Scott "Spongebob Hotpants" Baker

Oh no... we're not nerds!

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:48:58 GMT

Scott: Michael Goldfarb of the John McCain campaign oddly disses gamers in his post yesterday on the John McCain blog.

"It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others."

Scott: McCain hates D&D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111oneoneoneone
Isaac Force: What about the suffering of my level 5 elf mage when he fought the orc army in the dark forests and was nearly defeated?
Scott: Was he held prisoner of war in an orcish encampment for 3 moons?
Isaac Force: No but he was held prisoner in the great dragon's underground lair for half a mortal man's lifetime
Isaac Force: That one took a lot of Mt. Dew
Scott: Well in that case he's probably entitled for a 25% gold refund for taxes paid to the king for the past 3 crop rotations. And an extra goat for his trouble
Scott: However any loot, especially magic rings found prior to incarceration will fall under the "found monies" clause of the new provision and must be surrendered to the local provisional mayor immediately

Where high tech me H20

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:33:05 GMT

I've always wanted a water feature for my living room!

Epic Fail!

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:12:03 GMT

This has to be some sort of world record for stupidity...

Inside a mall in Richmond, Ky., a woman shoplifted a purse in a J.C. Penney store, placed her own wallet into the purse while still inside the mall, then, when confronted by security, tried to punch the security officer, dropped the purse, ran out of the mall and drove away. Later she called the J.C. Penney store to see if her wallet had been found and, after being told it was at the police station, she went to the station -- with illegal drugs in her pocket -- to retrieve it. - Richmond Herald-Leader

Letter to my gastro specialist

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:44:51 GMT

This is the letter that I wrote to my new gastro specialist. I include it here only as a record of where I was at during this stage of my life.

August 3rd, 2008

I'd like to start with some quick history of my situation. I'm a 29 year old male and in January of 2007 I had a colectomy in response to several hospitalizations for ulcerative colitis. Two weeks later I had an intestinal blockage that required an NG tube to reverse. February of 2007 I had an abscess, and had an additional abdominal surgery to correct. April of 2007 I had stoma tear down surgery and began the long recovery process. Almost immediately after my last surgery I was treated for pouchitis with both Cipro and Flagyl.

Fast forward to August of 2008 almost eighteen months since my last surgery and I am still struggling on a daily basis. I've seen my primary care physician, my original gastroenterologist, a hematologist, and Karen Deveney throughout this whole process. I feel like (until recently) my symptoms were not taken seriously and everyone was waiting for my body to heal naturally. I feel I was bounced around between my doctors as no one knew exactly why my body was not responding like it should. It was not until very recently that I have had some more significant tests done, and received some more attention. It's been a really long year, extremely exhausting both physically and emotionally. There have been several occasions that I've contemplated checking myself into the hospital to get several days of pain medication and rest.

My abdominal problems have affected my ability to work, to be a father, to be a husband, and to maintain any semblance of a normal life. Lingering effects of my abdominal problems have left me unable to do many “normal” things like: walk a mile, sleep eight hours straight, sleep on anything except my back, stand up for more than ten minutes, ride my bike, leave my house for any extended period of time, or eat greasy food. During an average night I'll wake up about four times with either with stomach cramps, or a sense of urgency. In the eighteen months since surgery I have had only two major vacations, both only two days long, and both very difficult. Often simple tasks like shopping, watching my two year old son while my wife works, or mowing my lawn prove to be too much and require outside assistance. For a young man, and a young father these are very hard things to accept.

Recently I have been diagnosed as being anemic to the point that my hematologist has given me two iron infusions. Follow up blood test results have been inconclusive due to abdominal inflammation. I also have had a negative reaction to Cipro that caused my Achilles tendons to become extremely sore, and gave me crippling IBD related arthritis for almost three weeks. I seem to be resistant to standard pouchitis treatments as most of the medications (see attached list) prescribed have little or no effect. The only medications that seem to have any effect on my quality of life are Hydromorphone for controlling cramping, and to a lesser extent Hyocyamine combined with Lomotil. I've taken a lot of medications, and few have any noticeable affects. I'm concerned about the amount of Hydromorphone (2 to 4mg a day) I have to take to maintain any semblance of functionality in my life.

