JimGorski.com

As I slowly read and internalize the NEC, my respect for electricians that spend seven years as apprentices and then get licensed grows and grows. Little things like terminating stranded wiring (which is stranded to allow easier pulling through conduit) seem like such little points, until you understand why they are required.

Personally I just want my pool pump plugged into a safe outlet and on a timer.

But I’m too cheap to spend more than a grand to do it…

A massive social study took place over the last eighty years or so called The Grant Study which examined the lives of some two hundred or so men every two years whenever possible. This study included physical health, emotional well being and pretty much every other variable you can measure. Admittedly the study started with a group of men from Harvard, so the baseline for happiness was set a bit higher (In my opinion) than in most other locations on earth.

What they discovered is that your connection to other people is the biggest predictor of personal happiness and satisfaction. Whether giving or receiving - contact on an emotional level is what does it.

I’m wondering how much of that contact was valid over the phone? (or in mail/telegraph).

How much of that contact can Facebook simulate?

Kidding! I have been working in the fresh air almost every day for the past few weeks, including three hours of mowing on Saturday! I can’t wait to get back out there and make some lasting, positive changes with my own two hands. It’s funny how satisfying that can be after shifting bits and attending meetings for the rest of the week…

Okay, if your eye is drippy and watery - even if the doctor says it is normal (post-op) - it is not. Go back every day until they give you some more meds. I suffered for two weeks, and then finally went back twice.  The second time around my drips had glued my eye shut in the morning and I earned a teeny bottle of medicine. Later that day I was back to awesome! I knew I was being to quiet about something…

I have made a terrible mistake.
That phrase ran through my mind about ten times a minute as I sat on the couch and squinted at my boys playing on the living room rug. My eyes burned and wept when they were open, and they burned worse and itched when I had them closed.  Eye drops would bring relief for a few minutes and then the weeping would begin again.
The sorriest sight to see is a person who cannot see (through their own choosing) searching the internet for advice before calling his doctor.
It turns out that I have very sensitive eyes. Since eyes are the windows of the soul and you know I am a sensitive soul, this makes an odd sort of sense.
Two days back on the original (and expensive - preservative free) eye drops and I am back on cloud nine.
My eyes just have champagne tastes I guess…

Well this holiday season will have significantly fewer brown boxes with black smiley swoops on my front door, and it has little to do with the sad state of the economy. I spent a week trying to find magnetic door holders/stops from a local vendor and then finally had to turn to the web.

Amazon was happy to send me to a ‘vendor’ called Polstein’s Home and Beyond.

They took my card number and sent me an email with delivery expected the following week. the following week I called when I hadn’t seen any shipping email.  They said it was shipping the subsequent week. So like a chump I set a calendar reminder and wiped my mind clean.  Yesterday when my calendar prompted me, I called again. They ship tomorrow. That is a quote. They ship tomorrow.

Then I got an email saying my order had been cancelled.

Confused, I called them up again.  It seems that they were not going to ship tomorrow - or ever. So they cancelled my order. No idea why I was told that they were going out soon. So sorry.

Get this - no ‘vendor feedback’ on Amazon.com for cancelled orders. No way to explain that they wasted weeks of my time and then lied to me on the phone.

Amazon.com sent me a polite email in reply to my ‘how can this be true’ email and confirmed that this is how thier system works today.

I sent them an even more polite email explaining that I was done doing business with vendors through them if the entire ‘feedback’ mechanism is a lie. That feedback is not based on people who were unsucessful in doing business with the vendor - those are only the SUCESSFUL, satisfied customers offering feedback!

So that score of 83% means that only 83% percent of the people who GOT WHAT THEY WANTED are happy. The others got what they wanted and are still unhappy. Who knows how many got treated the way I did…

So goodbye online shopping for 2009 - hello Barnes & Noble again.

Okay, I am sure most of you think that there must be an ugly lead colored under lining to the silver lining that is Lasik. There really isn’t. Like most exciting technology, there are easy ways to abuse yourself into a corner, but if you listen to your doctor you won’t stumble across them.

Like I stumbled.

I spent all day thursday sitting at my monitor staring and typing and then went home with a screamer (untouched by two Excedrin migrain) of a headache. When they tell you to keep your eyes moist, do it. When they tell you to take frequent screen/page/tv breaks, do it. Follow medical advice and you will never leasve the honeymoon period!

I learned this the hard way…

Stop reading this and go get Lasik today. Seriously. This morning I woke up and opened my eyes, shuffled into the bathroom and looked out at the moonlight streaming down onto the fields and saw. I saw everything without smeared, spotty, streaky glasses. It was cathartic.

