I took the Dante's Inferno Hell Test. Did so-so. Middle of the road. I'm a moderate, I guess. Here's my score:

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very High

If you ever wanted to do your own Star Wars ASCIImation with Perl, you might try this guy's site.

I really don't need another timewaster, but this is very tempting. I think I might have to try my hand at having my own movie on the dub dub dub where I can act out any scene I want.

In addition to National Spank-Out Day, my birthday is also free cone day at Baskin-Robbins. That's hardly surprising, as many wonderous and exciting things not involving ice cream or beating your child have happened on April 30^th. To wit:

1789 - The First Presidential Inauguration
1803 - The Louisiana Purchase
1864 - Civil War battle of Jenkin's Ferry in Arkansas
1927 - First federal prison for women opens
1945 - Hitler Commits Suicide
1948 - Land Rover introduced at the Amsterdam Auto Show
1964 - DEC unveils PDP-7
1967 - Wee
1975 - Saigon Falls
1992 - CERN declares WWW open to all without fees
1997 - Ellen comes out

See all the good stuff? We got presidents, a bunch of land meant to go to the French, the death of Hitler (far too late, IMHO), Ellen, the commies finally taking Viet Nam back, the coolest 4WD vehicles ever made, and the dub dub dub. What more could anyone possibly want?

Some people who were also born on 4/30 include:

1898 - Cornelius Vanderbilt (tycoon)
1912 - Eve Arden (actress)
1914 - Vermont Royster (writer)
1916 - Robert Shaw (conductor)
1923 - Percy Heath (jazz musician)
1930 - Cloris Leachman (actress)
1933 - Willie Nelson (singer and tax-dodging dope addict)
1938 - Gary Collins (actor)
1941 - Johnny Farina (musician)
1943 - Bobby Vee (singer)
1944 - Jill Clayburgh (actress)
1944 - Richard Schoff (singer)
1946 - Don Schollander (Olympic Hall of Famer)
1948 - Perry King (actor)

Now that's company to be proud of! Time for a cone...

I joined the International Registry of Large Congenital Melanocytic Nevi and Neurocutaneous Melanosis. Something with a name that incomprehensible just has to be joined. I put my info in, hit submit. Maybe they can get some use out of it.

That's a pretty scary form, though. I've never seen an oncologist, and I never want to. Apparently lots of people have complications so I guess I've been lucky. I'm especially glad I probably dodged that whole "mutant brain tissue" thing. And I'm really glad I didn't need rectal nevus surgery. That's gotta suck. Still, this is something which is more than a little depressing. Poor kids. They won't be smiling when they grow up...

Guess which conference I'll never be attending? Yeesh.

What is with my unintentional fascination about medical disorders lately? Maybe I'm feeling my mortality, what with a birthday approaching.

Just think of all the strange and lovely things email can bring to your life with Eudora and IE. All the bugs in Pine are so mundane...

Oh, I can't forget Internet Explorer. Browse the web, get pantsed. Can everyone say "execute arbitrary code"? I thought you could.

I think I'm mostly all better. I didn't do squat all weekend, and I went to work today. My average temp is somewhere in the 99 and a half degrees area, I can feel my jaw (which doesn't hurt all that badly anymore), I'm less weary/achy than before, my headache is down to a manageable thumping sensation, and I can almost always breathe out of one nostril. All I have left is phlegm. Lots and lots of thick, off-color phlegm. Nasally, I mean.

Yes, life is good.

I asked my doctor about that black crap and he seemed to think it was an unlikely culprit. If I inhaled it on Tuesday I should have been sicker sooner than Monday. Maybe. He really didn't want to hear about black dust mystery powder, and I maybe belabored the point with him somewhat. He thinks instead that it caused me to have a severe allergic reaction which then left me overly susceptible to something I came in contact with in San Jose the next couple days. And Todd started getting ill right around Saturday, while I felt bad Sunday and went into full bloom Wednesday. So there's more evidence against the mystery powder.

The good news is that three horse pill-sized Amoxicillin capsules each day work wonders in combating the infestation which has been giving me so much grief. I'm not overly keen on taking antibiotics, but one must do what one must. I also have some nifty cortisone nasal spray that I can try to inhale in order to reduce congestion. It doesn't work that well, but I like the noise so I keep trying.

