Goin' To The Doctor

05.02.2002

I've got about an hour before I go off to the doctor to get the rest of my nevus surgically removed (see last entry for all the gruesome details!), so I've snuck over to the international headquarters of bitHalo to grab a bite of lunch. Sweet, carb-loaded McDonalds. I'm glad Gina doesn't read this.

The other night Jerry and I helped JD and Matt unload video game cabinets for the MAME machines they're building. I found 2 important things from that experience:

• The cabinets are really cool
• They're also @$#%ing heavy

I also got to see one in the early stages of working. It's amazing how different a video game looks going from a regular pc to looking at it in a game cabinet on a 27 (I think) inch screen. I've gotta go find more wrestling games!

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Pathology to English Dictionary

04.30.2002

Last week I went and had a mole removed, and last night I got a call from the doctor's office to which about the only thing I understood was "test results". The results weren't supposedto get back until Wednesday, so them calling this early couldn't be good. I went in and found that the tests they ran resulted in "Probable Desmoplastic Spits Nevus". After a lot of searching, the closest match I could find was "benign juvenile melanoma". Just to findout what was going on, I sent the crux of the report to Doug Ross, PhD/MD/Super Medical Know It All!. Below is the report, with his explanations included in parenthesis:

The shave biopsy shows a hyperplastic epidermis (growing skin) with no appreciable junctional melanocytic activity (just skin). The dermis contains abundant thick collagen bundles admixed with epitheloid appearing cells which have abundant cytoplasm and large vesicular nuclei (I like using bigwords to describe skin). Intranuclear inclusion are also seen. Hyperchromasia or miotic activity is not identified (You're not growing and neither whatever the "lesion" is ... that is good). The atypical cells extend through the full thickness of the biopsy (It goes deep ... IF ... remember I said IF .... it was a bad lesion that would be bad ....). Immunohystochemical stain S100 protein stains the cells diffusely positive with focal positivity seen in Hmb45. The tumor cells are negative for HAM56 a monocytic marker. (This is what you would expect for melanocytes .. he was worried about he "hyperplastic" part but this made him feel better). These features would support a melanocytic proliferation of which the differential diagnosis would include desmoplastic intradermal Spitz nevus (not a problem) and desmoplastic melanoma (not good). While I favor the former the later cannot be totally excluded (I'm covering my ass in this litiginous environment and so should you) due to the focal atypia cells, perivascular inflammatory infiltrate that is present deep, and the fact that the lesion is incompletely excised and thus the deep aspect of the proliferation cannot be evaluated. (Better take it all out to make sure it doesn't look more like Melanoma in the parts we cannot see ... plus you get to bill another procedure).

So, basicaly I'm going to live, and I haveto go back to a dermatologist Thursday where they're going to scoop the rest of the mole out and double check it for sure.

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Oopsie on the email

04.29.2002

I found out this morning I had my email link pointing to an address that doesn't exist yet. I haven't had a chance to get teh russellmania mail server up yet like I had thought I would with the code switch over, so russ@russellmania.com goes nowhere for now. For anybody that might have tried it, try again. Everything's going to my yahoo account for now.

Now, if only I can remember to bring those 2 movies for Ying, everything will be ok...

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Still Workin'

04.26.2002

As most people that have called me know, Invitrogen announced yesterday that they were closing the Huntsville location (the one I work at). For anyone I haven't talked to yet, I've still got a job thru the end of June. Eveything is fine, and I'm still taking a mini-vacation at the end of next week (beach here I come!). More than likely I'll post my resume here for future reference, so if you know anybody looking for a semi-cocky web developer....

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Yet Another Website

04.22.2002

I was working on another one of my little side projects over the weekend. Wrestlerom is my latest adventure into the world of roms and video game emulators. I've always been hooked on wrestling videogames (I didn't need the PS2 until Smackdown came out for it), and I've always thought it would be neat to go to a site that had just wrestling games. There's so many sites that have everything that you can think of that it's a little overwhelming for someone starting out (like me). I don't have every wretling game that's available, but I like think that it's a good start.

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