Mitochondrial diseases result from failures of the mitochondria, specialized compartments present in every cell of the body except red blood cells. Mitochondria are responsible for creating more than 90% of the energy needed by the body to sustain life and support growth. When they fail, less and less energy is generated within the cell. Cell injury and even cell death follow. If this process is repeated throughout the body, whole systems begin to fail, and the life of the person in whom this is happening is severely compromised. The disease primarily affects children, but adult onset is becoming more and more common.

Diseases of the mitochondria appear to cause the most damage to cells of the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscles, kidney and the endocrine and respiratory systems.

Depending on which cells are affected, symptoms may include loss of motor control, muscle weakness and pain, gastro-intestinal disorders and swallowing difficulties, poor growth, cardiac disease, liver disease, diabetes, respiratory complications, seizures, visual/hearing problems, lactic acidosis, developmental delays and susceptibility to infection.

From this article:

“Everyone ultimately buys for emotional reasons and then makes every attempt to justify it with logic. It’s simple…

Everyone wants to be right. No one likes being wrong, or being perceived as being wrong.

If you want to accomplish this feat you must appeal to emotions. Fear, greed, anger, flattery, exclusiveness, salvation, lust, desire for love.”

Like trying to fill a jelly donut with a backhoe, migrating content from pmachine pro 2.4 to wordpress 2.6.1 (or any version for that matter) is definitely NOT a straightforward task. I’ve searched for “convert CSV to rss” and every other keyword combination including save-as, export, transform, CSV, rss, xml, XLS, etc.

If you come across this problem (i.e. you need to move data from pmachine to wordpress), the links below may help you out. The current thinking/approach is that I will 1) export pmachine via the mysql interface into a csv 2) transform it to rss (if needed) 3) import it into wordpress. These were the best approaches I found:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/171939
http://www.speedieconsulting.co.uk/importcsv/
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/wordpress/finally-a-wordpress-plugin-that-will-import-csv-feeds/
http://www.jayblogger.com/the-birth-of-my-first-plugin-import-csv/
http://www.datafeedtorss.com/
http://www.zackpreble.com/2008/03/28/importing-posts-from-csv-file-into-wordpress/
http://www.csvtorss.com/
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=3J136lMe3RGWWS_Xl7okhQ

I’ve been wanting to write something the whole weekend and am glad that I waited. It’s not a show that I usually watch, but a group of people helped a marine who lost his leg in Iraq…they touched his life in a way that he could never repay…and did so with great humility and servitude. It was extremely touching.

It’s not every day that you get to experience life through someone else’s eyes…hearing what that marine went through and knowing that hundreds of thousands of people have payed a price for the United States of America fills me with a great sense of pride and thankfulness. Since the 1700s, men and women have given their lives, their limbs, and their senses so that every person that lives in the United States of America can enjoy certain freedoms. This may sound cliche, but it is only cliche if you take these freedoms for granted.

So, I am thankful to live in a country where you can work hard to serve your fellow human and enjoy the benefits of providing them with some product or service that makes their life better. I am thankful to live in a country where anyone who wants to work hard and apply their creativity, energy, and enthusiasm can enjoy a good livelihood. I am thankful for the family, friends, and colleagues that I am able to enjoy time with on this planet (for the time that I am here). I am thankful for the opportunities that I’ve had and will have in my life…for how I was raised…for the impact that I can have on the lives of others. I am thankful to have two legs and feet, two arms and hands, a working brain, all my senses, and good health. I am thankful for each and every challenge that I overcome. I am thankful that I can walk down the street or get in a car and go to a grocery store which contains more food than many people might see in a lifetime…or go to a restaurant that serves such delicious food that it was probably only served to kings at some point in history. I am thankful that I can play music or watch television and be entertained at any time I choose. I am thankful for all the inventors who have made life more comfortable, made it possible to learn and improve more, and make people’s lives better. I am thankful that I can enjoy the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and, among others, the right to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It was with gratitude that I say, I am thankful for life…and I will keep in mind that not everyone has served their country…and not everyone who has served their country is here to be thankful that they have a life to live.

Thank You to everyone who has served this country. Happy Birthday America.