Corey

*phew* sticker on mine says it expires at the end of 08... please remind me then to renew my license... ps. getting the 3yr sticker reduces my chance of renewing to 1/3... hehe cd.

I've been in a few boats where we have had water over the transom when stopping. It's only happened on boats with high power though... At the BOQ, guy with a bass boat would have it happen nearly every time he would stop, of course it was from full out to full stop. It was a unning joke to stand up every time we stopped. Last time was this September on Nippissing in my friends bowrider, just finished a 65mph rip from the south to the sturgeon river, shut her down and whoosh water over the rear. Never have we had enough water to swamp the boat, but enough to qualify us for a wet t-shirt contest definately. cd.

Don't ever plead guilty with an explaination, pleading guilty with or without an explaination is still pleading guilty. Read through this... I know it's long and drawn out, but for an hours worth of reading... it could save you a ton in the long run. Take it to trial, and pull all the strings out. http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=1039 cd.

I'm going to report those pics under the category of "makes me jealous" cd.

Ya... after my first surgery Percutaneous Nephro-Lithotripsy was the word of the hour for me... sounds impressive, but in reality it friggin hurts. And for what it's worth, the tube is called a nephrostomy tube. cd.

I'm guessing when you say they went in to break his up it was percutaneous... hole and tube into the back and in with the drill to break it apart? Must have been a large stone. My first surgery was this type, cause the stone was around an inch in diameter. The surgery is alright because you are under general. It's when they put the tube in the day before that hurts. The tube is done under local and I have never felt so much physical pain in my life as I did when they shoved the tube in. Here's the 3 types of lithotripsy... up to 1/4" stones, shockwave. I haven't had shockwave, but from what I understand its a bad case of discomfort with a little burning pee afterwards. In and out the same day. up to 1/2" stones, laser. Done under general, they stick a laser up the peepee and burn the stone away while fushing the ash/fragments out. Day surgery, with possible overnight for observation. You also get a stent for about a week. This was my last surgery, it was a breeze with exception to a blood clot in the uretor for me 1.5 weeks after which ended up with me in a 104 degree fever. larger that 1/2, percutaneous. Day 1 you get day surgery to have a 1/2" tube inserted in through your back, directly into your kidney (there's something to be said for walking around with a bag full of blood and pee hanging on your side, yes, you pee out half yer pee through the tube into the bag). Day 2 you go under general for the actual surgery. When it's all done, you are in the hospital until a few events happen. These are, you have to have a bowel movement, you have to have a clear uretor (I won't tell you how painful it is when they clamp the tube and the uretor is still swollen closed), then finally once they pull the tube out of your back it has to begin to heal from the inside out and until it's closed, you are dribbling out of your back... takes 1/2 day to a full day. Once that is all done and over with, you generally get to go home. You have to be very careful though cause a couple of times after I got home I twisted too much and the hole in my back opened up and I started leaking all over the place. The moral of all this is that kidney stones suck. I have more in me right now, I can feel the pressure when I get dehydrated... gonna be time for another go at the surgery I think. Corey

Please don't take this the wrong way anyone, but cranberries/cranberry juice is very high in oxalates, which is the type of stone in 90% of cases. If you don't believe me, there are numerous studies about it, such as this... http://www.newhope.com/nutritionsciencenew...un_01/news4.cfm Cranberry's are good for preventing UTI's... that would be urinary tract infections, and has no bearing on the kidney's. Cranberries keep your bladder lining in nice shape, but only help to promote kidney stones. I can post a pic of fragments of my smallest stone... doc let me keep it... a bunch of chunks about 1/4" in diameter... Go get an ultrasound if you think you have stones. If your kidneys backup and rupture, you are in for a world of hurt and a very long hospital stay. What's that saying... an ounce of prevention or something? Lots of water, which should be in everyone's diet, regardless of stones or not. Corey

