The Late Dan Head

Dan Head

I only recently realized that I hadn't seen any posts from an old friend, Dan Head, in a while on Facebook, so I went to his profile to see what was up.  There I found out that he'd passed away on August 14th in Eugene, Oregon.

Here's a post I put on his page for any of his online friends to see...

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear of Dan's passing.  I only just saw this now, when I went to look at why I didn't recall seeing any of Dan's posts for a few months.

Dan and I were friends since elementary school in Waldport, when, though he was a year older than me, we played on the same little league baseball team.

In Junior High we had art class together.  One of those classes without the usual lectures and tests and school work, giving us students lots of time to visit and chit chat and goof off together. We were in the same in-class social group there.  The teacher usually let students pick music to play while the class worked and I remember Dan usually picked Ted Nugent's "Intensities in Ten Cities," though I wasn't into that sort of music yet.

I still remember a particular painting he did in class, three silver globes clustered together, floating over some kind of landscape.  

In high school we fell into the same social group again, a bunch of us hanging out every morning before class in either the counselor's office, with its round table and office-style swivel chairs, or if he had a meeting, in the home-ec room.  Talking about inane teenage stuff, but as a group of book loving teens, often working in a lot of puns and wordplay into our discussions.  For a couple of years we had a game where one person would pound the table and say a general subject and we'd spend all day trying to make our puns fit the subject (e.g. "birds" would be an emu-sing day...)

While most of our group likes fantasy, swords & sorcery books, Dan and I were the only ones who enjoyed John Norman's "Gor" series beyond the first book.  Both of us read all twenty plus books available then, and everyone else considered us a bit sick for that.

Being a year apart, we didn't have many classes together, just a few electives, but they were fun for socializing.  Classes like TV Production were like junior high art, not very structured and much of the work was done outside class hours, so in class every day was social hour to visit, discuss books, discuss music and all that...

We were both in the small school Games Club that met a couple of times a month to play war games, either in school or at our teacher's house to play games like Diplomacy, Russian Campaign, Squad Leader and so forth.  Lots of fun, lots of socializing.  Mostly it was the same group of us that met in the mornings, but with a few younger guys as well.

Some of our discussions, especially about a particular H.P. Lovecraft story we both liked have had life-long effects on me.  Talking to Dan back then, at 14 years old convinced me to basically reject religious belief altogether.  Though I'm not sure any of us actually knew much of atheism them, except as something portrayed as evil and communist, which we weren't.  But that's relieved quite a burden off me for decades.

I think the last time I can remember seeing Dan must've been around 1988, when a large group of our social circle were back in Waldport for holidays or summer or something, and we got together with a former teacher to play games.  We stayed up late into the night, playing a board game, chowing down Diane's Nacho Cheese tortilla chips, guzzling soda, talking, visiting and laughing.  

Life was already taking us all in different directions.  But it's a good memory.

Just for reference, here's the profile picture he set on Facebook at some point in the last couple of years...  It's not my photo, of course, so no credit to me.

3 Things I Saw Commuting on the Subway Today

Three things I saw commuting on the subway today.

1. Waiting at 49th Street for my train this morning I watched a rather large rat walk along the wall of the platform.  I stayed still, trying not to spook it, let it go about its business.  I thought it would walk around me.  But nope!  It walked right over my feet.  It’s claws tickled a little through my thick, wool socks.  When I twisted around to see where it would go, it darted off like a lightning bolt to hide behind a Metrocard machine (which is where I usually see the rats go down at that platform, they’re just not usually as large at this rat was).

2. When I got on the N train in Brooklyn to go home after work I sat down facing forward, near the front.  Two guys were sitting in the front two seats ahead of the door.  After the door closed the guy on the left took off his mask, poured some white powder out of a little jar onto the back of his hand and snorted it up his nose, then screwed the lid back on the jar, pulled his mask back up over his mouth and nose, then read on his phone till he exited the train at Canal Street.

3. The other guy sitting in the front got up at 34th Street - Herald Square and pushed his wire cart to the door, but didn’t get off.  He picked up a coffee cup off the ground and set it in his cart.  Then stood by the door when it closed and the train left for Times Square - 42nd Street.  The train switched from the express to the local track and he seemed a bit confused that it would be the opposite door, behind him, that was going to open.

