New Car

Greetings,

I purchased a new car, first new car for me since late 1996.  Decided to go with another Nissan Altima.  The one I drove away with is a 2009 2.5 SL with all of the cool stuff such as Bluetooth, navigation system and leather interior.

We have pretty much stayed with Nissan's and have had very good luck with them.  My father bought his first one in 1971.  At that time they were know as Datsun  My father had that car for about ten years and never really had any issues other than having the engine rebuilt somewhere at about 150 thousand miles.  I will most likely have this one for twelve years like my previous Altima.  Gas mileage is great and with the 6 CD changer it makes it most enjoyable to drive.

Just wanted to share my excitement on my new purchase.

Recovery

I had my surgery today, really yesterday since it is almost 2 AM.  I cannot sleep so I thought I would post.  I am very sore and this is why I cannot sleep.  It went well and I should now in about a week weather or not this was successful.  I can already tell that there is less sensation, but once the pain from surgery has subsided, then I should really know.

I am going to try to go back to bed now to rest.  I have one more day off, and then back to work.

Take care,

Darren

Greetings,

Sorry for not posting in a while. 

As most of you know from my previous posts, I have had pain in my right groin since the removal of my right kidney a little over two years ago.

Last year, I was referred to a pain management doctor and we tried several medications.  Some helped and some did not.  The one that helped had terrible side effects so I was taken off of that one.

Last month I was referred to a plastic surgeon that specializes in this type of pain, mainly from patients whom have had hernia surgery.  The procedure for the doctor first is to try to determine what nerve may have been affected from my initial nephrectomy, so he applied a nerve block last Wednesday.  The nerve block is temporary and it did provide relief for about two hours.  This is good, because the nerve has been identified so from here, more surgery has been scheduled for February 16^th.

The procedure is about three hours long and is considered outpatient, so I go home the same day.  What will happen is the doctor will cut in my groin area where the nerve block was applied and cut the affected nerve and tuck it into a muscle.  Once tucked into the muscle and it heals, the nerve will attempt to grow to repair it’s pathway, but will never be able to as it cannot grow outside of the muscle that it will be placed in.  This is relatively new but they have found that it works well.  I can say that I am not looking forward to the surgery, but I am looking forward to becoming pain free.

Take care,

Darren

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to All.

The Skidmore's

NAS200

Hello,
You may have been wondering why I have not posted in a while. I have been busy and just did not feel like posting. Sorry.

A while back I purchased another NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. This one I researched and found it to be the best on the market for the budget that I had. What I found was the NAS200 by Linksys.

This device is a shell and you have to purchase the hard drives for it. The two that I purchased where Western Digital 500 GB. It was very easy to setup and configure. The configuration that I chose was RAID 1 (Mirrored) so that I have redundancy in case of failure.

Backing up data has been my main concern, but with Windows Vista, there is a problem backing up to this device. The two problems with using the Windows Vista Backup and Restore center is that you cannot complete a "Full" backup as the path to the NAS device is a UNC path (\\server\share). The Backup and Restore Center needs a direct connected drive. I could still use the Backup and Restore center to perform a backup of selected data, but after a period of time, you will need to purge the older backups. When I tried to purge, I could not access the sub folders on the NAS200 device as I would get an "Access Denied" message. I am still looking into this issue.

The NAS200 comes with it's own backup software that I am currently using and it works very well. I did not use the drive mapping utility as I use a log in script generator by Sapien Technologies

Another nice way to backup is to use CrashPlan. Crash Plan works by backing up to another computer such as a second one you may have, or to a friends computer. Likewise, your friend can backup to your computer.

Check out CrashPlan

What I have been listening to

Wanted to share with you one of my favorite guitar players.

Robin Trower - Too Rolling Stoned



Robin Trower - Day Of The Eagle

May 1, 2008

Greetings,

Today would have been my fathers 66th birthday so to my father who is looking down on us today from Heaven, Happy Birthday Dad, you will forever be missed.

Today I had a followup appointment with my pain management Dr. and he does not want to see me for eight more weeks. This is good news, as the pain medicine is working!

More sad news, Since my diagnoses of Kidney Cancer, I found some very interesting blogs from others who have been affected by this disease and one of the fellows that I have been following had passed away on April 15th. Here is the link to his Blog
http://mpablog.typepad.com/david_foster/ May God Bless David Foster and Family.

My daughter Lauren gets her cast removed tomorrow so we are most excited and will do our best to keep her off of trampolines, well, not really, we must let out children be children right? As a child myself, I had my share of broken bones from falling off of a bicycle, running and turning a corner very fast, my ankle snapped, so it is hard to prevent these things as it is part of life. We must trust the Lord to help us along the road of life.

I am happy to report that my only brother and I are getting along better since the passing of my father. It was kind of funny that the day he died, he gave us a ten minute lecture about getting along and his belief of family values, it made us feel like we were ten years old and getting scolded and that memory will stick with me forever. Thanks Dad for all you have done for us!

Until next time, take care,

Darren