I had asked for them to use one of those types of scanners on me but the surgeon said he would not accept the scans because the resolution was too poor and that he would not operate on me until he got the scans HE wanted. It was spinal surgery and required that they knew precisely what the damage was before they went in. Even so, it still didn't turn out very well.
Nope. Besides, they didn't have music at any of the three places I went to. They said speakers (which as magnetically driven) can't operate in the high magnetic fields. Also the MRI machine is extremely loud. It's a hellish noise. But believe me, no music or eye covers can cover the fact that they're jamming you into a tube that you can't move in and can't escape from. My third MRI attempt required that I was in a very large and "open" type machine - http://www.kingsmedical.com/equipment-open-mri.htm and that I was heavily medicated. Even with the medication it was a terrifying experience. It felt to me like I was being shoved under a car or into one of those giant forge hammers like you see on the history channel where they are hammering huge battleships gun barrels out of red hot steel.
People that don't have claustrophobia can't understand the sheer terror and panic it throws you into. It's a very, very bad thing to experience.
The first time they pulled me out they suggested putting a towel over my eyes. So we tried that and that made it worse and I bailed out before my shoulders got into the tube.
MRI machines do not run into the millions of dollars. They average under a half million each. Do some research, don't make unsubstantiated wild guess claims.
As to the MRI clinics available, look in the Houston yellow pages. There's plenty listed there including several in strip malls.
My experience in those machines had nothing to do with paranoia. It was 100% to do with claustrophobia. Before I went in for the scans I had no idea I had claustrophobia. Being stuffed into the machines caused me extreme panic attacks to the point I thought I was going to die. After they pulled me out I couldn't breath and thought I was going to have a heart attack because my heart was racing wild.
And you know what, I don't give a shit what anyone else thought about my problem with those machines. And for your information, I PAID CASH for those scans. There was no insurance or socialized anything involved. I PAID CASH for everything. And there's no scarcity of those machines. There's dozens of them in this area, including several in STRIP MALLS.. Yes, in a STRIP MALL right next to a Verizon cell phone store and two doors down from a Chinese resteraunt. And where I ended up going to for the scan I was doped up, there's probably 100 MRI machines there, in a city of 4 million..
Get your facts straight before you go pointing fingers and calling names.
I had to have several MRI & CT scans and that friggin tunnel is more than I can handle. They tried to put me in one with the normal little tunnel (about as big around as a five gallon bucket) and I freaked out before I got 2' into it and made them back me out. Then they put me in an "open" MRI machine but it was like being crushed under a car. No way Jose. Abort #2. So I went to another city where they had a different kind that was a little more "open" than #2. This one then pumped me full of Xanax and I survived it.
The CT scan was not quite as bad because it was like a large doughnut and there was only about 1' of my body inside it but it still freaked me out. Xanax on that one too.
I swore I'll die before I ever go in one of those damn things ever again. They need to come up with a better way. Some people can't handle that crap. I hope these new ones are a break away from the "trapped in a pipe" or "crushed under a car" machines.
I would strongly recommend watching Trinity and Beyond http://imdb.com/title/tt0114728/ It available on DVD.. You'll get to see some wicked badass bombs.
Impose the death penalty for these hackers/crackers or whatever you call them these days. Public execution. And make it totally Medevil. Gruesome and painful and prolonged.
I guarantee you within one year the hacking/cracking/whatever will have come to an absolute total stop.
I'm not kidding. I'm 100% serious. These people are vermin. They are the lowest of the low and they deserve to be tortured to death in the most gruesome ways.
