Vicki and I were discussing the possibility of buying a Pioneer DVR-810H, which is a combination TiVo and DVD recorder and player, because they’ve been discontinued and sites all over the net are advertising them for less than half price. However, I soon discovered that any site that claims they have it in stock is lying through their teeth, and will cheerfully tell you that they’ll ship it to you as soon as it comes in - I guess they don’t quite get the concept of “discontinued”.
Continue reading ‘Considering MythTV’ »
Archive for October, 2004
Yesterday my physio gave me a 24 hour iontophoresis patch. Kind of a cool idea - it uses two patches, one with the drug, one with an electrolyte solution, and a metallic strip joining them. The idea seems to be to form an electrical circuit along the muscle and have the ions of the drug migrate through the muscle. I have no idea if it works. This morning that elbow feels worse than the other one, but it normally feels worse.
She also told me to stop doing that stretch that hurts so much.
I’m beginning to wonder if the quick diagnosis of tennis elbow was correct - the pain feels more like it’s in the joint than in the tendon.
Back in March, I wrote a little bit about the Apple “in-ear” headphones in Rants and Revelations: Tubular Bells
Continue reading ‘Product review: Shure E2C ear phones’ »
I think icing last night helped, at least up until the part where the bag leaked and the ice water spilled all over the sheets.
More taking breaks and stretching. That one stretch still hurts - I think I’m going to cut it out. I’ve got physio again tonight, I’ll see if she can give me a better stretch.
Remember a few days ago I said that my simple flying club tach entry web site had garnered about a bazillion feature requests before it could be rolled out?
Continue reading ‘Feeping Creaturism’ »
I came up with something at work yesterday that I can’t tell if it’s extremely clever, or way too complicated.
Continue reading ‘Am I clever or stupid?’ »
Well, I took the physio’s advice about taking breaks and stretching more often. I can’t say whether it helped or not, but it probably didn’t hurt. I’m currently icing one elbow - I don’t have enough ice to do both.
In spite of her advice on how to modify it, one of the stretches still seems to hurt - not a nice pulling out the tension stretch type hurt, but a “damage the ligaments” type hurt. Bad hurt. I’ve got to figure out how to stretch “A” without hurting “B”.
In physio today, we did the very painful “massage” thing that she does. It hurts like hell when she’s doing it, and for a while afterwards. Then she did ultra sound, and a less painful type of massage. Then she did what she calls “stim”, which is an electrical thing that makes the surface muscles just under the skin twitch in an interesting and not all-together unpleasant manner. While that was going on, she also applied cold packs to both elbows.
Joanne, the physio, also recommended that I take a break and stretch every 20 minutes when I’m typing. That’s going to be tough. She also suggested I use ice when I get home from work.
It’s a couple of hours after the physio, and my elbows feel better than usual.
Since yesterday I proved that not doing my stretches didn’t stop the pain from increasing all day, I did (a slightly abbreviated version of) them today. Elbows still more painful in the afternoon than in the morning, but no worse than yesterday. One of the stretches hurts a particular part of the elbow that doesn’t hurt when I’m not doing them, so I’m going to ask my physio JoAnne if I’m doing it right.
Not the most productive weekend I’ve ever had, but a nice balance of doing and not doing.
Continue reading ‘Random thoughts on the weekend’ »
Elbow pain has gotten progressively worse all day. I’ve been afraid of doing my stretches for fear that they might make it worse. I don’t know if the Alieve I took this morning helped any. The pain in my elbows is sort of dull, but it’s also slowly throbbing. If I had to pick, I’d say the right one is worse but every now and then the left one twinges worse.
Pain fucking sucks.
The Alieve I took last night must have helped. My elbows were ok when I woke up, but started hurting a lot as soon as I started typing. I haven’t done my stretches yet, but I’m afraid to.
Knees and hips same as always.
I just got woken up by Buddy barking, and then a knock on the door. I looked out the window and there was a cop car on the road. I was pretty groggy, and I went to the door. Of course the dog was barking at the wrong door - he’s so helpful at times. The policeman wanted me to step outside, and I asked if I could put my pants on first. He said that would be fine. He led me out to the end of the driveway where in the gutter was a very large knife, and asked me if it was mine or if I knew anything about it. And not just any knife, but what a TV watcher would probably think of as a criminal’s knife. The handle was covered in duct tape, and the blade had no discernable edge - you know how a store-bought knife has some sort of break-point between where the blade is just flat metal and where it tapers to the edge? There was nothing like that. All in all, it was a nasty looking piece of work. It rained last night, so I bet they don’t get much forensic stuff from it, but I can see as I started to write this that the other police are arriving.
My elbows seem to get sorer after doing my stretches. Right now, I’d give them a 4 or 5.
My knees and hips are at their usual 2 or 3, dull unfocused pain.
I haven’t taken anything yet today, but I’m going to take some Alieve now.
I’m starting a pain diary.
