Knee operation followup

Posted on February 29th, 2008 in Health by Administrator

Saw Dr. Kerr this morning. Here is what he said, in a nutshell:

  • Still some swelling but doing much better.
  • Still no running
  • Can start riding now, but start slow. Keep left knee wrapped. Ice it down after every ride.
  • Swimming is OK. Use a neoprene wrap if going to kick much
  • Check back in 4 weeks

space voyage

Posted on February 26th, 2008 in Misc by Administrator

The countdown had stalled at ‘T’ minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
rubbery lips unmistakably — the first of many such advances during what
would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
career.

Bank of America – Screwed up card activation system

Posted on February 21st, 2008 in Life by Administrator

I got a new Bank of America Visa card for my GnM Services account in the mail today. There was a sticker on the front of the card that said to call 1-888-624-23232 to activate the card.

I did that. The first thing that pissed me off was that I had to:

Press 1 for English

Screw that noise. This is the USA … I think.. I shouldn’t have to press extra buttons for the “privilege” of continuing this “conversation” in what should be the language of this country!

OK, fine… we continue…

I have to enter the credit card number. No problem. I’m holding the credit card in my hand.

I have to enter the expiration date. No problem. Again, I’m holding the credit card in my hand.

Next though, I have to enter the last four digits of the checking account that this credit card is associated with.

There is no way I can open up my laptop and look up that information quick enough to satisfy the merciless automated voice at Bank of America.

So… I have to start the whole process over again. If these turkeys had told me ahead of time that I would need this information before activating the card, I would have been happy. But no, that is not the case.

Bank of America – You piss me off, again!

Followup appointment with Dr. Kerr

Posted on February 15th, 2008 in Health by Administrator

I saw Dr. Kerr this morning as a follow-up to the surgery on my left knee. I still had a lot of swelling, which he didn’t like. He used a needle to draw off as much fluid as possible. The nurse wrapped my knee with cast bandages on top, to provided extra compression. She said to keep it wrapped with an Ace bandage during the day.

Dr. Kerr said to do no aerobics for the next two weeks. He said that I can be submerged in water so swimming and jacuzzi is OK. Upper-body strength training is OK. Stretching is fine. I have to see him again on 2008-02-29 at 07:45 for a follow-up appointment.

MoinMoin page names (lessons learned)

Posted on February 13th, 2008 in Computers by Administrator

I’ve started using the very cool MoinMoin wiki as a personal information management tool and so far it’s working quite well. As mentioned, I have a utility that will sync attachments as a complement to the native ability to sync pages.

I did run across what could be a serious problem, especially as the size of your wiki grows. There are currently some bugs (as of version 1.6.1) in the way MoinMoin handles page names.

First of all, say you have a page name with lower-case letters and a digit; e.g., “ww1″, and then you create some sub-pages, say “ww1/Hardware”, “ww1/Packages”, “ww1/RAID”, “ww1/SSL”, etc.

Then in the “ww1″ page you have this macro:

<<PageList(ww1/)>>

What you should get is a list of all of the sub-pages that you have created. I have found that, depending upon some factors that I have yet to figure out, you may get some or none of the sub-pages listed.

Furthemore, doing a title search for “ww1″ won’t necessarily show the “ww1″ page in the search results.

Also, if you copy the page “ww1″, you get the option to copy all sub-pages as well. And in-fact the new top-level page does get created and the sub-pages, properly named do get created. This can be verified by examination of the directories in the data/pages directory of your wiki.

However none of the sub-pages can be accessed via the wiki interface. I suspect it is a cacheing problem.

Anyway, my new practice: Until this problem has been fixed, All pages start with an upper-case letter, no exceptions.

Syncing MoinMoin Attachments

Posted on February 8th, 2008 in Computers by Administrator

Please see this page for information and a script that can be used to sync attachments between two MoinMoin wikis.

Gross Knee – 1 Week Post-Op

Posted on February 1st, 2008 in Health by Administrator

Good news! Mikie took me to see Dr. Kerr at 07:50 this morning. They took out all of my staples and a really long length of surgical drain tube.
If you want to see pictures from the exam room, click the link.