Normally I'm very physically active. Yet thanks to general fatigue related to my kidney/back problem, whatever it may be, I've been pretty sedate. Well, its catching up to me because sleep is no longer easily forthcoming.
On the plus side, besides feeling like I could sleep another few hours, I feel great. I didn't cycle in to work, but maybe I should have.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
More stupid stuff about my health
Over the weekend I took it easy. Not by choice. My energy levels are just plain low thanks to this stupid health issue. My muscles all feel fatigued. Sometimes the area that hurt before aches. I've got a painkiller in case it gets bad. I haven't taken it yet cause it might make me dizzy.
The real concern for me is this weekend. I really, really want to get away. I'll have 10 hours with my work buddy James to work on a side project while we travel. I'll meet my cousin who I haven't seen in about 10-20 years. I might get to see other NYC people I know.
Thats it. You know about as much as I do.
The real concern for me is this weekend. I really, really want to get away. I'll have 10 hours with my work buddy James to work on a side project while we travel. I'll meet my cousin who I haven't seen in about 10-20 years. I might get to see other NYC people I know.
Thats it. You know about as much as I do.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Day after the hospital
I went to our General Practice physician about the lower left kack/kidney pain. After a Q&A and lots of poking and prodding here are the results:
How do I feel? Tired from lack of sleep. A bit of nausea. Otherwise am okay. I'll be coming to work tomorrow.
- I definately have a bruised or stress fractured lowest left rib. That actually isn't as bad as it sounds. This sort of thing just happens to me cause I do a lot of contact work. I've got to watch that rib for a week or two and then it should be fine.
- The kidney area pain doesn't add up. I've got some of the symptoms of kidney stones and most of the symptoms of blunt trauma. But not enough of either to be certain. They can trigger the pain again by pressing with force against my kidney though, so the issue is still there.
How do I feel? Tired from lack of sleep. A bit of nausea. Otherwise am okay. I'll be coming to work tomorrow.
My trip to the hospital
Last night around 10:45 I started to feel an excruciating pain in my lower left back in the approximate area of my kidney scaled around 8 or 9 on the 10 point pain scale. Not to mention periodic fits of nausea. Around 11:30 minutes my son woke up, and at my request called 911 plus a family friend who lives nearby. The EMTs came and took me to Arlington County Hospital which is not far from where we live.
Sometime after midnight the pain faded from a scale of 8 or 9 to about 2 or 3, although the nausea continues to come in slow cycles. I was poked and prodded, CAT scanned and was asked lots of questions. They have hard evidence something is wrong, but the CAT scan is not showing anything. Some suspects include:
Anyway, I just got home after being discharged. I've been up all night. I'm going to take a nap, then get my prescription, then log in to work.
Sometime after midnight the pain faded from a scale of 8 or 9 to about 2 or 3, although the nausea continues to come in slow cycles. I was poked and prodded, CAT scanned and was asked lots of questions. They have hard evidence something is wrong, but the CAT scan is not showing anything. Some suspects include:
- Kidney stones (but these normally show up on CAT scans)
- Blunt trauma to the left lower back (should show up on CAT scans)
- Dehydration (Won't show up on CAT scans but not likely - I drink a lot of water)
- Over-exerscion causing muscle dissolution (Won't show up on CAT scans but I don't think I've been working that hard)
- Pulled/Cramped back muscle (Won't show up on CAT scans)
- Pinched nerve (I'm not feeling any of the loss of mobility this caused on my right side last year)
Anyway, I just got home after being discharged. I've been up all night. I'm going to take a nap, then get my prescription, then log in to work.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Pesach and tradition
My family calls it Passover, which is odd for us Jews. But as my Uncle Jeff put it so well, 'Our family tradition is a tradition of breaking traditions.' This certainly sums up things about my family when it comes to certain traditional things.
On the other side of things, my family, when it comes to politics and culture, is very traditional when it comes to being involved in the fundamentals of enlightened society. We have a 60+ year tradition of being involved in civil rights, advocating for peace, and trying to be the nice guy. Nice tradition, eh?