Thank you. I have chronic back pain due to a terrible injury and surgery. I scanned over the doc and it mentioned back pain too. I'll be reading this today for sure.:)
I have an MS fingerprint reading keyboard (doesn't work in Linux) and a MS wireless mouse. The keyboard is so-so but the mouse is horrible. The wheel is hard to turn and I have to put more pressure on the wheel than normal to turn it. After a day of that my fingertip hurts. It's numb and feels like I smashed it with a hammer. So all day long I find myself using different fingers on the wheel. Even the next day when I get up after sleeping and having been off the computer for 8+ hours, my fingertip still hurts. It's pretty much permanent. A numb pain like I smashed it. Also the back of my hand hurts like hell too. It's 100% from using the keyboard and mouse. I've tried all the weird ergonomic keyboards but none really help. Maybe some of the exotic types would be better but they are too expensive. I guess this is to be expected though considering I spend 16+ hours a day at the computer.
"more daemons and processes running by default on these modern Ubuntu releases is actually causing an increase in power consumption."
Ya think?
I just install OpenSuse 10.3 on a tower type and a laptop. The first thing I do is go in and disable a whole slew of bullshit that's enabled by default. I LOVE Linux but the trend lately has been to BLOAT it up like a new eMachine that's preloaded with 40gigs of bullshit.
What ever happened to minimal? When I installed Suse 9.3 on my Athlon 64 w/1g ram, it ran like a cat with it's ass on fire. SAME hardware with OpenSuse 10.2 was abysmal. It was sooooo bad that I was just about to give up on it then 10.3 came out. It's a slight improvement but, damn! They are developing all the new distros with the assumption that everyone is going to run out and buy all new shit. Shades of M$, dare I say??
For the longest time Linux captured and held my heart because it would run so fast on the oldest, worst case hardware. No more. Wanna run the latest distro? Better put some $$$ back for all new hardware...
Bloat = power drain.
How about getting back to basics and quit focusing on the bling-bling. Linux is NOT windows and it never should be. Quit trying to make it look and act like windows. Quit trying to make it run windows crap. Be happy that it's not windows. I do not want windows compatibility. At all. Ever.
Kill the bloat and pork and watch power consumption go down. Not to mention the old PC's being tossed out into the environment.
You're an idiot. The more you flap your lips the more you show the world what a jackass you are. Keep digging yourself in deeper. You're doing an excellent job.
If being a greedy, profiteering parasite gets you off, more power to you. You'll get your just deserts in the end.
Um, excuse you pal. I have been working on computers professionally since the late 70's.
You better think again. I was working on computers when the vast majority of the readers here hadn't even been born yet. I'll tell you this, I know WAY more than any other technician in this area. The reason I operate this way is because I despise big business and big corporations and VERMIN that are out to screw every penny out of every person on earth. I believe in the little people. I believe in individuals.
I worked as the tech at a major corporation in the 80's & 90's where I was solely responsible for over 1,800 PC's in one building. I was treated like SHIT by the morons that didn't understand how to use their computers. When they pressed the wrong key it was MY FAULT and they took out their ignorant wrath upon me. After several years of abuse I quit and walked away from computer work totally. I was sick of it. In the last few years I've resumed that line of work because it's really the only thing I can do. But I refuse to take my business up a level. I want to keep it small. I don't want employees, I don't want to open a store front, I don't want the hassle of all that crap. I work by word of mouth only, no advertising. People like me and they call me back. They recommend me to their friends and associates and so on. I get enough work to keep me where I want and need to be. I work at my own pace, set my own hours and I call all the shots. I make judgment calls and oft times I write off charges. Frequently I am called out to one of my favorite customer sites for trivial things such as printer problems or a PC running slow. If I can walk in and out in under 15 minutes I tell the lady "No charge." How's that grab ya? Can't handle the fact that someone actually treats their customers with respect because I LIKE my customers and I care that they are happy with my service?
