Seth’s gone live with his “build a bundle” extension to his charity Mac software auctions.

Pick what you need, make an offer…all the money goes to fight cancer. Everyone wins!

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I’m now exactly one week out from “minor” surgery to attempt to address my problems with Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  I had three procedures in one fell swoop: UPPP, Tonsillectomy and Septoplasty.  In simple terms, I had everything that’s considered unnecessary in the back of my throat ripped out, and the deviated septum in my nose repaired (along with general turbinate reduction) in an effort to open up my airway and allow me to breathe.

There’s a variety of opinions on the success rates of this surgery.  It fixes apnea completely in some people, and my general physical profile suggested I was a good candidate to have success with it.  ie, I had huge tonsils, am not overweight, etc.  It will probably be several month before I really know the level of success I’ve had with it — but, I weighed a number of options and decided it was right for me.  I’ve had a lot of trouble tolerating the high pressure levels of CPAP necessary to avoid apnea with my bad airway — and I’ve had a number of other recurrent issues over the years unrelated to apnea that may be improved by this procedure, like sinus infections and difficult to cure strep throat infections.

There were two incidents along the way that made me very hopeful about this surgery.  The first being that the ENT I original was referred to started giving me a long speech about how he didn’t really believe in many of the surgical options for apnea in most patients anymore as soon as he came in the door.  Then, he started explaining the specific set of narrowly defined conditions where it was likely to have very high success rate.  Then he examined me and said, more or less, “Forget all that I said, you should have this surgery, you are exactly the perfect candidate for it.”

The other was at the anesthesia nurse at the hospital wanted to take a quick peek at my airway before the procedure, looked down my throat and said, “Wow!  You definitely have a ‘difficult airway.’”  Sort of suggesting it was amazing I managed to breathe at all. 

As it stands, I took heavy duty pain killers for several days, and have mostly been surviving on Tylenol for the last few.  The nose is really annoying, but should improve after I have the splints in it removed tomorrow.  The throat is really painful at night, but pretty tolerable all day now.  I don’t want to eat anything crunchy yet, but anything soft goes down pretty well.  I’ve lost about 15 pounds, but don’t feel like I’m wasting away.

I’ve pretty much burned off all the brownie points I may have earn over 13 years of marriage by making my dear wife take care of me and our Summer-crazed kids all week (I love you, Sweetie!).  Hopefully, this will at least be alleviated by not having to sleep next to a really bad snorer for the rest of her life.

I’ll update again on this in a few weeks.

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If you develop or have some pull in the distribution of any software packages for the Mac/PC, now would be a great time to get in touch with Seth, and offer to contribute licenses toward his annual fundraising auctions, which support cancer research.  Follow the link for details.

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Yesterday I had the trifecta of Sleep Apnea surgeries all in one fell swoop.  UPPP, tonsilectomy and septoplasty.  In lay terms, I had my tonsils removed, the soft palette of my throat reduced and the crooked innards of my nasal passages repaired.  Doing amazingly well today, I think, considering.  Mainly I have the mother of all sore throats, which really makes it hard to swallow — but, otherwise, I’m mostly OK.  Just a bit out of it from the pain killers.

It’ll be a few weeks before I’m really getting back to normal.  Most people lose 10-20 lbs after having this surgery.  It’ll be a few weeks after that before I can really tell whether the surgery has been a success. Minimally, it should at least help reduce my propensity to strep throat infections, and improve my sinus and allergy issues.  At best, it will fix me so I can breathe while I sleep at night without the mechanical assistance of a CPAP machine. 

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Ok, Adam’s bad DL pic got me inspired to post my own, make of it what you will.

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Wow, I really don’t blog anymore. The inane chatter has moved to Twitter. The personal stuff long ago moved to the family blog. I could say I’m busy, which would be true, but it’s probably also that I’m lazy. Oh, and I’ve been sick.

But, I’m also still alive and will probably eventually have something to say again. Maybe. Or not.

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My Uncle Robert, aka “Fat Frank” of Fat Frank and the Plank Spankers, is going to appear on this week’s installment of the Antique Roadshow on PBS. He’ll be the one with the Ukelele. If you can’t catch that, you can always just watch him on YouTube.

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I had to put down my dog this week. She was 11 1/2 years old, and was, essentially, our first “baby.” I had always thought she’d live to be a really old dog, because she was so energetic and active…but, cancer doesn’t much care about those things. Katie and I got her together, the year we were married, though it was pretty clear over time that Maxie considered herself my dog.

She was a mutt. Played frisbee and fetched, chased squirrels, climbed trees (really, she did), barked at anyone who came near the house, loved to have her ears rubbed and generally did all those things that make a person love their dog — which I did.

She was smart and a really good dog. She was always great around the kids, though I’m sure she resented them — at least until they got big enough to throw her a ball and pet her. She mostly didn’t get into things she shouldn’t (except tissues. she loved tissues), and didn’t annoy the neighbors.

So far the boys are taking it pretty well, and I’m dealing. Being so busy with Christmas probably helps. I’m sure we’ll get another dog someday, but right now we’re getting used to the fact that despite the constant chaos of a 3 child household it seems pretty quiet around here.

