The dreaded Colonoscopy!

Okay, we’re going a little off topic on this one but I felt it worthwhile to recount my experience last week should any of you be dragging your feet on this.

As is the case with many of us, it took one of my childhood friends putting this procedure off too long to get me sufficiently motivated to get it done.  It was the shock factor that woke me up to do it.  In my friend’s case by the time he went in for the scan, his colon cancer had progressed to the point he is now going through Chemo/Radiation before surgery.  Yes, that’s before surgery!  Then the surgery, then most likely more Chemo/Radiation.  He pushed me to do it now and not put it off.  I’m 54!

With no family history of colon cancer you should not wait past 50.  With history, much earlier.  Consult your doctor.

The reason for even writing about this procedure is the real shock of it all is how SMALL a deal it really is.  As a comparison, I would rather a Colonoscopy than have a cavity filled.  It’s that routine and pain free.

The following is my experience:

1. Normal visit to my Primary care physician December 6th.  He says “get it done” and gives me the number to contact NCGA (his recommendation for who to do it).
2. I call NCGA and schedule an initial visit.  Most of you will not even need an initial visit.  I did because I’m on Coumadin (thanks to United Airlines)
3. Initial visit to NCGA December 18th lasts 10 minutes.  Procedure scheduled for January 18th.  (Yesterday.  Yes, it’s fresh in my mind).
4. Starting January 12th I go off the Coumadin.
5. Starting December 16th at 5PM no more food.  Just clear liquids.  I get a little bit hungry.  Okay, well a lot hungry.
6. 5PM on January 17th take one bottle of Suprep (no worse tasting than
   Alka Seltzer cold medicine) mixed with 16 ounces of water followed by two more 16 ounce glasses of water.  All takes 3 minutes.
7. The next two hours are not pretty but as long as you have a clear path to a bathroom and nothing important to do it’s just not a big deal.  The desired reaction from the Suprep only lasts for about 2 hours.  Other than being hungry everything else returns to normal.
8. 5AM January 18th, take another bottle of Suprep and repeat the steps above.  Again, no big deal.  By 7AM I was back to a normal day.
9. 9AM onward until the procedure no food or drink.  Yes, I’m still hungry!  But I’ve been promised all I can eat Pizza by 5PM.  I can do this!
10. Arrive for the procedure at 2PM.
11. Taken back for prep at 2:30
12. IV inserted at 2:45.  Drugs injected at 2:55 (twilight Anesthesia)
13. Procedure done at 3PM.  Takes 15 minutes.  One small Polyp removed.
14. Out of there by 3:45
15. On the basketball court in my daughter’s school parent game by 4:15
16. Chowing down the all you can eat pizza by 5:15.
17. Just finished my normal gym workout this morning.
18. Absolutely no side effects.  One bonus, I lost 7 pounds!

Key message:  Absolutely no excuses.  Do it!!

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New tech tips from recent experience

Firstly, my apologies for the long delay between Blog posts.  I’ve literally received 100’s of complaints.

In this Blog:

• Home WiFi Networking
• My latest Apple disaster and a major tip for getting inside the Mac.
• Blu-Ray note

Let’s start with Home Networking

Lately I’ve been getting numerous complaints from inside the family and out, that usually  takes the form of  “The Internet has stopped working DAD!!” or “I’m getting this weird Timeout message in my browser DAD!” or “it says the printer is offline DAD!”.  Somehow the verbal emphasis is always on the word DAD, like it’s obviously my fault.  Any of this sound familiar?  Oh and by the way the same quotes above come from outside the house as well just substituting the word “Kent” in for “Dad”.  Same verbal emphasis on Kent, again of course like it’s my fault.

Okay, when this happens the problem quickly becomes determining where the problem is.  Is it with the WiFi network device you’re using?   The router it’s connecting to, the Internet access modem or maybe the device itself is busted?  Who knows.

My home network is as follows;  We use Comcast for all three (Internet, TV & Phone) so we have a Comcast Cable modem piping the Internet into the house.  The Cable Modem is then wired directly to an 8 Port Cisco router.  From that router run 8 Ethernet cables to various spots in the house.  Connected to those 8 Ethernet connections are the following;  2 WiFi Access points, one WiFi Apple Time Capsule (UGGHH!), one powerline connector to connect to our Solar energy system to record stats on energy generation and usage and one directly to a laser printer.  Devices connected via WiFi to the various WiFi receivers are the following;  5 Apple Macs (only one with a cracked screen right now), 3 Apple iPads, anywhere between 1 and 5 iPhones (anywhere between 1 and 3 with cracked screens at any given time), one Lenovo laptop (Yes, that’s mine and yes it’s the only one that works all the time), one multifunction HP printer/scanner/fax, and one XBox.  Sounds like a mess doesn’t it but it actually works 99% of the time.

