Did they drop TeleAtlas too early

So I want to follow up on the nuclear bomb dropped on the geospatial industry – but instead I want to focus on what James pointed out about spatial accuracy. I think Goog made the switch to their own data too soon. My wife has used Google religiously for getting driving directions for a couple of years now and always been happy with it.  In the past week it has gotten her lost 4 times – she has now switched to MapQuest or Bing.  I tried to use it for directions here in the bay area and it took me into the East Bay to get to somewhere on the Peninsula. I went straight back to TeleNav (ATT Navigator) and had no problems.  Google’s routing data sucks right now and there are no two ways about it.  This is not due to bad algorithms since they used to work great on TeleAtlas (TA) data.

I know there would have been huge $ implications for using TA data for turn by turn navigation routing (they charge a lot more for that “use case”) but Google has a bazillion dollars. So I think there are two reasons why they did it.

1. They think they are smarter than everyone else and their fairy dust network would get them up to speed fast enough.

2. Marc Prioleau had the idea that perhaps TA got wind of what was going down and gave them an ultimatum. Sign a contract or we will never let you do turn by turn.

If it was number one then I think they switched too early.

Getting directions wrong has a lot more serious consequences than giving me the wrong search results. I only need once or twice and I am switching providers. I don’t care if it is free – directions are either right or wrong.

If I am lucky, wrong wastes my time, if I am not so lucky it can put me in danger.  Yeah yeah, say all you want about you get what you pay for – but that is not a way to keep users on your service.There are a bunch of other “free services” out there that I could use but I don’t because they are worthless.  Google dominated in search because it gave the best results and then inertia set in. They may not be so lucky here – wrong driving directions are useless.

I hope those fairies are working overtime correcting their street network…

Btw, poor TeleNav – guess they picked a bad time to stop being a privately owned firm.

Please go help Elizabeth

Alright all 3 of you kind readers – my friend Elizabeth Greyber is running the Nike’s Women Marathon this weekend as part of Team in Training in honor of my battle with cancer. Please go to her page and give a little so she can reach her goal.

Thanks and “Mind you, moose bites can be pretty nasty”

Unclogging and letting go

For those of you playing along on the home game… This coming friday is my last chemo. I have much to tell and share about the whole experience  but today I want to focus on the piece I am chewing on. It will probably come off preachy but screw it – it’s my blog. You don’t like it go elsewhere.

So I had a great labor day weekend – the Queen was back East visiting her folks, I fought bronchitis with the help of a z-pack, some great friends who helped with the kids, and some extra sleep. Got a ton-o-laundry done, restarted the compost pile, went on a calm and relaxing walk with my kids up the river by Sanborn park, saw some crayfish, and watched Bolt. Overall a win. Oh yeah, I also shaved off my eyebrows because they were going mangy due to chemo induced hair loss.

The loss of my eyebrows allowed Felix to give me these brand spanking new ones. And as I was going on the walk today I realized I couldn’t really keep up with the kids and that I had to use hiking poles to keep my balance. I am anemic and due to neuropathy I can’t really control the muscles around my knees as much. When we went to pick up Fay (the eldest) we were playing some baseball in the backyard and I was trying to walk backwards in the yard and tripped on…nothing. I just fell over backwards because my leg just gave out. And the final piece of this all is that I most definitely am suffering from chemo brain. I don’t have good recall anymore, have a hard time finding words (which some people consider a blessing), and have some serious difficulty keeping my train of thought as long as Dory.

I am fatigued in general, just plain old worn down. I find myself napping everyday and still not feeling rested. My face looks sallow and tired. People who haven’t figured out that I have cancer ask if I am feeling ok because I look really worn out.

So in the end – I am beat down. Not giving up or “refusing to fight” – just plain beat down. I go between being a small child – with no hair, needing to nap, and cranky – and what I feel it must be like to get older for some people – no hair, needing to nap, taking a handful of pills at least twice a day, losing my body and my mental faculty.

I am not sad, I am through that. I am now just starting to lean into it. I ask myself what does it feel like to embrace this state I have entered. I don’t want to stay here, but while I am in this place what can I learn.

