Some Guy's Blog

Rocking Out

Since picking up the Wii version of Rock Band at the beach this summer, Megan and I have both really enjoyed it. It turns out Megan Van Fleet is an excellent drummer! I don’t play drums that much, but when I do, I struggle on easy. She can definitely get through all the songs on medium, only struggling on the hardest ones. I’ve had to try to up my game and start practicing hard guitars, but we really don’t play that much.

I’m Not Fat, I’m Big Boned!

As a part of my post-surgery life, I’ve been referred to Elite Physical Therapy here in Charlotte, and it’s unbelievable. Joe kicks my ass twice weekly, and has also taken his own time to show me how to kick my own ass at the Y. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

As a result of physical therapy, I now consider myself 99.99% pain free. There is only the slightest bit of very occasional bother. We have been working on restoring my flexibility, core-strengthening (which relieves stress on the back), and recently more total body activities. I have definitely learned that you do not need weights to get stronger; your own body can provide all the resistance you need.

I am excited about getting back into a rhythm of going to the gym. I went last night to do a full session on the elliptical runner, and I was reminded about how I used to start plenty of days that way. It’s been over 18 months since the last time I was doing that, and I’ve definitely lost a few steps, but I came home energized.

Still a Geek

charlotte.rb has a new Meetup group sponsored by the guys at Engine Yard. It has been a bit of a relief to have a chance to participate in a professional group that I did not have to start myself.

I am working a lot more with Rails 2.1 and it’s new features. I hope to be able to write up some of it soon.

I am also working on a talk that I hope to present at RailsConf 2009— it won’t be just another Scaling Rails talk, I promise you that. It’ll be the first talk I’ve ever really spent time and energy on, and I hope to have enough fun making it so that if it gets rejected, I will still think it was worth it.

Fall’s Season Passes

Farewell, Monk, Psych, In Plain Sight, and Burn Notice! We will see you again soon. Here’s what we’re ready for this fall.

• House
• Heroes
• Pushing Daisies
• Project Runway (I’m getting destroyed this year in our fantasy Project Runway showdown)
• Desperate Housewives

and Megan has these upstairs

• 90210
• NCIS

Still Church Goers

For those of you who are familiar with my typical routine, it may surprise you that I really look forward to going to church each week. Megan and I became members of the UUCC earlier in the summer, and it’s something that we both look forward to every Sunday. It encourages us both to better habits (like just going for it and waking up earlier) that we’ve both struggled with a bit at times.

Thanks

I am slowly getting around to writing letters to everyone that’s impacted my life. My handwriting is bad enough that the experience may not be 100% pleasant for the recipient, but I was inspired by a service given by a guest speaker one week. He read aloud a note that his son had written him years ago, in conjunction with a gift of a book. It was clear, even years later, how this note made him feel so wonderful and happy.

We all have the power to do that for the ones we love. I want to encourage everyone to take a little bit of time out of your day to write from the heart to the people you love. They will never forget it, and it will make you feel good, too.

I, also, hope to write here more often. I am trying to get back into a lot of habits, and sometimes the last thing I feel like when I get home is more keyboarding.

continue reading

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my health problems with my leg, this may come as a surprise.

I had surgery a week ago, on Wednesday morning. You can see a description of lumbar micro-discectomy at my doctors’ site.

I was nervous leading up to the incident, especially after finding out that I would be intubated, but that’s in the rear view mirror now. After they put the IV in, I remember a few more discussions and then them leaving me in a hall for a second. Next thing I remember was waking up after the procedure in the recovery room and asking for some water.

In terms of the pain that has been a part of my life for so long, that particular kind of pain is gone. I am healing from surgery, and that’s never going to be a ride at Carowinds, but there’s no comparison between them. I am so fortunate to come across excellent doctors and an exceptional hospital in Charlotte

We’ve come a long way from that pretty helpless first 24 hours after the surgery, but there’s still always to go on the recovery process. I did have enough strength to run some errands yesterday afternoon, but I am on a very strict schedule for how long I can sit up straight. I even have what’s basically a perfect assistant there, having picked up Awaken during one of the last Mac software blowouts. I also have to wear these ridiculous tights for some kind of circulation issue in my legs. Don’t expect pictures.

My mother has been in town helping the recovery process, and she leaves in a few hours. I know both Megan and I have found her presence invaluable. It will be hard to say goodbye this time.

To sum up, I am still not fully independent (try keeping track of how often you bend at the waist today) but I am sure that day will come soon. That will be welcome.

continue reading

Mail

I have a good GMail system that I love. I used it to sort through approximately 5,000 e-mails from over two years into a pile of less than 30. Two wrenches are in those gears right now. All my workstation time is on Mac OS X now (yes!) and the new FireFox 3 betas are already the best browser there, in my opinion. But curses! my Better GMail extension is not yet available! Second wrench—I have to learn to get back to my starred messages (a.k.a. action items). Take it to the next level.

Church

I joined a church, the UUCC. I think we’ll have more on that as it develops, but it’s one of the elements in our Charlotte life that Megan and I have already come to value very deeply.

Music

Megan made fun of me for calling a recent playlist “a mix tape,” because clearly it’s not getting anywhere near a cassette player. We don’t even own a cassette player (although I still have a few of my KTRU shows on tape—the dream lives on!).

