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Dislocated (Part IV)

It’s off… The progress splint I was using to help my dislocated elbow heal has been removed, and I am now free of all splints, slings, and other such contraptions. But I’m not healed…

Right now I cannot straighten my left arm. It gets to about 35 degrees and just stops. It’s too painful to move it anymore than that. I’ll be starting therapy in a week and a half (that too is worrisome, as I would have liked to have started right away, but some miscommunication slowed down that process.)

I’m also supposed to “take it easy” which is something I have a hard time doing. I’m pretty conscious of my arm, and if I try to extend it too much I get a (slightly) painful reminder that I can’t. You’d be amazed how many times I look at something that used to be within my reach, and then reach for it, and realized I can’t quite get it. It’s this sort of disappointment/failure thing, and it’s a bit depressing.

Of course the most painful part of all of this just started. I got the first (of many) medical bills from this injury. Ouch… I’ll probably be paying this one off for some time… hopefully my arm will fully heal before the bill is fully paid off. Who knows? Maybe we’ll soon see a change in the U.S. and we’ll get a president who cares enough about people who cannot afford good health insurance and does something about it.

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BarCampMilwaukee3… soon!

Good gosh, we’re this close to BarCampMilwaukee3! The whole thing goes down October 4th/5th, 2008 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at Bucketworks.

BarCampMilwaukee3 Banner by KeVroN

There’s also a Friday night pre-BarCamp party event being planned that we need to spread the word about. Details should be available soon.

This is our 3rd BarCamp in Milwaukee (hence the “BarCampMilwaukee3” title!) and it feels like we’re in the groove of getting these things up and running. This year seems so much more mellow than last year. I’ve been keeping an eye on registration, and I’ve seen some interesting people sign up. As of writing this we’re at well over 100 people, and I’m guessing we’ll see that shoot up in the next week, and get more people who didn’t even sign up attending.

Remember to check out the proposed sessions to see what people are interested in doing. I’m pretty excited about the Hobby Robotics Make’n’Take Session and of course the The Future of Microblogging session looks amazing!

BCMKE3 T-Shirt

And have you see the shirt Mike Rohde designed? It incorporates tagging! How sweet is that?

So join us! It’s not too late to sign up… head over to barcampmilwaukee.org and use the signup wizard to register… We hope to see you there.




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Positive Complaining

John Resig shows us the right way to complain about something… by not even making it appear you are complaining, and offering solutions.

His post on Easy PDF Sharing nails it by saying he loves something (SlideShare) but then asking how it could be improved, and and offering a solution as well (with working code.)

To SlideShare’s credit, they are pretty open to people’s suggestions. When I mentioned them last year, they commented on my post right away, which is always great to see.

I’m really liking what John did, and I’ll see if I can tie into it with my workflow of using S5.




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McCain’s Playlist

Don’t ask me how I got this, cuz I can’t tell you… but reliable sources tell me this is John McCain’s playlist…

  1. Kill the Poor – Dead Kennedys
  2. Let’s Start a War – The Exploited
  3. You’re My Miss Washington, D.C. – Nation of Ulysses
  4. War Pigs – Black Sabbath
  5. Cops of the World – Phil Ochs
  6. Mount The Pavement – Born Against
  7. My War – Black Flag
  8. Night of the Living Dead – The Misfits
  9. Suspect Device – Stiff Little Fingers
  10. They Must Want to Die – D.I.
  11. Hate & War – The Clash
  12. Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Joe Jackson

Who knew he had such good taste in music?

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Dislocated (Part III)

Range-of-motion elbow splint I’ve got a new splint. This one limits the range of motion of my arm. I can bend my elbow all the way up, well, as far as it can go right now, but I can’t completely straighten it. This is to prevent it from coming out of joint again, as the ligaments still need to tighten up.

I’ll have this for at least two weeks, and need to work at keeping my arm moving, as it’s pretty stiff from being stuck at 90 degrees for the last two weeks. We’re still not sure if I will get my full range-of-motion back, but I’m hopeful. This is the first “real” injury I’ve ever had, besides breaking the tip of my pinky finger twenty years ago, and various sprains throughout the years. It’s not fun.

Update: Two weeks turned into three…