First of all, your descriptions about going to a yarn store made me grin. I’m a knitter who gets excited at words like “silk blend”, so it’s always fun to see someone get excited about it. It’s also great to see someone use knitting for geeky means. If you haven’t checked out Fandom_knit, you definitely should.

Secondly, when you were asking for ideas, I was going to ask about looking at any regrets a childfree person might have, but Ginger Campbell, who was FABULOUS btw, mentioned it at the end of the show. That was great, especially since I knew if I remain childfree, I would have some, but I still didn’t think that meant that having children was right for me.

Lastly, you read Water for Chocolate! I read it back in high school and was absolutely enchanted by it. I totally agree, having children just so you have someone to take care of you is a lousy reason to have kids. That said, I do think there’s something to be said for having descendents in one’s life when s/he is older, and it does ease a lot of the loneliness I think a lot of seniors suffer from. But then I read a lot of stories in the newspaper of seniors in China and India who talk about their children never visiting and how bitter they are about that, and there’s always one Dear Abby letter every season about a neglected elderly person whose kids never visit except to ask for money.

Anyways, great podcast as usual. Looking forward to the next one.

You made an interesting point, though, in regards to “childfree” keywords giving decidedly “childful” ads. The few times I’ve listened to eg. This Week In Tech, I noticed that their ads are always personally delivered and not a pre-recorded jingle. The ad tends to go on for a few minutes of conversation, because the people on the ‘cast are actually users of the product. Subsequently, I’m more interested in the product because the people are selling the product as part of their own experience.

Magpie ads, on the other hand, may not. The same is true for “Ads by Google”. Being auto-generated, there’s no “word-of-mouth” factor. If you could actually choose (or at least confirm) the products that Magpie advertises through your feed, that would be a step in the right direction. Otherwise, it’s a shotgun blast of advertising through a Dixie Cup(TM).

Marketers know that people are more willing to buy a product recommended to them by a friend. Since no one’s really figured out the best way to do that by mass-production, Magpie would be in a very unique position as an advertiser. And as podcasters, we would be raking in tons of cash.

The solution, I think, is to negotiate the deals individually. Since so many of us do niche-casts, we’ll have to chase down the companies that offer what we want and go to them for an advertising deal. Or sell ads on your site that you’ve personally approved - Penny Arcade only posts ads on their site for games that they’ve played and enjoyed (even if it’s just the beta). Demonstrate your integrity to your audience and they’ll keep coming by more and more.

So when I saw your tweet earlier, I didn’t reply. I simply don’t know what I would do if you started using Magpie. And I certainly don’t know what everyone else who follows you might do.

I suspect, however, that most people use Twitter as a party room conversation. Self-pimpage is tolerated as part of the conversation, but injected advertisements will be subject to a lot more objection.

Heh. Stay-at-home childfree. Too many syllables. Stay-at-home geek?

GO CHRIS!!!

XXX

Have a great trip!

Bonnie

When needed and dosed appropriately, it can make night-and-day differences, yes. If it’s not what’s needed or not dosed appropriately, it can also cause very severe side effects. I don’t mean to scare you or anything, as you’ve been on it for 3 years and obviously your doc must be managing you well. I just didn’t have any of the other low-adrenal function signs to any significant degree, so it wasn’t tested until the looks-at-more-varied-fatigue-causes guy ran more tests than I’ve ever seen on an outpatient!

My adrenal dysfunction is based on a single wrong-time-drawn and thus-not-very-reliable lab test. Hydrocortisone was discussed as a possible treatment to try, but the LA doc said (and I agree) that it risked being overkill with higher risk of those side effects if it wasn’t a real and significant deficiency. My own doc will probably, thorough as she is, rerun the tests appropriately and reexamine that possibility.

I wish you the best of luck in your completely better life– wow! Appreciate and enjoy every day!– and with resolving the achy joints with your doc’s help, and thank you for sharing your personal experience. It’s so nice to hear “old self again” and know that it really does happen for people! Thanks for writing.
-CF

Haven’t read the book. I’ll check that out.

I’m fascinated by the gene marker studies, but until some diagnostic criteria or treatment plans are tested using them, they remain academic. Fascinating, though!

Thanks for the info, and I hope something comes along to help both of us!

Things you might want to keep up with are the CFIDS Newsletter, http://www.cfids.org/subscribe.asp, signing up for pubmed alerts, etc. There’s a wealth of info out there, some of which is legit, some of which is scam, and it helps to become educated on which is which. Even with published research, there’s a huge dichotomy is what’s legit and what’s not. For instance, just about anything that supports Cognitive Behavior Therapy(CBT) or Graded Exercise Therapy(GET) is written by psychiatrists in England or the Netherlands who use a definition of CFS called the Oxford Criteria, which is roundly criticized by legitimate researchers because of the heterogeneous nature of the patients selected, ie it’s a mixed bag of people with depression, people who are burned out, and somewhere mixed in there are actual CFS cases. Basically, there’s a whole universe of politics, people, and theories relating to CFS, which is interesting to the nth degree, but it really helps to know the background of who’s saying what.