The steroid drops are a bit milky, so every drop brings things back down to reality, but the minutes before the drops are like your best glasses days ever.

My vision is now 20/15 (20/10 in the right and 20/20 in the left) without anything that can get smeared or dry out or lost or wet in the rain or foggy in the winter. Nothing.
Let’s talk about the downside now that I’ve stopped gushing. When your cornea is cut, the nerves that remind your eyes to blink and tear are disrupted. They recover after about six months (or earlier) but you have to put drops in about every thirty minutes for the first two weeks and then about every hour for the following months. For some people this may not be a problem, for others it may be a deal breaker. For me - no worries at all.

The surgery is not fun, but it’s only a few minutes out of your life. It’s also not painful. Read that again. It just doesn’t hurt at all. Don’t get me wrong - it’s uncomfortable and mentally tough to get through, but no pain.

First they put numbing drops in your eyes and the skin around your eyes gets tight and odd feeling - sort of like the feeling you may get after a crying jag or working in a dusty area. They also give you a small Valium.
Then they introduce you to the laser. It’s about the size of a refrigerator with some attached monitors and a blue attached bed. Everyone’s in scrubs but you, although you do get to wear a blue surgery cap. They warm up and test the laser so you won’t worry when you hear the buzzing during surgery.

Laying down on the blue bed, they position you on a head shaped pillow directly under the microscope/laser sight. You can see a green solid light and a red blinking light. You stare at the red light as calmly and as still as possible. They nicely gave me a couple of squeeze toys to help with the keeping still.

Then the real fun begins. They tape your eyelashes up and down, leaving you a small slit to look through until the eye speculum is inserted to keep your eye open. Your other eye is covered with a dark patch.

The speculum sounds pretty horrible, and I’m sure it’s no fun to look at, but as far as feeling goes - it really wasn’t that bad. I would blink both eyes, and the muscles would squeeze, but nothing happened. The squeezing was enough to make me feel better.

The doctor puts some ‘goo’ on your eye and then rinses it off again with a solution and you can see clearly the lights above and sighting laser in the middle.

After a few minutes of fussing with the settings, they warn you that your vision will fade for a moment and they begin the surgery.

The first step is cutting and lifting the flap. They press down a cutting tool and your vision fades just like when you press against your eyes to see stars. It’s uncomfortable from the pressure and the complete lack of vision (your other eye is patched - remember), but it doesn’t hurt.

Then the freaky part begins. They lift the flap (you can’t feel it really) and your vision is reduced to looking at a circle of greasy red light. That’s all you can see as it blinks on and off. The doctor tells you to hold very still and then you see an interesting pattern of purple specks starting in the middle of your vision and then spreading out in circles.

This sort of neat experience is ruined by the sound of the buzzing laser - think of a tazer firing and the sudden smell of burning hair. Except it’s not hair burning. Let’s not go there at all.

A few seconds of this process repeating and the doctor puts the flap back down and douses it with a solution. Then he dries it with a little jet of air. The lights come back up and then they get ready to work on the other eyeball. Your vision is milky and disappointing - it seems like nothing has changed at all - maybe gotten worse.

Then they do the next eye - same as the first. Still no fun at all.

Then it’s over, they give you some directions on post op care and it’s home to sleep - the best thing you can do for the first twelve hours is sleep and sleep.

The ride home was depressing - milky vision and lack of focus.

But the next morning - it’s like glasses - new, still in the store glasses - with nothing on your eyes at all. It’s hard to describe how incredible it seems.

My right eye had no pain or discomfort at all - zip. My left eye had a sensation like a dry contact was in it the day before. Pain is too strong a word, but I knew something had happened there. Discomfort is overused. Let’s say my left eye was annoyed by the whole proceeding.

Today I am back in action, a bit tired from sleeping with the protective goggles you have to wear to bed the first week, but otherwise okay. My vision is awesome and I have a timer set to remind me to put my drops in every fifteen minutes or so.

Do it - do it today.

Me - I’m going to take a nap and then wake up to 20/10 vision again.

Amazing.

Well I told my team at work this week that the date for my LASIK was coming up next Tuesday. Besides the overwhelming show of support, I learned that three people in my group have already had the work done! One still needs glasses to get to 20/20, but that person was not a very good candidate for total correction and knew that going into the operation. I am an excellent average candidate and should be perfectly corrected in about seven days or so.
I’m still a little nervous, but having an actual date to count down to has (oddly enough) calmed me a bit. When I start to get even a bit agitated about it, I just tell myself that it is already scheduled, the doctors are the best in the world, and that it will all be over in a week. This is not how I normally respond to similar stresses - I wonder what’s different here..?

Gotta stay focused.  This works and I am losing weight.  Gotta stay focused.