I'm going to inquire as to how I go about getting my office cleansed of black residue. Doctor's orders.

I didn't really sleep well last Saturday night. That was the last night we were in San Jose. I had a low-level headache and some bad nasal irritation, but I chalked it up to staying on the smoking floor, mold in the carpet, running around all week in an unfamiliar place, whatever.

I slept maybe 4 hours Sunday night. I woke up with a scratchy throat and a runny nose. Monday night I woke up at four am and couldn't get back to sleep, same stuff. During the daytime, I'm drag ass tired, my neck hurts, and I've been unusually stuffed up (unusual for me anyway -- I'm almost always stuffed up because I'm allergic to so many things). Been stuffed up for a week, come to think of it.

Last night I woke up at 5 am and couldn't breathe at all through my right nostril and my head was pounding. I felt really hot, too. My upper right teeth all hurt, and my cheekbone felt exactly like it does the day after you've been hit by someone's fist -- a dull throb. I feel like someone went a half inch behind and one inch below my right eye and cracked a bone inside my head.

I woke up, emailed in sick to work (which probably made my supervisor really happy; he's not yet mailed me back) and took a Dayquil. I'm running a low grade fever (it's around 100 after Dayquil and aspirin; my normal body temperature is about 97 and a half) and I can't feel my upper right teeth. My whole palate is numb. I have a microheadache just behind my right eye. My cheek is swollen. My left nostril is clear as a bell, but when I blow my right one, thick yellow pasty stuff comes out. Nasal spray doesn't clear it up.

Tess went looking online and did some self-diagnosis. I think I have chronic sinusitis. Let's see what that page says:

What are the symptoms of sinusitis? The location of your sinus pain depends on which sinus is affected.

Ok. Everything on the right side of my nose between my scalp and lower jaw is killing me. Real helpful. Let's examine the symptoms.

Headache when you wake up in the morning is typical of a sinus problem.

Head still hurts. Check.

Pain when your forehead over the frontal sinuses is touched may indicate that your frontal sinuses are inflammed.

Nope, no forehead pain. One symptom down...

Infection in the maxillary sinuses can cause your upper jaw and teeth to ache and your cheeks to become tender to the touch.

Every tooth I own in my upper right jaw is killing me. I can't touch my right cheek.

Check.

Since the ethmoid sinuses are near the tear ducts in the corner of the eyes, inflammation of these cavities often causes swelling of the eyelids and tissues around your eyes, and pain between your eyes. Ethmoid inflammation also can cause tenderness when the sides of your nose are touched, a loss of smell, and a stuffy nose.

Sweeling of eyelids and pain near eyes? Vision in my right eye is blurry and when I push gently on my right eyelid (with my eyes closed) I can hear a squishing sound inside my cheekbone. So check and check for those symptoms. Tenderness in nose, check. Loss of smell? Check. Stuffy nose: double check.

Although the sphenoid sinuses are less frequently affected, infection in this area can cause earaches, neck pain, and deep aching at the top of your head.

Nope, no earaches. I have a ringing in my ears, though, and a very deep ache in my head. Half check.

Most people with sinusitis, however, have pain or tenderness in several locations, and their symptoms usually do not clearly indicate which sinuses are inflamed.

So all my sinus cavities are infected with something? Well, that's just fucking great. What else can I look for?

Other symptoms of sinusitis can include:

Fever
Weakness
Tiredness
A cough that may be more severe at night
Runny nose (rhinitis) or nasal congestion

Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.

Super.

Now that I look back on it, I think I know what started it. I recently moved to a new office, and it has windows which open. I think that's really cool. The guy who was there before me (he's been in that office since at least '91) did a lot of handyman-type work with tools and whatnot, and along the walls had really high workbenches which had a backing to them. These backings covered the bottom half of the windows, which don't close quite all the way. Some moisture gets in. I think you can see where this is going.

There's a strange black junk/powder/weird stuff all along the bottom of the windows which had benches in front of them. I guessed it was mold or mildew or something. After all, at least thirteen years of sawdust and normal dust and airborne particulates had fallen behind those benches, where it couldn't be cleaned and where the barely open window has let moist air in. Perfect aerobic breeding ground. So now I have my desk sitting under those windows. That didn't bug me since I'm actually not allergic to mold or mildew.

