I have a number of contacts that apparently own iPhones, who send me email from said device from time to time. How do I know? They tell me each and every time they fire off an email from that very device (although I suppose anyone could append “Sent from my iPhone” to their communiqués, regardless of where they emanated).

Now, I realize that the iPhone, by default, does this. And I hope, and assume, that the reason these people do not turn off this “feature” is because of one of the following reasons:

• they don’t even realize it happens;
• they are too lazy to actually take care of disabling it;
• they can’t seem to disable it because of some glitch.

Excepting these reasons, and perhaps others that I am not cognizant of because of my inexperience with the device (oops, I just outed myself; you guessed it, I don’t own an iPhone – oh, the horror!!!), I see no reason to keep this message as your signature so that your iPhone continues displaying this message other than to try to look good to others. I don’t doubt that there are some (hopefully none I know personally) who privately relish that little message at the end of their emails. If your intent is to do just such a thing, I can honestly and truly say: I really don’t care – if anything, I now think less of you than I did before. Anyone who lets their possessions define who they are needs a lot of counseling (trust me, I need the same but for other reasons – as you may have already guessed).

So, if your goal is to rub in the faces of your friends the fact that you own an iPhone and they do not, why not go further than that simple message? What about something like:

Sent from my iPhone, from the front seat of my Porsche 911 GT3, from the island of Kauai, while I am sitting next to my supermodel girlfriend.

I don’t know, I get so tired of people and their need to tell everyone what material possessions they own. If it were not so destructive, it would be hilarious; however, it is destructive, thus it is only mildly amusing. I think I am going to start appending the following to my email messages:

Sent from my arrogant, self-righteous high-horse.

That ought to set things straight!

Reading an article about the bust of a drug ring which “penetrated deep into America's heartland,” I was immediately struck by the following statement from the sentencing judge to the supposed ring-leader:

You made cocaine available to all kinds of people that had an effect on lives that rippled way beyond yours.

Hmmm…What if we changed that up a bit? Like so:

You made alcohol available to all kinds of people that had an effect on lives that rippled way beyond yours.

Or, even this:

You made tobacco available to all kinds of people that had an effect on lives that rippled way beyond yours.

I’m sorry, but had I been given audience with that judge, I would’ve said a few choice words to him/her about the choice of words. “Coco” should merely be charged and sentenced based on the breaking of a law. To make this additional statement is just, well, ridiculous in my opinion.

Coco (or any drug (including the drugs alcohol & tobacco) dealer for that matter) was hardly responsible for the choices of others – true the product he sold may have enabled these people to make that choice, but it was their own doing. I am SO tired of people claiming to be victims when the only thing they are victims of are their own choices. We see this, however, in so many parts of our society. For example, abortion is typically used to deal with a situation people got themselves into through their own choices.

Blaming people for the choices of others, when those choices were clearly their own to make, is a travesty and defies logic. As far as I am concerned, if we are going to allow alcohol and tobacco to be legal, I see no reason why cocaine, marijuana, LSD, etc. should be illegal. Heck, let adults purchase Lortab or OxyContin too. How would that be different from letting people use alcohol or tobacco? We are bombarded by advertisements encouraging people to take all sorts of psychoactive substances – Prozac, Zoloft, etc.

I am prescribed Adderall for Adult ADD – you know what Adderall is? It is a combination of a couple of different amphetamines. Golly!!! I am a crazed drug user! HALP!!!1!

I wish our government would get out of the business of telling people what they can and cannot ingest at their own discretion. If someone ingests LSD and goes out and gets in a car accident, it’s no different from doing the same under the influence of alcohol. Deal with the real crime – if they break into someone’s home, charge them with it. If they steal money from their employer, charge them for it.

Let’s stop blaming drugs for bad behavior, there are plenty of sober people committing crimes and yet sobriety is legal – we need to focus on teaching people correct principles and let them govern themselves.

I have been taking 50mg of Zoloft, rather the generic thereof (sertraline), daily for the last 5 months for anxiety attacks (via panic disorder). It worked wonders for my anxiety problems, as well as my mood generally, but at the cost of having to deal with the side effects.

If you haven’t ever had the pleasure of ingesting an SSRI, you should count yourself lucky. The first two weeks taking it were rather nasty, I felt like I was on another planet. Eventually I felt better, but noticed that my memory wasn’t as good as it used to be, and my memory was already relatively poor (personally, I think it may be because of inattentiveness – I have Adult ADD).

As time has gone on, it seems the memory problems caused by Zoloft have been getting worse. Add to that the cardiac arrhythmia (palpitations) I experience on a daily basis and the fact that I have been dealing with anxiety attacks for over 10 years without medication and they seemed to be getting better, and you have the makings of my justification for a discontinuation of this pharmaceutical. Oh, and then there is the deadening of my emotions and my feelings of attachment to my family. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I am a zombie now, but there has, without a doubt, been a bit less depth to my emotions. I suppose that is how it helps some people, yes? Well, I would rather have the good and the bad then nothing at all.

