I got new glasses.

I can see now.

Whatever the numbers mean, I'm -4.00 in one eye, and -4.25 in the other.

Oh, and got some too. They're hot. She now has to wear them all the time too, because her eyes evidently got a LOT worse since the last time we went to the optometrist about 5 years ago.

The eye doctor was trying to get me to get laser surgery on my eyes. I was like HAHAHAHAAHA OH FUCK NO WILL I EVER LET A COMPUTER SHOOT LASERS INTO MY EYE.

She said only 1% ever had issues.

I said I'm always the 1% on fucking everything, and computers hate me.

36 thoughts on “”

    1. after all the bad things I've foiled computers from doing, they're just waiting to get their revenge on me.

      Last thing I'm gonna do is give them a laser, say "oh yea shoot this near my eyeball" and all that. hahahaha NO WAY.

      It's good you're part of the 99% though! πŸ™‚

      I was amused at the 99% too. 99.999% uptime is 5 minutes of failure a year. 99% is 4 days of downtime.

      1. Haha, you'd get in the operating room, and then the LASIK computer would start talking to you. "Hello Paul." It would sound suspiciously like HAL. That's how you know you're screwed.

          1. you figure with a question like that, they're asking if they can provide you with a service, not the other way around.

          2. I would have given it a what for but the eye examiner had my glasses so I couldn't see the machine well enough to take a swing.

            It's like they were working in cahoots.

  1. Heh, you youngsters and your good vision. My eyes are something like -4.50 in the right eye and -7.25 in the left. Without my contacts, clear vision is measured in units of centimeters in front of my face.

    The laser eye surgeries keep getting better and better, and the tolerances in both the laser equipment and the code that runs it are much, much better than anything you deal with on a daily basis, paul. That said, you probably want to wait until sometime after 2010 to get the LASIK done, since they'll be able to give us all 20/10 (much better than 20/20) vision. The laser surgeries are improving rapidly because the Navy is very interested in their successful use for Navy SEALs and aviators, neither of whom can wear glasses and perform their jobs effectively.

      1. I on the other hand have a finely-enough tuned color sense that I see the effects of chromatic aberration through the single lenses of glasses, and now I'm starting to see it through my contact. I'm biding my time, but once the procedure gets good enough, I'm going for it. Wait until your eyes get bad enough that you start wearing coke-bottle glasses like I did.

        1. If I take off my glasses my laptop screen becomes a complete blur. I tried to see if I could drive without them once out of curiosity, and I couldn't find the ignition on my car. I can't see that stop signs exist at all when stopped at them if I take em off.

          Even though they are polycarbonate, they are still damn near coke bottles as is.

          1. either you have the wrong scrip, or you're exxagerating just a bit. I have worse vision than you (4.25/4.50), and I can drive OK during the day without contacts/glasses. Can't read street signs to save my life (at least in Michigan. The street signs are massive here), but I can see well enough if I know where I'm going. I could probably do OK at night too, but I get really bad halos around the lights, enough so that I haven't had the balls to attempt it.

            As for the LASIK, I've said for years that I won't have anything to do with things cutting anywhere near my eyeballs. My biggest concern is longterm effect. I don't want to get it, and find out 15 or 20 years from now that I've regressed to near blindness, and there is nothing that can be done at that point. Pending solid long term report with good results, I think I'd like to ditch the eye wear.

          2. The lasik procedure has been around since the mid-1990s. To this point, I haven't heard of any complications, nor is there any reason that there should be. A laser is merely a collimated, coherent light source, there's no magic in it. There's no reason to belive that long term blindness should result from a lasik procedure. The only possibility that I could think of might be getting an infection in the eye while the flap is healing, but then, bad eye infections would likely cause vision problems/blindness anyway.

          3. I haven't heard of any complications, nor is there any reason that there should be

            Bull. No surgical procedure is 100% risk free. The procedure may been developed/first used in the mid 90's, but the FDA approval of it has only been what, 5 or 6 years? Even 10 years is a rather short period of time to determine long term effects. At one time Lithium was the de facto standard medication for manic depression, unfortunetly they later (like 15-20 years later) they found out it can cause kidney failure, as well as being much worse for some than to take nothing at all.

            There's already reports of the doctor totally fucking up the computer settings, and doing severe over-correction, as well as major problems in night vision that the patient didn't have before the procedure. Some people have had to go in for touch-ups of sorts after a few years, and that's what concerns me the most. We just don't know what's going to happen with these people 15, 20, 30 years from now. Will these people simply need touch ups every 5-10 years? Will they eventually run out of cornea to burn away, thus leaving them screwed? Will we find that the modified eyeball will collapse 30 years down the road?

            At this point, I'm much more comfortable with non-permanent changes such as Phakic Intraocular Lens, where there is greater chance of repair.

