nadaladaDOTnet » Funny

Surgery is behind, now, what’s next?

Greg — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 22:05:22 +0000

Still swollen, was HUGE before this shot

Like many, many people who have arthroscopic surgery on knees, my surgery was successful. It’s now almost a full week behind me as well. The first two days after the surgery are a blurry haze of vicodin, constant icing of my knee, and struggles to just get around. Man, you never know how much you need something from your body until it’s not there. Just trying to balance taking a leak was a struggle! But I digress. As I write this, I’m almost a full week from my surgery and I almost have no swelling left but am still really stiff.

I think I’ve done everything to the letter that my doctor told me to do and think I also was a bit militant with the icing. It was just too weird for me to see my knee as a cantaloupe. I mean, it was freakin’ large. Tomorrow is my first post operation meeting with my doctor and I understand that if he gives me the high sign I’ll start my rehab as soon as tomorrow which is pretty exciting but also a tad intimidating as I have no idea what to expect. But I must say this has been a very refreshing experience thus far, more so than I expected. It’s funny, the doctors and the staff treat these surgeries as though they were routine (I know, not a shocker, they are) and so the paperwork they hand you really doesn’t truly set expectations.

Swelling almost gone, feeling stronger

For example, the literature says “you may experience some swelling and this is natural”. What that should say is “your knee will swell to the size of a f**^ing mellon, and, you won’t be able to bend it not even 2 inches after the 3rd day, so…enjoy that”. And though this discrepancy of the expectation setting would have been nice to know prior, I can say with exacting detail and confidence that the body is an amazing thing. I can’t believe that I walked away from my surgery and I also can’t believe how HUGE my knee was and how “normal” it looks now. Truly amazing. Perhaps my doctor’s prognosis of a 4-6 week recovery IS realistic after all….

Anyway, I’m not sure, but we’ll see how it all goes. Regardless, this has been a humbling experience and a good reminder that all of us are totally mortal. Once I get my knee back to health I’ll take it far less for granted. I know that much.

Hooping @ 42

Greg — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:33:41 +0000

RUN CMD

This past weekend (July 31st) some good friends from work and I competed in the annual Portland Trailblazers Street Jam 3+3 tournament. Our company (CMD Agency) sponsored us and even had jersey’s made for us (we called ourselves ‘RUN CMD’) and overall we had a great time. I learned a lot from competing in this tourney as well. Here then, is some of what I learned….

Number 1: Playing basketball at the local LA Fitness, and playing street ball are as different as speaking German and Spanish. The 4 of us (Gerardo, Chris, Jack and myself) had been hooping at LA Fitness near the office, every week since May of 2009. Not to get prepared for this tournament, oh no..that came organically out of the thin air. We play because we like it and it’s a great way to stay in shape. We also play with some other LA Fitness members and by and large, our games are friendly. They get intense sure, but nobody fouls aggressively or makes dirty plays. Boy, fouling….was that an eye opener at the Street Jam. We got mugged in the 3 games we played. By the time we were playing our last elimination game on Sunday morning (8/1/2010) we were giving it back too. But in the end we got out street balled by the competition. We just weren’t seasoned at street ball enough.

Number 2: Playing in the “Under 6′” category doesn’t mean anything. In fact, I could have played with Latvian midgets and the refs wouldn’t have called anything. We played a team that had 2 dudes who were at LEAST 6’2″. I’m sorry, but that’s just not a fair playing field. Why bother having categories? And yes, it did make a difference. In the end, their height advantage was evident on the boards. And it still pisses me off. Was their height advantage a game breaker in the end? Probably not. We COULD have hustled more, played more scrappy but it was really tough to overcome that jumping disadvantage. All of us are 5’11″ and we plain old got “out thugged” by the height and constant jersey grabbing. But that’s for another point…..

Number 3: …..Which is, hey Portland Trailblazers Street Jam 3+3 tournament referees….WHAT THE HELL IS A FOUL ANYWAY? Ok let me get this straight…I stand straight up, jump in the air with the shooter, make contact because HE jumped into me and I am guilty of fouling? But then on the next possession, my teammate (Gerardo) goes strong to the hoop, gets hit mid air on the ball and arm and get’s sent crashing to the blacktop, but that’s called a block? C’mon. What rule book are you people calling the game from? And by the way, while we’re on it, why didn’t the 2 refs in ANY game we competed in ever talk to one another when they disagreed on a call? Who’s call was right in the end anyway?

Catching a breather

Number 4: Regardless of all these frustrations, it was still a LOT of fun to compete in this tournament. Personally it was VERY satisfying to do it and be a part of my team. I looked around a lot and I think I might have been one of the older players in the competition and I take great pride in that. I mean, I’m not an NBA player but I do hustle and am giving it my all. I am a HUGE NBA fan and basketball means a great deal to me. That I can still actively compete at this age is a big deal and I will play as long as I can given the physical limitations that my body imposes on me as time goes by. I do know this, if we’re all still at CMD next year, we’re going to enter this competition again but we’re going to get our thug on and knock some heads.

WordPress, having a CMS website, and decisions.

Greg — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:30:15 +0000

Hmmm, how would that work?

As I struggled with my WordPress instance bombing on me the other day, it occurred to me that I was unaware how dependent I had become to having such a tool manage my website. Once I realized the extent of the issue I was having, I even resorted to uploading my old static website to my server while I figured out the problem. I quickly realized when re-deploying my old website how much of an effort it used to be to maintain it and update it with no current CMS modularity that I have come to enjoy using WP. Then I realized (as if this weren’t enough to think about) that I have 2 “bloggy” sites…one on Posterous and this website you are reading.

So of course, this made me debate why I have a website altogether. It used to be for showcasing my projects and my web based offerings but I left that side of my career behind eons ago. These days I have moved more to the planning/strategy side of the street and so therefore, by design I guess, my website needs are best quantified by what I have to say. Sigh…so THEN, I read through a lot of my posts to investigate if I felt I had something interesting to say. I determined that though I am not providing expert analysis or other kinds of genius through this website I AM having fun and so therefore, WORDPRESS IT IS!

Going forward I plan to be more active in using it too.

Back in action

Greg — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:51:00 +0000

I’ve got my Word Press instance working again, to a point…but man was that odd and frustrating.

Have to find my images database but will get that done shortly. Oy vey.

WordPress Rant

Greg — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:26:14 +0000

You know, as much as I love WP (and I do) I can’t understand how code goes rogue out of nowhere.

My Lightbox plugin is barfing on my pages adding gobbledygook code on live pages and I have 0 time until later to fix it.

What’s up with you WP?

Poor Jessica

Greg — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:49:39 +0000

I’m sorry but this makes me burst out laughing.

From ABC News:

A bizarre 38-minute set by opening act Jessica Simpson inadvertently stole the spotlight from headliner Rascal Flatts in a show at the Van Andel Arena. The Grand Rapids Press said Simpson forgot her lyrics, struggled with her ear monitors, mumbled through songs and fought back tears during Thursday night’s performance.

At one point, the 28-year-old singer-actress asked her backing band to start over on one song, and she forgot the words to another.

“Jessica had an off night,” Cindi Berger, a representative for Simpson, said Friday. “She’s a perfectionist, and wanted to start some of the songs over. She always wants to give her best performance to her fans.”

Simpson apologized to the supportive audience of about 9,000 by mouthing the word “sorry” on two large video screens.

While introducing her last song, Simpson said she sometimes feels like quitting. She appeared to be wiping away tears after finishing the song and walking off the stage.