PolarLava::Blog

So as you've likely seem over the past several weeks, I had been using Twitter quite a bit since signing up.  And one of the things I did in conjunction with that was write a little script to archive my Twittering to my blog.  Unfortunately, that's all that has been on my blog of late.  I've been rather busy with work, home and riding my bike like crazy.  Thus I've not been spending much time blogging.  What time I've had has been spent working on fixing various things as well as a recent and fairly urgent bug fix for MyClient.

So now what?  Well, I'm going to try to get back to the blogging a bit.  Honestly though, with the weather being wonderful right now, I prefer to spend as much time outside as I can.  But to alleviate Twitter from killing my blog any further, I've rewritten the archive script such that it will now (hopefully) archive things a week at a time.  And if still is too much, I'll back it off to a month.  And if at that point I still don't like the percentage of Twitter posts, I'll likely kill it.

So late yesterday I came across Twitteresce, a Java app for your phone that allows you to access Twitter.  It's simple, it's easy and it seems to work.  In a quick test yesterday I was able to access the Twitter Public Timeline, my feed as well as post a quick message.  All of this is via HTTP and not SMS so there are no messaging charges…which works for me as I have a data package on my phone, but it doesn't include SMS message.  Not sure how SMS is not "data" other than it's just a way for them to charge you $0.15 per message.  Scam anyone?  But that's an entirely different story and not the point of this post…

Anyhow, this now gives me a viable option to use Twitter via my phone that previously I didn't have.  Will I use it?  Time will tell.  I've continued to us it from my PC, but in the past week my posts have declined in frequency although there are other factor involved also.  One other thing that I have done though is to modify my CycleLog so that it posts ride synapses to Twitter when I add a new ride. Yeah, rah!  ;)

So are you Twittering?  And if so, why haven't you friended me yet?

Once again our government has saved us from dangerous, drug addled Canadians!  Living only minutes from the border this comes as a great relieve to me.  I spend many a night lying awake worrying that my government could allow such miscreants to wander our holier than thou streets.  After all, this guy obviously is a major risk to our security.  And do you realize he's been in our country many times before?  gasp  Good thing they caught him before he could come in again and do something terrible like hug his grandchildren who live here.  Actually, maybe we should deport them as well.  We should all be relieved that this villain was stopped in time.  After all, we must "think of the children"!

Congratulations America, we are now only mere steps away from completing our wondrous totalitarian utopia.  Now we must spread "the faith" and convert the other "evil-doers" in places like Iran.  Shouldn't be that big of deal being we are in the neighborhood and just finishing up the job in Iraq in fine fashion.

It's been about a couple of weeks now that I signed up for a Twitter account.  And only this morning was the first time I posted to it.  If you're plugged into Tech to any great degree you quite likely have already heard about Twitter.  It's the hottest new thing on the web these days.  It's another of those cases like Facebook or the god awful MySpace.  Something that has come out of nowhere and is destined to make somebody a shit load cash when they get bought up.  In short, just another example that make you go "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"

So for me it's more of a matter of whether it's something that I can utilize to complement my blog.  After all, Twitter really is simply a micro-blog that allows you to spit out random thoughts quickly.  And you can do so via SMS (not that I would even if it didn't cost $0.15 a pop), a web interface and theoretically IM…although to this point I've been unable to get that to work.  But if I do that might make this workable for me as I spend a lot of time conversing via IM/IRC throughout the day.  Thus it would be a natural and easy extension to my daily routine -easier that the web interface which is currently my only realistic option.

So how do I then make this fit into my blogging existence?  Well, if you really want to follow me around in pseudo-real-time, then you can do so by getting your own Twitter account and making me a friend or simply be a "follower".  I know I can get an RSS feed with mine and my "friends" posts, but I don't currently see an option where you can get a feed of just a specific user.  I find it hard to believe that's not possible.  (I'm a big dummy, my RSS feed is right there on my public page!)  More research required on that one obviously.  But in any case, I can see where this might be somewhat addictive, but also could potentially complement my blog which I consider to be my information clearinghouse.  Thus I would do some sort of integration there.  There is a Twitter widget available that can display the current post, but I'm thinking of something beyond that…

At this point, if I find I am going to use this to complement my blogging it needs to integrate better for those who only casually follow my blog.  (Yes all 3 of you! ;)  So my initial though on that would be to write a custom extension that would snag my posts to Twitter for the day (if there were any) and then create a "Twitter Archive" post for the day here on the blog.  Doing something like this would then allow me to use Twitter to spew random thoughts throughout the day and then collect them here.  

