That is great news!

Although I am no longer considered a cancer patient, I am now considered a stricture patient. The stricture I have was caused by scare tissue in my esophagus from the surgery that I had back in June which removed all the cancer. Since the surgery I have had several dilations and 2 stents due to this stricture.

The last stent was taken out 4 weeks ago and I have started to have trouble swallowing again. It started on Thanksgiving and has been consistent since then. I had a barium swallow yesterday and it confirmed that there is a narrowing of my esophagus where the surgery was at. No cancer, nothing like that, just scare tissue.

I am having another stent placed on Thursday

So I am no longer battling cancer but being inconvenienced by 1 cm of scare tissue. Yes, just 1 measly centimeter of tissue. It may not sound like much but it does make a difference. The standard esophagus is anywhere from 18 to 25mm and mine is about at 6-7mm at the stricture point right now. What that means is that I am basically on a liquid/mushy food diet right now.

The Real Issue

The real issue here is that putting stents in and taking them out every 6-8 weeks is not a viable long term solution. What we are doing is buying some time, and space, that will allow us to do some research and let me eat normally – for now.

What we really need is a long-term solution.

The issue is that there is no textbook answer for what to do in this situation. Dilations work for some people – they do not work for me. Stents work for some – not me. Another surgery has not been ruled out but my wife, GI doctor, and I really want to go down that road if it can be avoided.

So we are doing research.

We are trying to see what other solutions their might be out their for a tough-throated person like me. We are only one day into looking into it so we do not have any viable solutions at this time. The internet is wealth of information though so I am sure something will pop up sometime soon. W also have our awesome GI doctor as well looking into solutions.

Still Thankful

Despite not quite being done with the after affects of dealing with cancer I am still thankful for where I am at. This issue is not life-threating but it is inconvenient. I can deal with inconvenience. Really, I can.

I believe that we will find a solution and that this will no longer be an issue. It is just going to take some time like everything else in life.

Thanks again to everyone for their support while we work this out. 

Well now you can.

Right over to the right hand side I have a whole bunch of little icons linking me to the rest of the world. So if we are linked up in one place now you can link up with me in other places as well.

See you around the social arena!

P.S. Here are the links also:

I am not currently looking for a position but as soon as I get the good results back from my PET/CT scan next week I plan of starting to look. My energy has been great and I am expecting that it will continue to stay that way.

If you know anyone that is looking for a web or software product manager I would appreciate you giving me an honorable mention .

You can see my resume on the resume page here.

The first you may notice is a new design or what we like to call in the blogosphere as a “theme”. I would like to take credit for the design but unfortunately I did not design it. Cozmos Labs did and I think they did a great job. I made some enhancements here and there for my liking.

Another change that I did to the site was to eliminate the  daily Twitter rollup posts. They were kind of redundant and annoying so they are all gone. You can see my tweets in the column to the right if you are really that much into Twitter.

The last thing I did was to add my resume as a page again since I will need to be getting a job here in the near future. It is kind of up-to-date in that it is the resume that I used to get my last job. It does not have my last job that I had for a whole 7 weeks on it though. The reason for this is long and irrelevant to probably everyone in the world so I won’t bore you with the why. I will say that I will update it soon.

Enjoy the updated site and please let me know if you come across anything that doesn’t work properly.

Command and Conquer played excellent at the highest settings which I was never able to do before. After anialating 3 hard armies I decided to try Battlefield 2. As I was installing the first disk I went to the EA website to download the latest patch which was almost 2 years old. While that was downloading I decided to check out the forum to see if anyone even played it anymore and found people wanted to but that somehow EA was not allowing servers to show up within the game anymore. The whole idea of BF2 is that you play folks online.

The whole reason that I stopped playing BF2 in the first place was EA screwing up the game by releasing terrible patches that would render the game unplayable. I had decided back then that if I was going to purchase any new games they would be Xbox games (I would have to purchase an Xbox as well of course).

EA just reminded me of that previous decision and even though I have a computer that would likely handle current games nicely I won’t be purchasing any from them for my PC. I was interested in Spore but with EA’s patch reputation and the root kit that they install on your machine as a legit customer they are not coming near any of my PC’s from now on.

That is Why I Will Never Buy Another EA PC Game.

Thank you for stepping up and saying “I will”. Thank you for the sacrifice of leaving your family so I can be with mine. I hope God keeps you safe and brings you home quickly. My prayers are with you and your family. Thank you that you may not agree with why you are there but you continue on in Honor anyway.

My thanks go out to the families as well, especially who’s loved ones went, but did not come back.

There are no words that I can give other then I am sorry and that their and your sacrifice is appreciated. I hope their children grow up knowing how how their mom/dad gave the ultimate sacrifice for what they believed in. They should be proud and do all with their lives that is possible because their parents gave so they could have the freedom to be anything they want.

Thank you to our Armed Forces on this Memorial Day. Thank you.

Technorati: Memorial Day, Armed Forces, Thank You, Salute

I scored a 24″ previous generation iMac on CraigsList about a month ago that came with an Apple Mouse and Keyboard. From day 1 the mouse would once in a while scroll up but never scroll in any other direction. This was my first Apple mouse and figured that I was not doing something right so I didn’t mess with it.

I finally got fed up with it and tried blowing it out with my air compressor. I tried the old “Press down on it hard and try to scroll” with no luck. Then I remembered the old school method of cleaning the wheels on the old ball mice and it was with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol.

