I bought a CHIP computer (http://getchip.com/).  $9.

4GB NAND, 512MB RAM, just 640×480 SVideo out, but capable of 720p, runs linux.

Generally more powerful than any computer I owned until the mid-late 90’s.

No, I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.  Possibilities include media server (using external USB drive), wireless music gateway (someone has written an itunes capable playback package), or maybe even some hardware hacking using the pinouts.

When Microsoft shipped the XBox and Apple shipped the iPhone I started to lament that there would be no more open computing devices.  The manufacturing process was just too complicated.  But now there are little kickstarters that can spin up a complete general purpose computer for dirt cheap.

Color me relieved.

I hope you had an awesome weekend, too!

The San Fernando valley the day after Thanksgiving from the Topanga Canyon overlook.

I visited my cardiologist on Thursday.  After reviewing the 48 hour Holter, the stress test data, and everything else, the conclusion is that this just isn’t a big deal.  The notion is that if you have a high number of ‘premature beats’ that ablation is probably justified.  High number in this case means something approaching 20%.  I have nowhere near that number.

So the decision is that I will just keep taking Atenolol.  It does not seem to disagree with me at all and it should keep me from having these super fast heart rate episodes which are really the only dangerous symptom of this issue.

Doc says I should just go on with my life, see you in a year, call if anything happens in the meantime.  His guess is that this might have been caused by some virus that left a scar when I was young.  Not unusual at all.

I figure that having a cardiologist and taking heart medication are two signs you’re old.  Even if it’s for an issue I’ve had since I was around 16 🙂

It was a good day for reading under the apple tree.

Yesterday I did the treadmill stress test.  Everything was steady while climbing the hill.  After the cooldown the flibidy flobity started up.  I skip a beat every 3 or 4 or more.  That’s the usual thing – as opposed to the super fast beats from the other day.  The hope is that this is two aspects of the same thing.  The good news is that the irregular beat is easy to trigger.  Well, good in that if we do ablation it should be easy to tell if it was successful.

Visited the doctor, yesterday, and here’s the short of it:

• My condition is not dangerous.  More just annoying.
• I’m staying on the atenolol for now, since it does not seem to disagree with me.
• In the next couple of weeks I’ll get a heart monitor for 48 hours to see what “Kurt normal” looks like.
• After that I’ll do a stress-treadmill to see what that looks like.

And then in about a month’s time I’ll visit the doc again and we’ll figure out if ablation is really called for or if atenolol will be a long term thing, etc.

Yesterday afternoon my heart started palpitating – beating really really fast.  This is something that’s happened ten or so times since I was a teenager.  Usually it hasn’t lasted more than a minute or two.  And I’m pretty sure the last one was more than two years ago.  I just sat down and had a sip of ice water and off it went.

Every primary care physician I’ve ever mentioned it to has said something like “That’s interesting.  We can’t really do anything about it unless we catch it with a 12 lead EKG.”  I write software, so I get that.  If you don’t see the problem it’s pretty hard to guess what’s going on.

I’m not getting any younger, and it’s generally better to figure this stuff out sooner than later.  We live in a small town and I figured good odds an ambulance would get here before it stopped.

So I dialed 911, called Ellyn to let her know, locked up the house, and waited on the tailgate of our pickup parked in the street.  Up comes the firetruck and they bust out the EKG, hook me up, and start printing tape.  Mission accomplished.  They clocked me at about 240BMP “undetermined regular rhythm.”

Then the ambulance showed up and they loaded me up.  I asked for “French, please” – the hospital that Ellyn works at, and off we went.  They gave me something to ‘reset my heart’, and that bumped it down to 110ish – still high, but way better than 240.

They dropped me off in the ER and they did labs and more hookups.  The labs came back negative for everything that you want to be negative, so that was good.  The recently hired rockstar Cardiac Electrophysiologist (heart electrician) stopped by and we chatted.

He admitted me to the step-down unit.  More hookups.  Another drug that bumped my heart rate down to the 70s.  Much better.

They kept me over night to monitor me.  In the morning I had an Echocardiogram – which was pretty cool to watch.  Chatted with the doctor a little more and they sent me home.

I’ll visit the doctor in a week or two and talk options.  The one he’s guessing will be appropriate is to go in and zap some electrical pathway that shouldn’t be there – and take a good look around while he’s doing it.

Things to note about hospital stays:
If you’re going to have leads put on and they are going to do any shaving/trimming, encourage them to do as much of that as they want.  You will end up with a lot less chest/back hair than you went in with, and having ’em trim it is way better than when it pulls off when the leads are removed.
When the doctor offers you something to help you sleep, it isn’t because you may sometimes have trouble sleeping – it’s because the bed is hot, you will have IVs in you, leads attached, things often beep, and people come to prod you every few hours.  Take the drugs.

People wanting to know more details should email me.  Family members wanting to know medical details should email Ellyn.

I had a stroke of inspiration last night: add tangerine zest to the chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Wow.  I don’t think I’ll ever make cookies without doing that again.  Just the zest of one tangerine.  Why didn’t anyone tell me?  Why doesn’t everyone do that?