Cancer and life in general has taken me to a place where I have almost nothing left that I thought about how the world works. For that matter I have had to let go of so much and yet still/because of it I am  someplace I never thought I would be.  I had started letting go of control a while ago, even before the cancer – but this has just brought it farther along (BTW, I know it could go much farther, so in no way will you hear me say I have “hit bottom”).

Some people theorize that one of the reasons you get cancer is because you have emotions and feelings that are stuck and repressed. They stay in you and eat into you and turn into something nasty and deadly.

I now believe this.

I have gone and gotten myself unclogged physically, the chemo has destroyed most if not all of the tumors. How do I go about and do it spiritually and psychologically. How do I go about changing my life to be true to me and who I am. No more clogs. What assumptions and baggage do I have that I need to jettison.  Given my strong desire to seek approval from others what I have done to myself. All the unquestioned ideas and assumptions I  inherited and chose to carry forward – what has it done to me. Which parts do I keep and which parts are no longer me nor were they ever.

This pain and experience is GOOD, thats right I said it – GOOD. You know what – Cancer doesn’t suck anymore than a whole lot of unfortunate shit that can happen in your life. It is just our fucked up society doesn’t see cancer as something you can blame the victim for (except for those dirty cigarrette smokers).  Whoa serious digression potential here. The point I want to make today is stop “fighting” this and that, because it is part of life. Sure don’t die – I am all for avoiding dying if you can, but get on with loving and living.

I am along for the ride on this one and I am excited to see where I end up. It may not be some place “happy” – life doesn’t give those kind of guarantees – but it can be good.  I am not sure where this all goes except one place it doesn’t – and that is back.

I am alive and in chemo

Given the number people asking how i am doing i must be remiss in updates. sorry i am typing one handed while get my doxirubin push. I am good – tired and achy – but good. I think I have overcommitted at work and I am trying to figure out how to pull back a bit. My parents are out for the next 2 weeks and so the kids are in high heaven.

Today is my 3rd round so after today I am half way done. Wooo hooooo!
I also get a PET scan this week to do a check for response. There is no more physical tumor that the Drs find so they are doing the PET scan to confirm.

So I am a bit overwhelmed with time commitments but I am working hard on staying whole. Still going to my mussar classes, hanging with the kids, and getting on my bike occasionally (thanks to Cyrus).

Will try to write more later this week…
Thanks everyone for your well wishes, prayers, and loving energy!

Time for the two week update – more fun with cancer and chemo

I am sad and tired. First ground rule to this post – do not write “keep it up” or “you gotta be positive” or any of that nonsense in my comments. I know all of that already and you telling me that either makes me feel inadequate or annoyed. So let’s save us all the trouble and skip those kind of comments.

It has been a little over 2 weeks since my chemo and I thought I would fill everyone in and write a little to perhaps alleviate some of my sadness.

I HATE PREDNISONE! There I said it. That has been the worst part of the actual treatment part of the chemo medicines. 5 days at 100 miligrams a day and then an abrupt stop really stinks. Saturday night I did not sleep and the other nights I slept no more than 5 hours a night. When I am awake it feels like being a field mouse on crank. You have a ton of energy and all of it is for naught since you can’t really focus on anything for more than 10 seconds at a time. I found myself feeling anxious even with an increase in happy pills. It was interesting to take the dose with breakfast and start to feel the rush come on and then feel it start to all wear off at about 10pm at night. The crash after stopping was pretty sucky as well. My legs were twitchy, I had terrible mood swings, my face started breaking out…

That being said – I feel incredibly lucky that this is what I have to deal with. I am complaining here but the background to it is that I feel incredibly fortunate. The eldest daughter and I went to a Team in Training event last Saturday – I am an honoree this season. When some of the honorees told their stories you couldn’t help but cry. I knew I was fortunate before but there were new depths of appreciation. I am not currently suffereing from heart failure due to the chemo, I am not being put in a medical coma because there would be no way for me to deal with the pain – it could be so much worse.

Back to our story… I felt generally good the first week – even went to a meeting at work in San Diego. This last week has been harder. I am not sure if it is coming off the prednisone or if it is the killing of my blood cells (an intended consequence of my chemo) but I feel drained. And it is not the kind of drained that is helped by a nap, though I have been doing that. It is more this lack of energy and being just plain wasted. I have been able to work and go about my day but it just feels harder.

