Got Any More of that Snake Oil, Doctor?

A few months ago I started suffering from globus pharyngeus (the sensation of having a lump in your throat), which is often caused by muscles in your throat tensing up when they shouldn't. A very common cause of that is post-nasal drip, which I've had since allergy season started earlier this year. I finally got tired of it and went to the doctor.

My doctor said that he was certain the globus sensation was being caused by the post-nasal drip and asked if I had taken any allergy medicines. Now, I've taken various allergy medicines over the years, but nothing has been effective since I took Rhinocort as a teenager. In fact, with the sole exception of Prilosec (for heartburn), I have not had a positive experience with a prescription medication in over ten years. Prescription dose ibuprofin for that back pain a few years ago? Nothing. Muscle relaxants for the same problem? Drowsiness, but no relief. Allergy medicines? Again, drowsiness and the same stuffy nose. The inhalers, steroids, and nebulizer medications I was given for the allergy-related inflammation of my nose, throat, and lungs that left me gasping like a fish for a month back in 2007? Nothing but false hopes and a disorienting buzz from the steroids.

So I told the doctor the truth; i.e., I don't have any faith in the effectiveness of allergy medicines. Well, he told me he was certain that prescription Zyrtec for the allergies in general and Flonase for the nasal problem should take care of the congestion and, by extension, the globus sensation. Well, I recognize that I'm not a doctor and don't have my doctor's training or expertise, so I went along with it and took the medicines...

The Zyrtec made me drowsy in the morning and irritated my throat. Did it help my allergies? Not at all. When the bottle of pills finally ran out, the only change I noticed was that I wasn't drowsy anymore and that my throat wasn't as irritated. What about the Flonase? What did it do? Well, it didn't do much for the congestion. But it did do something: horrible, frequent, profuse nosebleeds. I have had the three or four worst bloody noses in my life in the past two weeks. Even when I'm not actively having a nosebleed, I keep finding a small amount of blood in my nose. The most irritating part is that I stopped taking the Flonase after several minor nosebleeds and one major one. The subsequent incidents occured shortly thereafter. I'm going to be seriously upset if this lousy medication did long-term damage to my nose.

You know, as an engineer I've learned to stop putting faith in equipment, designs, brands, and companies based on significantly less bad experiences than I've had with various medicines. Maybe I should just avoid them lest the next batch of snake oil I'm offered actually finishes me off.

Noise, Noise, NOISE!

Sometimes it's fun to find out about the quirks of people you know. Well, here's one of mine: I have a problem with noise.

I'm not the only noise-averse person in my family. My father has been known to wander around looking for the source of noises that bother him. Once he drove around town at 5 a.m. looking for the beeping that had woken him up. It turns out it was the sound of garbage trucks backing up several miles away. I've heard that my granddad is the same way.

Given the tendencies of the men in my family, I can only assume that my mother has been amused by the stories that my wife tells her about me.

My issues seem to come to the fore around this time of year. I like the 4th of July, or at least I like the patriotic part, but I dread its coming every year. It seems that a lot of people see Independence Day as the time to make noise: popping noises, banging noises, whistling noises, crackling noises... and I can't stand noise! I don't really blame my neighbors, nor am I upset with them. They're just doing normal, acceptable things for this time of year. Unfortunately, it just happens to drive me nuts.

I can't say when it started, but since childhood I've had a problem with noise. Whether it's an overly loud TV, the noise of a crowd, loud music, motorcycles, screaming children, or firecrackers, it all makes me anxious and irritable. The fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and all I want to do is get away from it. Part of this sensitivity may be due to fact that I have excellent hearing (which was recently reaffirmed during an employee physical). Of course, it's also possible that I have good hearing because I have an aversion to noise.

I'm extremely protective of my hearing. If I'm at an airshow, using a weed-eater, vacuuming, or working in a relatively loud environment, you can find me wearing earplugs. I have even worn earplugs to a movie theater. Recently a friend of mine in my company's safety department asked to check the decibel level at which I kept my mp3 player (it was out of curiosity, he wasn't auditing me or anything). He held an earphone up to his meter and said that he was impressed; I'm one of the few that maintain their music at a safe volume.

The horrible irony is that I can't enjoy a quiet environment either. Every creak, whisper of air, or distant sound grabs my attention and wrecks my concentration. That's why I'm constantly listening to music. I was relieved when I read on Orson Scott Card's blog (Card is one of my favorite authors) that he always listens to music while writing for this very same reason. It's comforting to know that I'm not the only nut out there.