I have had abdominal x-rays (of the small bowel and pouch) and a biopsy done of the pouch tissue. The abdominal x-rays did not show much, and the biopsy results are not back yet. I am at the point in my life that we need to start making some serious decisions so that I can get my life back on track. I am open to anything that can improve my quality of life! I have been miserable the better part of the last eighteen months and I do not know how much longer I can do it. My wife is four months pregnant and I do not know if I will be physically capable of handling a second child if things continue they way they are.

I feel like I have very little control over my life, and my health. I'm constantly trying new medications and waiting another six weeks for my next follow up. Specialists like you and Karen are extremely hard to get appointments with. I'd like to establish more consistent and ongoing follow up. I'd also like to establish a long term plan to address my quality of life concerns. Can you work with me to establish these things? Do you feel you are the appropriate doctor for this?

Scott Baker

Yay a new doctor!

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:55:47 GMT

Today I had an appointment with a gastroenterologist specialist. I've been referred around to lots of doctors so to be entirely honest I wasn't expecting much. I have a feeling we're eeking closer and closer to another surgery and permanent ostomy. Fortunately, this new specialist really came at my situation from a new and aggressive angle. She had a lot of interesting ideas, and an interesting new perspective.

I basically explained that my quality of life is nowhere near where it should be, and that with Angie being pregnant I am worried about being able to handle another kid. The doctor told me two things that really stood out. The first was that she was surprised I was able to still work after everything I have going on, and the second was that she was pretty confident we could get things squared away in one form or another by January when the baby comes.

She immediately scheduled three tests (done during the visit), upped my medication, gave me a new prescription, and scheduled me to get a pouch exam by the end of the week. So I'm hopeful we're at least making progress in the right direction.

A man a plan a canal, Panama!

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:06:14 GMT

Weird Al has an entire song in palindrome? Rawk!

Science Fiction Humor

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 03:13:01 GMT

Heh. The next Futurama movie is going to be called Bender's Game.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:01:00 GMT

Watchmen is coming to theaters in 2009. There is no doubt that this is my favorite graphic novel of all time (The Sandman books are a close second), so when they announced they were making a film I was skeptical.

The graphic novel is 12 comics, about 28 pages each. That's 336 pages of dense content to try and convert to a two hour film. It will be a very tall order to get it into a film, but the trailer they've released looks phenomenal. Hopefully they can pull it off!

As a way to generate a little buzz they've released some Watchmen Motion Comics which are video recreations of the actual comic pages. It's pretty badass, I recommend it if you're a comic book fan.

No more annoying logins!

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:03:25 GMT

spot totally fixed a long running annoyance with LogJam today. It used to warn me almost every time I started up, "you haven't logged in X days, continue?" I could never figure out what it meant. Was I supposed to change my mind about logging in if it had been more than 3 weeks since the last time? Well spot added a configuration option to have it not warn me. Oh happy days.

Stupid marketing

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:54:59 GMT

Yesterday I bought some shaving cream.

I hate buying men's shaving products because they always have to make it sound so high tech and important. I bought Edge Shave Gel and my options were: Power, Energy, and Vault. I just want to shave without cutting myself! What the heck is "vault" anyway. Am I locking my facial hair away?

Reading backwards!

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:10 GMT

The more emails I get, the more people I see top-posting and it drives me crazy! It's totally counter intuitive to how we normally read. When you reply to an email and you quote the original email you should put your reply under the quoted section. That way when I get the email I can read all the previous replies in order (top to bottom like a book) and THEN see your response. It's just logical.

Instead I get all these top posted emails with three pages worth of back story to read. So I have to scroll all the way to the bottom to start reading. I read one paragraph, and then scroll up to read the next reply, and then scroll up again... Ugh! People don't read that way!

