Here it is, December - 22 or so. Been thinking about this for a number of weeks.
"Who decides what I can or cannot take, and who is going to pay for that when the drugs are more than my salary. "
I was taking a medication that is suppose to fix some of the issues that I deal with on a daily basis. One of my rules, is that I never take a medication that requires "special authorization", under the rules of BlueCross. To me, it feels quite awkward to have to fill out paperwork, and beg for the meds that helped me get through the last 30 days before that. And someone who pushes paper, never gets to live with someone who cannot sleep, for 2 or 3 or 4 days, until exhaustion overcomes the pain and finally the body surrenders to the pain and then I sleep. Pain relief is something that only comes in short intervals, when the long acting meds can reduce the pain levels to a point where I don't have pain in the forefront of my mind. There are many times, when I use many things to distract my mind from the pain. Exercise, Sex, riding a motorcycle, walking in the woods, shooting, fishing on a quiet stream, taking time to hunt, going to the dance club-and banging my Cain into the floor with such force that I am making my own beat to the music. When my back is bad, I love the loud music of a dance club, with a COKE and EFFIN loud music to take my mind off of the pain. I can tap my feet, even though I cannot dance, but I can enjoy it and go back 30 years to when I was a kid and never had this problem.
On the 10th of Dec - BlueCross sent the letter to tell me that I would have to pay for this medication out of my pocket. The bill was a couple hundred dollars. I am sure that you are like me - have plenty of disposable income, for meds. They told me that they would not cover my meds and that my Doc had to provide them with more proof that I needed this and that any proof for the stuff and any money the Doc might want for filling out the paperwork- WOULD BE OUT OF MY POCKET. Thanks - AH - your the ones who have been paying for my meds for 3 years, and this is not enough proof.
On the 16th of Dec - they sent me a second letter. saying - Approved - for an indefinite time period - in any way my Doc prescribes. I guess that he probably told them about the surgery consult, the CATScan rides I have taken that finally proved that what I had claimed for 25 years, was real and not in my head.
So after 25 years of being told that I had no pain, but really did - Resulted in my body rebelling to make sure that my mind knew that there was something wrong. I am going to tell you that telling your body that it does not hurt, when it does, is really sick. It is really interesting when you have a Doc, who spends an hour, to tell me that I was not wrong. That I have a severe reason for my body to hurt, and in the same breath, there is not a single thing that I can do to fix this. In my mind, I can heal myself, but in reality, I am always going to have a set of special requirements that need to be dealt with and require me to make daily accommodations to live with these sets of conditions.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Resistance is Futile!
Morning all - sunny -just above freezing.
This is something that I deal with on a continual basis. Pain, from the mechanical movement. Arthritis too,so I have to move in order to keep pain at bay. These are some of my daily acute pain issues. It is these that sets up the chronic as a side "PAIN" show to my life. It is neither good or bad, it is there. I try not to buy into it.
A little math play.
Area of a rectangle is height X length. If you make the length of the rectangle, twice as long, you double the area, but you still have the same height. 2A= H X 2L
Take this further A = H X infinite L = infinity.
Here is the thing - and this is not my original thought!
Pain is length - it can go on, like 2 X L or infinite, for days, weeks or 25 years or a lifetime.
Height = to the variable known as my resistance or acceptance. If my Acceptance is high, H is a low number. If Acceptance is low - Height can be a great number.
Suffering = Resistance[conversely Acceptance] X Pain
The Math marvel of this is - as I reduce my resistance to pain, no matter how long or "BIG" the pain is, the suffering can be reduced to zero.
Suffering = small number X Pain
Area = small number [height] x pain
I can reduce my suffering to zero, by reducing my fight against the pain or in turn, putting my full attention on it and watching it during a high cycle. Normally for me, my pain has waves, these changes are not noticed, until my full focus goes to the pain and I look at it, and not allow it to slap me, with out my going to find it and find out what it wants. If I ignore it, it gets louder, like a truant child. As I pay fuller and more direct attention, the message that the pain has for me, becomes clearer and I can make decisions about what I want to do with the "PAIN" and with my body, to reduce it somewhat.
This is something that I deal with on a continual basis. Pain, from the mechanical movement. Arthritis too,so I have to move in order to keep pain at bay. These are some of my daily acute pain issues. It is these that sets up the chronic as a side "PAIN" show to my life. It is neither good or bad, it is there. I try not to buy into it.
A little math play.
Area of a rectangle is height X length. If you make the length of the rectangle, twice as long, you double the area, but you still have the same height. 2A= H X 2L
Take this further A = H X infinite L = infinity.
Here is the thing - and this is not my original thought!
Pain is length - it can go on, like 2 X L or infinite, for days, weeks or 25 years or a lifetime.
Height = to the variable known as my resistance or acceptance. If my Acceptance is high, H is a low number. If Acceptance is low - Height can be a great number.
Suffering = Resistance[conversely Acceptance] X Pain
The Math marvel of this is - as I reduce my resistance to pain, no matter how long or "BIG" the pain is, the suffering can be reduced to zero.
Suffering = small number X Pain
Area = small number [height] x pain
I can reduce my suffering to zero, by reducing my fight against the pain or in turn, putting my full attention on it and watching it during a high cycle. Normally for me, my pain has waves, these changes are not noticed, until my full focus goes to the pain and I look at it, and not allow it to slap me, with out my going to find it and find out what it wants. If I ignore it, it gets louder, like a truant child. As I pay fuller and more direct attention, the message that the pain has for me, becomes clearer and I can make decisions about what I want to do with the "PAIN" and with my body, to reduce it somewhat.
Monday, October 12, 2009
This is just for myself - so take it for what it is worth!
Blue Moon
Cresent Moon
Diana - Goddess
Powerful help
There is fun in tummy
Fun is power
The water fall flows
Water was here before you and after you
==============================
Breathe into the Thymus gland
Ambrosia
Milk of forgetfulness
Green glow in leg
No more fake paneling
Blue Moon
Cresent Moon
Diana - Goddess
Powerful help
There is fun in tummy
Fun is power
The water fall flows
Water was here before you and after you
==============================
Breathe into the Thymus gland
Ambrosia
Milk of forgetfulness
Green glow in leg
No more fake paneling
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Chronic Pain personalities
I take time on a couple of websites - that allow for self help and mutual suppport. I have read and posted at places for probalby 10 years. There is a need to point out, what personalities make the best recovery. [IMHO = based on Psycology studies]
The Whiner - This person seems to enjoy being in the middle of thier mess and is only there to get sympathy and pity. They never want a solution to thier prolbems. They just want someone to listen to thier complaints. If and when someone points out simple truths, that are easily seen in thier writing, they normally turn into someone who complains of being picked on. Shortly after, they become the angry person who is going to use all manners of little language to berate you.
The meek - I truely hope that these persons get some help, becuase they can change and get better quickly. In some cases, they think they deserve this mess that has been dealt to them. They don't understand that they are just unfortuante to have been given a disease and now, must find ways to LIVE with it! AS they see paths away from thier pain and illness, they get better quick. It does not go away, but the attitude helps them deal with it.
The winner - be'er - do-er, Here we have someone who has an attitude of living with an illness, in a positive way. They see each day as a challenge, one to be met and lived to the fullest. There are days when they outdo themselves and so they are "sick" for a period. They go back and try again, not pushing so hard, trying to get past the life altering things that happen to us each day. If there is a wall, they go around, tunnel under, go over, blow it up, pole vault and generally never accept, that this is thier life experience. They will seek change, good or bad, but change for its own sake.
I hope you day is better for having read a little -
The Whiner - This person seems to enjoy being in the middle of thier mess and is only there to get sympathy and pity. They never want a solution to thier prolbems. They just want someone to listen to thier complaints. If and when someone points out simple truths, that are easily seen in thier writing, they normally turn into someone who complains of being picked on. Shortly after, they become the angry person who is going to use all manners of little language to berate you.
The meek - I truely hope that these persons get some help, becuase they can change and get better quickly. In some cases, they think they deserve this mess that has been dealt to them. They don't understand that they are just unfortuante to have been given a disease and now, must find ways to LIVE with it! AS they see paths away from thier pain and illness, they get better quick. It does not go away, but the attitude helps them deal with it.
The winner - be'er - do-er, Here we have someone who has an attitude of living with an illness, in a positive way. They see each day as a challenge, one to be met and lived to the fullest. There are days when they outdo themselves and so they are "sick" for a period. They go back and try again, not pushing so hard, trying to get past the life altering things that happen to us each day. If there is a wall, they go around, tunnel under, go over, blow it up, pole vault and generally never accept, that this is thier life experience. They will seek change, good or bad, but change for its own sake.
I hope you day is better for having read a little -
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Wed, why does it hurt?
