We're having quite an interesting discussion on the Hecl mailing list about the semantics and syntax of the language (since it's in its early days, we get to do that!). I have some questions for those of you reading this, if you have time to comment.
Hecl inherits a lot of things from Tcl, which is both a simple, and amazingly flexible language. One of the things that Tcl lets you do is modify the value of a variable. For instance,
set x [list 1 2 3] ; lappend x 4;. However, what is at times confusing for people is that to get the value of a variable, you place a dollar sign in front of the variable:
lindex $x 0 would return
1 for instance. To some people this is all quite intuitive, because commands that modify the variable take its name, which is then looked up in a hash table and fiddled with as needs be. So we have constructs like
if $n == 10 incr n . To other people, especially those who come from the Perl and PHP worlds, variables always have a
$ in front of them, so the Tcl way of doing things doesn't make as much sense. Even for experienced programmers, it can at times require a moment to recall how a particular command works.
lappend foo ; lrange $foo ; lset foo ; lindex $foo and so on. On the plus side, this is all very easy to implement, and really isn't that difficult to figure out.
One avenue I've pursued with Hecl is to be able to pass references around, instead of variable names, so that all commands just take "a variable":
lappend $foo x instead of Tcl's
lappend foo x, and so on. For the moment, I've also enabled proc's (user defined commands/functions) to receive references to variables passed to them, so they can modify them. This is both powerful, and dangerous:
set x 1
proc foo v
set v [* $v 10]
foo $x
puts "foo is $x" ;# $x is now 10
(Well, not exactly, but that's the general idea). We are considering ideas like marking the variables that may be modified in the proc definition to reduce the danger of people shooting themselves in the foot. In any case, it increases consistency, because commands that modify values always take a $variable. That still leaves commands like
set foo 10 (others are
proc,
foreach, and
catch) that take variable names to be created, rather than $variable $references, so perhaps to someone who comes from the world of PHP, it's still not as clear as it could be.
We're also considering some radical changes, for the sake of not excluding any particular direction: taking a more lisp/ruby/python like approach, and not using dollar signs for variables (except perhaps in string interpolations). This has some slight disadvantages in terms of requiring quotes around more things (in Tcl, you don't need to quote single world strings). This might result in code that looks something like this:
proc test name code result
catch code res
if eq res result
ok name
else
fail name res result
proc testfiles files
global ok
global failed
# clear success/error list
set ok [list]
set failed [list]
foreach f files
puts "Running $f"
source f
Which isn't bad, although in some places, I think the added syntax of $ helps to make it clearer, at a glance, what's what. eq $res $result is just that much quicker to pick out. This is especially true if you stash a command name in a variable.
In other words,
set p puts ; $p "hello world" might be a bit a bit clearer than
set p "puts"; p "hello world", but... it's definitely "eye of the beholder" territory, and depends on what you're used to!
In any case, it's been a very interesting process, and I've greatly enjoyed the company of Alexandre Ferrieux and Wolfgang Kechel on the list, as well as my friend Salvatore Sanfilippo. They're all very bright guys with good ideas, which makes for lots of thought-provoking discussions.
Where you come in, if you've made it this far... is what kind of syntax and semantics you prefer, and why? Call by name? By reference? Modifiable values? Tell me what you think!
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Just a quick update for SELinux in etch. With Manoj picking up work on it again
(you might have noticed the large influx of new SELinux related packages these
days, bringing our toolchain up to date again), and rjc having setup a SELinux
development box for me, we're actually making some progress on SELinux for etch
now.
Uwe Hermann also blogged about
SELinux on Debian recently.
There are tons of small nuisances with SELinux on Debian left. I've started
filing bugs and tagging them with the
"selinux" usertag. It's in the details. For example mawk and gawk both try to ioctl any
file they read as if it were a serial terminal. Which of course causes SELinux
to log an audit error, since the init script or whichever was calling awk
didn't have the permissions to ioctl a config file.
