took the additional time-off as a sign that I should probably do something about my tooth abscess/sinusitis. Even though my puffy-ness from a couple of weeks ago has subsided, it was eventually replaced by a headache which is ever-present unless I'm constantly dosing myself with Advil. He was able to squeeze me in at 4pm yesterday to check me out and prescribe a regimen of antibiotics, decongestants, and nasal sprays to combat it. He actually praised me for waiting a few weeks to give my body a chance to fight it on its own, since I'm otherwise an amazingly healthy person. He and I seem to be of like-mind in that too many people seek to over-treat simpler maladies at the slightest sniffle. I've long believed that the current trend of the past 15 years to sanitize EVERYTHING and the over-use of antibiotics has contributed to poorer health, and has not been a benefit. Certainly appropriate steps need to be taken to prevent major outbreaks of E. Coli or salmonella, but goin' all Howard Hughes with the hypochondria and paranoia only serves to weaken the immune system. Personally, I think we're already seeing the effects of this, as its been my observation that we've become less hardy as a species. In another generation, I feel this may come to rue with a vengeance. ver since getting the new EVDO Aircard, after accidentally (if not somewhat gloriously) smashing my old one to bits in a laptop tumble, I've had problems with the computer halting in error while the new card has been in use. My fear is that the PCMCIA slot was damaged in the tumble and that the card is shorting somewhere when it's jostled around, yet I've never been able to discern any specific correlation to the computer-freeze and the jostling. I've found Windows XP SP2 to be a remarkably stable OS for the most part. The type of halt I get is a blank, black screen and then I have to to do a hard shutdown and reboot. In my previous experiences with this sort of halt, it's most always a hardware issue. I'm hoping that it's not, and that I just have some nasty registry problem due to the new card and it's drivers essentially being copied over the old one. I've tried numerous uninstalls/reinstalls and firmware updates to no avail. The next step is a reinstall of the OS, which frankly I'm probably due for anyway. If that doesn't fix it, I guess I'm screwed. I had hoped that there was maybe some sort of USB-to-PCMCIA solution on the market, but they seem to be very hardware specific to the card and pricey to boot. I may have to suffer through the year of frugality with the annoyance of laptop crashes. 2008 will mark my two year anniversary as a Sprint customer and should enable me to get a $150 credit toward a hardware upgrade. There is a USB version of the EVDO modem which I might have to seriously consider if my PCMCIA slot is indeed fux0red. That would probably be a more cost-effective solution than trying to repair the slot itself. he repairs on Sally were completed yesterday afternoon. After returning from my doctor's appointment and fetching welfy from work, I went to retrieve her and brought her back to the house. I made myself available for a load and made dinner for us and chasinghighways, who had been hanging out with me at the house for the past two days in hopes that the truck would be ready at a moment's notice. Around 9pm, I got a load assignment. We loaded in Columbus around 5am and have begun the 1,100 mile trip to Houston. It doesn' t have to be there until Monday morning, but I suspect we'll be there sometime in the middle of the night tonight. I know LARM is just as happy to be back on the road as I am. Even though he gets PAID regardless while he's in training, it's no fun sitting around when all you want to do is drive, learn, and see the country. On that note, Sally is running rather nicely and I hope that she will continue to relatively problem free for the next few months. She likes to run, and I still have a good deal of faith in her engine. Once she gets going, she has no desire to stop. I just have to make sure that the things she needs to roll are kept in good repair so she can. She's like an aging person who's still full of heart and adventure, she's just getting arthritic and needs a hip replacement every now and then.
I know you won't take this the wrong way, so I'll say I'm glad you two are back on the road. :^) Sure, my heart gives a flutter when I find out Sally is broken down and you have to spend another day with me. But at the same time, I know we both get antsy to return to our own routines--for you, it's a life on the road and for me, it's hanging out at home being a bookworm and watching cheesy movies. Plus we need the money, especially after our awesome-but-disastrous 3 weeks you were out of work.
Which reminds me--call Mister Landlord so he can come pick up our rent check!
Not at all. While the time spent with you is great and awesome, it's more of an aberration than the routine. One the one hand, that keeps things fresh and interesting for us and we never really get a chance to "get used" to one another, but at the same time, after an extended period we're both kinda like, can I please get back to my life now?
I'm currently sitting in some po-dunk town in western Tennessee while some guy changes two tires on the trailer. One of 'em blew out while LARM was driving: the tread came completely off and just left the sidewalls, taking the mudflap with it. He should have this done in about 15-20 minutes and we'll be rolling again, but we'll still have to stop in route and get the mudflap taken care of, too.
At least this is one I don't have to pay for. Heh.
About spending moeny I don't have: I had intended to let my XM subscription expire and not worry about it for the remainder of the year, but I apparently had set it up to auto-renew. I got charge $70 yesterday for another 6 months. Oops.
Interesting article. I'm no economics person by any stretch of the imagination, nor do I really follow it.
But I went to the ATA website to view their index report for myself, and I can't help but feel that the Slate article is making a mountain out of a molehill.
According to the ATA chart, the tonnage index has risen steadily since Jan 2001, with a huge spike at the close of 2005, which the ATA attributes to a combination of the holiday shelf-stocking and construction freight in the wake of Katrina. In light of this, I think to compare the end of this year with that is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
You're right about the overuse of antiboitics being a bad thing. I'm not aware of any formal comparative long-term studies on the human immune system, so I don't know if it's been scientifically proven that we are less hardy. But what has been proven is the overuse of antibiotics has made bacteria MORE hardy. See MRSA and VRE for starters.
