HeadphoneAddict

Happy Birthday!

First off, I posted this because I'm proud of him. Also, I did say I survived the rivalry with my brother (and we were better off at diff schools). And I said nothing about denying him his dreams.

So, my son wants to go to CSU in Fort Collins like his mother, to study Biomedical Sciences (pre-med). Tonight he got an email offering him one of the 72 slots for freshmen in the program. It's gonna be strange with his sister going to a rival school, CU Boulder (Go Buffs, Go Rams, Go Buffs, Go Rams!). At least there's only one year of overlap before she graduates. I had dreams of them sharing a car and apartment for that year, but CU Boulder would make him live in the dorms his first year anyway, so part of that plan wouldn't have worked. I went to Texas A&M at the same time that my older brother went to Texas University (we Aggies can't call it University of Texas). We would have killed each other if we went to the same school and lived together, and we survived the rivalry, so I suppose our kids will be fine too.

I could not find a way to limit bandwidth other than installing an app on their computer. Here is a fix to adjust the priority of packets for non apple routers limit roommates bandwidth or block sites or set time restrictions limit roommate continued and parental controls for linksys I don't know that you can do that with an an Apple airport extreme, but you can set it to cut off their internet during hours when you know they wont be home. In Airport Utility you select your router and choose "edit", then go to "network" and choose "timed network access" and crate a new rule where you enter the user's MAC adress and select only certain hours for when they are allowed to have access to the internet. It should cut them off when the time is outside of the hours you select as being okay, so if they work from 8-5 each day you can have their internet turn off when they leave and disconnect Netflix. Oh, and you can ask your roommate to change their netflix settings for a lower quality stream that uses less data per hour of video streaming. Or take away all internet and remove the charge from their portion of the voice/data/TV bill. LASTLY, you can flash a new firmware onto a decent router, that actually lets you set the roommate's bandwidth at their IP address to something like 1mbps or whatever you want. It looks complicated to me - how-to-reliably-limit-the-amount-of-bandwidth-your-room-mate-or-bad-office-colleague-uses

How will you dispose of the old one? Don't throw it into the landfill!

Happy belated Birthdays! Sorry I wasn't paying attention.

I'm sticking with my HE-60 and just upgrading the amp later.

We just bought a Tempur-pedic Prima hybrid coil mattress with Ergo+ base and had it delivered last week. We slept on it for the first time Friday night, after I went home from the hospital. I started with this bed already having low back pain, so I had to see the chiropractor twice this week to get the back pain in a better place for evaluating the new bed. It's a bit firmer than our old generic 10" Thera-pedic memory foam mattress, so I don't sink down into a warm soft trench that I can't roll out of (like before). The old mattress didn't support my low back, causing my back to be in a similar hunched over position while laying on my back as if I was hunched over a computer desk. Now I can roll onto my side, but still not have hip or shoulder pain on my side. I'd like a little bit more low-back support for when I elevate my feet, so I stuffed a memory foam pillow back there last night, when I raised the feet or head of the bed. If this doesn't work out then we're considering the Tempur-pedic with the adjustable air bladders. Also, the Ergo+ base moves you head farther away from the headboard and night table when it's raised, while the $500 more expensive vibrating base keeps the head of the mattress up against the headboard when elevated. So, while we don't need vibration, we'd like to not have a huge gap between the mattress and headboard when the head is elevated. If we upgrade the mattress we might do both - we have 4 months to decide for 100% credit towards the more expensive bed. Has anyone had experience with this bed or the one we're considering if this doesn't work out?

I dropped I dropped my Oxycodone dose from 10mg every 6 hours to 5mg every 8 hours and feel a bit better. Brown sugar and maple syrup flavored Malt-o-meal helped too. I missed out on the free sponge bath at the hospital since I went home early, and the wife was like "Nah..." So I washed myself up this AM and had my wife drop me off to get my hair cut and washed while she shopped. Can't wait for a hot shower in 2 weeks when the staples come out.

I skipped this thread for months and wish I hadn't read this. Not your fault but it gave me flashbacks of both of us screaming from within the car after impact, and I didn't know I was crying while reading this for the first few minutes. Still not your fault but I'm never coming back in this one again.