A second body blow came when I started suffering from alopecia (a fun way to say hair loss). At first it started in my nether regions when I was showering. Now don’t all you porn studios call at once, I am a bit occupied now with my cancer killing and loving my family.  Then yesterday I noticed that if I pulled on my beard and head hairs they would just come out. I knew this was coming and I told really care about it from a looks perspective. I have always told people that I hate shaving and that I would undergo electrolysis if it would really alleviate the need to shave. But this is a very real physical manifestation of my chemo and the cancer. I have been used to having hair on my head. For a large part of my life barbers would comment on my how thick my hair was and I would call it a weed and tell them to use a mower. It has not been as thick of late with a bald spot on the back and my widow’s peak, which my children love tracing with their finger. Never the less it is hard to have this happen to my body. Again I am fortunate that I am neither young nor a woman where there is much more societal value on hair – my heart goes out to them. Still, it is hard.

Another physical manifestation this week was grating parmesean cheese for the kids to put on their pasta. I nicked my thumb and it bled, which nicks tend to do. The difference this time is that it bled just a bit more and for longer than I expected. The chemo I am taking basically stops your bone marrow from producing new blood cells for a while so I will start to dip in the number of platelets for a while. Unfortunately for me this means my Pro hockey as well as UFC career have to go on hold for a while since I am not allowed to engage in activities that can cause bruises and bleeding.

The other hard thing that happened today is that my children caught a cold. In a non-cancer house this is really no big deal and I like tending to my sick children. It has a very fatherly feel to being able to protect and heal your children. But since I am near my nadir, which is cancer speak for when my blood counts are low, I have to be very careful about getting sick. A fever over 100.5, sore throat, and a long list of other symptoms become an immeadiate call to the Dr. Today we, the cp pack, had to try to figure out how to make that work. I was feeling sick myself and so nervous about what was happening to me, but at the same time I had to someone tell the eldest and the artiste that I could not really be near them today and had to spend most of the day in my cave room. It made me feel bad to tell my kids not to kiss me or hold my hand. I know I had to do it but it still feels terrible.

Perhaps my nadir in blood cells is matching my mood.

On the good side, we had wonderful friends over for shabbat dinner last night, the nausea was not a big deal, I worked the last two weeks, my friends have been amazing (Dave B sent me kung fu hustle, one of the best movies ever; Naomi knit me an awesome hat; I got flowers from MJ, I have received a ton-o-emails, twitters, phone calls and other signs of love), my family has been loving and wonderful, I got an appt with the integrative oncology unit at the osher medical center, my tumors under my arm have definitely shrunk for now, and I am still waking up each morning!

This week I have my blood drawn on thurs. to check my blood counts and other various signs. I see my nurse practitioner to talk about how things are going. I think I am going discuss prednisone with her and then also some more about my slow metabolizing liver.

Time to turn it in for the night…

I need to share a little boy story tonight. So I am in bed feeling kinda sick, avoiding the girls with the colds, and generally feeling sad. The little boy comes in to share the joy of listening to the Shrek soundtrack playing on his Deigo CD player. He bounces on the bed for a while and then notices daddy is not feeling so well. So he stops listening and repeats a move I have done to him many times. He starts to rub between my eyes and down my nose with his little fingers. Such a sweet and gentle touch. I close my eyes and relax. Hooray for him and bring a soft moment to an otherwise relatively difficult day.

Why isn’t this file in the ESRI geoprocessing help- NAD to WGS geographic projections

The files listed here should be included in the geoprocessing help for geog. transformations. So if you are out there doing a projection from NAD27 to WGS84 and you don’t know which of the 11 or so different transformations to pick please come back to this link to find the link to the help page that links to the word doc that explains why use which transformations. Got it? Good

http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.techArticles.articleShow&d=21327

1 down, 5 to go – Cancer, I break wind in your general direction

Ok before I start this post some warnings

1. My pottty mouth is ramping up so if you are offended by those types of words please be careful or stop reading now

2. I am going to be really frank about my cancer  – I have it and by writing about it here it is another small way I can take charge. I am going to post a bunch of the info on my disease and how I experience it. I hope sharing this information can make it easier for other people to kick its ass and not feel so alone. Some of this comes from inspiration from Dooce and Dad Gone Mad who have been both out there talking about depression and anxiety. I admire their courage and their willingness to be open about their experience, it has has really helped me. In the same way maybe one or two people can benefit from what I have to say.