The withdrawal symptoms associated with going off of SSRIs are relatively infamous, you can find plenty of anecdotal accounts of the hell you may experience, notwithstanding the pharmaceutical industry’s denial (Pfizer claims that Zoloft is not habit-forming or addictive – if true, why do people experience withdrawal symptoms when they quit taking Zoloft abruptly (which is something you should never do)? Don’t you have to have a chemical dependence in order to experience those?).

So about a week ago I began tapering off Zoloft by following a somewhat-random schedule wherein I take only 25mg either before bed and/or when I wake up, and alternating my doses of Zoloft with ~50mg of 5-HTP. Combining 5-HTP with an SSRI such as Zoloft isn’t something you want to take lightly, as you could end up with acute serotonin syndrome if you are not careful. Since I already take a rather low dose of Zoloft and the dose of 5-HTP I am taking is also small, I am not too concerned. Knowing the symptoms of serotonin syndrome are important if you undertake to try this, as you will need to act quickly should you start experiencing them. Vitamin B6 supposedly helps the body convert 5-HTP to serotonin, and I am taking a B vitamin complex, so it should be helping too…

Thus far, I haven’t felt too bad, but only time will tell! I hope to post a follow-up that this may be useful to someone.

I encourage anyone reading this and thinking about doing anything I say here to carefully research it yourself, and as always, consult your physician regarding any changes to your current medication schedule and before adding any supplements such as 5-HTP. Personally, I only trust physicians as far as I can throw them, and my arm really isn’t that strong. ;)

As names of medical conditions go, "swimmer's ear" doesn't sound too serious or scary. If you have never suffered from it or heard much about it, you might think it a cute name for a minor ear problem that one encounters when spending too much time playing in the pool. Swimmer's ear?! What kind of pansy condition is that?! I imagine little kids getting it and maybe they suffer some mild form of pain that is more annoying that genuinely painful.

Ahem.

Then I contracted swimmer's ear - in both ears. Not too cool. For 3 days, I had pain in my jaw which made opening my mouth less than pleasant. Chewing food was torture. Yawning was nightmarish. Had the discomfort stopped there, I would've been fine; ibuprofen was able to dampen the pain sufficiently. Unfortunately, this was just a mild preview of what was to come. After giving it a few days, I went to my doctor's office and was told I had swimmer's ear. I was given some antibiotic drops for the infection and some other drops for the pain (which were utterly impotent - they were nothing more than a topical anesthetic of sorts).

The next day was when the fun began. I spent the better part of 36 hours writhing from intense pain that merely laughed at the 800 milligrams of ibuprofen I was taking. Once the pain set in, I couldn't believe the doctor didn't give me any prescription painkillers - either they are worried that I am going to be addicted or they are some sort of masochists and wanted me to suffer horribly.

So, the harsh reality is that this innocuous-sounding condition should strike fear in anyone diagnosed with it; the intense and unforgiving pain of this beast is a menace not to be underestimated. Don't fear the reaper, there are worse things to fear - despite how innocent they may sound.

I own and currently use a Motorola Q. Well, I haven't updated the software on this thing in a very long time and thought that I might as well check to see if such a thing even existed. Although I know plenty about JavaScript, C#, and other such and similar software engineering subjects, I am a complete ignoramus when it comes to mobile devices, largely because I barely use the one I have. My wife and I both have cell phones but barely use them - I usually only received phone calls from my wife on my phone. Other than that, the only other useful thing mine does is tell me the time.

So, I found an update on the Motorola website, went through the motions with it and it tells me there is an update available for my phone after all. So, I let this updater have its way with my phone for about 15 minutes, via the USB cable, and after all is said and done, I notice that it is in roaming mode.

Huh. Okay, what is that?

Then I discover that, according to the phone's settings, the phone thinks its phone number is "0000005303" which is completely incorrect.

Not good.

Sure enough, I try calling with it and it tells me I need to use a credit card, etc.

I accepted the idea that the update must've hosed the phone and that I would need to head into the Verizon store and spend the better part of my Saturday there in order to get this fixed...just lovely!

Thankfully, after a bit of googling around, I found a comment to a blog post that indicated that all I needed to do was dial *228 from my phone and then select option 1 when presented with that choice.

Sure enough, after about a minute waiting while the phone was reprogrammed over the air, my phone was back to normal and working. Hallelujah!

schiz·o·pha·sia (skĭt'sə-fā´zhə, -zē-ə)
n.
The characteristic disordered speech of a schizophrenic person. Also called word salad.

The characteristic disordered blog posts of a schizophrenic person. Also called word salad.

In the mental health field, schizophasia, commonly referred to as word salad (see "word salad" for other meanings), is used to describe the symptom of confused, and often repetitious, language that is symptomatic of various mental illnesses. It is usually associated with a manic presentation and other symptoms of serious mental illnesses, such as psychoses, including schizophrenia.

Word salad is a string of words that vaguely resemble language, and may or may not be grammatically correct, but is utterly meaningless.

Definition (schizophasia): The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/schizophasia

Encyclopedia entry (schizophasia): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from Reference.com website: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Schizophasia

Encyclopedia entry (word salad): Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from Reference.com website: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Word_salad