Last Tuesday I was feeling fine. Right after lunch, I picked up a napkin from the stack that I keep on my side desk (which directly under a window; my regular desk is perpendicular to the wall). I put that stack of napkins there the previous Friday after lunch. When I picked it up, I noticed that it had a fine layer of that black dust on it. I remember all this because at the time I thought it was odd that four days was enough to cause such a large amount of dust, and wondereed about the health effects of the stuff; I wondered if it was getting into my keyboard, should I be washing my hands more, that sort of thing. Anyway, I brushed the dust off and blew my nose.

After I blew my nose, I went into a 20 minute sneezing session. I figured my allergies started acting up so I grabbed the nasal spray I keep with me for times when my allergies get really bad (I can't take antihistamines unless I have the time to sleep it off, so I have to go with a topical cure for my near-constant allergies). So I gave myself a bunch of really deep squirts with the spray. That was dumb. Whatever black junk that was only just inside my nostril had now been sprayed and forcefully inhaled way up into my sinuses.

What followed that afternoon was an eight hour bout of some of the worst congestion and runniness I've ever experienced. Those of you who know me will recognize the gravity of that observation. It ended only when I took a benadryl that night, although then it continued on into the next morning. During the time I was at work, I used up a 5 inch stack of napkins (they're the dense brown paper kind you see in cafeterias) by the time I left early at 4:00. That's three hours. Toward the end when I was running low on paper, I resorted to stuffing the last napkin up my nose in order to staunch the constant dripping. I figured I had enough napkins on hand for a month. At least.

I think what happened is that I got that mildew or mold or whatever it is up into my sinus cavities and it started breeding. Now it's inflamed my sinus membranes and it's festering in there causing pressure to build up. I want it out, like pronto. My doctor can't see me until next Tuesday and said that if I can't hack the pain that I was to call there and ask for the nurse. I can't stand thinking that there's colony of decades old god-knows-what infecting my freakin' head. That mysterious black gunk is reproducing in a dark, moist, warm environment -- which just so happens to be an inch away from my brain. That thought weirds me out something fierce.

I'm going in to work tomorrow no matter how I feel. I'm going to take pictures of the windows, and then take samples from each one. If I had a petri dish and some agar I'd culture whatever that black stuff is, just to see what's infesting my head and causing me pain.

This shit sucks.

This guy (who happens to work for a company that makes USB floppy drives) has strung together 5 USB floppy drives to create a striped RAID array. My favorite quote:

Now I know this is now just a 4.22 MB drive (acutally it is 3.9MB of usable disk space when mounted). I also understand that carrying 5 USB floppy drives around is not exactly portable, but there is something special and amazing about the speed of this floppy cluster. It is really cool when you access the drives the way they flash each light and spin in no particular order that I can discern. It is of course faster than a standard single drive. I was able to transfer "DEVO Uncontrolable Urge.mp3" which is 3.6 MB in 32 seconds. Which is pretty good I think.

That's the kind of thing that makes me happy that the Internet was successful. Brilliant.

I think I found out what to do with all those 8 and 16MB SmartMedia cards we have laying around...

Well we got to the MySQL Conference in San Jose in one piece. We're at the Doubletree by the airport. The conference is here at the hotel, so it's pretty handy (although expensive: a coffee is $2.45 and a beer is $5; with no other place in walking distance, we're a captive market). It's a good hotel, and we have a nice big room complete with Net access. I remembered to bring that switch and me and Todd are all hooked up to the dub dub dub. Unfortunately, the desk only has one chair, so Toddler has to sit on the luggage rack I found in the closet. Adversity builds the spirit; he'll be in fighting trim in no time.

I attended the database replication talk this morning and learned lots of great stuff in that area. It was hosted by Jeremy Zawodny, the tech lead at Yahoo!. I'm going to set up replication at work to do hot spares, and get a dev server with live data. I'll probably also use it at my mom's store. It's a pretty interesting topic. It's apparently easy to set up, but also easy to break. I also didn't know that MySQL basically replicates queries. It doesn't send actual data across the wire, it sends the update/insert SQL queries to the slaves and then those servers run the statements. Cool stuff.