          4. There were people paying for the surgery in the mid-1990s, which means that it was in development for years before that. Doctors "totally fucking up the computer settings" would fall under malpractice, and the doctor, not the procedure would be to blame. Once people have had the procedure, their myopia, presbiopia, etc. doesn't just stop, if their eyes were getting progressively worse before, then that will continue. This is probably the reason that some people were getting touch ups after 5-10 years.

            Frankly, your fear-mongering about "eyeball collapse" displays your ignorance regarding human anatomy. The interior of the eye isn't empty, it's filled with the vitreous and aqueous humors, fluids that are incompressible. Even assuming some sort of bizarre catastrophic failure of the cornea (the amount of material removed in lasik is literally microscopic) the worst case scenario would be that these people would need cornea transplants.

          5. I don't give a shit if it's malpractice or fucked up equipment, the end result is still the same…I can't see.

            It's not fear-mongering, it's illustrating a point that we just don't know what the results will be. Show me a report/study/test that shows that in 30 years, I have nothing to worry about. As I see it, you're rather ignorant about the procedure yourself, as you're merely guessing at the reasons for touch-ups. You don't really know, it just seems to be the most logical reason, to you. You're also basing your thoughts on a one time shot. Do some of these people need touch-ups every 5 years? After 10 touch-ups, will we get to the point that enough material has been removed that it will cause the body to negatively react?

            At this point, I just don't feel that we have enough information to make a proper decision. The whole situation seems like an Amway pushing to me. You get a few people making oodles of money from Amway, and you never hear about the shit that goes along with it for most other people. 20 years down the line, the truth finally comes out that most people don't make squat.

          6. My manner of speech is the manner of speech of all scientists. I'm basing my statements upon my education in physics and the research job I had in a laser lab working with Neodynium Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet, Argon, helium-neon, and Copper-vapor lasers.

            The Lasik procedure: Apply local anaethetic to the eye, cut a flap in the cornea. The exposed interior of the cornea is then refigured to become a second optical focussing element in the eye. This is done using a computer controlled excimer laser. The flap is then reattached and a dressing is applied to allow the cornea to heal.

            Just because I'm not qualified and licensed to perform the procedure doesn't mean I don't know what it is.

          7. I don't give a shit if it's malpractice or fucked up equipment, the end result is still the same…I can't see.

            And that's precisely what I'm sayin. That's a big risk to take for what is effectively a cosmetic surgery.

  2. Some people don't trust computers because they don't know any better. Others don't trust computers because they know better.

    Its obvious what category you fall in and I agree. I'm not letting a computer near my eye with a laser. I don't think LASIK can fix my vision anyway.

    1. And still others realize that all of the technology around us was manufactured by human beings, and it all really is a question of tolerances and precision.

      1. and while computers are inerrant, the people who created them aren't.

        Until we make the perfect computer that creates other perfect computers….

        And when we do, we're fucking doomed. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

  3. A guy at the last place I worked had laser eye surgery. I was suprised he'd go in and have both eyes done at the same time, all the eggs in one basket, etc. And of course they screwed up. After several months he underwent an attempt at correction. I think at the end he was hoping to just wind up with the glasses that he started with.

    Plus, it makes you ineligible to go into space. I think it's something about the g-forces. And with space travel possibly becoming affordable in the next few decades, I wouldn't take that risk.

    Anyway, way to stand up to the eye doc. Even if for totally different reasons.

    1. Yea, I think my glasses look good on me, and in my job I spend my entire day when I'm not designing a new telecommunications network, I'm debugging these 1% of cases where computers really, really screw up. I know all the ways they can fail and refuse to believe that any complex system can ever be perfect. That would be okay if this is life saving surgery, or even something to fix a serious deformity. But not for something that has nothing more than effectively cosmetic effect. I get more flexibility with glasses, and they provide an layer of protection against flying items (it's like wearing slightly less than safety glasses at all times!). Woo.

      1. If those aren't safety glasses, you better show up with the amber polycarbonate safety lenses over your lenses the next time we go target shooting.

        1. as I always do anyway. As it is, the only difference between polycarbonate lenses in eyeglasses and prescription safety glasses is the addition of side shields and slightly more rugged frames, and larger lenses to ensure they fully cover the eye. (per my last eye doctor). The polycarbonate material is the same, so they say.

          But imagine wearing safety glasses every day – not perfect ones, but close enough for everyday use. That's the cool part about eyeglasses, among others.

          1. Most of the times I've had weird debris flying at my eyes on the range, it came from the side. In any event, I like my wrap-around mirrorshades, which are always with me.

            Wrap-around eyeglasses with apochromatic aspheric lenses (so they'd be color and distortion free) would be the absolute bomb, however.

    2. The Navy finds Lasik acceptable for its pilots, who pull more G's than the space shuttle on liftoff (7-8 G's in a tight turning F-14, vs. 3-4 G's in the shuttle). Plus, if you're vision is worse than 20/100 uncorrected, you're not getting into space on a NASA flight anyway.

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