On the other hand, being a Libertarian one thing that grates on me when it comes to the socially progressive is how traditionally patronistic they can be to race X or culture Y or religion Z. For example, recently I was annoyed when someone I know advocated for protesting against over consumption of gasoline, except for Hispanic people. His excuse was that to them overly large vehicles were a sign of 'making it'. To me, this is bigotry, albeit not motivated by malice but rather subtle contempt. Hispanic people are more than able to educate themselves, work great jobs, and have the same successes and failures as the rest of us.
Fortunately, I can't imagine my family getting involved in this sort of crap. They offer equal opportunity to everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, or sexual preference. As far as I understand it, a helping hand is given during youth or in emergencies but then people need to stand on their own.
So Pesach was a blast. I met my cousin's little boy (18 months), reconnected with family, ate great food, enjoyed a beautiful day, and felt thanks for another year of being a Jew in a relatively free country.
Jave, may you rest in peace. We miss you little guy
On the other side of things, my family, when it comes to politics and culture, is very traditional when it comes to being involved in the fundamentals of enlightened society. We have a 60+ year tradition of being involved in civil rights, advocating for peace, and trying to be the nice guy. Nice tradition, eh?
On the other hand, being a Libertarian one thing that grates on me when it comes to the socially progressive is how traditionally patronistic they can be to race X or culture Y or religion Z. For example, recently I was annoyed when someone I know advocated for protesting against over consumption of gasoline, except for Hispanic people. His excuse was that to them overly large vehicles were a sign of 'making it'. To me, this is bigotry, albeit not motivated by malice but rather subtle contempt. Hispanic people are more than able to educate themselves, work great jobs, and have the same successes and failures as the rest of us.
Fortunately, I can't imagine my family getting involved in this sort of crap. They offer equal opportunity to everyone regardless of race, religion, creed, or sexual preference. As far as I understand it, a helping hand is given during youth or in emergencies but then people need to stand on their own.
So Pesach was a blast. I met my cousin's little boy (18 months), reconnected with family, ate great food, enjoyed a beautiful day, and felt thanks for another year of being a Jew in a relatively free country.
Jave, may you rest in peace. We miss you little guy
Friday, April 18, 2008
Comments made easier!
A lovely colleague at work, Gamble, told me she didn't comment on my blog because logging in to do so was a pain. Well I just opened up comments for everyone. I'll delete anything nasty or unmentionable, but otherwise comment away!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Status of NASA Science
Last week we were #1 on digg/science and #3 on digg over all:
http://digg.com/space/Brand_New_NASA_Science_Website_Opens
We were slashdotted:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/12/0010230
We are on Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/04/nasa-science-we.html
Lots of other press too. Our system spiked a bit when we went high up in rankings on digg, but otherwise has run pretty smoothly. The caching is working just fine.
Most of the public comments are positive, some are helpful and are directing us towards bugs/mistakes. Some are snarky, ranging from the idiotic to the really funny.
Our feedback system is ugly but it works. Best question so far: 'When it is daytime on earth, is it daytime on all the other planets too?' Remember, we aren't allowed to ask the age of feedback submitters, so this could be a child or an adults. The fun is in guessing.
Anyway, this will look @#$% good on the resume.
http://digg.com/space/Brand_New_NASA_Science_Website_Opens
We were slashdotted:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/12/0010230
We are on Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/04/nasa-science-we.html
Lots of other press too. Our system spiked a bit when we went high up in rankings on digg, but otherwise has run pretty smoothly. The caching is working just fine.
Most of the public comments are positive, some are helpful and are directing us towards bugs/mistakes. Some are snarky, ranging from the idiotic to the really funny.
Our feedback system is ugly but it works. Best question so far: 'When it is daytime on earth, is it daytime on all the other planets too?' Remember, we aren't allowed to ask the age of feedback submitters, so this could be a child or an adults. The fun is in guessing.
Anyway, this will look @#$% good on the resume.
Friday, April 11, 2008
So what did I do on the website?
I've gotten a lot of emails asking for specifics on what I did with http://nasascience.nasa.gov. I'll try and address this on several different levels. First details about the project and effort:
The project had about 20 people on it, with three of us being full time developer/engineers. The rest were system administrators, graphic designers, content editors, and the odd rotating management. The project took over a year.
