Category: health

The Care Package – by Jack Ohman

The Care Package is a short comic series that was posted to the PBS NewsHour web site last year. It was a really well-done series about the author’s father’s final years and death. I had read one part of it, and bookmarked it, but never got around to sitting down and reading the whole thing until yesterday. It’s quite touching, and reminds me of some of the stuff that happened in my own parents’ final years. (Stuff like spending so much time in the hospital that you know where all the good vending machines are. And dealing with c. diff.)

Here’s are links to all five parts:

Long-term care is a tough problem. My Dad spent a lot of time thinking about it, and weighing options, and in the end, for him, he didn’t need it; he went from home to the hospital, and died there. My Mom was another matter, though also, in the end, she didn’t really need long-term care. She went from home to assisted living, but died after only a few months there, and was in and out of the hospital that whole time. But I learned a lot about long-term care in that time, since I did a lot of legwork and research in trying to find a place that was a good fit for my Mom.

Antibiotic Resistance – NY Times

I don’t know why I read articles like this. There’s not much that I can do, personally, about antibiotic resistance. I’m not a doctor, researcher, farmer, or politician. And I really don’t need the extra stress of worrying about this stuff.

Well, I guess I can vote for folks who recognize that this is a problem and that vaccination is a good thing and doesn’t cause autism. And I can try to buy meat and dairy products that come from animals that haven’t been fed loads of antibiotics.

The best outcome is preventing infections through vaccination or public health measures so that we improve human health without increasing resistance to antibiotics.

Source: We’re Losing the Race Against Antibiotic Resistance, but There’s Also Reason for Hope – The New York Times

Happy New Year 2016

The last couple of years, I’ve been writing year-in-review/goals posts on New Year’s Day, and I’m going to continue with that this year. For reference, here are links to the 2015 and 2014 posts.

Weight & Health
This category is pretty simple, so I’ll start here. I was at 200 pounds on New Year’s Day in 2014, and 165 on 1/1/2015. Today, I’m at 150. I had set a goal at 160, and got there, then everything past that just happened very gradually. I’ve been between 150 and 155 for the last few months, and I’m comfortable with that. So, for 2016, I’m just going to try and maintain my weight, within that range. Using the Lose It app has become enough of a habit now that it would seem weird not to log all my calories and weigh myself (almost) every day, so I’m going to keep doing that.

On the fitness front, I haven’t made much progress, though I’ve kept up with my habit of doing as much walking as I can. I haven’t started doing any other kind of exercise, and any thoughts I had about that were put aside when I had my hernia surgery a few months ago. I think I’ve healed up enough now that I could consider some new exercise ideas, and I might do something about that in 2016, though I’m not sure what.

My neck and back continue to bother me a bit, and I’m still not sure what, if anything, I’m going to do about it. I will likely buy a new mattress in 2016, which should help, since my current mattress is ten years old.

Speaking of mattresses, I’ve started using Sleep Cycle on my iPhone to track my sleep. I’m still not sure if it’s really that helpful, but it’s at least a little better than my old alarm clock, so I’m going to stick with it in 2016. I used to go to bed around 11pm most nights, but I’ve gotten into the habit of going to bed at 10pm lately. I get up at 6am, so that’s giving me eight hours in bed rather than seven, which is probably a bit healthier. And I’ve started setting my alarm on weekends also, so my time in bed is a bit more consistent now, from day to day. I still have trouble sleeping on some nights, and I’m not sure why. I know that afternoon coffee drinking definitely affects me, but I can have trouble sleeping even when I’m not drinking much coffee. So I’m going to keep thinking about this, and see what else I can do to improve my sleep.

Education / Programming
I didn’t do much in this area this year. I did learn a lot about SharePoint development, for a project at work that never really came to fruition. And I spent some time learning Ruby (and Ruby On Rails). I took Michael Uslan’s Rise of Superheroes course on EdX, but didn’t take any programming courses on EdX or Coursera. And I spent some more time on F#, starting a new book, Real World Functional Programming. I haven’t looked at it in a couple of weeks, but I want to pick it back up this month and get through it. Aside from that, I’m not really sure what I want to do in 2016. My day job is still going to be mostly Dynamics AX work, and I don’t have any consulting work coming up. So I’d like to continue with F#, and Ruby, and maybe more iOS development, but I don’t have any concrete projects that I’m working on or particularly interested in right now. So that’s something to think about.

Work
I’ve been at SHI since January 2013, so I’m just coming up on my three-year anniversary. SHI does performance reviews at year-end, so I just had mine recently, and it went well. I’m reasonably content with my day job, and I’ll likely stick with it through 2016. Since I’m only doing Dynamics AX work there, though, I should really try to get involved in some other projects, outside of work. I didn’t do any of that in 2015.