At 42nd Street he turned around, pushed his cart to the door and stood there, looking vaguely confused when the door opened.  He stayed there, inside the train as a few people stepped in around him.  Till a pair of better dressed men came in, said something to the guy with the cart.  The guy with the cart picked up his fabric tote bag and coffee cup trash out of it and walked off the train.  

One of the better dressed men pulled the cart and took a seat at the front, while the other one sat opposite him.  Inside the cart, underneath the fabric tote bag the first guy took with him were several oblong bundles neatly wrapped in white plastic bags.  

Guilt Over Complications of the Heart

This morning I'm feeling a bit guilty about something from last night...

In the evening, Leena came to me in a panic thinking she might be having a heart attack.  She said her Apple Watch was telling her something about "heart rate complications," and she knows she's at some risk as both of her parents have had heart attacks...

I guess while I know the Apple Watch has heart beat monitoring stuff, I don't know how much to trust it.  I asked her if maybe she'd had the Watch on too loose.  She didn't really answer, and I asked if maybe it was too tight?  Or maybe not aligned on her wrist properly or what.

Leena's not one for answering questions, as she doesn't like feeling like she's being interrogated and rebels at the idea of just simply answering.  She prefers talking and still kept saying stuff about "heart rate (or beat) complications".

Eventually I got out of her that she hadn't even been wearing the Watch.  She was holding it, and it was in some mode for configuring what gets displayed on the screen.  And it was giving her "heart rate complications".

Ah, that clarified things...  "Complications" in watchmaking means features on a watch beyond merely time keeping.  I only learned that a few years ago, through work, with our associating to a grey market luxury watch dealer.  I asked Leena if she was familiar with the term, since her family all has luxury watches, but she hadn't heard of "complications" in the horological sense.

Leena's older Rolex with a date "complication".

Here are some random Heart Rate Complications screen shots I just grabbed via Google:

I thought it was all resolved last night when I went to bed.  But this morning, thinking about it, I feel guilty that when Leena first told me she might be having a heart attack, I didn't even think of it as a medical emergency, I didn't think to call 911, that she might really be having a heart attack.

We're lucky this was just a misunderstanding of an obscure watchmaking term.  What'll happen if we have a genuine medical emergency in the future?

 COVID-19 Follow Up

To follow up after my March 3rd post about Leena getting sick with COVID-19 and testing positive....

I probably had it the first time in March of 2020, after I was exposed to it at the office, before New York City closed offices down.  One of my coworkers came to work sick, with a fever and coughing up a storm.  That time I had about three weeks of an on again off again sore throat and fever.  Both were so mild my wife didn’t realize it, and at times I had to remind her I wasn’t feeling well.  At that time tests were only available to the terribly sick, the wealthy, and the powerful, so I never got tested and can only speculate what I had.

Then I had it in March this year, 2021, and while it wasn’t the worst, most painful illness I’ve had, it was far from pleasant.  Both me and my wife had it, but we were fortunate enough not to have it so severely we needed hospitalization.

In hindsight, the first effects of it in me turned up before I knew I was sick.  I knew I was exposed to it, because my wife was sick with it, and had tested positive.  About a week or so after her test I read a news article about the governor of Mississippi, which had his photo.  And for a few days every time I was by a mirror I kept silently remarking how Tate Reeves was my doppelgänger, how we looked so uncannily alike, as though we were twins.

Me and Tate Reeves, side-by-side

Around the same time I also noticed a lot more red spots on my skin.  I’ve had acne problems since puberty, but that week I had more reddish, prominent bumps around.  Not large numbers, not like a rash, but red bumps on my face, my arms, my belly…. It’s rare I don’t have any, but this was more than I’d normally have at one time.

After a few days of that, one evening I had a sore throat.  I felt it, but I held out hope that I was merely dehydrated, although drinking water didn’t help.  The next day my throat was still more sore and I was unquestionably sick and my whole body felt sick.

