Bob Givnin

I tried to record the 2 hour event, but it went almost 3 hours, so my VCR (shut up - Tivo didn't even have it listed!) stopped as Usher was singing. Bummer. Anyway, MSNBC is hosting the video on their site and I thought I'd post it here for those that want to see it and not have to dig for it. I have no idea how long it'll be online for, so watch it while it's hot:



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Doesn't seem to work. It's on EW.com's page:

http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/07/michael-jackson-memorial-service-live-blog.html

I had my doctor's appointment this morning to get my staples out (yay!) and figure out exactly what was wrong with me. Long story short, they believe I had Diverticulitis. What's interesting is that my doctor made no mention of me not eating enough fiber or anything in the "how to avoid" section of that webmd article, but did say that in order to recover from my surgery faster, more fiber will help.

As my doctor put it, this is the best possible news. No cancer, no Chrone's Disease, nothing long term... just a nasty infected abscess 55cm long that needed to be removed. My appendix was in perfect shape, but it was a precautionary measure. I'd rather he removed it anyway, as now I never have to worry about it. Whee!

Now onto mending! I have to start being active again, plus, until my body is back to normal, eat more yogurt, eat more fiber (I've got Metamucil to take daily for awhile) and if I need to go out of the house and not be worried about not having a bathroom, I've got Imodium. That stuff stopped my colon for 4 hours. That's most excellent.

Chad Taylor posted another snippet of the new tunes. I'm fucking excited!



UPDATE:

New link to file:


Ramius MP3 -

It's not much, but Chad Taylor just posted a 10 second snippet of an intro to one of his new songs:

It's an absolutely gorgeous, 80 degree day outside and I'm completely stuck inside.

Please, enjoy the day. That's all I ask. :)

About 3 hours ago, I got my first Mac, a 13"
MacBook Pro, from Best Buy (the Apple store was completely sold out). I spent the last few hours trying to learn the ins and outs of it, plus I installed Windows 7 on it because I do need Windows for certain tasks.

So far, so good. I'm glad I got it. Now I need tips, dammit! :)

Get your Kevin Smith tickets now!

http://www.ticketmaster.com/Kevin-Smith-tickets/artist/973547

We're already in for 2! See you there. :)

Chad Taylor just tweeted about a new musical project he's working on that's "coming soon" and that "Speakers will be exploding and fires burning as we blaze this one". I can't wait. This is FANTASTIC news.

Read all about it: http://twitter.com/thechadtaylor

Three friends have gotten the new iPhone 3GS in the last 24 hours. I'm loving this!

Yesterday was my first full day at home. It was nice. I showered (very, very slowly and carefully), had lots of good, home cooked food, watched some sweet TV and just hung out. I made an appointment with my doctor for next Thursday to get looked at and hopefully have my staples removed.

All in all, everything is moving slowly but surely.

The question of the day: To Mac or not to Mac. I think I'm just gonna do it, but hell it's a LOT of money. Then again, it'll last for at least 3 years, so I definitely consider it an investment.

Things are going well! The nurses are pleased and the doctor will see me by 4. I'm probably going to be discharged tonight! Woot!

Just overheard by my roommate that's at least 70yo: "I don't need anything except television". Nice.

I've got Chicken Broth and Cranberry Juice! Watch out people!

My surgeon drew on my whiteboard exactly what he did to me. In the
bottom left corner, right above the appendix, there's a line. He cut
that portion out. To the right of the circle with the dots (that's the
nasty abscess part that had to be removed) is another line. That's
where the other cut is, then he joined the two together. Yay!

This time it's me! First off, thanks for the well wishes... I appreciate it. Secondly, I wanted to let you know what they did:

1. The surgeon cut out the last part of my small intestine.

2. He still wasn't happy, so he took out my appendix, plus a bit more small intestine, then connected my two intestines together. He didn't like the way it looked, so he took it apart and did it again. Awesome.

I feel okay... Weak and tired, but okay. Now I rest and concentrate on getting better.

This is Michelle, Bob's wife. He asked me to update you. Bob is out of surgery and doing well. He will post more tomorrow.

I'm going into surgery soon. Not sure why. It's either my appendix, an infection near my appendix or a twisted section of bowl.

Yay me.

I'm going up in 20 minutes, so wish me luck. I'll post when I'm able to. :)

I just finished updating my iPhone to the 3.0 OS, ready to take on the world with features that other smartphones have had for years! LOL! I kid... sort of.

Right off the bat, two things pissed me off:

1. No battery percent meter. This is only available for the iPhone 3GS. I find it hard to believe they couldn't sneak that in, but my bet is they needed any little feature to upsell the 3GS, so it went in there and not in OS 3.0. And no, I'm not jailbreaking my phone to get that feature.

2. The Messages app has a really cool feature when you send a text message that it replaces the recipient name with a Sending progress bar. Now you can see all in one place the progress for sending a text message. Extremely excited about this feature, I flipped to e-mail and sent an e-mail, hoping to see the same thing, but noooo... in order to see the e-mail sending progress meter, you still have to hit Back to go back to the in-box and you can see it there. So much for consistency.

What is cool, however, is you can flip your phone into landscape to not only type text messages and e-mails, but you can also READ e-mails in that view. That's flippin' cool. No more squinting! :D

I'll probably have more thoughts later after further review.

I'm so insanely happy that some company has FINALLY put a dual core Atom chip and nvidia's ION GPU in a netbook it's not even funny. While I want a DVD drive in my netbook (to watch movies on the go - why can't companies understand this?), I don't want a big and heavy, circa 2000 tray loading ugly POS. I want a slot loading, sleek, lighter (as in weight) drive. I know this would up the price of the machine, but I think it'd be worth it and I'd be first in line to get one.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/17/asrock-multibook-g22-packs-ion-atom-330-and-a-multitouch-trackp/

I'm still thinking about checking this one out, but it's going to come down to battery life and price. No release date yet, but that's fine... I'm trying to hold out for Win7 anyway. :)

Whee! I just got 2 tickets to the Layne Staley tribute concert on 8-22. I'll be seeing Ed from Live this year after all. ;)

Is it terrible of me to consider spending $1700 on a fully loaded 13" MacBook Pro because I want insane battery life? 7 hours of regular power and 3.5 when playing a DVD? That's INSANE, but so is the pricetag.

I'm thinking about waiting until late October/early November after Windows 7 ships to see what Dell and HP offer for the holiday season. I can't imagine that all the notebook players would sit back and let Apple shine with something like that, even with a similar pricetag. I'd love to see Dell refresh their XPS M1330 machine with comparable specs. I'd probably pick one up in a heartbeat.