This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
|
For anybody who might be curious, they found… absolutely nothing. Well, nothing of significance. He made note of a few things, but nothing that would be contributing to any problems. Which I suppose is good in that it eliminates various things that might have been possible that could have been problematic.
He did note that based on my last scans (a couple months ago) I only have one kidney stone left in me at the moment, down from around 10 in a scan several years ago. I’ve been slowly getting rid of them and not making any new ones.
Also, a blood test from earlier showed elevated levels of some hormone that relates to how the body processes calcium, so he’s going to have me see another specialist to look into that, but he thinks that is not going to be an issue, as my actual levels of calcium are just fine.
And he mentioned that the recurring UTIs probably ARE directly related to the stones, with the stones giving bacteria places to hide essentially.
All of the above though are related to non-invasive tests from earlier though. From today he just determined that everything up in there looks fine.
Which, as I mentioned, is good.
As for the test itself… I don’t want to be doing anything like that again for a good long time.
SurveyUSA released 15 new state by state polls today. Of those, 4 caused status changes in my rolling averages. In order of electoral votes:
- Ohio (20 ev) moved from weak McCain to leaning McCain
- Virginia (13 ev) moved from weak McCain to leaning McCain
- Missouri (11 ev) moved from leaning McCain to weak McCain
- New Mexico (5 ev) moved from weak Obama to leaning Obama
The end result of all that is 27 more electoral votes are now in the “leaning” categories, meaning the number of states and electoral votes that really could very easily go either way is increased dramatically over yesterday. The range between McCain’s best case and Obama’s best case is widening again reversing a narrowing trend from the last few weeks.
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 357, Obama 181
Obama Best Case – Obama 330, McCain 208
And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 281, McCain 257
Don’t know how, don’t know why, but CNN just added some delegates to their totals for McCain. 6 delegates total. All were from Ohio. 3 pledged delegates, 3 “Unpledged RNC” (which is the Republican equivalent of a superdelegate).
Obviously this changes absolutely nothing about the state of the Republican race.
But hey, six more for McCain. Woo! Go McCain!
I’m taking Friday off from work because just over 17 hours from now I’m going to be doing this. Or perhaps I should say I’ll be having it done to me. I am not looking forward to it at all. In fact, quite the opposite. And while theoretically after it is done I could come back in to work for the afternoon, I have a feeling that I will just want to go home and curl up in a ball.
I told the doctor I wanted to be more agressive about figuring out the underlying cause to the recurring kidney stones and UTIs I’ve had periodically (and with increasing frequency) since 1996 rather than just treating the symptoms when it happens.
But now I’m thinking maybe dealing with a little discomfort for a week or so once every few months isn’t actually that bad, and maybe I was a little hasty.
Gulp.
More bad state by state poll news for Obama. Colorado slips from “Weak Obama” to “Lean Obama” putting it in that “could really go either way” category. This improves McCain’s best case numbers.
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 352, Obama 186
Obama Best Case – Obama 308, McCain 230
And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 281, McCain 257
Notice how much better McCain’s best case is than Obama’s best case. Even though the “every body gets their leans” number is in Obama’s favor at the moment, the range of possible outcomes here gives many more ways for McCain to win than Obama has.
If you were forced to pick a winner today based on current polls, it would almost certainly be McCain. Of course, we have many months to go, and a “bounce” is expected whenever the Democrats finally pick a nominee. But still…
CNN’s intern has apparently been asleep at the switch in recent days/weeks, because all of a sudden they do a big update on their delegate counts, presumably just catching up with developments they missed when they actually happened because they figured people weren’t paying attention or some such. The way they display their data makes it impossible to completely dissect the changes, but there were updates in the delegate counts in at least seven states, plus there were some new superdelegate revisions.
All together, Obama gets 4 new pledged delegates and 8 new superdelegates while Clinton gets 7 new pledged delegates and 2 more superdelegates. Net is Obama gains 12 while Clinton gains 9. Turns out this ratio is pretty close to the ratio of delegates they already had, so this has very little effect on the percent of delegates each candidate has.
Since I haven’t mentioned the actual numbers in awhile, here they are.
Right now Obama has 52.0% of the delegates, Clinton has 47.4% and Edwards has 0.6%.
More importantly though, there are 888 delegates left that have not been allocated or who have not declared a preference.
To win Clinton needs 527 of them (59.3%).
To win Obama needs 381 of them (42.9%).
To win Edwards needs… well, Edwards can’t win. :-)
Caught up on my news feeds. Looks like almost all the Democratic leaning blogs agree with my comments on the questions being horrible, while some right leaning blogs really liked them. Most people all around though seem to think that Clinton did much better than Obama. When I was grading them question by question, I gave both Clinton and Obama six questions, and thought four were ties. So I really didn’t see that. Although in my count Obama only caught up near the end, for most of the debate I had Clinton ahead. And I can certainly see looking back that Clinton was a bit more energized, and Obama was on the defensive a LOT. In the end though, I’ll stick by my conclusion that this debate won’t make much difference one way or another… well… at least I’ll stick by that for now.
I remained spoiler and spin free, having not watched, listened to or read anything about the debate until I watched it straight through myself. Having just finished, my thoughts:
- I am glad someone told them during one of the breaks to stop looking up at the audience and start looking at the questioners and the cameras, they were both looking like idiots.
- I can’t believe they spent the entire first 45 minutes of the debate on bullshit stuff like Bosnia, Flag Pins, Joint Tickets, the small town comments, etc. This is all the kind of stuff that pundits can spend time blabbing about, but none of them are actually worth time in a real debate. Talk about stuff that matters please.
- Otherwise, I counted who I thought did better question by question for the whole debate. I think as a whole it was a draw. Nobody threw any knockout punches, nobody made any big mistakes. I don’t think this debate will end up effecting the dynamics of the race in either PA or in general much… if at all.
At least that is my thought unspoiled by other people’s thoughts. Now it is time to watch a bunch of commentary on it, and read even more. I’ll find out if my thoughts are in line with others, or if I’m completely out on my own. :-)
The Pennsylvania Democratic debate starts at 00:00 UTC… just over 15 minutes from now. In the normal case, I would have left work a little early and run home to be sure I could watch it live. But no… ABC is delaying it for the West Coast. It will not be on until 03:00 UTC here. Hours after it happened. Which is just ridiculous for a news event. As several West Coast bloggers have commented, they are treating it like a “show” rather than as news. (Of course, I get pissed off at the 3 hour delay for shows too sometimes.)
This is ridiculous.
It really makes me want to drop a Slingbox in the house of a friend or relative in the Eastern time zone. Very very annoying.
(Yes, I know, they will probably get more viewers this way, but still…)
And for the next 3 hours and change I now have to avoid all my usual news feeds and sites to avoid spioilers. Spoilers for a DEBATE. Urg.
After a string of good news for Obama, time for some good news for McCain. Massachusetts drops from a “Weak Obama” into a “Leaning Obama” state, basically meaning it is up for grabs, thus improving McCain’s best case scenario.
Meanwhile, with some additional polls (older polls, but new to me) Texas moves from the leaning category into “Weak McCain”. This significantly lowers Obama’s “Best Case” prospects.
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 343, Obama 195
Obama Best Case – Obama 308, McCain 230
And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 281, McCain 257
|
|