Yeah I know it's made bacteria more resistant. I presume that would eventually happen anyway, it's evolution after all, but there's no need in hurrying it along unnecessarily. I still think that by not giving your body the chance to fight it and build anti-bodies, due to early anti-biotic intervention, that we're cheating our immune system of the chance to develop natural resistances.
My theory essentially is that as a culture, we've started doing this so early in childhood, and so pre-emptively that by the time they have THEIR kids, the mother hasn't much of an immune system to pass on to her child, resulting in more sickly children and more rampant anti-biotic use to combat it. On top of that, you have the germ-o-phobe parents carrying around sanitizing moist naps and wiping down their kids and everything they touch, as if they could keep them from ever coming into contact with a germ. We can't sterilize our world.
Once started it's a hard cycle to break. Sure, no one wants to see their kids sick, but... people get sick. If they're experiencing a dangerously high fever, well sure, that needs to be nipped in the bud. But I say give 'em a few weeks to fight simple infections on their own. Manage the discomfort with analgesics and decongestants. Then if they're not getting better, consult a physician about anti-biotic treatment.
Misdiagnosis sucks. I think the old addage is true: if you just don't agree with your doctor, get a second opinion. Get a third opinion. I think sometimes people place too much mystery on medicine. With the vast amount of resources we via the internet in this wonderous age of information, there's no reason that the patient can't have an informed opinion before ever going to the doctor. You're the one that lives inside your body and know it better than anyone else. :)
I agree about antibiotics... I haven't even been to a doctor since the late 90's and I've only gotten OTC stuff maybe a few times in the past decade. my grandma always said to wait 2 weeks to do anything about something. I have had tooth pain off and on, but it always seems to go away without anything looking visibly worse, so I suspect all the pain is sinus related when it does come on. scare tactics generally get people to go to the doctor or dentist regularly. I dunno. I think I'd only go if something terribly drastic was happening which hasn't happened yet *knocks on wood*
..and Houston, eh? I basically live on the outskirts, but that's still cool.
I generally can conquer just about any common cold/flu/infection using OTC drugs for comfort and whatnot, and my body dose the rest.
In this case though, it'd been over a month and the symptoms just kept getting worse, so I decided it was probably best to get some help with kicking it.
We just left the Flying J in New Caney north of Houston. Heading back to Ohio by tomorrow morning. Such is my life.
My personal conspiracy theory is like a bad B movie. After years of people using purell unnecessarily, we'll be overtaken by giant bugs who have been living and evolving to fight all the excess sanitizers.
Heheh, well while I doubt it'll get to B-movie proportions, I agree with the basic sentiment. It's proposterous to think that we can sterilize our world and the only thing we do by over-santiizing everything is make the bacteria bad-ass and more resistant.
Well since the trouble only started after getting this new card, I've wondered that myself. For the record, my card is through Sprint.
Actually, it just occured to me that I have an old PCMCIA WiFi card sitting somewhre that I oughta find. Maybe I'll play around with that next time I'm home and see if I get the same sort of troubles out of it that I do with the Aircard. If I DO, then I know it's the slot. If not, then do the re-install. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll hafta get medeival on Sprint's ass to solve this one way or another.
welfy from work, I went to retrieve her and brought her back to the house. I made myself available for a load and made dinner for us and 
Which reminds me--call Mister Landlord so he can come pick up our rent check!
I'm currently sitting in some po-dunk town in western Tennessee while some guy changes two tires on the trailer. One of 'em blew out while LARM was driving: the tread came completely off and just left the sidewalls, taking the mudflap with it. He should have this done in about 15-20 minutes and we'll be rolling again, but we'll still have to stop in route and get the mudflap taken care of, too.
At least this is one I don't have to pay for. Heh.
About spending moeny I don't have: I had intended to let my XM subscription expire and not worry about it for the remainder of the year, but I apparently had set it up to auto-renew. I got charge $70 yesterday for another 6 months. Oops.
D'oh.
And I finally agree with lossfound: I hate your damn journal style.
So please taunt me with it in your comment reply.
PS--
your thoughts?
Re: PS--
But I went to the ATA website to view their index report for myself, and I can't help but feel that the Slate article is making a mountain out of a molehill.
For wht my opinion's worth. :)
Re: PS--
My theory essentially is that as a culture, we've started doing this so early in childhood, and so pre-emptively that by the time they have THEIR kids, the mother hasn't much of an immune system to pass on to her child, resulting in more sickly children and more rampant anti-biotic use to combat it. On top of that, you have the germ-o-phobe parents carrying around sanitizing moist naps and wiping down their kids and everything they touch, as if they could keep them from ever coming into contact with a germ. We can't sterilize our world.
Once started it's a hard cycle to break. Sure, no one wants to see their kids sick, but... people get sick. If they're experiencing a dangerously high fever, well sure, that needs to be nipped in the bud. But I say give 'em a few weeks to fight simple infections on their own. Manage the discomfort with analgesics and decongestants. Then if they're not getting better, consult a physician about anti-biotic treatment.
/two-cents
..and Houston, eh?
I basically live on the outskirts, but that's still cool.
In this case though, it'd been over a month and the symptoms just kept getting worse, so I decided it was probably best to get some help with kicking it.
We just left the Flying J in New Caney north of Houston. Heading back to Ohio by tomorrow morning. Such is my life.
Actually, it just occured to me that I have an old PCMCIA WiFi card sitting somewhre that I oughta find. Maybe I'll play around with that next time I'm home and see if I get the same sort of troubles out of it that I do with the Aircard. If I DO, then I know it's the slot. If not, then do the re-install. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll hafta get medeival on Sprint's ass to solve this one way or another.