GTD / organization
I did pretty good on this front in 2015. I’ve kept up on my bills and paperwork, for the most part, and have finally switched over my Merrill statements to paperless. (I blogged about this last month.) I’m got things pretty well-organized in OneDrive now, and I’ve making effective use of my Evernote account. I had started consolidating all my personal notes into Evernote back in November 2014, and I’m pretty happy with the way that’s worked out, enough so that I recently paid for another year of Evernote Premium.

Comics and Books
I donated most of my comic book collection to Superheroes for Hospice early last year, and successfully avoided buying them all back. I have been on a bit of a tear with Comixology and Humble Bundle sales recently, but that’s all digital so none of that stuff is cluttering up the apartment the way 25 long boxes of comics did.

For reading, I’d set myself a goal of 50 books in the Goodreads reading challenge for 2015. I came in at 96, so that’s good, but many of those were comic book TPBs, so it’s not as impressive a number as it could be. In fact, I see that the last prose novel I finished was a Dresden Files paperback, in August. So I should probably start reading a new novel soon, just so I don’t forget how to read the darn things. I’ve done a fair bit of non-fiction reading this year too, long form (but not book-length), mostly New Yorker articles that I read either in the printed magazine or that I’d saved in Instapaper. (I kind of wish that Instapaper had a statistics page I could look at to see what I’ve read recently, but if they do, they’ve hidden it well.) And hey, this article on good news from 2015 looks like one I should save and read!

Life-logging, journaling, and blogging
I’m not sure if I’m using the right terms here, but I’ve definitely been doing more and more of this “quantified self” stuff over the last few years. And also more of the “qualitative” stuff via blogging and journaling. It looks like I wrote a little over 100 posts on this blog in 2015. That’s a pretty respectable number, and some of them took a bit of work and thought to put together. Overall, I think blogging has helped me work through problems, set goals, and keep track of them. (And I occasionally write a post that might actually be useful to someone else, though not as often as I’d like.)

Via my iPhone, I’m now tracking everything I eat, my weight, my sleep, and my daily step count, and I’m actually paying attention to all of those things. I’m not sure how much good it’s doing me, except in the weight loss area, where it has definitely made a huge difference over the last few years. So I’m going to keep doing all that in 2016.

In addition to this blog, I’ve also been keeping a five-year journal for the last nine years. (I’m just starting the last year on the second book.) It’s somewhat useful, but there’s not much room to write anything beyond a few lines, and of course it’s old-fashioned paper, so it’s not searchable. I’ll keep up with it this year, but I’m not sure if I’ll start a new one next year.

I bought Day One for iOS about a year ago, when it was on sale for a buck, but didn’t really start using it. I bought the Mac app last month, when it was on sale for $7, and I want to start using it this year, to supplement the stuff that I post publicly on this blog, and the stuff that I scribble in my five-year journal. If using it becomes a habit, I’ll probably drop the five-year journal in 2017. The guys from The Sweet Setup wrote an ebook on Day One that looks interesting. I may pick that up, and see if it gives me any good ideas.

Hardware and Software
I didn’t do too much with major hardware or software purchases in 2015. I didn’t buy a new desktop or laptop computer. I didn’t buy a new iPhone or iPad. I did buy a $35 Kindle Fire, but that’s a pretty minor purchase. My biggest purchase of the year would be the TiVo Bolt, which is working well for me. I replaced a hard drive cable in my MacBook and the speaker in my iPhone, so I could squeeze a bit more life out of those.

I think there’s a good chance I’ll buy an iPhone 6c in 2016, if such a thing is actually released. My iPhone 5s is working fine, except that the battery is clearly on its last legs, so I’m going to need to replace either the battery or the phone before 2016 is over.

I’m almost definitely going to buy a new desktop computer soon. My current machine was purchased in 2010, so it’s about time for a new one. I’d rather just upgrade some parts in it, but it’s old enough that it’s not going to be able to run Windows 10 without replacing the motherboard, and I don’t want to do that. (And I’m not even sure if I can, and don’t want to waste a lot of time trying to figure that out.)

For software, I’m going to keep up my Office 365 subscription. Even though I’m not doing much with Office itself, the subscription is worth it for the OneDrive space. And I’ll keep using a lot of the applications I’ve been using, like Evernote and 1Password.

Summary
Well, this has turned into a long post, much like last year’s one. I started writing this around 10am, and it’s now 11:45, so I should really wrap this up and start thinking about lunch. It’s nice to have nothing important to do on New Year’s Day. It’s been quiet outside on Main Street all morning, and pretty quiet here in my apartment building. I’d like to go out for a walk, but it’s a bit cold out there today. Maybe after lunch it’ll be warm enough for a quick walk around the block.

