No, this isn’t another rant about how the media and advertisers are leaving out Christmas from their respective vernacular (heavily, and quite offensively handled by last night’s episode of Community)- its that time of year where I point you back to:

How not to end up in a ditch

As a bonus tip, avoid the ever-relevant “You have received a Hallmark e-Card from ‘A Friend’”, which invariably contains a link to an executable file which promptly installs itself and compromises your computer, AKA Bad news.

Merry Christmas and happy driving!

*ahem* let me start again

After a nice hike through the park and a wonderful dinner including a Colombini’s sub, I fell to the task of getting back to some homework, not knowing what was to come.

The following day, Sunday, I noticed a little bit of red on my arm. I didn’t think much about it until Sunday night, when I could see what looked like poison something and proceeded to ask for some salve that would relieve the itching.

Monday morning started normally, but with some pretty sore/itchy arms. By that point, it had spread to my other elbow and my hip. Everything seemed to be going fine through the day. There was a bit of itchiness, but a quick dab of lotion or vinegar solved that for a while.

Arm at noon on Monday

After lunch, I made my typical trip to school and sat through all my classes and worked on labs until about 8:30pm. I then came home posthaste to make it in time for 24. During one of the commercial breaks, I asked my mom for some more vinegar or something to put on my arm. It was at that point where she noticed that my arm had swollen up like a balloon and you could see the redness spidering out through the veins. It was at that point that I decided a trip to the ER might be best. After I finished watching 24.

I made it to the ER about 10:30pm, chilled a bit in the waiting room, twittering, IMing, responding to some email. When my number got called, a tech checked me over and he told me to go wait out in the waiting room again. I figured that meant I was going to be given something and then discharged.

Noooo.

I got my own room. I sat there from 11:30 or so until 1am waiting in my room. Wondering if they had forgotten about me, etc. Turns out they didn’t, because the first person to see me was another tech who wanted to know if I had a will, who my emergency contact was, etc. Oh yeah, and how I would be paying for the visit.

Eventually doctors and nurses came in checked it out, explained what probably happened, and prescribed what needed to be done. So I waited another hour before someone else stopped by with pills.. then another 1/2 hour before I was given my prescriptions and then discharged. I didn’t make a big deal about waiting so long and it doesn’t bother me since around me, people were potentially dying and whatnot.

I got out of there about 3:00am and drove home.

That’s my story.. perhaps a bit dramatic, but it was definitely.. not fun. The first time I’ve been in the ER since I broke my nose maybe… 10 years ago– besides taking kids from camp and my “friend” at the time because she decided to do a handstand on her chin on the concrete sidewalk… ^_^

Anyways.. if you could keep me in thoughts and prayers.. I would appreciate it. At times the itching/pain/pins and needles feeling is a bit unbearable..

Another picture?

Arm at 11:30pm Monday, almost at its worst (angled slightly so you can see the oooooze)

So yesterday was Monday, I realize that, but I’m only now able to get a wireless connection while we’re here in Orlando. Currently we are making prep to head over to MGM and spend a day of awesomeness there and meet up with Nonalla tonight.

Yesterday, however, we stopped over at Port St. Lucie and visited the beach there.. it really was a blast and by far the best beach I’ve ever visited. The water was quite cold, but after a few splashes, it felt super-warm and the three of us zomgees decided to have fun. In addition to the odd looks we received for being in the water in the first place.. (really, just about everyone there was wearing a sweatshirt) we partook in typical zomgee-ness and … well … you can see for yourself below.

It’s time to annouce the winner of the contest a mere two posts ago. ZePuKa best defined the word “in” without using a word that contained “in” and was, in fact, the only person to do so.

In recognition of her superb rule-following and adequate defining skills, she’s won a $15 gift certificate towards anything from woot.com, shirt.woot.com, sellout.woot.com, or jinx.com.

Without looking at a dictionary or other definition-giving source, define the word “in” without using the word “in” or any other word that contains “in” (inside, within, etc).

So I just added some new categories to the site- Owned and Fail. I’m sure I’ll remove/combine those two later, but for the time being, they’re really the only thing to describe what happened today.

Recently, Pakistan announced that it would henceforth ban YouTube due to it harboring blasphemous videos, ideals, etc. Can you guess what PieNet, Pakistan’s quick-to-act ISP did? Instead of blocking traffic to and from YouTube within Pakistan, it instead rerouted the IP addresses to other sites.

Now in their limited intellect (apparently) they thought that making large scale DNS changes wouldn’t really do much. What they didn’t (or did they?) realize, was that the beauty (shortcoming) of DNS is that it propogates up, down, left, and right.

YouTube ceased to exist for an hour today.

The response? Well PCCW, an upper tier telecom provider, cut the cords to Pakistan.

So thankfully, I was able to see what the hubbub on Google Trends was about with Gary Busey kissing Jennifer Garner on the red carpet at the Oscars.