My Post-Op Playlist

If you're interested in the playlist I built to keep me positive, you can check that out from my last.fm journal.

Under the Knife

June went by without a single blog post. I would say I haven't had the time, but as the people who follow me on Twitter can attest, that isn't true.

The largest reason is I have had back issues, alluded to previously on this blog. I finally decided to get that checked out after it flared up again in early June.

A rather unpleasant procedure called an electromyography (EMG) and a new MRI confirmed I have three, not one, herniated discs. My first consult with a neurosurgeon said I not only needed surgery, but emergency surgery.

I had a second opinion with the Stanford Orthopaedic Spine Center. Yes, that Stanford - which I hate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. Seeing as how the weakness began during Cal football season and the first episode of pain hit on the day of the Big Game, this is only fitting.

Luckily, my surgeon is a Cal alum.

Anyway, I had a difficult choice to make. The first surgeon said I absolutely needed surgery to avoid permanent nerve damage. He recommended an open lumbar laminectomy. Dr. Ivan Cheng at Stanford recommended a microscope surgery, called a microdecompression/microdiscectomy.

The two surgeries are basically the same - cut away a piece of the lamina of the vertebrae to relive pressure, then temporary move the nerve out of the way to cut off the disc herniations. The open surgery meant a much longer recovery, but the micro surgery presents a higher risk of recurrence. Both surgeries might only give me about a 50/50 chance to regain strength in my right foot.

I decided to go with the micro surgery. When the chances of full recovery are that low, I don't see the point in getting the more invasive surgery. If I re-herniate, I'm not even sure I'd go back in for a second surgery. But I figure I have to give my 30-year-old body at least a coin flip at repairing itself.

So I go under the knife in less than twelve hours. I'm not extremely nervous, but I've never had major surgery or been in a hospital, so I've been anxious about this for weeks. Luckily, if all goes well, the micro surgery is outpatient and I could be writhing in pain in my own bed by lunchtime tomorrow.

I've decided to look at this as a wake-up call. I can't just sit at a desk all day, eating junk food and staying sedentary. I really can't do that if I expect to stay away from an operating table for a second time.

These are the steps I have taken:

1. I have built a playlist of music to motivate me and keep me focused.
   
2. I bought Giants Crocs so I won't slip and kill myself.
   
3. I bought a PikStik Pro. This is my favorite new toy in months.
   
4. I bought a pedometer to track my progress and make sure I don't push too hard. I wore it today to get a baseline and took 2072 steps so far. That is pathetic. It has USB so I can be a true geek and make charts and stuff.
   

These are my goals, in descending order of importance:

1. Re-gain strength in my right leg and foot.
   
2. After six months, don't be worse off than when I started.
   
3. Make it to my cousin's wedding in three weeks. I bought a plane ticket, so I fully intend to be there.
   
4. Get down to a reasonable weight by Christmas.
   
5. Try to be able to set comfortably enough to see "The Dark Knight". This is totally beyond my control.
   
6. Watch Battlestar Galactica, season one.
   

I'm sure I will be spending a lot of time online, in between episodes of Battlestar. If you want to keep tabs on my recovery (and I don't post anything here), try the following sources:

• My Facebook profile
  
• Follow me on Twitter
  
• FriendFeed - I'm new to this, but it should aggregate all the other sources.
  

Thanks everyone for their well wishes and concerns. I don't plan on being down for long.

The fruits of my labor.

I just burned an entire afternoon and evening trying to get my home network file sharing working. Since I finally figured it out, I decided to post about what worked for me in the slight chance someone with the same problem will read this.

I have two Windows XP machines, a desktop and a laptop. They both connect to the Internet fine, and can ping each other. The problem was that the laptop could access the shares on the desktop, but the desktop could not access the shared resources on the laptop.

After many hours, I figured out the problem, at least for me. Here's the solution:

1) On each computer, click Start->Run, and enter "regedit".
2) Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters.
3) See if there is a NodeType or DhcpNodeType parameter (for more info, see this site.

In my case, the desktop didn't have either parameter (the default is 1), but the laptop had DhcpNodeType = 8. To make them match, I deleted the DhcpNodeType value on the laptop.

4) Reboot the PC that you made the changes on.

Worked like a charm for me. As we learned on LOST a couple weeks ago, destiny is a fickle bitch, and apparently so is Windows networking.

JavaOne 2008!

If you're reading this, I am hopefully already at JavaOne 2008 in San Francisco's Moscone Center, drinking some coffee and waiting comfortably for the keynote to begin.

Hopefully, I am not still asleep in San Jose. Nor am I waiting in some interminable line for my pass. Nor am I wandering the streets of San Francisco, because I was somehow unable to get into the keynote address and the Pavilion isn't open yet.

Why wonder what I'm doing when you can find out? I will be live blogging my first trip to JavaOne (after eight long years looking from the outside in) on my Twitter feed.

Playing Catch-Up

Almost two months since my last post. I suck at this.

Let's hit the high/lowlights of March and April:

• I started Twittering (Twitting? Tweeting? Damn Web 2.0 doublespeak). Well, in any case, Twitter is sort of like a mini-blog, where you can post short entries about anything, no matter how mundane. My three most recent "tweets" are in the sidebar on the right of this page, or you can sign up and "follow" me. I have been spending a lot of time on this lately, probably slowing down my blog output.
  
• In sports, out with college hoops season. Out with Ben Braun. In with Mike Montgomery. In with baseball season. Out with Giants' playoff hopes, then back in. (Same for entertainment value of 2008 Giants.) Out with Warriors' playoff hopes. In with Cal NFL prospects, out with little remaining faith in the 49ers' front office. Lastly, out with Sharks hockey.
  
• Democrats still haven't picked a player. Starting to wonder if an election seemingly ripe for the taking will go by the wayside. Hilary doing McCain's work for him. Obama unable to close the deal. Sigh.
  
• Back flare-up two weekends ago. Using leaf blower and doing actual work apparently through me all out of whack. That's all gone now but still some nerve impingement in my leg, and I think that is still causing me some weakness (although the pain is mostly gone). I am convinced the extra thirty pounds I put on after my wedding is causing all this, and I need to lose at least twenty. So all-you-can-eat ribs tonight were probably a bad idea.
  
• Layoffs on the way at Sun. What else is new? Seriously, I love working at Sun so I'm hoping that I (again) will make it through unscathed. I think they are on the right track and were just stung by the sluggish U.S. economy. I put full blame for our current stock price on the guy in the white house on Pennsylvania Ave.
  
• I have four (yes, four) fantasy baseball teams this season, including two in 20-team leagues. That is taking up far too much of my time.
  

That's all for now. See you in ...July?