I <3 Spam

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:29:01 GMT

Scott Stevenson: This came from spam: Madonnas Former Home Destroyed By Jesus

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:04:35 GMT

Vanity Fair through up a little parody of the now infamous Obama New Yorker cover. Bush over the mantle, pill bottles in hand, and the Constitution in the fire. I'd say they parodied them point for point :)

I <3 Joss Whedon

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:50:01 GMT

I still contend that Firefly was the greatest science fiction show of all time. So when I heard Joss Whedon had a new show online called Dr. Horrible staring Neil Patrick Harris I got pretty excited. It's a musical and quite funny. I highly recommend checking it out. Joss Whedon hasn't steered me wrong yet.

Childhood reimagined

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:35:34 GMT

Mad magazine cracks me up every month... This month's jem was a little something called Calvin and Jobs.

That's a lot of Benjamins

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:19:39 GMT

"If you had a padded expense account that allowed you to spend $1 million dollars a day on whatever you wanted, it would take you 1,918 years to spend as much as we've spent on Iraq and Afghanistan through March 2008 (approximately $700 billion)." - Iraq Insider

It's the economy, stupid

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:12:26 GMT

"Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain’s chief economic adviser and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the benefits of success in Iraq dwarfed the $150 billion annual cost. He also said that if the war and the personal and corporate tax cuts that Mr. McCain advocated added to the federal deficit and debt, so be it." - New York Times

Our national debt is skyrocketting, our economy is in a near recession, gasoline is $4.27 a gallon and we shouldn't worry about the budget? We shouldn't worry about the Iraq ware? A war we can't win? And please won't someone think about those poor corporate giants and the tax cuts they can't afford to lose.

*sigh*

Useless Trivia

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:46:52 GMT

Did you know the theme song on The Daily Show has a name? Ya me either! Apparently it's called "Dog on Fire," which makes no real sense, so maybe it does make sense.

Comedic Siblings

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:41:25 GMT

I'm talking to my little brother on IM today about how my colon (or lack thereof) is driving me crazy lately:

Daniel Baker: that what you get for getting the brains
Daniel Baker: i mean look at hawking
Daniel Baker: i bet he has an extremely good looking younger brother
Scott Baker: HAHAHAHA

Parade!

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:53:42 GMT

It's July 4th and we're at the parade!

Infinite loop!?!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:44:31 GMT

Is this some artifact from a terrible translation or something else!?!

Vega, known as Balrog in Japan, is one of the bosses of the Street Fighter fighting game series.
Balrog, known as Mike Bison in Japan, is a character from the Street Fighter fighting game series.
Bison, known as Vega in Japan, is a video game character created by Capcom.

Wikipedia could just be incorrect, but that seems unlikely.

Free cutlery!

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:23:43 GMT

I was mowing my massively overgrown side yard today and I found a machete! I've never owned a machete, so I'm not quiet sure where it came from. The area was highly overgrown with weeds, but after a quick mowing it looks pretty decent now. Plus I got a free machete out of the deal!

Epic Fail

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:12:13 GMT

This is how my conversation went at Fred Meyer yesterday:

Me: Gabe what kind of band-aids do you want? They have: Batman, Spider-Man, Scooby Doo, Diego, Dora.
Gabe: I want the kitten ones!
Me: What? What kitten ones? There are no...

About that time I look at the end of the row... Hello Kitty band-aids.

Gabe: *points* I want the kitten ones
Me: Really? You don't want Batman or Spider-Man? I think you should get Spider-Man!
Gabe: Kitten ones!
Me: *sigh* You're killing me kid...

Now we're the proud owners of bright pink Hello Kitty band-aids.

Like printing money

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:02:31 GMT

Nintendo sold 426,242 Nintendo DSs last week. That works out to approximately 42 DSs per minute.

That's crazy!

Dancing Matt

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:40 GMT

I'm not entirely sure who Matt is, but he's got some great dance moves, and he's been to some really cool places.

I recommend the HD version.