Medical woes

Now I have Diabetes and still have Hypoglycemia as a constant condition (which is pretty rare, so they are not sure exactly how to treat it). Diabetics can have hypoglycemic reactions sure, but not many have it daily or even several times a day. I do.

I was going to write a complex series of paragraphs that detail the condition, but then I’d have to complain about that, so just suffice to say that having both sucks and my daily life is a rollercoaster of highs and lows due to sugar levels in my body.

The doctors know that they can not fix what is wrong with me, so they try to lessen the symptoms with medication. So here is the brief timeline of what has happened:

Started on medication: Metformin, had bad reactions.

Switch medicines to Avandia.

Things are still not under control. My numbers are 9x normal.

Increase Dosages and need a new Diet (low carb), damn that sucks.

Loss of favorite foods: Potatoes, Corn, Breads

Still gaining weight, this sucks hardcore.

Took months to see any benefit, now weight has stabilized somewhat.

Now need another apt to check numbers again.

I know I’ll need to be medicated for the rest of my life, I just wish we could establish what that would be and tweak it as I age for whatever changes take place. It seems like right now we still are guessing. It sucks to feel like a Guinea Pig, it really does.

Autoconfigure Routers that Fail to Autoconfigure

Ok, so I have a home network and I use a piece of technology called a router to sit between the internet and my network. It protects my network and only allows traffic and actions that I want.

Like most people I don’t have tons of money sitting around to purchase big Cisco routers, though it would be nice. So I went to my local stores and purchased one from a company who makes networking equipment. I know these are not top end devices and they have no fans, so the electrical components are destined to burn out after a period of time. Ok, so all that said and done, why am I upset?

I’m upset for two reasons. First, I had one router for a few years, it died 4 months ago and I bought a new one. I spent some time reconfiguring it and was back up and running. Then, after only 3 months of operation it started having problems, symptomatic of failure. Sure enough it basically died a few days later. What a POS. So I went to the store to buy a new one and try to exchange the old. The store was nice enough about it all and I had my new router, same model as the others, but with newer software installed.

This software, known as Firmware, basically tells the router how to do it’s job and allows people like me to configure them however I want. Or so I thought. This new Firmware does not allow me to manually configure things until after a special automation feature tries to configure it first. Hence my second frustration. Now, I know this autoconfigure was built by the Firmware developers to allow laymen to use their product without having to understand networking. It serves a good purpose, so I can jump through the stupid hoops and then reconfigure myself, right? Wrong!

The autoconfigure failed. I retried, it failed again. Over and over. So I tried to get around the autoconfigure and just do it myself. No Dice. It would not respond to commands until autoconfigure did its thing. So I would normally have searched the internet and looked for a solution, but without a working router, this is not possible. As I have internet phone, which requires the router to work and be configured properly, I could not call their support from my home line. What a picklement.

So, I used my cell phone to call the support line. Of course I was routed to the India support team and that was a debacle. Besides the language barrier my cell reception stinks at my house. I could not even properly explain my issue for 25 minutes. Once I did the rep responded, “run autoconfigure from the CD”. When I replied that this process failed dozens of times I was told “that is not possible.” Clearly I was thrilled to hear that.

In the end I took my entire network out of the picture and just had my modem, router, and single laptop running the autoconfigure program. After a few tries, this worked. Then I was able to manually configure the router and bring my network and phone back online. It only took 5 hours. :(

Where have I Been?

Well it has been a long while since I’ve complained about things. Why, you may ask? And I answer; because life has been very good most of the time, and besides the fact, life has been extremely busy. Odd as it is to say, I’ve been too busy to complain about things. Oh yes there were frustrations in the last 9 months, many of them, but nothing I needed to vent or rant about. But now I am prepared to do a bit of that and write about things that have bothered me in the last 9 months that I was too busy to write about…. So hang on, more to come soon.