Tone Parsons

I almost fell over while walking down the hall a few minutes ago.

With the change in medication for my back, everything is slightly out of whack. While I’m starting to feel better (and much more clear headed), there are a few side affects that I’m not wild about.

I was outside having a smoke, and when I came back in I got hit with a massive dizzy spell. I felt myself go pale and I started to shake. I almost took a header in the hallway.

Good times all around on that!

I’m starting to feel a little more human now. I ate something sweet and am drinking a soda (in case it was just my blood sugar crashing).

Wheeeeeee!

Edit at 2:01 pm

I’m feeling much better now.  It’s mostly passed (though I’m still a little fluffy in the brain department).  I’m also very glad I didn’t faint in the hallway.  That would have been totally embarrassing!

If you visited the blog during the past couple of hours, you may have noticed something was wrong:

All the images were replaced.

No… I wasn’t defaced, I accidentally did this to myself. Let me explain.

I have a serious issue with hotlinkers (people who post images hosted on my site to their web page). Every time you view their page, you see images that live on my server. This eats up my bandwidth, and they get all the credit. In short, I hate them (myspace users are the absolute worst of the bunch for this crap!).

So, being that I’m all clever and such, I added some rewrite rules to my htaccess file that basicaly says “I don’t care what image you’re asking for, if you come from xxxxxxx.com, you get this image instead!”. Below is the image I used to replace whatever they were asking for:

Sadly… I screwed up the rule, and while it replaced images by the domains I specified, it also replaced all the images on my site too. Even more sadly…. I didn’t notice the problem for a couple of hours.

It’s monday, and I have nothing of real value to post to the blog.

While that’s not unusual (most of this blog is full of filler posts anyway), I feel obliged to give you something. So hold on to your butt…. here we go!

First, here is a picture of a kitten:

I met with my Doctor on friday. We talked about the medication I’m on, how much I enjoy being a walking vegetable, and how if I continue taking it I’m going to end up unemployed (because it’s hard to do a job that’s purely intellectual when your head is full of oatmeal). He decided it was time to “mix it up”, so to speak. He’s weaning me off the old meds (can’t stop taking them suddenly, or seizures are possible… and while that might be interesting, I’ll pass) and put me on some new ones.

Today… I’m more clear headed than I’ve been in months (and have the ability to walk in a straight line without keeping a hand on the wall to steady myself). I’m also a very sweaty boy. I’m sweating like a damn pig!

Better living through chemistry, my ass!

Mmmmm… beef stroganoff!!!

I also finished the monumental task of ripping all my CD’s to MP3 for my iPod. If I were to play each song back to back, 24 hours a day, I woudn’t hear the same song twice until over 2 weeks had passed. That’s a lot of music!! All of it, conveniently, fits on my 30GB iPod! Hell… I even have 4GB left over!

God bless technology!

Pie chart showing the proportion of girls to boys when it comes to bed wetting:

And finally…. yesterday, I was feeling pretty good with the world and decided that it was time to fire up our motorcycles for the first time since October. Normally, I would start them about once a month and let them run for about 20 minutes to keep the batteries charged up. I didn’t do that this year and funny enough… neither bike will start.

Damn!

But my brother-in-law has a charger and I’m farily confident that the batteries just need a charge (read: the cells didn’t die over the winter) and all will be good.

And there you go… one filler post, pulled directly outa my ass.

My ass:

My eldest sone turns 18 in a couple of weeks.

He’s a very bright kid (on the honor roll, lettered in academics) and he has a plan. He’s been in the running start program for the past two years, going to college instead of high school (tuition free). After he gets his Associate of Arts degree, he’s planning on heading directly to a 4 year university (EWU, to be exact) for his Bachelor of Science degree.

He’s thinking of following in my footsteps and majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics.

Unlike me, he’s not going to wait to do this. I goofed off after high school, did time in the army (91A10 – combat medic), got married, had a couple of kids, and lived in poverty for a decade before I went to college. Like I said… he has a plan.

This plan does not include the military.

We have discussed that option, and he’s not interested… not one bit. I fully support his decision.

So… this is an open letter to all the recruiters out there. We don’t care what branch of the armed services you represent…. stop calling us. Seriously!

I’m sure you’re having problems getting good recruits, but my son isn’t interested. Yes, I know you have a need… so go recruit from a red state (they voted for Bush, we didn’t). Call the children of anyone who is a registered Republican… they’re the ones that voted the President in. Better yet, make it mandatory for all politicians who voted to allow the current administration to start this shit storm in Iraq to send their children first.

If they lead the way… perhaps my children would be inspired to follow.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.