I feel your pain... if they are still in your kidney's, make sure you keep hydrated. That will keep your kidney enlarged and prevent the stone from jabbing the side of your kidney. If it's gotten into your uretor, drink as much as you can for as long as it takes to get the stone to pass. It's gonna hurt, alot, yes. But you either have to pass it, or live with the pain until it passes on its own. I don't know where you live, but Dr. Whelan in Hamilton is the best doc for this stuff by far. If you are close and can get a referal from your doctor, go! Depending on the size of your stones (do you know? have you had ultrasound?) he my chose shockwave therapy for you (which I am pretty sure we are getting a machine in hamilton) of maybe laser lithotripsy. I had the laser last time and I was out the same day, off work for almost a week, but out of the hospital. There is also a renal dietician at St. Joe's hospital who has been studying stones for like 30 years and she's really good. She is of east indian descent, make sure you get her and not one of the other basic dieticians... Even if you aren't all too close, you may want to consider the drive cause Whelan is top notch. Corey

Well many thanks to Joe, Pauline, Fishmaster Steve and Ken today for allowing me to join the trip. I met up with them at an undisclosed location, where I was blindfolded and stuffed in the trunk of a car. Apparently on route to 'Plan B'. (I was blindfolded, I really don't know where Plan B is). With not a whole lot of action other than a bunch of lunkers, the decision was made to move to 'Plan A'. As usual, I was once again blindfolded and stuffed in the trunk of the car. (Steve, I hope that was indeed a pickle in your pocket j/k). Anyhow... once we got to Plan A, we got into a few descent Perch and some catfish for a changeup. I had to split early to try and avoid rush hour, so for a third time I was blindfolded, stuffed in the trunk and dropped off at a remote location that was known to me enough to get home. In the end, was a nice afternoon, meeting new people, catching some fish and talking about women's rights in Ontario It was all good, looking forward to doing it again. I would imagine someone will post some pics of the days' catch, as I had no camera. Corey

Not to be rude, but the described issues are in no way, shape or form symptoms of a failing hard drive. Recommending someone download software that runs on a continual basis like HD Heartbeat does, accomplish's nothing more than slowing down a computer that much more with no hope of resolving the issues at hand. Don't install HD Heartbeat. Make sure that SMART is enabled in the BIOS and leave it at that. Your computer will tell you when the hard drive is failing without the added bloatware.

Cranberry is on the very NO NO list... it's as high in oxylate concentration as Tea is. Cola's and other dark pops should not be drank at all. Phosphoric Acid is the thing to be avoided in dark drinks such as cola's. Beer is actually quite good for the kidney's, or should I say the barley is... Cranberry's are good for the urinary tract, but bad for creating stones. I drink at least 2 litres of water daily, and usually another 2 litres of gatorade and then a few coffees on top of it all. Pee like crazy but (knock on wood) it's working, as far as I know. To shoot off on yet another tangent, on my last CT we noticed I have a 1.5mm stone in my prostate, but apparently that's common and nothing to be concerned about. eeks.

Hey... sorry to hijack the thread, but ChrisS... you went to the lithotriptor? Which city did you have it done at? And how was it? My first stone removal was a tube in through the back into the kidney and a dentist drill to bust em apart, 10 day hospital stay, the second was laser up the you-know-what, out of the hospital same day, but had a stent in there for a week after. Only one I haven't had is shockwave...

ya man, kidney stones suck. I have had surgery twice to remove them. First set was 1 weighing in at just over an inch in diameter with a 1/4 inch kicker and the second time was for a set of triplets at 1/2 inch each. Kinda weird that they didn't show up until I was 27 and then got the second set within 2 years of the first surgery. My doctor and I figured out what the probable cause was of mine, iced tea and other assorted tea's... very high in oxylates, very bad for production of kidney stones. Goto www.kidney.org and look at the dietary stuff for kidney stones. You will really be doing yourself a favour if you keep some of the restricted foods in mind when shopping for groceries. For someone who has been there a few times, kidney stones suck. Corey