Then there is /dev/xconsole - it's created by the syslogd init script
(shouldn't maybe this be handled by udev), it's barely used by anyone, and
SELinux policy upstream wants to keep it in the xserver policy, and claims its
main use is to be able to feed it the output from programs started by the
window manager (instead of .xsession-errors). Which is a seriously broken
design, since it's not multiuser capable. Anyway, our current options are to
- diverge from upstream in policy, putting xconsole into logging policy
- make xserver an mandatory policy module
- convince the syslogd maintainer to disable xconsole by default
- convince upstream to at least split it out from the xserver module into
a separate xconsole module and make that mandatory
Of course I was quickly flamed for filing a bug against exim stating that there
currently is no SELinux policy for it, and people thus will have to use postfix
or sendmail instead. But heck: people trying out SELinux on Debian
will
run into this problem, you know. I'd certainly prefer people to use exim
instead of sendmail (I'm more of a postfix guy), but unless someone writes
a policy for exim, people can't use it with SELinux. I have no idea how exim
works (where its queues live, expected behaviour and so on), so I can't write a
policy.
Now to start a real flamewar - how about making postfix the new default MTA
for Debian with etch? /me runs and hides.
We were occupying the entire park bench when the strange girl
approached. She was strange in the sense that we had never
seen her before; in the grand scheme of things she was not all
that strange. I mean, she was wearing bellbottoms, which was
not the norm, and her feet were caked with mud, which might
have indicated inclinations toward being a neo-hippie, and while
that might be pretentious and lame, it's not all that strange,
considering.
Eying the occupants of the bench, she asked if any of our laps
were free. The art of sitting on someone's lap is largely a
lost one; I don't know where people learn the proper technique,
but I do know that most people don't even know it exists to be
learned. I know that I was surprised when it was revealed to
me.
Anyway, I never discovered whether or not she knew how to
properly sit on a lap, because we all kinda glanced at each
other and told her to fuck off. Two days later, she was
screwing the guy to my right.
That didn't last long. Neither did her mode of dress or her
behavior. She lopped off her long, brown hair, bleached it
blond, and got a few facial piercings. She started doing
heroin and boasting that she gave the best blowjobs in a
certain geographical region. She shacked up with a girl
named after an invertebrate. I'm guessing that she didn't
continue on to greatness.
Then there was another strange girl. She was strange because
she was stuck in the 50's. She was also as dumb as a rock,
so the only two interesting things about her were her
50's fetish and her profoundly deep bass voice. When I say
she was stuck in the 50's, I don't mean that she lived through
them and failed to move on. I mean that she wore saddle shoes,
sported memorabilia from the golden age of rock and roll, and
became very hostile when anyone challenged her adamant insistence
that no good music was ever produced after 1959.
Her sister was a model, also as dumb as a rock, and with the same
freakishly low voice. Her sister was also a giant slut.
In contrast, 50's Girl publicly had sex with a 50-year-old guy
while his wife and kids were in Virginia. Having sex in public
is generally bad form. I know this because the last time I tried
to have sex in a moving vehicle, the driver forbade it.
Actually what she said was that we weren't allowed to have
sex in her car until she had done so first. Then she proceeded
to never have sex in that car, which I thought was a rather rude
and deceptive practice.
Anyway, 50's Girl met this schmuck with spiky hair, piercings
and tattoos galore, combat boots, and a penchant for crashing
motorcycles. Really, you didn't need to look far below the
surface to know that he was a festering douchebag, but if you
did, you would find out that he was a pathological liar and
backstabbing snake.
They hit it off, and just like that, the 50's persona was cast
to the wind. She dyed her hair some sickly color, started
dressing in leather and listening to hardcore. Her elderly
friend, who had little trouble relating to clinging to the 50's,
now suddenly found herself in the position of possibly needing
to get herself a subscription to some kind of magazine.
Not too far away, a lollergirl took a break from plumping up and
spotted a ticket. If you were lucky, she told you about it.
Today on Slashdot, there is a
story and interesting discussion about an article entitled
Consumer electronics ate my child's imagination.
The main point of the article is that children today are spending a lot of time in front of the TV and playing videogames. As a result, they are less able to reason about the world, and even have a
higher rate of depression. Apparently children today
average about 2-3 years behind children from just 15 years ago on cognitive tests.
The Slashdot discussion was (surprise!) interesting as well. One point raised was that the entire notion of childhood is fairly modern concept since most children had to work as soon as they were able up until modern times.
