Oh, and don't forget to periodically check the links to the left. If you have something you want to share, let me know and I will add it!
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Sunday, July 25, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
the kickball blues
Another kickball game last night, another loss. It wasn't a terrible loss, at 3-6. The other team just had some powerful kickers. A typical strategy is to keep them low to the ground, to prevent them from getting caught. It's unbelievably easy to get out in kickball if you kick the ball up in the air, because it's so big and slow. This team said "screw you!" to that strategy. Their guys demolished the ball almost every time, getting it up in the air into the outfield. They either got lucky, or placed them well, because they generally went in between our people so that they couldn't get caught.
At one point, a ball was kicked up and fast toward me, like a line drive. I had a pretty good chance of catching it, but it got up just high enough to be in front of the field lights. The field lights are right behind the kicker, meaning anytime the ball goes up, you are being blinded by them. So, on its trajectory toward me, I lost track of the ball and barely missed catching it as it slipped awkwardly out of my hands. Even worse, the ball drove into the knuckle of my thumb, which immediately hurt. I was fairly certain it was jammed then, and this morning I am all but positive. My thumb is swollen, and I can't really use it much because applying any pressure to the joint causes sharp pain.
This comes as bad news for several reasons. First, you really don't appreciate how much you use your opposable thumb on your dominant hand until you have to avoid using it. Since it's only jammed and not completely incapacitated, I can still use it for some things. Overall, though, I have to avoid using it. Second, jammed fingers can heal as quickly as a week, or as long as a month if you're really unlucky. Hopefully I'm lucky. Third, we have a softball game tonight which I'm not confident I can play in anymore. Gripping a bat involves placing it in between your index finger and your thumb, and that is the location of my inflamed joint. I'm pretty sure that batting would hurt. Then I thought that I could skip batting and only go out in the field. However, I realized that throwing a softball involves gripping it in your hand and also using your thumb. So I might not be able to play after all. Finally, if my thumb continues to hurt for the next week or so, that will really put a damper on my motorcycle maintenance. For obvious reasons, I'm going to need to use both my hands fully. I might just have to sit on that one for a little while longer. [Update: This just in! As if my hand-writing wasn't bad enough, it is now worse!]
There is a very slight chance that it's a fracture instead of a jammed joint, but I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, I took this as an opportunity to finally schedule a doctor's appointment. I haven't been in about 3 or 4 years, so I figured it'd be a good idea to get a checkup/physical. I'll have him take a look at my thumb, too, but I don't anticipate it being fractured, nor do I believe he'll be able to help much since it just needs time to heal.
Oh well, shit happens.
At one point, a ball was kicked up and fast toward me, like a line drive. I had a pretty good chance of catching it, but it got up just high enough to be in front of the field lights. The field lights are right behind the kicker, meaning anytime the ball goes up, you are being blinded by them. So, on its trajectory toward me, I lost track of the ball and barely missed catching it as it slipped awkwardly out of my hands. Even worse, the ball drove into the knuckle of my thumb, which immediately hurt. I was fairly certain it was jammed then, and this morning I am all but positive. My thumb is swollen, and I can't really use it much because applying any pressure to the joint causes sharp pain.
This comes as bad news for several reasons. First, you really don't appreciate how much you use your opposable thumb on your dominant hand until you have to avoid using it. Since it's only jammed and not completely incapacitated, I can still use it for some things. Overall, though, I have to avoid using it. Second, jammed fingers can heal as quickly as a week, or as long as a month if you're really unlucky. Hopefully I'm lucky. Third, we have a softball game tonight which I'm not confident I can play in anymore. Gripping a bat involves placing it in between your index finger and your thumb, and that is the location of my inflamed joint. I'm pretty sure that batting would hurt. Then I thought that I could skip batting and only go out in the field. However, I realized that throwing a softball involves gripping it in your hand and also using your thumb. So I might not be able to play after all. Finally, if my thumb continues to hurt for the next week or so, that will really put a damper on my motorcycle maintenance. For obvious reasons, I'm going to need to use both my hands fully. I might just have to sit on that one for a little while longer. [Update: This just in! As if my hand-writing wasn't bad enough, it is now worse!]
There is a very slight chance that it's a fracture instead of a jammed joint, but I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, I took this as an opportunity to finally schedule a doctor's appointment. I haven't been in about 3 or 4 years, so I figured it'd be a good idea to get a checkup/physical. I'll have him take a look at my thumb, too, but I don't anticipate it being fractured, nor do I believe he'll be able to help much since it just needs time to heal.
Oh well, shit happens.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
hurray for reading
Many, many months ago I started the book "The Hunt for Red October", a classic by Tom Clancy. I read only a small amount, and put the book down. A few weeks back I picked it up again, and tonight I finally finished it. The ending was so gripping that I had no idea that I was past my normal bedtime. Whoops!