More crazy thoughts, more things to dilute my working on existing projects…  :)

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't been posing much lately.  It's certainly not for a lack of wanting too.  Even when I am posting often I come across things I would like to comment on, but simply don't have the time to do so.  I may have an answer to that, but I'll cover that possibility in a separate post as that's not really what this post is about…

I've become rather busy with work again which in turn tends to cut into my personal life and time.  This tends to also lead to a bit of computer burnout so I generally feel less inclined to work on my personal projects.  Thus why Yapter hasn't seen much activity of late; that and I ran into a problem that was stumping me.  So as a diversion I managed to package up my weather project and get it released as I had been planning on for quite some time.  So in the end I guess that's sort of a lose/win situation as at least something worthwhile got done.

My family life has also required a good deal of attention in the past couple of months.  My wife, Mary Lou began having gall bladder attacks about two months ago and it's been a pretty rough go of it for her.  Fortunately they successfully removed it about a week ago and she's well on her way to regaining a sense of normalcy in her life.

Me on the other hand, I've begun to have some medical issues of my own.  I've been going to switch my primary physician for some time, but you know how it goes…you put it off and you put it off, until your wife schedules something for you and you finally go!  ;)  So a few days ago I went for a physical with my new doctor.  Happily, I'm generally in very good shape for my age.  Which is pretty much what I've always suspected because I try to eat healthy and I exercise regularly.  There's only one problem…about a month ago, one typical Sunday morning after reading the pager I got up and walked up stairs.  No biggie, except when I got there I suddenly was extremely dizzy and had to lie down.  I felt fine other than this spinning feeling I had that wouldn't go away.  After a couple of hours I was able to get up and ate a bit, but a short time later I began to get dizzy again.  I then spent the next several hours in bed, unable to do anything.  After a miserable evening I went to bed with a horrible headache and hoped that after sleeping all would be well.  Often if I'm not feeling well after sleeping I generally feel better.  The next morning the headache was gone, but I still felt uneasy and disoriented.  I went to work anyway and by mid-morning I contemplated leaving early.  But after eating lunch I was feeling better and worked the rest of the day.  I was pretty wiped out by the end of the day and turned in early.  The following morning, although tired I was feeling human at least.  So after a couple of days in a funk, life began to return to normal.  I wrote it off as "just one of those one time things".  Unfortunately that wasn't to be the case…

Since that time I've had a few minor dizziness episodes but nothing like that first day.  But this past week I've had it to varying degrees with the past two day the worse since the beginning.  So while visiting the doctor I discussed the situation with him.  The verdict is that it would seem I now have Meniere's Disease.  And based on the symptoms, I really can't argue with the diagnosis as I clearly exhibit all of these.

So now what?  Well, the negatives are that the vertigo attacks can occur at a moments notice and can literally render you unable to do anything.  This tends to create anxiety because you tend to worry when it's going to happen again and how bad will it be.  For me, thus far it hasn't been too often or severe.  If you read further on the symptoms page you can read about various case studies and how truly awful this can be.  Thus I'm hopeful that it stays relatively mild and continue to wish that it would just go away…because I don't have time for this.  So, as disabling as this can be, on the positive side it's generally manageable and appears to dissipate after a couple of years.  Most people are largely symptom free after about eight years.  Thus I guess I have a reason to look forward to my fiftieth birthday.  :)

So with this in mind, I'm trying to continue my life as normally as possible.  I can tell you at this point that even my relatively mild attacks leave me feeling disoriented for days as well as completely exhausted.  And although things have improved in the past couple of days, it seems to be a very slow recovery process as I still don't feel quite right, particularly if I make sudden movements.  What affect this is going to have on my cycling remains to be seen.  But based on the way things are progressing, it would appear that what has started off as a very good season could quickly go in the toilet if this situation gets any worse.  Vertigo and balance problems tend to make cycling, shall we say "a tad difficult".  :(

So now you know why I've been absent from my blog.  And now that I've babbled on endlessly in this oh so serious tone, let's see if we can't get back to the usual nonsense you find here.  :)