Personal | Youseph Tanha

Fixing My Arrhythmia

I will be heading down to Seattle next week to fix an arrhythmia of my heart. It was discovered a month ago during a doctors check up here in Juneau. What happens is that every now and then my heart starts beating really fast for no real reason. How fast is my heart beating? Well the doctors have clocked me at over 200 beats a minute. Not the best thing for your heart.

So my heart can go in to over drive for no reason at all. But it also happens just about every time i swallow. Which no doctor I have spoken with has ever heard of happening before. .

The procedure to correct this is called a “Cardiac Ablation“. It’s rather common and no one expect there to be any issues from it.

…ablation is a relatively non-invasive procedure that involves inserting catheters – narrow, flexible wires – into a blood vessel, often through a site in the groin or neck, and winding the wire up into the heart. The journey from entry point to heart muscle is navigated by images created by a fluoroscope, an x-ray-like machine that provides continuous, “live” images of the catheter and tissue.

Once the catheter reaches the heart, electrodes at the tip of the catheter gather data and a variety of electrical measurements are made. The data pinpoints the location of the faulty electrical site. During this “electrical mapping,” the cardiac arrhythmia specialist, an electrophysiologist, may sedate the patient and instigate some of the very arrhythmias that are the crux of the problem. The events are safe, given the range of experts and resources close at hand, and are necessary to ensure the precise location of the problematic tissue.

Once the damaged site is confirmed, energy is used to destroy a small amount of tissue, ending the disturbance of electrical flow through the heart and restoring a healthy heart rhythm. This energy may take the form of radiofrequency energy, which cauterizes the tissue, or intense cold, which freezes, or cryoablates the tissue. Other energy sources are being investigated.

Once this is all over and I am back on my feet I will write a follow up post.

I found the following links to be helpful for me when looking this up on line.

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/services/tests/procedures/ablation.aspx
http://yourtotalhealth.ivillage.com/cardiac-ablation.html
http://www.sjm.com/procedures/procedure.aspx?name=Catheter+Ablation
http://www.hrspatients.org/patients/treatments/cardiac_ablation.asp
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cardiac-ablation/MY00706

The iPod Dice Tower

I have no clue what the HELL came over me or what possessed me to do this. I feel like I had a real ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind‘ moment. You know the scene where Richard Dreyfuss is eating diner with his family, and he uncontrollably starts sculpting the Devils Tower from his mashed potatoes? That’s how I felt! I just saw these two Apple iPod Touch boxes lying around and I uncontrollably starting building a dice tower out of them with a rubber band, an exact-o knife, and some super glue. It took me about 45 minutes.

I have had dice towers on my mind. They seem like a good idea and a sure fire way to increase the randomness of ones dice roll.

After building the iPod Dice Tower and showing it to my weekly Dungeons and Dragons group, the response was not what I hoped for. Everyone seemed very impressed for the first round of game play, but after that everyone switched back to just rolling their dice on the game table.

Here is how you can make an iPod Touch Box Dice Tower

1.) You need to iPod Touch boxes. Not just a top and a bottom but two complete boxes. You will also need an exact-o knife (modeling knife) and Super Glue

2.) You can see how the top iPod Touch box holds the bottom iPod Touch box insides it’s self. The bottom of the box has a layer of foam attached to it which makes for a soft landing for your dice.

3.) Next we are going to be prepping the hard plastic case that held the iPod Touch still in the it’s box.

4.) Being very careful with the knife your going to want to cut the top 3rd of the plastic case off. This will be used as one of the “Shelfs” that the dice will bounce off inside your iPod dice tower.

5.) Here you can see how I have attached the 2 cut off sections of the plastic case and super glued them inside the bottoms of 2 the iPod Touch boxes. One close tot he top and one close to the bottom.

6.) Carefully using the exact-o knife I cut out a square on the top of the box. I also cut and exit hole on the bottom of the same box. Here I am using a rubber band to hold the to bottom boxes together and placed them inside the top of the foam filled iPod Box

7.) Using super glue I attached the last 3rd of the plastic case to the top of the new iPod Dice tower. The whole in the plastic case just happens to the right size for a standard set of gaming dice.

To Be Continued…

Do Dice Matter?

I don’t know. But when I watched the following videos found on the GameScience website it’s hard not to drink the Kool-Aid.

Being a Dungeons and Dragons player, and Dungeon Master, it’s a scary thought to think that all the games you have been involved with have not bin fare. On the other hand, I (and my friends) have had a lot of fun playing D&D and would a set of dice that cost a few bucks more really affect our game play in a positive way at all? I don’t know. If I ever am lucky enough to be at GenCon or find a set of GameScience dice at gaming store I am sure I will pick up a set for myself. But I don’t know if they are worth the price to order on-line and have them shipped to Juneau Alaska.

To Be Continued…

Dink

Dink,

You were great. I will miss you everyday.

Paper Block

paper-block The paper block is just that, a block of scratch paper that you can terror off. Like a 3M sticky note, but no sticky side. Just paper. The paper block has become a key part of my GTD dump process. Someone storms into my office with something for me to do while I am already working on a project. I jott it down on my paper block, rip of the page and put it in my inbox. Then continue on what I was originally working on. Someone calls while I am in the middle of an office memo e-mail, I write it down on my paper block, rip it off and put it in my inbox.

I find it so much better then using sticky notes. It’s so simple and easy.