Leadership

Calling Bob Rae the best option for the Liberal leadership is like saying Newt Gingrich is the best option for the Republican nomination -- frankly it's more a scathing condemnation of the alternatives than an actual positive endorsement.

Day 15231: Poor Judgement

...like driving. I made a bunch of stupid mistakes today, fortunately none of them had permanent consequences.

Living In The Future

Instead of white boards, we have these:

They look great -- especially the large one in the conference room -- but I find it takes a bit of getting used to, because the first few times your brain thinks you are going to write on the wall instead of a board that is five centimeters in front of it, and you crash the marker into it.

Poor Impulse Control

This is stupid, but I'm going to do it anyways:

One DJ says to another, "Hey, want to go see a movie?" The other DJ says, "I dunno, who's the projectionist?"

— David Mackintosh (@xdroop) January 5, 2012

Hmmm.

Its Amazing What Consumers Want

I got passed today by a BMW X1. This car has to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. It resembles a BMW 328i xDrive Touring, except it has a blunter nose and a slightly elevated ride clearance.

It really is a station wagon for people who'd prefer a SUV.

(Oh, and digging around: in Canada, it's almost $10K cheaper than the 328.)

The Difference Between The Tea Partiers and The Occupy-Wall-Streeters

The message from the Tea Partiers:

We don't think we are getting good value for our tax dollars.

The message from the Occupy-Wall-Streeters:

We don't think we are getting good value from other people's tax dollars.

Post Ablation Report

Hi folks

This should be the last update for a while.

We went through the ablation process last week and had the full-body-scan this morning. The results are that all the right parts are lit up nicely like they've absorbed the iodine and should be killed. The scan revealed a couple of suspicious bright spots in my upper chest, but those are probably just lymph nodes and while they may have cancer they are lit up with the iodine so they should also be killed.

The scan also revealed more thyroidal cells in my tongue than would be expected normally, but again, they are lit up properly. This is most probably because in pre-birth development the thyroid actually develops from the same group of cells that the tongue does, but it is not a concern.

At this point there's no reason to assume that the treatment hasn't been successful.

I'm back on my thyroid hormones and eating normal food again. My energy level crashed during the ablation period, but is coming back, and we should be on track to being normal again for next week.

The next step is to get onto a stable dose of the long-term thyroid hormone and monitor various blood chemical levels. Also there we will repeat the iodine scan in six- to eight-months or so; that will require me being on the iodine diet again for a couple of weeks, then another radioactive iodine dose although not nearly as large as what I received last week. It is hoped that the magic thyrogen drug will be more generally available then and I won't have to go through the hormone withdrawal as well.

If all goes well, there shouldn't be any more intervention-type treatments to go through for this.

I would like to thank everyone for their support over the last while, it really made a difference.