Well - to give a little background, I had a re-visit to the painful side of this problem, last week. I got up at 0530, to get ready for work. As I slowly raised myself on my legs, I felt my upper body shift left, while my lumbar shifted right. Felt odd, then acute pain started. I sat back down on the bed and assessed how I felt. I went over a quick body-scan and when I felt that things were not too bad, I again began to raise myself on my legs. I told myself that I would be fine and that this happens from time to time, but it has been quite a while! Showered and got ready for work. I eased myself into the truck and drove in for 0620.
When I arrived at work and went to ease out of the truck, I noticed that there was now shooting pain down both of my legs. "This is not good" So I began to implement my emergency plan for myself. This means that I plan on not moving too much, I do stretch my back and legs on a constant basis and try to minimize the amount of unneeded movement as best I can. Pacing is the modern term. Well I paced everything I did that day. And yes, I used all of the coping mechanisms that I had available to relieve this a bit. I spent the day, going from 10 minute walks to 5 minute stretches and back again. I practiced meditation, almost immediately, at 0600 in order to gain insights into the issues I was dealing with. My employer, later in the day, asked me why I did not go home? Well, good question, I probably should have, but I felt that my staff had been here and they needed their days off too. I felt, at the time, that I would be able to learn a bit from this incident. Learn to more fully integrate meditation, practice mindful movement and in general, get a better understanding for myself. BTW - I also had a physio that morning and as I put it to my Therapist there, "you are seeing a 1 in 100 day, I don't normally have issues like this." He looked things over and quickly told me: "do everything that you normally would do for yourself, when your are in a high pain cycle and use all of the medications that you are allowed to use. Keep stretching all the time and I want to see you ASAP as well!"
I spent the rest of the day, just getting things down as best I could and really feeling like the best thing for me would be to stop all activity. The problem is that I know from 25+ years experience that doing this only results in my stiffening up really badly and with that it takes forever to get me loosened up again. So what is the plan? Hot, cold, TENS unit, walking, stretching, self massage, meditation, body scans, guided imagery of healing hands on my body. Trying to sleep at night and not make the incident catastrophic.
When I arrived at work and went to ease out of the truck, I noticed that there was now shooting pain down both of my legs. "This is not good" So I began to implement my emergency plan for myself. This means that I plan on not moving too much, I do stretch my back and legs on a constant basis and try to minimize the amount of unneeded movement as best I can. Pacing is the modern term. Well I paced everything I did that day. And yes, I used all of the coping mechanisms that I had available to relieve this a bit. I spent the day, going from 10 minute walks to 5 minute stretches and back again. I practiced meditation, almost immediately, at 0600 in order to gain insights into the issues I was dealing with. My employer, later in the day, asked me why I did not go home? Well, good question, I probably should have, but I felt that my staff had been here and they needed their days off too. I felt, at the time, that I would be able to learn a bit from this incident. Learn to more fully integrate meditation, practice mindful movement and in general, get a better understanding for myself. BTW - I also had a physio that morning and as I put it to my Therapist there, "you are seeing a 1 in 100 day, I don't normally have issues like this." He looked things over and quickly told me: "do everything that you normally would do for yourself, when your are in a high pain cycle and use all of the medications that you are allowed to use. Keep stretching all the time and I want to see you ASAP as well!"
I spent the rest of the day, just getting things down as best I could and really feeling like the best thing for me would be to stop all activity. The problem is that I know from 25+ years experience that doing this only results in my stiffening up really badly and with that it takes forever to get me loosened up again. So what is the plan? Hot, cold, TENS unit, walking, stretching, self massage, meditation, body scans, guided imagery of healing hands on my body. Trying to sleep at night and not make the incident catastrophic.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Chronic Pain Industry -- ! ? !
Hello, I guess you may have figured out with a name change, that I am thinking in a whole new lineage of thought, Yep! Nonsequtor as usual! The reason for this is that I have spent many months in pursuit of answers to my condition. You see, I have a problem with my spine. It started with trying to figure out why I ached a lot. 24 months later, I am told, "Well - I have good news and bad news. Good news is I know why you hurt, Bad news is there is not much I can do to fix it." And so this was my final verdict on my issues with my spine. I since have figured out that like most things, you need to be very careful how you work, how you play and how you get around. I posted the question and title, "Chronic Pain Industry" because as much as everyone wants a solution to this problem, there seems to be a great reluctance to "FIX" this really well. Think about it. We have all kinds of "Therapies". Pharmacology, Mind-Body, Cog-Behav-Therapy, straight meditation, pain-killer, anti-inflamatories, ice, aroma-therapy, Reiki? Physical Therapy, and a whole host of other things that promise to help you.
Let me tell you this, I'm not convinced, having experienced what I describe as "discomfort" and what I mean is that my back,neck,legs and hurting, so much so, that I can only sit, walk and meditate for 10 to 20 minutes at a time, on any task, and must keep moving in order not to freeze up. I have sciatica that has not been part of my issues for about 18 months, but today is so bad that my right legs feels like there is a spike through it and my flesh ripped off the upper leg. I work at maintaining an attitude of acceptance and equinimity. I have had this before. I've had blood pressure through the roof, and been to ER to get shots drop the acute pain side.
I ask about the "Industry" because of this point. Is all of this just a form of snake oil salemanship? Is a person in pain, willing to do anything to move away from the pain and pay anything for that "Service"? Probably, and that is my thought, are we being duped into thinking that we can fix ourselves, for a pile of cash and the right healer, or is the best thing for us to do, is just sit quietly and listen to our breath and listen to our heart. Can I open to the pain and feel the waves crash upon me, as the ocean runs onto shore.
Yes - I can, I can live with pain and begin to learn from it, for every day is completely different and a wonder that I am still here. Think about the 300 billion blood cells that have spent the last 24 hours running around, without you every having to direct them to pick up harmful things and expell them from your lungs, and you never directed any of it. How cool is that.
I am going to take the time to catalogue my 25 years of experience with acute, and then chronic pain, sciatica, lumbar issues and a whole host of issues, as they arise.
Let me tell you this, I'm not convinced, having experienced what I describe as "discomfort" and what I mean is that my back,neck,legs and hurting, so much so, that I can only sit, walk and meditate for 10 to 20 minutes at a time, on any task, and must keep moving in order not to freeze up. I have sciatica that has not been part of my issues for about 18 months, but today is so bad that my right legs feels like there is a spike through it and my flesh ripped off the upper leg. I work at maintaining an attitude of acceptance and equinimity. I have had this before. I've had blood pressure through the roof, and been to ER to get shots drop the acute pain side.
I ask about the "Industry" because of this point. Is all of this just a form of snake oil salemanship? Is a person in pain, willing to do anything to move away from the pain and pay anything for that "Service"? Probably, and that is my thought, are we being duped into thinking that we can fix ourselves, for a pile of cash and the right healer, or is the best thing for us to do, is just sit quietly and listen to our breath and listen to our heart. Can I open to the pain and feel the waves crash upon me, as the ocean runs onto shore.
Yes - I can, I can live with pain and begin to learn from it, for every day is completely different and a wonder that I am still here. Think about the 300 billion blood cells that have spent the last 24 hours running around, without you every having to direct them to pick up harmful things and expell them from your lungs, and you never directed any of it. How cool is that.
I am going to take the time to catalogue my 25 years of experience with acute, and then chronic pain, sciatica, lumbar issues and a whole host of issues, as they arise.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Don't you like how sheep act?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126925.600-cunning-psychopaths-manipulate-their-way-out-of-jail.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
This really tells me that horrible people, can and do have better ability to fit in and affect thier environment.
Cheers -David
This really tells me that horrible people, can and do have better ability to fit in and affect thier environment.
Cheers -David
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Energy, Gasoline, batteries, solar, where is the money?
I was driving to work this morning and saw a sign. "BIG OIL" 80.1 cents per liter. Just last night, it was 73.9. We have the same Canadian PM. We have a new President, but he is in charge of what can only be described as a foreign country.
The last time I entered the USA was a month after 9-11. The same border guard met me at the gate. When I pulled up there was 3 people. One National Guardsman with a M16 was walking all around my car. They asked me to open the trunk, I looked up and told them, "this is a 1984 VW, there is no electric anything, if you want to open the trunk, hit the button yourself, it is unlocked and there is nothing in it." With that the Guardsman hit the button and looked in their for a few minutes. The Border guy looked down at me and asked where I was from and continued to give me the third degree. I looked over at the three of them and said," I have lived in the house across the cove for 40 years. I have lived and worked in Fredericton for 20 years and I have driven across this border for more than 40 years. What happened to you guys? Did you forget who your friends are, I'll never be back again." With that the older guy remembered that the family had been in the same house, since 1930's and had been across the border all that time and never caused a problem. Finally the Guard guy stopped pointing the gun in my direction. I have never been back.
