Author: Stepto

The View From the Ambulance

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I’m guest posting on Wil Wheaton’s blog, so cross posting this here as well.

 

Try to imagine this conversation:

Brain: Man. I am getting kinda worried about the fact I’ve had this incredible cold and have not slept but 10 hours over the past 5 days.

Heart: Roger that Brain, engaging the engine at 110%

Brain: No wait I…

Chest: Heart? This is the Chest we’re gonna need to tigthen up a bit here to handle the new load.

Brain: No guys that’s going to make it worse because…

Heart: Make it worse? Roger that! Upping to 120%

Chest: Chest copies! cranking up pressure.

Lungs: Engaging gasping.

Brain: no guys this is going to make this bad because he’s going to think he’s having a heart attack–

Skin: Hey guys, we have the go ahead to go flush and get all clammy just FYI that’s what we’re seeing across the board here.

Lungs: Uh Heart, we’re pushing up respiration to 130% to help move this racing oxygen around. This triggers shortness of breath mode just FYI.

Heart: Brain we can’t keep this pace up how long were you needing this?

Brain: I never asked for–

Eyes: Guy’s I’m seeing some crazy stuff on Webmd regarding heart attacks and I know we have a family history so…

Brain: All right I’m getting angry here, let’s calm down immediately and–

Heart: Angry? Got it, crank it up another 30%.

Chest: Roger that cranking up the tightness.

And this is how I ended up calling 911 with racing heart, intermittent chest pressure, rapid breathing, anxiety etc. All of which had lasted off and on for a couple of hours.

My father’s side has had heart issues, most of my paternal grandfather’s siblings as well as himself died from heart related issues. So when, late Friday night, I began to feel what I thought were ever increasing and clear symptoms of a mild heart attack, I called 911. 911 sent a dispatch team out to the house while I laid down and Rochelle penned up the dogs and got me ready to travel if needs be. My anxiety level began to skyrocket when I realized I had just called an ambulance, sirens and lights blazing, into my “so quiet you can hear someone drop a coke can in another house” neighborhood at 4am on a Saturday morning.

Brain: Jeez I hope they don’t use the siren…

Heart: Aye sir cranking up to—

Brain: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUTUP

They arrived (sans siren) and hooked me up to all manner of bitchin’ equipment to scan my heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and a field EKG. while they shouted scary numbers to each other (“210 over 120″ “96!” “6.0221413e+23″) I got to become increasing agitated while I answered a ton of questions about where did it start, how did I feel etc. All while wearing enough leads and wires that I felt like one of the trees in Avatar.

After a scary few minutes the tech calmed me down. Started asking the “have you been getting sleep? Under stress lately etc.” They reassured me I was in no immediate danger looking over all my vitals and my EKG’s were normal. My heart rate was through the roof so they wanted to go to the ER.

The view through an ambulance was surreal and I guess an experience I have the good fortune to scratch off my bucket list without kicking the bucket. The techs told me all about the various gadgetry and we all geeked out over my iPad mini retina which they allowed me bring. In the interests of their privacy I didn’t want to tweet photos from there since it would be hard in the cramped quarters to remove any distinguishing characteristics but they did a great job in calming me down.

Once at the ER, a crack team of people informed me they would not need to crack open my chest. They ran a blood panel, took X-rays, and ran several EKG’s. About the only disappointment was the X-ray, where the technician put a lead cloth down to “shield my privates from being irradiated” and I complained it was OK, I wanted Hulk privates.

Everything came up Milhouse. I was given an IV of Lorazopram and that niftily settled my brain down. They explained my blood panel was fine, my heart was ok, the EKG’s were fine and that I did not, in fact have a heart attack. Instead I had a very sustained panic attack brought on by a variety of factors, not the least of which was an extreme case of sleep deprivation.

Now, I told you all that to tell you this.

My family on my father’s side as I mentioned has a huge history of sudden heart related death experience, an experience you only get to have once. I quibbled for a few minutes over bothering to call 911 until I remembered that. On the heels of Wil’s post about getting healthy, I wanted to throw out that assuming the presence of insurance (or even not), DO NOT SCREW AROUND with symptoms like the ones I had. It’s always better to know it’s not a heart event than it is to drop dead being so very thankful you didn’t wake your neighbors with the ambulance siren.

On the morrow.

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My ride share had to cancel this morning, her son is ill. So I tried to catch the valley shuttle bright and early to get me out to work at HBO in time for our morning Stand Up meeting. I love the work being done there and wish I could talk about it but I cant. Suffice to say they are an amazing team of people doing amazing work on amazing things that are amazing and I’m just really proud to be a part of it.

