Saw this stuff for the first time last night at the grocery store — “Spicy Szechwan Kraft Dinner”:
(For readers in the United States, what gets sold as “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese” where you’re from is sold as “Kraft Dinner” in Canada.)
I can’t imagine it being any good, but I feel compelled to give it a try, just once. Maybe at my next grocery run.
The picture below is a very clumsy approximation of what my vision is going to be like for the next little while:
(And no, that’s not my Karmann Ghia. I wish it was, but it ain’t.)
That thing bobbing around the right side of the photo above – the black clump that looks like a bunch of knotted-up string or a very small rotten banana – is my rendition of the floater currently bobbing about in my right eye. The motion isn’t as jerky as the animation shows; it’s much smoother, like a dead ant in a jar of baby oil that occasionally gets shaken about.
The floater appeared last Wednesday. It slowly travelled from right to left and I swatted at it. That’s when I realized that it was actually a little object in my eye.
I’ve got a strong family history of retinal detachment. That’s when the retina – the paper-thin sensor at the back of your eyeball that catches light and turns it into electrical signals to be interpreted by your brain – comes loose. It’s common among nearsighted people, whose eyeballs are stretched so that the lens focuses light in front of the retina instead on on it:
If you’re nearsighted, it typically gets worse as you get older and your eyeball stretches. This stretching pulls the retina taut, making it more susceptible to tears or holes, which let the vitreous (the clear goo in your eyeball) seep underneath, causing your retina to peel away like wallpaper in a sauna.
To complicate matters, the vitreous also shrinks as you get older, and it pulls on the retina as it does so.
Floaters are a sign of possible retinal detachment, so I was a little concerned.
My original plan was to go to St. Joseph’s Health Centre, which is nearby and where they know me – my Mom’s the chief of cardiology there, and my brother-in-law also a cardiologist there. I figured it was best to go to a place where I had a little clout.
My brother-in-law suggested that I go to Toronto Western Hospital instead, since they are a big opthalmology hospital and would probably have an opthalmologist on call. The Ginger Ninja and I headed there, and sat in emergency, waiting to go through the Harry Potter Sorting Hat of triage.
Luckily for me, my mother and sister (she’s a doctor too) decided to come to the hospital. My sister prevailed on the emergency doctor (a PGY1 or “Piggy 1”, barely a couple of weeks into her first year of residence), who was going to send me home and have me come back in the morning. Our family has a history of retinal detachments progressing quite quickly, so the sooner my eye got looked at, the better.
While we waiting in the emergency examining room, I could hear a couple of family arguments in the adjoining areas. Emergency rooms often bring out the Jerry Springer guests in people.
In the end, the opthalmological resident, Dr. Mandell, gave me a full exam – including poking at my eye with a metal stick – and found a couple of small holes in my retina.
“They’re tiny holes, but we can use a laser to seal them so that your vitreous doesn’t leak under them, which will eventually cause a detachment. The vitreous is tugging at your retina a little; I can tell from the tenting.”
I resisted the urge to go all Beavis and Butt-Head and say “Huh-huh-huh, you said ‘tenting’.”
It was after the clinic’s hours, so we had to wait for a security guy to open the locked room where the laser lenses were stored. While Dr. Mandell was going about trying to get his hands on the lenses, Wendy took this photo of me on her phone:
The laser was computer-controlled, and guess what it ran:
“Win2K? I’ve got some Windows 7 discs,” I joked with Wendy. “Maybe I can upgrade him before he comes back.”
The procedure involved my holding my head very still in the headrest. Dr. Mandell held a lens covered with goop to my eyeball, through which he focused a laser to do the retinal spot-welding.
“Keep your head still,” he said. “You don’t want the laser to hit the wrong thing.”
“No, I don’t,” I said in agreement.
All I saw was about ten seconds of a bright flashing green light. Then another ten seconds. Then another ten seconds, after which he said “All done.”
There’s only one thing the laser couldn’t fix:
I was told that it would eventually dissolve…”in weeks, perhaps months.”
It’s only slightly annoying when I’m looking at things that are an arm’s length away or farther. When I focus on objects at those distances, the floater becomes a blurred-out grey region and isn’t too hard to deal with. Reading, using the computer and driving aren’t really affected by it.
However, when I focus on objects close by, the floater comes sharply into focus and it seems as though I’m viewing the world through the aforementioned jar of baby oil with a dead ant floating in it. I noticed this when looking through my camera’s viewfinder. Any career aspirations to become a sniper, astronomer, diamond merchant or anything that requires me to look through a viewing lens will have to be put on hold.
Since I’m going to be stuck with this thing for a while, I might as well have some fun with it. I should give it a name. And that’s where you come in. I’m taking suggestions for names in the comments, and whoever comes up with the best name will get at $25 ThinkGeek or Amazon gift certificate from Yours Truly.
And no, “Floaty” is not a good name. Get creative!
