I've got secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Can't take beta seron, can't find a doctor for novantrone, the only other drug for SPMS. I found out about a different drug therapy, antibiotics and statins, that I can get, and is helping me, from a BBS linked to multiplesclerosissucks.com. It's been a life- and sanity-saver for me.
Think about it: For a change, here's a guy who, after convincing his girlfriend to try a threesome, would drag home another guy. What a refreshing change that'd be!
You missed my point. I'm tired of fighting this same battle, over and over again, with people who refuse to learn. Been there. Done that. Got a whole box of tee-shirts. Am now busy working on fightimg a very fast-moving case of progressive multiple sclerosis, and don't choose to waste energy trying yet again to convince anybody who could just google for "opal" and "elecrton microscope" and see *real* articles, in *real* scientific journals, about *real" opals and silica microspheres and real companies making synthetic opal by using silica microspheres.
When I want the best information available, I'll look for real scientific journals. When I want outdated, disproven theories stated as fact, I'll go to the Wikipedia.
I'm tired of arguing. Just typing this reply has taken most of an hour already, not including proofreading for typos.
Because I no longer have the book with photos to cite author, ISBN number and page to back it up. Also, see the above comments on fixing articles. As I've never been involved there before, from what others have said, my correction is likely to be edited away.
I've already had flame wars about opal with another old-timer on rockhound mailing lists. He claims to have photos to back his claims up, but wants $500, and a signed non-disclosure agreement, before showing them to me. As I've run afoul of him more than once, it might well be the same issue here. Sans *my* referrences, I'd be wasting my time and effort. While I have boatloads of time now that I'm on disability, my "effort" supply is rather limited.
The few times I've checked it against other, reliable sources, it's failed miserably. I'm an avid lapidary. One gemstone near and dear to my heart is precious opal. I checked Wikipedia here for what causes "play of color." They're claiming it's an interference pattern caused by parallel plates formed inside the stone. That's wrong.
Opal is amorphous. It fractures with a conchoidal shape. There are no microscopic parallel plates in opal, tho there are in labradorite. Opal's color play is caused by a regular pattern of silica microspheres, all the same size, forming a diffraction grating.
Opal's colors are pure like a rainbow. You'll never see metallic bronze, or metallic gold, coming from an opal, because of this, but you will see them coming from labradorite.
Their explanation was shown false some 25 years ago, with scanning electron microscope photos of precious opal. Why are they propagating a factual falsehood? And, more importantly, if they do this on a subject that I know well, what happens on subjects where I know little? How can I trust them???
Possibly true if they're in the business of creating software-as-a-product. I worked in the engineering department of an OEM, with other engineers. I had to be able to read schematics, run oscilliscopes, induce engine faults to test software, hook up and use in-circuit emulators and many other things that mere programmers are not taught to do. Porting legacy code from 6809-assembler to a new, multi-processor design using a PC and an 8048 was merely my first task, and there were other, even more exciting things that followed.
I haven't worked in over ten years now. Secondary progressive multiple sclerosis got me just as I was burning out. When I was employed, I was getting just over $40k/yr. Hadn't had a raise for two years, and was just pleased I'd survived the last round of layoffs. Sure, when we all had to work insane hours, the code was crap, but try to convince the VP of Engineering about that. Thankfully, I excelled at finding other people's bugs, so the longer they worked, the more work there was for me:-/
Amen! My favorite good ol' boy was the VP of Engineering, who once informen a potential large customer that our premier product used MS Word for its operating system.
Funny. I worked writing software and firmware, and doing some soldering, for Sun Electric, of automotive test equipment fame. It sure felt like engineering to me.
Simple answers: P*ss-poor pay, insane hours, unreasonable deadlines and no real power. I was a senior software engineer, and lived through all that, and hated that part of my chosen career. Watching morons making more money, making decisions based on ?horoscopes? ?coin tosses? ?eeny meeny miney moe? really sucked rocks.
Since then, I've steered bright kids into an engineering *hobby* and a far more lucrative, less stressful career in management.
