Good drug...

Januvia is one of the pills I take for my diabetes and i have to say it works really well.

clipped from www.cnn.com Januvia, a pill from New Jersey-based Merck & Co., Inc., is the newest entrant to the diabetes field. Like the other drugs, it controls blood-sugar levels and is only used by diabetics with type II diabetes, which generally emerges in adults as a result of obesity. Januvia's growth has been rapid since the drug was launched into the U.S. market in October 2006. Sales for Januvia (and the similar drug Janumet, which is much smaller) totaled about $200 million in the third quarter of 2007. Some analysts believe Januvia has billion-dollar blockbuster potential. John Boris, an analyst at Bear Stearns, has projected $740 million in sales for 2007, Januvia's first full year on the market.

Sadness...and then boredom

Today I lost one of my (and many another 40-something year old man) childhood heroes. Evel Kneivel passed away and with him another link to my childhood. While my memories will never fade, knowing he is gone will push them a little more into the past. Every once in a while I would see him in the news and it would bring back the memories of me trying to jump my wagon with my bike as a ten year old. Twisted that knee and to this day it hurts when the weather turns colder! I remember watching the Wide World of Sports on ABC with anticipation of his spectacular showmanship. It is just another reminder that I am getting older with each passing day. Now for the boredom. Loved the fact that Dallas won the game but if the NFL Network ever wants to achieve its goal of competing with the broadcast networks it will absolutely have to find a better broadcast team. I like Chris Collinsworth on Sunday's when he is in the studio but him and Bryant Gumbel just cannot call a game. That was about the most boring experience I have ever had when watching the Cowboys. Fox has the crowd going in the background and just makes it feel alive. A lot of people missed a pretty good game but they did not miss anything when it came to the team in the booth.

First, the good news. The Cowboys won. Now the not so good news. The score should not have been anywhere as close as it was. Green Bay was missing two important defensive players (KGB and Woodson) and it showed as Dallas moved the ball at will. But the defense gave up too many plays, like the long touchdown run and some passes by Rogers. I give credit to Green Bay for making a game of it but it should have been a 20 point win without much of sweat being broken. Aaron Rogers may be the future for Green Bay but tonight Dallas made him look like the present quarterback of a 10-1 team. Hopefully the letdowns can be fixed by the time Dallas goes to Detroit. Detroit can put up some points in a hurry. Bought a new toy this past weekend. It should arrive tomorrow. It is a pen scanner which is a device that looks like a highlighter on steroids and it scans in printed type. I read a lot of magazines and am always coming across stuff I would like to save to look up at a later time but just do not have the time to scan in pages. Things like web url's, quotes, titles of books or videos, etc. I also don't want to tear out the pages from the magazines (not because I want to save them, I put them in a recycle bin) as I do not want torn out pages laying around. I have known about pen scanners for quite some time so I decided to find out if there was one that I could afford so I did some research on the internet. I found one that had been reviewed by David Pogue of the New York Times "Circuits" column. He thought it was pretty good so I decided to find out just what it cost. I found one at J&R's Electronics in New York City for about $90 with a $25 mail-rebate. I truly hope it works as advertised. I read several reviews on the internet and most were positive. As with most things I do believe that the negative comments are a result of people not understanding how it works and get frustrated. Also, they may have higher expectations of what any given product than what it truly is capable of. I figure many of these people could not master how to hold it or they expected it to be able to scan line after line. I do not need it for that (it supposedly holds 500 pages of text) as I do not think I will be scanning more than 30 characters at a time and most likely not near that many. That means I will have plenty of time between scans for the device to record each scan into the memory before the next scan. I am not going to sit there and scan page after page, I just want it for those moments when something does come along that I want to remember. And you can tether it to your computer and scan directly into a program such as word or excel or straight into the url field in the browser. I really think this is one of those gizmos that if it works I will use it a lot. Practice is what will make the difference between me writing a positive or negative review. Don't make the expectations higher than what the product can do and practice with it until you know how to properly use it.

Lessons of life....

This is one of the lessons I have recently learned about myself. There is so much about life that we need to know and by the time we know it, so much of life has passed us by.

clipped from www.nytimes.com I’m the man pretending he knows what the hell is going on around him when, in fact, he’s clueless.”

Not the same and yet it is how I feel at times...

The following quote is from a man that had been incarcerated for 16 years for a brutal murder that he did not commit. He is having trouble adjusting to life outside. In no way do I think my life compares to his, I have been free, and yet my choices and decisions led me to locked in a mental prison that only now am I becoming free from. I am in a "halfway" house but I am on my way to mental freedom. I cannot recover time lost but I can enjoy that which is yet to be.

clipped from www.nytimes.com “I’m free, but I’m trapped, and no matter how much I run, I’ll never make up for the lost time.”

If only...

I had understood just how much my life was affected by being bi-polar. I have been taking medication for this condition and it has completely changed my life. I can now see myself and my actions in a different way and realize just how much I had been holding myself back. The emotional roller coaster was far greater than I understood and its effects on my relationships was so much more than I thought. I do know that it is better late than never. I cannot recover that which is lost or was never found in the first place but I can move forward from here.

Finally....well, maybe.....

I finally broke down and ordered internet to be installed at my apartment. Went through a website that partners with all of the major providers as they offered a rebate on the modem ($90). Finally received the modem Friday and had a Saturday appointment to have it installed. That is when things went downhill. The guy spent the better part of two hours trying to get a signal but to no avail. There are two cable outlets in the living room and yet neither one of them seems to be connected to the box outside. So the technician called in to have another, higher level tech, come out and rewire my apartment. He told me that it could be anywhere between two and seven days before they can get out and do the rewire. So I am excited to get it but disappointed it is going to be another week before I do get it. There is so much entertainment on the internet available that I do not know if I will need my tv for anything more than Cowboys football and the one show each week that I schedule for, "Life".