So I met with my GI doctor last week, and he ordered a TON of blood work. Along with *7* stool samples.. UGH, that might have been the most disgusting experience of my life.

Now I’m waiting to get the results back now.. If everything comes back clean, then we move on to a colonoscopy. I’m hoping they pick up some infection from my blood work, and are able to give me the meds to rid my body of it. This illness has consumed 2 MONTHS of my life, and countless dollars (co-pays, medicine, and lost revenue from my lack of work).

I’ve now lost 20lbs since this first started. I haven’t been this low since 2005, when I left my full-time job. I guess it’s true, you become a fat slob when you sit in front of a computer all day and don’t exercise.

If you’ve got an iPhone 4, and you’re having reception problems because of the new antennae placement, Apple is now offering a free bumper (or a case). All you need to do is download the “iPhone 4 Case Program” from the App Store.

I wasn’t really feeling any of the cases, so I just went with the simple bumper. I was hoping to get a white one (nice contrast to the black phone), but they’re only offering ‘em in black.

Free is free, so I’ll take what I can get!

Just before Memorial Day, I got really sick. The assumption was that I got food poisoning from dinner the night before. I spent the next 48 hours in the bathroom, and I figured it was behind me after that.

But my symptoms came back with a vengence on Father’s Day, and I spent the next few days in bed. I figured I had a minor relapse, and waited it out to see if my situation would improve. The following weekend, I had more stomach issues. So on Monday June 21st, I went to the doctor, and he put me on a week of Flagyl. Flagyl is this AWFUL antibiotic that is supposed to kill bacterial infections and/or parasites.

Side-effects aside, life was good. I finished my last pill on the 28th, and figured I was finally cured. Until the morning of July 4th, where I was right back where I started from. Talk about bad timing, I had to go to a family BBQ, where I mostly drank water and kept to myself.

Stubborn me didn’t go back to the doctor until July 9th, at which point the doctor put me on a 2-week dose of Flagyl, feeling that the first dose wasn’t enough to kill the bacteria. So far, it’s been pretty good. My side effects (mainly nausea) isn’t as bad as the first time around, but today I woke up feeling some unsettling symptoms that have me concerned.

I now have an appointment with a GI doctor on Thursday, where I’ll undergo some more tests to hopefully figure out what is going on.

Normal food poisioning goes away on it’s own usually. Bacterial infections and parasites usually get taken care of with antibiotics.

Of course, my immune system isn’t super strong, given that I work from home and aren’t around germs all the time like everyone else. Hopefully that’s the reason this infection has proven so resilient thus far, and my issues don’t run deeper than that.

Fingers crossed!

At first, it was a little underwhelming. Sure, there were some new features I didn’t have before, but it wasn’t a HUGE change, more of an improvement on an already awesome product.

But then I played with iBooks today, and it was a game-changer for me! I have HUNDREDS of PDFs scattered across my desktop. SEO, social media, gurus, etc. Stuff that I actually want to read at some point, but just never find the time. The perfect time to read these things? When I’m traveling. But since I rarely bring my laptop with me anymore, that becomes a problem.

But no longer is this a problem! iBooks lets me load my PDFs onto my phone, and I can read them while I’m on a train, plane, boat, etc. This is a HUGE deal for me, well worth the $199 upgrade price! Facetime and other do-dads might be fun in the short-term, this will really be useful for me in the long-haul. If I had an iPad, it would even be better, but I’m not looking to lug something around with me all the time. My phone is always in my pocket, so if the wife decides to spend an extra 20 minutes shopping while I’m in the car, I can now fire up my latest PDF, and get reading.

Yeah, I’m a dork.. Whatever.

Eventually, I just had him bring the computer to me, so I could work on it. My first run of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware came up with 50 infections! So I let it do it’s thing, and I figured I’d be in the clear.

I rebooted the computer, and everything appeared to be fine. But just as I was about to close out of IE, it redirected me to a random site. WTF?

Some Googling led me to the discovery of the atapi.sys rootkit, a NASTY malware hack that is even harder to clean up. Thankfully, this thread led me to TDSKiller, a nifty utility from Kaspersky that replaces your infected atapi.sys with a clean version when rebooting.

Problem solved!!

