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).

Email on mobile phone

I now have email working to and from my mobile phone, but only through an Australian email address that I almost never use. Of course I can forward other addresses to that one if I want to check all my mail using my phone while I'm in hospital or travelling without the computer. In theory I can also read web pages on the phone itself, but I'd have to be fairly desperate to try that on such a small screen. Next step is to get the phone working as a modem for the computer, for use in remote parts of the country when I can't find some other connection.

Ubuntu upgrade to Gutsy (7.10)

I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon") last night. OpenOffice.org and Thunderbird both stopped working. Probably not coincidentally, those are the two programs where I had been using versions that I self-installed (because I wanted a more recent one than was in the repository). Spent some time solving those problems. I installed Thunderbird from the repository and it works, so that's good. OpenOffice.org was more of a problem. Previously both my self-installed OOo and the one that came with Ubuntu worked; after the Ubuntu upgrade both versions of OOo crashed continuously and in the same way. A bit of research revealed that many people are having the same problem, but the cures vary a bit. I finally uninstalled both versions of OOo and reinstalled the one from the repository, after which that one worked fine. It's not ideal for my work writing documentation, because the icon set is different from the standard OOo set, but that's of minor importance because someone else is now redoing all the screen captures in a consistent style for the OOoAuthors books. Other than those problems (now solved), everything seems to work okay. I checked things like the DVD player to make sure it hadn't also broken, but it was fine.

New mobile phone

I got a new mobile phone. I didn't want one, but the CDMA phone system here is being replaced early in 2008 by something called NextG (for Next Generation: how Star Trek-ish!) so I had to get a different handset. I've been putting off getting one until the phone company offered me both an acceptable phone (the early models didn't have various features I wanted) and an inducement that appealed to me. A month or two ago they started offering a Nokia 6120classic phone with the Symbian operating system and all the features I wanted (as well as lots of other features of no interest to me). This week I received their latest inducement offer: $100 credit on my phone bill, so I decided to go ahead and make the switch. The phone has more features than many of my former computers and my cameras. I'm sure I'll never use most of them! I spent some time with the instruction book, learning a few of the most-needed features.

Expatriates voting in US elections

I just learned that I can vote in the US Federal elections next year! I had always thought that I couldn't, but apparently the law was changed a few years ago. Now Americans living temporarily or permanently abroad can claim as their "voting residence" the state in which they last voted in the US, whether or not they ever intend to return to that state, or have any other connection to it (property, business, etc), and registering to vote does NOT carry any obligation to file a tax return in that state. This information was sent to me in a note from the "Voting Assistance Officer" at the US Consulate in Sydney, which referred me to the Federal Voting Assistance Program's website. It's really interesting how things have changed: for many years I got the distinct impression that the US government actively made it difficult for people to vote if they lived abroad; now they are actively encouraging and helping people. I haven't decided yet whether to register or not. Meanwhile, a date for the Australian federal election has finally been announced: 24 November. The campaign has been going on unofficially for several months now, so it's good to finally have a date set. The "news" during election campaigns is even more boring and tedious than usual.

Marina construction update

Vast amounts of digging and moving of dirt is going on.

Hip + related medical stuff

Trip to Mackay today: the surgeon says I'm doing very well. I walked in without using a cane or crutch, so I suppose that helped. We filled out the paperwork for the next operation, so that's all organised for 6 November. This time we'll stockpile only 2 units of blood instead of 3, and the surgeon has agreed that unless I really, really need the blood, I won't get it back (because of the bad reaction I had last time). He thinks I might have had a reaction to one of the additives; the risk of another bad reaction isn't worth it for a routine transfusion. I had gone in prepared to argue that point rather strongly, but I'm very glad that I didn't need to. I also mentioned the muscle cramps I've been having intermittently in the operated leg, and he said (a) that's normal and (b) his recommended treatment is to drink tonic water, the kind with quinine in it (he said many brands remove the quinine, so I need to check the label). I said "I suppose I shouldn't be too generous with the gin" and he laughed. Lastly, I asked about the edema in my left knee and he said (a) that's normal, (b) be patient as it will eventually go away and (c) pressure stockings might help. We had quite a long chat about this and that, because his next appointment had cancelled so he had plenty of time. For example, we talked about how much people differ in their reactions to chemicals. He said he had always disbelieved the idea that food dyes caused behavioural problems in children -- until one of his own children showed unmistakable symptoms that could be correlated precisely with comsuming certain processed foods and soft drinks. His other child shows no symptoms whatsoever from eating or drinking the same items. Afterwards Eric and I stopped at the blood bank to drop off paperwork, and I chatted with the head nurse there about my reaction to the transfusion last time. She showed us the list of additives used in their blood storage packets; Eric will be looking them up on the Internet later. After that, we went to the store in Mackay that sells Apple computers, so Eric could look at the new 24-inch iMac. It has a shiny, very reflective screen, which he doesn't think he'll like.

Marina construction update

Most of the water has now been pumped out of the enclosed area and the mud is drying. As these photos show, digging equipment is removing the mud from some areas and dumping it in other parts of the site. Under the gray mud (which varies in depth) is a layer of clay or other (brown) dirt, which is being used to construct access roads (probably temporary). Lots of dust and noise is coming from this work. It's slightly better than the pounding noises when the metal barriers were being hammered into the dirt, but the beep-beep-beep of the backup warning signals on the trucks and other equipment is seriously tedious.

Technical editors' website redesigned

After months of off-and-on work on my editors' website (setting it up in WordPress), I've finally got it to the point that I'm ready to reveal it to the world. And so I have! http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/ The design (template) breaks in Internet Explorer. I don't have the time or energy to figure out how to fix that. I'm no longer doing this professionally, or with a view to attracting clients, so I've decided to be bloody-minded about it. I put a note on the first page that says "get a browser that supports standards". Some pages are out of date, so I still have a lot of maintenance work to do, but at least the major conversion work is done... except for the old newsletters, which will gradually be converted or absorbed into the main site.

Marina construction update

Here are some recent photos of the marina construction going on below us. For some weeks the construction site has resembled an open-cut mine, which in a way it is. The area to be deepened has been enclosed and the water is being pumped out. Digging equipment and trucks (exactly like those used at open-cut coal mines and other mines) are trans­ferring mud, dirt, and rocks from one area to another that is being built up for eventual use as housing, a resort, a boat terminal, and so on. The dust and noise are quite impressive. This sequence goes from left to right across the bay.

Hip: staples out, all well

Eric drove me to Mackay yesterday to have the surgeon remove the 17 impressive-large staples from my leg. His camera failed at the critical moment, so I don't have any photos of the instruments used, but they were a set of needle-nosed wire snips (almost identical to the ones Eric uses for electronic work) and tweezers. The surgeon said all is going very well and I can have the other hip done whenever I want. We agreed on November 6th, assuming all is still well at my next checkup on October 4th. I'm using only one crutch now, and getting around the apartment quite well, albeit very slowly. Now I can carry my own cup of tea, or plate of dinner, from the kitchen to the table. I'm trying to walk around as much as possible, as well as doing the set of exercises the physio gave me, to strengthen the leg as much as possible. Unfortunately, the pain in the other leg is hampering these efforts a bit. We discovered that the before-and-after x-rays were on CD as well as film, so here are some images. Before: After: