My editors' website was hacked!

Today I discovered that my technical editors' website had been hacked sometimes in the past few days. All my pages got turned into blog posts, and a bunch of spam sites were listed on the blogroll. <sigh> Damage control time! At least everything appeared to be there, even if it was goofed up. I fixed the blogroll easily, and then figured out how to edit the database and change the designation of the pages from "post" back to "page". Fortunately, Dreamhost provides easy access to tools for editing the database. The hardest part was remembering my login name and password combination for the database (different from the FTP login).

Marina construction update

We've had a lot of rain this week as well as king tides, so the holes dug in the bay are full of water, despite the best efforts of some heavy-duty pumps to keep up. The section they've been building up in preparation for construction has some large, but not deep, puddles. Good thing all the digging equipment had been brought in to high ground, or a lot of it would be well underwater by now.

Christmas events

Eric and I had a pleasant but uneventful Christmas as home, indoors with the air-conditioning on because it was over 30C and very humid on both the 25th and 26th. I had cooked half a turkey (all that will fit in my tiny oven) on the 24th, so we had a nice meal instead of our usual snacks. I even put a tablecloth on the table for the occasion. ;-) On Thursday rain started before dawn, and continued for two days with few breaks. We recorded more than 150mm here, but we know it was more because overnight the rain gauge overflowed. The big hole that's been dug in the bay below us filled up with muddy runoff water and is now a lake, despite the best efforts of several large industrial pumps. Good thing the workers brought all of their diggers and trucks in to high ground before they left for the Christmas break; otherwise, several would be well submerged by now. I'm hoping to put some photos on this blog soon. Also on Thursday, my oven stopped working. Good timing, waiting until after the turkey was cooked! The top burners still work fine, but the oven doesn't heat. Fortunately there is a similar oven in Eric's kitchen, so we can use it if we need to. We think the problem is a broken switch, but as the oven is 10 years old and was cheap to begin with, I won't even investigate whether it can be fixed; I'm glad to have an excuse to buy a new one.

Recent reading

I've been catching up a bit on my reading of science fiction. Lately I've been working my way through several volumes of collected "best of the year" books. Yesterday and today's reading was the "Year's Best SF 8" collection, edited by David Hartwell. The stories were published in 2002. I was mildly surprised that I enjoyed (or at least found interesting) most of them; often I don't. One of the stories really made me laugh: Robert Onopa's "Geropods", first published in F&SF. I loved the premise; a geropod is a legal entity that constitutes a full human being: "any group of infirm old people whose combined physical and mental capacities constitute the powers of a single, competent individual is collectively entitled to act as an individual". So a group of men "escape" from a nursing home (to which some, if not all, of them have been involuntarily committed) by forming a geropod and hiring a younger man with a large vehicle to drive them around. Their original purpose was to get even with the son-in-law of one of the members of the group, who had got the older man been declared incompetent and taken over control of his assets; but during their adventures, they meet another geropod ("babes!") and form some friendships... for a 14-page story, there was a lot in it.

Marina construction update

After working feverishly the past few days to tidy up the flat area visible in this photo, it looks like the construction crew will be taking the usual two-week Christmas break, because they've lined all of their equipment up near the road, presumably so the security people can keep an eye on it more easily.

Marina construction update

This photo shows most of the earthmoving equipment digging out what will eventually be the yacht harbour of the marina. Six of the seven dump trucks are visible, along with diggers, graders, and other equipment. Much of the dirt is being moved to this spot, which will eventually have a hotel and other buildings constructed on it.

All's well with the new hip joints

Yesterday I saw the orthopedic surgeon for a 5-week checkup on my right hip. He said I am doing very well and now have no restrictions on what I am allowed to do (except "no jumping, running, or other impact stress on the hips" for the rest of my life). Mainly my task now is to do as much walking and other exercise as possible, to strengthen the leg muscles on the right side, and then to get both legs back to my former level of fitness. He gave me another exercise to do, to help me stop limping when I walk.

I love the iPod Touch

Eric recently bought an iPod Touch. I didn't think I would like it at all, but I love it! I thought it would be really difficult to read things on the screen, but it does such cool things with the display of web pages that they are actually readable, and Google has a "Google mobile" mode that makes using Gmail easy and even Google Docs are not bad. It connects by wifi to the internet. Typing is tedious (though not nearly as bad as typing on a the keypad of a typical mobile phone), but the rest of it is fantastic. I haven't tried to watch a movie on it, but then I almost never watch movies at all. And I rarely listen to music, so the ubiquitous "music everywhere" aspects of an iPod have never interested me. But the possibility of doing my email and websurfing on this thing on my travels, instead of lugging along a laptop computer (unless I expect to want or need to do a lot of typing), are most tempting. (The iPhone isn't available in Australia yet.)

