At my last job, a couple of the employees attended some kind of disaster preparedness or recovery (I'm really not sure which) seminar.  Upon their return one of them knowing that I am heavily involved with Scouting said something to me about being CPR Trained and being the person in the office that knew it. I let them know that I was not CPR trained but if the company wanted to help pay for me to attend the training (it's less than $100), I'd be happy to take the time and get trained.  It's just not a requirement to be a Scout leader and it's not something that I've done yet. The reaction was kind of "Well when you get trained, let us know and we'll use you as our CPR person".  A few more times over the next several months the topic came up again, and my answer was always the same, "Help pay for it, and I'd be happy to do it".  I just wasn't going to go do it because they asked me to, at my expense so that they could claim that they had someone CPR trained in their office, seemed like that was a situation where they gained more than I did.  Of course, after being laid off and then being asked to other things at no cost, it shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Another thing that I suggested was that the office really should get an AED device.  There wasn't one there and in my opinion, there needed to be one.  I was literally laughed at and mocked for making such a suggestion, on several occasions. Now I realize that they aren't cheap, but I also know that they save lives.  I was told that everyone working there was young and in good shape and that such a device wasn't needed and even if someone did happen to have an issue that the Fire Department was just minutes away.  After that I told my wife that if I just happened to have a heart attack while working there and died, that she should look into her legal options. So while watching the news tonight I had a huge smile on my face when I saw thisreport.  I don't know the details of the ordinance, and this company isn't located in South Jordan (they are literally only a few blocks away though), but it's good to see that some people are taking things like this seriously. And for the record, my new company does have one and I know exactly where it is located just in case it's needed.  The funny thing is it's within 20 feet of the vending machines.

About 9 months ago I started getting some really bad headaches. This was really unusual for me, because I've never been one to get headaches. They were coming everyday and I wasn't really getting any relief.

I went through a few doctors, medications, tests, and scans trying to figure out what was wrong. They really couldn't figure out what was going on and nothing was really helping.

That was until I was sent to a Neurologist, who knew what it was immediately. She put me on a new medicine and ordered a Sleep Study to confirm it. Sure enough she was right.

Sleep Apnea.  Once they confirmed what it was, I was put on a CPAP machine and while my headaches haven't gone away completely it's nice to at least know that and I've getting a decent nights sleep.

Previously, I was unable to sleep on any kind of Scout camp.  I would literally lay there at night with my eyes closed and think to myself "Go to sleep, it's not that hard, you're tired, now just go to sleep".  Come to find out, I was "sleeping" but I was also having episodes an average of 62 times an hour, so it just felt like I was awake all night long.

I went to the Varsity Big Event recently and was able to take my machine with me.  I won't say that I slept perfectly, but it was much better than it was in the past.

So hopefully we're on the right road and the headaches become a the past.

Last week, I was out of town so when I returned and saw the new about BYU's Basketball Coach Dave Rose being diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, my heart sank.  All I know about Pancreatic Cancer is that it is not a good one ot be diagnosed with. I was quite impressed when I saw that some of my Ute Fan friends at UteFans.net had taken up a collection in his honor and were doing what they could to help up. I was actually quite relieved to read about the Press Conference today about his situation and that he is currently cancer free.  Hopefully he stays that way. Any kind of cancer is not fun, if has affected our family somewhat and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Even at Scout Camps.  Life must go on though I guess.  You can't shut the world down for a couple of weeks and hope that all of this goes away.  You have to deal with it as things come up and do what you can.

I've ranted about web ads here quite a bit.  Not that my rants have any affect on what people produce, but I can't believe some of the garbage that is cranked out and passed off for advertising. While I have personally noticed a reduction in the total number of annoyance ads that either pop-up, pop-under, or float over a page that I'm viewing I have noticed an increase in the text based ads.  Usually they are pretty simple with a small image, some basic text and a short link. My beef with them is that they are just as annoying as the other types of ads.  The one that I'm seeing all the time is the "Jiggly Fat" one.  It makes my kids laugh, but I think that it's just plain stupid (sorry that's a "Naughty" word in our house) just plain "lame". Then again, maybe I do have a bunch of "Jiggly Fat" that I need to lose and the agency that produced these ads have developed technology to only display it to people like me who really need to lose said "Jiggly Fat", but I know for a fact that I don't need a "Colon Cleanser".  One Colonoscopy per lifetime is enough thank you very much.