About 2 years ago I installed a firewall for a customer running Smoothwall. I gave then a 1 year parts & labor warranty with the machine and software and FREE LIFETIME UPDATES (I do the updates for them when required at no charge forever). They were so nice to me that when their warranty expired around August I told the lady I was going to extend the warranty at no charge until the end of the year, as a thank you to them because they were so nice to me. After that she forgot about the warranty period expiring. So did I. About 3 months later, the PC that ran the Smoothwall died. I replaced the PC with a brand new one at NO CHARGE and gave her a one year warranty on the new one. I ate the cost. Why? Because I like my customers. They treat me right and I take care of them. It was no big deal. I keep about 100 PC's on hand so I just pulled one out, installed Smoothwall and switched it out. They were only down about 4 hours on a Saturday. I didn't charge them a penny for any of it. But make no mistake about it, I get plenty of billable time and I do indeed make money with my small circle of loyal customers. There's a lot of benefits you can reap by treating people decently.
You see, what I do is called "personalized service".. I don't treat my customers as if they are just a piggy bank that needs to be robbed. You however, seem like you have the Bestbuy Geeksquad mentality. I wish I knew where you work because I would advise my customers to avoid people like you. Oh, and that's another thing. I get asked by my customers to repair all sorts of things. I COULD if I wanted to but I don't want to spin off on oddball repairs (other electronics). I'm more than capable but I just don't want to get into other stuff. PC's are easy and fast.
It's truly sad that there are people like you in this world. It's people like you that make me hate this world so much and people like you that have made me rebel against the system and throw aside the parasitic, predatory, capitalistic, profiteering and greed driven lifestyle that the Neo-CONS so lovingly embrace. Their plan
for a lady. Laptop #1 is a Compaq. She bangs it around over and over and keep breaking the power jack from the motherboard. The power plug acts like a crowbar and prys it loose.
Laptop #2 is a Dell. The hard drive started acting up. I diagnosed it as a bad HDD. She purchased a new hdd through Dell and had it shipped to her. She brought me the laptop and the drive. The new drive refused to install, the mobo insisted the drive was password locked. I spent about 4 hours on the phone with dell (someone reading a que card in India) and after much agony it was determined that the mobo was bad. I called the lady and asked her what she wanted to do. She said that was it, end of the line, trash the PC she wasn't going to spend another penny on it and was buying a new desktop. She asked me how much she owed me for what work I had done. I told her "No charge. I didn't repair it so there's no charge. You pay for what you get and nothing more." She was flabbergasted and insisted on paying me for my time and trouble. I told her no, don't worry about it. She insisted though and after almost getting into an argument with her I told her that if she felt she had to pay me then she could pay me a gratuity in whatever amount made her happy. Her husband suggested $25. She asked me if that was enough. I told her it was more than enough so she wrote me a check for $25.
I treat people fairly and honestly. I'm not out to get rich and you will never get anywhere by screwing people over. I have a small circle of loyal customers that like me because I treat them well, I treat them with respect and I always deliver on my promises. I LIKE my customers. And I think they like me. I assume they do because they keep calling me back over and over.
Treat people the way you would want to be treated.
older folks such as myself don't use this mashup crap because it sounds STUPID. The name alone implies that it's some sort of hap-hazardly created frankenstein stuff that 10 year olds create. The name does not indicate at all, in any way what a mashup is or does.
It just sounds stupid and totally un-professional.
No, I'm not trolling, this isn't flamebait, I'm giving MY take on it from the perspective of someone near 50 years old.
Why not call this stuff, what ever it is, by a name that gives people a sense of what it's about?
While I'm of the mind that they should grow thicker skin, let's be honest, they're facing a lot more obstacles than you deal with as a pasty male geek with no fashion sense.
Perhaps men should just quit being such ASSHOLES towards women? I wonder in anyone ever considered that concept.
Slashdot Mirror
I had asked for them to use one of those types of scanners on me but the surgeon said he would not accept the scans because the resolution was too poor and that he would not operate on me until he got the scans HE wanted.
It was spinal surgery and required that they knew precisely what the damage was before they went in.
Even so, it still didn't turn out very well.
Nope.
Besides, they didn't have music at any of the three places I went to.
They said speakers (which as magnetically driven) can't operate in the high magnetic fields.
Also the MRI machine is extremely loud. It's a hellish noise.