About two years ago, I bought 3 books: Terminal Man, The Hunt for Red October, and Kiterunner. The first two were suggestions from Justin, and the latter was one from Andrea. Two years later, I have sadly only knocked off two out of the three. It's not that I don't enjoy books, I generally like all the books I've read. Instead, the problem has been that I'd rather be doing many other things, such as playing video games or bass, watching TV shows, or hanging out with people. Reading has always been so far down in my priorities that it never came up. I decided I wanted that to change, and so far I've succeeded.
Once I finish Kiterunner, I am open to your suggestions, my fellow readers. When I say I am open to your suggestions, I'm being quite literal. I don't have a favorite genre, and I will give both non-fiction and fiction an equal shot. As long as it's engaging, I don't care, but I don't know why you would recommend a book that isn't engaging. If it's not engaging then it's not a good book, right?
So post up one or two of your favorites, and I will give them a look-see. In the off chance that I've already read it, I'll let you know so you can give me another.
About two years ago, I bought 3 books: Terminal Man, The Hunt for Red October, and Kiterunner. The first two were suggestions from Justin, and the latter was one from Andrea. Two years later, I have sadly only knocked off two out of the three. It's not that I don't enjoy books, I generally like all the books I've read. Instead, the problem has been that I'd rather be doing many other things, such as playing video games or bass, watching TV shows, or hanging out with people. Reading has always been so far down in my priorities that it never came up. I decided I wanted that to change, and so far I've succeeded.
Once I finish Kiterunner, I am open to your suggestions, my fellow readers. When I say I am open to your suggestions, I'm being quite literal. I don't have a favorite genre, and I will give both non-fiction and fiction an equal shot. As long as it's engaging, I don't care, but I don't know why you would recommend a book that isn't engaging. If it's not engaging then it's not a good book, right?
So post up one or two of your favorites, and I will give them a look-see. In the off chance that I've already read it, I'll let you know so you can give me another.
Monday, July 19, 2010
first day, first aid
I'm not going to bother recapping the weekend because I'm lazy. So there! Average weekend, nothing out of the ordinary. I did some hanging, some downtowning, and some lunching. Instead, let's start with the first day of the workweek.
Today was a special day at work; I was in training all day to become first aid certified. The first half of the day was spent on medical, injury, and environmental emergencies, and knowing how to handle such situations. They're all very basic, since we're obviously not trained medical professionals. It just allows us to do something at work for the few minutes before paramedics arrive, or to look for warning signs for things such as heart attacks and strokes.
The second half of the day was centered around administering CPR and properly using AEDs. A common misconception, and one that I actually held before the course, is that CPR is used to actually bring people back into consciousness. That is incorrect, and usually CPR doesn't "resuscitate" people as the name might suggest. We were told that typically, adults whose hearts stop beating are due to underlying reasons which simply pumping won't correct - they will need hospital intervention to get their heart jump-started. Instead, CPR is used to maintain blood flow to the vital organs - the heart and brain, especially - to keep them oxygenated. By using compressions on their chest, you act as their heart and circulate their blood for them, giving them the extra minutes needed before the EMT arrives with better equipment. Ventilation (through breathing into their mouth) isn't entirely necessary these days, although it does help to provide additional oxygen, especially when CPR is being administered over several minutes. However, they recommend that if we ever have to give CPR to a stranger we don't know, to do compression-only CPR and not risk mouth-to-mouth contact. They say that giving compressions is better than not doing anything at all, which is understandable. Now, there are instances where CPR can actually bring people back around, but those cases are rare, such as children who were drowning. In a case such as that, the heart was perfectly fine and only stopped beating because of lack of oxygen. By giving CPR, you are re-establishing oxygen to the heart and it will return beating as normal.
AEDs on the other hand are used to send electrical shocks to the heart, to correct very specific heart conditions. They are almost completely automated, and are virtually dummy-proof. You turn it on, and it will tell you audibly to place the pads on their chest and to plug in the pads. Then it will analyze their heart, and determine if a shock is needed. If so, it will recommend a shock and charge itself. Once everyone is cleared, you push a button and it sends the shock. You administer CPR as normal and it will analyze and shock if necessary every 2 minutes.
CPR is intended to be given until trained professionals arrive. Since patients don't typically revive, you can be giving CPR continuously for upwards of 10-15 minutes until the paramedics are ready to take over. I was pretty tired after just 2-3 minutes of CPR. Tough stuff.