Researchers say too much cola can be bad for your health It seems that if you just wait 5 minutes, there will be a new study published that tells you that too much of something is bad for your health.  To me that just makes sense.  Too much of anything has got to be bad for you in one way or another, right? What amazes me in this story is the part about the 21 year old woman and her health problems.  It says hat she drank up to 7 liters of cola a day for 10 months, as a result she "developed fatigue, appetite loss, excessive vomiting and a heart blockage". Let's do some quick math here.  I'm going to assume that every day she drank 7 liters.  I realize that the article says "up to 7 liters" but I'm going to assume the worst because well I can and it makes the story sound better. According to the story, 1 liter is equal to 33.8 ounces.  So 7 liters would be equal to 236.6 ounces.  There are 128 ounces in a gallon, so that's 1.84 gallons of Cola a day. In 10 months there are roughly 300 days, give or take a few.  That's 552 gallons (Sorry, I'm American I think in Gallons) of Cola in 10 months time. Now let's just backup a little.  As I mentioned that's 236.6 ounces per day.  Let's assume that this person is awake for 16 hours per day (which also assumes a full 8 hours sleep cycle). If they were drinking 12 ounce cans of Cola, they would be drinking 19.71 cans (we'll round to 20, because is someone drinking that much per day really going to let .29 of a can go to waste, I don't think so) per day.  Yes, that's slightly more tan 3 six packs per day. So 20 cans per day in 16 hours is one can every 48 minutes. Yeah, I can see how that would cause health problems.  Just for the record, I suspect that it's not just Cola.  I think that if anyone were to drink anything this much, they would have some kind of medical problem.

Remember this....well now there's this. There has to be a solution somewhere on how to make this work.  How many Stay At Home Mom's out there have their degrees in Nursing and are taking their Continuing Education credits online (or by other methods) to maintain their licenses, can't there be someway of allowing them to "volunteer" at the schools for an hour or two each week for a period of time to help out in this situation? I realize that there are some risks involved here, but if the legislature isn't able to provide the funding for the nurses, can't they find a way to provide for an alternative plan like this? Personally, I don't like the idea of my children's school not having trained Medical Personnel on the premises.  I'm sure that they office staff is great but if there's a real emergency that means life or death for my child, I'd honestly rather have the Nurse there than an Administrative Assistant.

The warning on my Men's Health Formula Multi-Vitamin bottle reads as follows: "If you are pregnant or nursing a baby, ask a doctor before using this product". I'm so confused.

I would think that just about anything that links your industry to something that puts health fears into people like this flu has been would cause people in the industry to react like this. Though I must say that calling it "H1N1" makes me laugh because it looks like the work "Hiney" to me.  So it's either the "Swine Flu" or the "Hiney Flu", either way I don't want to get it.

I've known about Geocaching for a while now and have quietly looked into it from a distance.  Then was somewhat introduced to it last June at the Varsity Big Event, only it was on a very small scale.  Ever since then I've been quite interested in purchasing a handheld GPS (I already own a unit for my vehicle) and giving it a try. Earlier this month at roundtable we had a guest speaker come and speak about it a bit and so my interest has becom even more intense.  Combine that with some points that I've collected on one of my credit cards (thank you mega-summer 2008 family vacation) and I was able to pick up a basically free (I think that I paid $20) handheld Magellan GPS unit. I'm excited, hopefully I'll lose a few pounds, get in better shape, and have some fun while doing it. So now I'm all set, except for the time to go and actually do it.  I wonder if I can get some of that with the remaining points on my card too.