Giza aka Douglas Muth's LiveJournal

I've been kinda quiet here for the last month or so, and that's because, after my workplace got a visit from the FBI(!!) a few months back, I decided that was a sign it was time to move on. I had been there for 5 years (an eternity for a software engineer) and really felt like I was outgrowing the position. I wanted to move up in my career and into a position with more responsibility. So I spent a few weeks in November quietly doing job interviews, eventually found an employer that was a good fit, received an offer, and started work for them 2 weeks ago.

The new position has me working as the senior most engineer with a startup in Center City Philadelphia. In addition to actual programming, I also play the part of the sysadmin and get to be a one-man NOC. It's a big step up in responsibility, and with the corresponding pay raise I got at the new job, it's like a promotion of sorts. The company is still small, and only a month old, so I also have the chance to build something really cool as the company grows. It's the kind of challenge that attracted me to computer programming in the first place.

Yes, they're a Drupal shop, why do you ask? :-) Seriously, Drupal is a big piece of software, and I've learned even more about it in the last 2 weeks. This in turn means I do more neat things with the Drupal sites that I run. Everybody wins!

In health-related news, I finally got over to the Rothman Institute (which is like the Anthrocon of sports medicine) and got a diagnosis on my knee issues. And the diagnosis is: patellar tendinopathy, also known as chronic tendinitis. Here's my MRI:



It turns out that this wasn't brought on by exercise, but rather because the length of my patellar tendons are a few millimeters shorter than is normal. This predisposes me to issues with that tendon, and normally affects people when they get to be around my age. The rest of the knees are "perfectly healthy" according to my knee doctor, and this particular injury is treated with physical therapy. This would be different from the physical therapy I had in the spring, in terms of what muscles are exercised.

I asked the doctor if chondromalacia had anything to do with this. He explained to me that my problems were never chondromalacia. The previous issues I had were just warning signs of this. So I see more physical therapy in my future, and hopefully I can get the knees back to normal.

So, I'm 5 weeks into wearing my custom foot orthotics, and while I wish I could say I'm feeling 100% awesome, unfortunately I'm not. My knees are doing great, but my feet? Not so much. Walking around is pain free, but here's the rub: when I sit down, the pain starts. I'm not sure why that is, but taking off my shoes seems to help.

Also, I tried walking for about 20-25 minutes during lunch the last 2 days, and while my feet felt okay during the day, my symptoms picked up in the evenings. But only when seated at my desk. If I put on my shoes, walk around and do some chores, etc., the pain pretty much goes away. But when I sit down, it comes back. It starts with feeling my pulse in my feet, and slowly escalates to a burning sensation in both feet. I just don't understand it. As I type this, I keep having to move my feet around every couple of minutes, so I don't feel pain in whatever part has contact with the ground.

I see my pawdiatrist again next week, and we'll see what he has to say.

At least other aspects of my health seem to be okay. I weighed myself the other week, and I'm down to 170 pounds. (I'm 5 foot 10 inches in height) I'm doing my knee exercises every night and my core and lower body appears to be in pretty good shape. Mentally, I had an epiphany of sorts the other night, and was a huge relief to figure out. (and it helped my dreams/nightmares)

On Saturday, my mother stopped by, and she brought a present--a throw rug for my dining room:



That rug really tied the room together, let me tell you.

On Sunday night, desteredra, dragonof31102, and orionvw stopped by and we had dinner. 3 women in my apartment at the same time? I think that's a record.

Since I'm not feeling better, I don't think I'll be doing that road trip in October. :-/ Well, between that, and the fact that I'll be out of town during 3 weekends that month.

And now, a Star Wars propaganda poster:



More Star Wars propaganda posters can be found here.

I got some of the mental/stress issues that came up in July squared away. The bad news is that I'm single, but the good news is that my relationship status is no longer in a state of flux, which is where it had been for the past few months. I value stability, and having my situation be in said state of uncertainty for some months was starting to take its toll on me. I still have remaining unresolved issues on my plate, but they are about a different situation entirely and there is little I can do about them right now.