A Foreign country, the New York harbour price of oil, sets the price for all of Canada. Why? Is it because they know better than we do? Do we not have a stock market, that could function for this? We produce more oil than the US, at least that is what we are being told by Alberta. If that is true, why does not Alberta set the price for oil. They are selling it to the USA. A Foreign country, using thier own definition of Canada.
Venezula - produces oil too, has national oil companies and sells oil to its people, at the cost-plus arrangement of 30 cents per liter or so. They offered to sell oil to US states directly, a couple winters ago, to get cheap fuel to senior citizens who needed to stay warm but could not afford the high price of USA fuels. Funny eh! Venezula was making a profit!?
Alberta is making a profit! Not a foreign country.
Nova Scotia and NFLD are not countries either, but I have had to pay $1.45 per liter in order to put Canadian fuel into my Canadian car.
I am told, that is becasue of the Americans. Which ones? The ones who could not get out of New Orleans when they were flooded? The ones who got stuck in a Football stadium until the filth was so bad they had to move everyone out again to some where else. Or the ones who put thier money into Ponzie schemes and were dupped by already wealthy, Con- artists.
Batteries is the technology needed to store energy to allow it to be kept and used at a later date. It is not static. Lead-acid loses a percentage of charge each day, until dead. NiCad are not much better, 5% to 7% per day. NiMH are somewhat better, but are shorter on the life span and only lose about 4% per day. Lithium is the best of the bunch right now, at 2% to 3% loss per day. However, put Lithium batteries in a confined space and the battery pak has problems with heat. Heat makes fire and you have all seen the flaming Laptops on YouTube. If we could get a really great storage device/ technology that would make running electric cars that much better. Don't hold your breath on this though. Technology gets bought and shelved to keep the old tech making money.
Solar Panels have had some great movement. Efficiency is the issue and once this is tackeld there have been some great improvements made in the last 10 years. That said, it has been bought up and the price increased to keep it in line with other current technolgy. Don't you just love it? [I'll detail the 2 technolgies and give Eff notes for each. You can buy surplus stuff, but the Eff is low compared to the newest of the panels. ]
Money - Well - it's not with Canadian oil companies, cause they can do stuff, but they run out of money very quickly. Look at the oil patch right now. Even with the economics down, they have the infastructure sorted out. All it is now is turn the crank and the oil runs out the pipe. To me, it appears that the problem is effiency again. Lots of losses along the line. There appears to be no heat recovery systm for a lot of these oil process systems, WHY? NOT?
Oil Companies - look at the quarterly reports of profits made by USA oil. Look where they are drilling and if they are working anything real. Taking mideast oil and processing it is just a shell game. The shieks are making money and are happy. The energy monster needs to be fed and it is ingrained that the most efficinet way is to use oil.
Look around, there are grass roots mechancis working on all kinds of stuff that gets a lot more MPG than any big 3 company has built. Some have Carb tricks, some have other stuff attached. Some are just large BELT-Sanders with big Battery paks and still go for a good distance. Whatever it takes, it will get better, through back-yard mechanics and the internet, there will be better answers come out.
Just keep watching!
Cheers - David - mileage varies depending how you drive. If you pak your own parachute, make sure you knwo what your doing! Do eat the yellow snow, or the white snow with brown flecks.
The last time I entered the USA was a month after 9-11. The same border guard met me at the gate. When I pulled up there was 3 people. One National Guardsman with a M16 was walking all around my car. They asked me to open the trunk, I looked up and told them, "this is a 1984 VW, there is no electric anything, if you want to open the trunk, hit the button yourself, it is unlocked and there is nothing in it." With that the Guardsman hit the button and looked in their for a few minutes. The Border guy looked down at me and asked where I was from and continued to give me the third degree. I looked over at the three of them and said," I have lived in the house across the cove for 40 years. I have lived and worked in Fredericton for 20 years and I have driven across this border for more than 40 years. What happened to you guys? Did you forget who your friends are, I'll never be back again." With that the older guy remembered that the family had been in the same house, since 1930's and had been across the border all that time and never caused a problem. Finally the Guard guy stopped pointing the gun in my direction. I have never been back.
A Foreign country, the New York harbour price of oil, sets the price for all of Canada. Why? Is it because they know better than we do? Do we not have a stock market, that could function for this? We produce more oil than the US, at least that is what we are being told by Alberta. If that is true, why does not Alberta set the price for oil. They are selling it to the USA. A Foreign country, using thier own definition of Canada.
Venezula - produces oil too, has national oil companies and sells oil to its people, at the cost-plus arrangement of 30 cents per liter or so. They offered to sell oil to US states directly, a couple winters ago, to get cheap fuel to senior citizens who needed to stay warm but could not afford the high price of USA fuels. Funny eh! Venezula was making a profit!?
Alberta is making a profit! Not a foreign country.
Nova Scotia and NFLD are not countries either, but I have had to pay $1.45 per liter in order to put Canadian fuel into my Canadian car.
I am told, that is becasue of the Americans. Which ones? The ones who could not get out of New Orleans when they were flooded? The ones who got stuck in a Football stadium until the filth was so bad they had to move everyone out again to some where else. Or the ones who put thier money into Ponzie schemes and were dupped by already wealthy, Con- artists.
Batteries is the technology needed to store energy to allow it to be kept and used at a later date. It is not static. Lead-acid loses a percentage of charge each day, until dead. NiCad are not much better, 5% to 7% per day. NiMH are somewhat better, but are shorter on the life span and only lose about 4% per day. Lithium is the best of the bunch right now, at 2% to 3% loss per day. However, put Lithium batteries in a confined space and the battery pak has problems with heat. Heat makes fire and you have all seen the flaming Laptops on YouTube. If we could get a really great storage device/ technology that would make running electric cars that much better. Don't hold your breath on this though. Technology gets bought and shelved to keep the old tech making money.
Solar Panels have had some great movement. Efficiency is the issue and once this is tackeld there have been some great improvements made in the last 10 years. That said, it has been bought up and the price increased to keep it in line with other current technolgy. Don't you just love it? [I'll detail the 2 technolgies and give Eff notes for each. You can buy surplus stuff, but the Eff is low compared to the newest of the panels. ]
Money - Well - it's not with Canadian oil companies, cause they can do stuff, but they run out of money very quickly. Look at the oil patch right now. Even with the economics down, they have the infastructure sorted out. All it is now is turn the crank and the oil runs out the pipe. To me, it appears that the problem is effiency again. Lots of losses along the line. There appears to be no heat recovery systm for a lot of these oil process systems, WHY? NOT?
Oil Companies - look at the quarterly reports of profits made by USA oil. Look where they are drilling and if they are working anything real. Taking mideast oil and processing it is just a shell game. The shieks are making money and are happy. The energy monster needs to be fed and it is ingrained that the most efficinet way is to use oil.
Look around, there are grass roots mechancis working on all kinds of stuff that gets a lot more MPG than any big 3 company has built. Some have Carb tricks, some have other stuff attached. Some are just large BELT-Sanders with big Battery paks and still go for a good distance. Whatever it takes, it will get better, through back-yard mechanics and the internet, there will be better answers come out.
Just keep watching!
Cheers - David - mileage varies depending how you drive. If you pak your own parachute, make sure you knwo what your doing! Do eat the yellow snow, or the white snow with brown flecks.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Fixing Microsoft, for home use.
I have used MS products since MSDOS 3.01 and have continued to make advances as the software became available. I have versions of just about everything along the way, including Beta Tester Vista and now Windows 7 Beta too. I use for the most part WinXP and Professional, more than anything else.
Back in Oct 2008, I noticed something not running right on the machine, an AMD 3000 CPU machine, Raid drives and all build for surviving a catatrosphic issue. This was the back-up that I had rebuilt and saved multiple drives of information for 14 years of business. Not something you want to lose. I noticed that after coming back from Halifax for a couple days, that something, was very wrong. The machine was patched and on Auto update. But low and behold, it had multiple viri. It had a good scanner and was also auto-updating. I did a non-network install of the updates and set it to scan, it started to find problems, multiples.
I spent multiple hours going though logs and figuring out where the infection started. It looked like the problem, was with any device that has a USB FlashDrive memory. With that criteria, I went through all of the machines, all pens, everything I could find looking for the guilty problem.
I found hints of it from the scans of the pens and from the access log to the networks and which user name was being used. The problem was that someone had appropriated someone elses user/pass and was using it to SURF, in the middle of the night. This would not have been a problem, except this second person had given themselves ADMIN, in order to install a game, and NEVER bothered to change it back. This looked like THE HOLE, into the system.