Today has been a tough day, not so much for pain but an upset stomach and nausea from the pain meds, and a empty feeling in my pit that usually goes away with food or antacids. Have had some chills and a headache, but no fever. Going to bed soon...

I may be their first patient to go in for an "exchange nailing" of the femur rod who went home the next day. Sayonara Swedish Medical Center, hello home with my new tempur-pedic bed... The doctor, physical therapist, and occupational therapist saw how well I was doing moving around, and cleared me for discharge. My fracture doesn't hurt anymore, but boy am I sore around the incisions, with tender and stiff muscles all around my upper leg! So, I get to double my dose of Oxycodone for the next several days. Can you say Buzz?

I brought my JH13 with me to the hospital and haven't gotten to use them. Sigh....

Hey gang, So, I woke up in post-op recovery about 4 hours ago. I'm having much better pain control than the last few leg surgeries. I've got a 1mg/hour morphine drip and can push a button to get an extra 1mg every 10 minutes, but only need it like every 30-60 minutes. The doctor says things went really well, and if I hadn't swapped the old skinny rod in my femur for this fatter one that I'd probably have never had my bone heal. The old rod wasn't very tight inside the bone anymore, and I was wobbling around on the rod, basically re-breakng any bone that would have been healing. i was very scared to have a fifth surgery after the accident, but I'm so happy that I did. I'll likely go home Saturday, but I'm hoping that if my pain is under control and my weight bearing with physical therapy goes well today that I could go home tomorrow (30-40% chance if I push hard).

it could still ignite... Poof!

So I'm heading up to Denver to spend the night before surgery, since my checkin time for surgery is 5:30am and I'd rather make the hour and a half drive tonight. Thanks for the prayers and well wishes.

Swapped out my car tires and wife's tires on Thursday, my son's tires on Friday, and my daughter's tires on Saturday - good thing all I had to do was load them into the car and my son and the car dealer or tire place did all the real work (hauling up and down to basement and mounting them). Got to visit my daughter in Boulder and buy her groceries and lunch while Discount tire did her tires. Hadn't seen her in month, so it was really nice. We even picked up Grandma and brought her to lunch with us, and then took her to dinner at PF Changs. Then went shopping today and spent almost $5K before the Broncos game.

Still waiting for approval from my health insurance company - they made me wait 9 months to do anything else because their guidelines say it's not a "non-union" until after 9 months. So they better not give us a fight over this.

Just DIY mod your HD800 if you aren't happy with them. When I wanted a Subaru WRX and they didn't sell them in the USA yet, I turned my 2000 Impreza 2.5RS into a WRX, with a 240hp turbo kit, and KYB AGX struts, Tein S-tech springs, and Stromung exhaust. And I blogged about it, getting Subarus attention. When the WRX came to the USA the next year, Subaru invited me to the Detroit Autoshow and the Ride and Drive event at Firebird Raceway, to blog about the new car. But they didn't let people upgrade their Imprezas to a WRX. It looks like Sennheiser also noticed people blogging and posting about Hd800 mods, and fixed some things, but they don't have to retrofit the previous model.

21 staples for drinking age - and serious about the spoiler tags? I can edit if I have to...

At least this time I wont be going under anesthesia right after a huge trauma. I found a couple of sharper photos of our car after the accident. The right side has no doors because they had to use the "jaws of life" to get me out. The front end was entirely caved in and flat, and the dashboard came into the passenger compartment by several inches so we didn't have room for our legs to stay intact. Combined impact speed was about 100mph between the two vehicles. More nasty photos I couldn't post until the case was settled - my right knee and left ankle postop.