I'd read that McGoohan designed it for "n" episodes, and when it really caught on, made just a few more, then it was over. It's sf at its finest, forcing you to actually think about what went on, and discuss it with friends. Far more enjoyable, to me, than blasters, rayguns and scantily-clad cgi aliens.
There was a bunch written by Laumer, and then he died on 22 January 1993. Since then, Baen Books has the rights, and bunches more authors have written Bolo stories.
My first Bolo story, as a kid, was wen I read The Last Command. Riveting, frightening (to a pre-teen), very emotion-laden. Great story. Unit LNE of the line really grabbed me. I read every Bolo story I found after that.
Any of the stories by Laumer will be good, guaranteed. Baen has them all, I think. The new stories are generally ok. Try anything by Ringo, or Weber, they both write great military sf stories.
Having read many (all?) of Laumer's sf stories of AI-based tanks (called Bolos), reading about this real thing makes me smile. I'd like to nominate these to the Dinochrome Brigade as the first real members.
Still, cool as these are, I really want a Bolo Mk. XXVI. Those puppies are downright nasty:)
Hands down, Farscape. Well-thought-out, well-scripted, believable aliens, and an interesting ship. 'S a crying shame that the SciFi channel pulled the plug. I really miss it. It made cable tv worth the money - that, and F1 racing.
Next best is an oldie: The Prisoner. If you're under 40, you likely missed it.:( #6 just refused to cave in, and he won... or did he?
For me, blogging is mainly about dealing with multiple sclerosis, its ups and downs, varying degrees of suckiness, and how I cope with them. I use it to share ideas, jewelry I've made, jewelry I'd like to make if MS will allow me, my kittycats and such-like. Politics? Get real! I vote, but that's about as involved as I get - MS hasn't left me with enough energy for that.
Nasal stem cells are easier to harvest and cultivate than most other adult stem cells. True, they may have more genetic abnormalities than embrionic stem cells, but they also have my DNA, and not that of another being unrelated to me. I'd think this would be a big plus - no need for anti-rejection drugs.
And no, I haven't been to the site you cited, so I haven't been (directly) brainwashed by them.
From one study, on mouse EAE, in the last 5 years. I keep a close eye on what studies are in the pipeline, and have seen nothing else, even tho there is much going on with embrionic stem cells.
I've got advanced multiple sclerosis, and the ONLY hope I have for sutvival, let alone being able to walk again, lies with stem cells (plus some way to remove the scars already on my nercous system). Most people assume this means embrionic cells, but there are other ways. For example,in nasal cavity tissue, there are stem cells that can, and do, differentiate into neurons. This would help not only myself, but many others, with MS, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's, ALS, and possibly even Alzheimer's and BSE.
I realize that these won't cure verything, but why is this research being ignored in favor of embrionic stem cells? There are no moral issues here, no politically-demanded guidelines to be followed, only a chance to help lots of people before they wither away and die. Yet, from what I've been able to see, this avenue is being soundly ignored by researchers.
if they're still controlled via nerves, I'm not sure this would help me any. I've got SPMS (secondary progressive multiple sclerosis), and by no I've lost nearly all use of both legs, most use of one arm, and I'm losing the other arm, too.
I still have muscles, and no issues with my joints. What's killing me is the de-myelination of my nerves. This, and the subsequent nerve tissue scarring ("sclerosis" in medispeak) means that signals just aren't getting to where they belong. Most signals just stop, tho sometimes they're short-circuited with other signals.
One example of this is a really-frustrating spasm in my legs. Unless I concentrate REAL hard, both legs can oscillate for quite some number of minutes once it gets started.
So, imagine if I had this cool walking exoskeleton (shades of "A Specter Is Haunting Texas", anyone?), these spasms would be duplicated but amplified, likely resulting in much devastation of furniture. Additionally, these powerd legs would still not be able to move right, as the control signals will not make it to the neuron/electronic interface.
Cool idea, tho somewhat flawed. It might work better for others, tho.
