LaBarca.org

I was up at 3:30am this morning. Couldn’t sleep (for obvious reasons). So after working a bit, I decided to flip on the PS3 to see if the 1.6 firmware update came out. To my surprise, it had!

So I thought I’d help build some medical karma and start folding some proteins. I immediately joined the CMU team (Team 11243) - hell, it’s not like we have an NCAA Final Four team to root for or anything, but I do have a ton of school spirit.

Update: There’s another CMU team that’s doing better! Team 33403 is in much higher place than 11243, so I switched. CMU, why are there two teams here? Divided we fall and all that.

So here are some pics of Folding@Home jacking up my electric bill.

Cool visuals, very cool goal. I invite everyone with a PS3 (or PC for that matter) - join the CMU team and help us move up the list. I’ve seen some interviews where people claim a PS3 is about 30x more powerful doing these protein folding crunches than an average PC. I’m not completely buying into it, but if they spent a ton of time optimizing it for the Cell, who knows…

Update (3/23/07): Looks like the 30x power of a normal PC is true.

Mom’s in the hospital for recurring heart racing and lightheadedness. She went in with some serious tachycardia that started the night before. Here’s a pic:

Heart rate of 137! She also had atrial fibrillation - I think - because there’s multiple irregular P-waves. Take that reading with a grain of salt. Robyn taught me a little about reading EKGs, but I’m an armchair quarterback here.

They thinned her blood a bit, and while she, her PCP and I were talking, she said she felt lightheaded. At the same time the EKG flatined for 3 seconds, and then she went back to a normal (sinus) wave and heart rate:

She experiences lightheadedness, but it’s her heart stopping. Pretty scary.

More tests tomorrow and possibly intervention. We’ll see what happens.

Update (3/23/07):She needed a pacemaker - and got one yesterday. Very simple procedure that didn’t even require general anesthesia. It even came with an instruction manual.

She has a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (a thickening of the heart muscle) that caused her sinus node (the heart’s pacemaker) to function poorly - or in her case, be slow on the uptake after she comes out of those fibrillation spells. This pacemaker will take over when that happens, so there’s no risk of those 3 second pauses anymore. However it will not stop her fibrillation. Instead, they upped the beta blocker medication she was on to try to decrease those occurrences - which they can do safely now that she has a pacemaker in there.

Here’s a picture of the EKG history when her heart stopped. First line is atrial fib, second is the 3 second pause, and then it goes back into sinus bradycardia (slightly slow heart rate with a normal rhythm).

Jeff pointed me to this article the other day:

“Adrian and Beth joined Geoff onstage and blew all our collective brains to s***,” the Grumpy Man DJs said on their Web site.

In the reclusive band’s first live appearance since 2005’s Tsunami Benefit Show, the trio performed their classic track “Wandering Star” before jumping into a new song.

This is way overdue - it has been so long since I got that pit-of-my-stomach anxious can’t wait feeling for a new bit of music. But here it is again. Welcome back knotty stomach, welcome back.

Someone caught “Wandering Star” on video, but unfortunately stopped before the new track.

This means, of course, that I have to break out the old teeshirt:

Update: Here’s footage of probably the best version of “Strangers” ever recorded - complete with orchestra and horn section. Circa nineteen-ninety-something at Roseland Ballroom in NYC. There is no better example of Portishead bringing down the house. Jeffy, weren’t you at this show?