A story from the Heart...

here's the story:

I was working yesterday (@Dell) answering calls. I stood up to pose a question to a co-worker. I literally took 6 steps from my desk to his, when my heartbeat shot sky high,at least 130+bpm, I had intense pressure in my head/ears, became disoriented and collapsed into a chair. I was still conscious the whole time, so they helped me up and I laid on the floor in another room. After about 30 minutes (and several vital sign tests) my BP was fine, but my heartrate was still elevated (between 100-129) and they couldn't get it down. My boss (and the nurse on site) decided that I needed to go to the Hospital, so I went to Southern Hills (don't EVER go there if you have a choice!) where I was stabbed in the arms numerous times by nurses (who seemed like they could care less), while trying to draw blood, AND get an IV (at the same time!). My arms look like I'm a junkie...it's awful. After 6-8 hours, I was put into a room on an abandoned floor (4th, used to be Labor&Delivery), in a room with little heat, no telephone, and I left my cell charger in my bag (which I didn't have with me).

They ran me through the gamut of heart tests (EKG, Stress Tests, Echogram). I was hooked up to these weird little boxes that looked like a reject Gameboy from the late 80s. Oh, they also gave me nitroglycerin, which gave me a killer headache. Doctor told me that all tests came back negative. My heart is perfectly healthy, my BP is excellent, but that I need to lay off the caffeine. Once burnt, lesson learnt. All I had to eat was some really gross hospital food, a pack of RANCID saltine crackers, and Sprite.

By the end of it all, I left the hospital around 8 pm on 2/24. Took a cab back to Dell (Dell policy wouldn't let me drive myself to the hospital), got in my car, went to Hardees, promptly ate a bacon cheeseburger to reward myself for the torture that I just endured, arrived at home, found my cat (who had been locked outside since I left for work the day before), crawled into bed and slept.

What am I doing now? Preparing to go back to work, as soon as I set up an appointment with my primary care physician.

Winter of 2010

Troy and Wynter had fun sledding in the front yard. The yard was completely frozen over and was a great place to sled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X56sq2NZNA

Here are some pictures of the event.

Troy at the Christmas Parade

Troy and I attended the Cool Springs Kiwanis Club parade today, in Franklin.

    

Fall 2009

My apologies to all the family and friends that read this blog. We haven’t updated nearly as much as we would like to.

Please enjoy the following pictures of Troy and Wynter as they have been enjoying the fall leaves and weather!

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I made them a “Formula One racetrack” in the yard, with all of the fallen leaves. They ran around in it for at least 2 hours, and had a blast!

MVP Award 2009

Well, I just received notice that I won the MVP Award for 2009! This is pretty exciting stuff and is a nice little bit of extra sunshine, in our otherwise cloudy day to day existence.

We’re preparing to move back to Franklin, TN after living in South Carolina for 2 years. There is just no job opportunities here for me, but their are plenty back in Nashville (which is weird because that’s exactly why we left Nashville).

Hopefully this will be our last move for a while, because I’m sick of moving. It really bites.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of Troy and Wynter:

MVP Summit 2009 and more!

It’s been a while folks. Sorry about that.

The MVP Summit was awesome. It was totally rad to sit down and have deep discussion with the Zune team for two days. I learned a lot. None of which I can disclose at this time, as I’m bound by NDA, but know that Zune is in for an amazing year.

I’ve met with the team a few times, and I can honestly say that everyone on the team has such great energy and genuine excitement over the release coming this year. We’ve got some great things coming our way. The fruit should watch out.

Aside from the amazing Summit experience, I also found out that I did not get the job at Red Hat, much to my dismay. Apparently 5+ years experience with Linux isn’t enough for a Level 1 tech support position. Actually it probably had more to do with the fact that I’m not local to Raleigh, and they didn’t want to pay relocation expenses.

Hopefully something better will come along. Being under-employed kinda sucks.

Here are some pics of the kids at Marbles museum in Raleigh, NC.

New job on the horizon?

Well, it’s been a long a difficult time for our little family.

For reasons beyond my control, I had to resign from my job at Mack Molding back in October (right before the crap hit the fan with our country). Granted, it was either resign or be fired because they decided to downsize.

I’m happy to announce that I do FINALLY have a job interview with Red Hat (Linux software company) in Raleigh, NC. I’m hoping it goes much better than it did last time. My last interview went well until around the 3rd hour. I wasn’t given any lunch and hadn’t eaten anything all day but a lousy bag of peanuts on my flight from Nashville to Charlotte. When the HR Manager came around (she wasn’t very nice to me anyway) I was a little snippy.

This time will be better, or at least I hope so.