My dad had a hernia and a perforation in his stomach… for 4 days before he got to a hospital. His coworkers called an ambulance after his repeated complaints of pain.

My dad’s roommate is a very… interesting person. She’s very controlling and won’t allow me over. I can’t exactly hang out with him all the time where he works, so the time I spend with him is very limited. He doesn’t have a phone, so I can’t call him either… I basically see him on average once a month.

When I got a call from his roommate Tuesday (2 days prior as I write this), I was on the way to taking care of my injuries from the accident and taking care of my business taxes. Apparently, I didn’t have enough going on in my life, eh?

Sunday 4/4, he arrived in the hospital. Things did NOT look good.

Monday 4/5, “he was touch and go all day long.” Normally the ICU nurses have 2-3 patients at a time depending on the needs of each. Dad had a dedicated nurse all day long. This is how bad he was.

Tuesday 4/6 I found out he was in the hospital and went to see him. Know what it’s like to see the man that was cool and the best of the best in your eyes 25 years prior now sedated with tubes sticking out all over his face? A reality check. I spent 2 hours talking to a sedated man until I couldn’t bare it any more. I updated my mom, grandma, his boss, mutual friends out of state and facebook.

Wednesday 4/7 I walk in and am greeted by the nurse’s smile, “Only good news!” she exclaims. He’s stabilizing. His blood pressure is normal. His heartbeat is regular. 40+ years of booze is cleaned out of his system now. He’s still on a ventilator, but I guess 49 years of cigarettes will do that to a guy in his early 60s. I stay 2 hours. My mom, his ex, is expected to drop in later. I update his boss, my mom, grandma and his boss. Boss is a great guy. I’m assured dad has a job waiting for him. Boss is a great guy. Get a call from boss later in the day. Why’s my mom signing papers to pull the plug he asks. I tell him that there’s only one person in the world that has the legal authority to authorize such an action. Me. He’s not married and I’m his only child. He has no living parents or other relatives. I’m all he’s got. Therefore, if such a decision were to be made, it’d end with me… this is not something even close to consideration. I reassure the boss and talk to mom over facebook chat. The nurse was showing mom his charts…. seriously. She just can’t stand others caring about Dad.

Thursday 4/8 I spend an hour with Dad. The new nurse isn’t exactly what I’d call awesome. To her, Dad is just the patient in room 17, not a person. She tells me she’s going to dial back his sedation so I can talk to him. I tell her no, let him rest. She tells me she’s doing it anyway. She converts the bed so he’s sitting up more instead of laying down. She shakes him a bit, pats him on the shoulder quite hard and yells in to his ear, “Bill wake up, your son’s here.” My dad’s name is not Bill. It’s not even close. I don’t like this woman. She goes about running around him and looking busy in front of me. I’m not impressed. 30 minutes later, Dad opens his eyes for the first time in days. I know this man very well. He’s confused. He spots me right away and won’t look away. I smile and start walking over to him. He tracks my steps and turns his head to spot me. He tries to talk but can’t. I guess tubes stuck down your throat can hinder your ability to speak. I tell him that he’s OK. He’s in a hospital and he’s being taken care of. He’s safe and can relax. I’m here. He looks down at his nose as best he can. He tries to lift his hand. I tell him that he’s got tubes in him and he needs to leave them alone so they can help him heal. He looks at me again and closes his eyes. He’s out again. I continue talking to him. Just like I’ve been doing the past 2 days. I have to go do some stuff like talking to my doctor about my accident and getting a rental car while my Scion is getting fixed. This is so emotionally exhausting. I hate being a grownup. I want to have my Mountain Master toy truck and jets and aircraft carrier and park them on his head while they’re trying to refuel. Not watch this great man drift back into unconsciousness. I bid the nurse a good day. I call Dad’s boss, mom, grandma. My friends have nice thing to say on facebook. It makes me happy. I get a call from Dad’s boss. Dad’s roommate called him again. She needs his paycheck cashed. She’s drunk. Boss doesn’t know what to do. Roommate tells him Dad was moved out of the room and taken off ventilator, then returned back to room and reattached to ventilator. I call hospital and speak to my favorite nurse. He’s not moved since I left. I call boss back. Boss is calm now. Boss doesn’t like Dad’s roommate now. Welcome to my world. I need a break and need to heal my own body up. I’m calling tomorrow, saving myself the trip. Will be dreaming of you, Dad, hopefully. Hopefully it’ll be the one where you took me to Miami Metrozoo. That was a great day. You bought me ice cream and a dinosaur wax figure. A great day.

He was stable and seemingly improving the rest of the week. I’m getting happy and hopeful.

Wednesday 4/14 his temperature shot up to 105 and they’re saying he needs emergency surgery, he may not see tomorrow. This has been a bad day.

Fast forward to July…
Dad had a ton of ups and downs in the hospital and was eventually released under his own recognizance. Despite asking me to call him every day, now he’s out and I haven’t heard word one from him. Such is life. I hope he’s well and has learned to stop his bad habits or end up right back in the hospital or worse. Good luck, Dad.

My goal was to create a website that brought all the resources available to new & existing players to a single source. I’ve been working at it for more than a month and have found lots of these other resources to have out-of-date information or things to be completely erroneous, let alone with decent grammar. I’m getting permission from the folk that have the existing focused (on one part of the game) resources and bringing them to this single source. I have a feeling that this’ll take me a couple more months, but it’ll be one of my best contributions to the internets!

DDO Source.com

I’ll be focusing on my podcasting and a new project I’ll be working on slowly across the new year… it’ll teach me video editing, something I’d been wanting to learn for some time.