This is something that Terah and I have been thinking about already. Terah was shopping for high chairs one day, and was reading reviews online at Amazon. We were both shocked that some chairs were being panned in the reviews because children "got uncomfortable after more than 2 or 3 hours in the chair". Huh?? After reading some more reviews, it seems that people are using high chairs as a place to just plonk down kids for a few hours while the parents are trying to get work done around the house. I can't imagine any high chair being a good place to put a kid for hours. Some parents also complained that the kids could get out of the chair if left unattended for awhile (which brings up a whole LOT of questions).
Then of course, there are plenty of parents that use the TV (or PlayStation or handheld videogames) as a cheap babysitter.
Terah and I have talked about this already, and though we don't have any sort of detailed parenting plan, we certainly do NOT want to be that kind of parents. Some people react by saying, "oh sure, you may say that now, but once you have the kids, you'll change your tune." Yes, that's right, some parents don't even try, and what's more, believe that it's impossible to treat children any other way.
We know plenty of parents that are successfully raising children without buying them hundreds of beeping electronic toys, using the TV (or high chair) as a babysitter, etc. We know it's possible and that's what we're going to aim for, too.
So i have travelled to Slovakia again, for a weekend this time.
I have been painting window frames. Since i have a new iPod (4G nano,
black, yummy), i could also listen to music (Tristania, In Flames,
Kamelot). The last time, it was somewhat of a patience exercise, but
this time... I guess i got better at painting and maybe i have become
more patient, too :). It was pretty enjoyable, more than i would have
thought a work like that could be. And i am sure the music helps, too.
(The next day)
And to continue the last blog... There, i have concluded that hardship
was important factor in becoming better:
And apart from hardship... Problem is, hardship alone, if it stays the
same, is not enough to make people change. It is the change from
contentment to unhappiness, that drives people forward. Because in
that change, one starts to change, and hardship together with dynamics
helps a lot. Static, unchanging hardship will only do little to change
a person. One can get used to it, like to anything else. Like to
contentment. So an initial change can start a cascade. Like for me,
breakup caused a domino effect. The change alone brought a lot of
hardship with it, and i had to change to accomodate to it. And the
change in me provoked more changes and so on. I have learned many new
things, or, things i have learned before but went unnoticed took my
notice. And in light of such things, i had to change again, because i
knew i couldn't be happy any other way.
A human being is as good as dead, when captured in a period of
stagnation, in an unchanging moment that lasts. Only through change,
through dynamics of life, we are alive. A man that does not change is
a statue, a dead piece of matter, only useful as a memento. And that
was what i have become, and now the statue is again starting to move,
to breathe, to live. Because there is just no perfection that one
could capture in a moment. No matter how perfect a moment, if frozen,
the perfection decays, the little cracks are noticed. That is why
trying to freeze time is futile, trying to preserve. One cannot enter
the same stream twice. Life is a constant change, and this constant
change is its only manifestation. Take the change away and you take
the life away.
The past is important. The past is what resulted into present, and
present is what makes future. Every moment, in a succession of
moments, is important. But without the moment before and the moment
after, the moment does not mean anything. The moment is void, without
predecessor and successor. We move in time, and the motion is what
becomes important, not the points we moved through. They are only
important in the relation to our trajectory, not in isolation. And so
is the direction which we take, the vector of our motion, and the
shifts in direction.
There is no eternity, only the eternity of its own
absence. Immortality and death are the same, the very same
notion. Because every time we change, there is a little death and a
little birth. And immortality is only possible in
staticness. Immortality is a point in time, without motion. And
without motion, there is no life to be.
And same goes for relationships. Make a relationship immortal and you
make it die. Relationship needs a possibility of death to live. Like
humans, like every living being. Without death, there is no life. The
transition from being into non-being is essential, because it is the
precondition to change. As i have already described, every change is a
death followed by rebirth, but the entity reborn is not the one that
has died. And therefore, without the ability to die, there is no
ability to change. And death, the conventional death, as we know it,
is just a death without rebirth. Something dies, and there is nothing
more to take its place. But... The death makes others change. And
therefore, the one who dies definitively, is again reborn, as part of
those others that have died, but haven't died, but are reborn. And the
one definitely dead enters those new, reborn creatures, as a little
fraction of them. And the cycle of life is closed, and the change can
perpetuate itself.