Sleep

I’ve decided recently to try to work on my sleep. It sounds weird saying that. Sleep doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can “work on.” I have trouble sleeping occasionally, and I know there are some things I can improve. I’ve read a lot about good sleep habits, and the best things you can do to help get a good night’s sleep. And I’ve already done some of them. I use f.lux on my Mac (and my PCs) to tone down the color on my screen before bedtime. I try to limit my caffeine intake in the afternoon and evening. And I generally go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am, so I’m in bed for a full eight hours. (Though I’m not always perfect about that. Or the caffeine thing…)

I decided this weekend to make one more change: I started to use an alarm clock app called Sleep Cycle that (supposedly) tracks your sleep so that it can wake you up while you’re in a light sleep phase. I have to admit that I’m a little skeptical about how accurately it can track my sleep; it uses the microphone to pick up the noises you make in bed, and tries to figure out your sleep cycle based on just that. So I’m not sure if it’s really doing anything useful or not. But I’m going to give it a try for a week or two at least. The basic version is free, so there’s no real down side. (Unless it turns out to be buggy, and just doesn’t wake me up at all, and I miss work.) Their FAQ says that it takes a few days to calibrate itself, so we’ll see how it goes.

On another front, I’m starting to think about buying a new mattress. My current mattress is about ten years old, so it’s time. I did a little online mattress shopping this weekend, though, and came away more confused than anything else. There are a lot of options and a lot of opinions out there. I may give up and just go back to Sleepy’s, where I got my last mattress, show them the receipt for it, ask for something similar, and hope for the best.

Black Friday: Fixing Things

I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself today. I had a nice Thanksgiving yesterday at my friend’s house. And I have today off from work. And I’m mostly healed up from my surgery last month. So I considered going into NYC to check out the Jackson Pollock exhibit at MoMA.

But I decided this morning that maybe I should see about getting the speaker on my iPhone fixed. There’s a local store called Batteries + Bulbs that, I recently discovered, does iPhone repair. I don’t know much about them, but they appear to be reputable, so I thought I’d give them a shot. Alas, the repair guy had the day off, so I’ll have to come back tomorrow. But I walked there and back, so I got some exercise at least.

I read an interesting article on Vice this week about iFixit, and about computer repair in general, called How to Fix Everything. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately, since all of the trouble I had with my MacBook recently, and since I’ve been on the fence about geting a new iPhone vs. repairing the old one.

I almost managed to replace the hard drive cable on my MacBook, but had to give up and let someone else do it. But, if not for those two pesky screws, I would have been able to do it, no problem. For the iPhone, I did check out iFixit’s page on speaker replacement. It looks a little too complicated for me to handle on my own, especially if I can get someone else to do it for a reasonable price. But I appreciate, in general, the idea of repairing existing hardware, and keeping it useful for as long as possible. It does seem like Apple, and other manufacturers, and going out of their way to make end-user and third-party repair and upgrades as difficult as possible. But Apple gear is still a good choice, since it’s so populat that you can always find instructions and parts via sites like iFixit.

I’ve managed to avoid blowing any serious money on Black Friday sales, so far, but I have spent a few bucks here and there. I ordered one of the 7″ Kindle Fire tablets that are currently on sale for $35. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it, but for $35, I’ll find something semi-useful. And I bought Commander One Pro from the Mac App Store for 99 cents. I’ve been using the free version, since I got my MacBook set up again, and I like it. I had needed to find something to replace Total Finder, which doesn’t really work with El Capitan, and Commander One seems to fit the bill.

It’s really nice out today, so, in addition to the walk to Batteries + Bulbs earlier, I also walked to Bridgewater Commons and back. I didn’t buy anything while I was there, but I wandered around and looked at what was on sale. I didn’t see anything I really needed, nor did I see anything I really wanted to buy for anyone else. (I really don’t need to buy many Christmas presents these days anyway.) But all this walking put me over the 7500 step threshold for the first time since the hernia issue arose. So I feel pretty good about that. And I now feel like I can spend the rest of day binge-watching Jessica Jones, if I want to, and not feel guilty about it.

replacing a MacBook hard drive cable

So it’s Sunday morning now, and Monday will be one week since my surgery. I’m feeling good enough now to do some walking outside, back and forth to the bank or grocery store, but I get tired a lot quicker than normal. And I’m starting to feel like I can pick up on some projects, like trying to get my MacBook working again.

I’ve figured out, through trial and error, that I most likely have a bad hard drive cable. I’m going to try replacing it, using these instructions from iFixit, and see if that works. I ordered the cable (and a couple of tools) from iFixit today, so I’ll likely have them by the end of the week, and try to do the replacement next weekend.