I used to make jewelry from chips. Had earrings made from EPROMs, split open, and necklacess made from 286s which had the cap un-soldered, and the cavity filled with water-clear epoxy.
Nobody bought them then, either. They were too common, too easy for any geek to make.
These days, my jewelry is less geeky, and far more salesworthy. I learned.
Actually, at the time, my wife-to-be was Wiccan. I was devotly atheist, until several years later when a willow tree sprite talked to me. Now I'm Dianic Wiccan.
As for shared offspring, that'll be difficult, as those bits have been surgically removed. Sorry.
Jeff is/was frugal to a fault. He once spilled a larg bottle of pricey yuppy vitamins in the bathroom sink, and gathered up the soggy mess, dried it out and used them. Speaks well of his money-management skills at Amazon.
Jeff has always been one darned smart cookie. Back when I worked with him at Fitel, he told me of how he once wrote a program to convert / translate the tape counter on several different VCRs, so that the American ex-pat community could figure out where on the tape their favorite tv show was located. Clever, and non-obvious.
I knew darned well he'd make money. He used to talk US Tax law at lunch, and how the IRS gives a company X years before they must show a profit. He used that time to build up his company, to be strong enough to compete.
He's good, and a decent dude, too, tho Ellie may not agree - Ellie usually lost at the lunch tab games played with Jeff and I:) Heck, Jeff even came to my wedding in 1988 - a Wiccan handfasting, back before Wicca really took off.
Good guy, Jeff. Hopefully, he learned from Graciella how to attract the best and brightest employees, and how NOT to treat them. Fitel was a bear of a place to work. I could not have survived without Jeff and his then-gf Annette St. Onge.
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I've got secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Can't take beta seron, can't find a doctor for novantrone, the only other drug for SPMS. I found out about a different drug therapy, antibiotics and statins, that I can get, and is helping me, from a BBS linked to multiplesclerosissucks.com. It's been a life- and sanity-saver for me.
Think about it: For a change, here's a guy who, after convincing his girlfriend to try a threesome, would drag home another guy. What a refreshing change that'd be!
You missed my point. I'm tired of fighting this same battle, over and over again, with people who refuse to learn. Been there. Done that. Got a whole box of tee-shirts. Am now busy working on fightimg a very fast-moving case of progressive multiple sclerosis, and don't choose to waste energy trying yet again to convince anybody who could just google for "opal" and "elecrton microscope" and see *real* articles, in *real* scientific journals, about *real" opals and silica microspheres and real companies making synthetic opal by using silica microspheres.
When I want the best information available, I'll look for real scientific journals. When I want outdated, disproven theories stated as fact, I'll go to the Wikipedia.
I'm tired of arguing. Just typing this reply has taken most of an hour already, not including proofreading for typos.
Because I no longer have the book with photos to cite author, ISBN number and page to back it up. Also, see the above comments on fixing articles. As I've never been involved there before, from what others have said, my correction is likely to be edited away.
I've already had flame wars about opal with another old-timer on rockhound mailing lists. He claims to have photos to back his claims up, but wants $500, and a signed non-disclosure agreement, before showing them to me. As I've run afoul of him more than once, it might well be the same issue here. Sans *my* referrences, I'd be wasting my time and effort. While I have boatloads of time now that I'm on disability, my "effort" supply is rather limited.
The few times I've checked it against other, reliable sources, it's failed miserably. I'm an avid lapidary. One gemstone near and dear to my heart is precious opal. I checked Wikipedia here for what causes "play of color." They're claiming it's an interference pattern caused by parallel plates formed inside the stone. That's wrong.
Opal is amorphous. It fractures with a conchoidal shape. There are no microscopic parallel plates in opal, tho there are in labradorite. Opal's color play is caused by a regular pattern of silica microspheres, all the same size, forming a diffraction grating.
Opal's colors are pure like a rainbow. You'll never see metallic bronze, or metallic gold, coming from an opal, because of this, but you will see them coming from labradorite.