In Nov, I pulled the rigs out on the coffee table in front of the TV and set up to install and clean things up. I wanted it on the table, cause I wanted the culprets to see how much time they had wasted of my time, to fix their problem.
In Dec, I locked the machine down, ended scripting, stopped VB, patched it before I left, had good passwords on the admin and admin accounts and left of Dec 6 for Ottawa. I never heard a peep outta anyone, until a week after I got back from Ontario. My sweetheart said that something was not right. I went back and looked, watched while she worked. AGAIN it looked like a viri at work behind the scenes.
Stuff popping over the work in progress, files missing, stuff moved and programs not working right.
Over In England, there was some news, about a worm that nailed 3.5 MIL machines over there and remarkably has the same symptoms as I see on my 2 machines. It ran on Flash devices and was hard to catch. Rats! I knew there was a figgen problem with those flash drives, I just could not find it and scans were clean, but it acted like there was a problem, and by jimininie - there was!
The WIZZ OFF is that one these machines, is mission critical. It did have all updates, it had auto-updating virus protection. It had all of the changes that I could think of to stop the problems with having open ports. And now I am working again to rebuild the machine for the 3rd time in 3 months. I don't think I will put this one back - online. I will just set it up for file serving for my sweetheart and my files and not bother having it open to the outside world.
To answer the problem with some of the other people involved, I have loaded RedHat Fedora 10 onto a P2000 with 1 gig memory. It does have Raid on it, but I don't want to mess with figuring that out right now. I just need a clean machine, on the network. They just need to surf and check email. That will do that and securely as well.
I also have Mandriva 2008 and another box which may get something like the BETA 7 again.
Cheers - David - mileage varies depending how you drive, always wear your seatbelt and look out the wind-shield.
I hope you are not wasting your time these days.
Back in Oct 2008, I noticed something not running right on the machine, an AMD 3000 CPU machine, Raid drives and all build for surviving a catatrosphic issue. This was the back-up that I had rebuilt and saved multiple drives of information for 14 years of business. Not something you want to lose. I noticed that after coming back from Halifax for a couple days, that something, was very wrong. The machine was patched and on Auto update. But low and behold, it had multiple viri. It had a good scanner and was also auto-updating. I did a non-network install of the updates and set it to scan, it started to find problems, multiples.
I spent multiple hours going though logs and figuring out where the infection started. It looked like the problem, was with any device that has a USB FlashDrive memory. With that criteria, I went through all of the machines, all pens, everything I could find looking for the guilty problem.
I found hints of it from the scans of the pens and from the access log to the networks and which user name was being used. The problem was that someone had appropriated someone elses user/pass and was using it to SURF, in the middle of the night. This would not have been a problem, except this second person had given themselves ADMIN, in order to install a game, and NEVER bothered to change it back. This looked like THE HOLE, into the system.
In Nov, I pulled the rigs out on the coffee table in front of the TV and set up to install and clean things up. I wanted it on the table, cause I wanted the culprets to see how much time they had wasted of my time, to fix their problem.
In Dec, I locked the machine down, ended scripting, stopped VB, patched it before I left, had good passwords on the admin and admin accounts and left of Dec 6 for Ottawa. I never heard a peep outta anyone, until a week after I got back from Ontario. My sweetheart said that something was not right. I went back and looked, watched while she worked. AGAIN it looked like a viri at work behind the scenes.
Stuff popping over the work in progress, files missing, stuff moved and programs not working right.
Over In England, there was some news, about a worm that nailed 3.5 MIL machines over there and remarkably has the same symptoms as I see on my 2 machines. It ran on Flash devices and was hard to catch. Rats! I knew there was a figgen problem with those flash drives, I just could not find it and scans were clean, but it acted like there was a problem, and by jimininie - there was!
The WIZZ OFF is that one these machines, is mission critical. It did have all updates, it had auto-updating virus protection. It had all of the changes that I could think of to stop the problems with having open ports. And now I am working again to rebuild the machine for the 3rd time in 3 months. I don't think I will put this one back - online. I will just set it up for file serving for my sweetheart and my files and not bother having it open to the outside world.
To answer the problem with some of the other people involved, I have loaded RedHat Fedora 10 onto a P2000 with 1 gig memory. It does have Raid on it, but I don't want to mess with figuring that out right now. I just need a clean machine, on the network. They just need to surf and check email. That will do that and securely as well.
I also have Mandriva 2008 and another box which may get something like the BETA 7 again.
Cheers - David - mileage varies depending how you drive, always wear your seatbelt and look out the wind-shield.
I hope you are not wasting your time these days.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Alternative Energy, getting higher MPG from todays cars.
When I was 12 or 13, was the energy crisis of the 1970's. My dad's car got 6 mpg and this made for an expensive change for the family, in filling the car with gasoline. Nothing though, compared to us paying $1.40 a liter, that we experienced recently for almost 2 years. I hope that the people who orchestrated this modern pillage of the North American economies, has made enough cash to just live on their salaries without figuring out a way to continue the rape, of the modern society.
Anyway, I was always mechanical in mind, as a kid and wondered how to increase the mileage of those old cars and trucks. First, I worked up detailed drawings of the present cars we owned and then set about figuring out how to increase mileage. Next was aerodynamics, even at 12, I knew a brick running down the road was no easy task, it had lots of drag, so I redrew the front end, smoothed it out and got something close to the Chrysler Intrepid. The car for this project was oour then new, 1973 NewPort, 400 cubic inch engine, 250 to 350 hp, 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds or less. An 18 foot boat that ran 4000 lbs with no problem and although it would not spin the tires or another thing like than, it did run fast and would set you back in your seat and pull anything you wanted to attach to the hitch on the back. Still, it looked like a box of Kleenex running done the road.
After that was the engine. I came up with an idea to pull a couple of rockers out of the engine, to reduce the overall HP built up by the engine and therefore reduce the fuel used. I found the "Brake Specific Fuel Consumption tables" for the particular engine. [I think I had to go down to UNB Engineering sometime later to find this information, but it opened a whole new avenues of research then!]
Back to the engine, the only problem was working on vibration and setting it up so it would not hurt the engine. At the time, 100,000 miles was time to get rid of any car. I figured that if the oil was changed a couple of times, you could get 200,000 miles with no problem on those old engines. Look at the taxi drivers of the day. They bought the car and never changed the oil for the entire time they owned it.
Now I figure that everyone knows that a direct drive transmission, like a standard, is more efficient than the automatics that were prevalent in cars of that day. [not much has changed, 40 years later and trying to find a standard transmission in anything except the base model is impossible.] So I looked for standard transmissions that would fit the 400 engine. I found a whole host of truck transmissions that would fit and do the job, but they had close ration gears, nothing near an over drive. BTW - overdrive is a gear ratio which is less than 1:1. Such as the final drive in my 4X4 truck is something like 0.89:1. As well, those old engines were expected to turn at 3500 to 4000 rpm [revolutions per minute] while driving done the road. Today we know that the most efficient place is to have the engine turning at as close to the Max Torque produced by the engine; at the highway speed that you expect the vehicle; to be at, most of the time.
Besides as I continued to check on those old truck transmissions, and actually visited junk yards to look this stuff over, I figured out that they had been designed in the 1950's, heavy gears and large transmissions, heavy cases. Never going to be fuel efficient. It would take 20 years, and the advent of computer graphics and CA design which allowed for the decrease in weight of the parts, by designing closer to the mechaincal limits of the materials used. With this, we could get cars with 20 to 40 mpg.
Back to the kid design idea, so to start, we put in a manual transmission. Then we put in a high ratio rear end. 4.11 to 5.30 would not be a problem. In the normal setup for trucks and muscle cars, this would have been a vehicle that would get almost a gallon [or two] per mile. The RPM would be so high, that you would never be able to get anywhere. The engine would be running at over 5000 rpm and it would last about 50,000 miles, if you were lucky, due to the piston speed of the walls of the cylinder. This high speed on those walls normally is a killer of the engine in the end.
So the trick now is to take a second transmission and turn it around and hook it up to the truck trans and then put the input shaft to the rear end. In effect, you would now have 2 transmissions and therefore 16 possible gear shift combination's. As I did more research, I found that there were things like 2 speed rear ends. They were operated by air or electricity. They really did not work well, because the actuators were prone to failure. Fail and your stuck without a viable way to move the car or truck.
When I went through the hand math calculations, [No computers then or calculators either, all hand work] and through the actual gearing combination's, I did these charts with the gear ratios verses rpm, for each of the combination's. It was a lot of hand work. In the end, I figured that we could have a truck running at 60 mph, and rolling along at 1000 rpm. And if you wanted to increase speed of the vehicle, just step on it a little bit and you still could have another possible 4 gear positions available, as I wanted to have a top speed of 100 mph.