Also is the book Osler’s Web. It tells the story of how ‘CFS’ came about, and in the 4+ years I’ve been researching CFS since becoming housebound, this book has been the single most informative thing I’ve come across. Cannot recommend highly enough to anyone who is in any way interested in CFS.

The English ME patient websites, MEAction, ME Association, ME Research UK, Invest in ME, etc. are also very good sources of info since the CFIDS Association, their American counterpart, is partly funded by the CDC, which is itself widely criticized by the patient community, so it seems kind of hamstrung on what it can and cannot say, and who it can and cannot criticize.

One last recommendation is to look around for the half dozen or so gene expression studies that have been done in the last few years, as those are going to be very key in developing CFS research in the upcoming years, for example Dr. Jonathan Kerr’s seven different subtypes in CFS/ME based on gene expression matched with clinical presentations, and Dr. Takuya Saiki’s et al’s recent paper on Marker Genes for Differential Diagnosis of CFS.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18596870

Leann- yes, we must talk.

CF out.

THIS can be old news.

http://www.fibroandfatigue.com/center_locations.php

She has heard good things about them, but hasn’t tried them personally.

It might take a few days, but I’ll talk to the podango people and get them put back up. My apologies if this puts it through the feeds again.

Here’s a perfect illustration regarding parents taking kids where they really don’t belong:

I just finished listening to the commentary for the movie Superbad. It’s basically a profanity-laced BS session. One of the producers, Judd Apatow, brings his 9-year-old daughter at the New York half of the recording session. Another of the film makers (who’s in studio with them) tries to watch his language until about halfway through the movie, when he gives up and gripes at Apatow for bringing a kid to a commentary for an adult oriented movie. Judd then storms out! It all does feel like it really happened. After that, the commentary becomes even more raunchy.
Anyone who has seen the movie,and knows most of the people involved with making it, should have been aware that the commentary would not be kid friendly.

Yeesh on the kid at the McDonald’s. Were you there at 2 am when security swept all the party rooms at Dragon*Con trying to find a 13-year-old girl last seen at 6pm? NOT an everyone space…. very scary. This is why the illusion of childproofing the world is dangerous to kids. Doomed childproofing attempts are also dangerous to my freedom of speech and ability to attend adult-oriented gatherings. And Who-da-funk thought Dragon*con at 6pm was safe for a 13-year-old to wander solo? Just asking…

And yes, I wish to hear Dirk Moonfire assembled. After all, I have waited most of my life to be Queen of the Nefarious Space Women. Umm, I blush at the things I have said to you/Dirk. Nothing personal.

I fully get the over-Disneyfication of the world and find it depressing that 13 year old girls (and their parents) are deciding the media for a majority of the world. Too many people who do have kids end up thinking that it’s someone else’s responsibility to raise THEIR kid. I never understand those people.

Sorry, didn’t mean to rant. I had to suffer one of these parents who chose NOT to watch their kid at McDonald’s and all of us there got annoyed with the little kid. That was until the kid disappeared and the parent (about 15 minutes later) freaked out that the kid was missing. To make a pathetic story short, the kid had left McD’s and wandered to the store next door. One of the employees next door came back with the kid and the distraught parent. I kept think that they need to issue parenting licenses, but that’s my opinion.

Okay, I’m done ranting. Get better soon! Oh, and let’s start to beat up on Jack about Dirk Moonfire. I’m dying to hear him finally get that one out. I’ll let you guess who did the voice of Dirk. heh heh

J.R.

Luckily, there will be new forums in another month or so (All hail Farpoint Media!) and I will update the link then. Glad you’re liking it! Thank you!

CF

R

My kitty was lying on my arm at the computer desk while I watched it…he was super interested in the kitty in the video. The guy who did the video has some other videos with the same cat…very funny.

Michael, it was good to meet you, too. I’m down to some persistent sniffles. I should be back with Ep 52 really soon.
CF, she of a thousand naps.

Michael

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlrGhzEG2DI

I thought you had to be 18 to be in the casinos? So what’s when all the clueless BNPs dragging their strollers onto the floor?

I drove from Los Altos (on the Peninsula) to Las Vegas (actually Nellis Air Force Base) in 8 hours. I was going extremely fast.

As for disparity in wages at the workplace, check out the military. They practically reward you for getting married and shooting out kids. Many of my Navy buddies did just that and I wound up alone while all my married buddies hung out together. Of course they all had extra money, could live off base, extra money for that, extra benefits, etc, etc.

As for my current employer, it’s equal pay based on seniority. In some ways, that’s almost worse because you get people who’ve sat in the same chair for 25 years doing little to nothing getting paid more because they’ve been there longer.

Hmmm, I’m rambling, aren’t I?

Keep up the good work!

-Andrea