Do a google search for "hijack this", download it, run it and post a log from it here, or pm me the log it generates. A little more background on the situation would help. When did the problems start happening? Did you do anything at that time like new software/hardware? As well, make sure that you have the pseakers plugged into the right jack, generally the green one. You should also check in the control panel under 'Sounds and Audio Devices', make sure the volume is up and it's not muted. The beeps can be attributed to the system speaker inside the machine, which leaves a good possibility that there is an issue with the sound card or settings. The system hanging could be something as simple as a virus definition update, or scan. It could also be some type of anti spyware issue, Windows Defender/MS Antispyware is classic for that. Either way, I would guess you have 2 seperate problems, so double/triple check the sound settings and connections, try different speakers or headphones too, make sure the speakers aren't shot. Post that Hijack This log and we'll figure out what the system lag problem is. Corey

How can you say the other fights were crap? Did you only watch the Sylvia/Monson fight? The first three fights of the broadcast were good fights. The first fight ending in the submission was quick, but interesting nonetheless. The next 2 fights were good brawls. The Sylvia/Monson fight was typical for Sylvia... pecking punches, control the smaller guy and get a decision. I think the UFC should follow in the footsteps of others orgs and knock 10% off the fighters pay for lack of action if warned by the ref. That would speed things up. Corey I heard the comment about Montreal after the fight too, but it was hard to hear the words before Montreal came out. I think it might have been more of a 'GSP can take the belt back home to Montreal'. Canada doesn't have a sanctioning body that uses the unified MMA rules and therefore I don't think that you will see GSP defend his UFC belt in Montreal. I could be wrong, but AFAIK this would be the case, re sanctioning.

You could certainly install a second sound card, but before you do that, I would go through the drivers on the link I posted for you and make sure they are installed. As well, you should go into the device manager and right click on any of the unknown devices (ie. anything with the yellow exclaimation mark) and select Update Driver and let it automatically search through for a driver. Fortunately when drivers are installed, the info about them is more or less kept in a common spot on your hard drive and just because it hasn't been picked up, doesn't mean it won't be if you update the driver for an unknown device. If you need more help, let me know. I know a little bit about this stuff. Even better... http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html Goto that link and there is a button right in the middle to detect the model and such. It will give you access to every driver for your machine, and if you do infact have an integrated sound card, there will most definately be a link to the soundcard driver. If I am not mistaken, the modem and sound card are the same piece of hardware, so make sure you use the modem drivers provided by HP.

Here's the link to the HP website for your computer. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwar...419&dlc=en# I believe that the Wild Tangent Driver Update near the bottom is the one you want. Corey

So... I picked up one of these fandangled GPS doohickey's a while back, a Lowrance H2Oc to be exact. Today I picked up the MapCreate package with the Canadian Topo's. Who has experience with MapCreate? In addition, are people interested in sharing maps. There are methods to get maps on unregistered MMC cards. I would be interested in trading some maps with people, provided they are personally made maps, as opposed to copyrighted/licensed maps. I have access to very detailed aerial photos of a lot of Southern Ontario and plan on making some maps for myself. I figure I can take some aerial photo blocks, stitch em together and then overlay a line art nautical map on top. For instance, I have a very detailed map of Binbrook C.A. I plan to push that onto the GPS with a nautical map overlayed so that when I go icefishing there, I can use the GPS to find dropoffs and such. My goal with all of this is to keep a detailed record of where I catch fish, including date, weather, lure, etc. So that in the future I can hopefully do some trend analysis on the data I collect to allow me to figure out where my best chance of catching fish will be. I know it's a pretty ambitious idea, but I figure with what I know and do, along with the resources I have access to, I should be able to swing it. If anyone has any other ideas, please share. I think we could work out a pretty slick way to use our GPS units for future success. Corey