ProfessorTomoe

No need for that right now. Just remember that you've got a willing group of people who are more than happy to jump in and lend a hand whenever things get lean. We're always here. The call came (shock of shocks!). They had a grand total of one surgical spot left in the 2017 schedule - early Tuesday, December 12th. More needles in my back. Joy.

Hmm, nope, no NyQuil on your Amazon wish list. I suppose the paints for all those zombie figures might clear your sinuses.... ;-) This. Project Wish List can be partially reopened again. Made it through last night without suffering shallow breathing (something Dr. Parker warned me to watch for at this level). I did wake up after only 7 hours (3:00 a.m.), though, with the pain relief mostly worn off. The extra hour of waiting was quite uncomfortable, as was the first hour after taking my morning dose at 4:00 a.m. CST. I'm not looking forward to what's going to happen between now (9:45 a.m.) and noon. Right now, the pain relief is acceptable. It's the last hour that I'm really afraid of. Will it wear off again like it did this morning? Also, I'm still waiting for results from Wednesday's blood draw, since I'm out of one of my medicines that depend on the results. In addition, I'm waiting for a call from the folks at Baylor to see if I can get me into surgery for the posterior injections before the end of the year. The tension is high in this one today.

It's plain oxycodone tablets, and he's put me on 20 mg of it 3x a day. Two cats, other allergies already detected and dosed, and this being a single event—figuring it out is going to be damned near impossible. I'll just take what the doctor gives me and hope it gets rid of it.

11:47 CST 20171130. I've seen two doctors in one day (Dr. Konen for pain and Dr. Parker, my PCP, for a rash and blood tests/drug refills). Both were interesting. Let's start with Dr. Konen. He recognized the fact that the hydromorphone wasn't doing the trick. It was either too little or too much, with no in between. He's switching me to (everybody gasp) one of the oxycodone variants, specifically not a long term release one due to my gastric bypass. He's also going to do another series of injections, but from the posterior position instead of caudal. I'm waiting for a schedule on that one. Later on, I saw Dr. Parker and had blood drawn for my quarterly testing. Found out I've dropped enough weight to move down into a lower BMI (yay!). The blisters that I thought were shingles, however, were just an allergic reaction to something. I got a prescription for a shingles vaccination and another for a cream for the blisters.

This.

Tried to digest a serving of chicken cordon bleu. Couldn't get past the first three bites before I got nauseous. Wound up eating the ham and cheese out of the center, plus a couple of bites of the side dish (balsamic coated brussel sprouts and cauliflower. My stomach just hasn't wanted to cooperate today, especially since I lost a filling in a tooth. Got to get that fixed soon.

Only for the distance the projectile travels.

Just found out that the second appointment this Wednesday is a fasting/water only appointment. Not looking forward to that.

One other thing that came with the XLNAudio purchase: I checked with them to make sure my setup was correct. I thought I was supposed to have version 2 of an electro-drum collection, when all I had was version one. An XLNAudio tech manually checked my account and found several items that I didn't have in my account. He updated everything, and I unexpectedly wound up with a bunch of shiny new drum kits and MIDI grooves at my command!

Yeah, but see elsewhere about the demise of my composing software.

They've gone to plaid!

Still here, still kicking my coffee table.

Thanks again for the kind words. I'm glad to hear about the fun experience. I had to shut down the previous thread thanks to our friend Dilaudid and his blurry vision. Anyway, I'm now looking for a suitable replacement. It needs to have these attributes: MIDI equivalency with SONAR Platinum. VST2 and VST3 compatibility, both 32 and 64 bit. Compatibility with iLOK keys and WAVES plugins. Can handle 32GB RAM and booting from SDRAM cards. Compatible with Windows 10 64-bit. Unlimited audio track handling. Multi-threaded processing. NO SUBSCRIPTION PLAN. Basically, it needs to be as much like SONAR as possible, but with no subscription plan (or with a lifetime one-time purchase plan). Can any of you help me do the footwork on finding a compatible program?

@The Old Hack, you and your late friend have my eternal gratitude. That was my first attempt at doing an ethereal soundtrack. Now that I think about it, pretty much every game I worked on was my first attempt at doing a certain genre.

