Back on the bike

My orthopedist told me not to bike, since if I crash again, I could really screw up my arm. But the weather is so nice, it's a real shame not to be biking. So I did ride on Saturday and then again today.

I had my first occupational therapy session this morning. (Apparently occupational therapists deal with arms and hands, and physical therapists don't.) My arm still doesn't straighten, and it hasn't really gotten all that much better, in that regard. But the occupational therapist is telling me to stretch with a light load for 10-15 minutes (vs the 5 x 45 sec stretches that I've been doing), followed by a bit of triceps strengthening, and after the stretching she subjected me to, I was really sore. So I'm hoping that this new method, while considerably more painful, will get me back to normal. Also, she said there was no reason for me to not be biking, so she's definitely on my good list.

The biking was really nice, especially today. It was about 50 degrees in the morning, and about 80 in the afternoon...rather different than my last time on the bike, 5 weeks ago.

Walk down my street

You can now walk down our street, using Street view in google maps.

Many pictures

I went a month without posting any Caleb pictures, but finally, here are a bunch.

My favorites:




You can see pictures of our basement remodeling, which has been going on for about 3 weeks, with another 3 weeks to go.




I took a bunch of pictures before the wallboard went up, to document the location of the wiring. I used Caleb as a yardstick.

100 inches

This weekend, we hit the 100" mark for snow for the season. This is more than double the average, and two feet more than the previous season record.

Arm photo

If you want to see a photo of my arm, as of Sunday, 16 March, click here. It's not pretty.

The arm is a lot better. I still can't straighten it all the way, and it's still quite sore, but it doesn't ache all the time, as it had.

Bill and I spent all day Saturday and much of Sunday doing the low voltage wiring. It was a lot of fun. We ran a lot more wire than we'd planned, because we kept thinking of more things to do. If Bill and Rose hadn't headed home yesterday, we might still be thinking of more stuff, and so still screwing around down there.

Spring snow

It's officially spring, but it's been snowing all day. As of yesterday, we had 92" of snow for the season, and we're expected to get 8-13 inches by the end of the current snow, so we should surpass the 100" mark. I may be the only one in town that is happy about that.

Andrew and Giso are moving into a new apartment (just 2 miles from our house) tomorrow. Hopefully this won't screw that up.

Easy right-click, finally

Two things I don't like about Macs: you can resize windows only from the lower-right corner. (Why can't we use one of the other corners for this, too?)

Second, the mouse has just one button. Sure, with each of my desktops, I have a mighty mouse, which has all the buttons one could need, though it doesn't look like it. But the laptops have just the one button. Right-clicking is extremely important to me, and on my old laptop, I had to press "control" while clicking to do that (with the result that the control key on my old laptop is almost worn away).

On my new laptop, though, with that multi-touch trackpad, if I tap the touchpad, it's like clicking the mouse; no big deal, we had that before. The new addition: if I tap with two fingers, it acts as a right-click. That makes me happy.

New laptop

I got a new laptop yesterday...it's the new version of the MacBook Pro, which has the new "multi-touch trackpad", which can tell whether I have one, two or three fingers on it. The trackpad features will be very cool, once I get used to them.

I decided to go for the 17" model. (I've previously been using a 15" one.) This in spite of the fact that I'm on record saying it is obnoxiously large. That's certainly true, but I'm going to enjoy it anyway. I just won't be able to work on an airplane very easily, and at NIH Study Section I'll spill over into the space of the people next to me, since they always put 40 people at a table designed for 20. But it will be a lot easier to do programming at home or in a hotel room.

The screen resolution (1920 x 1200) is the same as that of my 23" display (though I may need to wear my glasses to see things).

In upgrading to the latest version of Mac OS X, I'm needing to revise a lot of the ways I work, particularly regarding X11 and emacs. But it's especially nice to finally be able to have multiple desktops, since I am generally working on several projects at once, it's nice to be able to separate them completely.

Not even a sling

I went to see an orthopedist this afternoon. Not only don't I need a cast, I can even dump my sling. I'm glad for that, because it's rather a hassle. (That was especially true during my trip back from Chapel Hill; my flight was cancelled and with the re-route through DC, I ended up going through security 3 times, including getting patted down. "Be nice, my arm is broken," I said.)

The orthopedist wants me to stretch the arm twice a day so that I can get the full range of motion back, but I don't need to modify my activity at all, just as long as I'm careful not to fall on it again. He suggested not biking, as my reactive abilities will not be so good, so I might smash my face.

He felt my arm, and asked, "It hurts here?" And I responded, "No, it actually hurts over here." So it seems that I sprained the ligaments in my elbow---that it got overextended a bit. And that's actually what I originally thought that I'd done. It's interesting that most of the pain is from the strained ligaments and not from the fracture. Aimee took a picture of the bruising, which has become quite spectacular, but I think I'll spare my readers from that.

We've postponed the low-voltage wiring to the weekend, when Aimee's dad will be back to help me. (Really, though, it'll probably be the case that he does most of the work, given my arm.)

Mom, don't read this

I'm hesitant about writing this, because I know how my mom worries, and I know she won't follow the instructions in the title.

Wednesday morning, I crashed my bike, again. This time it was really my fault, and not that of the chain.

It was a beautiful morning, the temperature was just around freezing, and I was riding way too fast. Near the lake, I hit a patch of ice and then hit the pavement. I was going nearly 20 mph, and I don't think I even had time to take my hands off the handlebars. I skinned my left knee, and my right arm was quite sore (especially to twist it). The arm became more and more sore over the course of the day, and t really hurt while riding home.

Of course, I didn't do anything about it until late last night, when I realized how bruised and swollen the arm is, and first thought that maybe it was broken. My sports medicine book suggested that it's common to break the head of the radius in such situations.

So I went to urgent care (with Aimee's dad), waited an hour (we talked about wiring), got some x-rays, and sure enough, the head of the radius has a crack.

My arm is in a sling; I need to make an appointment to see an orthopedist, but the doctor said the sling will probably be sufficient.

I leave for Milwaukee in a few minutes to get on a plane to go to Chapel Hill, NC. I'm borrowing Aimee's parents' car, since it's an automatic, and it'd be difficult to shift gears in our honda with my left hand.