Author: Joey deVilla

Me on Thursday, my second day in the ICU.

Hello from St. Joseph’s Health Centre! As I write this, I’m sitting in a regular hospital room, having been transferred out of the intensive care unit a couple of hours prior. I’ve been here since Tuesday afternoon (it’s Saturday now), when I checked in with a 40C (104F) fever, a heart rate of 110 beats a minute while slumped over in a chair and symptoms that looked like a combination of laryngitis, bronchitis and pneumonia.

Here’s what was hanging over my head to my right the entire time: vital statistics monitoring equipment and IV pumps:

Hanging over my head was this sign:

My throat has swollen so tightly that they were worried it would be very hard to intubate me (run a breathing tube down my throat), should it decide to swell even further. In preparation for this sort of emergency,  someone brought a tracheotomy kit into the room.

If you’ve been struggling to come up with a name for your new band or album, you might want to consider “Difficult Intubation”.

Here’s my right arm:

I’m off the IVs now, but from late Tuesday afternoon until about the same time Saturday, some kind of fluid has been been run into my veins: lots of saline, some glucose, and a whole lotta meds, either via syringe or intravenous drip, not to mention a couple of pills including a fair bit of Tamiflu.

And finally, here’s the view I’ve had, looking straight ahead from my bed for the past few days:

Between my being completely out of commission on Tuesday and Wednesday and the ICU’s equipment interfering with 3G signals, I’ve been relying on third parties to let them know that I’ve been in the hospital. I thought I’d quickly bang out this blog post to let people know that I’m still here, but in a much better, non life-threatening condition. The fever’s gone, my heart rate’s normal and my lungs are fine – I still have laryngitis and the doctors are trying to suss out what’s going on with my throat. With some more antibiotics and a little luck, I’ll be out of here soon.

The stairwell at The Wilson 96, a bar on College Street. I caught up with Andrew Burke there earlier this evening, and we chatted over hot buttered rums.
Apparently, this is a Martin Luther quote.

Five Years Ago

Photo courtesy of Tris Hussey.

Five years ago, I was working at Tucows, which was located a short walk away from Corus Entertainment’s studios in Accordion City’s Liberty Village neighbourhood. Corus is home to a number of television and radio channels, one of which is YTV, which is sort of like Canada’s answer to Nickelodeon.

I joined YTV PJs (program jockeys) Carlos Bustamente and Stephanie “Sugar” Beard on their weekday afternoon show The Zone for an installment of musical week where I talked about the accordion, showed them how it worked and played a couple of numbers in a few segments that aired between Spongebob Squarepants segments. The folks at YTV, from the hosts to crew to office staff, were very welcoming and friendly, and I had a great time during my visit.

They gave me a VHS recording of our recorded sessions, and I really should get around to digitizing it and uploading it to YouTube.

Photo courtesy of Tris Hussey.

Five Days Ago

Five days ago, I went to Corus’ new digs, a big new building on the lake (just off Queen’s Quay, between Jarvis and Sherbourne) with a lot more space and even a slide leading from the third to the ground floor. It was a happy reunion with Carlos for another segment on The Zone, and this time I brought two accordions – one for me and one for him.

If you tune into YTV this afternoon between 3:55 and 4:25 to enjoy a little Spongebob, you’ll catch me and Carlos as I talk about the accordion, explain how it works, attempt to teach him how to play The Hokey Pokey, and play a little game called musical roulette where I’m given a random musical genre and topic and have to make up a song on the spot.

YTV were even kind enough to give me a little promo on The Zone’s site:

My thanks to Christina Florio for arranging the whole thing, Sandra Kasturi for hooking me up with Christina, and Carlos and the crew for the great time! I’m always happy to make an appearance on YTV – and hey, when this computer fad blows over, I’m going into kids’ TV.

In case you missed it over the holidays, here’s a pointer to Lifehacker’s list of the best Windows Phone 7 apps, which fall into a number of categories: productivity, internet/communication, location-aware/social networking, utilities, music/media and food/shopping/entertainment. There doesn’t seem to be a games category, but that’s okay – it gives me an excuse to review (and therefore, play) some!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

The Dyson sitting in the corner of my home office.

The Dyson DC25 “Ball” vacuum is a fine example of industrial design and it sucks harder than all three Star Wars prequels put together — but in the good way! Right now, Future Shop and Best Buy are selling them for CDN$450, which is a $150 savings. I never thought I’d spent Christmas present money on a vacuum, but the office and apartment look great!

I don’t exactly what’s happening here, but it looks like Gianni Mirizzi (a Facebook friend of mine – you know, the whole accordion secret society thing) is rockin’ out. Well done, sir!

Here’s a YouTube video of Gianni in action, and there are many more: