Six hours later, yep 3:48 AM, cozy sleep interrupted by (uh-huh) sixteen beeps. Nope, not the phone ‘cuz it was in the family room. Uff! You would think a pacemaker/defibrillator (ICD for short) might find more suitable hours to let me know the battery is down to its last three months. Getting back to sleep may be a few minutes or stretch into a couple hours. A couple hours, oh yeah I really look forward to those times!

For gits and shiggles I plugged in a microphone and recorded a WAV file of the pacemaker delivering its message. This ain’t gonna make the billboard charts but hey, what do you expect from an old guy that spends Sunday evenings watching Stargate SG-1?

Click HERE to hear the “sixteen beep pacemaker boogie”. Be warned the sound level is very low and needed major background noise removal. Yep, you will need to turn the volume up (probably way up). Even then it’s doubtful everyone will hear it.

Then came Monday, Labor Day, not a normal weekday when you simply call the pacemaker clinic and schedule an appointment. So we fired up the grill and made burgers, brats and weenies for twenty or so people. Nothing helps you forget about odd beeping noises for a while like people clamoring all around the place. Good company, good food, a couple beers, indeed it was a beautiful thing. Diet? Me? You’re kidding, right?

Seriously, an appointment has been set and depending on exactly what the current ICD is programmed to do will dictate if I need a new one implanted or be OK without. Tuesday morning, Sept 20 answers to the unknowns will be revealed.

I’m seeing three options: 1- Turning the ICD off ‘cuz the heart will be OK without, 2 – Implant a new ICD ‘cuz the heart will go downhill quickly without or 3 – Let the current ICD run the battery out and after that slip back into congestive heart failure. Since personal experience had CHF within hours of putting an end to me option three is real unattractive. Believe it or not even a curmudgeon like me experiences stress over this kind of stuff but don’t tell anyone, I got a reputation (maybe not a good one but still a reputation) to consider.

In the meantime “The Sixteen Beep Boogie” happens every six hours. Amazing as this technology is wouldn’t ya think they could come up with something more entertaining than sixteen one note samba beats? Maybe something like “Another brick in the wall”, “Welcome to the machine”, “Steam” or “Sledgehammer”. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Anyone remember the 1963 series (am I dating myself now) “Burke’s Law”? It starred Gene Barry (RIP) as Burke and he had a telephone in his chauffeur-driven Rolls. Seriously, did I ever expect I wouldn’t have a land line but still have a phone? Go a step further: the vehicles we drive have greater computing power than landed Americans on the moon. Let’s not talk about the computers in our house, I personally use three older laptops and each with far greater capabilities than what once were considered high powered computers. Hmmm! Anyway you get the idea.

Fringe has captured my fancy and a few evenings back we started watching episodes from the first season. One of the early episodes finds Nina Sharp offering agent Olivia Dunham a position with Massive Dynamic. Nina explains (only paraphrasing) Massive Dynamic possesses untold technologies, the ability to deploy private military forces anywhere needed and resources to influence who is or is not in power anywhere on earth. Of course Nina was far more eloquent or possibly disconcertingly ominous.

Much as I believe government(s) should not control business the reciprocal is business should not control government(s). To keep this from becoming a political statement I’ll leave it at that.

Anyway over the next day or so Nina’s little discourse kept me wondering how much is fiction. What US company could the fictional Massive Dynamic be based upon? What all is General Electric involved with?

Am I serious? Nope, but…