But their offices are in downtown Seattle, roughly 27 miles as the crow flies from my house. By bus on the best of days that’s an hour and twenty minute commute.

This wasn’t the best of days, weather wise. I let Aspen out for his morning routine and did sign language to him in praise while I gave him his anti-seizure meds. It was cloudy out and raining that classic late-January Seattle rain. Misty and a bit clingy more than pure drops out of the sky. It smelled wonderful outside, and Aspen looked like he was covered in dew from it during his morning constitutional.

I love living in the country. I’ve been here ten years now. If you get the chance, try to spend some time living somewhat remotely. I’m not saying it’s better than living in the city, I’m saying a radically different experience sometimes cleanses the mind.

I tended to my own morning routine and donned my “rain shoes”. Yes in Seattle you usually have to have a pair of shoes dedicated to the purpose of walking in the rain. The shuttle pickup stop is roughly three quarters of a mile down the ridge from my house and my canvas Vans weren’t going to cut it. I have a wonderful new greatcoat I bought for the Child’s Play dinner this year that I trot out for the cold and rainy days. I shrugged my way into it, put on my hat, tucked my ipad into the inside pocket, and began my walk. I paused for a moment at the door and listened. I’m not sure why I did it, but there’s something about the sound of rain lightly hitting the trees and the house in the morning that never, ever gets old. Even a misty rain can be loud in just the right moment.

I walked. All around me commuters passed me by and I was wondering what they were thinking of me. Was it “Oh that poor guy trudging in the rain somewhere” or was it “oh man. I wish I could just walk around in the morning instead of driving to work”?

aaaaannnnnnd I missed the shuttle. I wasn’t walking slowly, there was a slight pause in my walk as a family of deer foraged up the hill halfway the journey by one of the housing subdivisions. I thought about taking a picture, but deer in Duvall are fairly common and I was in a really good mood and although I’m not “that guy” lecturing people about enjoying a moment as opposed to stopping to phone-cam it, I enjoyed the moment instead of phone-camming it. I was probably 30 seconds from the bus stop, and a good 7 minutes ahead of the shuttle’s pickup time, when the shuttle blew right past me.

I went with my first instinct, “Oh no that’s the only shuttle for the morning bus runs!” and realized the best I could hope for to reach work would be late morning. I raised my hand and took a few urgent sprint strides before realizing there was no way this was going to work. I stopped, the rain still making that soft patter in the mist, and continued on to the stop just in case that was perhaps a duplicate shuttle or one running really late.

Suffice to say, that was my ride. I stood at the stop until ten past the pickup time and resigned myself to doing some work from home until I could catch the next run of buses an hour or two hence.

The sky had brightened considerably and the actual droplets of rain had increased. My coat and hat made me feel like Tom Reagan in Miller’s Crossing. I imagined a world where I returned home, put a record on my new turntable I just bought, poured a whisky, and sat like a person in a simpler time until things coalesced back to where the things I had no control over aligned again to get me where I needed to be. I was somewhat amused by this line of thinking when I saw the deer again.

They had moved down the hill and were standing square in the center of the road. The curve at the top of the ridge where I live offers a long line of sight to anyone coming down the road, but to anyone going up it’s a blind turn. And the speed limit, while 35, is routinely broken. My appreciation for them standing stock still in the road, a doe and two very young offspring, was countered almost immediately by considering the likelihood of someone hitting them. Sure enough I turned and around the bend were two cars. I raised my hands up in a waving motion, then my hands pushing down in the road construction crew “slow down” motion. They slowed and I pointed to around the curve. They crawled around the bend and saw the deer.

The deer were nonplussed.

This represented a problem. They were in the road. Two cars, albeit with blinkers on, were on a blind uphill curve. I tried everything I could think of: my phone’s ringtone, shouting, etc. I was even considering quickly downloading a bobcat or cougar roar on my phone when the entire family of deer, with a measure of somewhat aloof disdain, snorted and moved off the road into the brush. The cars passed. I stood for a moment. The entire situation had lasted maybe 60 or 90 seconds.

Living in the country.

I made it back home, hung up my coat and hat. I sent a mail letting work know I’d be delayed and my work item updates. I took a look at the phonograph I just bought (it’s this one by the way) still in its wrapping and debated opening it.

On the morrow, I decided. I’m still waiting for some tiny bookshelf speakers en route to accompany it.

