Diary of a Network Geek

Just like at the factory farm.

I was going to just gloss over why I was looking for this and get right to the fun, but, let’s face it; at this point I’m pretty much writing this blog for myself. So, my blushing bride was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a couple weeks ago and she read that one thing which might help is going to basically a ketogenic diet. That led me to look for some DIY keto-friendly energy bars, which I were shelf stable and I could seal up in a small food vacuum storage bag. (You can find my latest recipe discoveries on my Pinterest Recipies and Cooking board.) And, all that led me to think it would be fun to put a nutrition label on my creations.
So, first, I’d need to break down the ingredients in the recipe so I could enter it into the label. After searching around, I found two that analyze the recipe and generate the label. First, there’s cleverly named recipenutrition.com. It’s really simple to use and free. Then, there’s the even more user friendly Very Well Fit site’s Recipe Nutrition Analyzer. Both are free and give you a basic nutrition label.
Finally, if you want to take the output from those labels and make something that’s a little fancier, you can grab your info and head to the Nutrition Label Generator at OnlineLabels.com. Also free, but you’re got to have your data already worked out.
And, while these look like great labels, I’d make sure they were up to FDA standards before using them on a commercial product. Can’t be too safe!

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words!
(Gee, I miss the plugin that used to cross post and attribute for me.  I know I ought to write one, but who has the time?)

By the time most of you read this, I’ll be fully irradiated and probed with God-knows-what-kind of rays.

Yes, the joy of being a recovering cancer patient is that the doctors keep close watch on you.  Today, I’m having the second of four scans I’ll get this year.  This time, it’s a PET scan, not a CT scan.  Unlike a CT scan, I don’t have to drink the barium which messes up my digestive tract for days afterward.  Instead, I’ll have an I.V. put in and get injected with a kind of mildly radioactive glucose.  Then, I get to sit quietly and contemplate my sins for an hour while the glow-in-the-dark glucose gets sucked up by my body’s tissues.  Anything that’s more metabolically active than the surrounding tissue will get a higher dose and, therefore, show up more on the scan.  The theory is that a tumor would use more of that glucose and be an easily identifiable dark spot.

And, I have to admit, the geek in me loves to see the results of this.  When I was near the end of treatment, one of my doctors showed me a side-by-side comparison of the before and after PET scans.  It was like something from the Discovery channel.  Two ghostly, skeletal images of me, in basically the same position, rotating in unison on the screen.  One with a tumor the size of a football in my lung, the other with something more like a big lime, or a kiwi.  The difference was quite startling and the pictures themselves were fairly impressive.  Sometimes I wonder at the age of technological marvels in which we live.

In any case, I’ll be fully probed and, hopefully, done by lunch.  My plan is to take my keeper for the day to a decent sushi place for lunch, since I haven’t been able to eat since midnight, the only big downside to the PET scan.  And, for a change, I’ll get the results Monday, not a whole week later, too.  Normally, I have a very long wait to find out what, if anything, they may have discovered floating around in me, so this will be a nice change.
Naturally, I’ll report the results when I get them!