I Love UAB's Kirklin Clinic 250

My new cardiologist's real name is Dr. Vijay Misra. I first nicknamed him Dr. DJ Misery, but today I changed it to Dr. Goodheart. He's wonderful!


Getting to Kirklin Clinic, parking, and finding the Cardiology Department was super easy this morning. Somebody totally had the patients in mind when they designed the place. The architecture is both beautiful and 'user friendly', and I'm so proud this world class organization is so close to where I live.





Once Dr. Goodheart came in the exam room we discussed why I was there - to get a letter for Dr. Flagman so I could go back to work. And he went into detail about improving my fitness, suggesting some things that are impractical for a truck driver - like joining the YMCA and working out 3 or 4 times a week while I'm on my breaks. He mentioned the YMCA because "there's one in every major city." But I forgive him for not understanding truck driver's lifestyle, and his other suggestions are doable with some extra effort. He told me to be selfish about taking care of myself - to make time for it.

We talked for several minutes, and then he ordered an Echocardiogram. I love watching stuff like this - the heart beating, the valves opening and closing ... looks kinda like a little bird flapping it's wings in there


(Not my heart)

As a reminder, my problem wasn't in my heart per sey; it was in my LAD (left anterior descending artery), which was 99% blocked.



Anyway, once Dr. Goodheart reads the echocardiogram, he will dictate something to his assistant, Jennifer, and I should get the letter for Dr. Flagman sometime next week.

Facebook, YoVille, AdSense, And 249

It seems like forever since I've made a post here.... I've been playing A LOT of the Facebook games Farmville, YoVille, and Farm Town. Ingenious and intricate games that simulate real life - sort of. I showed Mother how they work, but she didn't quite grasp the concept. She said, "Well, when does the game end?" I told her they don't end.

In the farm games, you plow, plant, harvest, and sell your crops so you can earn money and buy bigger and better stuff for your farm. In YoVille, a 'city-ized' version of the farm games, you bake stuff at the Sweets Factory instead of farming. These cute games are ingenious to me. All the things the developers and writers had to think about when they wrote the programs - it's mind-boggling!

Also, I found a way to put the Google AdSense ads inside the posts here instead of between posts. The article is here at My Digital Life, Living Digitally and Electronically. It's an effort to make the ads more diverse. I'm not sure what everybody else sees, but I only see ads about trucking. There's more to this blog than just trucking, so I'm exploring ways to make the ads more appealing and interesting.

And you may have already noticed that I changed the big, banner type ads to simple links. I think they look more like blog content instead of big banner ads. The experts say doing this will increase the number of clicks, or click through rate (CTR) in AdSense jargon. There are other ways to enhance the CTR too. When I have the time, and my brain is in a learning mode, I'm going to check them out.

In other news: We have yet to recover from the sink hole move, and I'm anxious to improve the looks of our house. Someone is coming out at noon today to give me an estimate on putting the shed over the trailer. They've seen this picture, and know what I want to accomplish:


And yesterday I had to call AT&T to get help connecting to the internet. Several months ago Bellouth (AT&T) changed their email platform to Yahoo email. You had to log into Bellsouth first, then be redirected to a new AT&T page, and log in again. It's complicated and frustrating, and I get the feeling AT&T can't even figure out what they've done.

Anyway, I was trying to delete Mother's old Bellsouth.net email address. In the process, I changed the password to the email account - or did I? I still don't know, because I never got to the email stuff. The next time I tried to get on the internet, I kept getting the message that I'd changed the password to the modem! I couldn't connect to the internet at all!

I called AT&T and found out how to reset the modem:



Once you do that, and reopen the browser on your computer, you have to log into the AT&T INTERNET page (totally different than the phone page), enter a password, and complete a couple of other steps. What an ordeal! But then I remembered there was a time when nobody could access the internet.... I'm sure there was a better way around this external modem fix to use the internet and phone at the same time, but I was on the road when all this happened.

Finally, tomorrow is my appointment with Dr. Misery. From the internet (that I apparently can't live without anymore) I learned where to park - but I'm gonna let the valets do it. Let them remember where my car is....