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So, is a garbarge truck in a swimming pool flotsam or jetsam? OK, probably neither….but, there was one in a swimming pool a couple of blocks from our house tonight.

We went outside to go to dinner and found an entourage of News helicopters circling overhead at low altitude. We didn’t know what was going on, but it certainly smelled of a “developing story” — so we called Kt’s mom and had her check the news for us. We drove by on the way back from dinner and saw the crane working on lifting it.

Interesting and unexpected diversion.

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Though our anniversary sadly gets lost in the shuffle of birthday parties and Halloween around our house, as of yesterday Katie and I have been married for 12 years. I continue to steadfastly believe that marrying Katie was the finest decision I’ve ever made.

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My sister’s got a blog now. She’s an independent consultant in the Seattle area who helps non-profit organizations actually live up to the “organization” part of their name.

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Maxie, my dog, is doing much better now. Whatever infection she had seems to be responding to the antibiotics and she getting up and moving around pretty well, though still with somewhat of a hobble. Hopefully there won’t be any long term side effects.

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My dog, Maxie, is sick. She started limping a bit two days ago, but I didn’t think much of it because she pulls up lame for a day or two from overdoing it with the frisbee or whatever else. After all she’s 11 years old. But last night it got much worse and she got to the point that she couldn’t stand or really control her back legs, and she had some sort of seizure.

I took her to the all night animal hospital at about 11pm. They checked her out and kept her for the night. Her blood work didn’t look very good, so they gave her IV antibiotics. I picked her up this morning and went to our regular vet, and now she’s back home. She’s clumsy but is walking. She doesn’t really seem to have any discomfort, just sort of a partial paralysis of her rear legs.

It’s an infection of some sort, and she’s on heavy antibiotics for now. Hopefully it will clear up quickly and she won’t have any permanent damage — but that’s not at all clear yet.

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My long-time friend and fellow music freak John “JP” Palmer is now working the 4-6am free-form programming slot on Tampa’s WMNF 88.5 Community Radio. This probably provides him a bit more satisfying creative outlet than his day job as a Bank Vice-President…at least, I assume it must to make the hours worth it.

Luckily, the show will be available via online archives for a week following the broadcasts.

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I’m very proud to have a friend like Seth Dillingham. He’s really pouring a tremendous amount of effort into raising funds for charity. Today marks the beginning of a series of auctions of donated Mac software he’s organized. Proceed from all the auctions will directly benefit cancer research.

Cancer research rocks, too! I don’t mean that as a joke. I’m alive today because of it. It’s one of the great killers that we’ve made real strides to defeat — largely thanks to the great amount of funding that’s been thrown at the problem through generous people who give time and money to charity efforts.

So, long story short, if you have a Mac, you owe it to yourself to place some bids. It’s a win-win.

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As the rest of the family is off at a birthday party for a few hours, I had a chance to play with new iLife some. The result is a simple photo movie of Leo.

I’m probably missing a few things about how the new iMovie is suppose to work, but wow it is a dramatic step backwards in terms of capabilities from the prior version. Long term the library integration is great, and it’s dead easy for the basics, but there’s not a timeline. Detail level editing is gone. Effects are gone. Precision control of titles/transition is gone. Also, it appears though you can export it to Final Cut XML, Final Cut Express doesn’t support appear to support opening that for editing.

The integration with iPhoto is nice. This movie is only photos, no video. I edited the photos in Photoshop (as external editor for iPhoto), duped one and created the “sketched” version for the lead-in, then dropped them all into the iMovie project. There’s a nice little editor for the “Ken Burns” zooming effect, but things like how long a photo shows, and how long transitions run are all set on a project level, not a “per photo” level.

Also I fired up GarageBand to lay record the guitar part. Added the iMovie as a movie track to get the timing — but then I was left with no way to tie those in iMovie. I was left having to export the movie from GarageBand, and put it back in iMovie as a complete clip to publish it to the .Mac web gallery. Weird.

Anyway, I’m happy with the net result considering I only put in about 2 hours no the project, including selected and editing the photos, composing-rehearsing-record the music. And the web gallery is slick, particularly for photos.

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It’s Katie’s birthday, today. Hope you have a good one, sweetie!

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I bought a new Ducane Stainless Grill today at Home Depot. The old grill more or less disintegrated, so it was necessary. I decided to get one that would last this time around. This is about the least expensive one you can buy that really well constructed out of exclusively decent grade stainless steel.

It did pretty well on the turkey breasts and zucchini tonight — though it always takes a while to get a feel for a new grill.

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I’ve resisted declaring Leo the world’s cutest baby for fear of being derided as a familial demagogue. Sure, there are lots of other really cute babies around, but, now at least I can come forth and support my argument with some serious physical proof.

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I posted last year about an old friend in need. Their plight, and the overwhelming response they’ve received got some coverage on All Things Considered this week.

It’s a sad situation, but it certainly sounds like they’re making the best of the time they have.

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