Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	January 2019 Surgery and Recovery	38		07/25 02:20am

On the way to weight loss surgery.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Monday, January 28, 2019 - 04:29 pm: Edit

Steve is out of surgery (which went well).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, March 08, 2019 - 09:32 am: Edit

I just got my Penguin Badge for 70 miles since I got my Fitbit.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, March 08, 2019 - 02:00 pm: Edit

Just in case anyone doesn't know this...


Feb 2013 broke my knee and spent six months in a wheelchair. I was told I would not walk again but with the help of Wolf and physical therapy I did.

Oct 2015 Wolf and I were walking a mile every day and I was losing weight.

Nov 2015 kidney removed for cancer. Never really recovered my strength, never walked more than 300 yards after that.

June 2016 cyst appeared

May 2017 cyst now the size of a grapefruit effectively crippling me. Very little work got done in 2017.

Oct 2017 cyst removed. Blood clot forms.

Nov 2017 blood poisoning nearly killed me, clot removed. Recovery was slow and for the next year I rarely worked more than four hours a day.

May 2018 a doctor mentioned bariatric surgery. I had heard of it before and refused, but this time I said "sure, roll the dice".

July 2018 , 5th, met Bariatric surgeon, began three months of medical tests to qualify for surgery.

Oct 2018 , 11th, Leanna injured, surgery delayed

Jan 2019 , 28th , surgery done

Feb 2019: began to wonder if I was ever going to recover.

March 6 2019: said that either I was having a good day or I had turned the corner.

March 8 2019: it was clear I had turned a corner and was getting stronger.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 10, 2019 - 02:31 pm: Edit

Sunday night (3 March) I watched a new episode of a show called BAR RESCUE. This is one of those business rescue shows where the expert and his crew arrive, analyze the problems, retrain the staff, change the menu, redecorate the place, and sometimes spend some money fixing or providing things the bar needs. I rarely go into bars (I am a teatotaller as you know) but as a business man I like the show.

In this first episode of the new season, expert John Taffer goes to Puerto Rico, where he spent his childhood, to rescue ... well more a restaurant than a bar, but they do have a full bar. Here is the back story (not all of which was on the show but I did some digging).

Young man starts in restaurant industry as a child. By the time he grows up, he's a gifted chef with a flair for cooking who comes up with an Asian-Latin fusion menu people flock to eat. He borrows money from his sister and her husband (he is not in the restaurant industry). The young chef opens his own place and is successful until the hurricane happens. The area of town his restaurant is in loses power. The undamaged restaurant is locked up and waits for better days. He isn't paying his rent or the loan payments, but he, his girlfriend (actually a competent restaurant manager), and his sister all get jobs in restaurants that are still open. They apply to several restaurant makeover TV shows and get selected by Bar Rescue.

Taffer arrives seven months after the hurricane. He decides that the menu is fine but the bartenders need a little extra training. He notes that the undamaged restaurant has had electricity for two months but the chef and his posse never tried to reopen. Worse, when the restaurant lost power and locked up, they left all of the food in the kitchen which rotted and turned into cockroach nirvana. (Why didn't they take it home and eat it?)

Taffer pounds on the guy.

Taffer: Why didn't you reopen?

Chef: We didn't have electricity.

Taffer: You have had electricity for two months. Why aren't you open?

Chef: Place is a mess.

Taffer: I'll get a cleaning crew (cost $200) because we're in a hurry but you could have cleaned this up yourself months ago. Why aren't you open?

Chef: Storm damage.

Taffer: Total damage that can't be fixed with a mop is eight ceiling tiles that cost under $100. (Taffer bought them.) Why aren't you open?

Chef: No money to stock the kitchen with food and the bar with booze.

Taffer: You think you're the only place with this problem? You could have gone to the venders and asked for some credit. (Taffer paid to stock the place.)

Chef: We owed the money from before the storm.

Taffer: Did you even ask to see if they would give you a break? You think you're the only place with the same problem? You think they're ever going to get paid if you don't open?

Chef: No, but we owe seven months unpaid rent.

Taffer: Did you even ask the landlord to cut you a break?

Chef: No...

Bottom line, after the hurricane, the chef and his posse were defeated whipped dogs, overwhelmed by events. They had surrendered and waited for some angel to save them when they could have saved themselves.