The project was created using mostly open source tools. Comparable purchasable tools would have cost $200k-$250K to get started, required as much per year in licensing costs, and would have required just as much work. Several large firms and agencies use the same toolset that we do for this precise reason, with examples being Novell, Lufthansa, and the CIA (yes, the CIA can't afford overpriced tools).
My Role
Though the project officially started in Spring 2007, my effort started in Fall 2006. That was when I did a product comparison (with presentation) between a number of purchasable (COTS) and open source (OS) remedies to the issue of content management. I had been an advocate of OS efforts for some time. Apparently I did a good job so for the NASA Science project, they choose one of my OS suggestions.
A quick list of things I did once the project began includes:
Some of the open source tools we used include:
Note the lack of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, and Java? Thats because we believe in true open source and choosing the best tools.
The project had about 20 people on it, with three of us being full time developer/engineers. The rest were system administrators, graphic designers, content editors, and the odd rotating management. The project took over a year.
The project was created using mostly open source tools. Comparable purchasable tools would have cost $200k-$250K to get started, required as much per year in licensing costs, and would have required just as much work. Several large firms and agencies use the same toolset that we do for this precise reason, with examples being Novell, Lufthansa, and the CIA (yes, the CIA can't afford overpriced tools).
My Role
Though the project officially started in Spring 2007, my effort started in Fall 2006. That was when I did a product comparison (with presentation) between a number of purchasable (COTS) and open source (OS) remedies to the issue of content management. I had been an advocate of OS efforts for some time. Apparently I did a good job so for the NASA Science project, they choose one of my OS suggestions.
A quick list of things I did once the project began includes:
- Created over a hundred Plone views from the data. If you know how to view the source HTML, you can see thats my work. The CSS/Javascript/images were done by others. Because of code reuse techniques the amount of code generated is actually quite small.
- Added and modified lots of different content types and their relations with other content types. Content types include things like Missions, Programs, Big Questions, and areas of the site you can't see yet. ;)
- Wrote a script to map out the Zope 2 database architecture when our tool to handle that broke down. The database architecture is complex, arguably too complex and now that we are done with launch, we will be simplifying it (we hope).
- Modified an existing third party Plone package to support handling of incoming RSS feeds that followed no standard but their own.
- Created most of the Zope 3 feedback forms and their handlers on the site. I have to admit I really don't like the form api we used as the results are ugly and the library itself is annoying. You can read my thoughts on that subject here (warning - rather technical).
- Added and modified existing relationships between content areas.
- Created a Zope 3 captcha engine that eventually got shelved.
- Ensured that HTML rendered is section 508 compliant and meets international usability requirements. Which means the visually disabled can use it without issue. I wasn't the 508 overseer, and the one we had sucked. But I certainly adhered to the protocols.
Some of the open source tools we used include:
Note the lack of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, and Java? Thats because we believe in true open source and choosing the best tools.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
321 LiftOff!!!
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/
Over a year of work by yours truly and other people to boot. And its live! Live I say!
Over a year of work by yours truly and other people to boot. And its live! Live I say!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Next time I'll read the label
So Saturday I get to the gym at around 9am. I plan to be there until 3pm. Unfortunately for the world I left my deodorant at home. So I raid someone else's unlocked locker and find a stick. I apply to my underarms and then check the label to see what brand.
The brand is Icy-Hot.
Which heats up on the skin.
I figure I'll be okay. I mean, its nice on sore muscles and stuff, so it should be okay in my armpits. It feels warm but I'm not bad off.
.
.
.
60 seconds I'm in the bathroom frantically rubbing the burning stuff off using wet paper towels and trying not to howl in anguish.
The brand is Icy-Hot.
Which heats up on the skin.
I figure I'll be okay. I mean, its nice on sore muscles and stuff, so it should be okay in my armpits. It feels warm but I'm not bad off.
.
.
.
60 seconds I'm in the bathroom frantically rubbing the burning stuff off using wet paper towels and trying not to howl in anguish.
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