In completely unrelated news, many months ago Taylor and I completed a little mashup for fun. In case you're too lazy to click the link and read about mashups, I will briefly explain it for you. A mashup is a song that is made up of segments and snippets of a ton of different songs. Basically, we took vocals from some songs, and put it on top of music from other songs, and put them all together for about 5 minutes. In case you're interested, here it is (it's a bit soft so you might have to turn up your speakers). As a warning, you should know that there are rap songs in this mashup and thus the language is not safe for work or prudes. I think we're going to work on a new one soon.
Okay, I just hyped you up to listen to that mashup, right? Well it wasn't as easy as I was hoping to post it, so I will work on it and put it on a future entry. I didn't want to delete everything I wrote above, so instead I just teased you. I apologize.
Finally, a lot of my time the past week has been spent practicing piano and reading, neither of which I regularly do. I'm proud of myself for working on both of those. However it has come at a cost, because I haven't played much bass in the last few weeks. That's okay though, it will always be there for me when I'm ready.
Today was a special day at work; I was in training all day to become first aid certified. The first half of the day was spent on medical, injury, and environmental emergencies, and knowing how to handle such situations. They're all very basic, since we're obviously not trained medical professionals. It just allows us to do something at work for the few minutes before paramedics arrive, or to look for warning signs for things such as heart attacks and strokes.
The second half of the day was centered around administering CPR and properly using AEDs. A common misconception, and one that I actually held before the course, is that CPR is used to actually bring people back into consciousness. That is incorrect, and usually CPR doesn't "resuscitate" people as the name might suggest. We were told that typically, adults whose hearts stop beating are due to underlying reasons which simply pumping won't correct - they will need hospital intervention to get their heart jump-started. Instead, CPR is used to maintain blood flow to the vital organs - the heart and brain, especially - to keep them oxygenated. By using compressions on their chest, you act as their heart and circulate their blood for them, giving them the extra minutes needed before the EMT arrives with better equipment. Ventilation (through breathing into their mouth) isn't entirely necessary these days, although it does help to provide additional oxygen, especially when CPR is being administered over several minutes. However, they recommend that if we ever have to give CPR to a stranger we don't know, to do compression-only CPR and not risk mouth-to-mouth contact. They say that giving compressions is better than not doing anything at all, which is understandable. Now, there are instances where CPR can actually bring people back around, but those cases are rare, such as children who were drowning. In a case such as that, the heart was perfectly fine and only stopped beating because of lack of oxygen. By giving CPR, you are re-establishing oxygen to the heart and it will return beating as normal.
AEDs on the other hand are used to send electrical shocks to the heart, to correct very specific heart conditions. They are almost completely automated, and are virtually dummy-proof. You turn it on, and it will tell you audibly to place the pads on their chest and to plug in the pads. Then it will analyze their heart, and determine if a shock is needed. If so, it will recommend a shock and charge itself. Once everyone is cleared, you push a button and it sends the shock. You administer CPR as normal and it will analyze and shock if necessary every 2 minutes.
CPR is intended to be given until trained professionals arrive. Since patients don't typically revive, you can be giving CPR continuously for upwards of 10-15 minutes until the paramedics are ready to take over. I was pretty tired after just 2-3 minutes of CPR. Tough stuff.
In completely unrelated news, many months ago Taylor and I completed a little mashup for fun. In case you're too lazy to click the link and read about mashups, I will briefly explain it for you. A mashup is a song that is made up of segments and snippets of a ton of different songs. Basically, we took vocals from some songs, and put it on top of music from other songs, and put them all together for about 5 minutes. In case you're interested, here it is (it's a bit soft so you might have to turn up your speakers). As a warning, you should know that there are rap songs in this mashup and thus the language is not safe for work or prudes. I think we're going to work on a new one soon.
Okay, I just hyped you up to listen to that mashup, right? Well it wasn't as easy as I was hoping to post it, so I will work on it and put it on a future entry. I didn't want to delete everything I wrote above, so instead I just teased you. I apologize.
Finally, a lot of my time the past week has been spent practicing piano and reading, neither of which I regularly do. I'm proud of myself for working on both of those. However it has come at a cost, because I haven't played much bass in the last few weeks. That's okay though, it will always be there for me when I'm ready.
Friday, July 16, 2010
welcome to the wonderful world of friday
It's Friday!
Let's get down to business. We had a double-header for kickball on Wednesday, and unfortunately we lost both. However, they were what I consider "good" losses - 8-9 and 8-13. Both games were close right up until the end, and we played very well despite losing.
We also had a double-header for softball, but we had 45 minutes in between our two games, instead of immediately back-to-back. Our softball team's roster consists of 19 players, and yet we somehow managed to only have 8 show up for our first game. That means that we were short 2 players from the normal amount you have on the field, so we combined short stop and third base into one position, and had only 3 outfielders instead of 2. The team we played was good, but they didn't understand that the game was over when they were up 11-2, and they kept trying really hard throughout the rest of the game.
