Back Pain

I went for an MRI of the lumbar section of my spine today. I asked the Rad Tech if he got any good pics and he showed me what he got. I have a bulging disk at L5, but the doctor will need to look at it to make a diagnosis and recommend a course of action.

Everybody keeps saying, that kind of stuff happens when you hit 40. Ugh!

Hot Button

I finally made it to a local GM dealer and tried the Hot Button. I was not a winner. If you haven't made it yet, you might want to drop by. It doesn't take long and compared to a lot of contest/games the odds aren't to bad, 1 in 3,000.

Graduation Day

Today we had 5th grade promotion (graduation) and 8th grade graduation to deal with and running kids around to parties afterwards. It makes for a rather busy day.

I was out for my finger Wednesday afternoon and took today off for the graduations. Since checking my e-mail I noticed that I missed a meeting someone decided to schedule for 8am this morning. Since the meeting, I received several e-mails with documents attached for review. Tomorrow back in the office should prove to be a busy one. I think I am ready for the long weekend, although some of it may be taken up as tonight has been trying to catch up on reading the documents. The are all fun documents relating to a request for proposal (RFP), of which I can't discuss.

Viewer Discretion Advised.

A finger even Frankenstein would be envious of.

Maybe I can get my finger into a Jay-Z video. "H to the Izzo". Okay, I'm not really into rap, but it is definitely an H.


Now for the new look. I was sent to a therapist to simply get a rectangle of plastic put under my finger, then taking a colored pencil and drawing around my finger (And some people don't think you learn any useful skills in Kindergarten). Next the slab of plastic gets thrown into some heated water (??) and when pulled out it is more pliable. The piece is cut off then put on my finger while warm to form fit the finger. Not good when the person doing it doesn't seem to know a whole lot about your situation and doesn't realize anything about your pin until they are pushing the plastic up against it and you almost come out of the chair. The therapist did notice the stitches (really quick, huh?) and stated, you had it fixed (thanks for clueing me in), but then talks about bending it up into a hyper-extended position in the splint as that is how it is done, but when realizing that your finger won't bend like that, states that since it has been fixed the doctor just wants it put in the splint straight. Ugh! Anyway I can type a little better now that I have my index finger available on the left hand. I doubt any other fingers will hit the keyboard until the pin is taken out. Stitches out in two weeks, pin out at six weeks.







It is definitely straight again.

Google's Technology Playground

Have you checked out Google Labs lately?

They even let you customize (rather limited) your own Google. Go here and sign on to try it.

Passwords. Interesting.

Interesting article (follow link). I don't have so many passwords internally that I can't keep track of them, but with so many websites requiring one to register and login, I can see where password management can be an issue.

A lot of websites will allow you to e-mail your password to your e-mail account if you can remember which e-mail account you signed up with.

Coders, I mean Koders

I saw this in an SD Times newsletter. I haven't tried it, but it sounds intersting.

"Koders is the leading search engine for open source code. Our source code optimized search engine provides developers with an easy-to-use interface to search for source code examples and discover new open source projects which can be leveraged in their applications."

After the surgery.

And I was complaining about only having one finger to type with on the left side of the keyboard. Having them wrap the whole hand hasn't improved my typing speed at all.

Slow blogging

I have been busy at work, at home, and using only the index finger on my left hand for typing on the left side of the keyboard has slowed me down a bit. Hopefully I'll feel up to posting some over the weekend. I'll try to post about the surgery that almost wasn't.

Finger update.

Ugh! And it is only Monday.

I do not have Boutonnière Deformity, what I have is mallet finger. I go in for surgery in Columbia Friday morning. As the doctor's favorite surgeries are breast augmentation and lipsuction, I hope he doesn't get me mixed up with any other patients.

He believes that the problem lies within the last knuckle and will go in there first. If it is there he will suture it up and put a pin in for six weeks, if not he will work his way up the finger looking for the problem. He said that he could not think of anyone with this kind of injury that could not tell you exactly what they were doing and when it happened. Evidently many often hear a pop as well. Glad it didn't hurt, but I have a feeling there will be some pain associated with all of this before I am done.


I think it is time for a beer.


No volleyball for eight weeks either.

More Music Downloads

Looking for more music downloads, check out Pure Volume.

Ruptured Tendon

I messed up my finger while farming Saturday. I went to the urgent care facility to have it looked at later in the day to find out that I have a ruptured tendon in the finger next to my pinky. Ugh. Tomorrow they are suppose to make an apppointment for me to see an orthopedic doctor. Right now it is in a splint. Needless to say, it makes it rather difficult to type.

Search Engines

Our state is actually looking at getting an Enterprise Level search engine for it's webspace as many others have already done.

What's fair game?

Good question.

Where does one draw the line. Many may agree if it is simply defamatory comments without any backing or simply rude and vulgar then one should remove the comment, but on a corporate blog, who is to say if it is legitimate or not?

I am looking at lawnmowers. My 8+ year old mower has basically had enough. I was doing some research on lawnmowers and found a comment which was on a consumer advocacy site. The individual was slamming the place where he bought his mower as they did not simply turn around and give him a new one. He thought that they should. The consumer advocacy site disagreed as well as the business. He tried to state that even though he did run over and hit a 3" x 4" stump that he thought they ought to just give him a new mower. He thought that it was of bad quality as it bent the drive shaft. The advocacy site simply points out that a bent drive shaft would be a common result for the circumstances. So, if one were ranting and raving on the corporate site about such a situation, would you simply leave it and hope individuals were smart enough to realize the guys claims were frivolous, and say so, simply leave it and not respond, or remove it?