The rain still made noise around the house. Aspen, Eowyn, Adia, and Rochelle were asleep upstairs. A new puppy, Basil Hayden, is asleep up in Canada. We see him soon.

I sit at my desk now, finishing a wiki for work, getting ready to catch the next run downtown. Might have dinner with some friends tonight. Finishing up a long overdue project in the late evening.

And I might see those deer again in the morning.

On Mike Krahulik’s Resolution Post

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Go read this. It’s a startlingly thoughtful transformation. I think regardless of whether it does anything for your opinion on the matter you have to admit it’s laudable to publicly realize you’ve lived long enough as the hero to see yourself slowly transform into the villain. And then clearly express the desire to change.

It’s a very different kind of post than an apology, something John Scalzi wrote about quite well. I wanted to read and re-read it over a few days before talking about it then realized it’s just a little too personal for me to really comment on other than to say go read it. I’m not saying people shouldn’t comment, but the more I read it the more I thought “well there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go we all sometimes.”

On Mike Krahulik’s Resolution Post

1

Go read this. It’s a startlingly thoughtful transformation. I think regardless of whether it does anything for your opinion on the matter you have to admit it’s laudable to publicly realize you’ve lived long enough as the hero to see yourself slowly transform into the villain. And then clearly express the desire to change.

It’s a very different kind of post than an apology, something John Scalzi wrote about quite well. I wanted to read and re-read it over a few days before talking about it then realized it’s just a little too personal for me to really comment on other than to say go read it. I’m not saying people shouldn’t comment, but the more I read it the more I thought “well there but for the grace of the flying spaghetti monster go we all sometimes.”

Xbox One: The Reviewening

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I’ve now been using my Xbox One for close to three weeks now and I think that’s enough time to move through initial impressions and actually review the unit as a whole.

DISCLAIMER: When I left Xbox work was just completing on finalizing the hardware specifications on “Durango” which would end up being the Xbox One. While a number of public features that made it in and ones that have been announced bear resemblance to features I specced out over the life time of the Xbox 360, I had no direct involvement in what eventually shipped as Xbox One. I also do not own a PS4 yet so this review is strictly just my thoughts as a consumer who paid $499 for a new console. I purchased an Xbox One because I believe Xbox LIVE is still the gold standard in console interactivity and my existing investment in the platform through achievements, etc.

Hardware

One of the more interesting things about this generation is that both major manufacturers in this release cycle have chosen to go with commoditized hardware, meaning instead of a custom designed processor platform they have chosen “off the shelf” solutions from AMD. Much will be made over design choices such as “ESRAM over GDDR5” etc or the GPU choices between the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One. In the end I doubt there will be a massive difference in the end result of quality of games until much later in the cycle, much like it took years to eek out the performance advantages of the Playstation 3’s cell architecture over the tri-core PowerPC platform of the Xbox 360. For now, out of the gate it would appear Sony has the edge in that several key cross platform titles run at a full 1080p resolution instead of being scaled. However I’m not totally convinced yet that’s going to be a standard situation. Both platforms rushed to market.

Unboxing the Xbox One is a simple affair, the packaging is neat and tidy and while some people might complain about the plain look of the box, I love it. I want my electronics to be as simple and unobtrusive as possible. This is one of the reasons I did not like the white Xbox One launch console. The sleek black squared off look of the Xbox One is appealing and the size of the case and knowing the heat dynamics of the hardware platform they chose indicates they left plenty of space for heat dissipation.

Connect the power, HDMI out, HDMI in if you wish (I hooked my 360 to it, more on that in a minute) and the Kinect and you are ready to boot up.

My setup wasn’t quite so simple as I had not prepared my home theater for getting the new Xbox. So this required rewiring some HDMI, moving my old 360 over to a new spot, then hooking everything back up to make sure it worked. All told from unboxing to power on was about 20 minutes.

First Experience

Right off the bat the nicest thing about the Xbox One is how quiet it is compared to the last generation of consoles. I’m sure 8 years from now I’ll be complaining the next generation should be quieter but the difference is immediate. Pairing your controller is also simplified, you put the controller in pairing mode and the Xbox automatically detects it.

Prior to really being able to do anything with the box required a mandatory 500+mb update which took about 10 to 15 minutes for me to get. I have a lot of Internet connected devices in my home and while it was downloading I was doing other things online so that most likely impacted the saturation on my 7mb line. Once the update was installed I ran through the simplified initial setup to connect my Xbox LIVE account, select instant on, Kinect sign in, and Kinect calibration. All told that took about 10 minutes.