An Annex institution is no more. Mel’s Montreal Delicatessen, a late night spot on Bloor both loved and reviled by residents of this city, has closed its doors. Or rather, had its doors locked by the landlord after reportedly failing to pay rent that was months in arrears.
It started so full of promise and slid into a miasma of laziness, rudeness, incompetence and debt (rather like my deadbeat ex-housemate, now that I think of it). When it opened ten years ago in Pizzadelic’s old location, the food and service were decent; over the years, it became the Amy Winehouse of restaurants: looking bad for its age, barely functioning, somehow clinging to life after all the self-inflicted harm and willing to let just about anyone work in it.
Out of respect for the city of Montreal, that “Taste of Montreal” sign should be taken down as quickly as possible. Montreal doesn’t taste like failure.
I gave up on Mel’s after a streak of incredibly bad service ending with a visit where Wendy, Dave and I sat in their empty restaurant for ten minutes, in full view of the staff, without even being approached. They were lost in their own world, and as I wrote in a blog entry back in 2006, “I’ve seen bathroom mould with more ambition.”
I wonder what will open in its place.
Whether you’re part of the local tech community or a visitor from out of town who’s come in for the FutureRuby conference, you’re invited to the Developer Lunch taking place today at noon at Sky Dragon restaurant in Dragon City Mall.
This is going to be the 14th developer lunch organized by local developer and video-chronicler of local geekdom, Kristan “Krispy” Uccello. They’re not formal at all – there’s no agenda, set discussion topic or presentations – it’s just people who like writing software or who aspire to write software getting together to enjoy a nice dim sum lunch.
The lunch takes place at Sky Dragon restaurant, which is at the top floor of Dragon City shopping mall, which in turn is at the southwest corner of Dundas and Spadina. If you’re a FutureRuby attendee from out of town, that’s a five-minute walk from the conference hotel.
For those of you not familiar with Chinatown, here’s what Dragon City Mall looks like:
Use the elevator or stairs in the circular tower part of the building to go to the mall’s top floor, which is where the restaurant is located. We expect that we’ll be a big crowd, so they might put us in one of the private rooms in the back – if you don’t see a bunch of geeks in the restaurant, ask the waitstaff for the large group of computer programmers and they’ll lead you to us.
It’s dim sum, which means the food will be tasty, cheap and plentiful. Everybody pitches in equally towards the final bill and it’s typically $12/person including tip.
See you at noon!
If you were at last year’s FailCamp, you might remember the best story of FAIL of the evening, which involved warming up some “body lube” in the microwave oven for a little too long, after which hilarity ensued.
Here’s how Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, the originators of FailCamp, describe their vision of the event:
We believe that it’s time to give our personal fail some tough love and talk it out over beer!
Join us for a brief, rousing introduction followed by camaraderie, beer, and show-and-tell. We’ll present a little about failure through the ages, mining your personal suck, maybe some science, pithy quotes from people you may or may not respect, and share some failure stories of our own.
Then it’ll be your turn. If all goes to plan, you may even win in our friendly “race to the bottom” for the most public, most expensive, or most ridiculous Story of Fail.
FailCamp returns next Thursday, July 9th and once again, it’s the warm-up act for Unspace’s Ruby programmer conference (going by the name “FutureRuby” this year), which takes place on the weekend of July 10th through 12th. Just like last year, FailCamp will once again provide a forum for you to share your greatest and most pathetic stories of FAIL, and hopefully how that failure taught you some important lessons and made you a better, wiser, more-careful-with-the-lube person.
Me, presenting at last year’s FailCamp.
Once again, I will be hosting FailCamp. I’ll start the evening with a couple of stories of failure, including a couple of Keyboard Cat-worthy ones of my own, after which I’ll open up the floor to you, the audience, to share your own stories of FAIL. Once we’re all thoroughly embarrassed, DJ Barbi will spin the wheels of steel and we’ll dance our shame away.
There are some tickets left as of this writing:
If you want ‘em, go to the FailCamp registration page and get them before they disappear!
My one-slide summary of how things went terribly wrong in the movie Deliverance
(The link leads to the “Squeal like a pig” scene from the movie – you might not want to watch at work).
FailCamp will take place at the Queen City Yacht Club on the Toronto Islands (Algonquin Island, to be precise). Your printed ticket stub is good for a free ferry ride from the Toronto docks to the Yacht Club, where we’ll have some finger food, the Yacht club’s kitchen and cash bar will be open, and the evening should be full of surprises.
What better way to close an article about FailCamp than the Keyboard Cat video starring “Pinky, Pet of the Week”?
Seen in the window at a shop in Bloor West Village and coming soon to your grandmother’s (or a die-hard Star Trek or M*A*S*H fan’s) house:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
This is what ten dollars got you at Thursday’s Pride Week barbecue at University of Toronto’s Hart House:
It was quite a meal: one beef kebab, one piece of chicken, 4 pork ribs, a slice of bread, roast potatoes, steamed vegetables and salad, all prepared quite well. The Ginger Ninja and I enjoyed it.