The free conference lunch line had at least 498 people in it by the time we got there, so after a lovely lunch in the cafe (beef with barley soup and a reuben sandwich; you're welcome, Toddler!) we went to the PHP and MySQL session. It was hosted by none other than Rasmus Lerdorf, the inventor of PHP and another big wig at Yahoo!. It didn't cover MySQL all that much, but it was a great session. A couple things he said really blew my mind. Like PHP having the shortest "Hello World" program of any programming language: you just put the text "Hello World" in a PHP file and the preprocessor will happily print "Hello World" when you run it. "Try that in Java or Perl or C and see what happens... Why shouldn't PHP just print it if you want it to? Why should it complain about something it doesn't understand?" said Rasmus. There was kind of a quiet moment while the people there (standing room only) digested that one. Then you could see the "I get it now..." feeling wash over the crowd.

He also went over some insane things you can do with PHP. Like opening an image file and then reading it into a Flash object and then spinning it around. Spinning logos in PHP. Weird. Then there was the PHP code he showed that allowed one to set up a complete web site (with hundreds/thousands of pages if you want) with only having one PHP script acting as a 404 error handler for Apache. You basically check what the path in the URL request is and then go open a page there. If none exists, you use the URL path info to make a DB query and then print the file at the requested location and serve it up. Then next person that comes along doesn't hit the 404 error handler (and doesn't execute the PHP program) -- they get the file the previous run created. I wanted to pipe up and ask how he manages preventing people from abusing his server but I didn't. (For the terminaly curious: You could write a 3 line perl program that would ask for any number -- millions if you wanted -- of randomly-named files from a dynamic web site bult on his code from the example. That PHP code would nearly always run, and therefore nearly always create useless dummy files. You'd run out of file descriptors or disk space eventually, and this would be an effective denial of service attack on the web site.) I didn't pipe up because I was sitting way in the back (standing up this time) and I figure he was only showing the code as an example of a possibility, not a complete solution. I'm sure anyone putting that code into action on a live server would have to figure out a way to limit the effects of such an attack.

In other news, the conference made the news. Yes, the dolphin thing is everywhere. No, I don't know why the mascot is a dolphin. Yes, I got a t-shirt and it has the dolphin on it. My first vendor shwag in nearly four years. w00t!

Well that's all for now. There's apparently some meet-and-greet dinner event. Todd and I are going to see if we can score form free food and booze. I'll drag my laptop dowstairs tomorrow and Saturday and make notes as I go. More updates later...

I'm heading on out to San Jose for a MySQL Conference. I convinced Toddler to go with me. He needs to get out more, and the room price is the same for one as two anyway. The hotel will pipe a T1 to your room for ten bucks a day, so he won't be completely cut off from the world. Oh, that reminds me: I can't forget to pack some long patch cables and my spare switch.

I'm bringing my laptop, and during the downtime I'm going figure out the best way to replace Red Hat's default MySQL 3.23.x install with the newly-released MySQL version 4. I'll probably write that up and put it on here somewhere. I'm also going to be taking notes and whatnot for work and I'll post whatever I wind up with so I (and the other two people who read the nonsense on this site) can get to it later.

The war in Iraq just got very serious. From :

In a deeply insulting Arab gesture, people hurled shoes at a giant statue of Saddam outside the hotel.

They've started throwing shoes. The horror... The horror.

I love reading through Ebay feedback.

No breaks! Death in the family. Please have more patients. Poor members. I'm cloudy.

This guy has great auctions (mirror). Read that description. I expected him to say say "I kiss you!"

That waterhead wants $75.50 to ship what will more than likely wind up being just a friggin' keyboard and mouse. And the picture of said "Sun Ultra 10 keyboard and mouse" is deceptive at best because they are sitting on top of an Ultra 10. Is the keyboard/mouse all he's selling? No clue.

That dude is a shyster. Maybe he just doesn't have "knowledge of all of these technologies". Could be why his spelling and grammar are so bad. Maybe I feel like kicking a guy when he is down. But then again, maybe I don't understand what being bitten by UPS rates means to a person who's being kicked.

Ten bucks says this guy smells like sweat and stale cigarettes and cheap cologne and gets 4 inches from people's faces when he talks to them.