Every day, i die a thousand times. But there are deaths that are
important and deaths that go unnoticed. And most of the important ones
are only noticed in retrospect, by a being that resulted, after many
hours, or days, or weeks or even longer. And many more deaths. We only
exist through our succession, because only what is born from us
remembers what we were. And the very moment we are born, we die again,
and a new being remembers. The memory lives on, but the beings are
already dead. And the memory changes as well, because memory itself
does not mean anything, only the being possesing it can give it
meaning. And every successive being that we become gives it a slightly
different meaning.
And so the delicate, complex dynamics of individual life are
established. Not only the living being changes itself, but the
memories of the previous beings change. There is certain gravity
toward stagnation, because often the changes are only very slight, and
the being remembers his predecessors that were fairly happy and tries
to remain so. Because the bigger the change, the bigger risk. And
therefore all beings are susceptible to stagnation, to the stasis cell
of past success. Because past success is one's own enemy, even if it
is something that is a precondition to one's own being. So we need to
learn to live with our past success, but to not try to revive it. The
effort to bring back past is a wasted, contraproductive effort. It
seems so, it is almost natural, that if there was happiness in the
past, restoring the same past will bring the same happiness. But
there, that is not true, in the light of previous paragraphs. The trap
is so obvious, that description is probably redundant, but let me do
it once again anyway, maybe because i have fallen in it so many times
already. Yes, the trap is in the stagnation, in absence of new
things. Because even if one cannot restore the original condition no
matter how much he tries, one can, and that is for sure, replicate it
very closely. And that way lies a trap, a temporary (or even
permanent) thermal death of stagnation.
(Later that day, outside, on a nearby hill)
And now, like before, there's nothing more to stand between me and
myself. I sit in the grass, alone. My being alone complements me, in a
way. There are waves in the grass, as air moves. Music is playing,
apart from the few houses i can see downhill, my only connection with
the rest of people. And this what belongs to me, this paper, this
pen. This book by Italo Calvino that Enrico Zini has given me. If on a
winter's night a traveller. But it is late summer. I can see vineyard
in distance, on a slope different from mine. I call this slope mine
because i am the one sitting there. And the time to collect the grapes
is close. And here, next to me, an apple tree, with red apples on it.
And a white butterfly in the distance, beating the air with its light,
small wings. And i blow away a tiny spider who has lost its way on my
trousers. I feel being part of all this around me, and still so
foreign. And the butterfly appears again, but it may be a different
one.
The sun shines behind my back, alhtough i sit in shade of a tree. And
neither the sun nor the tree are my enemies, or my friends. But still,
i feel sympathy for both of them, one gives me light and warmth and
the other shields me from too much of it. And the setting, the scenery
soothes my senses, my mind, my feelings. Here, i am close to the
loving mother of us, living beings, the nature. Here she is tender and
forgiving and caresses my hair and it feels good.
And these feelings, i would love to pass on, to other people, so they,
too, could feel well. But i see that this is not quite
possible. Although these lines will hopefully give something to
someone, they probably can't carry what i feel. And i would bring
someone with myself here, so they could feel it with me. But presence
of other person would spoil it, it would be something else then. Maybe
beautiful in a way, different from this one, maybe very pleasant. I
love people, and when i see them happy, it fills me with gladness.
(And in the evening, on a train...)
And here i am, moving with speed, from one place to another. The
speed, sound of loud music in my ears, the landscape drifting away. I
could say i was happy, happy in the sense of change, everything
changing around me, sun setting behind distant horizon, the train
moving through the country. The semaphore lights. In the headphones,
heavy guitar riffs competing with the roaring of the train. Cold air
blowing in my face, flowing in my hair.
And now in another train, sitting in a compartment with stranger, a
girl, trying to guess who she could be, from her dress, from what she
is reading, from cues. Who she could become. What she means to me, a
passing stranger on the path of life. I have been reading the Calvino
book till now, but i thought i could write down my thoughts before
they perish, like they do. It is fairly silent now here, even while we
are on a train. The engine and the outside are muffled, the window and
the door are closed. We are in a strange kind of privacy with this
girl, neither knowing anything about the other. I, writing this text
here, she reading some sort of magazine. Looking up from what we do at
occasions. The train is accelerating now, and the sounds are more
intense. It is a bit shaky, too. My hearing is still lightly impaired
from the loud music from the previous train.
