by cg on October 26, 2006

So, as promised, here is a Magnetic Resonance Image of my brain taken last Friday, October 13. The view is from below as it were, and the perspective is such that the hemispheres are reversed – that’s the right hemisphere on the left, and you can probably see a bright oval something there, wherein lies a tale.
Some months ago I began to notice that my left arm was behaving oddly. I was making more typing mistakes than usual, and I was having a hard time in the gym working the weight machines with my left. So I saw the doctor; he suspected a pinched nerve or orthopedic issue and sent me off to an orthopedist. Orthopedist suspected tendonitis, and sent me to a physical therapist. Physical therapist said she thought I had something weird going on, and recommended a neurologist, so I made an appointment.
Before I could keep that appointment, however, a very odd thing happened. Sitting in my office at Adobe, in San Jose, I had just finished typing a document and was reaching for the phone to call a colleague when my left arm suddenly convulsed into a painful contraction that froze it, every muscle tightly clenched and curled up against my chest. Wild contractions began to flow up and down the arm.
Completely nonplussed, and absolutely at a loss to figure out what was going on, I slid to my knees and crawled to the corridor and said ‘Help.’ Three colleagues appeared, 2 headed for the phone and one came and tried to calm me down. By now I was hyperventilating and completely freaked out. The contractions begin to reside, San Jose Paramedics arrived, and some 6 hours later, in the E.R. at O’Connor Hospital, I was told that I had just had a seizure, and a CT scan was showing a mass in my brain. Sixteen days, 3 ERs, 4 hospitals, MRI centers et al. later, I now know that I probably have a tumor called a glioma, and will soon undergo a procedure at UCSF known as a right frontal craniotomy using stealth navigation and motor mapping. I had thought the blog was a little dull lately, so here ya go… more TK…
by cg on October 26, 2006
A while back we decided to do something about the drifts of paper that tend to collect, over and over again around gulker.com’s ‘World HQ.’ No sooner do we dispatch one batch of mailed and faxed documents, but another one seems to spontaneouly grow. Finding these documents, on those rare but vital instances when some communication from the bank or insurance company or DMV or house remodel contractor is important, can be a nightmare of looking through drawers, filing cabinets and boxes in the garage. This is especially true when the documents are some months or years old.
So we started the Paperless Project a few months ago. Everything that comes in that isn’t already a PDF or email or other electronic file format (which all get converted to PDF) now goes through a fast Fujitsu ScanSnap, then onto a Mac Mini where it’s processed by Adobe Acrobat Pro 7 (for OCR, rotation issue setc. ) and then into a collection on the HD that’s managed by yep (’iPhoto for PDF’). The whole thing is backed up automatically to an array of inexpensive NAS drives by ChronoSync and Apple’s Backup (not really paranoid, just evaluating both products).
So today we discovered that one of the many pieces we ordered for our in-progress master bedroom/bath remodel – a French door from Kolbe & Kolbe in Wisconsin – had arrived without its hardware. A quick search on ‘remodel’ in yep produced the confirmation-of-order form (a fax) complete with all the names, phone numbers and order details that I needed to get the ball rolling on replacing the hardware. If this had been a piece of paper I would likely still be sifting through folders trying to put my hands on this 6-month old document, amidst hundreds that have rolled in during the time frame…
by cg on October 26, 2006
Well, we had a lot of thoughtful comments, email, pingbacks et al. on the topic of faith and atheism. Thanks to all for their input… we will definitely be pursuing this, an essay is in the works. This will just take some time to research, think through and organize…