As I start to look at re-branding this blog, I wanted to take a moment to call your attention to what I feel are 16 of the most interesting posts that have flowed from my brain in the last couple of years. You may not find all of them hilarious or funny, as many of my posts tend to be, but you might find them interesting.

Insightful, inspiring, informative. The 3 I’s of blogging. Well, interesting as well, so really the 4 I’s of blogging. My four eyes. You get the point.

So without further or farther adieu or adoo, here I present them for your review:

1. Back before my wordpress migration, I did a 5 post series on the 2006 Out and Equal Workplace Equality Conference. You can start at the beginning when Rachelle and I arrived in Chicago, enjoy our adventures at a disgusting restaurant called Stetson’s, and revel in the magnificence of us meeting Mr. Sulu of the Enterprise.
2. Continuing on the multi-post theme, who could forget the 5 days of Victoria, BC. Not only did I finally get to meet Bobby Apperson, but we once again experience the awe inspiring Butchart Gardens.
3. Next on the list is an informational page about the Randompedia, the Random Encyclopedia. Are you looking for things you’d never find in wikipedia? Look no further/farther.
4. A pivotal point in my life centered around an event in November 2006. NaNoWriMo, the writing competition to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Well let me tell ya, I didn’t just complete it, I blew it out of the water in 12 days then started on the next one! Here’s the post that started it all. (And the post about my first book published on amazon.com)
5. Ready for something spooky and scary? How about the story behind one of my favourite holidays? Hellaween! (I also shared the true history of Valentine’s Day too, but it’s not one of my favourite holidays because it’s not really a holiday. However, Easter is.)
6. The list wouldn’t be complete without at least one GLBT informational component, and what better than a warning that you should not do business with the gays. Ok, maybe two components - especially a warning about hate crimes.
7. The Hellaween season continued with a quick movie review. Some of you might recall the 8 Films to Die For series, and specifically, the movie Unrest. Yeah - I tried to forget it too. Here’s the review.
8. One of the longest series posts that I’ve done here is the Childhood Journal. After receiving a stack of old notebooks from my parents, I realized there was a goldmine of interesting writings from yours truly back when I was a wee little boy. Here’s the one that kicked it off, which includes a link to the entire series.
9. Ok, so GLBT is a common theme here, and so I should probably fill you all in on what it means to be a Friend of Dorothy.
10. Want to know how to make the world a better place? Try Star Trek.
11. I don’t just care about making the world a better place, I also want to make your lives and relationships better. Who knew that you could learn so much about a relationship from your toothbrush?
12. One of the most popular posts I’ve ever done was about throwing a wine party. It’s really quite easy, and I’ve provided simple instructions on making it a memorable event.
13. Some of you were probably wondering when I’d get to this one, and number 13 is probably appropriate for it. That’s right, it’s my American Idol series.
14. Time for a meme. I’ve done quite a few of these, so I’ll lump some together into #14. What’s on your iPod, iTunes Meme, and What’s On Your Desk.
15. Sometimes it’s important to share your dreams. For some reason I felt compelled to share one of my most bizarre ones with you.
16. Finally, I provided more education, in a post on 8 Quick Tips for Aspiring Amateur Photographers. We don’t just provide entertainment here, we also educate.

So there you have it. 16 posts (actually 22 but in a list of 16) that resonated with me and with my readers (based on a very scientific process that I developed just for this post). Have a great time browsing around, and remember that these are just a sample of what we have to offer here at Digital Heath.

Also remember - safety first!

I don’t know how on earth this item escaped main world news, but here’s an excerpt and link from Towleroad.

A doctor involved in the preparation of a healthcare regulation bill in the Indonesian province of Papua cited dangerous behavior among some infected with the HIV as the reason lawmakers are considering the use of microchip implants in tracking some HIV carriers. [Link]

I’m astounded. I’m also a member of Harris Poll, and in most of the ones I have completed in the last year, there is a question near the end of the survey about “Which of the following things do you consider a serious violation of privacy?”

On that list are things like thorough screenings at airports based on visual profiles, cookies on your computer that track personal preferences, unrequested telemarketing calls, and screening prospective employees for AIDS.

Just imagine if you had to walk through a security portal that not only scanned your badge to see if you were an employee, but also scanned for a microchip inside you that classified you as being HIV+…

Aside from the personal privacy issues, I’m thinking of the complete humiliation for having one of MANY diseases that have no cure and are contagious. Are we going to tag people who regularly get the flu? What about herpes - that could mean chipping nearly the entire population. What if I have a chronic cold - like half the people I work with every day? You can’t cure the cold, and it’s highly contagious - why not chip me for that too?

I’m just picturing big red flashing lights going off above the portal if someone walks through not in 100% good health. We’d all have to wear earplugs, because it would be going off non-stop.

*Airport screening image from NASA Explores *

A couple of weeks ago, Siobhan went in for a routine comprehensive exam, and the doctor discovered a heart murmur during the checkup. I had planned for her to get a teeth cleaning the same day, but with the possibility of a heart murmur, they did not want to use any anesthesia on her until they knew exactly what was going on.

So a few days later, we went back to the vet for an ultrasound of the heart, and low and behold - heart disease (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) and a grade 3 heart murmur (on a scale of 1-6). If you’re not familiar with this medical issue, it’s when the valves do not close completely and blood washes backward in the heart. It can cause significant medical issues, and eventually death.

When I was growing up, our dog Jini had a very severe heart murmur, but she lived for 14 years without many problems at all - so it’s not as if a murmur in and of itself is an immediate death sentence, however, it’s something that can be managed.