This hit too close to home. I decided that my medical issues had turned me into a whipped dog and my crew were waiting for me to pull myself out of it (since there is no show called "Game Rescue"). So I called a meeting on Monday, announced that better or not, I was ready to quit being a whipped dog. We all got scratch pads and we all wrote down five (or so) things we could do that would at least be SOME progress until I feel a lot better and can start on CL53.

Every day I told everyone my progress on my list. Every day I asked everyone for their progress on their lists. Every day, we all added things to our own lists and to other people's lists. The lists got very long as forgotten projects reared their monsterous heads, but we prioritized. We got more done this week than I did most of last year.

I don't know if we'll officially start CL53 this next week or the week after, but it will start and then take 3-4 weeks to finish. Then we move on to the next one and the next one.

I know I'm on the right track when a certain employee keeps wailing "You're dumping so much work on me!"

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, March 10, 2019 - 06:02 pm: Edit

Today, March 10th, was the first time since early November 2015 that I walked Wolf 400 yards.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 14, 2019 - 01:02 pm: Edit

Today I was awarded the FitBit Happy Hill badge which is strange since I haven't climbed any hills or even any stairs. Seems to be a glitch (i.e., stupidity) in the 3 axis motion sensor.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 07, 2019 - 07:08 pm: Edit

At Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, pouring rain now and expected all week, no hiking, sigh.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 10:33 pm: Edit

Wednesday was sort of a bust. It rained all day. We drove to Gallup just to avoid being bored, had a nice lunch, and bought some stuff for the sanctuary we would not have had room for on the drive over. The sanctuary was an ocean of mud and other than one brief walk in the rain to feed Kota, the alpha wolf, no hiking except inside the house we rented.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 09, 2019 - 10:42 pm: Edit

Thursday was great. Clear skies. I cut up the meat I brought and we walked the whole sanctuary passing out goodies on what would normally be a fasting day. (Wolves need two days of no food each week to make their digestion work. The small amount we gave them didn't cause any problem.) I worked in the kitchen processing donated meat. I got 5500 steps and Leanna got 6000.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 06:59 pm: Edit

Friday we got up and found it raining cats and dogs. So much for plans to spend the morning feeding wolves. Drove to Grants in pouring rain. Stopped at KFC but they were closed all day for no apparent reason. Went to an old favorite cafe but it was out of business. Went to Denny's but they were closing due to a shut off of their water. Went to Walmart and bought a pack of ham cheese crackers. Awful. Drove an hour in rain to Albuquerque and went to a mall with 20 restaurants. Looked them over and left, went to Longhorn steakhouse and I had salmon (no flavor of any kind) and broccoli (which was raw and cold). Checked into Sheraton but gave up plans to go walk around mall as we were unimpressed with it. Did a lot of walking in hotel hallway. Set a new steps record 6579 with plans to shoot for more.

7065, first time past 7000.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, May 11, 2019 - 05:49 pm: Edit

Saturday: spent the day at the Albuquerque Zoo, Botanical Gardens, and Aquarium. Back at hotel at 3:43 with 12,834 steps, first time past 9000 for either of us.8 dots in a row so far. Going to rest for a bit then go to mystery dinner theatre this evening. Leanna had to convince them to give us child's plates since she doesn't eat much at night, I cannot eat much anyway, and I am allergic to all their adult dinners. Once they figured out we still expected to pay full price they suddenly didn't continue to argue.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, May 11, 2019 - 11:50 pm: Edit

The dinner theater was a lot of fun.

Total steps 14625.

Might get a hundred more moving around the room before bedtime, but no hall walks at 400 steps each.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - 07:43 pm: Edit

I got my London Underground badge for walking 250 total miles since I bought a Fitbit.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, July 20, 2019 - 01:38 am: Edit

Friday I officially joined CRUNCH FITNESS. Monday I meet with my personal trainer to evaluate where I am, set goals, define a program.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, December 17, 2018 - 01:54 pm: Edit

I have said for years that I will sell ADB when the right buyer appears. I'd have sold it ten years ago had the right buyer shown up. Over the years I have talked a few times with potential buyers none of whom had the resources for the deal. Trick is, the only way I can sell out is to sell it all, otherwise I'm partners with somebody I don't control who might do something dumb that gets us sued. I would need enough cash that I would not care if they screwed up and destroyed the company.

