Going home this weekend. It’ll be good to go and relax for a few days and see my family.
What I'm thinking...
Family
The dogs are asleep on me right now and I’m listening to music and thinking about life. It’s kind of crazy.
I’m overwhelmed and I’ve not stopped since my grandmother passed away two years ago… has it been that long? Grandma died, papaw was in the hospital, mom gets diagnosed with cancer (again), my uncle dies, my cousins crap out, my grandfather gets sicker, my mom goes in for surgery, I go to Europe, come back early, mom is in the hospital again…
I can’t keep up and I feel like I’m failing everything I touch. It’s a lot to worry about and I’m a worrier. I’m worried. And I don’t know what to do.
Life is failing me right now.
36 days
Moms been in the hospital at Duke for 36 days…
Sitting with mom
Mom had a procedure today to put another portal into her stomach. There’s been some draining that isn’t looking right and hopefully this will help.
She might get to go home soon to continue healing. Over two weeks at Duke isn’t fun…
I just fed her dinner and now she’s sleeping. Pain seems to be increased, but she’ll do what she can. Says the food here is pretty good.
That’s all I know right now. My grandpa’s been moved to a rehab/ assisted living place. Looks like he’ll never get to go home again- he just can’t live alone.
Not a good time for the Hoke/Hendrick family…
Sick and surgery…
I was sick all this weekend. Norovirus. TERRIBLE stuff. I’m so sore and tired…
Mom went in to surgery for the Whipple about 10 minutes ago. I can’t visit the hospital for a few days since I’ve had this virus. I want to, but there’s no way I’m going to risk giving her that after what she’s about to go through.
Maybe tomorrow or Thursday…
Repost of The Pirate Bay’s SOPA/PIPA response
Nailed it. Blow is the text from here.
INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.
Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.
Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.
So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations – it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.
The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between eachother, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.
And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.
The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe – but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that noone wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the american people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.
SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.
In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world – because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.
Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.
THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012
RIP Christopher Hitchens
He was an inspiration. A great thinker. An amazing writer. Someone who suffered, but never lost himself, and faced his ordeal in a head-on, deliberate way. I hope when I go, I can look upon the inevitable with the same peacefulness, determination, and fearlessness.
13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011
You will be missed.
Things keep getting worse
So, 2011 keeps proving to be not the best year ever. Sure, there have been a lot of really good things happening for me, but it feels like everything around me is getting crazier and crazier.
I’m home right now with my parents. My mom is back from Duke, for now, I think she came back Friday a week ago. She’s been doing really well and then everything gets crazy again.
Sunday afternoon, I got a call from my mom. My uncle had died. He had recently gotten out of jail for a probation violation and I guess he overdid it.
Today, we buried him, came back to the house and had food with family and friends. I just got a chance to settle down and reflect.
It was a great service and they did a great job with the body. It’s just a lot to take in. I’m exhausted.
I keep reading…
Every time I look at an article about something inflammatory, such as:
or this (No, I don’t read FOX News, just needed a link.)
I get so mad. I can’t believe the comments people leave on these pages. It’s seriously getting to the point where I feel like everything online has the same people commenting on it that comment on YouTube videos. It’s thick, thick ignorance.
Like people saying they will go to Lowe’s just to support their stance. It’s stupid.
Or people hoping that those Dutch designers will get killed by a rogue US military person. What? Are you serious?
I look around and see what “leaders” we have coming up. Then, I get really, really sad.
Vickie Hendrick Hoke (my mom)
Hi all. I think it’s probably fitting that I start out my website with an effort to write, first and foremost, about things and people that mean a lot to me. So, I choose my first post to be about my mom. She’s staying at the Caring House in Durham and is going daily (through the week) to receive treatments at Duke.
A few years back, my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma. The doctors in Charlotte were very optimistic and promised her that they’d beat this. And they came through. She lost her hair, went through a lot of pain and being tired, but for some reason, she never really seemed like someone that was suffering from cancer and chemotheraphy. Certainly not like those people you see on TV stories about cancer.
But, she went through all of that and came out on top. She got better, got her energy back, got her hair back, and really started enjoying life again. She kept working through all of this, mind you.
Then, a few weeks ago, everything changed. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This time it didn’t seem to be the same.
My mom got an edible arrangement from a friend. This is from her second week at the Caring House in Durham. November 3, 2011.
My parents came up to see me in Raleigh. I’m oblivious. I’m especially oblivious when it comes to picking up signs that things are bad with my parents. They insisted that they come up. I had plans and wanted to just come down to Lincolnton the next weekend. the insisted. I said “sure” and made plans to hang out with them. They wanted to see Wally and hang out with me. Everything was fine Friday night. We had dinner and hung out and watched TV. The next day, we went to Best Buy to get my dad a new laptop- got it home and they told me what was going on.
She has a tumor on her pancreas. It’s small, but it’s there. This type of cancer spreads rapidly. Very much so…
She was faced with options like:
1) Go through a Whipple Procedure.
2) Wait and enjoy life as much as possible.
That’s about it. She had decided that she didn’t want the Whipple. She wanted my advice. I just want her to do what she wants and not get herself in a position where she’s not liking being alive. I wouldn’t want to see her in pain. My last memory of her mom, my grandmother, is of her sitting on her couch in severe pain. I don’t want to see that again and I don’t want her to live like that.
People that know me well, know my position on things like this. I’m very opinionated on this particular topic.
She decided to seek out other opinions and that landed her with an amazing team of doctors at Duke who specialize in what she has. They started from scratch and agreed it was pancreatic cancer, but their approach was different- let’s try to shrink the cancer and see where that gets us. I’m torn on how I feel about surgery. I do think it’s rushed into a lot. I just feel like there’s a lot that can be done in many situations before cutting someone up.
So, she’s now living in Durham at the Caring House and I got to stay with her last weekend. I’m heading there again after work, but she’s doing really well. She’ll be in Durham for 3 more weeks, chemo and radiation every day (during the week), and we’re gonna see where this takes us.
I’m scared. I’ve never been this scared before. It scares me more, for some reason, that this is cancer again. I feel like I should feel a little better because I know there’s a lot that can be done about cancer. For some reason, it’s not the same. But, I’ll let the doctors do what they know how to do best. I’ll wait. And I’m going to be there for my parents.
