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Text of the page (random words):
d ideas hair breened ideas words music about words music about hair breened ideas words i say stuff sometimes words music about april 01 2026 my turn apple at 50 april 01 2026 christopher breen now living the free and easy lifestyle other than the stress that comes from well everything it seems i missed the memo stating that april 1 2026 is the day to tell a personal apple related tale or two in celebration of the company s 50th anniversary i m on it read more april 01 2026 christopher breen comment november 12 2024 a belated explanation or why i left macworld november 12 2024 christopher breen nearly 10 years ago i left macworld to take a job in cupertino somewhat to my surprise it became a thing a story flung around apple centric websites and it was weird for me i was accustomed to being the person who penned this kind of thing rather than the subject of it while i loved the many nice things people wrote about my work i was perplexed by some of the more imaginative takes read more november 12 2024 christopher breen comment november 11 2024 time to do nothing else november 11 2024 christopher breen just a note to say that i ve left the job i left macworld for to work at well pretty much whatever i feel like some people call it retirement i call it an opportunity to routinely misplace my glasses hit the nearby beach during work hours and discover what it s like to live without the burden of someone else s deadlines i ve been incredibly fortunate to work at things i love teaching making music writing and redacteding it s now time for personal pleasures which coincidentally fall very much in line with the things i got paid for i might even tell a story or two no not those stories watch this space november 11 2024 christopher breen comment christopher breen april 01 2022 broadband in the boonies 2022 april 01 2022 christopher breen not that i expect you to keep track but were the very first broadband in the boonies missive to take on human form it could legally purchase alcoholic beverages in these 50 united states indeed on or about february 28 2001 i detailed what it was like to live with the now defunct and may it rot in hell starband satellite broadband system domain name for sale btw in later years now lost to time and macworld s spotty archives i exulted in dsl finally coming to my rural valley allowing me to ditch the wretched dish bolted to my home and i was happy believing that this was just the first step in a future swollen with viable broadband as it turns out that first step has lasted 16 very long very frustrating years with fingers firmly crossed i think i can say that step is finally complete read more april 01 2022 christopher breen comment december 22 2021 broadband in the boonies holiday edition december 22 2021 christopher breen dear santa you so delivered on last year s wish list no cancer recurrence continued employment during a challenging pandemic and virtually no covid among family and friends that i feel almost sheepish for making yet one more request before the year s end but as you re in the request business here goes could i please have my broadband back sometime before 2022 read more december 22 2021 christopher breen comment september 29 2021 the journey one year on september 29 2021 christopher breen dear chris hi it s me your future self one year from today i know you re going under the knife this morning to finally get that cancer out of your throat and as i recall you re a little concerned about what the future holds i can t tell you how the you re probably out of the woods two year plan goes because we re not there yet but we re halfway cancer free and alive enough for me to compose this message to you read more september 29 2021 christopher breen comment july 08 2021 broadband in the boonies 2021 july 08 2021 christopher breen when we last met to discuss broadband in rural areas at t had jerked back its leased circuit from my then current isp and taken its sweet time providing its own service after weeks of calls and promised but not delivered truck rolls the correct modem lights finally lit up and i was back on the internet in the two years since then we ve had are having a pandemic life has shifted to home and each of us has grown to appreciate just how important a reliable broadband connection is lately some of us are appreciating as in understanding rather than enjoying how expensive and frustrating that connection can be read more july 08 2021 christopher breen comment december 17 2020 journey s end december 17 2020 christopher breen if you follow u s politics you know the most recent presidential election was wrenching months of bitter campaigning the worst sorts of people spewing lies and hate and no real sense of resolution because of one man s metastatic ego given how invested i and those with similar views were in making that guy a one term president you d think we d feel a greater sense of jubilation when the votes were finally tallied rather than having a sense of triumph and positivity i felt tired and let down and i wasn t alone my friends who were most invested in the election s outcome had the keenest feelings of disappointment what do we do with the energy we ve generated all these months now that it s all over what happens next have our efforts made a difference or is this just a brief respite before the next cluster of american authoritarianism corrupts the body politic and so maybe you can understand that when my last meeting with the medical team ended with an abrupt we think you re cured but we ll keep checking i left with mixed feelings the bad thing is gone but is it gone for good read more december 17 2020 christopher breen comment december 16 2020 an unexpected development december 16 2020 christopher breen when i was 50 i had what is known in the business as a big surgery it dealt with the issue i had but recovery did not go well far from blaming the surgeon for my problems we became friends and after we became friends he shared this bit of surgeonly wisdom with me the reality of surgery chris is that we cut you and then wait to see what happens i can see the switchboard light up with angry calls from surgeons worldwide so please allow me to interpret obviously there s a lot more to surgery than the employment of sharpened tools and patience what surgeon friend was referring to is recovery you can perform the same surgery on two patients who match the same profile and one s recovery can be wholly different from another s or as robert burns so aptly put it the best laid schemes o patients an surgeons gang aft agley and agley is exactly what happened to my treatment plan after surgery read more december 16 2020 christopher breen comment december 15 2020 healing at home december 15 2020 christopher breen and so began the home stretch on my road to recovery on the plus side my bed my family my media my toys uninterrupted sleep and the support of my friends in the minus column no ability to get a breakout narcotic squirted through an iv when pain hit the 7 to 8 mark broadly next steps were along these lines recover for four weeks take on calories get calibrated to stanford s radiation gadgetry wait another week radiation treatment five days a week for six weeks recover for one to two months back to work slacker i had a lot of time to kill read more december 15 2020 christopher breen comment december 14 2020 pain management and puddings december 14 2020 christopher