This could go either here or into the "Things that make you sad" thread, but since it's about software I'm posting it here. I've just learned, about a week belatedly, that the software I use to create music (Cakewalk Sonar Platinum) has gone out of production. I've been using this software since Cakewalk for Windows version 2.0, back in 1994. I've gone through a ton of updates and have grown to love Cakewalk, to the point of writing menus for them. Now it seems it's about to go away. I'm going to have to find a crossgrade so I can continue to write. Problem #1: Mrs. Prof. She used the forbidden phrase that I'm "not really a professional musician." I had to bring that conversation to a screeching halt before I did something I'd regret. I'll admit that I'm not a professional writer, sure. Professional Musician? No one calls me that, not even my wife. More to follow.

Bit of an early Black Friday present arrived today. Well, it had to arrive, since it was software, or it wouldn't have been retrievable. I got a couple of items from XLNAudio's Addictive Drums division for music composition. It was one kit and three sets of grooves. The kit is called "Boutique Mallets," a drumset that's been played with both drumsticks and with fuzzy mallets set on the end opposite of the drumstick part. The grooves are groups of editable MIDI filesets: one set designed to go with the drumset called "Mallet Grooves" and a pair of MIDI groove sets called "Funk Beats 1" and "Funk Beats 2" that give just what the titles describe. I've already been composing with them, with a bit of a time out for watching Formula 1 qualifying on DVD.

1:25 p.m. CST 20171125. I now have two doctor's appointments scheduled for this coming Wednesday. The first is with my pain management doctor, to discuss how I should adapt to the Dilaudid and to destroy the erroneous extra hydrocodone prescription that was sent to me the day after the Dilaudid was a month ago. (That's required so I can get my new Dilaudid prescription.) The second appointment is with my primary doctor to examine some tiny blisters that have been erupting in spots on my skin and to get a prescription for a shingles vaccination. That's if I don't already have the early stages of shingles anyway.

This makes sense. Spreading the info among nearly 30 people might be difficult, especially when a Christmas tradition Mrs. Prof and I started might be affected, but we'll try. I would ask Mrs. Prof for a different travel schedule. In the past, we've driven down (she's driven down, to be precise—I just rode shotgun) to Round Rock (a northern Austin suburb) and checked into a hotel. The next day, we checked out, went to Mrs. Prof's brother's property for the celebration, then drove back to Garland (northeast Dallas) and recovered. I don't think I could do that this year, not with Dilaudid in my system, and I don't think she could do it because of how tired she got on the drive back from Grand Prairie yesterday. What I would ask for instead is a three-day trip: day one down to the hotel, celebrations and then back to the hotel on day two, and day three back to Garland. She would reject this because of the cost involved, based on past discussions. Still, I don't see how we'd be able to pull it off otherwise. I couldn't handle the ride, and she couldn't handle the drive. Discussions will follow over the next few weeks.

White miso soup with wakame seaweed and tofu. Good stuff.

Texas Tech beating the Longhorns, thanks to turnovers. AAUUGGHH

You haven't hired those mice yet?

9:15 p.m. 20171124. This has been a bad day—one that might prove that I'm incapable of travel and socializing. We went to have Thanksgiving with my son's wife's family in the middle of the D/FW Metroplex, just on the opposite side of Dallas from where we live. The trip over wasn't too stressful, but I got seriously drained during the celebrations. I wound up falling asleep while I was there.The trip home was a bit better, but I had to take a phenergan tablet for long-term nausea control. My memory is kind of hazy after that. I remember trying to stay awake to get to a proper hydromorphone dose, but instead falling asleep with a glass of tea in my hand and spilling it all over me. I remember being in pain after taking my pills. (Turns out one of my pills got stuck in the coaster I use to hold my pills prior to taking a dose.) If I'm going to do this, what's going to happen if I travel down to Austin for Christmas?

Spread the popularity of Jai Alai! Why is it not an Olympic sport?

12:32 p.m. CST 20171122. I turned 54 since my last update. Don't think it helped. The past couple of days have been difficult. I've been laid out and sleeping for most of the time. Not much to do during the time, but I could have come up with something if I'd been awake. Pain, headaches, and a sore throat have made that next to impossible. Add to that a cluster of little blisters on my right knee that came from who knows where and you can see why I've had trouble with the past couple of days. Geez, one thing at a time, please! At least I'm up today. I'm not very functional beyond checking e-mail and updating add-ons (NoScript is out for Firefox Quantum! Yay!), but I'm going to try and push it. Let's find out what happens.

Very much obliged - thank you!