Thanks everyone. This has been a really tough time for us. Sometimes just having to make the hard decisions, or having choices forced upon us, is as painful as the physical sequelae we're experiencing. So much is going on that it's hard to go with the flow - I have think 5 steps ahead like playing chess. I would have preferred to just try the simple outpatient procedure of removing the lower screw in my femur rod/nail, so that my upper femur could settle down further onto the lower femur at the site of the fracture, and we'd know in 4-6 weeks if it was successful. That was the second option presented to me by my doctor (rod replacement was 1st), but it was less invasive and less dangerous with me having only one working lung - it could keep me from needing the more invasive and expensive procedure. But my health insurance company would likely make me wait 8-12 weeks after the simple procedure before allowing them to replace the rod if this failed, pushing the $50K surgery out to 2016 with a new $3K deductible and another $5K max out of pocket. We've already had to meet our deductible for 2014 and 2015 for this accident, and don't want to pay it a 3rd year in a row for the same injury/accident. As I waffled over this decision my surgeon invited me to go to Vegas with him because it would still be gambling but more fun.

Well, I'm over 10 months post accident, and I need to have another surgery next week on my left femur which still has not healed (this will be my 5th surgery total for the accident). It's called a non-union fracture after 9 months. I'm still stuck using a wheelchair around the house or the mall (or CanJam) and crutches the rest of the time. In August my local doctor took me off all non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (ALEVE, ADVIL, MOTRIN) because they can delay bone healing. I also had to stop taking the Tamoxifen that controls my fibrosing mediastinitis, as it not only reduces the scarring around my left lung but can also reduce bone healing. Since that time I've gone downhill big-time. I lost strength and mobility due to the pain, and then developed muscle wasting and muscle spasms, with more severe pain as a result. Now simple movements can take my breath away and Vicodin no longer works (was limiting myself to only 2 a day, so I shouldn't have gotten used to it and I have no other symptoms of too much opioids). I went to see the original surgeon after all this, and the bone is in the right position and there is no "varus deformity" like one other doctor suggested. He says this happens to 4 out of 100 people, and that once people with this problem get to this point (non-union with muscle loss and spasms) that there is no going back without surgery to exchange the rod in the femur with a thicker rod, reaming out the bone marrow cavity more to stimulate growth. I could have just one of the retention screws in the lower part of the rod removed, to allow my weight to settle the upper bone further down onto the lower part of the bone, but there is only a 60% chance of success with this simple outpatient procedure. With the full "nail" replacement he says I should be walking without cane or crutch in 6 weeks. Plus, I've met my $3K deductible and $10K max family out of pocket expenses for 2015, and there's no point in delaying this to 2016. We'd love prayers over my left femur (and my daughter's right ankle which will need a 4th surgery as well). PS: McKenna has Avascular Necrosis of the right Talus bone, and will need an ankle fusion, but has decided to delay that until she graduates from Duke in Dec 2016. She took off school for 6 months, and did physical therapy with me. Then she took her wheelchair to a 2 month law internship in Portland over the summer, and was only home for a week before she left for semester abroad in Nepal in August. She is now in Amman Jordan until November, and then in Chile in November-December. She goes back to Duke on Jan 2nd for 12 months. She figures she'll have 9 months between graduation and starting law school to recover from the fusion in January 2017. She has 2 plates with dozens of screws in her left ankle which seems to be healing well, it's just the right ankle that's not allowing her to be fully weight bearing. She uses a wheelchair more than 50% of the time still, and is on crutches the rest of the time. Neither of us can walk without assistance. I found her a decent 23 lb chair with knobby tires so she can get around. We'll buy her a car in December since hers was totaled, but we're all afraid to drive it to North Carolina in December, 12 months after we were hit head on in an ice storm. So we'll likely have to drop $1000 to ship it. We want to buy and license it in Colorado to help her maintain residency here for law school, as she wants to come home for that. We found her a studio apartment about 1 mile away from Duke that's accessible, althogh about 50% more expensive than we had budgeted before the accident. The guy that hit us only had $25K per person of insurance, minus legal fees. I had a bit more insurance for underinsured motorist, but after medical bills and lawyer fees about half of that will never reach us. Still, McKenna's share will almost pay for her 3 years of law school. I'm using my portion to pay off my wife's student loans and our 4 cars, buy McKenna a car, and pay for her and her sister's last year of undergraduate school. I still have to set aside some for a medicare trust, in case this needs future medical care. I didn't want to post more until the releases for the insurance companies were signed today.

I'm still loving the strap on my new Tudor Black Bay, much more than any bracelet. However, I do think my GMT II and Explorer II look best on bracelets.