Today, I look at the Maximum Torque verses RPM for the engine and then figure out whether that is reasonable. Once this is on paper, I drive on a quiet road, with the engine sitting at that RPM and see how it responds. In the real world, there can be things, like a hesitation in the engine, due to some quirk in the fuel delivery system, that makes this impractical. You need to check it and make a decision without blindly saying that this so and so will work. Sometimes things just don't!
Maximum Torque is what pushes you up a hill, at the lowest RPM, so hitting that sweet spot, is the best thing to do for any engine. My Ford F150, has a max torque right at 2000 rpm. So I drive all the time, with the engine set right at 2000 RPM, and get 26 mpg in warm weather, less in the cold.
My motorcycle - a 1982 Kawasaki 750 twin, 48HP and a max torque at around 2800 rpm was way out of range when I got it. The rear gears were 16 tooth to 38. I spent 2 months doing calculations of the changes to the rear gears and came up with the rear gear of 30 teeth to the front 16 teeth. Before - I was running about 38 mpg at 80 to 100km/hr and at highway speeds, the engine was up around 5000 rpm and more. Red line was 8000 or 9000 so who really cares, except that I cannot stand running an engine, any faster than needed. So, in 2006, I changed the rear sprocket to a new 30 tooth gear and took it out for a week long test. The first tank of gas with just one rider was 64 mpg. 5000 km later, I get an average of 55 mpg when my sweetheart and I are traveling together. So for me, it is successful. Increased the MPG by almost 18 mpg with 2 of us traveling, almost doubled it when just myself traveling. Neat eh?
As for the truck. - I continue working on 2 projects. One is to add a mixture of alcohol and water to decrease the combustion and prevent spark-knock. If you need proof of the logic, look to the Alcohol Dragsters that run almost 100% alcohol and are running 1000 horsepower to boot.
Second I am working on adding a second engine, available to the truck on an electric clutch and locked to the rear axle to provide a separate drive system. I figure that I can run the truck along at 55 mph with less than 20 HP to do it. Engines in this size use something like 32 oz per hour, per the whole 20 HP being used. So if you are not using all 20 HP, your mileage will be above this. I am running the calculations on having a more [aerodynamic] drag efficient profile for the truck too. Speed and calculations of fuel consumption per HP needed appear to give me a real world MPG use of something like 35 to 70 MPG.
There is some basic wiring that needs to be added too, such as switch systems to allow me turn off the main engine when running on the road and when hitting a hill, hitting the starter for the main engine when needed, pushing in the clutch, dropping it and shoving it into 5th to climb the hill. Once over the hill, hit the kill switch and your back on the auxilliary engine and your electrics and all are on the smaller engine as well.
[Copyright - David Ryder - 1974 and 2009]
Anyway, I was always mechanical in mind, as a kid and wondered how to increase the mileage of those old cars and trucks. First, I worked up detailed drawings of the present cars we owned and then set about figuring out how to increase mileage. Next was aerodynamics, even at 12, I knew a brick running down the road was no easy task, it had lots of drag, so I redrew the front end, smoothed it out and got something close to the Chrysler Intrepid. The car for this project was oour then new, 1973 NewPort, 400 cubic inch engine, 250 to 350 hp, 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds or less. An 18 foot boat that ran 4000 lbs with no problem and although it would not spin the tires or another thing like than, it did run fast and would set you back in your seat and pull anything you wanted to attach to the hitch on the back. Still, it looked like a box of Kleenex running done the road.
After that was the engine. I came up with an idea to pull a couple of rockers out of the engine, to reduce the overall HP built up by the engine and therefore reduce the fuel used. I found the "Brake Specific Fuel Consumption tables" for the particular engine. [I think I had to go down to UNB Engineering sometime later to find this information, but it opened a whole new avenues of research then!]
Back to the engine, the only problem was working on vibration and setting it up so it would not hurt the engine. At the time, 100,000 miles was time to get rid of any car. I figured that if the oil was changed a couple of times, you could get 200,000 miles with no problem on those old engines. Look at the taxi drivers of the day. They bought the car and never changed the oil for the entire time they owned it.
Now I figure that everyone knows that a direct drive transmission, like a standard, is more efficient than the automatics that were prevalent in cars of that day. [not much has changed, 40 years later and trying to find a standard transmission in anything except the base model is impossible.] So I looked for standard transmissions that would fit the 400 engine. I found a whole host of truck transmissions that would fit and do the job, but they had close ration gears, nothing near an over drive. BTW - overdrive is a gear ratio which is less than 1:1. Such as the final drive in my 4X4 truck is something like 0.89:1. As well, those old engines were expected to turn at 3500 to 4000 rpm [revolutions per minute] while driving done the road. Today we know that the most efficient place is to have the engine turning at as close to the Max Torque produced by the engine; at the highway speed that you expect the vehicle; to be at, most of the time.
Besides as I continued to check on those old truck transmissions, and actually visited junk yards to look this stuff over, I figured out that they had been designed in the 1950's, heavy gears and large transmissions, heavy cases. Never going to be fuel efficient. It would take 20 years, and the advent of computer graphics and CA design which allowed for the decrease in weight of the parts, by designing closer to the mechaincal limits of the materials used. With this, we could get cars with 20 to 40 mpg.
Back to the kid design idea, so to start, we put in a manual transmission. Then we put in a high ratio rear end. 4.11 to 5.30 would not be a problem. In the normal setup for trucks and muscle cars, this would have been a vehicle that would get almost a gallon [or two] per mile. The RPM would be so high, that you would never be able to get anywhere. The engine would be running at over 5000 rpm and it would last about 50,000 miles, if you were lucky, due to the piston speed of the walls of the cylinder. This high speed on those walls normally is a killer of the engine in the end.
So the trick now is to take a second transmission and turn it around and hook it up to the truck trans and then put the input shaft to the rear end. In effect, you would now have 2 transmissions and therefore 16 possible gear shift combination's. As I did more research, I found that there were things like 2 speed rear ends. They were operated by air or electricity. They really did not work well, because the actuators were prone to failure. Fail and your stuck without a viable way to move the car or truck.
When I went through the hand math calculations, [No computers then or calculators either, all hand work] and through the actual gearing combination's, I did these charts with the gear ratios verses rpm, for each of the combination's. It was a lot of hand work. In the end, I figured that we could have a truck running at 60 mph, and rolling along at 1000 rpm. And if you wanted to increase speed of the vehicle, just step on it a little bit and you still could have another possible 4 gear positions available, as I wanted to have a top speed of 100 mph.
Today, I look at the Maximum Torque verses RPM for the engine and then figure out whether that is reasonable. Once this is on paper, I drive on a quiet road, with the engine sitting at that RPM and see how it responds. In the real world, there can be things, like a hesitation in the engine, due to some quirk in the fuel delivery system, that makes this impractical. You need to check it and make a decision without blindly saying that this so and so will work. Sometimes things just don't!
Maximum Torque is what pushes you up a hill, at the lowest RPM, so hitting that sweet spot, is the best thing to do for any engine. My Ford F150, has a max torque right at 2000 rpm. So I drive all the time, with the engine set right at 2000 RPM, and get 26 mpg in warm weather, less in the cold.
My motorcycle - a 1982 Kawasaki 750 twin, 48HP and a max torque at around 2800 rpm was way out of range when I got it. The rear gears were 16 tooth to 38. I spent 2 months doing calculations of the changes to the rear gears and came up with the rear gear of 30 teeth to the front 16 teeth. Before - I was running about 38 mpg at 80 to 100km/hr and at highway speeds, the engine was up around 5000 rpm and more. Red line was 8000 or 9000 so who really cares, except that I cannot stand running an engine, any faster than needed. So, in 2006, I changed the rear sprocket to a new 30 tooth gear and took it out for a week long test. The first tank of gas with just one rider was 64 mpg. 5000 km later, I get an average of 55 mpg when my sweetheart and I are traveling together. So for me, it is successful. Increased the MPG by almost 18 mpg with 2 of us traveling, almost doubled it when just myself traveling. Neat eh?
As for the truck. - I continue working on 2 projects. One is to add a mixture of alcohol and water to decrease the combustion and prevent spark-knock. If you need proof of the logic, look to the Alcohol Dragsters that run almost 100% alcohol and are running 1000 horsepower to boot.
Second I am working on adding a second engine, available to the truck on an electric clutch and locked to the rear axle to provide a separate drive system. I figure that I can run the truck along at 55 mph with less than 20 HP to do it. Engines in this size use something like 32 oz per hour, per the whole 20 HP being used. So if you are not using all 20 HP, your mileage will be above this. I am running the calculations on having a more [aerodynamic] drag efficient profile for the truck too. Speed and calculations of fuel consumption per HP needed appear to give me a real world MPG use of something like 35 to 70 MPG.
