Done yesterday (20091011)

( raw notes )

I started the day with comparatively little pain in my shoulder, but trying to put my shirt on took care of that detail very quickly. Ouch!! It turns out that reaching up or behind my back is what makes it hurt the most; that must have been what I was doing when I damaged it: picking up something a little behind me.

I spent the rest of the day listless and rather foggy. It seems that pain wears me out physically and eats away at my ability to think; probably effects of adrenaline and endorphins, respectively. I could pretty easily identify the adrenaline reaction, since it's similar to anxiety; a little deep breathing helped.

At Colleen's suggestion I took a walk around the rose garden. It did help; I found that I could swing both arms naturally. It took out a lot of the stress.

After my walk I did the final data entry on the taxes. I get a little back from my withholding, which was a huge relief. (For those not familiar with the US's horrible income tax system, you can get an extension on filing, but you have to pay up front or you end up paying both penalties and interest on the difference.) I still have to do the printing, and mail in the forms.

I finally put Argo (the Thinkpad) away pending a memory upgrade, and switched over to Barnard (the Dell netbook). Much smaller and lighter, though the keyboard is pretty bad and the touchpad is absolutely loathsome. A mouse largely fixes that.

I spent the evening out in the living room doing things that didn't involve either my right arm or much of my brain: re-arranging files and culling old stuff from my to.do file.

Anyone out there reading this who has chronic pain has my heartfelt sympathy.

The Danger of cloud computing

Just in case anyone still thinks that letting a third party control your data is a good idea, here's T-Mobile telling Sidekick users that their data has all been lost. If you have a Sidekick, don't turn it off!

I just love the fact that the company that developed the Sidekick is called Danger. And that they were bought by Microsoft.

Have a nice day.

More on the Sidekick out(r)age

More links on the T-Mobile/Sidekick disaster.

This article on Engadget is probably the best of the lot -- it blames it on Microsoft outsourcing an upgrade to the storage-area network without making a backup first. You would think... And there may be another disaster in the making, if their $50 all-you-can-eat plan comes out and people who haven't learned from the Sidekick debacle (or know how to run rsync on their Android phones) pile on and suck up all their bandwidth.

And here's Gizmodo saying that, whatever you may have heard from T-Mobile, your data is probably G O N E.

Good luck.