I totally read it on Some Guy’s Blog

For those who don’t know anything about my problems with my leg (and back), it’s been causing me a great deal of pain in the last year. When the pain began in April or May of 2007, it wasn’t bad at first. Nothing really happened to make it start hurting, I just noticed that it did one day. It wouldn’t bother me all the time, just every once in awhile. I thought “if it’s still bothering me like this in June, I’ll go to the doctor.”

It was still bothering me at the end of June, I went to the walk-in clinic, and they gave me some muscle relaxers and told me to keep taking Aleve. That helped for a couple weeks, but didn’t stop the pain. I figured the next stage there was getting a referral, and I wasn’t sure it was that serious. I went to a chiropractor, and he seemed like a quack. He had signed pictures of him with Whitesnake and Frank Stallone. Didn’t seem like the right atmosphere to me.

After that, Megan and I took our Europe trip. I made it through without too much trouble and had a great time. I did have to miss one evening in Nimes, but overall I don’t remember it causing me that much trouble on the trip. Three days after we got back, my former employer laid off pretty much everyone without equity in the company. It was totally unexpected. I suddenly had to think of my leg being ruled a pre-existing condition at any job I’d ever have in the future, in addition to the stress of traveling the country to find a new job with my wedding and my ten year high school reunion in the weeks to come.

I found a great job with relative quickness, but the insurance was scheduled to start 30 days after the first day of my first full month of employment. November. As it turned out, there was some administrative difficulty getting my plan in order, since I was working in North Carolina and living in Virginia. By the time I had proof of insurance (not presenting as self-pay), it was mid-November from then, the first referral appointment was late November.

At that time, I went to the doctor and got a referral to a physical therapist. I did feel some improvement after some of the sessions, but not all of them. I went to four sessions before heading to Des Moines to spend the Christmas holiday with my parents. Because of weather and the precarious nature of travel, Megan and I ended up driving a couple hours to Raleigh to make a flight to make up for the one that got cancelled from Richmond. That just kicked off a comedy of errors for Northwest, who I honestly intend never to fly with again. (I hear people say that for effect, when an agent tries to get them to gate check their bag, but I mean it.) A few days later, one evening I was laying on my back, on the floor, in the worst physical pain that I’ve ever experienced. For those of you who do not know what nerve pain is live, I hope that you never experience it. I went to a doctor in Des Moines the next morning and was prescribed a steroid series, which helped until I got back to Richmond.

I didn’t book any more visits with the physical therapist. Our plans called for a move to Charlotte early in 2008, and I suspected that I would find some treatment there. I am seeing a chiropractor in Charlotte and that has relieved the pain considerably, but it’s still a long journey to being pain-free. I’m told there are no guarantees. It bothered me a little more than normal this week, but I’m hoping to be able to help out around the house tomorrow. Sometimes I can’t, even when I would like to. Lame. Literally!

As I write this, with the late evening games of Round 1 yet to conclude, I stand tied for first in my bracket competition. Come on, buckets, I could use the spare dough! I am officially worried by the Clemson Tigers at this second, however. A Tiger beats a Wildcat every time, though, so I am sure they’ll pull through. I don’t care how feisty that Wildcat is.

I’m happy to see the UT men’s basketball team put together a good season, and I thought the game against Memphis was a classic. I hope to see them do well, even though I picked them to get upset early. That way I at least get something to be happy about either way.

The Fans of the ACC 2008 season is about to get underway. It seems that there’s always something rocky during the off-season, and I’m considering having this be my last year as commissioner so that I can just enjoy playing for a change, but who knows.

I like the way my team looks—but I did last year as well and finished 8th out of ten! I drafted horribly and made some terrible trades. I tried to learn from my mistakes and put together a better off-season this time. You can check out my team if you like.

I may not have football, but it’s a good looking spring right now.

I saw Built To Spill at the Neighborhood Theater here in Charlotte earlier this month. I almost didn’t go because I felt a little low energy, but I couldn’t be happier that I did. It was an excellent introduction to live music here in Charlotte. They closed their set with Carry The Zero, a song that I named one of my favorite mix CD’s after—ten years ago! Unreal.

Also interesting was the discovery that rock and roll is still alive—and it looks like my dad! I can’t find any pictures of what Doug Martsch is looking like these days, but he’s not going to be on TRL anytime soon. I bought a cigarette off a beggar for 75 cents. I’m not sure whether to feel depressed or whether I was actually showing him the way up and out of poverty.

Last night, Megan and I went to see Greg Brown at the McGlohon Theater. An old friend got me into Greg Brown more than ten years ago. I saw him in Knoxville’s Laurel Theater ages ago. This show was a lot more bluesy, but he was still personable and so relaxed. He broke a string, and retuned the guitar and finished the song with more aplomb than some other musicians do a whole solo.

I was amazed at how intimate the venue was. Incredible. Megan got very distracted at some of our fellow concertgoers—you must learn to tune them out, grasshopper! We took the light rail into uptown to try that out. It will be worth it for ballgames, but overall I thought the most impressive part of the light rail was getting a fuller view of Charlotte itself. There is definitely a lot to like about this city. I’m feeling very at home.

I’d like to introduce you to Blanket, a library designed to make automated, remote backup easier. I’ve had to set up automated backup before, and I wrote this package to make it more enjoyable for myself and others. I was also experimenting with a lot of new technologies and techniques, which makes it even more rewarding that the end product ending being a preliminary success.

An introduction to Blanket is available at the excellent GitHub. There’s also the blanket project on RubyForge which means that I also have my first Gem in the wild.

Install it, kick it around, and if you like what you see, take a look at the development road map and see if you’d like to get involved. I have some GitHub invites if you need them, so please contact me if that’s an issue.