There is some basic wiring that needs to be added too, such as switch systems to allow me turn off the main engine when running on the road and when hitting a hill, hitting the starter for the main engine when needed, pushing in the clutch, dropping it and shoving it into 5th to climb the hill. Once over the hill, hit the kill switch and your back on the auxilliary engine and your electrics and all are on the smaller engine as well.
[Copyright - David Ryder - 1974 and 2009]
Friday, January 16, 2009
Cigars, one a day
Any of you who know me for any amount of time, know me as a total non-smoker, and in truth, I don't consider myself a smoker. I don't need it, If I am sick, I don't have to have one and I don't "NEED" to get a fix.
How I arrived at Cigars? Well, in the fall of 2008, I was at an outdoor craft show and noticed a group of reformed smokers, in effect, picking on a 60 year old grandmother type. Now she is an absolute sweetheart and a joy to have at a show and she does need to have her cigs. I watched how other crafters picked on her and made her feel less than a person because she needed to smoke. That is sad! On Sat afternoon, chatting with her, I decided that if I had a cheap and I mean cheap, cheap cigar, that no one would pick on her. You see, I am a gimp. I use a cane. I cannot walk more than about 500 meters, without having my cane handy. So my thought was, "Let them pick on me, there will be 2 of us, and since no one wants to pick on a gimp, I could in effect shield her from a little of the unkind words that had been said to her.
OK, I had this cigar that cost about $1.25 and it was harsh but as I smoked it, I began to notice that there was a slight decrease in the felt discomfort from the spinal stenosis and nerve damage. It took me about 4 days to smoke the entire cigar, but each time I did for about 15 minutes, I noticed a slight decrease in the back pain. I wonder why? I did a quick search and found that there was connection to pain relief and nicotine. Wonder of wonders.
How I arrived at Cigars? Well, in the fall of 2008, I was at an outdoor craft show and noticed a group of reformed smokers, in effect, picking on a 60 year old grandmother type. Now she is an absolute sweetheart and a joy to have at a show and she does need to have her cigs. I watched how other crafters picked on her and made her feel less than a person because she needed to smoke. That is sad! On Sat afternoon, chatting with her, I decided that if I had a cheap and I mean cheap, cheap cigar, that no one would pick on her. You see, I am a gimp. I use a cane. I cannot walk more than about 500 meters, without having my cane handy. So my thought was, "Let them pick on me, there will be 2 of us, and since no one wants to pick on a gimp, I could in effect shield her from a little of the unkind words that had been said to her.
OK, I had this cigar that cost about $1.25 and it was harsh but as I smoked it, I began to notice that there was a slight decrease in the felt discomfort from the spinal stenosis and nerve damage. It took me about 4 days to smoke the entire cigar, but each time I did for about 15 minutes, I noticed a slight decrease in the back pain. I wonder why? I did a quick search and found that there was connection to pain relief and nicotine. Wonder of wonders.
I picked up a cheap cigar from the gas station and this was as far as I was willing to go with this experiment. Each time I did have a cigar, I had a noticed pain reduction for a period of 60 to 120 minutes. On a day when the pain level is up at 8 or 9, having a pain reduction of a magnitude or 2 makes a huge difference in the daily level and how you feel at the end of the day.
I began to try some better cigars, one at a time and soon noticed that better cigars brought much increased pain relief. R&J, Cohiba, Punch-Punch, Montecristo have all been tried and are preferred by me.
So just know that if you need a break and have an hour or so to do so, try a good cigar sometime!
Cheers - David :)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
alternative energy
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16419-top-7-alternative-energies-listed.html
start with this and think a little bit. There is good information here. Cheers -David
start with this and think a little bit. There is good information here. Cheers -David
Back Pain, ugh, what is it good for, ugh,
[Say the words to the 1970's tune from the band "War", I think? Never was good at music names and bands]
So, they now have a study that has found the issues related to the degeneration of tissue around the bones of the spine, is a disease and therefore could be a treatable condition. That would be nice indeed!
Next, I posted a note earlier about the brain-gut connection. Think about this, how many times have you wondered if stress was the reason that your body ached. It's not depression, just getting caught up in the thought storm, of wondering why you ache, makes you ache.
Consider this, imagine sitting on a bank of a river, watching your mind's thoughts going by. [Yes, you are trying to meditate, keep quiet and listen] As you see the thoughts go by, try not to buy into the talk, that the brain is presenting you with. Forget about feeling guilt,anger, sad, or any other emotional baggage that makes you interject a label on your actions or inaction depending. As you sit on the bank, your mind may give you a second that there are no thought's, you see stuff going by, but it does not relate to you, your not judging yourself, just watching.
Within those small glimpses, when you truly are able to detach from the physical hurt that affects you and can step away and look at the hurt, away from your body, you get a second without pain. Watch how that feels, in a moment you take the pain back, or decide to push it away and watch it more. Guess what, 2 seconds feels better, and when your body does not fight you. Keep extending those seconds until you have time that you can step into and you hurt no more for a period of time. When you leave the place, make a mindful effort to bring this peace, with you into the future and your daily activities and if needed, you do have permission to return to this place at any time, and wash away the pain, for a period of time and take that peace with you again.
Yes - It works, I started using this technique 25 years ago. I did not have a label for it, but just did it. Eventually I allowed my mind to intuit how to positively affect this issue with my back.
Today, back pain is a daily reminder that I am alive and that I need to be very careful, that I am not foolish about lifting anything, pushing. I am super-vigilant about little kids. I have had them run into me, they have knocked me over but the visual I had, resulted in my locking my back in a spasm, trying not to hurt myself and in the end. It took 3 weeks to loosen the muscles.
I read medical journals and published studies from around the world. That is where I get the most up-to-date, from peer reviewed sources. So for those of you that fall into this category, please follow me and find those sources.
Please stay away from Forums as they normally fall into a Delusional Optimistic issue or they just share crap and what drug will fix you up. All three are a problem and they don't help you. You never need to compare yourself with someone else.
Cheers - David
So, they now have a study that has found the issues related to the degeneration of tissue around the bones of the spine, is a disease and therefore could be a treatable condition. That would be nice indeed!
Next, I posted a note earlier about the brain-gut connection. Think about this, how many times have you wondered if stress was the reason that your body ached. It's not depression, just getting caught up in the thought storm, of wondering why you ache, makes you ache.
Consider this, imagine sitting on a bank of a river, watching your mind's thoughts going by. [Yes, you are trying to meditate, keep quiet and listen] As you see the thoughts go by, try not to buy into the talk, that the brain is presenting you with. Forget about feeling guilt,anger, sad, or any other emotional baggage that makes you interject a label on your actions or inaction depending. As you sit on the bank, your mind may give you a second that there are no thought's, you see stuff going by, but it does not relate to you, your not judging yourself, just watching.
Within those small glimpses, when you truly are able to detach from the physical hurt that affects you and can step away and look at the hurt, away from your body, you get a second without pain. Watch how that feels, in a moment you take the pain back, or decide to push it away and watch it more. Guess what, 2 seconds feels better, and when your body does not fight you. Keep extending those seconds until you have time that you can step into and you hurt no more for a period of time. When you leave the place, make a mindful effort to bring this peace, with you into the future and your daily activities and if needed, you do have permission to return to this place at any time, and wash away the pain, for a period of time and take that peace with you again.
Yes - It works, I started using this technique 25 years ago. I did not have a label for it, but just did it. Eventually I allowed my mind to intuit how to positively affect this issue with my back.
Today, back pain is a daily reminder that I am alive and that I need to be very careful, that I am not foolish about lifting anything, pushing. I am super-vigilant about little kids. I have had them run into me, they have knocked me over but the visual I had, resulted in my locking my back in a spasm, trying not to hurt myself and in the end. It took 3 weeks to loosen the muscles.
I read medical journals and published studies from around the world. That is where I get the most up-to-date, from peer reviewed sources. So for those of you that fall into this category, please follow me and find those sources.
Please stay away from Forums as they normally fall into a Delusional Optimistic issue or they just share crap and what drug will fix you up. All three are a problem and they don't help you. You never need to compare yourself with someone else.
Cheers - David
The Brain-Gut connection
Try this for an interesting read!
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/11/06/the-brain-gut-connection/
A lot of this information, relates directly to Spinal Stenosis pain and the issues which come up from it.
Cheers - David
http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/11/06/the-brain-gut-connection/
A lot of this information, relates directly to Spinal Stenosis pain and the issues which come up from it.
Cheers - David
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Delusional Optimism
Delusional Optimism
I just 3 spent hours this post. I am not amused but from now on will write my posts in EVERNOTE and copy over here.