We immediately put Siobhan on heart medication, which slows down the heart and hopefully minimizes or prevents the backwash caused by a murmur. She will also have to undergo ultrasounds every 6 months so that the doctor can measure the heart muscle for any thickening.

Today we went back in for a checkup, since she’s been on the medication for a week - it went very well. The heart rate, even though she was nervous, was well within normal for this medication (100-150), and the doctor could not hear any sign of the murmur. That doesn’t mean everything is fixed, it just means that the medication is thankfully doing its job.

The main side effect we’ve noticed is that for the first couple of days on the medicine, she ran a bit of a fever, and was very lethargic - a normal reaction to a shot or medication. After a couple days of that, she is mostly back to normal, with just a bit of lethargy still present. It will take some adapting to this, since we’re used to her jumping through the air after things, swatting at Lasher during playtime, and tearing around the house knocking things over. The latter item we could do without :-).

I’ll be posting progress as we know more, but for now it’s wait-and-see until the next ultrasound, and hopefully the disease is slowing to a crawl.

This is new…..here’s a search that hit my site today:

“What does it mean when you are finished throwing up you start to get severe heart pains?”

Here’s where it referred…

Box of Hair - Heath Buckmaster’s Blog » Generic
I rarely throw up (except for the Cadbury Cream Egg incident, which you may ….. Being a proponent of using language to the fullest extent does not mean …
www.digitalheath.com/blog/category/generic/ - 61k

Talk about an odd way for google to categorize :-).

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of March 7, 2007, 425 people in 44 states have now been infected with the strain of Salmonella Tennessee found in Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter products.However, although 71 people were hospitalized there have been no fatalities.Most persons infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection.The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most recover without treatment, however, in some people the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. [Link]

You know…I’ve had diarrhea like that before. It happened after we got back from Mazatlan last year. It wasn’t, thankfully, caused by Peanut Butter (which is one of my personal addictions in life), but was most definitely caused by the 2lbs of fresh shrimp we consumed on the last day of the trip.

The article goes on to say, “Initially, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said all Peter Pan peanut butter bought since May 2006, and all of Wal-Mart Inc.’s Great Value peanut butter with the batch code 2111 should be discarded.”

Oh the irony of “Great Value”…I wonder if they were rolling back prices to get that off the shelf. While I’m not averse to Wal-Mart, I am averse to the ones in the Sacramento area, due to the…how can I put this delicately enough so that people won’t think I’m a stuck up, pretentious *ss. Nope, there’s no way to do that. Classless. Ok, that was moderately delicate. I mean, I didn’t use the term white-trash did I? No, because I don’t like that term. No one is trash. However, some people are not necessarily well kempt.

I think you know what I’m talking about…it all goes back to wearing sweat pants in public. Sick and wrong for so many reasons. Not only do they put it all out there for everyone to see, but they are also incredibly unflattering to anyone who has more than 1% body fat. But we’re really digressing away from the story here.

Peanut Butter. I’ve NEVER been a fan of the stir-it-yourself variety, you know the ones with an inch of oil at the top of the container that you must stir into the thick mush in order for it to be edible? Yeah, I pour it right off the top into the trash can and deal with the brick-like paste. It doesn’t work for me.

Anyway…please be careful about the Peanut Butter you choose. Cheaper is not always better, and really, why would you EVER buy a grocery item at Wal-Mart? Please go to your local Albertson’s or Raley’s and pick up something healthy, and salmonella-free.

I would like to give a shout out to cotton, and a shout out to sheet manufacturers.

ST. PAUL, (eCanadaNow) - Weight loss surgery, such as gastric bypass surgery, can lead to a vitamin deficiency that can cause memory loss and confusion, inability to coordinate movement, and other problems, according to a study published in the March 13, 2007, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The syndrome, called Wernicke encephalopathy, affects the brain and nervous system when the body doesn’t get enough vitamin B1, or thiamine. It can also cause vision problems, such as rapid eye movements.[Link]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - A woman who went into a vegetative state more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back. [Link]

I decided to take a brief break from AI posts when I saw this distressing article today about Christa Lilly. Frankly, this is quite depressing. Aside from the infinite medical costs associated with keeping her on life support while she “sleeps”…what kind of life is that to wake up for a few days, then go back to a vegetative state for a few more years before repeating the process?

I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t want to see a snapshot series of my friends and family once every couple of years. You’d basically watch them grow older while knowing absolutely nothing about them, and being no part of their lives.

And let’s be real - if you are out of touch with one of your friends for a year, and then suddenly they email you, are you really going to put a lot of effort into catching them up on your life over the past year? I don’t think so. MAYBE if they moved back and you saw them more often, but certainly not if you knew they were heading back to la-la-land in a few hours.

Now I don’t want to get flamed for being Anti-Vegetables here. But what kind of existence is this really? It was quite sad to get to the bottom of the article and see a quote from her mother, “The good Lord let me know she’s alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I’m thankful for that.” Yes this is a very sweet quote, and I empathize, but…

If the lord was good, he’d wake her up and let her get back to her life, and actually LIVE it, instead of leaving her on a feeding tube forever. I choose to live through life, but a heart attack took that choice away from her. Here’s hoping she wakes up permanently, soon, or at least moves on to more peaceful pastures and her family gets on with their lives.

Besides, it’s got to be a bit freaky that while she’s been in this vegetative state since 2000, her eyes have been open.