Then I had a weekend and I developed a mild cough.  Monday I actually felt slightly less sick, overall, but the cough was worse, more coughing more often, while still not being terribly forceful.  I went for a COVID-19 test that afternoon at a nearby clinic, and two days later it came back positive.

Tuesday, though, Tuesday it all got worse.  Tuesday morning I woke up to eat breakfast and begin work, but all I could do after I ate was lie down on the floor and take a nap for an hour and a half.  Then I got up and worked, not feeling well, having trouble focusing.  I had a headache and I felt like I had a fever, even though our thermometer never measured a temperature above 98.6 degrees F.  Whenever I tried to speak I coughed.

The following day was worse.  After breakfast I felt everything from the day before, sick, sore throat, cough, with an even worse headache, and adding in nausea.  I took my 90 minute on the floor by the computer, and when I woke up realized I couldn’t work, so I sent some emails that I was sick.

I slept on the living room floor till my wife woke up in the bedroom (she’s on a wildly different schedule than me) and then I slept in the bedroom, waking up now and again to use the bathroom and sip some water.

That evening I took a shower, a long, hot shower.  It felt nice.  I just sat in the tub, reclining against the back of it, feeling the hot water hit my belly to ease the nausea, slam into my throat to ease the cough, and pound my face and forehead to massage away the headache.  

I was in there for an hour and a half or so, then I got up and I was dizzy.  I could barely stand, wobbling on my legs all over.  I bashed my nose against the tiles of the tub, and while trying to gauge how much blood was pouring out I lost my balance and crashed out of the shower, banging my head against the tiled floor.  I found myself looking up at the toilet, my feet still in the tub.  

I called for my wife, who came in and helped me sit up.  She got me a few glasses of water and held an ice pack to my bleeding nose for a while until I’d calmed down.  

Following the bathroom incident I felt like the peak of the COVID-19 infection had passed.  The next few days I still had a headache, still felt sick in my body, still had a sore throat and cough, but it wasn’t as bad as leading up to the shower.

I took the next couple of days off from work, spending most of the time sleeping.  By the end of the following weekend I no longer felt sick all over.  The headache was gone and I felt normal, except for being fatigued and having a cough when I tried to speak aloud much.  Cough drops didn’t work on it, cough syrup did little, if anything.  Cherry flavored candy helped as long as I sucked on them, not ones that purported to be cough drops, just plain old candy.  Other flavors, not so much.

Now it’s close to two months since the first symptoms and I still feel tired more easily.  If I’m active I get to the end of my energy a lot faster than I would’ve before COVID-19.  I’ve had Raynaud’s Syndrome as long as I can remember, but now my fingers and toes, and my arms, are much colder for the current weather than they would’ve been in previous spring seasons.  When my wife wants to test out the new air conditioner in preparation for summer, I’m fighting it because I feel cold.

For other health reasons I’ve been checking my blood pressure almost daily, and during the couple of weeks I was sick with COVID-19 my blood pressure was noticeably higher.  

So that was COVID-19 for me…. I’m lucky I didn’t have it as bad as millions of other people have.

CD-ROM Express from PC-Kwik

The final product released by my old employer, PC-Kwik in 1996.

So, I was browsing around a few weeks ago for the PC-Kwik logo for some reason, I don't quite recall now and saw someone on eBay selling an old copy of CD-ROM Express for just a couple of bucks, and a bit more shipping.  I thought it was worth it for the nostalgia...

I worked at PC-Kwik from September 1993 till we shut our doors on December 31, 1996 (though I'll admit that last day I jetted around 3pm rather than stick it out all the way till the end of the business day at 5pm).

While I wasn't one of the main developers of the CD-ROM Express utility, I did write the MS-DOS based install program for the DOS/Windows 3.1 version of it (but not the Windows 95 version).  And I was the main QA tester for both versions, and I was the editor of the user manual.  

I also helped with the design of the box.  Initially the designers made it so there was a complete image of a CD within the Mercury helmet, but I thought it looked bad, like someone took a car cigarette lighter to a plastic helmet, and suggested resizing it, cutting off the bottom so that the curve aligned with the curve of the helmet, the way it is above.  I think it looks much better this way.

