So I got a call from the blood bank last Friday asking if I could come in and donate. Really! Kind of surprising but after the phone screening I was told I could donate. So I made an appointment/reservation for 7 PM. Figured that would be a good time of day, relatively low wait. There are a few flaws in that plan.
- I still had to wait 30 minutes.
- I had to fill out the screening form again
- I had not eaten dinner yet. I would have eaten if I had known it was important.
- The stress of the day made my Blood Pressure a little high.
So I am still trying to pay it forward.
So today as I was driving in the car, I was passed by an ambulance. It kind of struck me just how fortunate I was to not be more seriously injured from my accident. Yup, I am pretty sore, but that is about it. I could have easily broken, tweaked, sprained, torn, twisted… etc something. I could have had a piece of road rash bigger than the dime size one I have.
When I got to the office, I went to the local blood bank’s website. I donate blood hoping that I will never need, but feeling better after that I have done something for the community. I called to set up an appointment to donate, then they asked me the questions about my health. “Are you in good general health and feel well?” I have some bruising from a motorcycle accident. “hmmm, do you have any cuts, road rash, ….etc” So the nurse recommended that I wait until I am recovered before I donate, hopefully a week or two. But then she mentioned that she was happy I called and didn’t need to receive blood. They are in a “yellow” condition which means that they only have four to five days on hand.
So I ask that if you can, donate some blood. Not for a specific cause but for the people we don’t know who need help. I am sure that all communities, near and far can use the help.
Thanks
So today [Sunday, April 12, 2009] at about 6PM it was a nice sunny day and 55F. So I was going over to a friend’s house for some cigars. I decided I wanted to take the motorcycle, the VFR. I then was debating what to wear, it is about 5 miles to my friend’s house. Jacket and Jeans? Aerostich Suit? Hmmm I decided it was ‘Stich weather. I am glad I did…. it did its job about three miles from home.
Damaged Riding Gear - Click for Larger Image
I was going straight and I thought that the SUV coming out to my right was not going to stop at the stop sign. I locked up the rear wheel trying to brake and it slid out and I slid down the road at about 40MPH. It was quite surreal I can remember pretty much the whole thing. I felt the rear end coming around to the left, did I turn to the right? I felt the road hit my right hip. I saw the road coming up and thought, I hope the flip up helmet holds. Make a fist so you don’t break your thumb like your brother did. The flip up held, The fist worked.
I slid down the road and watched the motorcycle keep going on its right hand side. I pick my self up and think am I okay? I think so, do inventory. Everything attached. Thumb there but a little skin scrapped away. People from the SUV come out and check if I am okay. I then notice that they have the spinner hubcaps, I wonder if that is why I thought they weren’t stopping. They call the police so I can file a report, even though it was just me – I figure I need it for insurance. A Yamaha Rider stops and helps me take the bike out of the road and over to the side. I call the L&T Jennifer to ask her to come and grab the camera. The Yamaha Rider helps me take inventory of the VFR. I found out the bike would start and shift. It is rideable. The police arrive and I say, “let me guess license, registration, insurance…” I get all that out. I hand it to the officer and he chuckles and says “I am going to assume that your insurance is good as this card doesn’t take effect until the 15th.” Yup, I swapped it too early. He also commented on how well the gear worked. So after the paperwork is done Jennifer follows me home.
So here is the list of injuries:
- Left Thumb
- Right forearm
- Blackberry imprint on the right leg
- Sore left knee
- Sore right shoulder
- Bruised palm
- Soreness all over
- Pride
My pride is injured as it was most likely preventable, I think I braked too hard.
Complete pictures on my SmugMug account.
With apologies to the Talking Heads, but having been battling with Outlook and Exchange at work with regards to meetings and appointments, I think that Microsoft has really decided that time is an after thought. The problem is that start times on appointments are not consistent; they wander by an hour. Everyone, including IT Tech Support thinks that it is a Daylight Saving Time offset issue.
However I have found a flaw in that ointment, my meetings do not move consistently in the same direction, early or late. In addition the problem occurs whether the event was scheduled before the Daylight Saving Time change. So I can’t just look at the meeting and do the math myself as say, if the meeting is scheduled for 2PM it is actually at 1PM as it does not work the same direction that I can find a pattern with.
Here are some challenges that I have hit recently. Each week I participate in a multi-company multi-time zone conference call. It is scheduled for 9:30AM Mountain Time. Notice how I did not say if it is Standard or Saving Time. That is because I am not sure how to define it, and apparently neither is Microsoft.
Outlook is not clear - Click for larger image
Yes, that image is blurred to highlight the time. Notice how it indicates that the meeting is at 9:30AM Mountain Time within the information pane. The start time shows though as 10:30 AM Mountain Time. Yes, that is untouched by me, just opened the occurrence. So looking at that one would think that meetings would appear an hour later in my calendar.
I can compensate for that if it is consistent. However I have another weekly teleconference once again spanning time zones on Mondays. It is scheduled for 1PM prevailing Eastern Time. However it appears in my calendar at 12Noon. (I am never sure if Noon is AM or PM.)
I also have the same challenge when the meeting is in one time zone and not recurring. I had a meeting with the company president with some coworkers. However all of us had it at different times on the same day. Some were early, some were late.
Now comes the slight twist in here that I have been trying to keep out of the process, the Blackberry. I thought maybe it was caused by the fact that the Blackberry also synchronizes to the Exchange Server and that might be causing problems. So I turned off calendar synchronization while I was troubleshooting this issue with the calendar. It did not make a difference. I decided to turn it back on as it did not have an effect.
It did have an effect but not the one that I expected. The appointment time on the Blackberry would show differently that on Outlook on the laptop. Okay, so this means that one of them would be right one would expect. No such luck, it is also inconsistent. I scheduled a meeting for 4PM and it appeared in my Blackberry at 5PM. I scheduled another meeting for 3PM and it displayed in my Blackberry at 2PM. Once again, one time zone, scheduled and occurred the same day so there were not time changes.
I almost wore out search phrases on Google and Wikipedia before I finally called IT. I spent time with them and still do not have an answer. They tried a Windows and Outlook Patch, but no change. So I am just getting good at confirming the meeting times. I am sure that people think I have no concept of time, I simply reply that I do, my work computer doesn’t. Before anyone says, so how does the Macintosh handle it? So far no problems, but is that the operating system or is that Thunderbird with the Lightning addon?
So I have had a few ideas percolating for a while that I want to include in the blog. However what I have had is a difficult time carving out the time to actually write them. The challenge is that I don’t want to just put up a quickly written no content post, which this one could quickly become, but rather some information, some thought, something that is not just noise in a world where the signal to noise ratio is decreasing.
I realize that my content is most likely someone else’s blather. However that does not mean that I should simply write something quickly and post it up, just to keep the pages filling. I am trying to actually have something well thought out to say. I don’t expect everyone to like what I have to say, I don’t expect all of it to make sense.
I just don’t want the blog to be palaver. Although I am sure it will be at times. I want to actually have content to it. So if at times it appears that it is sitting idle, it very well could be a sign that I am snowed under at work. It could just as easily be that I don’t have anything to say. Or perhaps I could be working on a bigger entry that I want to get complete before posting.
I am also trying to figure out what goes in the blog, and what goes in the static HTML pages.