But believe me, no music or eye covers can cover the fact that they're jamming you into a tube that you can't move in and can't escape from.
My third MRI attempt required that I was in a very large and "open" type machine - http://www.kingsmedical.com/equipment-open-mri.htm
and that I was heavily medicated. Even with the medication it was a terrifying experience.
It felt to me like I was being shoved under a car or into one of those giant forge hammers like you see on the history channel where they are hammering huge battleships gun barrels out of red hot steel.
People that don't have claustrophobia can't understand the sheer terror and panic it throws you into.
It's a very, very bad thing to experience.
The first time they pulled me out they suggested putting a towel over my eyes.
So we tried that and that made it worse and I bailed out before my shoulders got into the tube.
MRI machines do not run into the millions of dollars. They average under a half million each.
Do some research, don't make unsubstantiated wild guess claims.
As to the MRI clinics available, look in the Houston yellow pages. There's plenty listed there including several in strip malls.
My experience in those machines had nothing to do with paranoia.
It was 100% to do with claustrophobia .
Before I went in for the scans I had no idea I had claustrophobia.
Being stuffed into the machines caused me extreme panic attacks to the point I thought I was going to die.
After they pulled me out I couldn't breath and thought I was going to have a heart attack because my heart was racing wild.
And you know what, I don't give a shit what anyone else thought about my problem with those machines.
And for your information, I PAID CASH for those scans. There was no insurance or socialized anything involved.
I PAID CASH for everything.
And there's no scarcity of those machines. There's dozens of them in this area, including several in STRIP MALLS..
Yes, in a STRIP MALL right next to a Verizon cell phone store and two doors down from a Chinese resteraunt.
And where I ended up going to for the scan I was doped up, there's probably 100 MRI machines there, in a city of 4 million..
Get your facts straight before you go pointing fingers and calling names.
I had to have several MRI & CT scans and that friggin tunnel is more than I can handle.
They tried to put me in one with the normal little tunnel (about as big around as a five gallon bucket) and I freaked out before I got 2' into it and made them back me out. Then they put me in an "open" MRI machine but it was like being crushed under a car. No way Jose. Abort #2.
So I went to another city where they had a different kind that was a little more "open" than #2.
This one then pumped me full of Xanax and I survived it.
The CT scan was not quite as bad because it was like a large doughnut and there was only about 1' of my body inside it but it still freaked me out.
Xanax on that one too.
I swore I'll die before I ever go in one of those damn things ever again.
They need to come up with a better way. Some people can't handle that crap.
I hope these new ones are a break away from the "trapped in a pipe" or "crushed under a car" machines.
LOL! Mod parent up!
I would strongly recommend watching Trinity and Beyond http://imdb.com/title/tt0114728/
It available on DVD..
You'll get to see some wicked badass bombs.
The key is under the doormat.
Google sucks. Google bad. Google evil..
Google doesn't serve your interests, it serves the interests of it's stock holders.
You haven't figured it out already? Damn!
There are other search engines out there. Pick a few and try them out.
Quit your bitching about profiteering Google and move on to greener fields.
Impose the death penalty for these hackers/crackers or whatever you call them these days.
Public execution. And make it totally Medevil. Gruesome and painful and prolonged.
I guarantee you within one year the hacking/cracking/whatever will have come to an absolute total stop.
I'm not kidding. I'm 100% serious.
These people are vermin. They are the lowest of the low and they deserve to be tortured to death in the most gruesome ways.
Fox 'News' and at the home of the little tin horn dictator?
Please mind your own business.
Please leave us to handle our own affairs, what ever they may be.
Thank you. :)
I have chronic back pain due to a terrible injury and surgery. I scanned over the doc and it mentioned back pain too.
I'll be reading this today for sure.
I have an MS fingerprint reading keyboard (doesn't work in Linux) and a MS wireless mouse.