I simultaneously acknowledge that she is right, and rue the woeful downgrade in the coolness of sharing personal music. A “playlist”? Really? A “mix” doesn’t even sound any better! Do I have to send people the MP3’s or do I make a real CD? Are they going to download these tracks? Yuck. Much less cool.

Also, was having a Walkman ever cool? I mean, people working out had them, and that was obviously cool. But what about everyone else?

Music

On an related note, it blows my mind that having an iTunes library comprised largely of a network file share is such a problem. I don’t want to keep 160GB of music on my hard drive. HELLO!

Music, one more time (hit me!)

We didn’t go to a concert in Charleston, SC on Saturday night because my leg hurt so badly. We ended up having a low-key weekend with plenty of relaxation thrown in, as well as a haircut.

Money

Megan and I are also having budget talks. It takes a long time to go from “we have no real way of tracking or planning for expenditures” to “we know what expenses we incur each month, and are planning to spend in ways that more closely match our values in the future.” We are getting very close, but it’s been a journey filled of discoveries and new understandings. I highly recommend it to everyone.

continue reading

For those who don’t know anything about my problems with my leg (and back), it’s been causing me a great deal of pain in the last year. When the pain began in April or May of 2007, it wasn’t bad at first. Nothing really happened to make it start hurting, I just noticed that it did one day. It wouldn’t bother me all the time, just every once in awhile. I thought “if it’s still bothering me like this in June, I’ll go to the doctor.”

It was still bothering me at the end of June, I went to the walk-in clinic, and they gave me some muscle relaxers and told me to keep taking Aleve. That helped for a couple weeks, but didn’t stop the pain. I figured the next stage there was getting a referral, and I wasn’t sure it was that serious. I went to a chiropractor, and he seemed like a quack. He had signed pictures of him with Whitesnake and Frank Stallone. Didn’t seem like the right atmosphere to me.

After that, Megan and I took our Europe trip. I made it through without too much trouble and had a great time. I did have to miss one evening in Nimes, but overall I don’t remember it causing me that much trouble on the trip. Three days after we got back, my former employer laid off pretty much everyone without equity in the company. It was totally unexpected. I suddenly had to think of my leg being ruled a pre-existing condition at any job I’d ever have in the future, in addition to the stress of traveling the country to find a new job with my wedding and my ten year high school reunion in the weeks to come.

I found a great job with relative quickness, but the insurance was scheduled to start 30 days after the first day of my first full month of employment. November. As it turned out, there was some administrative difficulty getting my plan in order, since I was working in North Carolina and living in Virginia. By the time I had proof of insurance (not presenting as self-pay), it was mid-November from then, the first referral appointment was late November.

At that time, I went to the doctor and got a referral to a physical therapist. I did feel some improvement after some of the sessions, but not all of them. I went to four sessions before heading to Des Moines to spend the Christmas holiday with my parents. Because of weather and the precarious nature of travel, Megan and I ended up driving a couple hours to Raleigh to make a flight to make up for the one that got cancelled from Richmond. That just kicked off a comedy of errors for Northwest, who I honestly intend never to fly with again. (I hear people say that for effect, when an agent tries to get them to gate check their bag, but I mean it.) A few days later, one evening I was laying on my back, on the floor, in the worst physical pain that I’ve ever experienced. For those of you who do not know what nerve pain is live, I hope that you never experience it. I went to a doctor in Des Moines the next morning and was prescribed a steroid series, which helped until I got back to Richmond.

I didn’t book any more visits with the physical therapist. Our plans called for a move to Charlotte early in 2008, and I suspected that I would find some treatment there. I am seeing a chiropractor in Charlotte and that has relieved the pain considerably, but it’s still a long journey to being pain-free. I’m told there are no guarantees. It bothered me a little more than normal this week, but I’m hoping to be able to help out around the house tomorrow. Sometimes I can’t, even when I would like to. Lame. Literally!

continue reading

Matt tagged me, and this seems like a decent enough way to catch everyone up with the basics of what’s going on at this extremely busy time in my life.

“list eight habits or facts about yourself, then tag eight more people.”

1. I am not going to finish up writing RailsConf 2007 like I said that I would. I blame my readers for their utter lack of caring. It’s just too far in the rear-view mirror now. Next year, I’ll move more quickly.
2. I left on a trip for Europe on July 16 and returned on July 30. It was an incredible trip, undoubtedly one I will remember for a long time. The trip was with 10 high-school children from King William county where Megan taught this year. I’m certainly going to try to blog about this.
3. The time between RailsConf and Europe was spent primarily on XSLT project with a Flash front-end. That was different.
4. Two days after I came back to work, I was laid off by my employer. It was four days before my ten-year high school reunion, and just over two weeks before The Big Day. I’m interviewing with several places around the country, and having an enjoyable time considering the possibilities. I am looking outside the Richmond area, and if you know of a senior level Ruby/Rails position with some managerial responsibilities, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
5. I attended my ten year high school reunion, and I would describe it as surreal and anticlimactic. I expected to know more of the people who came.
6. I get married in less than ten days.
7. I use Twitter habitually, even though there’s really no point to doing so.
8. I tend to be a very calm person typically, but if I am hungry, that is a dangerous time to irk me.

I’m not going to tag anyone, you can do this if you want.

(Via mattwalters.net: lost ramblings.)

continue reading