My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Monday September 12, 2011

Shingles

Filed under: Personal — don @ 4:28 pm

As most of you know I’m recovering from Shingles.

It takes quite a bit of effort to write anything coherent so I’ll just hit the high spots and fill in the details over the coming days.

Two weekends ago on Monday August 29th I stayed home from work with what I thought was a cold. I felt weak and I had a lot of sneezing and sniffles. That went away but the next week around Wednesday I started getting a bad headache. The headache continued and I took Friday off from work.

By Saturday I was starting to feel like a tooth on my left side was becoming infected. On Monday I called my dentist and asked him for some antibiotics and pain medicine and said I would make an appointment on Tuesday.

By Tuesday I was feeling worse and I had a slight “cold sore” on my lip and was starting to get a rash on my forehead on the left side. When I visited the dentist he said he couldn’t find a bad tooth and that he thought I should see my MD because it seemed viral to him.

I went to urgent care on Tuesday night and they diagnosed it as Shingles. They sent me home with some prescriptions that we got filled for Acyclovir.

The next day it was hurting a lot more and my ear was starting to swell. I called my regular doctor but he was on vacation so I dealt with his backup. He gave me a little stronger med but when I asked about seeing him I was told it wouldn’t be until the 26th.

On Thursday it was becoming very difficult to stand the pain and my ear had swelled to the point where I couldn’t hear because the canal was shut. I called my doctor again and asked both for something stronger and if I could come in as soon as possible. When I hadn’t heard back from them I went back to urgent care.

At urgent care I was seen by a doctor in training and a doctor. They agreed that I needed to go to Emergency which I did.

At emergency the doctor said it was shingles with a secondary infection. He said the secondary infection was Cellulitis. He also said he wanted to admit me so they could treat it aggressively.

I went in that night and they ended up putting me in isolation because of the open vesicles.

I spent the next 3 days getting massive amounts of antibiotics, steriods, and various pain medication including morphine and gabapentin. I got out yesterday but am still taking Acyclovir, Prednisone, and Vicodin.

I understand it will likely take from 2 weeks to 2 months to heal. I hope it’s closer to the former but we shall see.

Thanks to everyone who has wished me good luck and said prayers. I’ll take anything I can get.

Friday September 2, 2011

Tablet Buying Saga, Slight Frenzy

Filed under: Computers,Cool Stuff,Geek — don @ 7:46 am

A few weeks ago I sold my old Toshiba laptop to Patrick so he would have something for school (that’s another post I should make). He had wanted to buy a new one but I convinced him he would be better off saving his money and using my laptop. He didn’t want to take a chance he would break it or have it stolen and then feel like he owed me so he asked if I would sell it to him and I did.

That gave me the perfect excuse to start looking for something to replace the laptop for when I go on trips and other times when I like having a portable computer around.

I looked at iPads about 6 months ago but I couldn’t quite justify buying one when I already had my laptop and iPhone. The iPhone does most things the iPad does but on a smaller scale. The laptop served as my vacation device so I decided I didn’t “really” need one.

After I sold the laptop I began looking at laptops in earnest but I was still thinking I might like an iPad. I checked the Frys’ ads for a couple of weekends and then last week on Friday they had a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 that came with a $100 gift card. Since I buy a lot of stuff from Frys’ I figured that was as good as cash so I went to look at them.

When I got there they had it in a plastic case so I couldn’t tell how light and small it was. I started looking at other tablets and finally decided it was going to be the Acer Iconia or the Asus Transformer. The Acer had mini HDMI, SD card slot, and USB. The Asus had everything except the USB. I couldn’t really decide which to get so I figured I could buy one and if I didn’t like it I could return it. All of them ran on Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) so in that respect they are equal.

When I got to the checkout I was told the tablets had a 15% restocking fee. Since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep the Acer I just walked out with nothing. I wasn’t about to pay $60 just to try something out.

I went over to Best Buy and asked them if they had a restocking fee and they didn’t. They also didn’t have the Acer but they did have the Asus. I went ahead and bought that and brought it home. I played with it for an hour or so and then I started looking for reviews between the Acer and Asus. Most of the reviews said the Asus was a better tablet but one of them said neither was as good as the Samsung.

I started looking at reviews between the Samsung and the Asus and all of them said the Samsung was better if you didn’t need the extra ports on the Asus. The Samsung had a better screen and was much thinner and lighter. They also said you could get adapters for the Samsung for USB and HDMI. I decided I needed to try one of them out so I returned the Asus to Best Buy and bought the Samsung.

The Samsung came with a USB adapter in Best Buys deal which helped me decide.

After using the Samsung for a few hours I knew that was what I wanted. I also wanted the $100 gift card from Frys so I went back to Best Buy and asked them if they would match the deal. They said no so I returned it to BB and went over to Frys’ and bought it there.

All the reviews I read have the Samsung on top over everything except the iPad. Most reviews between the 2 suggest each has it’s strengths and weaknesses. The iPad is the choice if you want the Apple experience but every review said if you like the ability to modify your tablet then the Samsung was the choice. The Samsung has a slightly larger screen with much better resolution (1024 x 768 Vs 1280 x 800). The Samsung is also slightly thinner and slightly lighter.

Now that I’ve had it for almost a week I feel like I made the right choice. I had looked for an HP after reading Daryl’s tablet saga but none were to be found. I also like the idea of an Android tablet over the HP WebOS although I found out you can install Android on the HP. I guess you can also install Linux so it’s a good choice if you can find it.

In summary I’m quite happy with my choice.

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