breen i suspect that for most people the first couple of days of hospital recovery are largely a blur you re doped up and constantly interrupted for one thing or another let s take your vital signs let s go for a walk around the ward let s change your sheets let s suggest that you suck in some deep breaths because your blood oxygen level has dipped below 90 and sets off an alarm when you re trying to sleep and most frequently let s talk about your pain level read more december 14 2020 christopher breen comment december 13 2020 steps along the journey december 13 2020 christopher breen i ve been writing about my experience with cancer if you d like to join me on the journey these are the steps along the way the journey so you ve got cancer spreading the word asking for help make way for robots cancer in cancer out surgery day pain management and pudding healing at home an unexpected development journey s end december 13 2020 christopher breen comment christopher breen december 11 2020 cancer in cancer out surgery day december 11 2020 christopher breen september 29 in the blighted year of our lord 2020 surgery day after a month of appointments and preparations i awoke at 3 00 am to make a 5 00 am launch at stanford after dousing myself in antibacterial soap for the second time in seven hours i took the small sip of water i was allowed to choke down my morning medications and with otherwise empty stomach set off for the hospital in hindsight i was surprisingly calm as i was more concerned about removing the cancer than how it was done read more december 11 2020 christopher breen comment december 10 2020 make way for robots december 10 2020 christopher breen though i can t swear to it i m pretty sure that any physician tasked with telling a patient that they have cancer is trained early on to avoid opening with dude you are so screwed so it wasn t too surprising that after the first doctor to scope my throat told me that he found what he suspected was a tumor on the back of my tongue he quickly followed up with no one wants to hear that but this is really treatable and curable and i think you re a good candidate for surgery and that s a good thing it is not everyone can have surgery for this it all depends on the size and location of the primary tumor and the number of affected lymph nodes if it can be surgically removed you may be able to avoid chemo and if you re really lucky radiation as well you could be one of the rare one and done cases read more december 10 2020 christopher breen comment december 09 2020 spreading the word asking for help december 09 2020 christopher breen after digesting the news of my cancer diagnosis i began to think about who i d tell the first obvious choice would appear to be of course my family but that can be problematic for some people it certainly was for us read more december 09 2020 christopher breen comment december 08 2020 so you ve got cancer december 08 2020 christopher breen apart from the expected mental turmoil that results from a cancer diagnosis even a good one practical concerns quickly march to the fore naturally medical questions take priority in the beginning what kind of treatment will i have who should provide it when will it start and end how long will it take to recover in my case who should provide it drove everything else read more december 08 2020 christopher breen comment december 07 2020 the journey december 07 2020 christopher breen my family tree is fairly littered with doctors my great grandfather grandfather and uncle were surgeons my brother in law is an internal medicine physician and my niece is a resident head and neck surgeon who specializes in cancers of that region i m pretty sure my mother who was always eager to diagnose and prescribe for her family also claimed a medical background to those unwary enough to take her advice at face value so perhaps it s not without cause that i focus overly much on my health on balance health anxiety what was once termed hypochondria offers few rewards there s the resulting anxiety which if you ve never experienced it is something i wouldn t recommend taking up in your off hours and then there s the reputation you earn through routine visits to your doctor for your many illusory ailments a waste of time for the doctor and only a fleeting dose of reassurance for the afflicted i have discovered one benefit however though any good medical professional will warn you away from the practice because it fuels rather than relieves anxiety you develop the inclination and ability to conduct thorough research of rare diseases sometimes the sources of the resulting research are even reputable websites not designed to increase your paranoia or provide testimonials from the untrained but rather the cdc nih mayo clinic and international cancer centers i turned to these sites when something clearly wrong cropped up in my neck read more december 07 2020 christopher breen comment november 04 2020 this malignant american november 04 2020 christopher breen everything went well rest now but what counts as your remaining consciousness spins can the months years of malignancy that has eaten away at you carried away countless hours in fatigue frustration and doubt be erased in a day read more november 04 2020 christopher breen comment march 06 2020 survival guide how to work at home march 06 2020 christopher breen so covid 19 pretty weird huh here we are one day concerned only with a churning political climate the regular old climate behaving in alarming ways and whether it s time to finally cut the cable and this novel coronavirus comes out of left field as you re likely aware the virus will touch each of us and bring some measure of disruption to our lives a greater focus on hygiene reevaluation of travel plans boning up on techniques for manufacturing hand sanitizer and toilet paper at home i can t help much with these but i do have a fair measure of experience with something that s going to affect many of you working at home for the long haul read more march 06 2020 christopher breen comment august 14 2019 broadband in the boonies 2019 august 14 2019 christopher breen some 18 years ago i moved from the silicon valley suburbs to the wilds of the california coast and have questioned that move for not a single moment the area is gorgeous the natives friendly and then there s the beach that inspired me to take up the camera and spend time learning its workings if there was ever an insect in the ointment it would be the lack of broadband options as in dearth as in well you re the one who chose to live in a rural setting at the time it proved rich fodder for a series of macworld articles umbrellaed under broadband in the boonies in the good old days we country bumpkins had little more than dial up and satellite connections to feed in the outside world and considering that streaming media wasn t yet really a thing it was annoying but hardly intolerable and surely with time conditions would improve with cable fiber line of sight anything and it did to the extent that a little over a decade ago dsl was introduced to our pleasant coastal valley okay it topped out at 5 megabits per second down and 640 kilobits up but because i used a third party provider rather than at t i didn t have to deal with a data cap and when the connection crapped out i could talk to a human rather than be buried in a phone tree and that s the way it s been ever since until now read more august 14 2019 christopher 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