4. I AM NOT A MEDICAL EXPERT – do not take my advice in the place of your Dr, RN, or PA – again DO NOT

5. If you want to follow along with the home game I am tweeting my chemos (Camino Medical rocks for having wifi – though I wish it didn’t time out every hour). Oh yeah and a shout out to all my homies in Camino medical oncology and infusion facility – they are frickin awesome. I felt cared for, listened to, they kept joking with me. I can not recommend them highly enough!

6. I will try to respond to comments but please don’t be upset if I don’t. I am riding this wave and I imagine some times will be better than others. My priorities right now are 1) beating cancer to a pulp 2) loving and protecting my family 3) living by my commitments at work 4) making the world a better place.

6. I am amped up right now on 3 cell killing drugs, a monoclonal antibody, a butt load of steriods, enough benadryl to knock out an elephant (saw it once on Wild Kingdom), and my happy pills. Please excuse the writing style if it is not working for you. This update will not be a thought piece but more of just catching people up with where I am…

With that out of the way – here we go, buckle your chin strap and hang on.

So last week I finished up all my testing, my blood work, my PET scan, my CAT scan, and my Bone Marrow work.  I will post my pictures and reports later in the week when I pick up the CD. It came back that I am stage 2, which means I have two lymphatic areas that have cancer but they are on the same side of the diaphragm. Thanks everyone for txt’ing in and picking Stage 1 but I think AT&T messed with the results and so I am stage 2.

Based on this I am still really curable. As a matter of fact my oncologist, the excellent Dr. Wong, said “You have a really curable cancer don’t fuck it up”. He said this in making sure i don’t dilly dally with getting the chemo burn on. I really trust Dr. Wong and felt so good about how he is doing, that i have chosen not to get a second opinion right now.

I pushed really hard to get my chemo started as soon as possible and work was incredibly flexible about moving meetings around, allowing me to begin today (friday). I am taking 6 rounds of CHOP-R, once every 3 weeks. If you want to find me in 3 weeks – I will be sitting in a lazy-boy pumping in those great cancer killing poisions. I will scan my drug regime and put it up later next week as well so you can find out the acronyms. The cool one is the R part which is not a chemical drug but actually a monoclonal antibody that targets the CD20  receptor on my cancer cells – better living through biochemisty!

As the day approached for my chemo I was really starting to get sad. In retrospect I really let the fear of my chemo take hold of my thoughts. In the end, for me the chemo was relatively easy to have administered. I had a slight allergic reaction to the C drug which is why I had more benadryl and the steroids, but it was very managable. But it was really very easy to have the drugs put it. I sat there today and tweeted and did some work (hurray for billable hours) and watch geoGeekTV with Dave B.

Lesson from today: Don’t let your fears work you up – we, as humans, are generally much better at spinning fears down dark paths that are false. I think this also helps to explain why more communcation is better than less. The vaccuum of information is usually filled with peoples’ fears.

I am experience some of the nausea symptoms now but I took some anti-nausea drugs, ate some ginger ice cream, and went for a walk and I am feeling a bit better. I am sad that I missed the Shavuot Torah study last night and the festivals today.

I went into the infusion center @ 8:30 AM and left at 5:00 PM – it has been a long long day that I hope (Baruch Hashem) you never have to experience. I am finally starting to get sleepy. I want to thank TheQueen for being so awesome at my side today and riding the wave with me, my kids for being so good and having all the other parents say they were a joy to have over, the excellent staff at Camino, and all you out there in ether land. Getting the tweets, txts, facebook updates, and email just made me plain joyful. I love getting the good vibes and the sillier or happier the note the better.

Tomorrow shall try to be a day when I post pictures of what I look like on day 1 of my smashing of cancer. Here I am a 40 year old, out of shape but soon to be working on it, European and Iranian Jew who defeats cancer and rides off into the sunset with his lovely family and friends at his side. Let’s see where this goes….