On the physical end of things, I got casted for my orthotic inserts last Thursday. Despite there being high tech methods for measuring feet for orthotics, my pawdiatrist explained to me that in this case, the simple methods are the best methods. The orthotics are expected to arrive in another week or two. In the meantime, I adjusted the inserts in my shoes, and started lacing them much looser, and have seen lots of improvement on the pain levels. That makes things much more bearable than before. Things for my physical health will probably continue in this holding pattern until I get my orthotics, at which point they should start to improve. Hopefully that will also take care of my knee issues and I can make a return to the gym.

Over the weekend I bought The Orange Box, and have been playing Half Life 2 in my spare time. For the first time ever, an FPS caused me to suffer from motion sickness. It turned out that the fix was to adjust the view angle from 75 degrees to 90 degrees. That fixed the problems I was having. Also, I'm on Steam as DmuthAtHome.

I also installed the Ubercart Drupal module on my development sever over the weekend and was very very impressed with what they had to offer.

I signed up for an account on InkBunny awhile back, and seeing as I like the interface there, have been visiting that site regularly: http://inkbunny.net/Giza Their feature of having account preferences that can filter out specific tags is a Big Win, because it means I can completely avoid tags which do not interest me, and therefore save time browsing the site. It integrates nicely with their search feature as well. It looks like they're past 10,000 submissions, and the site has scaled pretty well so far.

I also just signed up for Tumblr. Anyone else on there? My account there is: http://dmuth.tumblr.com/ I like what I see of the service so far, in that it's like Twitter but with more "depth" (no silly 140 character limit), and like Facebook but without being quite as "busy" interface-wise. They still need to work on their social integration, though. I can't seem to find any sort of a "friends page" on there.

I've found that I've been drinking a lot less over these last few months. For whatever reasons, my brain no longer associates alcohol consumption with "having a good time". The tolerance that I used to have? Gone. All it takes is 2 beers, and I'm starting to feel happy and buzzed. Meanwhile, my collection of scotch and rum sits lonely and neglected in my liquor cabinet.

Due to better eating habits, and keeping off the weight I lost, I'm down 1-2 shirt sizes. At the beginning of the year I wore Large and Extra Large shirts. Now I'm wearing Medium and Large. I've bought a few smaller shirts to see how the smaller sizes work out, but need to make sure that I'm not going to outgrow them when I eventually get back to the gym after recovering from my current health issues.

Just got back from the pawdiatrist's office about my feet, which began hurting quite bad at this year's Anthrocon and have continued to hurt since, laying me up for the last couple of weekends.

The good news: it's not neuropathy.

The bad news: it's my mom's fault.

Okay, maybe I should work my way back from that statement.

My pawdiatrist examined my x-rays and then my feet, and seemed impressed at the brain dumps I put together for him on my knee and feet issues over the past 3 months. He then went on to explain the big picture, starting with my hips. They're a little wider than they should be for someone my size, which means my knees aren't perfectly straight. This accounted for my knee issues (though the excessive cycling surely did not help, either!). From there, he pointed out that my feet also have high arches, which means that an abnormal amount of weight is being placed on the outside of the feet (where it hurts the most) as well as the balls of the feet and the heels. Age didn't help, either. My body was just too old to take the stress that I put on it at every Anthrocon, hence the problems happening this particular year.

So why are my hips abnormal in the first place? It has to do with how I grew in my mother's womb. Since I am a first born child, that means that the muscles in her uterus were tighter and caused my body to be a slightly different position as she carried me. Hence the bones of my hips forming differently.

