MikeJandreau

Woah. Hey there.

July 7th, 2010 No Comments

Wow, it’s July. I should rename this blog the 6 month blog, and only update once every six months. But that’d be lame. I just don’t have much to say. Not that you care, anyway, but whatever.

Let’s see, what’s happened? Well, we bought a house for one. A nice yellow one, with lots of room. So much room, in fact, that not only do I get my own office, but I get a music room for my drums and guitars, as well. That’s pretty exciting. Once we’re completely done unpacking everything I’ll put up some pictures of the inside. Soon, I keep telling myself that it’ll all be done soon.

It’s been almost 7 months since Lasik, and my eyes are still near perfect. The dryness isn’t as bad as it has been for the first few months. I can go days without any eye drops now, but still eventually need to drop some in.

I’m so uninteresting, I can’t even think of anything else to write. Sorry for the disappointing post. At least it’s something, right?

Oh, hello there.

January 27th, 2010 No Comments

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What’s new? Lots, I guess.

My eyes have settled in quite nicely. I can see things like I never thought I’d be able to see things. Night time vision is still a bit blurry when it’s really dark, but that’s getting better as time progresses. They say that I’ll be completely clear and healed in another 8-10 weeks. I look forward to that.

The holiday season was good. Lots of time with family. Lots of good times in general.

I’ve been working on a redesign for MJJ Designs’ website. Should be done in a couple of weeks.

Finished up some sites for clients recently, they’re in the portfolio on MJJ Designs, if you’re interested.

My contract with BU was up, then wasn’t, then was, then wasn’t. I still don’t know if they’re going to continue the contract or not. We’ll find out in a few weeks.

Christine and I have been working hard on the Kindle site (here), and made quite a bit of money over Christmastime. That was nice. We’re looking for a house, and hopefully can get one when our lease is up in June. So we’ll see what happens there.

Other than that, it’s just life as usual. Nothing else noteworthy to report. But yes, I’m still alive, and for those of you who stumble upon my site here, thanks for coming back.

Day Two – Post LASIK Surgery

December 19th, 2009 No Comments

For those of you who didn’t know, I had LASIK eye surgery two days ago, Thursday December 17th, 2009.

There’s been a lot of questions since there, so I’ll do my best to answer them. Also, in the future if people stumble onto this page, maybe it’ll answer some of your questions:

No, it’s not painful to be zapped in the eye with a laser. It is a bit painful when they put the clamp on your eye, and apply pressure while cutting open your cornea. It feels more or less like someone’s punched you in the eyeball. It goes away after an hour or so.
No, you can’t immediately see after the surgery’s over. When you sit up from the chair, it looks like you’re under water. That goes away (mostly) after your mandatory 5 hour nap after surgery.
Yes, my vision is perfect now. At least that’s what they’ve told me. According to my morning after test, my vision is now 20/20. It’s still a bit foggy around bright white things, and Tv/computer, but it’s getting better each day.
Yes, I could technically have gone back to work the day after surgery. But why risk it. I took a long weekend, and should be more than fine on Monday to go back full time.
There are a metric ton of eye drops you have to put in pre and post surgery. Every hour I have to put in artificial tears, every two hours some anti-inflammatory medication, and 4 times a day some antibiotics. If you don’t like eye drops, you might not want to get this surgery. I didn’t know about all the drops until the morning of. (Yes, after I’d already paid.)
It’s still an expensive procedure. After a discount I got, it cost me just shut of $3500. However, there are cheaper procedures you can get done. I got the “CustomVue” surgery from The Lasik Institute in Burlington, MA. Dr. Sheth did the surgery, and was fantastic. The cheaper surgery that the Lasik Institute folks have available is as cheap as $650 per eye. (As of the time I’m writing this.) The “CustomVue” I got also comes with a lifetime guarantee. If my sight goes bunk at any point, I can have the surgery done again for free.
Yes, you go blind temporarily when they’re doing the surgery. My eye sight went completely black for about 10 seconds.
Yes, you can actually see when they flip the sliced part of your cornea away from your eye. It goes from clear to blurry pretty quickly.
Yes, the laser makes a scary sound. (Similar to the first time you hear a tattoo gun. It’s that scary.)
Yes, the eye drops they make you put in give you a metallic taste in your mouth. You get used to it.
Yes, I’m glad I did it. Once my vision crisps up, I’ll be 100% glad I’ve done it.
The laser itself is very quick. My left eye (which was worse than my right) took two blasts. 8 seconds, and 6 seconds. The right eye (which was the stronger of the two) took one blast, 8 seconds. All in all, I was in the chair about 8 minutes or so. (A few minutes for prep, then the slicing, then the laser, then done.)
My eyes are incredibly bloodshot right now. The pressure they apply with the clamp, to make it so you can’t move your eye, can cause bruising. It’s normal. It doesn’t hurt anymore, though.
If you’re thinking of having LASIK done, and have the financial means to do so. Just do it. While the surgery is something I don’t want to do again in my life, it was definitely worth doing it once.

I’m still recovering, but getting to the point where I can function. I can look at the computer screen for more than ten minutes now, without having eye pain. I drove on the highway today for the first time since the surgery, and it was a trip. Being able to read things far away is pretty awesome.

I’ve been playing “Can you read that?” with Christine since my eyes started healing. I’m determined to find something that’s far enough away that she can’t read it, and I can. So far, I’ve failed. She has some damn good eye sight.

