Getting better..

Posted by rae in Reid, family
at 9:05 am on Tuesday, 29 March 2005

I’ve had a nasty cold all weekend, spending most of my time drugged up and not sleeping well. Last night was a welcome change, and I’m hoping I’m on the mend now. Michael has a “late start” day today, which means he doesn’t have to be in to school until 10am. I wonder if they did this partially because a lot of students will be having trouble waking up early this morning after a week of late nights. Heh.

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Ronnie’s piano lessons

Posted by rae in family
at 6:34 pm on Tuesday, 22 March 2005

Tonight at 7:15 is Ronnie’s first official piano lesson. His teacher is somewhat unorthodox and doesn’t strictly follow the Royal Conservatory books, etc. She was showing Ronnie something called a “G 7th”[?] was in hist first, try-out lesson. But then she said she was going all over, just to give him a feel for it all.

Ronnie plays the Bass Drum in music classes at school. He has a good time playing with Garage Band on the Mac, and I think if he learns a bit of formal music (e.g. being able to read music), he may really get into it.

His teacher is a big Mac user too, which is nice. However, she only recently upgraded from Mac OS 8.5 to 9.1. I may bring the iMac tonight to show her Mac OS X and GarageBand.
:-)

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Barium Swallow

Posted by rae in Reid
at 1:58 pm on Thursday, 17 March 2005

Mmm, mmm good!

I went to Centenary Hospital today to do a “U.G.I.” Barium Swallow. It meant I got to swallow a white concoction that went POP! and FIZZZ! and tasted like mint chalk. Mmmm, mint.

This is just part of a semi-sesqi-bi-annual physical I’m having on the 28th. It’s funny, I couldn’t read the writing on the sheet my doctor filled out (did it say “UGI” or “UUI”?), and thus I couldn’t reliably transcribe it over the phone to make an appointment. So I ended up scanning it and plugging the phone into my Mac’s modem to fax the scan over to the hospital. They phoned back and arranged an appointment for 9:45 this morning. Or at least, **I** thought they had.

When I got there, they’d never heard of me and I wasn’t on the list. However, they had room to squeeze me in, so it wasn’t a big deal after all.

Hmm, physical. Hmm, time to start running again. I stole Luisa’s mp3 player last night (iPod still dead), so now I can run and listen to CBC’s /Nerd (which I downloaded via CBC’s podcast feed of course) at the same time.

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forearm problems

Posted by rae in Reid
at 1:36 am on Friday, 11 March 2005

Well, I don’t have tendonitis like Debbie, as it turns out.

I went to the doctor today because, since Wednesday last week the ring finger and half of the little finger on my left hand have become somewhat numb and have permanent pins-and-needles. At first I thought it might be circulatory, but the pattern of the feeling made it clear that it had to do with nerves instead.

Turns out there is a nerve that comes very close to the surface at your elbow, and this is the nerve that you zap when you “hit your funny bone” in that particularly agonizing way. Seems like the way I rest my forearms on my desk as I type or use te mouse is putting undue pressure on that nerve.

AActually tonight I caught myself shifting position in my chair by leaning against my elbow on the armrest of my chair, almost directly on that nerve, so maybe that’s what did it.

Well, in any case, I am now wearing an elbow pad while I work at my desk. Really, I think I need a lower desk or a higher chair.

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CBC Radio Begins Podcasting

Posted by rae in entertainment, podcast, the Net
at 11:06 am on Monday, 7 March 2005

Tod Maffin writes that CBC will begin podcasting two radio shows: Quirks and Quarks and his own /Nerd show.

This is *great* news. I used to listen to Quirks and Quarks religiously, and even had a cron script that fired up to download the latest mp3 version for me. However, the URL changed (which I updated) and then I reinstalled my OS and didn’t get around to re-setting-up the scripts so.. I haven’t listened for a while.

Having a defined means by which one can automatically download scheduled shows is a BIG step forward.

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Upgrading to Fedora Core 3 tonight I think

Posted by rae in software, web site
at 7:04 pm on Saturday, 5 March 2005

It’s time to upgrade. .. or should I just wait for Fedora Core 4?

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Ronnie’s Drawings on Flickr

Posted by rae in family
at 11:10 am on Thursday, 3 March 2005


one of Ronnie’s drawings

I’ve posted an album of Ronnie’s Drawings on Flickr. I was surprised to find an entire cut-in-half notebook filled with these drawings. Ronnie says he has been doing them for fun for the last couple of months. Most are simple stick-men style pictures, with the long-necked dragons he is currently favouring, but there are a couple of more advanced pictures in there, too.


Spider-Man, Spider-Man!

Along with Flickr, I also have the pitures up on tnir. I do this, because I’m not sure flickr is worth the $$ it costs — it’s main advantage being that I can put the full-size pictures/scans up there (like Ronnie’s drawings) and people are able to view them with some speed.

For this post, I’m using the local smaller pics, but if you click on them it takes you to much larger pics on flickr.


portrait of the artist as a young man>
(taken with a digital camera at school and printed on an inkjet)

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