And how to fix this? Fixing my hips (...how?) is right out, so the next best thing we can do is get orthotics to align my feet properly. That in turn will take some of the stress off of them as well as my knees. From there, it will be some months for my muscles in my knees and feet to fully adjust, since I have to undo about 33 years of mis-alignment first. (there may be more physical therapy involved) I have an appointment to get fitted for them next week, and they'll be delivered 2-3 weeks after that. They normally last a year for people who run marathons, and 3-5 years for the rest of us mortals.

As far as ongoing treatment, the doc said that foot baths and capzasin really won't do much, nor does the Piroxicam. The inserts I currently have don't hurt, but they won't completely help, either. Orthotics are pretty much the only option.

The big downside (aside from the pain) is that insurance plans generally don't cover orthotics, which means $500 out of pocket for me. But... I guess that's what my emergency fund is for. So that brings it down to a mere inconvenience.

Until I get this under control, I don't think I'll be doing much long distance travel, or even short distance travel. ConFluence (this weekend!) is right out, and so is IndyFurCon, I'm afraid, since the first one involves a 5 hour drive and the second involves stomping through a couple of airports. :-/ I'm hopeful I'm feeling better by FurFright and MFF, but we'll see. (I can still make it to DC this weekend, since that involves Amtrak, and mostly hanging out at davinwarter's place, as opposed to walking around a convention.)

I got plans the next couple of weekends, but I think in general if folks want to come visit on weekend (or give me a lift to local social events on weekends), I won't say no. I think the social interaction would be good for me anyway, and I can grace folks with my charming wit and witty intellect. (complete and total lies, BTW)

Oh, and being old sucks. :-P

My mental state have improved a bit since last weekend's "Diet Emo Post". One thing that still bothers me are the dreams I am having that involve a specific individual. I didn't ask for these dreams, and I don't want them. I'd really like to stop having them. Anyway...

Onto some other issues I talked about, one was my concern that part of me feels like an asshole. It was pointed out to me that what it really comes down to is impulse control. And if I had a real impulse control problem in my life, I'd have become intimately familiar with the legal system by now. Obviously that has not happened.

Social contact is something else I need to work on. I guess I need to get out more and interact with other people, be they furry or non-furry. That's easier said than done, though, because of transportation to the suburbs, and some interpersonal issues (see the part about me being a bit of an asshole). Not having a car also makes seeing people difficult, which leads me to...

Should I buy a car? Part of the reason why I sold my car is that it's just not practical to own one since I work in the city and take the train to get to work. The rest of my town is fairly walkable, and I have AVIS and ZipCar in case I need wheels for awhile. But being carless makes it difficult to just get up leave on any given weekend. That said, I'm having difficulty convincing myself to buy a car that I'm not going to use 90% of the time. While it'd cost less to operate the car (gas, maintenance), insurance costs would still be the same.

Earlier in the week, I did a health assessment at work. Here are my stats:

Blood pressure: 114/74
Resting heart rate: 69 BPM
Weight: 174 pounds

That's not too bad, considering my injuries have kept me out of the gym for 4 months and I started the year weighing 197. Right now, I wear XL t-shirts, and they're feeling a bit baggy on me. I'm debating going down a size to buying t-shirts that are size Large, but it would mean replacing quite a bit of my wardrobe. If only I knew some gay men who had fashion sense...

On the technical side of things, I played around with a Drupal module called RPX, which allows you to integrate Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and just about any other OpenID-based login with a Drupal site. I went ahead and deployed the module on the Save Ardmore Coalition site, as well as the Pennsylvania Furries site.

I also went and set up OpenID delegation using my own website: http://www.dmuth.org/openid. But then I found http://drupal.org/node/214788, so I think I'm going to look into implementing that at some point.

And now, Sarah Palin and The Rape Kits (no, it's not a band):

Today was still pretty rough on my feet, so I saw the doctor. I was literally able to walk over after making the phone call, and was the only patient there. The doctor took one look at my feet and said, "you did everything you could, go see a pawdiatrist". So off I went to get an X-Ray, and called the pawdiatrist's office earlier today. Waiting for them to call me back now.