Other than that, life’s just chuggin’ away. Keeping busy. Did all my holiday shopping today, wrapped all the presents and placed them under our mock-tree. (We didn’t buy one, we just designated a spot on our floor that we were going to stack the presents.)

That’s all I’ve got for now. Uninteresting, I know. C’est la vie!

New Design, New Content

November 11th, 2009 No Comments

I’ve been looking for a new theme for this site for a while. And I’m honestly too lazy to make my own from scratch, so I found this one. Modified it a bit to suit my needs, and voila. Here we are.

I’ve added back in the “Music” section, which isn’t complete yet, but it’s almost all of the lyrics to songs I’ve written in my lifetime. I haven’t written in years, and I’m hoping seeing all of my past stuff on the site every time I come to will inspire me to write something new.

So, there you have it. Read away. Comments are turned off for the lyrics, but feel free to send me a message if you’ve got any feedback, or even comment on this post.

Note of warning, try not to read anything from the ’90s, I was just a kid and wrote cheesey meaningless crap back then. 2000 and 2001 were good years for me, at least I think so. Anyway, enjoy. Or not.

Dedicated Servers Rock

October 27th, 2009 No Comments

I was downloading a backup this morning from the fairly new dedicated server:

Dedicated download speed

Note the 1.5 MB/s downspeed, from a server! Get that with a shared host. I dare you!

Mac Pro – day 6

October 16th, 2009 No Comments

I love my Mac. His name’s Alfred, in case you were wondering. You know, like Bruce Wayne’s butler. And he’s just as awesome, and helpful.

I’ve done quiet a bit in the last six days of having a Mac, including doing my first bit of design work on it. I also learned what applications I need to rip and burn DVDs, which is so fast I have a hard time believing that this is actually working. Amazing, right?

I’m still in awe that I’m able to do all the things I can, and so far.

I was scared to make the switch full time. I even bought Parallels, just in case there was something I needed to do on Windows. I haven’t even opened it aside from when I installed it, to make sure it worked. It’s amazing.

Who knew that I’d convert after all these years? Did I go to the “dark side?”, no. I think quite the opposite, actually. I went from years of being frustrated with Windows, and not being able to do the things I wanted to, to having the simplicity of a Mac, and the ease that comes with it.

I’ve got a lot of web-related stuff to do this weekend, so I’ll finally put it to the test. I’ll also be upgrading the last two drives in it (the one it came with, and the secondary one that will be for Time Machine backups), and possibly getting a new mouse.

Why didn’t any of my Mac friends make me switch years ago? Thanks, jerks.

Mac Pro Day!

October 10th, 2009 No Comments

First, thanks to Nick at the Apple store in the Rockingham Mall (Salem, New Hampshire). Dude knows his stuff, that’s for sure. I know what you’re thinking, all the dudes and dudettes at the Apple stores know their stuff. True, but none that I’ve encountered like this guy. He had an answer to every question I had, and got me everything I wanted. Kudos to you, sir.

So, how’s the Mac? Glad you asked. Let’s put it this way: I’ve used a lot of high end PCs in my lifetime. A lot. And not one of them has ever come close to this thing. Here’s the final specs:

Dual Quad Core 2.26 Processors (I would have upgraded the processors, but a) I didn’t think I needed to, and b) the prices are a bit crazy)
8Gigs of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 4870 (The upgrade with 512MB of DDR5 on-board video memory.)
640 GB main drive.
30″ Cinema display.

I’m about 80% done installing all the software I need, and it’s so easy because this thing’s a freakin’ beast. I’ve been installing handfuls of apps at a time. My PC would have thrown up and died an hour ago. So awesome.

As you may know, my PC had two external hard drives, each a terabyte in site, that I had planned on connecting to this beast. However, they used Firewire 400 and the new Mac Pros only have Firewire 800 (only, like it’s a bad thing, heh.)

So my solution was rather destructive. I ripped open the cases, and dropped them into the available slots on the Mac Pro. I know what you’re thinking; it’s day one and I’m ripping the thing open already to put more stuff in it? With a PC that may be complicated, but fret not, it takes less than 10 seconds to install a new drive into a Mac Pro. Literally.

So I dropped in the two terabyte drives, and the secondary 320gb drive from my PC, for a total of 2.94TB in the Mac Pro.

The hardest part was opening the freakin’ cases of the drives, which I learned is more complicated than it needs to be. The first was easy, the second I ended up smashing to bits to get the drive out. It worked though.

One of the drives is formatted in a way that OS X can’t erase stuff from it. (I assume this is a formatting issue), so I’m going to copy everything off of it, format it, and put the stuff back. It’ll take a while, but it’ll get done eventually.

The biggest question people are going to ask, is about the 30″ Cinema display. Is it as good as it should be for $1800? You bet your sweet ass it is. I can fit the whole freakin’ internet on this thing, on one screen. It’s huge, and the resolution is enormous.

It truly is a work of art. Given, it should be for what I paid for it, but I’m not complaining.

Overall, my Mac experience thus far, has been nothing but excellent. My PC is sitting next to me (as a reminder of what applications I need to install) and begging me not to through it away. With those beady Windows eyes of it. Evil! Evil I say!

Photos of the new set up below (Warning, I didn’t re size them, so they’re going to make your monitor explode. Mine, on the other hand, loves them this large):