The keyboard is so-so but the mouse is horrible. The wheel is hard to turn and I have to put more pressure on the wheel than normal to turn it.
After a day of that my fingertip hurts. It's numb and feels like I smashed it with a hammer. So all day long I find myself using different fingers on the wheel. Even the next day when I get up after sleeping and having been off the computer for 8+ hours, my fingertip still hurts. It's pretty much permanent. A numb pain like I smashed it.
Also the back of my hand hurts like hell too. It's 100% from using the keyboard and mouse.
I've tried all the weird ergonomic keyboards but none really help. Maybe some of the exotic types would be better but they are too expensive.
I guess this is to be expected though considering I spend 16+ hours a day at the computer.
Not misdirected at all. I was talking about the mainstream, premier distros like Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu, etc.
"more daemons and processes running by default on these modern Ubuntu releases is actually causing an increase in power consumption."
Ya think?
I just install OpenSuse 10.3 on a tower type and a laptop.
The first thing I do is go in and disable a whole slew of bullshit that's enabled by default.
I LOVE Linux but the trend lately has been to BLOAT it up like a new eMachine that's preloaded with 40gigs of bullshit.
What ever happened to minimal? When I installed Suse 9.3 on my Athlon 64 w/1g ram, it ran like a cat with it's ass on fire.
SAME hardware with OpenSuse 10.2 was abysmal. It was sooooo bad that I was just about to give up on it then 10.3 came out.
It's a slight improvement but, damn! They are developing all the new distros with the assumption that everyone is going to run out and buy all new shit. Shades of M$, dare I say??
For the longest time Linux captured and held my heart because it would run so fast on the oldest, worst case hardware.
No more. Wanna run the latest distro? Better put some $$$ back for all new hardware...
Bloat = power drain.
How about getting back to basics and quit focusing on the bling-bling. Linux is NOT windows and it never should be. Quit trying to make it look and act like windows. Quit trying to make it run windows crap. Be happy that it's not windows. I do not want windows compatibility. At all. Ever.
Kill the bloat and pork and watch power consumption go down. Not to mention the old PC's being tossed out into the environment.
Google-analytics and urchin are both evil.
Can you say blocklist?
Sorry Mr. Submitter but you are preaching to a room full of dry eyes.
You're an idiot. The more you flap your lips the more you show the world what a jackass you are.
Keep digging yourself in deeper. You're doing an excellent job.
If being a greedy, profiteering parasite gets you off, more power to you. You'll get your just deserts in the end.
Just remember, you reap what you sow.
Um, excuse you pal. I have been working on computers professionally since the late 70's.
You better think again. I was working on computers when the vast majority of the readers here hadn't even been born yet.
I'll tell you this, I know WAY more than any other technician in this area.
The reason I operate this way is because I despise big business and big corporations and VERMIN that are out to screw every penny out of every person on earth. I believe in the little people. I believe in individuals.
I worked as the tech at a major corporation in the 80's & 90's where I was solely responsible for over 1,800 PC's in one building.
I was treated like SHIT by the morons that didn't understand how to use their computers. When they pressed the wrong key it was MY FAULT and they took out their ignorant wrath upon me. After several years of abuse I quit and walked away from computer work totally. I was sick of it.
In the last few years I've resumed that line of work because it's really the only thing I can do. But I refuse to take my business up a level.
I want to keep it small. I don't want employees, I don't want to open a store front, I don't want the hassle of all that crap. I work by word of mouth only, no advertising. People like me and they call me back. They recommend me to their friends and associates and so on. I get enough work to keep me where I want and need to be. I work at my own pace, set my own hours and I call all the shots. I make judgment calls and oft times I write off charges. Frequently I am called out to one of my favorite customer sites for trivial things such as printer problems or a PC running slow. If I can walk in and out in under 15 minutes I tell the lady "No charge." How's that grab ya? Can't handle the fact that someone actually treats their customers with respect because I LIKE my customers and I care that they are happy with my service?