The value of the company is not what it's doing, but what somebody with real money could do with the license. (ADB could legally do an MMO but I don't have millions of dollars to pay coders to create it.) And in the end that's the kind of value the company has, the license and the content. Somebody who could pay to film TV episodes or webisodes of all the fiction would be one example of the perfect buyer. Somebody with the money to do an MMO would be another.

Absent some rich visionary the other option is to sell it to someone like me (e.g., Petrick and Jean) who will keep it chugging along as it is until the rich visionary shows up (in which case my cut of that pot of rainbow gold is built into the contract under which I'd sell it).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - 01:19 pm: Edit

I was asked: "Is there an available PDF that includes an SSD for every ship created for the game? Or at least separate packs for each faction (all Federation ships, all Klingon ships, etc.)?"

===================
Answer: No. You can get PDFs of most of the individual product SSD books (and will get them all when we finish their updates).

Sadly, we cannot upload non-updated books without getting trashed in reviews that lower the entire company off the bottom of the charts.

We cannot do one product with every SSD (or a series of products with every Fed SSD, every Klingon SSD, and so forth) for two reasons.

First, we'd have to give away every future product in free updates which means we could never afford to do new products.

Second, It would confuse the heck out of things as players had some "product books" which had ships from many empires and some "empire books" with ships from many products.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, September 14, 2019 - 01:28 am: Edit

Decent flight over in a 777-200. Thanks to Will for making my premium economy seat extra comfy. Nice Thursday night at Marriott. Friday at Sealife Park. I got to pet a Dolphin and Leanna actually rode one. Tomorrow I might have time too see the USS Missouri before we board the Pride of America.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - 10:39 pm: Edit

SATURDAY
Oahu, Too tired to see the battleship went to the cruise ship, lifeboat drill, buffet for dinner.

SUNDAY
Maui, took a bus ride to top of volcano, could not find a virgin to throw in, went back to ship, nice roast beef dinner in main dining room.

MONDAY
Maui, paddled a double canoe in the ocean, lunch buffet, steak in main dining room.

TUESDAY
Big Island, Hilo. Bus to top of volcano, steak dinner for our 42nd anniversary. The boat made us a cake.

WEDNESDAY
Big island, Kona. Took a submarine down to settle on the bottom at 109 feet. The lunch at a local place -- no crab, what the frak? -- the glass bottom boat, waiting now for dinner.

THURSDAY
Kauai, zip line and luau.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, September 20, 2019 - 10:25 pm: Edit

This morning we toured the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, constantly saying "if only Jean could see this."

At lunch we met the couple we went zip lining with and they promised to send videos of myself and Leanna doing that to Leanna's business account. Maybe Jean can find and post them.

Right now we are doing a high speed battle run ... I mean we are taking a casual cruise... down the breathtaking Napoli coast, said to be the most scenic part of Hawaii.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, September 21, 2019 - 10:48 pm: Edit

This morning we had a nice ham and eggs breakfast on the ship, then disembarked and went to a hotel. I caught a ride to Pearl Harbor and climbed all over and through the USS Missouri and a US submarine. I got to see the Arizona. Curiously, everyone on the sub except me was Japanese. When I was on the bridge some of the Japanese women were cranking the deck gun around to aim at something. When I entered the aft torpedo room about six Japanese people 30-70 were standing there; they bowed when I entered. I said domo arigato and climbed out the torpedo hatch, Lots of Japanese on the Missouri. I heard some 50 something guy talking German to his frau. I paused to listen and heard Sharnhorst and zwanzig und ocht centimeter so we stood there on the bridge of the Missouri discussing the refit of the Gneisenau to 15 inch guns. He spoke about as much English as I spoke German but we eventually shook hands and headed in different directions.

Back when I was in the Army I was taught that the greatest weapon of ground warfare was a battleship, you just had to stay within twenty miles of the beach.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, October 12, 2019 - 02:20 pm: Edit

I received my FitBit Serengeti badge for walking 500 miles since I got my FitBit last December.