Back in 2006-2007, I was very active in the real estate market.. I was one of those guys you’d see on A&E, buying a “ugly” homes, bringing in a crew to remodel it, and then sell it for a tidy profit. Then the mortgage crisis started. All of a sudden, there were a million foreclosures and short sales, but it was impossible to sell when the renovations were completed.

If I had huge sums of cash, I would have bought up a ton of homes at a third of their actual price, sit on them until the market corrected, and then sold them for a huge profit.

I did in fact do this with two properties, but neither by choice. The market collapsed just as my first house was finished, and I ended up renting it out for the past 2 years. The market down there hasn’t improved, so it’ll remain a rental property until things get better.

The other house needed a TON of work, and there was no reason to get started while market prices were in the dumps. But now I’m ready to unload this house, so I started on a massive renovation. It’s been awhile since I’ve been involved with this, and I forgot what a headache it can be. Demo started yesterday morning, and 2 hours into it, I get a call from my contractor telling me they’ve found termite damage when they removed some sheetrock!

So today, I meet with a termite company, get a $1400 bill for treatment, and they start work next Wednesday. Thankfully, it’s mainly surface damage, and I don’t need to do any interior work. Otherwise, I would have been screwed!

A bunch of stuff needs to be moved in order for the treatment to be done. My contractors want $25/hr to do this, and I’m already over budget as it is. So I’ll be headed over there tonight to do it myself.

I should have taken some before pictures, but I’m going to try to capture some in-progress video tonight with my new iPhone, and will post final pictures when everything’s completed.. ETA is 4 weeks, but you never can tell what might come up..

Hope you’re enjoying the 3-day weekend, and try not to blow your fingers off – It’s hard to type when you’re missing fingers!

The following day, I was finally able to get my order placed, only now the “Ship By” date had moved to July 2nd. Whatever, I wasn’t about to camp out in line for 12+ hours to get the phone, so I placed my order.

What annoyed me was that the Apple/AT&T stores got more phones earlier this week, and people were able to just walk into the stores and get one. Meanwhile, those of us who placed our order on June 16th are still waiting..

That just doesn’t seem right, you’d think the preorders would get priority, right?

I got my shipping notification on the 30th, but my estimated delivery date isn’t until July 7th! Right now, it’s in SHENZHEN CN according to FedEx. Because of the long holiday weekend (which is a No Movement holiday), I’m probably not going to see the phone until Tuesday or Wednesday. Knowing about this ahead of time, you’d think it would have made sense for them to ship entire pallets of the phones to a US distribution center, which would have probably allowed for those phones to arrive before the holiday weekend.

Food for thought. From all accounts, this launch has been a total disaster.. Sure, they’ve moved over 2Mil units already, but the amount of bad PR they’ve gotten because of the reception problems is BAD. Guess some QA testers will lose their job over this mess..

Amazon is excited to announce AmazonWireless – A new website by Amazon.com that offers cell phones and wireless plans, easy shopping without rebate hassles, and FREE two-day shipping. AmazonWireless offers more than 140 bestselling phones from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless–with more carriers and additional features coming soon.

AmazonWireless makes it easy for customers to upgrade their phone if they already have a plan, or if they want to establish new cell phone service, has tried to make it simple to find the right phone, service plan, and options.

Customers can shop for phones by carrier, phone feature, price, color, and brand. The site’s shopping cart will guide them through each stage of the purchase process, where they’ll find familiar Amazon features like bestseller lists, detailed product descriptions, and customer reviews.

AmazonWireless is owned and operated by Amazon.com. Customers can shop securely with their Amazon.com account on AmazonWireless, and benefit from Amazon’s world-class service and security.

Click here to start shopping!

I received an e-mail blast from GoDaddy reminding me to renew some outstanding domains before the price hike takes effect. No one knows for sure how much each registrar will charge, but it’s expected that the cost will go up by .50 – .80 cents. Not a huge deal for those who own a handful of domain names, but if you’re like me and own hundreds (or thousands), boy is this going to be painful. (I just spent $300 renewing a batch of domains that were set to expire in August)

What can you do right now? If you haven’t already done so, renew all of your domains immediately to take advantage of renewals while they’re still at their current prices. Come July 1, 2010, you’ll be paying higher fees, like it or not.