Unfortunately CD-ROM Express failed as a product.  There were several reasons, including bad timing, we released it just as consumer level CD-ROM drives themselves got fast enough to obviate the usefulness of CD-ROM Express.  

While skillful, and maybe lucky, marketing could've gotten around that, this just wasn't the product our customers wanted to buy from us.  Doing technical support I talked to PC-Kwik customers every day, and they made it clear what they wanted us to make was Super PC-Kwik, our fast hard drive caching utility, and our PowerPak programs, for Windows 95.  If we could've converted those from DOS to Windows 95, they would've bought them.

But alas, we didn't listen to them...

And it's here...  The Coronavirus...

So, Friday afternoon Leena was just out and about, running errands.  She saw there was no line outside the nearby urgent care clinic by our apartment and just went in to ask how quick it is to get a COVID-19 test and if it's free.  It was, with our insurance, so she scheduled one for Monday afternoon.

Monday afternoon she went out for her 3pm test.  She described it as a terrible experience.  She checked in and was put into a stuffy exam room.  And nothing happened.  Nobody came, she just waited.  Finally when she opened the door to ask someone if she could wait with the door open, someone realized she was in there.  

The test itself was quick and easy, if mildly uncomfortable.

Then Monday night, after I went to bed, she developed a stomach ache, a sore throat and a fever.

Tuesday morning I got up as usual to begin my workday and she felt horrible.  She had some Tylenol and went back to sleep.  The rest of Tuesday she was clearly sick.

Around 3pm on Tuesday she got an email from the urgent care clinic that she had a 5pm telehealth call with the clinic's doctor, which made no sense as she hadn't requested one and she was afraid they'd charge us hundreds of dollars for it.

Then she saw she also had an email with the test results...  In big bold red letters it said the coronavirus was "DETECTED".  Then I guessed that the 5pm telehealth call was probably required by the doctor to discuss the positive test with her.

We put together a list of questions to ask the doctor about Leena's condition, about what we should do to take care of her, about what I should do regarding my own upcoming doctor visits, and so forth...

Only at 5pm we got into the telehealth website the email linked to, and waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  By 5:20pm the doctor never signed in and Leena gave up.  She's less patient than I am, and she was sick.

After that she called the clinic and gave a rough overview of the situation to the receptionist who said she'd get a doctor on the phone.  And Leena waited and waited and waited, for nearly an hour on hold without ever getting the doctor.  So she gave up.

Today she's feeling much improved, talking with a lot more energy.  I think her sore throat is mostly gone, and the fever is more mild than it was yesterday.

I've scheduled a test for myself for tomorrow morning to see if I might have it, since I've definitely now been exposed to it as we live in a tiny apartment.

-- --

Follow up Friday afternoon...  I got my test results: Negative.

And I keep thinking of the band W.A.S.P. with their Live... In the Raw album.  It's got a short sequence in the song I Wanna Be Somebody where Blackie Lawless leads the crowd in a bit of "audience participation".  They do a bad job so he admonishes them, "What, are you guys sick or something?  I'm supposed to be the sick motherfucker around here."  Well, after all my heart related exams and appointments recently, it's not Leena, it's me, "I'm supposed to be the sick motherfucker around here," not her...

 An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Over the years I've found this cliche actually works out to be true.

For years I've eaten an apple a day as part of breakfast.  Not because the cliche, because they're healthy and I like sweet apples.  In India I ate ones that tasted like sweetened apple juice, which may have been imported from China.  Here in the U.S. I eat Fuji apples, which are pretty similar.

After I had my high blood pressure crash & burn that landed me in the emergency room in 2014 I set myself up with a primary care physician, Dr. M who we really liked.  The day of my first appointment with her was her first day at that practice, so she had a lot of time to spend with us answering questions and what-not.

And a few years later she moved out of New York City, leaving the large practice where we went.

They assigned me a new primary care physician, Dr. Z and I went to her a couple of times.  While Leena never joined me and didn't meet her, I liked her, she seemed like a pretty good doctor.  But then she moved out of New York City.

Following Dr. Z's departure I continued to eat an apple a day as part of breakfast and didn't go see a doctor at all, not wanting to start over all my history again with a new one.  Better to just skip the whole thing.