Star Trek

This past Saturday my wife and I finally saw Star Trek. Now, I've been a fan of every incarnation of Star Trek since about 1990. I've seen every single episode of the five different series with the exception of a few Voyager episodes (I was on a mission in Mexico at the time). I own the two-disc special editions of all the previously released movies, all four seasons of Enterprise, and the last two seasons of Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately I'm not quite rich enough to own a whole lot more than those six seasons. I actively collect Star Trek novels. I own the official encyclopedia and the official chronology as well as the Original Series, Deeps Space Nine, and The Next Generation technical manuals. I have the Star Trek Star Charts. I even have the official blueprints of the Enterprise-D from The Next Generation. In other words, I think I'm fairly well qualified to judge J. J. Abrams' new Star Trek.

I thought it was the best Star Trek movie ever.

My wife, who didn't exactly grow up on Trek, was very impressed by it (and actually teared up during the first fifteen minutes).

The story was engaging, the characters were good (better than the originals, in fact), and the action was constant without ever dumbing down the movie. The cinematography was more dynamic than in any previous incarnation of Star Trek (this is particularly noticeable in a noteworthy scene in which the Enterprise swoops in with literally all phasers and torpedoes blazing). They even addressed the age-old complaint that all action in the Star Trek universe occurs in a single plane, with all the starships being presented as if they were sea vessels limited to the surface of the ocean rather than moving in the three dimensions of space. In one particular scene the Enterprise actually appears upside down with respect to the object on which the camera is focused. This may seem like a small detail, but it shows that the new caretakers of the franchise have been paying attention.

The film is also filled with minute details for the fans: various sound effects are cleverly modernized versions of their 1960s counterparts, quotes and paraphrases from the Original Series and its movie spinoffs can be found throughout, and there's even a reference to "Admiral Archer" and his beagle that viewers of Enterprise will find pretty funny. Since the movie was obviously designed to appeal to a larger audience than the typical Trek movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see how faithful they were to their source material.

In short, Star Trek was a great movie that seems to appeal both to Trek fans and non-fans alike, as indicated by its 95% on Rottentomatoes.com. This compares pretty favorably with The Dark Knight's 94% (let's just ignore that in my last post I said I don't usually agree with the critics). Once the closing credits appeared, my wife and I agreed that we couldn't wait for the sequels. I'd give the new Star Trek a 4.5 out of 5:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Like any other self-respecting nerd [sic], there was a period in my youth when I collected comic books. While I collected far more Spiderman comics than any other particular series, I was also quite a fan of Wolverine. Years after I bought my last comic, I enjoyed the three X-Men movies and felt that the character was well-portrayed. I was therefore looking forward to the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

My wife and I went to see it a few weeks ago, around the time of the Star Trek premiere. Now, I'm a Star Trek fan first and foremost, but I also hate crowds, so we decided to see the slightly older Wolverine. I had heard that Wolverine was getting some pretty lousy reviews (37% on Rottentomatoes.com), but I don't often agree with movie critics. After reading a few of those reviews, I thought it humorous that one of the critics' main complaints was that the movie spends much of its time showing Wolverine fight random mutants (Wolverine vs. Gambit, Wolverine vs. Blob, Wolverine vs. Sabertooth, etc.). All I can say about that criticism is what Microsoft may say about any number of its products; it's not a bug, it's a feature.

It turns out that the movie was pretty good (definitely better than 37%); I enjoyed it at least as much as the X-Men movies. The movie covers Wolverine's origins (who was born in the early 1800s as James Logan), and spends most of its time on his relationship with his brother (Victor Creed; better known as Sabertooth, although he's never called that in the movie) and the experiment that bonded the indestructible metal "adamantium" to his skeleton and claws. That's right, the movie is consistent with the 1990s X-Men comic that revealed that Wolverine has always had claws made of bone; his claws weren't implants but pre-existing claws bonded with adamantium. The movie also reveals that the experiment performed on Wolverine is merely one part of a program to create the ultimate mutant weapon.

For those who are bothered by it (as I sometimes am), the movie had a bit more profanity than most of the PG-13 Marvel Comics movies and was more violent than any of the Spider-Man or X-Men movies. However, the violence was of a highly exaggerated sort (which my wife and I perversely enjoyed) and wasn't nearly as disturbing as the violence in The Dark Knight (another movie we both enjoyed, but in spite of the violence).

For entertaining me for an hour and a half, for focusing on the most interesting of the X-Men, and for the shear magnitude of the property damage that occurs in the last twenty minutes, I give the movie a 4 out of 5.

