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    Physical Therapy: Consultation and Fun Treatments

    My first physical therapy session yesterday was pretty cool, albeit painful. The PT put my shoulder–which was already hurting from busing/backpacking through town–through the usual contortions (*tear*). By the end, she would raise my arm in such a way, push lightly on it, look at my face, and go, “Hmm, I’m not going to put you through that.” Her conclusion was the same as the sports doc: decently likely it’s a small cuff tear. What followed was far more interesting than my usual pain, though. First, I got a therapeutic ultrasound. And the gel was warm! (Quite the novelty in my experience.) I didn’t feel any warmth or hum from…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: A Microaggression, a Game, and Some Dancin’

    This week’s internet cruising: Microaggressions submission – I love microaggressions.com, and this one is actually cute. Learning from Fable III’s UX Mistakes | UX Booth – A nice look at the usability issues of Fable III. Email Management Made Fun | The Email Game – Okay, this is a cute and fun spin on the (in my mind) GTD principle of fast processing an inbox. I got 2375 points in my first game, and 2250 on the second. Make Love, Not Flamewars – bitquabit – I don’t care about mercurial vs. git (I use and enjoy both), but I like the approach of giving up the silly flamewars and debates…

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    Shoulder Update: Steroid Shot!

    I got in to see the rather awesome (medical bill pending) sports doctor at my doctor’s office yesterday, and got my (*tear*) first ever cortisone shot. She ran me through a painful battery of tests (painful because they were designed to find my limits) and determined that, yup, I did a great job of aggravating and maybe worsening my old injury. May have been a small rotator cuff tear back then or now, but the result now is a loosey-goosey shoulder joint (very weak stabilizing muscles) combined with some super-tight (ow) tendons. Given that I can’t take NSAIDs, she recommended the steroid shot. I also start physical therapy next week.…

  • On Life and Love

    Too Human Was… Too Human

    Sorry, I really couldn’t come up with anything wittier than that. I finished Too Human about a month ago at this point, I think. Let’s celebrate that for a moment. Given my propensity for games like Sims, GalCiv 2, and Civ 4, getting to finish a game is always a miracle. Guy totally warned me about some of the game’s disappointments, so I went in with eyes open. It was… alright. Kinda fun early on. Really frustrating later. I want more, but not more of what was in Too Human. (I’m restarting Fallout 3–which I never finished–as the balm for my ache.) A couple of nights ago, Greg and I…

  • On Life and Love

    Chewing on Granny Squares

    My knitting colleague E. made the (arguably) goofy decision to refresh her crocheting skills by taking on a granny squares blanket. It’s a great idea for using up a ton of scrap yarn. It’s not a great idea if you enjoyed the level of sanity you had when you started. She quickly ran into the classic self-randomizing problem: given 20 different colored yarns of different weights, how do you put 3 different ones in each square while trying to keep the colors as random as possible? Sounds easy enough, but after 15 or so squares, it gets tricky. If you’re aiming for randomization, the last thing you want is a…