I had my surgery this morning, and true to the surgeon’s word, I was discharged 3 hours later and am currently at home.

Being that I’m all sick and stuff…. I took a couple pictures for ya (they’re links that will pop up in a new window for those with sensitive stomachs).

My back.

The screws they removed

An old x-ray showing the screws in my spine (links to an old post)

So… I’m off work for the next couple of weeks for recovery, but I’m feeling pretty damn good at the moment. That might have everything to do with the drugs, so we’ll see how I feel tomorrow 🙂

I met with my neurosurgeon today for a few last minute things.

My surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 11:30am. I have to check in at 10 am so they can prep me. Oh, rapture!

For those who aren’t following along, I’ll do a brief summary:

When I was young and stupid, I got run over while riding a motorcycle twice. Then, years later, I was shoveling gravel for a charity and that finished off my back. I had two surgeries (a discectomy and a fusion), and now they’re gonna remove the hardware in my back.

According to my surgeon, this should be an easy gig and I should be home tomorrow night.

Other news:
While coming home from the neurosurgeon’s office, our durango got creamed by a white pickup truck. We’re fine, but the durango is at the body shop. It’s not too bad, but it’s not exactly gonna buff out. We were sitting in traffic and a guy backed out of the parking lot across the street from us… straight into us.

*sigh*

He said we were in his “blind spot”. Um… yeah… you didn’t notice us sitting there… not moving… surrounded by cars that were doing the same? Whatever. He’s paying for the body work, so I’m cool.

The lan party was a success for the most part. We had a few technical issues with the server, but that was about it for problems.

We started just after 6 and went till about 1am.

The game of the evening was classic Unreal Tournament. We ran as a straight deathmatch, then we played CTF, and finally assault.

I got my share of kills in, but there were some brutal people in-game (read: I got my ass kicked on a few levels).

Here are a few images from the fun:

Dave had the sexiest damn computer on the room!

A pic of the room early on… more people came later but I was too busy playing to take pictures.

I’m getting pissed at my son for handing me my ass for a hat.

All in all, good times! It wasn’t a huge party (15 players in house and one remote), but hell… that’s the max the game will handle, so it was perfect! Huge thanks to my good neighbor, Ben, for hosting the party!!! Special thanks to encap as well for providing the 40 port switch!

I do have a few extras items after the party ended that need to be claimed: A black CD case (full of burns) and an extension cord. If these belong to you… fire off an email to me.

I didn’t get to bed until 4:30 am (there was a small post-lan gathering at my house). We had a few beers, made fun of each other, and laughed a lot.

We’re having a LAN party tomorrow night.

This will be the first one in a couple years and will probobly be much smaller than they used to be (you can see the photos from the older ones here, click the “bring out your dead” links).

Because a lot of the people who are coming have never played before, and they have older machines, we’re probobly going to play classic UT for the most part (though we may break out the BattleField Vietnam with the POE mod if enough people have it).

Normally, I host these parties, but this time it’s being done at my neighbor’s house. He’s already wired his basement with CAT5 and we should be good to go (though we may have a table and chair shortage… we’ll see on that).

Other news:
OMG!! We got a req to hire a graveyard person!!! That means that we can hire someone who’s only shift is the 2am till 10am POS that we’ve had to work once a week each for the past year and a half.

<insert my dance of pure joy here>

Ok.. I try to be clever with the php, I study how you do it and make it as difficult as possible, yet you still figure out a way to spam my blog.

Why the hell is this blog so special? There’s no real content. Yeah, I get hits, but it’s all people looking for porn (the average stay is less than 30 seconds).

Why the fuck would you waste your time modifying your damn Load Dump program just to include all the special “one 0ff” bits of php I’ve written to keep you out?

Bejesus!

Of course, I’ll just keep tweaking on my end, and you’ll keep spamming on your end (a cosmic balance of sorts). But at the end of the day… I’ll still be a blogger, and you’ll still be a goat fucker.