We arrived to a station. Short stop, then another long motion. Always
toward Brno, toward my flat, toward the night and tomorrow. The girl
is reading a horse races program. Here, i intrude her privacy and
write that here. I hope she wouldn't mind. I don't have a name other
than "the girl" for her, since all the words we exchanged was me
asking whether i can sit down in the compartment and her answer. And i
suppose i won't say anything and she won't, neither. Maybe a goodbye.
And now, we share a sort of almost intimacy. Two lone people in a
compartment, tired and waiting to arrive somewhere. An invisible bond
between us, doesn't mean anything, just that element at random brought
us there together, for a short moment. Chances are, we won't ever meet
again. And still, she is almost falling asleep, with her feet up, like
if i were a trustworthy friend of old. And i feel sympathy for that, i
feel honoured by a trust given by a complete stranger. She seems
comfortable, feeling safe. And it feels good to have that trust, it
feels important. It nearly gives warm fuzzies.
(To be continued, further...)
Debian has always defined itself as "the universal operating system", which to me means that, given two options A and B, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, we will incorporate them both, because there are people for whom A is better, and people for whom B is better. This is one of Debian's greatest strengths, and this is what makes it the "universal" distribution.
Now there has been discussion lately about whether Debian needs some sort of central authority to pull the project into a certain direction. The thing is, while everyone seems to agree that we lack direction, we cannot disagree more on which direction it would be if we had one.
At present, we have a number of groups pulling in different directions:
- The "release" group
- Debian's primary goal is/should be to make stable releases. In the time between releases, people should run the release candidate and iron out bugs, so we can release faster; new features are to be added only right after a release.
- The "usability" group
- Debian does not have any use if we do not support every user. As the admin users can already help themselves, we should focus more on the average user and make the system more simple to use and administer. Integration is a must, as is closed-source firmware.
- The "hacker" group
- Debian's purpose is essentially to give us a distribution we can use for ourselves, where all the tools that exist are there.
- The "freedom" group
- Debian is supposed to be only free software so I don't accidentally come into a situation where I'm in breach of a license.
- The "large installations" group
- It should be as easy as possible to deploy Debian to a set of boxes and remotely administer them. It should be easy to install the software the users need and to customize it for our organization. Users are not supposed to administer machines, and non-free software and drivers need to be clearly marked and easily avoidable so as to not put us at legal risk.
- The "supermarket" group
- Debian is a repository of packages that makes our lives easier when we build either a system or a distribution, but we don't really care whether stuff is integrated already, because in order to feel comfortable with it, we need to redo it anyway.
- The "small but beautiful" group
- The system should be as modular as possible, allowing me to leave stuff out that I don't need. I don't mind installing stuff later on.
There are others, and I have represented each only with their most extreme positions. These groups are not usually disjunct, and in some places, some groups share goals. But, for example the "usability" group and the "small but beautiful" group will always disagree on what should be in a base installation.
All of this is not new. What is new is that people are asking for a strong leader to strike down the unbelievers rather than discussing stuff on the mailing lists. This is generally a thing I wouldn't like to see happen in Debian, because anyone you pull into the discussion is either uninformed (so not qualified to answer) or already has an opinion (which will most likely conflict with either party's opinion). By forcing a decision, you essentially give one party the right to dismiss arguments with "we've already had this, it has been decided" and do not solve the problem at all, because the other party is still unhappy.
You might want to argue that a committee evens things out a bit as more groups are represented there. That is true to a certain extent, however you'd have to have a way to determine who gets to be on the committee, and to do so in a manner that noone is left out (even if there are new groups forming all of the time) and without giving any group too much power. We might just include everybody, which brings us to status quo, except that everyone got a job title now and people might feel more inclined to decide things by majority vote (because that is what committees do after debating, right) instead of based on actual merit.
Scott writes that implementing the same thing he just did in Ubuntu would have taken him ages to do in Debian because there are so many more people to coordinate in Debian. I have to disagree here, the number of people to coordinate is probably the same if not higher, except that the Ubuntu model seems to be that every core team member has commit access and is supposed to read up on the changelog when touching a package, making the coordination more implicit.
