gave me a totally unnecessary  prescription for Percodan. I had fun with the pills but I didn't really need them.  Since then I've had a couple of experiences with really severe pain that Percodan couldn't touch.

Trust me. when there's a risk of pain like that it's better to have too much pain relief than too little.

[Chimpy]

Morphine woo!

[Paelos]

Muscle relaxers after I was in a car wreck were very helpful with my neck. Downside is they make you sleepy.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Hope you're out of the hospital soon and feeling better, Chimpy!  My manager had a sudden gallbladder attack and had to have his removed as well.

I must have some weirdly high pain tolerance, because apparently I didn't complain or ask for painkillers often enough after my hysterectomy.  I can remember a lot of pain when I was being moved from the surgical gurney to my hospital bed, but I was also barely conscious and hardly knew what was going on.  I think the worst was when they made me stand up the first time and it just felt like things were shifting in my abdomen (which they might have been... getting your intestines rearranged can do that, I'm guessing) but that was mostly pressure and having to stand up straight more than anything.  I did take the pain pills when the nurses gave them to me, but that was more of a "oh, you're saying it's time for this? sure, I'll take it" than out of any real need.  It did help with the feeling of constant fatigue though.

[Lantyssa]

I haven't had surgery pain since I was 10, so it's fuzzy.  It also wasn't on my abdomen, which, yeah, gets tricky in the pain dept.  Last severe problem I had was a broken hand that didn't hurt all that much.  I've got odd pain tolerances, though. (Not high, just odd.)

Abdominal pain can really suck.  They didn't cut far into, but they did have to get some of the muscle when I had my abscess.  I had no pain lying in bed, but if I tried to sit up or move or they were cleaning the wound...

What's weird is vicodin does more for me than morphine, and tramadol doesn't take the pain away but makes me not care about it (and very, very sick).  Drug interactions can be strange.

[Ingmar]

Yeah pain is weird. I had shoulder surgery where they gave me a 100-pill prescription for vicodin and I didn't need anything 2 days later, but I ended up eventually using it all up on some fairly minor upper back discomfort/pain that I have because it is the only damn thing that works for it.

[Chimpy]

My pain right now is mostly where the incisions are when I tighten any muscles in my stomach. Stopped taking the morphine this morning and have been able to drink water and keep
liquid foods down. (36 hours not being allowed to even have a sip of water was absolutely brutal. )

[Soln]

Good luck Chimpy, get well.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So did they have to do actual abdominal surgery or was it laparascopic? 

Also, plums are yummie and a nice snack.

[Chimpy]

Laparoscope it was.