Thanks to Mike for the link to Kodawarisan Oheya’s step-by-step disassembly of a 12″ PowerBook G4.
Month: February 2003
Well, after taking a couple of sick days, I’m beginning to feel normal again. The anti-nausea and anti-spasmodic drugs the ER doc prescribed for me have been helping immensely. I can feel my appetite coming back as well, eating 2 bowls of chicken and relatively bland stuff (water chestnuts, celery, white and green onions) at Genghis Grill, before dropping my sister off at the airport for her flight home.
Yesterday, for kicks, I got on the scale, and discovered that I had lost somewhere between 7-10 pounds in about 48 hours. I say 7-10 because I generally float within a 5-pound range when I weigh myself.
Plenty of rest has gone a long way toward recovery, and I should be back in the saddle at work tomorrow. For those that knew, thanks for your kind words and thoughts.
And it really, really, really sucks when you end up at the ER at 11:45 on a Saturday night because you’re so dehydrated and you can’t get fluids in by drinking water or Gatorade because you keep puking it up. Two IV bags of fluids, 3 blood samples, 2 x-rays, and 1 urine sample later, we learn I’ve got some kind of nasty virus because my white cell count is over 20,000. This is not a good thing.
I was released about 3 in the morning. After stopping at the 24-hour Tom Thumb pharmacy nearby and getting my new drugs and a 2-liter of Sprite, we crashed into bed some time around 4.
Steady improvements all day today, no more throwing up, which makes me happy because I really, really, really hate that. Bland food is all I can eat, so it’s been dry toast, crackers, and rice. I’m feeling tons better, though not still 100%.
While we had talked about what kind of fun, exciting things we could do with my little sister while she is in town visiting, this little adventure was the furthest thing from our minds. 🙂
We’ve been getting calls pretty steady all morning from friends and family, making sure we’re ok since all the reports have the Columbia breaking up over north Texas.
The shuttle broke up south of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and local stations are using weather radar to track the debris field, which is now south and east of the D/FW metroplex, beginning around Nagodoches and moving slightly south and east through Rusk, TX, into western Louisiana.
I had heard on the news last night that the shuttle would be visible this morning, but forgot to mention it to my wife so we could set the alarms earlier than normal. A friend in Boston woke us up with a phone call to make sure we were ok, and that was the first we heard of it.
I recall a science demonstration at our high school in the mid-to-late 1980s where a guy had a blowtorch going on a space shuttle tile throughout his entire program. At the end, he had a student come up, removed the blowtorch, and dared the student to touch the tile. Trent (I remember his name!) was a little hesitant, but did touch it, and he reported it was completely cool.
Major Texas connections on this Columbia flight: Commander Rick Husband was from Amarillo, Pilot William McCool was from Lubbock, and mission specialist Kalpana Chawla was the 2d graduate of the University of Texas-Arlington to go into space.
Like many, I have now witnessed Columbia’s first flight into space, and it’s last return. Certainly, this is not the type of return anyone would have wanted. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the seven souls lost on the Columbia.
UPDATE (12:15pm CST): Lee has more thoughts and info.