PET scan done (aka Cancer has a sugar addiction)

Today I had the PET scan. The basic idea is that I fast and then they inject me with radioactive sugar. I take a nap for 45 minutes, wake up, lie on a big spinning magnet for a half hour and then they take some images. Since cancer cells LOVE sugar they tend to stand out in the photos. I got to sneak a peak and I didn’t see any bright areas except around my armpit – so if I read it right that would put me in stage 1 or late stage 2. What I was really glad to see was no glowing liver or spleen. Another cool part was since the brain is constantly chewing carbs my brain was all lit up as was my bladder as my body worked to rid me of the isotopes.

The one drawback, I am mildly radioactive for the next 6 hours. So, for example, if I had a long drive with someone I would have to sit in the back of the car. On the other hand there is a chance I could have been mutated and now I am super hero!

and a musical selection in honor of todays events.

So here it is – I have cancer

More specifically – I have B-Cell Lymphoma.

Met my oncologist on Thursday last week and he, Dr. Derrick Wong, is awesome. He tolerates me well, extracts bone marrow in record time and has a great sense of humor. For the record, having bone marrow taken out hurts more than skinning your knee but less that root canal with semi-effective anesthesia or less than Thai massage when it hits a really owwwie spot. The Queen told me I should be glad I did not see the needles and bone sample things they used. I have the distinct feeling I am going to end up being like cartman http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103511 – don’t watch if you don’t like southpark

He told me that my disease is incredibly treatable, no matter what stage I come back as, and the treatments are cookbook. I go to get a PET and CAT scan this week and then probably begin chemo the week after. He also said on the scale of 1 = woosy chemo and 10 = chuck-Norris-world-of-hurt chemo, mine would be a 3. If I am stage 1, it is 3 courses of chemo and 1 round of radiation – any other stage and its 6 rounds of chemo. I find out my staging after all the test results are in. If you need to pray and hope for something I would ask for 1) spontaneous remission 2) barring that let me be stage 1.

We told the kids that Daddy has cancer but that there are lots of types of cancer. Baruch Hashem, mine is very treatable. I will have 4-6 months of taking medicine and then I will be all better. Oldest asked if the medicine would make me crazy and I asked her how would she be able to tell. Middle wanted to know what color my lymph node was and what color the medicine would be. Youngest said ok and wanted to go back inside so we could play Wii.

I have spoken to many people about my disease now but it still hasn’t really sunk in – I don’t feel sick yet I have this disease in me that, if left untreated, would probably kill me in a year or so. Given all I have read, all I have heard from my friends, all I have heard from DRs, talking to other survivors, and everyones love and support I am extremely upbeat. I plan on being sick for several months and then getting back on with my life. I plan on trying to work through this whole time period. I feel extremely fortunate that this is “all” I have to deal with – it could have been so much worse.

For most of the time I am happy, upbeat, and positive. For those other times it’s not something a little nap and some nice medications can’t take care of.  I am loving all the jokes and joy people are sending my way. We can all move on from sorry now and move on to kicking ass – except when I need to really milk the sympathy a bit.

I plan on looking into team in training, so I can finally get good at riding a bike. I could use some advice on DSi versus PSP (hand-held game consoles). I need something to do during my day long chemo sessions and I am totally parlaying this into getting a handheld game console. I tried to work it for a PS3 but didn’t get very far on that one and there was no movement on a 40” flat screen tv for the Wii.

Please understand if I don’t respond to comments here right away – I am busy giving my kids good daddy time, dealing with testing and paperwork, and trying to stay sane. I will try my best but no promises…

On that note you can expect some posts focusing on cancer here for a bit. I am already cooking up a diatribe on how we as a society have come to poison ourselves.

The CP-Pack rocks Open Street Map (OSM)

So the kids, some of their friends, and I did the recent OSM street mapping party for San Jose.

We had a phenomenal  time – I highly recommend taking your kids if one of the parties comes to your neighborhood. You can discuss crowd-sourcing, GPS units, mapping, landmarks, and all sorts of fun hiking around. The CloudMade staff were awesome and basically my kids got one on one tutorials from the staff and each child got their own GPS unit.

So now my kids edits will live in OSM forever. All the fountains, landmarks, memorials, footpaths that end in fountains, museums, and public toilets (need to change styles to see it) are due to my kids!!!!! How frickin cool is that. And the great part is that my kids can download the data again and use it for whatever they wish.

http://maps.cloudmade.com/?lat=37.337664&lng=-121.892087&zoom=17&styleId=1045

Promise - they were really having fun