Where does one draw the editorial line? Should there be different guidelines between corporate and personal blogs? If openly a corporate blog the one blogging may not have a say in the matter. If a personal blog the blogger probably has full control and editorial control, unless it is a personal blog discussing corporate items, which one may still be bound to a certain level of conduct by the corporation.

Upgraded to Firefox 1.0.4

Just upgraded my Firefox.

Red Screen of Death (RSOD)

I guess Microsoft was not content having the market cornered on the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), so they are going after Lotus' share of the Red Screen of Death (RSOD) market. :-)

Rock Solid Server

I don't use the Web Administrator much. I don't use the full Administrator Client that much for that matter, but I had to try the R6 easter egg on Ed's site.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of trying it, Chris Whisonant, has posted a screenshot of it, although it does lose some of the affect.

As I logged into the Web Administrator some bold text caught my eye as well:

Elapsed up-time: 121 days, 19:37:37 You got a rock solid server here! Great uptime!

I wonder how many other messages there are.

For those wondering, this is our development server running Windows Server 2000 SP4 and Domino 6.5.4.

Blogbinders

I saw this an ad for Blogbinders and thought it was a bit interesting. Blogbinders turns your blog into a printed book. Not real sure why you would want to, but interesting nonetheless.

State Holiday

Yeah. I am off tomorrow. It is a state holiday (Truman's Birthday Observed).

To bad more President's weren't from Missouri.

Ford Service Part 9 - Fixed again - maybe

Well they said that they made some adjustments to the suspension and it appears to be fixed, but they want me to drive it for a week before they close the ticket, just in case. I guess we'll see - again. A.J. said if this didn't fix it then they would replace the end links.

Music Download

Looking for a few good songs available for download. You might check out Epitonic.

A few songs I found to be worth listening to:

The Improbable Solution - The Cassettes
Hyacinth Blues - The Constantines
Young Offenders - The Constantines
Fragile Awareness - The Pattern
Complex Person - The Pretenders (You remember Chrissy Hynde don't you?)
Mr. Kennedy - The Soft Boys
Miles Away - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Bleed American - Jimmy Eat World
Greenlander - Pavement
The Way We Get By - Spoon
Indian Summer - Sundays Best

Ford Service Part 8 - Probably time to call again

The suspension on my 2001 Ford Focus ZX3 S2 has been making the squeaky box spring noise all day. I grabbed my digital camera on my way out to volleyball this evening. It was 8:30pm so to dark to get really capture video, but I stuck it in the wheel well simply to capture the noise. Simply sticking my hand under the fender and lifting the front up and down a bit. You can click here to follow the link to listen to the video and hear the noise that they can't seem to get fixed.

Update: 5-6-05 Well it was still squeaking this morning so after dropping my son off at school I ran by the Ford dealership and found A.J.. I told it was making the noise more consistently if we wanted to listen. I let him hear the sound on video as we walked out to the car and he said we should be able to find that.

Before I walked in I pulled up on the wheel well and it did not make the noise, but had been while driving this morning, so asked if he had a second to go for a ride. We pulled out of the lot and it started squeking bad enough that I was able to pull back into the circle as it kept squeaking and he said that they would get it in to look at it while it was squeaking. We'll see what the verdict is today.

Quote

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. -- Hector Berlioz

I would have to say he was right.

Microsoft after the Adobe market next?

It looks like Microsoft is going to try to take some of the market away from Adobe with a .pdf competitor called Microsoft Metro.

Info about Metro on MS site.

Metro is the codename for the set of conventions for the use of XML and other widely available technologies to describe the content and appearance of paginated documents.

Kind of funny that you can also find info on their site about Lotus Metro with MS-DOS 5.0.

Lotus Metro is a memory-resident desktop management DOS application that allows you to access pop-up desktop accessories such as a calendar, calculator, clock, and so on. Lotus Metro also contains a full-featured keyboard macros program.

Day 2

Finally posting about day 2 without an administrator. It has been a busy week. Anyway, on day 2 I was asked to sit in on a Statewide Network Management Steering Committee meeting. The biggest topic discussed was MODOT's 6 strands of dark fiber. There really seemed to be a cooperative spirit and interest by all agencies in attendance at the meeting. It appears things will progress in efforts between the agencies to see how all can benefit, it just might not be at fiber optic speeds. :-)

Mazda 3

I was just thinking how nice the Mazda 3 looks the other day and then I saw a two 2004 models on a used car lot. If you are looking for a small sedan under 20 grand new, I think the Mazda 3 looks like a nice car. The sedan version has somewhat of a BMWish look to it. The two I saw had probably been rental/lease vehicles so they may have received more abuse than what an average driver would inflict on them, but I must say that I have never seen seats that looked that bad on a car for sale on the used lot of a new car dealership. Both were stained so bad I think one would want to at least put a slipcover on them before using them. Maybe even replace the whole seat. As they were so bad I would probably advise someone to consider leather seating if they were looking at the Mazda 3.

Day 1

Well it was day one without an Administrator. I was out Friday afternoon and as I started going through my mail one of the developers came in to say that our Domino Server was not up. The server itself was up, but the Domino Service was not started. We are still waiting to be given the permission to do this. Hopefully that will be done soon.

A bit later the Data Center called to inform me that the passwords were out of sync and thus the service did not start. They synced them and started the service. Oh well, it was running now and the customers could start using it again. As a result, I hadn't gotten caught up on my mail yet when our new IT Director (just started today) showed up at my door about 8:25am asking if I was going to the Senior Staff Meeting. It turns out one of the e-mails I hadn't gotten to yet was an invitation to the 8:30am Senior Staff Meeting. I said sure and off I was to my first Senior Staff Meeting. Sitting in as the point of contact since we don't have an administrator at the moment. It was much like any other meeting. It appears there are some people that don't seem to realize those that run the Department are simply people too.

Most of the content was simply informational.