NFL? or MRI?
Went in very early this morning to get an MRI on my shoulder. Apparently there is some calcium buildup on my left shoulder that my doctor said was a "disease" and when I audibly gasped at that, he quickly told me that baldness was also a disease, and that I should start breathing again - normally. Nothing to worry about. He tells me that I have an awesome immune system, and whatever trauma happened to my shoulder, my body is just going overboard in fighting it is all. A cortizone shot will probably take care of it. But he wants me to get an MRI on it, just to "rule out some things." Erratic breathing resumes.

Anyway, I went in this morning at 7:45 a.m. (yeah, on a Saturday I know... welcome to managed care) and the technician asks me how I "hurt" myself, even though it's in my medical record, I was pre questioned about all of this two days prior to coming in, and I filled out two pages of the same questions while being admitted this morning.

At any rate, the technician is all over me. "Did you hurt your shoulder playing football!?" he says...
"Um, well, the doctor seems to think that maybe..."
"NFL??"
"Um, no, I'm not in..."
"You can tell me, I'm just going to look it up on the web you know and figure it out anyway."
"Really, I'm not a pro foot..."
"Fine, be that way!"

Then he goes on to tell me about how many baseball and football people have come in the last few weeks, "some guy from the Expos" and how puny the running backs are compared to me, and really doing everything that he can for the next 10 minutes to figure out what team I play for, and really that he's cool with all of it, and why can't I just come clean with the fact that I'm a pro football player, "and like, tell me how you hurt it, and what position do you play, and for what team?"

When I get home and mention this to my wife, she is of course, incredulous about it and says... "It's obvious that you're not in prime condition, I wonder why he would say that?" And there you have it. Now I know, in some small way, how famous people must feel. The fans are all over you, interested in you and what you do, and then you go home and are immediately brought back down to Earth by the folks that know "the real you."

Pump It Up!
Don't know how long they'll keep this link up, but MSNBC put up a rockin' webcast from NBC's "The Today Show" as part of their Summer Concert Series (click from their homepage) of three of Elvis Costello's tunes. Still the man, and still rockin' after all these years. Definitely a treat whether you're a fan or not.

Either way, save a tree.
Don Park is saying that publishing is not dead. Well, I have to agree that it will take some time for news, magazines, and books to change - but they will still be published. When they stop cutting down trees, there will still be some value to how things are editorialized and hence grouped together. But is it possible for technology to figure out what to put in front of us right now. I mean, what is newsworthy to me isn't necessarily newsworthy to someone else. What an interesting world we would live in though, if technology (via collaborative filtering of people's blogs) could figure that out for us? Ray Ozzie of course, makes the opposite distinction that publishing is dead in his post.

Operating Systems
Article:Microsoft has finally released more code that will make it easier for developers to build the kind of applications that Microsoft can - now you really can compete and without all the additional books. I've finally won a ten year argument with several fellow programmers, and if they really do end up putting some useful things in the API, this may be a step in the right direction. It could be too little too late though. Most techs that I know have already made the move over to versions of Unix, with flavors of Linux and Free BSD leading the pack. If you're interested in a very secure version of the latter, check out OpenBSD - it's a "FREE, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system."

Well, it's official. The US continues to try and drum up support for a war with Iraq, even though every other country in the middle east has begged Bush not to, and even though allies are either not in favor of it or vehemently oppose it. Latest news from MSNBC here.

"I don't want to get off on a rant here, but..."
Why the hell are they cancelling Dennis Miller?

Hello World - my first official blog post. This is the place where I will vent, organize thoughts and projects, and talk about whatever is relevant in the worlds of software, sound, words, sights, and well, the world at large.