But last autumn Leena had an urgent need to see a doctor.  So, thinking back to when I first went to Dr. M, I remembered another doctor at that clinic who Dr. M used on billing and referrals until she was completely set up in their computer system, Dr. A, I set us up with Dr. A as our primary care physician.  Leena went to Dr. A and really loved her, recommending I go to see her about my long running high blood pressure.

Great.  I prepared some notes and how to introduce myself to Dr. A for my own appointment with her.  I told her I picked her at that clinic because she was the one Dr. M used for billing and referrals when she was still too new at the clinic to be set up in their computer system.  Dr. A acknowledged that and we continued on.

And now we recently got an email from the clinic that Dr. A is leaving in a couple of weeks.

I have to wonder, back at my first in-person appointment with her, when I told her why I chose her as my new doctor, did she already know she was on her way out?  Or did she get a new opportunity at some point after that...  

Thinking back farther, back in India, sometimes when we'd make a plan to go see Dr. S for whatever reason, Leena would usually tell me to eat something before we go.  Sometimes, I'd eat an apple, and then Leena would call the doctor's cell phone to confirm (Leena was an old school friend of the doctor's wife, also a doctor) and he'd say something like, "sorry, I'm stuck in Mumbai on some work," and we'd have to postpone, cancel or maybe go see Dr. P instead...

My only conclusion is that eating apples regularly somehow repels doctors.

Maybe it's time I switch to a pear a day...

A picture of Fuji apples I snagged off the internet...  (not my apples, not my photo...)

The Heart of the Matter

So, in November last year I finally went to a new primary care physician to discuss my long-running high blood pressure issues.  I'd been putting it off for a few years because I didn't want to get into things with yet another new doctor after my previous two both left New York City...  

But Leena had gone to her for a skin issue and really liked her, so she talked me into going.  I actually picked this doctor because I knew her name at the clinic since she was well established there when I first started going for another doctor in 2014.

So, Dr. A. talked to me, took some blood and later when we followed up via video call (coronavirus pandemic, you know...) she changed my high blood pressure medication and put me on a statin for cholesterol, which she described with "sky rocket".  The new medications were giving me headaches, but as they were lowering my blood pressure she didn't want to change them without my seeing a cardiologist first.

When I saw the cardiologist, Dr. T. he didn't believe me that the medications were causing the headaches, which started the day after I started those medications, but was willing to change the prescription to ease my mind at a minimum. 

Dr. T. was concerned about my state of health, my long running high blood pressure, that I got out of breathe when I was active, and my family history, since my father had a heart attack and quadruple bypass at 64 years old and one of my grandfathers died of a heart attack at 62 (granted, he'd been a lifelong smoker, which wasn't my case).  Dr. T. said things like my father's heart attack usually started showing signs about fifteen years in advance, and that puts me easily into the beginning of that 15 year range compared to my father's heart attack...

Dr. T. also scheduled me for a CAT scan, a "CTA Coronary Artery" at the hospital for a week and a half ago.  I went for that, which involved spending an enormous amount of time waiting my turn, and then feeling like I peed my pants when they injected me with the radiocontrast dye (I didn't, it just felt that way when the warmth spread through my body, getting to my crotch region...)

And Monday last week I met with Dr. T. at his office where he reviewed all the images from the CAT scan and some other ultrasound images done that morning.

He then told me that the scans of blockage scored me in the 89th percentile for men aged 51.  Um, ok.  I had to ask if that meant 89th percentile good, or 89th percentile bad.  He then clarified that it was bad.  So, these are like golf scores, a lower number is far better...  It turns out I have more blockage in my heart's arteries than 88% of men aged 51.

Well, I figure that's trivial to beat.  Later this year I'll turn 52, invalidating the whole statistic.  

Dr. T. recently uploading the results to the MyChart system so I could read it and here's an excerpt of the key parts.

1. The calcium score is 119 in the 89th percentile for age, gender and ethnicity.

2. There is no calcified aortic plaque.

3. Normal LM. 

4. 25-50% stenosis of the proximal LAD due to mixed plaque with a high risk feature of spotty calcification. Normal remaining LAD.