I did a quick search and saw in the comments of a thread that someone else used alcohol as well. I Tired it myself and it worked!

This is what I did:

• Unplugged the mouse from the computer
• Got some tissue paper and folded it over a few times to make it thick
• I then dowsed the tissue paper with rubbing alcohol until it was saturated
• I turned the mouse upside down and rubbed the scroll ball in a circular motion and back and forth for about a minute

After doing these steps I looked at the tissue paper and sure enough some gunk came out. I plugged it back into my computer and it was nice and peppy!

Note: Some people mentioned using water as opposed to the rubbing alcohol but I think the rubbing alcohol is better because it will evaporate quicker.

Technorati: Apple, iMac, Apple Mouse, Scroll Bar, Tips and Tricks

The reason that I support Barack Obama is his main message – Change. I think the country needs change. I am not proud of it but I did vote for Bush both times and now regret it. He took our country from having pretty good relations with the rest of the world and a surplus of money to the most hated nation in the world and the biggest deficit in our country’s history.

McCain is a little Bush and Hilary is the Dark side of Bill in my opinion.

Obama says what he means and means what he says. He voted against the War in Iraq and is against special interest. He wants to get into office and make things better for people like me – a middle class man trying to take care of his family. Out of all the candidates he is the one who’s beliefs most closely match my own.

While he has a lot of good qualities he is not perfect. I see him slowly caving on getting the troops out of Iraq. I understand the reasoning behind not just pulling the plug on the operation but at the same time I have not heard a precise plan on how and when they will be able to come home. But out of the 3 candidates I believe that he is the one that will eventually bring them home the quickest.

Now on to the email I received:

Dan –

I have some very exciting news.

My good friend John Edwards is endorsing our campaign and joining our movement for change.

We’re here in Grand Rapids, Michigan — and if you receive this message in time, you can probably turn on your TV and be part of the moment.

I’m deeply honored by John’s support. He is a true leader who dedicated his career to improving the lives of ordinary Americans.

John ran a strong, principled campaign for president, focusing on a number of important issues where we share common ground — universal health care, bringing our troops home from Iraq, and eliminating poverty in America.

The way he ran his campaign was also important. He ran in a way that reflected our shared conviction that we need to fundamentally change politics.

Like our campaign, John’s campaign never accepted donations from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs.

Let’s welcome John Edwards to the campaign with an outpouring of the kind of grassroots support that is bringing our political process back to the people.

Make a donation of whatever you can afford now, and if you choose, include your own note to Senator Edwards. I’ll make sure he gets them:

https://donate.barackobama.com/johnedwards

Thank you for all that you’re doing,

Barack

The thing that stood out to me in his email is how he makes a concerted effort to outline the areas that where he and Edwards are aligned – Universal Health Care, Bringing the Troops Home, Poverty, and the fact that both of them do not accept donations from Lobbyists of special interests. I find his final sentence in that group particularly revealing:

Let’s welcome John Edwards to the campaign with an outpouring of the kind of grassroots support that is bringing our political process back to the people.

Hhhmmm, interesting. – Welcome him to the campaign…

How would an Obama/Edwards ticket perform against a McCain ticket? I think it would do pretty good. In fact I think that it would do a whole lot better then a Obama/Hilary ticket. If Obama chose Hilary I would be disappoint because I do not feel that she is aligned with what he stands for and would just bring more of the same into his campaign and Presidency.

I have to be honest with the fact that I am not that familiar with Edwards and what he stands for. What I do know is that he is a previous Democratic candidate contender and people are familiar with him. I think that combing Barack Obama’s momentum along with John Edwards as Vice President can take them all the way to the White House. I would feel completely confident with Edwards on the ticket with Obama.

I am not usually this charged about Politics and this is actually the first post that I have ever done on any of my blogs that is politically based. There is just something about Obama and his message that gives me hope that if he is is elected that he can make things better. I do not get that feeling from any of the other candidates. In fact when I think of any of the other candidates in office I get a sinking feeling that things will only get worse.

I believe that we need change in this country and that Obama is the best candidate to try and get that change accomplished.

OK, political commentary over…

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama,John Edwards,Hilary Clinton,John McCain,Democratic Race,2008 Elections,Vice President,President of the United States

The first was idano.net which I started over 5 years ago. Back then it was a photo sharing site that once my wife and I started to have kids they took it over. Now it is the portal for the idano Blog Network so once again I have been booted from it (it’s my blog network, don’t worry).

From there I setup a freely hosted WordPress blog at wordpress.com. danmasters.wordpress.com is still alive (and semi-active) and I post there occasionally. I never really took off on that blog due to the fact that they do not allow you to do any advertising to make money off of it.

Yes, I am shallow and like to make money from blogging. I started making money almost 2 years ago and have not looked back since. I am at the point now that it is making one of my house payments so that is pretty nice (I want it to make both of my house payments though!).

As much as I like to make money online this blog is not specifically designed for that. The idea behind this blog is that I get to post what I want about whatever I want. If it should happen to bring in money that would be great but I am not holding my breath. I say that with a smirk on my face because very few of the other blogs I have started with the intent to make money. I just started blogging and people came and clicked on ads and that was it.

Anyway, if you are reading this far you really have too much time on your hands, you should really go now. Bye now, see you later.

Photo courtesy of oskay via Flickr.

Technorati Tags: Dan Masters, Personal Blog, Blogging, Blog, WordPress, idano, idano Blog Network