Milestones

My wife recently posted about family milestones, two of which were mine. First, I turned 30 years old this past April. Now, is there a point at which one is supposed to feel like an adult? Considering that my birthday presents consisted mostly of Star Wars Lego sets, I don't think I've reached that point yet. When I was younger I thought that there was an age at which you realized that you had finally reached maturity and that you knew what you were doing. Well, I hit 18, and that certainly wasn't it. I reached my 20s and it didn't happen then, either. I was married in 2001 and now have three kids; that didn't do it. I received a bachelor's degree in engineering in 2003, but I still felt like a kid. I earned a master's degree in engineering in 2005 and felt like an over-educated, heavily indebted kid. This year I turned 30 and will soon have spent four years at my current job. More than once I've wondered what my employers are doing allowing some dumb kid to work with nuclear technology. Maybe I'll reach maturity when I'm 40.

The second milestone has to do with my weight. Those who know me may have noticed that I've been on a diet recently. This past month, for the first time in quite a few years, the number on the scale started with a "1" rather than a "2". That's a loss of about 60 pounds since October, 2008. My goal is 170, which I haven't weighed since high school. I've been asked repeatedly how I've done it and the answer is simply that I eat less.

I've tried diets such as "South Beach" and "Slim-Fast" and have been unable to maintain them due to the limited food choices. I've done much better following the "Weight-Watchers" point system since it allows you to eat whatever you want; it just limits your portions. For the first few months I was closely following the system, but have since gotten a feel for how much I should be eating. It appears that I had to recalibrate my sense of hunger to more closely match my level of physical activity (i.e., cubicle dweller).

Free At Last!

Around the time my wife and I were married, my parents sat us down for the talk... on credit card debt. I seem to remember them spending about an hour recounting the horrors of excess credit card debt and how it's easiest not to get into it in the first place.

Well, apparently we didn't remember that talk a few years later when our lifestyle cost slightly more than my salary. After a significant buildup of debt, and a couple of decent raises, we decided to finally start chipping away at the credit card. We spent quite a while trying to pay the debt off, but the ridiculous interest rate kept eating up much of our payments. Finally, someone suggested we transfer the balance to a credit card with 0% interest on balance transfers for one year.

We have sunk hundreds of dollars a month into that card for the past year, trying to pay it off before the 0% interest ended. We think the credit card company was well aware of what we were doing, since they kept raising our credit limit and encouraging us to actually use the card rather than just pay it off. On March 31st, my wife made the last payment on the credit card. And now we're free! Free! And given the current credit crisis in this country, it looks like we're just in time, too.

Movie Score Review: The Dark Knight (2 CD Special Edition)

When The Dark Knight came out, I bought the mp3 version of the one-disc score from Amazon. However, a short while ago it came to my attention that a 2 disc version of the score had been released. Oddly enough, the first disc was identical to the original release; the second disc had additional, unreleased music plus four "remixes". I absolutely had to have that additional music (except for the remixes; I hate remixes). Given the cost of the set (an outrageous $51.99) I was very grateful that Amazon allows you to buy individual tracks for $0.99. Thus, I spent an additional $10 and effectively ended up with the 2 disc score.

Although I enjoyed the Batman Begins score, The Dark Knight is substantially better. While it may not work as stand-alone music for some listeners (the music is closely tied to the tone and events in the movie), it is a fantastic work with a good balance of exciting, menacing, thoughtful, and tragic music.

The score is dominated by three musical cues: Batman's, the Joker's, and Harvey Dent's/Two-Face's. Batman's musical cue shows up from the first movie effectively unchanged. The Joker is given an atonal synthesizer score that is very appropriate for the portrayal of the character (throughout the movie I was able to predict when the Joker was about to appear since he is often preceded by his theme). Finally, Harvey Dent's/Two-Face's musical cue, like the character, depicts both dignity as well as tragedy.

My only complaint is that, like nearly all scores, the music is incomplete (about an hour or so of the music from the movie is missing). Nor is the music presented in the correct order. In fact, several individual tracks contain music from disparate parts of the movie. This is standard practice for movie scores, but it would have been nice to see The Dark Knight get the same treatment as Star Wars Episodes I, IV, V, and VI or the extended Lord of the Rings scores.

The music that's there is excellent, but the score's incompleteness and disorder earns the collection a 4 1/2 out of 5. By the way, if you intend to purchase the score, save yourself about $33 and buy the mp3 version of the collection.