My Hush Space

After several months of debate on whether to get LASIK surgery done, I went and finally did it. The process started with casual discussions with friends and associates who have had the procedure done within the last 10 years.

All of them were happy with their results and of course happier to be free of glasses for everyday functions. Now outdoor sports and activities will not be so limiting. Of course getting LASIK done comes at a price.

There are risks you have to be aware of. I am no expert and that is why it is so important that you find the right doctor that can go over those risks in order to set your expectations. Luckily I was referred to my LASIK surgeon by another optometrist.

Dr. Keith Liang and his staff were great! They are located right here in Sacramento, California. He and Dr. Pitts took their time to measure and re-measure my eyes. Even on the day of the surgery, which as this past Friday, Dr. Liang took another reading.

It was refreshing to see the numbers revalidated at my each visit. I didn’t have too many questions to ask because I had done my own research ahead of time. I did, however, want to know what to expect on the day of the surgery.

I won’t go into detail here because of you’re planning to get LASIK done, then this is information you should get from your own surgeon.

For me and was in and out of the eye center in little over an hour. That included the prep time, surgery, and post op time. They do give you a list of things to do before the surgery such as cleaning your eye lids, top and bottom, taking flak seed, etc.

Some tips my previous boss gave me was vacuum your house and car so there isn’t any dust flying around when you get home and when you’re driving around. You basically want to do everything to protect your eyes post surgery.

They even gave me some special glasses to wear home since my eyes would be more sensitive to light and even special eye covers for night time so I don’t accident scratch my eyes when I go to sleep. I read a lot about eye dryness after the procedure, but mine seems to be ok.

One thing about he prescription eye drops, they are very expensive if you don’t have medical coverage. The LASIK procedure could cost you $3,800 for both eyes on up. It all depends on your vision care. My friend who is in the Air Force got his free from good ole Sam.

I’ve seen advertisements for $399 per eye, but I don’t know if I would trust those places. That’s just an ad to rope you in. So do your homework, find a reputable surgeon and ask around.

For me I’m reading at about 20/20. The results will vary and will change over time. You can get follow up or enhancement surgery if you need to in the future. The cost won’t be that much, but it is something that should be available to you.

Good luck!

Special thanks to Savoon for walking me through all the paper work and for Crystal for giving encouragement during the surgery.

As Mariuca says, ‘better late than never’. Here’s a nice tag from Mariuca to help people out.

Below are the links of a few organizations that benefit the hungry people of the world. You can play your part and contribute by playing a game, clicking to feed, donating, signing a petition, purchasing items on the website and etc. The purpose of this tag is to spread the word on these wonderful sites by linking to them and encouraging your readers to help the hungry in any way possible. Please tag at least five other bloggers and please add on to the list if you know of any other organization that focuses on this issue.

I have just visited The Hunger Site to do my part in feeding the hungry today. You too can give FREE food to the world’s hungry just by clicking a button. All you have to do is visit the site and click the yellow “Click Here to Give - it’s FREE” button.

Remember! A click a day keeps the hunger away. Do your part and make a great difference in the lives of millions of starving people worldwide by visiting and clicking NOW!

I think for this round I won’t be tagging anyone.  Hopefully you can just help out by clicking on the links above and do your part to help someone out.

If you’re tired of paying $4.63 for Premium gas as I did yesterday, then you have to sign the petition!

‘As gas prices continue to increase, Congress continues to blame others while ignoring practical steps to stop the pain Americans are feeling at the pump. To lower gasoline prices and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we need real solutions to our energy challenges.’

Welcome to BlogBlast For Peace - The Fourth Launch! Dona Nobis Pacem is Latin for “Grant Us Peace”. The Peace Globe project began in the fall of 2006 with a simple post from this blog. The post ignited a flame in the blogosphere. The flame became a passion. The passion became a movement. It amazingly traveled from blog to blog across the globe until it reached 35 countries and 46 states. BlogBlast for Peace is a semi-annual blog event. It happened on my blog. It happened on your blog. It happened all over the world. It is positively inspiring to watch. The simplicity of three Latin words on a globe and bloggers writing amazing articles on what peace means to them.
Simple. And powerful.

On June 4, 2008 bloggers from all across the globe will blog for peace. We will speak with one voice. One subject. One day.

Read the background at Mimi Writes.

Hi All,

Sorry I haven’t been around. Just got back a 2 week vacation in Istanbul, Turkey. I’ll be making my rounds starting tomorrow (I hope). In the meanwhile, you can check out the post I made on our family site - R Playground - Istanbul 2008.

Rolando

I’m not sure about you, but I get spammed by robot spammers all the time. It’s not bad, but it does become annoying after awhile.  I get at least 10 or more spam messages a day.

I use the Akismet spam plugin that came with WordPress and it does the job.  This new WP-SpamFree plugin is a great supplement to Akismet.  It’s transparent to users.  There is no CAPTCHA code to enter or math degree required to make a post.

It’s been a week since I installed it and I’m spam free (knock on wood).

Key Features

1. Virtually eliminates automated comment spam from bots. It works like a firewall to ensure that your commenters are in fact, human.
2. A counter on your dashboard to keep track of all the spam it’s blocking. The numbers will show how effective this plugin is.
3. No CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions or other inconvenience to site visitors - it works silently in the background.
4. Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use - no configuration necessary.
5. No false positives, which leads to fewer frustrated readers, and less work for you.
6. You won’t have to waste valuable time sifting through a spam queue anymore, because there won’t be much there, if anything.
7. Powerful trackback and pingback spam protection.
8. Easy to install - truly plug and play. Just upload and activate. (Installation Status on the plugin admin page to let you know if plugin is installed correctly.)
9. The beauty of this plugin is the methods of blocking spam. It takes a different approach than most and stops spam at the door.
10. The code is has an extremely low bandwidth overhead and won’t slow down your blog (very light database access), unlike some other anti-spam plugins.
11. Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can say that.
12. Display your blocked spam stats on your blog.

You can read more about it here.

What’s going on? Catastrophes at almost every corner of the world. It’s like an epic movie come to life.

Just this morning there was a 7.9 earthquake in China that killed thousands. About a week ago a Cylone in Myanmar. Close to home we had tornadoes in the mid-West.

There are plenty of scientific reasons on why this happening. Heck you could even blame Al Gore and Global Warming. But blaming someone is not going to stop the inevitable. When it happens it happens and there is nothing you can do.

You could pray or move out of the area if you knew a natural disaster was going to happen. But most times we don’t and we don’t have enough time to do anything about it. You could be proactive and build a shelter, but it’s not going to stop what has to happen based on Mother Earth’s will.

For me I might as well throw up my arms and just hope that God’s will protects me and my family. All material things can be replaced (at least we hope).

This morning when I heard the news about China I thought about my own life and environment. Here I am complaining about the little tiny weeds I have to pull from the ground each and every day. Nagging and irritating me like a fly buzzing around my head. There are people with far more worse problems. Children buried under their school in China, bloated bodies found in the waters of Myanmar, and families homes ripped to shreds in the mid-West.

These are just the stories about natural disasters. There is a lot of other unfortunate things happening in this world. But that is another post for another time.

By comparison I have nothing to complain about. I am fortunate and even more grateful for what I have. I am fortunate to have a living room I can walk through and not swim through. A garden that grows weeds and not flowers from a plant that blew from 100 miles away.

I sigh with hope that the people in need can find food, shelter, and resources to find loved ones. Who knows what Mother Earth has in store of us next?