Delusional Optimism is --to think yourself into a state of positive attitude where you actually believe your are in a much better condition than you really are. If you are told what actually is going on, you take that information and minimize the negative and ignore it if possible. Your spouse may be the only one, who knows how bad off you are, but you may not believe her, or you think, you are keeping her unaware of the problem. You may think that you are shielding the spouse from the really negative situation. Guess what, you are not. Get over it and start to deal with reality.
Truth is that you do need to realize that your spouse, has your best interest at heart, but you need to let her help you.
I may be back to discuss this further.
[Edit - frustrating technology]
I just 3 spent hours this post. I am not amused but from now on will write my posts in EVERNOTE and copy over here.
Delusional Optimism is --to think yourself into a state of positive attitude where you actually believe your are in a much better condition than you really are. If you are told what actually is going on, you take that information and minimize the negative and ignore it if possible. Your spouse may be the only one, who knows how bad off you are, but you may not believe her, or you think, you are keeping her unaware of the problem. You may think that you are shielding the spouse from the really negative situation. Guess what, you are not. Get over it and start to deal with reality.
Truth is that you do need to realize that your spouse, has your best interest at heart, but you need to let her help you.
I may be back to discuss this further.
[Edit - frustrating technology]
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Exercise, what does it do for you, Me?
Ten years ago, as a way to deal with the mess of a divorce, I started to work out in a gym. Due to back pain, I only used machines that worked my large leg muscles. The workouts did help me sleep at night, although you have to wonder why someone would go through all this effort, just to sleep.
I started with a regimen of 10 to 30 minutes of exercise. I used the rowing machine, the stair machine and the recumbent exercise bike. I spent 4 months, at 3 days a week, 30 minutes exercise, and never lost a pound. I then increased the time to 60 minutes per exercise time and remained at 3 days per week. Thirty days later, I lost about 10 lbs. The next month was modest and thereafter, I slowly dropped about 2.5 lbs per month and kept losing until I reached 193 lbs. I remember this, because since I had been about 10 years old, I had never weighed this much.
When you exercise for 60 minutes at a time, you really get to a point where you are exhausted when you are done. It takes a lot of discipline, to go past the 30 minute line and as I approached 45 minutes, there is a real problem with hitting the wall. When I could hold it together, I would get an endorphin hit, as the body kept going.
During what I called the run-out time, my body started to re-group, to slow down the heart from near max rate.
For the last 4 years, over time, I have kept up my exercise only to keep me mobile. When done, I am loose and feel good, but the back however feels like crap and if I concentrate on it, the pain has increased to a point where I am almost physically ill. For those of you, who understand the pain scale, it tops 8 to 9 when finished. Even with the pain, and "Yes" it interferes a lot.
I see my heart rate dropping with the same exercise time each week. Over time, I know that I am stress hardening my body to sustain effort and this in fact makes my daily life easier because I never work this hard at anything, so I have reserves built up.
Another benefit of exercise is that I get to eat whatever I want and still lose about a pound a week right now. Truth be know is that I don't eat everything I want, I am quite satisfied with enjoying smaller meals with less fat in them.
And for the record, the high fat meals do not taste like much once you have gotten away from them for awhile. You can taste the blandness of the fat. Meat that has no taste to it. Potatoes that need all kinds of condiments to make them tasty. Today, I just finished, this morning, my ritual exercise on the bike for 25 minutes, not for anyone else's benefit, just for me.
Heart rate hits 140, feels good. A little tired when I finished, soaked my T-shirt but I felt really good. If you have never done this before, give it a try, but give it about 3 occasions before you decide to stop this-- forever. It can feel like torture to someone who has never tried exercise. Oh and I remember that when I started, I only worked out for 10 minutes, once a day, three times a week for 3 months before I began to ramp things up. You must know, that you cannot go 0 to 60, in a week.
UPDATE - as of today, I have officially dropped to just 200. With this in my reach, I now am looking at 195 as the next step. So we'll see! My weight has fluctuated between 274 and this, since my teens. It was always stable, but climbing during my 20's and 30's. At 38, I began the first real assault on this and this time, I have just tweaked the weight off, a couple pounds during the month. Very slowly and this allows for me to get a real "Feel" for how it feels to be this weight. When I gain a pound now, I feel the weight and want to lose it, to get back to my equilibrium again. Just my thoughts about this.
[BTW - see a Doctor before trying any exercise program - this works for me and you are not me, so get checked and use a physiotherapist to ensure you are doing it right and not going to hurt you. Mileage claims vary depending how you drive!
Cheers -David
I started with a regimen of 10 to 30 minutes of exercise. I used the rowing machine, the stair machine and the recumbent exercise bike. I spent 4 months, at 3 days a week, 30 minutes exercise, and never lost a pound. I then increased the time to 60 minutes per exercise time and remained at 3 days per week. Thirty days later, I lost about 10 lbs. The next month was modest and thereafter, I slowly dropped about 2.5 lbs per month and kept losing until I reached 193 lbs. I remember this, because since I had been about 10 years old, I had never weighed this much.
When you exercise for 60 minutes at a time, you really get to a point where you are exhausted when you are done. It takes a lot of discipline, to go past the 30 minute line and as I approached 45 minutes, there is a real problem with hitting the wall. When I could hold it together, I would get an endorphin hit, as the body kept going.
During what I called the run-out time, my body started to re-group, to slow down the heart from near max rate.
For the last 4 years, over time, I have kept up my exercise only to keep me mobile. When done, I am loose and feel good, but the back however feels like crap and if I concentrate on it, the pain has increased to a point where I am almost physically ill. For those of you, who understand the pain scale, it tops 8 to 9 when finished. Even with the pain, and "Yes" it interferes a lot.
I see my heart rate dropping with the same exercise time each week. Over time, I know that I am stress hardening my body to sustain effort and this in fact makes my daily life easier because I never work this hard at anything, so I have reserves built up.
Another benefit of exercise is that I get to eat whatever I want and still lose about a pound a week right now. Truth be know is that I don't eat everything I want, I am quite satisfied with enjoying smaller meals with less fat in them.
And for the record, the high fat meals do not taste like much once you have gotten away from them for awhile. You can taste the blandness of the fat. Meat that has no taste to it. Potatoes that need all kinds of condiments to make them tasty. Today, I just finished, this morning, my ritual exercise on the bike for 25 minutes, not for anyone else's benefit, just for me.
Heart rate hits 140, feels good. A little tired when I finished, soaked my T-shirt but I felt really good. If you have never done this before, give it a try, but give it about 3 occasions before you decide to stop this-- forever. It can feel like torture to someone who has never tried exercise. Oh and I remember that when I started, I only worked out for 10 minutes, once a day, three times a week for 3 months before I began to ramp things up. You must know, that you cannot go 0 to 60, in a week.
UPDATE - as of today, I have officially dropped to just 200. With this in my reach, I now am looking at 195 as the next step. So we'll see! My weight has fluctuated between 274 and this, since my teens. It was always stable, but climbing during my 20's and 30's. At 38, I began the first real assault on this and this time, I have just tweaked the weight off, a couple pounds during the month. Very slowly and this allows for me to get a real "Feel" for how it feels to be this weight. When I gain a pound now, I feel the weight and want to lose it, to get back to my equilibrium again. Just my thoughts about this.
[BTW - see a Doctor before trying any exercise program - this works for me and you are not me, so get checked and use a physiotherapist to ensure you are doing it right and not going to hurt you. Mileage claims vary depending how you drive!
Cheers -David
Friday, January 9, 2009
Ghosts, bad memories with baggage
Over the years, I have come upon situations in which, I felt that I knew the answers to the questions and how the conversation would go, even without continuing the discussion. Creepy, eh!
Here is what is going on, at least this is my view. In a former relationship, a certain, discussion dance has already occurred, it has some kind of negative pattern to it and it results in a destructive pattern of blame, anger, hurt and a host of un-intended things. In front of me, at this present time is a very vivid ghost. I don't know who it belongs too, but I have seen it before. I just don't know why I see it right now. I fear the discussion dance, because I know it went negative and was destructive. I fear traveling down that road a second time. I may not even realize that this is what is going on, so I feel apprehensive, but have no knowledge of why I do.
If I think my partner, is seeing a ghost, one way I deal with it, when I notice this, is to put on my soft catchers mitt, so I am prepared to catch whatever is thrown at me. The objective is to catch the words and not let them hurt anyone. I don't always know when to grab that glove and in the past, I have missed the fact that this might be the actual issue.
Ghosts rob you of living in the present relationship because they fool you into believing that the ghost is real and the old action is going to occur again, with the same hurt and fallout. Here is the thing, neither of us want to live with a ghost, nor do I wish to allow ,the ghost's of the past, to control my present life.