Their explanation was shown false some 25 years ago, with scanning electron microscope photos of precious opal. Why are they propagating a factual falsehood? And, more importantly, if they do this on a subject that I know well, what happens on subjects where I know little? How can I trust them???
Possibly true if they're in the business of creating software-as-a-product. I worked in the engineering department of an OEM, with other engineers. I had to be able to read schematics, run oscilliscopes, induce engine faults to test software, hook up and use in-circuit emulators and many other things that mere programmers are not taught to do. Porting legacy code from 6809-assembler to a new, multi-processor design using a PC and an 8048 was merely my first task, and there were other, even more exciting things that followed.
I haven't worked in over ten years now. Secondary progressive multiple sclerosis got me just as I was burning out. When I was employed, I was getting just over $40k/yr. Hadn't had a raise for two years, and was just pleased I'd survived the last round of layoffs. Sure, when we all had to work insane hours, the code was crap, but try to convince the VP of Engineering about that. Thankfully, I excelled at finding other people's bugs, so the longer they worked, the more work there was for me :-/
Amen! My favorite good ol' boy was the VP of Engineering, who once informen a potential large customer that our premier product used MS Word for its operating system.
'Nuff said, eh?
Funny. I worked writing software and firmware, and doing some soldering, for Sun Electric, of automotive test equipment fame. It sure felt like engineering to me.
Simple answers: P*ss-poor pay, insane hours, unreasonable deadlines and no real power. I was a senior software engineer, and lived through all that, and hated that part of my chosen career. Watching morons making more money, making decisions based on ?horoscopes? ?coin tosses? ?eeny meeny miney moe? really sucked rocks.
Since then, I've steered bright kids into an engineering *hobby* and a far more lucrative, less stressful career in management.
I'd read that McGoohan designed it for "n" episodes, and when it really caught on, made just a few more, then it was over. It's sf at its finest, forcing you to actually think about what went on, and discuss it with friends. Far more enjoyable, to me, than blasters, rayguns and scantily-clad cgi aliens.
There's a new series (or two) of Dr. Who. It's been on CBC, from Canada. The new stuff is light-decades ahead of the older stuff.
If you see it, beware of the bad wolf!
There was a bunch written by Laumer, and then he died on 22 January 1993. Since then, Baen Books has the rights, and bunches more authors have written Bolo stories.
My first Bolo story, as a kid, was wen I read The Last Command. Riveting, frightening (to a pre-teen), very emotion-laden. Great story. Unit LNE of the line really grabbed me. I read every Bolo story I found after that.
Any of the stories by Laumer will be good, guaranteed. Baen has them all, I think. The new stories are generally ok. Try anything by Ringo, or Weber, they both write great military sf stories.
Having read many (all?) of Laumer's sf stories of AI-based tanks (called Bolos), reading about this real thing makes me smile. I'd like to nominate these to the Dinochrome Brigade as the first real members.
:)
Still, cool as these are, I really want a Bolo Mk. XXVI. Those puppies are downright nasty
Yes. It's on dvd - if you've never seen it, check it out. When done watching them all, in sequence, tell me this: Is he really free, or not?
;)
Be seeing you
Hands down, Farscape. Well-thought-out, well-scripted, believable aliens, and an interesting ship. 'S a crying shame that the SciFi channel pulled the plug. I really miss it. It made cable tv worth the money - that, and F1 racing.
:( #6 just refused to cave in, and he won... or did he?
Next best is an oldie: The Prisoner. If you're under 40, you likely missed it.
For me, blogging is mainly about dealing with multiple sclerosis, its ups and downs, varying degrees of suckiness, and how I cope with them. I use it to share ideas, jewelry I've made, jewelry I'd like to make if MS will allow me, my kittycats and such-like. Politics? Get real! I vote, but that's about as involved as I get - MS hasn't left me with enough energy for that.
I can't remember where first I saw it - Doonesbury, perhaps? - but I think it's time it re-surfaces:
"A pre-emptive nuclear counter-attack means never having to say you're sorry."
