Recently, about 10 days ago I spent 6 days in the hospital.  It started out with me getting a test, an echo-cardiogram…. it checks to see how well my heart is pumping, you see about 8 years ago I wound up getting Congestive Heart Failure. It was associated with getting pneumonia; the virus that gave me pneumonia also attacked my heart.  So I was getting a checkup visit and they said my ejection fraction, that amount of blood that your heart pumps out of the left ventricle (it doesn’t pump 100% of it…) was down to 12%. Well, the cardiologist pulled me aside and said that I need to get myself to the hospital. So, I drove home, got some clothes, discussed it with my wife and we left. Now I’ve spent some time in the hospital before (8 years ago for like 8 days) so I know how damned boring it can be, even with a TV in the room. So I packed my laptop and my iPad 2.  I figured I’d use my laptop if there were free wireless, and have my iPad as a backup (I’ve got some movies on it) in case there was no wireless network access.

Well, to my surprise, there was a free wireless network, but with some restrictions. They had blocked all of the social networking sites, and any site that streamed any kind of media.  Well, that killed pretty much 90% of what would keep me entertained.  And while I was there the county experienced the largest blackout in the history of electrical services…. that was fun.  The windows were closed, couldn’t open them.  The air conditioning was out, not even a fan was operational. There was some emergency lighting and funny enough… the router that was providing the free internet access, well restricted free internet access, was still up and running…. I was able to get out on my laptop and google information about what was going on. That kept me entertained for about 5 minutes… Then I had to turn off my laptop because I had limited battery.

I did take advantage of having my iPad there, I watched some of the lord of the rings, and read some of the book as well (kindle for iPad rocks!) and eventually decided to try and get some sleep.

I’m not sure if bringing all of that equipment was smart, but it did do what it was intended to do. And after getting to the hospital on a Tuesday, I checked out the following Saturday… and hauled all of my computer crap home.

Will I bring that much stuff if I have to go to the hospital again? Maybe.