About 2 years ago I installed a firewall for a customer running Smoothwall. I gave then a 1 year parts & labor warranty with the machine and software and FREE LIFETIME UPDATES (I do the updates for them when required at no charge forever). They were so nice to me that when their warranty expired around August I told the lady I was going to extend the warranty at no charge until the end of the year, as a thank you to them because they were so nice to me. After that she forgot about the warranty period expiring. So did I. About 3 months later, the PC that ran the Smoothwall died.
I replaced the PC with a brand new one at NO CHARGE and gave her a one year warranty on the new one. I ate the cost. Why? Because I like my customers. They treat me right and I take care of them. It was no big deal. I keep about 100 PC's on hand so I just pulled one out, installed Smoothwall and switched it out. They were only down about 4 hours on a Saturday. I didn't charge them a penny for any of it.
But make no mistake about it, I get plenty of billable time and I do indeed make money with my small circle of loyal customers. There's a lot of benefits you can reap by treating people decently.
You see, what I do is called "personalized service".. I don't treat my customers as if they are just a piggy bank that needs to be robbed.
You however, seem like you have the Bestbuy Geeksquad mentality. I wish I knew where you work because I would advise my customers to avoid people like you. Oh, and that's another thing. I get asked by my customers to repair all sorts of things. I COULD if I wanted to but I don't want to spin off on oddball repairs (other electronics). I'm more than capable but I just don't want to get into other stuff. PC's are easy and fast.
It's truly sad that there are people like you in this world. It's people like you that make me hate this world so much and people like you that have made me rebel against the system and throw aside the parasitic, predatory, capitalistic, profiteering and greed driven lifestyle that the Neo-CONS so lovingly embrace. Their plan
for a lady. Laptop #1 is a Compaq. She bangs it around over and over and keep breaking the power jack from the motherboard. The power plug acts like a crowbar and prys it loose.
Laptop #2 is a Dell. The hard drive started acting up. I diagnosed it as a bad HDD.
She purchased a new hdd through Dell and had it shipped to her. She brought me the laptop and the drive.
The new drive refused to install, the mobo insisted the drive was password locked.
I spent about 4 hours on the phone with dell (someone reading a que card in India) and after much agony it was determined that the mobo was bad.
I called the lady and asked her what she wanted to do. She said that was it, end of the line, trash the PC she wasn't going to spend another penny on it and was buying a new desktop. She asked me how much she owed me for what work I had done.
I told her "No charge. I didn't repair it so there's no charge. You pay for what you get and nothing more."
She was flabbergasted and insisted on paying me for my time and trouble. I told her no, don't worry about it.
She insisted though and after almost getting into an argument with her I told her that if she felt she had to pay me then she could pay me a gratuity in whatever amount made her happy. Her husband suggested $25. She asked me if that was enough. I told her it was more than enough so she wrote me a check for $25.
I treat people fairly and honestly. I'm not out to get rich and you will never get anywhere by screwing people over. I have a small circle of loyal customers that like me because I treat them well, I treat them with respect and I always deliver on my promises. I LIKE my customers. And I think they like me. I assume they do because they keep calling me back over and over.
Treat people the way you would want to be treated.
the new Edsel.
older folks such as myself don't use this mashup crap because it sounds STUPID.
The name alone implies that it's some sort of hap-hazardly created frankenstein stuff that 10 year olds create.
The name does not indicate at all, in any way what a mashup is or does.
It just sounds stupid and totally un-professional.
No, I'm not trolling, this isn't flamebait, I'm giving MY take on it from the perspective of someone near 50 years old.
Why not call this stuff, what ever it is, by a name that gives people a sense of what it's about?
So you went home alone last night from the local waterhole eh?
While I'm of the mind that they should grow thicker skin, let's be honest, they're facing a lot more obstacles than you deal with as a pasty male geek with no fashion sense.
Perhaps men should just quit being such ASSHOLES towards women?
I wonder in anyone ever considered that concept.