Pete’s Musings

I decided it might be beneficial to create a little survey for my fellow Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH) sufferers. Something to help them see where they stand amongst other patients in terms of treatment, health, life changes. I’ve already received a lot of feedback on other questions people want to know about, so a second survey is likely. Check it out! embedded below, or you can take it here. Results will follow after some responses Read More »

Music that sets the tone Sarah Mclachlan

Why do I identify with Sarah Mclachlan and ‘Fallen’? you can probably guess most of it. I’ve lost a lot in these past years. My thoughts of a career and desire for it, my liver (which is partially embolized and cirrhosed), my back (Broken and with osteoporosis), finances (living on disability-welfare and bankrupt). Add on top of that the old weight problem … I can barely get through a day unscathed, much less dare to hope for better days ahead. Just trapped. No way back to where I was, and little hope left for things to get better. Want to move, but can’t - no money, nowhere to go, and can’t even physically move a single box! Want to work, but can barely cope now … spending equal or greater time in pain in bed for whatever time I spend doing anything. Even a little sortie the other day to meet old friends, added to cutting a few boxes for the kids and making a quick supper (whilst barely having energy to stand for the last 2) … was only attainable with pain medication, and had to spend the night and next day in pain, bed and house-bound. It just sucksssssssssssssss! Read More »

Had a little bit of a panick attack earlier this week when a friend alerted me to the big ol’ 404 error when trying to access my blog. Site was offline for 2 days only. My generous webspace patrons had a little billing kerfuffle and the contract didn’t auto-renew. But they got it all fixed up now and I’m very grateful! I had not backed up for over a year and a half!!! Needless you say, I backed up immediately and will endevour to do that more often. I have the posts emailed to me (which account I can’t recall!), but what a pain it would be to add it all back. And I’d lose the post dates, which I have found to be very valuable.

I often use the post dates to figure out Read More »

So I voted today in the advanced polling. I had to go and add myself to the electoral list because I wasn’t there for some unknown reason. Having flashbacks to the the 1995 referendum where I had to fight tooth and nail to vote because my name was misspelled (omg it’s english, I can’t possibly spell it!). Obviously the error occurred because the person doing the transcribing was french and didn’t care to do it right. Unfortunately, elector officers come primarily from the parties who won the previous election, kinda biased ever with the check and balances that are in place. Things like that take time to fix, and voting already takes too much time. Tens of thousands of people across Quebec had this happen. That in addition to the 86,000 ‘No’ ballots that were discounted in that referendum! I hope they do better this time.

But anyway, the funny part is calling elections Canada yesterday to verify that I was on the list and how to be added. I experienced what I call the Anglophone Shuffle. Where I call in Read More »

So my previous post, “Videotron (Quebecor) Throttling Bittorrent P2P,” jumped the gun a little bit! Videotron is NOT throttling my connection! (sorry videotron, still love ya - hug back? lol).

Instead, unbeknownst to me, both uTorrent and Azureus bittorrent clients have instituted what they call “bandwidth-allocation.” Read More »

[Aug 25, 2008 11PM - EDIT/RETRACTION: I overlooked an automatic software update as cause for the BT download limiting - info here]

Yup, Videotron has long been a public supporter of filtering internet or a tiered internet … and now they are taking action on it. According to my own tests, they are now limiting bittorrent downloading to 30KB/s on a plan that is rated at 800KB/s down and about 180KB/s up. Normally, my total bittorrent rates are consistently in the 100-200KB/s range, and I’ve changed nothing (same internet plan, system, software, sources). I’ve searched the internet to see if anyone else has noticed or written about this … and I’ve found nothing. Worse than this, it seems that while downloading via P2P, normal downloading is also compromised.

It is absolutely important that this fact be known to the public. Read More »

So after supper last night my sister blurts out “I’m pregnant!” Shocked, but not really surprised, I reply “well that didn’t take long!”. LoL. Her hubby has only been in the country 2 and a half months! Anyway, after that wore off, I was excited at the prospect of seeing another baby around. My niece and nephew are great, couldn’t have turned out better. But they are almost 12 and 14 years old now!!! Hard to believe, but there it is!
Recent picks of Nick and Sarah: Read More »

Just checked my blog and saw that it’s been a month and half since last post. Would like to say that this is because I’ve been super busy and all is going well. But that’s not the case, things are painfully boring here and aches and pains are wearing me down! Back is still messed up - walks are out of the question as is bike riding. Joints are sore, but possibly getting better now.

I had a visit with my liver specialist yesterday. All is good on the AIH front. My LFT (liver function tests) are still excellent, very low and normal, and unchanged from 2 months ago. And over that time period I’ve come off the evil steroids completely and am currently celebrating my first week without them since March. 4 months to regulate the inflammation caused by that stupid biopsy. The pain from Read More »