When it doesn’t work…

Firstly, you can be sure that if it’s not fixed immediately the world is going to end!!  Just like the Mayans predicted 🙂

My experience is that when anything that could be related to the network is not working the following is the easiest way to fix it for sure (Well with 99% confidence):

1. Go around to all the networking devices (including the Cable modem or DSL Modem, the Router and all WiFi access points) and unplug them from the power source.  Be sure to also remove the backup battery from the Cable Modem if it has one.  If you have phone service from the Internet access provider it will have one.
2. With them all unplugged start to plug them back in but STOP!  They must be plugged back in the following order.  Very important!
3. Start with the Cable modem or DSL modem along with the backup battery if you previously removed it.
4. Then start moving your way from the middle to the edge of your network
5. Next plug in the Router
6. Then plug in all your WiFi access points
7. Now reconnect to your WiFi hot spots and test.  Most devices will automatically reconnect.
8. This routine should fix 99% of the problems.  If it doesn’t call your internet provider and see if there’s an outage.  If no outage you may well have a hardware problem with one of the devices in your network.  Since hardware rarely fails (unless of course if it’s an Apple product) I will not attempt to delve into how to determine which bit failed.  You’re on your own from there.
9. Note:  more than 50% of the time I find the problem is local to the WiFi access point device and simply power cycling that device will fix the problem.  Call this the quick and dirty fist thing to try.
10. Even if you’re not having any problems this set of steps above should be done every 3 to 6 months just to shake out the gremlins that build up over time in a network.  Sort of like the need to re-boot the computer even when it’s not having any problems, once in awhile.

Now lets move on to the latest Mac disaster in our house and key learning from it.  

One of my daughters started experiencing “funky” issues with her MacBook Pro.  First it was just an overall sluggishness in how the Apps performed and then the key moment was when she could no longer search using the finder.  Searching for even the most obvious phrases that normally would have returned 100’s of files found, was not finding any files.  In hindsight this was a telling symptom of some sort of corruption.  Anyway, she just powered ahead grumbling until the moment of death occurred.  The grey screen of death!  Not to be confused with the Microsoft “blue screen of death” which never occurs anymore.  The grey screen of death occurs when you restart the Mac and it stops at the screen with Apple logo in the middle and the little spinning thing down below.  When you see this you assume some big new update is installing and you just wait it out for awhile.  If you are doing updates you should wait this out for a couple hours before concluding it’s the “Grey screen of death”.  Once you conclude its the grey screen of death you can do as I did and either call Apple phone support or schedule an appointment at the local apple store genius bar (hear in the Bay Area takes at least 5 days advance notice to get an appointment.  Gee, I wonder why that is?).

After running numerous secret key sequence tests all the Apple geniuses concluded the hard drive had failed and would need to be replaced.  They referred us to 3 third party companies that might be able to save the data.  Me being the never say die sort that I am would not accept this for an answer as my daughter sitting in front of me put it “This can’t be!”.  “Tell me it isn’t so!”  I’ll cut a long story short of how I got to this point but here is the sequence of tasks I used to ultimately return the Mac to it’s good as new state:

1. Start by holding down the power button until it powers off.
2. Then depress the Command and “R” keys simultaneously and hold then down continuously.  (thought all the Apple adds convinced you only Microsoft had ctrl-alt-del kind of stuff…)
3. Press the power button to turn on the Mac.
4. The grey screen of death will come on.  Just wait still holding the two keys down until the disk utility menu comes up.  This may take up to a minute or 2.  If it does not come up you likely do have a hardware problem.
5. Once the Disk Utility comes on screen select the Mac HD drive and click on “repair”.  Hopefully this utility will run to completion and repair the issue.  If it finishes with no problems it will prompt you to restart the computer.  Restart the computer and see if it boots to the desktop screen and runs normally.  If the repair routine fails for any reason just run it again and again until hopefully it completes with no errors.  This is the secret trick.  Often it does the repair in increments.  The apple tech following the onscreen trouble shooting DB will tell you it’s a hardware problem if the repair utility fails initially.
6. If, when you restart the computer it returns to the grey screen of death then repeat step #1 & #2 but this time (assuming you have run the repair utility with no failure notice of any kind) select re-install the OS rather than repair the disk from the disk utility menu.  Begin the OS installation process.  This may take several hours depending on Internet access speed.  The computer will be re-installing from a download site.  Once this process completes restart the computer again and see if you get to the desktop and resume normal operation.
7. If, once again you’re back at the grey screen of death you have bigger problems than I can help you solve.  Either you have software corruption problems beyond the OS or you really do have a hardware problem and will need to replace the hard drive.

Now on to the Blu-Ray note

I discovered recently (maybe all of you knew this already) but the Blu-Ray standard has changed in the last 3 years and I assume it happened quite recently.  We have Samsung Blu-Ray players purchased 3 years ago.  Recently purchased Blu-Ray discs no longer play properly on them.  I suspect this problem is more widespread than just Samsung.  The fix is to upgrade the firmware on your Blu-Ray player.  Yikes!! I said when I heard this.  It actually turned out to be much easier than it initially appeared.  If you are experiencing the same problem I describe then follow these steps:

1. Find out the make and model number of the player in question.
2. Go to the support site for the manufacturer of that player and find the download for the firmware upgrade
3. Download it to your computer and copy the file to a thumb drive.
4. Take the thumb drive and plug it into the USB port on the player and follow the instructions on the display or on the TV and in a few minutes it will do the upgrade.  Make sure there is no disk in the player when you do this and that the player is powered on.
5. Alternatively you could wait  a few more years for all video content to come via the web and there’s no further need for DVD players or DVDs.  Up to you.

I hope some of these were helpful.  Next up for my blog will be taxes.  I’m planning on tackling all my own tax returns this year and will communicate back to all of you what I learn.

Stay tuned

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