It remains my duty to be diligent about ridding myself of that old relationship and plant new memories. Every time a ghost is faced down, it gets smaller so you can easily realize that it is a ghost. The problem is when I have not recognized it before as one. That first time is quite difficult, takes time, thought and effort to deal with. Once this is done, it takes time to rebuild the safety net needed for each of us.
There are times that I wish this process was faster, it is not, it takes time for the emotional storm to settle and once the dust has fallen to the floor again, only then can you in fact sweep it up and put it in the dust bin.
[If your confused, you have not had this type of relationship yet. Wait, it will come to you sometime. If you never look for it, you'll never see it either. ]
Cheers - David
Here is what is going on, at least this is my view. In a former relationship, a certain, discussion dance has already occurred, it has some kind of negative pattern to it and it results in a destructive pattern of blame, anger, hurt and a host of un-intended things. In front of me, at this present time is a very vivid ghost. I don't know who it belongs too, but I have seen it before. I just don't know why I see it right now. I fear the discussion dance, because I know it went negative and was destructive. I fear traveling down that road a second time. I may not even realize that this is what is going on, so I feel apprehensive, but have no knowledge of why I do.
If I think my partner, is seeing a ghost, one way I deal with it, when I notice this, is to put on my soft catchers mitt, so I am prepared to catch whatever is thrown at me. The objective is to catch the words and not let them hurt anyone. I don't always know when to grab that glove and in the past, I have missed the fact that this might be the actual issue.
Ghosts rob you of living in the present relationship because they fool you into believing that the ghost is real and the old action is going to occur again, with the same hurt and fallout. Here is the thing, neither of us want to live with a ghost, nor do I wish to allow ,the ghost's of the past, to control my present life.
It remains my duty to be diligent about ridding myself of that old relationship and plant new memories. Every time a ghost is faced down, it gets smaller so you can easily realize that it is a ghost. The problem is when I have not recognized it before as one. That first time is quite difficult, takes time, thought and effort to deal with. Once this is done, it takes time to rebuild the safety net needed for each of us.
There are times that I wish this process was faster, it is not, it takes time for the emotional storm to settle and once the dust has fallen to the floor again, only then can you in fact sweep it up and put it in the dust bin.
[If your confused, you have not had this type of relationship yet. Wait, it will come to you sometime. If you never look for it, you'll never see it either. ]
Cheers - David
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Whether to write or not, is this a question that needs answering?
I have been encouraged to write a detailed experience piece about my journey through the 25 years of fixing and then learning to live with a broken back and the host of other injuries that accompany this kind of issue. Broke not in the literal sense but broken none the less as it controls my every waking sensation.
No, I do not expect you to understand, it is really difficult to do that! The degree of empathy required is along the lines of Spock's mind-meld stuff of the 1960's Star Trek. I have lived not being able to pick up my son or daughter because if they swung their body, against my weight, it could drop me to my knees in a second.
You might wonder why I don't "just have it fixed". Well, have you read and researched any long term [20+ year studies of surgery verses not too much except meds and exercise] and figured out that, out of the 30,000 patients studied, the success rate was about 25% and then after 10 years that the patients were in the same condition as the bunch who did nothing except try to lose weight. As you read longer term studies, 15 or 20 years, the patients on lower pain meds, are the ones who did not have surgery. Seems like a simple thought process to me, logic says don't do surgery until you are in a wheel chair.
It has taken 4 years, of Dr visits, and tests, to get to the point where I am back to feeling like I going to enjoy the future, rather than fear it. I am not in control of how this is going to play out for me, but I now know that I am in perfect health, with the only problem of a really bad back. The rest of the details are being saved for the book of how to live each day to the fullest while in this kind of situation.
Save the world, as a statement, is fine. I have always bee the type you had the white horse and the suit of shiny armor. Today, I have only myself to save. I cannot carry or help others too much, unless I can carry my own and do it well. It is for this reason that I would even bother to spend some time taking my experience and transform it into some life lessons for others. I never have to defend these insights, because they are my honest experience. Use them or not, it is not me who has to wonder whether they work. I know they work, I stand and walk and use a cane if the day warrants it. It does not matter how fast I move, but only that I continue to move forward each day. In this way, I have moved forward from a day in Jan, 25 or more years ago.
[edit - I may be back to this a little later -DFR- I came back and fixed this up!]
No, I do not expect you to understand, it is really difficult to do that! The degree of empathy required is along the lines of Spock's mind-meld stuff of the 1960's Star Trek. I have lived not being able to pick up my son or daughter because if they swung their body, against my weight, it could drop me to my knees in a second.
You might wonder why I don't "just have it fixed". Well, have you read and researched any long term [20+ year studies of surgery verses not too much except meds and exercise] and figured out that, out of the 30,000 patients studied, the success rate was about 25% and then after 10 years that the patients were in the same condition as the bunch who did nothing except try to lose weight. As you read longer term studies, 15 or 20 years, the patients on lower pain meds, are the ones who did not have surgery. Seems like a simple thought process to me, logic says don't do surgery until you are in a wheel chair.
It has taken 4 years, of Dr visits, and tests, to get to the point where I am back to feeling like I going to enjoy the future, rather than fear it. I am not in control of how this is going to play out for me, but I now know that I am in perfect health, with the only problem of a really bad back. The rest of the details are being saved for the book of how to live each day to the fullest while in this kind of situation.
Save the world, as a statement, is fine. I have always bee the type you had the white horse and the suit of shiny armor. Today, I have only myself to save. I cannot carry or help others too much, unless I can carry my own and do it well. It is for this reason that I would even bother to spend some time taking my experience and transform it into some life lessons for others. I never have to defend these insights, because they are my honest experience. Use them or not, it is not me who has to wonder whether they work. I know they work, I stand and walk and use a cane if the day warrants it. It does not matter how fast I move, but only that I continue to move forward each day. In this way, I have moved forward from a day in Jan, 25 or more years ago.
[edit - I may be back to this a little later -DFR- I came back and fixed this up!]
Monday, January 5, 2009
I failed Art!
Back in 1968, I was sitting in my father's radio shack. This is a room referred to by Amateur Radio Operators as your home base. In most cases, a small room, constructed with a little sound proofing to keep the late night noise down. I knew enough to turn on the Heath Kit radio receiver than was in front of me and to turn the tuning dial, to bring in signals.
During the day, there was only local traffic but at night, the ionosphere would allow for radio signal bounce. Depending on the night and weather, USSR or England would have a chance of being heard better. When I showed interest in the gear and how to use it, my father spent a little time, pulling out an old receiver and some parts to repair it.
As we worked, me watching mostly, I noticed the brightly colored parts that we were using. Capacitors, Resistors, Crystals, tubes, and all kinds of brightly colored parts. Red, blue, copper, black, green, lime, yellow. I did not see the parts necessarily, I saw objects, like the brooches, pendants, ear-rings that my grandmother was wearing.
Later that summer, I began to strip wire and solder together images that I saw on TV. Ants, beetles, a little Robot and a wire framed boat. It was really fun to use these parts for toys and jewelry, rather than radio systems. No!, I did not show my dad what I was making, cause he was taking these parts out of radios for other projects. This would not have been good!
Later that second year of school, I remember being graded on a soapstone sculpture. Now how is a 7 year old suppose to be able to do anything with soapstone and a file. Yep, I failed, my first failure was in art. I am so glad that I did fail, because without that, I would have begun to adopt another persons idea of what art was, rather than having the freedom to build or look at anything as a medium for expression. Through all the years, I have always looked for off the wall, interesting ideas.
Cheers, David
During the day, there was only local traffic but at night, the ionosphere would allow for radio signal bounce. Depending on the night and weather, USSR or England would have a chance of being heard better. When I showed interest in the gear and how to use it, my father spent a little time, pulling out an old receiver and some parts to repair it.
As we worked, me watching mostly, I noticed the brightly colored parts that we were using. Capacitors, Resistors, Crystals, tubes, and all kinds of brightly colored parts. Red, blue, copper, black, green, lime, yellow. I did not see the parts necessarily, I saw objects, like the brooches, pendants, ear-rings that my grandmother was wearing.
Later that summer, I began to strip wire and solder together images that I saw on TV. Ants, beetles, a little Robot and a wire framed boat. It was really fun to use these parts for toys and jewelry, rather than radio systems. No!, I did not show my dad what I was making, cause he was taking these parts out of radios for other projects. This would not have been good!
Later that second year of school, I remember being graded on a soapstone sculpture. Now how is a 7 year old suppose to be able to do anything with soapstone and a file. Yep, I failed, my first failure was in art. I am so glad that I did fail, because without that, I would have begun to adopt another persons idea of what art was, rather than having the freedom to build or look at anything as a medium for expression. Through all the years, I have always looked for off the wall, interesting ideas.
Cheers, David
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