Brats: Our Journey Home

I recently bought a documentary film titled Brats: Our Journey Home. It's about growing up as an American "military brat". It was totally fascinating (to me). Some of the topics reminded me of things I had long forgotten about life on a military base and in a military family; others I remembered all too well. The main point of the film was the effects of our childhood on us "brats" as adults and our outlook on life and our ways of coping and relating to people and work and life in general, in comparison to the general population. I had worked out long ago for myself most of what they said, but it was interesting to learn that some of my experiences and reactions were more general than I had previously thought.

Marina construction update

On the 30th and the 1st we had some real gully-washer thunderstorms: about 50mm (2 inches) of rain in less than half an hour each time. The next day, the diggers, trucks, graders, and other construction equipment in the marina area were busily moving more tons of dirt into the extensive puddles left by the weekend's rains. I've been mildly disappointed that so far no equipment seems to have got bogged in the mud, as it's quite entertaining to watch them extricating bogged items. Here are some photos of the latest stage of work.

Medical progress

Today I walked down and up 15 steps without using either crutch or cane (though holding on to the railing with one hand), and putting only one foot on each step in the normal manner (instead of putting one foot on the step and then putting the other foot on the same step. Thus I leaped several stages of recovery in one bound! Incredible. I'm still limping/lurching a bit as I walk (apparently due to tight muscles on the right leg) but that seems to be improving daily too. I feel about 10 years younger than I did a few months ago.

Five years with OpenOffice.org!

I just realised that I joined the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project five years ago. I got my first copy of OOo (1.0.1) in late August 2002 and joined the Documentation list on 4 December of that year, while working on what was to become my first self-published book on the topic (Taming OpenOffice.org). In mid-2003 I met Daniel Carrera online and joined the OOoAuthors project (producing user documentation for OOo), and in September 2003 Daniel recruited me as lead editor for OOoAuthors, where I've been volunteering ever since. Wow! How times flies. It is time for me to move on from OOo to something else. I've become somewhat bored with the routine, even though I'm also very happy with the way things have been going at OOo. Over the past 6 months, the new team at OOo Documentation seem to be embracing the resources at OOoAuthors (people, website and user guides) with enthusiasm, and several grass-roots initiatives (for example the wiki and a new user forum) have really taken off. So I feel I can now leave and things will keep chugging along well without me... though I am disappointed that I never managed to get a Calc Guide finished (I just don't know enough to write all the missing bits myself, like I did with Writer). So I'm telling both OOoAuthors and the OOo Documentation Project that I'll be winding down my activities by the end of 2007. I plan to continue producing the printed copies of OOoAuthors books through Lulu.com in my role as publisher at Friends of OpenDocument Inc. Perhaps I'll have time to expand those publishing activities to include books on other software or even translations of the existing books—of course that depends on someone writing the books or providing the translations.

A bird comes to visit

A lot of birds visit our balcony. Mostly they are the common local birds like cockatoos and lorikeets, but occasionally something unusual stops by. I must get out the bird book and try to identify this one. Two of them turned up early one evening and stayed long enough for us to take photos, most of which turned out badly.

New Avalook website goes live

Although many pages of my Australian travel website (Avalook) have yet to be moved into WordPress, I've made the site live. Pages that have been updated are in the new (WordPress) style, and the others are still visible but in the previous (home-grown) style. I decided that if I waited until I had moved all the pages into Wordpress, the new site would never go live... or at least not for another year or more... not least because I'm more interested in getting some photo albums done and online too.

Medical costs

I saw the full bill from the hospital (charged to my medical fund) for the right hip operation: just under $12,500. That includes the 4-night hospital stay, operating theatre fees, and the implant itself, but doesn't include the surgeon's and anaesthetists' fees (approx another $5,000, most of which is also covered by my medical fund). Presumably the other hip cost about the same except for one extra day in hospital. I suspect this is somewhat less than a comparable operation would cost in the USA.