I happily give out Ubuntu CDs, which do have non-free drivers, firmware and documentation, to users. Telling them that they cannot use that driver or have a manual because it's not free will not help anyone, and it is unlikely that they will be taken to court over it. This is all fine and dandy considering Ubuntu's target audience. However, Debian has a much larger target audience, including Ubuntu itself. If Debian were to interpret licenses less strict for some perceived benefit for the users (cdrecord springs to mind here), then all derivers, including Ubuntu, would have to carefully cross-check all of the licenses for possible violations. Thus, I oppose GFDL documentation in Debian main, because when we say "our priorities are our users and free software", that includes
all of our users, not just end users.
So, what I ask of you people reading this via Planet Debian is the following:
Ask your "opponent" whether he'd be interested in finding a common solution that fits both use cases. Present it as a technical challenge. Accept that the outcome of such an endeavour might be that the other person is right.
Accept that not everyone shares your views and/or priorities. It is hard to accept for me that a lot of people still think that svn is superior to git, or emacs is superior to vi. So if you have a different opinion on some matter, keep in mind that the other person may be looking at things from a different angle, where his choice is the only "logical" choice. Oh, and that goes for both of you.
To conclude:
Debian's strength is its lack of a clear direction.
If we were to decide that the end users are what matters, we'd become another Ubuntu, which would be quite unnecessary because we already have one, and they are pretty good at being Ubuntu. If we decided only releases mattered, we'd probably release more often, but right after a release, unstable would be really broken (the elders might remember how it was before the "testing" distribution was introduced).
In the same way, the release team takes care to include your pet project in the release if at all possible. Every package that is added delays the release because they have to wait for autobuilders and make sure that everything is internally consistent. So, they are already respecting your goals. Are you going to respect theirs, and join the
release effort even if all your machines run unstable?
So in my opinion it is a good thing that we did not decide on a direction, because there is no right one. We'd always leave some people behind if we had to make a choice.
What needs to change is our attitude that software is to be used in one particular way, because the people actually using it would disagree. After all, free software is (also) about being able to do things your own way, and Debian as a whole should be supportive of that.
In a recent post I mentioned that my scalp is adorned with 14 titanium staples. While some may think that I have them because an odd accident incurred during my recent move, I have them because I live in mole-ville and some of them were causing a small disturbance in the hood.
Living here means I have a lot of moles on my body and well, these little masses of brown pigment, while they can be somewhat attractive, and unproblematic, can be unruly creatures that can change on short notice and cause a lot of problems. Now I usually don’t blog about personal things like my moles, but I thought it is worth writing about this as a public service announcement… So if there are any other readers who live in a crowded mole-ville, this is little reminder to check up on your moles, sooner than later.
I have never had a problem with my moles and there is no history of problems in my family but I do have more than the average number of them. In fact, anyone who has met me knows this because they are all over my face, and there is one distinct one, under my left eye that is shaped like a tear, and often mistaken for dirt, more graciously as a tattoo, and most oddly as that black stuff that football players smear under their eyes.
About a year ago, after one of my friends was diagnosed with melanoma (thankfully he is ok), I started checking my moles more frequently and did a full check at the dermatologist. All was ok and when I went to another dermatologist in February, all looked good. Then this summer, as I was running my hands through my hair, I felt a mole and started obsessing over it. I was pretty sure I did not have it a year ago as it was not on my chart and if was, it was probably flat and since I could feel it, it had changed, which is not a good sign… I was traveling most of the summer and it was first in South Africa where I had it checked in a fancy dermatological office in Durban. They dermatologist took a close look and said, looks fine but have it removed because you can’t track it. That made me feel a lot better so I enjoyed the rest of my time there and then as soon as I got back I saw a RN at a dermatology office in NJ (it is near to impossible to get a derm appointment without a month’s wait in the US but since they had RNs, I could see someone quick.. More on this in a second).
This person also confirmed what the dermatologists in SA had said but also decided to remove it because I could not track it. A week later a pathology report came back that showed it was dysplastic and that the cells were changing, and thus considered abnormal. Some dermatologists consider this as pre-cancerous, some don’t, but it seems to be that there is more likelihood that this type of mole can turn into cancer. So the “treatment” is a full excision where they remove 1cm all around the mole. I got word of the report around the 8th of August and the only time they could fit me in for surgery was the 25th, a day after I was supposed to leave for Edmonton, which changed my moving plans (and explains why I arrived here so late, making getting my stuff complicated given school is in session and parking is tight).