Now, I'm not one to really complain about people being competitive, but let's look at the facts here. We only had 8 players, meaning we had people doubling up positions and no one was getting breaks. Also, we were clearly going to lose. At that point, is it really necessary to keep trying to kick our ass? We ended up losing 4-12. During our 45 minute break in between the two games, we stayed and watched as they played another team that was as bad as us. They were even more unnecessarily overly-competitive against this team. By the third inning, they were up 18-0. You read that right, eighteen to zero. You know what they were doing? They were still running and diving for fly balls like it was life or death. Listen guys, when you are up 18 points after about 15 minutes of play, you no longer have to give 100% effort. Need I remind everyone that this is a "super-social" league, which according to the Austin SSC website, is a league "for players with limited softball skills." What that translates to is, "when you are kicking a team's ass by 18-0, you no longer have to dive to catch fly balls, assholes." Not to mention that they were still hustling at full speed and throwing fastballs to first base to get out poor people who never had a chance to get to the base to begin with. At least they weren't verbal assholes, like other teams we've run into.
Taylor actually played in that game, because the team who got their ass kicked needed an extra player. Also, after our second game, another team needed two more so me and her joined that team, too. I ended up playing 3 softball games, while Taylor played 4. Intense.
In motorcycle-related news, I have attached my new clutch cable, but my battery is now dead. It is clear that my battery can't hold a charge very well, but what is the cause: poor acid levels, or keeping it hooked up for 6 months while I was storing my bike and not riding it? Either way, I need to resolve the issue. I also made the big purchase yesterday and grabbed all (or almost all) the new parts I'm going to need. It's going to come to about $500 in parts, plus however much in labor for whatever I take to the shop (like the new tires, for example). Wish me luck!
Let's get down to business. We had a double-header for kickball on Wednesday, and unfortunately we lost both. However, they were what I consider "good" losses - 8-9 and 8-13. Both games were close right up until the end, and we played very well despite losing.
We also had a double-header for softball, but we had 45 minutes in between our two games, instead of immediately back-to-back. Our softball team's roster consists of 19 players, and yet we somehow managed to only have 8 show up for our first game. That means that we were short 2 players from the normal amount you have on the field, so we combined short stop and third base into one position, and had only 3 outfielders instead of 2. The team we played was good, but they didn't understand that the game was over when they were up 11-2, and they kept trying really hard throughout the rest of the game.
Now, I'm not one to really complain about people being competitive, but let's look at the facts here. We only had 8 players, meaning we had people doubling up positions and no one was getting breaks. Also, we were clearly going to lose. At that point, is it really necessary to keep trying to kick our ass? We ended up losing 4-12. During our 45 minute break in between the two games, we stayed and watched as they played another team that was as bad as us. They were even more unnecessarily overly-competitive against this team. By the third inning, they were up 18-0. You read that right, eighteen to zero. You know what they were doing? They were still running and diving for fly balls like it was life or death. Listen guys, when you are up 18 points after about 15 minutes of play, you no longer have to give 100% effort. Need I remind everyone that this is a "super-social" league, which according to the Austin SSC website, is a league "for players with limited softball skills." What that translates to is, "when you are kicking a team's ass by 18-0, you no longer have to dive to catch fly balls, assholes." Not to mention that they were still hustling at full speed and throwing fastballs to first base to get out poor people who never had a chance to get to the base to begin with. At least they weren't verbal assholes, like other teams we've run into.
Taylor actually played in that game, because the team who got their ass kicked needed an extra player. Also, after our second game, another team needed two more so me and her joined that team, too. I ended up playing 3 softball games, while Taylor played 4. Intense.
In motorcycle-related news, I have attached my new clutch cable, but my battery is now dead. It is clear that my battery can't hold a charge very well, but what is the cause: poor acid levels, or keeping it hooked up for 6 months while I was storing my bike and not riding it? Either way, I need to resolve the issue. I also made the big purchase yesterday and grabbed all (or almost all) the new parts I'm going to need. It's going to come to about $500 in parts, plus however much in labor for whatever I take to the shop (like the new tires, for example). Wish me luck!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
bad news in Coppell
Quite a sad story in Coppell today. The mayor was part of an apparent murder/suicide, where she killed her daughter and then turned the gun on herself.
Read more:
play qrank
What is Qrank? It is a daily social trivia game. Everyday, you have one chance to answer 15 questions and get the best score you can. By the end of the day, you can see how you did against all your friends. Turns out I have no friends, because no one plays. Won't you play a daily trivia game with me?
For those without an iPhone, play it on facebook:
http://apps.facebook.com/qrankit/
I'm serious, play it. Once a day. I need competition.
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