I got a CD with the images on them, and discovered they were in some new format, known as DCM files. Basically, high resolution bitmaps with patient data encoded in them. I finally found a free command line utility called NConvert that would turn them into PNGs. Then I uploaded them to Flickr:





Later, on the way home, I got caught by a nasty rain storm and stranded at the train station for about 15 minutes while waiting for the sky to clear. I got these pictures:



Those X-Rays are now on my iPod Touch for when I visit the doctor. :-)

Finally, delphanaeous and orionvw stopped by for a bit. The original plan was to do dinner and then watch a movie. It sorta degenerated into us whipping out our laptops and inflicting YouTube videos on each other. Still, we had fun.

I think my mental state is starting to get back to normal, but I'm still having trouble sleeping, and have dreams I don't want when I do. Not sure what I can do about that. It'd be much nicer if I didn't have any dreams at all, really.

Summary of Today

I'm not feeling quite as bad off as I did yesterday, but today was no walk in the park, either.

The issues in my feet that started at Anthrocon flared up again on Thursday night, and still persisted today. Basically, I felt like both of my feet are on fire. That's a very unpleasant sensation, and walking is right out.

So I spent most of today either doing random stuff on the computer or laying on the sofa watching TV. At least I got to watch Tales From The Hood. I didn't leave the apartment, and I didn't eat much. Just haven't felt hungry. :-/

Since this is the second flareup since Anthrocon, I think I'm going to call the doctor first thing Monday morning. But I'm not very optimistic, since burning sensations are generally due to nerve issues, which means a very long recovery time. :-(

I'd be lying if I said these health issues aren't contributing to the funk I'm in, too. First my knees have issues, and then as I start to feel better, my feet have god-knows-what wrong with them. What did I do to myself? :-P

Thanks to those of you who contacted me privately. I got a couple of useful insights from that.

On an unrelated note, unlike the iPhone 4, the HTC Evo prints money:

And by that, I mean I got Comcast Internet over the weekend. (FIOS isn't available here) I'm seeing about 14 Megabits down and somewhere around 5 Megabits up.

Don't get nervous, folks. After I cancel DCANet ($55/mo for 1.5 Mbps down just isn't worth it anymore) I'm going to get Basic DSL from Verizon for about $17.95/mo to use as hot backup. It'll be nice to have two different wireless networks running here so I can just switch if Comcast starts acting up.

Along with the Comcast Internet service, I also broke down and got basic cable TV, for the first time in about 8 years. It's nice to be able to channel surf through 2 digits worth of channels and not worry about static or a complete lack of signal.

I then spent the rest of the weekend doing cable management of all the computer cables at my place. I actually ran out of wire ties on Sunday afternoon and ran over to radio shack to get more. I'm afraid I didn't get any before/after photos, but take my word for it, the area behind and under my desk is much less cluttered than it was before. :-)

On Sunday night, omnibahumut and I met xshengx and two of her friends at a local Chinese restaurant for some cheap food.

And that was one of my most stress-free weekends in awhile.

This was the first weekend I spent at home in uh, awhile!

I took things pretty easy and mostly caught up on tasks I had been meaning to do in for some time:

- Got caught up on laundry

- Began packing for FurFright

- Did a final back up of, and then decommissioned an old server

- Did some fine tuning on Anthrocon's registration system. (Wanna help test it out and register early? Email/IM me!)

- Weighed myself at the gym and saw that my weight is down to 180 pounds. That's a low since I started keeping track 6 months ago.

- Watched a cheesy foreign movie:


Earlier this morning I went to visit my physician ("Dr. K") to discuss some outstanding medical issues I've been having. Nothing serious, but I've procrastinated long enough in having them treated, and I figured it was time I fixed that. So, I'm hopeful that things will improve over the next couple of months. (Not that they're bad now or anything!)

As mentioned above, my next con is FurFright which is this weekend! I hope I'll see folks there!