I created a new blog called Geekdar.com and hope to bring concise news stories to other geeks’ attention without wasting their time.

Geekdar.com will feature humor, movies, toys, video, pics, retro and damn near everything else geeks like.

Give it a shot, but only if you’re a true geek!

www.Geekdar.com

I think I’d be a really great King of Mars, but I’m a bit apprehensive what with the oxygen shortage there. I understand that Kuato is leading the rebels in fighting the megacorps there, trying to maintain a steady stream of oxygen for all.

I also think the arrival gate at the spaceport needs to have better security… this woman kept going on about her being here for 2 weeks as I was leaving the last time I was there, it was really weird, then the whole place eploded just after I passed the blast doors! Crazy! We’d need to improve the reliability and training of the guards there like really quick, perhaps cross-education with Fort Lauderdale’s TSA would be the solution.

I would need my own personal supply of oxygen up there in my spire high above the red landscape. I’d need to make sure it had a little spaceship to launch me out into space toward Earth should an uprising occur. This part would be non-negotiable. I’d also like 7 (it’s a cool prime number) Fembots, but I’m willing to negotiate the number as I know resources are constrained lately and space (even cargo) is limited on freighters as of late.

If the position is open or as an alternate to the position for which I’m applying, I’d like to nominate my cousin, Barry, for Queen of Mars. Barry tears it up a couple nights a week in South Beach. I don’t know know what he means when he tells me he’s a queen, but he walks really weird and I’ve seen movies where the queens walk weird, so I think he’d be a good choice. He’s very moody and has a great collection of makeup and accessories, just in case a bunch of women want to look pretty! What a thoughtful guy!

As for a Court Jester, there’s a really tall guy I see on the Earth news channels every once in a while carrying a dialisys machine and walking around the desert with a bunch of guys and they are constantly praising a Balla’. It’s weird, my brother talks about Balla’s all the time; he especially likes Tu Pac and Eminem. Are they Ballas? I also think he sneaks in time listening to R. Kelly, but we’ll discuss that another time, I think he’s got an appointment with Dr. Phil for that one.

It seems a trend to have a ‘first animal,’ so I’d like a T-Rex. John Hammond owned a couple islands in the Pacific if I remember correctly and he grew them. We’d avoid the raptors, they were a bit too aggressive for my tastes. There would have to be a royal decree made immediately upon my taking the job that people could not tell said pet that they love him or he loves them and none of that nonsense about a happy family. I’m just letting you know all this now, so it’s not a surprise later on.

I suppose a scheme to conquer Earth would be inevitable, so at that point, I’d need to upgrade my job title from “King of Mars” to “Emperor.” It seems like the thing to do to wear a black cloak and walk around speaking in a raspy voice. I think this is something I could accomplish in time, but I’d have to practice. Are there training programs in place to assist me in said training? While the king is expected to have a great army, I think I’ll have to make all my troops wear white plastic armor. It’d have to be resistant to the red sand/clay of the surface, otherwise they’d all be pink and it’d seem like my cousin Barry was running the army. On a related note, he did say the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in American armies was intriguing. I’ll have to ask him about that. We’ll need to make sure the armor offers a good field of vision as other instances of said armor have had limited success in other galaxies far, far away where the troops constantly bump into things. We need to think smart from the start to ensure the medical supplies aren’t used up too quickly. Medical consumables will likely be in limited supply when the siege of Earth begins and I can’t be giving asprin to every foot soldier that has a headache because he kept bumping into walls and low-hanging entrances.

While it’s on my mind, the first peasants that claim they didn’t vote for me must be put down immediately. We can’t have a rebellion on our hands.

If you’re considering me for the above named position, I can provide references stating my ability to act with dignity in high-pressure situations and delegate work to underlings. Thank you and have a great day.

Walt Snider

Let’s see if I get hired!

Edit: I didn’t get the job.

I used to literally have 17 WordPress blogs for show notes, news and more for said podcast group, but found that I was "in the weeds" (to use a hospitality term) on a regular basis. Eventually I figured out how to get all my podcast feeds running out of a single WordPress installation (thanks to Blubrry PowerPress WordPress Podcast Plugin and an assist from the staff there) but recently when trying to update a category (I wanted to get interviews from beneath Kore Movies to a global category) I couldn’t find it to edit.

After a search of the toobs, I found David Cumps’s blog where he details how he fixed the problem.

It involves messing with the database and I’m lazy, so I didn’t wanna do that bit. He does mention that you can fill in the description after doing the database bit and then going manually to each category the way WordPress sees it, as a cat_ID and refilling the info in:

After I’ve done this, I visited my admin section and noticed the Descriptions were filled in again. But there was no Name, and all my posts still had empty categories linked to them.

To fix this, visit http://your-site/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=1 where 1 is the category id to edit. Fill in a Name and a Slug, the url name for your category, and save it.

Repeat this process for all your categories, until they all have a Name again.

What I did was cycle through 77 categories on Kore Notes.com by updating the number at the end of the URL: http://your-site/wp-admin/categories.php?action=edit&cat_ID=1

I eventually found the offending category, updated it to have no parent and it suddenly showed up in the category list the way it should and sorts just fine on the public side of the blog.

Thanks to David and as he says in the opening of his blog post, I put this up in case others need help and are lazy like me. (He didn’t say he was lazy though!)

Fortunately for my family, we live in the farthest North city in Broward County, Pompano Beach, but this still has us concerned. Do we keep the kids out for school until this blows over? Do we lock ourselves in the house and stock up as if there were a hurricane coming?

*sigh* Why can’t people stop shaking hands and sneezing on people? All I want in life is a healthy family with two kids to carry our hope to the next generation. Stop doing things that get in the way of my dreams.