Blog / Random thoughts and musings.

Sneak preview of spring

As anyone in Northern Virginia already knows, spring has made an early, but temporary appearance this week. Today’s high will be in the mid 70s (20 degrees above normal), and it’s a perfect day for working out on the balcony at work with a wireless laptop. Let’s enjoy it while we can, since it will be in the 40s this weekend!

The Verizon FiOS install went quite well. As predicted, the HD picture quality is generally excellent, although it does vary from channel to channel and show to show, probably depending on how the shows were originally filmed. Too bad we’re not too into sports, as the ESPN HD channels look amazing. The standard-definition channels look significantly better than DirecTVs. The digital video recorder leaves a lot to be desired after being spoiled by a Tivo for the last 5 years or so, but a software update from Verizon is due in a couple months, and a new Tivo Series 3 that’s compatible with FiOS but less expensive than their current $600 model is also due this year. Haven’t played much with the FiOS internet but will do so this weekend and try to switch everything in the house over from Cox internet.

Glad to say that chemo #8 was better than #6 and #7! Side effects were less severe and didn’t last as long. Interestingly, two days after I got my Aranesp shot for my red blood cells, the FDA came out with warnings about Aranesp. Fortunately the warnings seem to only apply to situations where the recommended dose is exceeded, but I’ll still be checking with my Oncologist about it. I’ve only needed Aranesp twice so far, and it’s likely I won’t need it any more anyway.