a blab by idle

Medtronic, makers of ICDs, are pushing the results of SCD-HeFT (the Sudden Cardiac Death in Heart Failure Trial): The landmark clinical study demonstrates that ICDs on top of optimal drug therapy reduce mortality by 23% in Class II or III heart failure patients with LVEF less than or equal to 35%.

Charming.

Dammit, if they suggest an ICD next month, I am not going to be happy.

So, has anyone else started playing with Growl for MacOS X yet? I finally installed it today and I'm already very much enjoying the notification consolidation of Smoke Stack, GrowlMail, and Synergy. Plus, the developer's API is what's most exciting for me — that I'll actually be able to build Growl support easily into my own application is just groovy! With perl, Java, and Cocoa/Objective-C support, how can you go wrong?

It's not as cool as Quicksilver — but, of course, even that has plugin support for Growl.

If anyone out there has been playing with it or has any experience, I'd like to hear about it!

Can I just say how utterly cool it is that the iPod auto-pauses when the headphone cable is pulled from the jack? The 1G definitely didn't do that and it's a very nice touch, both for the frustration of the accidental "oops, moved wrong, my headphones popped out, and now I'm missing the song" as well as the nice battery-saving implications if you've been known to doofishly not pause the iPod reliably when removing it after a walk.

David, our mole in the mountains of the west, has surfaced long enough to bring to my attention two pieces of very disturbing news about AOL's view on the privacy (or lack thereof) of instant messages: first a warning from Ben at Thrashing Through Cyberspace, and then analysis of AOL's waffling about it from boingboing.

Breaking news! As I was writing this post, he sent me a third article, this also from Cory at boingboing on AOL's scrambling to save face. Apparently, Cory thinks that they've done the right thing and should be commended. Do you all agree? Much as I am quick to villify AOL when given the chance, perhaps this is a moment where unclenching and relaxing is in order….

I love Apple. Anybody who knows me knows this. I carry my PowerBook with me almost everywhere. I have owned the first generation Newton, iPod, and iPod photo; I've owned maybe 8 or so different Macintoshes in my life, including curios such as the G4 Cube. I started back in 1982 with a lowly 48K Apple II+.

So when I hear of Apple screwing over and burning a loyal, faithful, and good personal and business customer — specifically, my friend and co-worker Neal — it really saddens me.

Don't get me wrong. They've made me downright mad before. When Steve killed the Newton not too long after I bought my MessagePad 2000, I cursed him loudly. When they unhired me (illegally, I might add) after hiring me to work at one of their retail stores, I was seething — though still not enough to bring legal action against them; how does one, after all, sue one's dream company?

But still, for almost 23 years now, I've been a zealot, a true believer, one of the insane fans who will travel to San Francisco or Boston just to go to MacWorld.

So to read of how they keep screwing him over is just plain demoralizing.

Come on, Apple. Get it together already, will ya? I've seen you work wonders and pull off last-minute miracles before. Pallets of iPods for Oprah on 48 hours notice. An Xserve G4 for me on 24 hours notice so I could pull the rug out from under Michael Dell in his own back yard.

So why can't you make good on a simple PowerBook G4 17"?

I remember being blown away when they started doing TGA repairs in infancy back in the 80s and 90s.

Check out how far they can push the envelope now.

For those who are more technically aware of this kind of work: does anybody know if DeLeon had a Rastelli switch performed, or some other form? Since they did not use bypass (and I assume were relying on his PDA for whatever perfusion there was), was he even a candidate for Rastelli?

One other thing of which I was not aware was the relative frequency of TGA in the populace: "Jerrick’s condition, known as transposition of the great arteries, occurs in about 40 of every 100,000 live births." 0.04%? That's a lot higher than I had thought.

For a Subversion repository: bdb or fsfs?

I need to decide very soon on a very important one (well, important to my work, anyway), so any input would be appreciated.

From the "I get most of my content from two people, one of whom is Aster" department:

Check out the salvaged reviews for the ViewSonic TPCV1250S.

No, really. Look at them.

From Reuters, via a Medscape article earlier this week:

Thiazide diuretics, used to treat hypertension and cardiovascular disease, may increase the risk of cholecystitis, new study results suggest. There is evidence that thiazide treatment increases biliary cholesterol saturation, but studies evaluating its association with gallbladder disease have yielded mixed results. … The age-adjusted relative risk of cholecystectomy for thiazide users was 1.57. … To rule out a generic effect of diuretics on gallbladder disease, Dr. Leitzmann's group examined the association between furosemide diuretics and cholecystectomy risk. In this situation the multivariate relative risk was 1.05.

Fun fun fun! Enjoy your ongoing organ deterioration, kiddies. I know I will!