I then scheduled an appointment for a a full body check and removed another mole that once biposed was confirmed as dysplastic and though not as abnormal as the other, the recommendation was to also remove the surrounding dermis.
Now, when I called the surgical coordinators, they could not fit me in another time slot to expand my appointment for 2 surgeries because they were “full” even though I explained I was moving away from the U.S. They said that it was up to the surgeon to decide whether to operate on the second area and since I was leaving to Canada the NEXT day, he would probably agree but no guarantees.
So of course, I wanted the stuff out because I was not sure how to go about getting the procedure done in Canada. My insurance does kick in the second I sign up and there is no Bull-Sh*t pre-existing clause stuff here but because I could not get an appointment in time, I would probably have to go to a medicenter that performed these operations and not all do. Though I was confident I could get it done eventually, it would take a lot of inquiring and after a 7 day drive and all that follows a big move, I decided it was not the thing I wanted to do.
So I got to the office early on the 25th and one of the first things that comes out of my mouth when I saw the nurse was that I was leaving the next day to Canada and I did not know when I could get care there. Of course the first phrase that pops to mind for many Americans when you say Canada and health care is “socialized medicine” which most people in the U.S. associate with bad healthcare and long waits.
Now on the one hand, I have to admit I, to some degree, share those fears, which is one of the reasons I wanted the extra dermis removed asap.
On the other hand, I think that the claim is a big fat red herring because in fact for many Americans, they *do* have to wait a long time for many procedures (dermatology is classic for this, and even my first procedure took a 3 week wait and if I wanted to schedule the second one, it would have taken 5 weeks) or worse, they have no insurance, which KEEPS many people from going to a doctor in the first place.
So American medicine is not necessarily “fast track” and in a dual sense: in the literal sense because HMO healthcare is like socialized medicine with capitalist prices, and because many people without insurance also probably avoid the doctors until they are in bad shape… And even though I have insurance, they would not pre-approve anything as I am in some awful pre-existing clauses because my insurance had lapsed for 2 months this year. And even though I have never had a problem with a mole in my life and did not even see one doctor in the 6 months before I got my insurance (which is when the pre-existing diagnosis would pertain to) and even saw a dermatologist in my HMO network in February who found nothing wrong, the insurance wants to make sure to add as many roadblocks as possible in the hopes of never paying up. Great.
Now I am very grateful the nurse at the derm office proceeded to get the doctor to perform the 2nd surgery and he also was more than ok to do it. I wanted to give them big fat hugs after the procedure but you know, you just don’t do that type of move in your blue robe after the surgery.
Before the surgery I naturally “hit” the net to gather a lot of information on moles, cancer etc… I join the millions around the world who–for better or for worse–use the Internet to supplement (some I am sure supplant) their doctor’s medical advice. In fact, a key part of my second project on psychiatric survivors looks at how patient communities are building a sphere of amateur but expert medical knowledge exchange. It is an enormous sphere of vibrant peer-to-peer knowledge production but one that many are uncomfortable portraying as such because it involves a lot more risks and ambiguities than exchange knowledge about, you know, how to get your blue tooth working…. But if we bracket the realm of alternative remedies (which admittedly is a HUGE part of this type of exchange), I think in fact, patients are pretty savvy and are engaging in risk-averse behavior by going on the net and illness forums. A lot of what is exchanged are warnings about side-effects, detailed accounts of experiences with procedures, and yet a lot of red flag raising that one’s experience may not match another persons but may be still helpful. It is a lot of information that often may be missed during the exchange with the doctor and derives from what is another type of expert knowledge: one’s bodily experiences with medicine, illness, and other related procedures.
But I have to say that when researching melanoma and moles on the Internet, I was somewhat stumped. There is just too much variation out there to make informed judgments and abnormal but non-malignant moles have the same characteristics as melanomas. The Internet, in this case, seemed helpful to provide some baseline information and then just served to freak me out more than necessary so I turned away for the time being.
For now I am just adjusting to the staples, which come out in another week. The procedure did not hurt much but the first week after the removal my head was much more sore than I had expected. Not so fun when on a marathon road trip, which is finally over!