Just for laughs, I called Apple and verified that they won’t touch my MacBook, since I replaced the stock HD with an SSD, thereby violating the sanctity of their precious hardware. If that wasn’t the case, I’d be really tempted to take it to the Apple Store and let them take care of it, even if it would cost a lot more than doing it myself. And if I had enough energy to take the train into NYC, I’d probably take it to Tekserve, and let them do it,  but I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle NYC any time real soon. So I’m going to hope I have enough manual dexterity to remove and replace the cable myself.

My MacBook is about two years old, and I’m hoping to get another couple of years out of it, so here’s hoping this works!

recuperating

I had surgery to repair my hernia on Monday. It went well, I guess, all things considered. I’ve taken the week off from work to recuperate. It’s Friday now, and I’m feeling a lot better, though I know I’m not nearly done healing. I walked over to the grocery store yesterday and got a few things. (This is one of those times when I’m really grateful that I have a ShopRite that’s only about a block away.) But I’m definitely not ready for any long walks.

I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to do next week. I have a follow-up visit with the surgeon on Tuesday, so hopefully he can give me an idea of how I’m progressing, and let me know if it’s OK to go back to work. I may just see if I can work from home next week. (And, again, this is one of those times when I’m grateful that I do the kind of work that can be done remotely.)

another busy week

My company’s upgrade to Dynamics AX 2012 R3 over the past weekend went well, all things considered. We’ve been having lingering problems all week, but we expected that we would, and we were prepared for it.

My hernia surgery is still scheduled for Monday, so I’ll be out all next week. I still have some open issues at work that I’ll have to close out or hand off to someone else today, but I’m sure they’ll get along fine without me.

Meanwhile, my warranty replacement SSD arrived from Samsung yesterday, so I can spend some time this weekend rebuilding my MacBook, hopefully. I have a tentative plan for doing a clean El Capitan install on the new drive, and then migrating my user data over from my old backup drive, but I’m not sure if it’ll work or not. Either way, I should have plenty of time to work on it next week.

A busy week

It’s been a busy week, starting with my follow-up visit to my doctor, where I found out I have a hernia. So a lot of my energy this week has been spent just thinking about that and planning for the surgery that I’m likely going to need.

And, at work, we’re in the last stretch of our upgrade from Dynamics AX 2012 RTM to R3. This is a really big update for us, as we have a lot of custom code, so there was a lot of work to do. The final upgrade is scheduled for this weekend, so I’ll have to work on Sunday. And the first week after the upgrade is liable to be a doozy, as various stuff we didn’t catch in testing shakes out.

Meanwhile, the RMA process for my MacBook’s SSD is plodding along. I got the RMA # and the UPS return label this week. I need to print out the label and package up the drive this weekend. I’ve been without my MacBook this week. and have been using my ThinkPad a lot, which is actually a pretty good experience, except that I keep wanting to use Emacs key bindings for a few things, like Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E for beginning of line and end of line. As soon as I get used to using ‘home’ and ‘end’, I’ll probably get the MacBook back up and running, and I’ll have to re-learn the Emacs key bindings.

And I’ve got my TiVo Bolt set up now. I dropped by the cable company office after work yesterday and picked up a CableCARD. I got it installed easy enough, but it took two calls to Optimum support to get it working. I think that “support tech roulette” gave me a clueless rep on the first go-round, and a more experienced one on the second. But both reps were polite and patient. Then it took me a couple of hours to set up the channels and my recordings. I’ve discovered that the channel line-up is a little different when you’re using a CableCARD than when you’re using a box. So I’m going to have to get used to some new channel numbers. The recordings seem to be working out OK too. I’ve got last night’s Daily Show, Nightly Show, and Late Show all on there, ready to watch. But I’ve also just figured out that I needed to re-run the guided setup to get the TiVo to fully recognize the channels that didn’t show up the first time around. Hopefully, that’s the last thing I’ll have to do, and it’ll be nice and stable now, with all the right channels and a fully-populated guide.

hard drives and health

I’m trying to get myself back on a “normal” diet today, after my clear liquid diet over the weekend. I’m not sure it helped anything, but I assume my doctor knows what he’s doing. It turns out that not eating any food for 72 hours really takes a lot out of you. I went into work this morning, but gave up on it and went home around noon. I’ve since had a sandwich and a nap, and I think I’m feeling a bit better.

Meanwhile, I called Samsung to see about replacing my failed SSD drive, under their warranty. My first call to them was a failure, as the rep said he’d email a form to me, but didn’t. The second call got me as far as getting the form, which I filled out and emailed back. So now let’s see if the support rep does anything with it. What he should do is issue an RMA # and send me a prepaid UPS label. I’m not sure how long their RMA process will take, overall. I’ve been trying to decide if I should put the original drive back in the MacBook and use it until I get the replacement. If I had more energy right now, I’d probably do that, but a second nap is sounding pretty good.