An old Chinese curse also applies:
"May you live in interesting times."
Yikes.
Nasal stem cells are easier to harvest and cultivate than most other adult stem cells. True, they may have more genetic abnormalities than embrionic stem cells, but they also have my DNA, and not that of another being unrelated to me. I'd think this would be a big plus - no need for anti-rejection drugs.
And no, I haven't been to the site you cited, so I haven't been (directly) brainwashed by them.
From one study, on mouse EAE, in the last 5 years. I keep a close eye on what studies are in the pipeline, and have seen nothing else, even tho there is much going on with embrionic stem cells.
I've got advanced multiple sclerosis, and the ONLY hope I have for sutvival, let alone being able to walk again, lies with stem cells (plus some way to remove the scars already on my nercous system). Most people assume this means embrionic cells, but there are other ways. For example,in nasal cavity tissue, there are stem cells that can, and do, differentiate into neurons. This would help not only myself, but many others, with MS, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's, ALS, and possibly even Alzheimer's and BSE.
I realize that these won't cure verything, but why is this research being ignored in favor of embrionic stem cells? There are no moral issues here, no politically-demanded guidelines to be followed, only a chance to help lots of people before they wither away and die. Yet, from what I've been able to see, this avenue is being soundly ignored by researchers.
'I am truly baffled.
if they're still controlled via nerves, I'm not sure this would help me any. I've got SPMS (secondary progressive multiple sclerosis), and by no I've lost nearly all use of both legs, most use of one arm, and I'm losing the other arm, too.
I still have muscles, and no issues with my joints. What's killing me is the de-myelination of my nerves. This, and the subsequent nerve tissue scarring ("sclerosis" in medispeak) means that signals just aren't getting to where they belong. Most signals just stop, tho sometimes they're short-circuited with other signals.
One example of this is a really-frustrating spasm in my legs. Unless I concentrate REAL hard, both legs can oscillate for quite some number of minutes once it gets started.
So, imagine if I had this cool walking exoskeleton (shades of "A Specter Is Haunting Texas", anyone?), these spasms would be duplicated but amplified, likely resulting in much devastation of furniture. Additionally, these powerd legs would still not be able to move right, as the control signals will not make it to the neuron/electronic interface.
Cool idea, tho somewhat flawed. It might work better for others, tho.
I used to make jewelry from chips. Had earrings made from EPROMs, split open, and necklacess made from 286s which had the cap un-soldered, and the cavity filled with water-clear epoxy.
Nobody bought them then, either. They were too common, too easy for any geek to make.
These days, my jewelry is less geeky, and far more salesworthy. I learned.
Actually, at the time, my wife-to-be was Wiccan. I was devotly atheist, until several years later when a willow tree sprite talked to me. Now I'm Dianic Wiccan.
As for shared offspring, that'll be difficult, as those bits have been surgically removed. Sorry.
Jeff is/was frugal to a fault. He once spilled a larg bottle of pricey yuppy vitamins in the bathroom sink, and gathered up the soggy mess, dried it out and used them. Speaks well of his money-management skills at Amazon.
Jeff has always been one darned smart cookie. Back when I worked with him at Fitel, he told me of how he once wrote a program to convert / translate the tape counter on several different VCRs, so that the American ex-pat community could figure out where on the tape their favorite tv show was located. Clever, and non-obvious.
:) Heck, Jeff even came to my wedding in 1988 - a Wiccan handfasting, back before Wicca really took off.
I knew darned well he'd make money. He used to talk US Tax law at lunch, and how the IRS gives a company X years before they must show a profit. He used that time to build up his company, to be strong enough to compete.
He's good, and a decent dude, too, tho Ellie may not agree - Ellie usually lost at the lunch tab games played with Jeff and I
Good guy, Jeff. Hopefully, he learned from Graciella how to attract the best and brightest employees, and how NOT to treat them. Fitel was a bear of a place to work. I could not have survived without Jeff and his then-gf Annette St. Onge.