Thursday, April 10, 2014

Day 1577

We still don't know whether Dash will be getting radiation therapy tomorrow. The cancer center said they're still working on the machine this evening and will call us between 6AM and 7AM tomorrow morning to let us know whether to bring Dash in for treatment. There must be a serious problem with the machine, since they've been working on it for almost three days now. Hopefully, everything will be fixed tomorrow. I worry that a big gap in treatments might compromise the effectiveness of the therapy.

Machines always seem to be the problem. On a much smaller scale, I've been having weird problems with my iPhone lately. I'll start to take a picture and the phone will abruptly shut down like the battery was dead. When I go to recharge the battery, I  typically discover that it still has a 50% charge. I went on a couple of Apple forums and discovered that this was actually a common problem for people who have upgraded to IOS 7. Apparently it is some sort of firmware problem where the battery controller gets scrambled ant doesn't know whether the battery is charged or not. I wish Apple would concentrate on developing a better battery, rather than making an even thinner case or a larger screen. I don't particularly care about the size of the phone. I just want it to work reliably.

One of my clients has been having problems with their online forms ever since the hosting company made a server change. The hosting company called me today and told me they had resolved the problem. I tried out one of the forms and quickly discovered that it still didn't work. This is the problem in dealing with technical support. Just saying that a problem is fixed, doesn't necessarily mean that it is actually fixed. It doesn't matter if the problem is a software glitch, a billing discrepancy, or a password that doesn't work, it usually takes at least five tries before you eventually get it right.

Despite all the problems, I managed to get quite a bit of work done today. I efficiently wrote and submitted three new articles. Then I wasted a ton of time inefficiently struggling to resolve a variety of technical issues over the phone with technical support people in India. I have a hard enough time understanding these people and and even harder time finding a satisfactory solution to my problems.

I was kind of disappointed to learn that Stephen Colbert will replace David Letterman. I was hoping that Craig Ferguson would get the job. Ferguson's lazy, largly unscripted brand of humor doesn't appeal to everyone, but he's become my go-to guy when I can't get to sleep at night. The guy does the same thing over and over again with minor variations, but it still seems funny to me. Maybe I'm just jealous that Ferguson gets paid for not really giving a shit about what he does. I wish I could get paid for not giving a shit.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow.  Either Dash will return to his radiation treatments, or the entire treatment schedule will slip even further behind. I sympathize with the folks at the cancer center. Their fancy radiation machine is much, much more expensive than my balky large format printer, but I'm sure their frustration is the same when the machine refuses to work for some inexplicable reason.

Apollo is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day