Archive for January 2007
Ok, well maybe that starting statement is a little misleading, but take a look at this statistic available from Technorati:
Posts that contain Chantix per day for the last 180 days.
I didn’t quit back exactly in August, but being among the first to try it, it’s been 5 months + now. Chantix will turn your stomach sick for a while, but it’s nothing compared to the ravages your lungs and digestive tract have been through since you started the filthy habit.
Well, this weekend was my part of my goal and every time I look at the silkquit, feelings I should reinforce my nonsmoking come up to the surface. I won’t stay quit forever if I don’t stay vigilant, due to what I was doing being so damn addicting.
So I found a nice list of businesses that have closed or have lost a lot of customers since the smoking ban, however I’m forced to wonder at the same time how many lives are spared since the people are obviously not drinking and driving now. I’m not against clubs and bars, even places to eat that are smoking only, and advertise that. For reasons unknown, no state or municipality that I know of has created a quota or any system that would make sure at least a percentage of places existed where people could smoke opium, oops, I mean tobacco.
I’m all for a smoking ban, but let’s give them somewhere to smoke after all, since we all can relate to being pushed out into the rain or cold to smoke.
My next stop was to realize that other people struggle to quit, hadn’t found prescription medicines to be so good ( such as chantix ) . I’ve heard it all from friends, relatives and even the bystanders. The joy of smoking is the number one reason they won’t stop, even I’ve used that one before but I really felt stupid to say so. I had a little voice coming into my ear canal saying “Ah, but you won’t like the lung cancer, or enjoy the trouble breathing”.
Following on down the path of certain death, there is the group that just can’t quit. It’s impossible and they don’t see any damn way they can quit. They won’t take medicine, they won’t stop for longer than a week and they sure as hell won’t tell someone to ride their ass until they stop. My opinion has always been that if they were truthful about what they were saying, they’d ask for help from friends if they couldn’t take a magic pill: and we do have one now.
Then we are arriving at the gates of hell and agony, waiting too long to stop smoking to find ourselves at the last bastion of a smoker: It doesn’t matter, I’ve smoked so long what use is it to quit now? . I pondered that question myself already, when I considered that a 10 pack year smoker has changes in their bodies that signal cellular changes are occurring and cancer or lesions are already forming in their lungs. One could postulate that since I’ve hit that mark, even went over I have no reason to stop smoking, I should just keep right on trucking. One reason is good enough for me to quit, that it does matter my cancer, stroke, hearth disease are decreasing every single day.
That said, I’m glad that I haven’t smoked over 3,000 cigarettes so far in the past 5 months and that by statistics purposes I’ve saved over 1 1/2 weeks of my life. I can take a vacation with the $300 I’ve saved with that time I also have back. (I know it’s statistical, but in reality it’s a number to hide behind)
In closing, all the times I thought smoking saved me time, made me more calm, in the past 5 months I’ve saved over 50 hours by NOT smoking, 55 hours if you count the number of times I’d have to find a lighter or the pack of smokes.
I couldn’t imagine a cooler usb application right now, being that it’s the hardest problem to overcome with using X11 on a daily basis. Even when you consider that most X11 apps stream well to any 1mbps connection, getting back to that host is hard to do.
I’m not one to like using VNC for everything, and rdesktop only helps so much. It’s just great to have a complete true linux or freebsd enviroment that can stay running when you are not there.
My windows box doesn’t enjoy my freebsd server times, which would be years if it wasn’t for the power outages. (Just batteries) Lestat for example has pushed out pretty much a terbyte and no hitches yet.
Suddenlink kinda blamed my problems on my ‘router’ and that, quoting the rep “all routers have memory leaks”. Maybe I’m a little biased, rooting around for memory leak problems in freebsd has never happened to me. I’m glad that machines can push 20 terabytes nary needing a reboot, me being a windows user at home, so many things force us to reboot and cleanout our systems.
The problem mentioned before resolved on it’s own without anymore ‘memory leaks’ causing me to reboot.
So after getting my number transferred to another customer of Vonage, after I had not been a Vonage customer for many, many months I filed complaints with the FCC who is charged with regulating telecommunications.
Why oh why do I think Vonage will stop their lies at any point? Is lying to the consumer enough? Did lying to the Better Business keep them up at night? I don’t think they had enough truth to give, so they decided to shovel some more lies (which they have plenty of).
I quote Vonage’s response to my FCC complaint that they trasferred my number to another one of their customers:
“Our records indicate that Ms. *****’s number was removed from our inventory on December 13, 2006, which should enable her to receive inbound calls without incident. We do not have any indication that her number was assigned to another customer. “
Wow, I guess that email notification they sent the lady in Texas is like a needle in the haystack.
Stay away, and for god sakes do something else to save money than going to Vonage, eventually the FCC will shut these goons down if they keep getting complaints and using the same response:
Due to the nature of VOIP, it’s an umbrella term to mean: Vonage has problems.
So, I decided to type in what my ENT’s assistant said to me during a recent visit into google,
“You can’t fight ignorance”, while we were talking about among things:
1. My smoking cessation for 4 months 1 week
2. My beer habit since I quit
I’ve had my few beers a day compared to smoking a pack of smokes (actually told it contains formaldehyde - mostly a myth, but some truth to it), and that two years of light drinking is the same as 10 years of multi pack a day smoking.
The good news is that the beer has been slacked down so far, due to a new year’s resolution, to none until weekend. We’ll see if it ultimately sticks to none (not even one) until Fridays.
Ultimately alcohol is a poison, that does kill some brain cells, but mostly paralyzes them and stops communication between them. While both docs said they wouldn’t smoke due to the large amount of damage, they, and the AMA consider no more than 6 beers a week (2 a day at most) to be non-harmful in long term studies with men.
Compare red wine to the effects of smoking, combined with coffee after you drink the wine and you get a good heart disease regimen that helps protect your liver at the same time. But we all already know the glass of red wine a day shouldn’t cause liver problems. There is documented scientific proof as to how cirrhosis starts and keeps going.
Anyway, going back to the issue at hand, he explained to me that there just isn’t any way to get through to smokers, especially smokers that don’t want to quit. Comparing the three types of smokers, one of them is what he called ignorant smokers that don’t want to quit, are hopelessly addicted to it, and don’t know enough to read any literature about smoking dangers. (Apparently the ones who want to die are clumped in this group and the non-ignorant group).
When I typed “can’t fight ignorance smoking”, I found this ignorant smoker (albeit a farce) who doesn’t quote any sources at all, not even a hyper link to state his many fallacies: (it’s good)
- irrational fear and intolerance of smoke and smokers
- appalled that so many parents seek to stop children from discovering their smoking identities
- Smokers make up well over 10% of the general population - perhaps as much as 30%, according to recent studies
- Frequent lies from all sources claiming that smoking “causes” cancer
I won’t even touch the ignorance of these claims, or the anti-claims they make.
There is no safe way of smoking, filters do not stop your cancer risk, and an Ultralight and a light have the same cancer risk. (Ever wonder why they don’t list the carcinogens on the side of the cigarette pack?)
America, it’s time to stand up for non-smoker’s right. No part of the constitution stops smokers from smoking in the private residences, in there cars, and away from the public. There is laws that stop drunk drivers from driving, or wondering around in public, and finally laws to stop smokers from making people cry, sniff and having heavy chests.
So this is not phobia. Phobias are irrational and non-founded fears. We have something to fear with smokers, and as I’ve found it’s the suspension of belief that smoking is bad for you with some people, that and ignorance with air pollution kills millions per year.