Medical progress

The staples were removed yesterday from the incision in my leg, using a staple puller much like those I'm familiar with from business offices. The surgeon says I can pretty much do whatever I want instead of sticking to the list of restrictions on activities (designed for the "average patient"). The fact that I walked into his office without using any crutch or cane, 10 days after the operation, probably didn't hurt my case any. Mind you, my "walk" at the moment has a fair amount of stagger and lurch in it, but that should improve rapidly. The only rule is: if it hurts, stop doing it. Sitting at the keyboard for any length of time makes my hip ache (not bad, but noticeable), so I'm using that as an excuse to spend more time in my recliner chair reading novels. I continue to have very little pain (in contrast to the first operation), other than a brief bout on Wednesday night which succumbed to high-strength prescription painkillers and has not returned.

Marina construction update

More earth movement. I wonder how many tonnes are being shifted? Much of the construction site looks to me like an open-cut mine, including the small mining trucks being used to shift the dirt.

More hip hooray!

On 6 November I had my right hip replaced. The surgeon, hospital, and device used were the same as for the left hip, but the two experiences were otherwise very different. The second seems to have taken place in an alternate universe to the first... one that for the most part I found much more to my liking. The anaesthetist was a different person and he took a different approach, using different drugs. Probably this was his standard approach, but the choice may have been influenced by the complaints I had made about inadequate pain relief following the first operation. I remained in the recovery room for an hour or more and was returned to my room (where Eric was waiting) around 6 pm., having gone in to pre-op around 1:30. I felt okay but very spacey. Over the next 12 hours I experienced some quite entertaining hallucinations, mainly of the parts of the room moving around in several dimensions whenever I tried to focus on some­thing. The effect was most pronounced when I looked at my travel clock to see what time it was; the clock face would strobe forward and back so it was impossible to focus on. Other than that, I felt fine. One thing that had con­cerned me was the possibility of a repeat of the severe pain I’d had on getting my own blood transfused back into me. The surgeon avoided this possibility by doing the transfusion during the operation itself. For the first time in my life (except perhaps as a very small child), I reacted to the anaesthetic drugs by being unable to keep any food down. Most disconcerting! Normally I can eat soon after waking up, with no ill effects. I found it quite odd that I felt perfectly fine otherwise. The next day, after receiving an infusion (through the drip) of some anti-vomiting drug, I was able to eat. I felt little pain during the day or that night (unlike after the previous operation). The physiotherapist had me up and walking in place that afternoon. On Thursday morning, after the surgeon had inspected me, a nurse removed the drains and I went into the shower (using the crutches, not the walker) and demonstrated that I could get around on the crutches just fine. The physiotherapist rewarded my progress by having me practice going up and down a step 10 times. In the evening I went for a walk around the hospital corridors and met another of my surgeon's patients: a man who’d had a knee replacement operation on Monday. He said he was having both hips and both knees replaced, at about three-month intervals: right hip 3 months ago, left knee this week, right knee in January, left hip 3 months after that. He was making a good pace and said that by the next day he thought he wouldn’t need the crutches at all. Saturday the dressing was removed from the incision and we drove home. I had no problem getting into the car, despite the passenger seat being on the wrong side for putting my good leg in first. I was still experiencing a remarkable lack of pain. I almost immedi­ately stopped needing two crutches and was getting around fine on one... and in some cases (in the kitchen or the bathroom) not using a crutch at all.

Grumpy old woman shirt

I've been trying to find a "Grumpy Old Woman" t-shirt, but have been able to find only "Grumpy Old Man". The GOW website has a selection of shirts, but none of them say "Grumpy Old Woman". So, when Eric spotted GOM shirts going for a low price, he bought two of them for me. I then got a bottle of white fabric paint and edited the writing on the shirt. Here is the result. (I'm taking it with me to the hospital to amuse the nurses.)

Mobile phone as modem

One goal I had for my new mobile phone was to be able to use it as a modem to connect the computer to the internet using Bluetooth under Ubuntu. It was easy to get the phone and the computer to recognise each other's existence, but I was stumped on the next step. So I asked for help on the Australian Ubuntu users' list and several people answered, each giving me a different piece of the puzzle: one helped me get the Bluetooth connection working, one gave me a set of scripts to do the dialing, and one had some other hints and tips to make my life easier. I don't know what age group(s) these guys are in, but I asked them to explain how to do things "like you would explain it to your grandmother" and they did a fine job, even the one who started out talking in incomprehensible (to me) geek-speak. I followed their instructions carefully and on my first test -- IT WORKED! I won't actually use the mobile phone as a modem except as a last resort, because of the costs involved and its slower speed compared to our home broadband connection, though the phone company does have a monthly data plan I can sign up for at times when I expect to be using it a lot (like next year's planned outback expedition).