5. 50-69% stenosis of the ostial to proximal large high D1 due to mixed plaque with a high risk feature of low attenuation plaque.  50-69% stenosis of the mid D1 due to non-calcified plaque. Norma distal D1. Normal branch of D1. 

6. <25% stenosis of the proximal LCx due to non-calcified plaque.  Normal remaining non-dominant LCx. Normal OM1.

7. Normal proximal RCA. Mid RCA is ectatic with 50-69% stenosis in the mid segment due to mixed plaque with a high risk feature of low attenuation plaque and spotty calcification. <25% stenosis of the distal RCA due to mixed plaque. Normal RPLA and RPDA.

I sent this to my wife with this description, including links to Wikipedia:

Here's a Wikipedia article that explains the arteries in question.  

And here's a grabshot of the vector drawing in the Wikipedia article:

Note that the picture is reversed, showing the patient's left side on the right and right side on the left.  This is because the picture is drawn the way a doctor would see it looking at the patient.

In the picture you can see the LAD mentioned in the doctor's #4 item.  It's on the right side of the picture.  This is 25-50% blocked (I'm not sure why there's a range that size, whether it's because different parts of the artery are blocked different amounts, or because that's as accurate as the scan can get).

His #5 item refers to D1, which is on the lower right side of the picture.  This is blocked 50-69%.

His #6 item is LCx which is in the middle of the right hand side of the picture.  This is blocked less than 25%.

His #7 item is RCA which is on the left middle side of the picture.  This is blocked 50-69%

For now Dr. T. has increased my blood pressure and cholesterol medications as well as including a new one, a beta blocker.  He suggested (was it a suggestion or an order?) a no cholesterol diet.  And I'm to follow up with him later this month to see where to go from there.

He talked about maybe scheduling another procedure to look closely at the blockages with a camera inserted up in there, and possibly inserting stents.  I assume it wasn't an immediate life threatening emergency or he would've done more than sending me home with some medication prescriptions for now.

Dr. T. also emphasized my need to get a sleep study from a sleep specialist.  I was lazy about scheduling that, with the idea that it would be a lot less stressful to deal with one specialist's area of my body at a time.  

At home we're trying to deal with my diet.  I need to be more careful about not cheating as much, since now the damage that's doing is more concrete and less abstract.  But convincing Leena to change how she's cooking for me is harder because she doesn't want to believe she's been cooking food that's unhealthy for my heart as it is.  She wants to think she's been doing everything perfectly.

I also made an appointment with the sleep specialist for next week...

How Do You Explain a Mosquito if Their is No God?

How Do You Explain a Mosquito if Their is No God?

(note: I borrowed the wrong homonym in my title to keep with the meme...)

For some reason the not-particularly-new meme from some dumb-ass theists asking questions to "prove" that god exists came to mind.  One in particular, with a woman holding a hand written note "how do you explain a sunset if their is no God?" (sic).

In my sleep I thought of three different ways to interpret the question itself (ignoring the incorrect homonym).  There may be more interpretations, I just thought of these three, and I already know I'm not particularly bright in general.

1. How do you explain why the sun sets at all, as opposed to remaining the sky?
2. How do you explain why the setting sun looks the way it does?
3. How do you explain why we almost universally feel sunsets are beautiful?

The first two are easily explained by physics, of course, and most of the memes that "answer" this question revolve around those two, the sun sets because the Earth rotates on its axis, and the Rayleigh scattering explains why it looks like it does in Earth's atmosphere.

The third interpretation, though, is a lot more philosophical.  If sunsets weren't almost universally considered beautiful the woman in the meme, and many others, likely wouldn't associated them with god.  And for people who believe in crap like a supreme being want to associate good or beautiful things with their supreme being.

And because the third interpretation appeals to people, they likely won't find arguments against the meme to be at all convincing.  Sunsets are still relatively beautiful, even if you understand why they happen and why they look the way they do.  

Otherwise, the question could be "how do you explain a mosquito if there is no god?"

Then again, many religious people see the explanation of negative, bad, or ugly things as still proof there is a god, punishing the wrong-doers, or punishing the righteous for not fighting the wrong-doers enough or something.

I guess there's no getting anywhere with this shit.