MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 5000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'LBnuke' source. Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:44:30 +0100 http://lbnuke.com/2008/05/09/thinking-about-autism/ Amanda at Ballastexistenz has written an excellent post for Blogging Against Disablism Day describing what it is like to be autistic and taking a look at the trend of accusing people of using autism as an excuse for having poor social skills, among other things. The post goes on to talk about techniques used by autistic people to appear “normal” and includes a video that explains how it can take all day to boil a pot of water. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that video is worth a million. One interesting thought, which I had never heard before, is that some people might choose to be non-conformist as an attempt to mask involuntary weirdness. There can also be attempts to mask involuntary weirdness by appearing to be voluntarily weird. Since chosen non-conformity can in some circles have higher social status than involuntary non-conformity, and since it can lead to an internal sense of being in control of one’s own weirdness, even though of course the person isn’t really. I have always been non-conformist. For the most part it has been because I have never fit in with the “normal” people and could never figure out their completely illogical rules and bizarre system of prioritizing things. In the place where I grew up, fitting in was essential to being treated like a human being. If you looked or acted differently, you could be assured that people would treat you badly, if not to your face, then behind your back. If you were a child who was different, you were doomed to a miserable life of physical and mental abuse where people’s idea of how to help you was to make you look and act like everyone else. In high school, I became a “burnout”. We were a bunch of misfits who hung out in parking lots and did a lot of drugs. It was the first time I ever felt like part of a group, like I fit in. I wonder if this is the kind of chosen non-conformity that Amanda is talking about. From that point on, my friends were always part of some nonconformist group or other. The focus changed from drugs to music to peace and love to politics to computers, but the feeling of not being alone and not “having” to fit in have played a large role in my periodic decisions to stay alive and keep trying rather than giving up and killing myself. The autism community has taken ‘fitting in’ to a whole new level for me. It is not like other groups where I share the focus of interest, but am still kind of clueless about how people’s minds work outside of that focus. It is the opposite. It is an incredibly diverse group of people with all kinds of interests that I may or may not share, a group of people that make sense to me because I can understand how they think and how their minds might take them from fact A to conclusion B. I think that autism is a whole different way of seeing the world. Whether it is good or bad should not be a question. It affects many people’s lives to a degree where they need help and assistance with basic daily tasks, and other people’s lives in a way where they contribute things to the world that would never exist without them. Some people fall into both of those groups or any point in between. unrulyasides has an interesting post about the idea of automatically classifying autism as a disability. I don’t really have a point to all of this right now. Reading things written by people whose brains work similarly to mine gets me thinking in a way that other things don’t. It is not that other things do not make me think. Tons of things make me think! The difference is that these things do not need to be translated into a framework that I can understand before they are processed. An entire level of energy expenditure is removed. It is nice. Still, it gets me rambling. photo credit: Spoungeworthy (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1433696 Sat, 10 May 2008 23:18:37 +0100 1433696 http://lbnuke.com/2008/05/01/4-good-things/ My brain has not been cooperating lately, but thankfully it seems to be taking a turn for the better these past couple of days. Yesterday was the first day I was feeling good enough to get out of the house since Saturday, not including short trips to the BART station. Went to the library in the morning and helped my friend D move stuff in the afternoon. Amazing how a little fresh air can make everything better. The good company didn’t hurt either When my brain is not working, it is very hard to get out of the house because I can not organize and implement the steps needed in order to leave the house. Things that should be happening automatically do not. Instead, it becomes a complex, often insurmountable task. Steps needed to leave the house: Remember that you are going to leave the house Stop what you are doing Get ready to leave Put on jacket, gloves, etc. Bring anything that is needed, i.e. backpack, library card Don’t get sidetracked Don’t start working again because you forgot you were going out Think about destination or at least what direction to head out in Don’t answer the phone because your client has a “quick question”. If you do answer the phone, read the email, etc., do not think “This is easy. I will do it real fast before I leave.” because that will place you back at step 1. Don’t get sidetracked Say goodbye to cats and walk out the door Speaking of being sidetracked, I almost forgot the 4 good things. Good thing #1: K, aka Nikkyo, dings 70! Congratulations K! We can finally quest together for real. Woo hoo Good thing #2: Renaeden’s repost of The Top Ten Terrific Traits of Autistic People. Thanks Renaeden! Good thing #3: FaceBook In Reality Got a link to this in an email this morning. Cracked me up. Good thing #4 Did I mention that I got out of the house yesterday? Old news by now. Good thing #4 is that I am going again out as soon as I complete the 10 steps listed above (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1433697 Thu, 01 May 2008 18:22:36 +0100 1433697 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/274437543/ Locked in my room. Loud in my head. Friends outside. I hear them laughing but I can not join them. I tried. Very bad. So hard to separate their voices. K, Lorena, Tess. It is Tess’ birthday. Happy bday Tess. Makes me tired. I can feel every speck of dust in the air. Hear it. Sometimes see it. Like a million tiny lightening bolts, each giving me a tiny little sting. Freak. Why can’t I just have fun like normal people? (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397589 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:36:59 +0100 1397589 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/271907738/ Do or do not. There is no Try. –Yoda I am not a Jedi, so I suppose those words were not meant for me, but from what I can tell, trying = effort and everything takes effort. Therefore, there is a try. Went to another aspie meeting on Sunday. Not sure if I liked it or not. It was nice to see the people I knew from the other meetings and meet the new people. Other than that, it was just like hanging out with any other group of people. That was very disappointing. It started out okay. A go around introduction. Not the kind of thing I generally like, but in a group like this, it seemed appropriate. I usually like hanging out with other autistic types because different rules apply to social interaction than with most other people. At the group on Sunday, this was not the case for most of the meeting. After the go around, things got very disorganized. People were having back and forth mini-conversations, changing the topic, and generally having a “normal” group interaction. I can not do that most of the time, especially with people I do not know very well. One of the main reasons I even went to the meeting was to get a break from that kind of thing. I am not sure how I would make it better next time. About half the people in the group did not seem to have a problem with how things were going, and the other half did not speak very much, if at all. The group leader is a great guy and he did make an attempt at giving the quiet folks a chance to speak. I appreciated it, but could not think fast enough when the opportunity was given. It makes me worry that I will never be able to have comfortable social interactions. I like people and can usually talk with someone about a topic that I know a lot about like computers. I can process information about computers quickly. It is a language I understand. I can not keep up with a conversation that changes focus and has no order. I do not know the rules of speaking in a group. When do I say something? Usually I try to wait until someone is done speaking, but almost always, someone else says something before I can. I hear things delayed, so there is no way for me speak right when someone else stops speaking. It is also hard for me to say what is in my head when it is my turn to speak. The words get stuck and my mind goes blank. It takes so much effort to even spit out a basic outline of what I was thinking. I can’t just do it, Yoda. I can try. Once in a while it works. Always, it is exhausting. The words jumble and crash in my head. I have software that lets me create flowchart-like images of what is in my mind. At the click of a button, the software will immediately turn it into a formal outline. I wish I could install that software in my brain. Do other people have a natural ability to do this? Is it something they learn? Do they already think in straight lines and not even need this software? I will probably try another meeting. I wish I could think of a way to make it easier. I think part of the purpose of the group is to practice social interaction in an environment where others will understand the pauses and silences. I appreciate the fact that I do not have to speak if I don’t want to. I usually don’t want to. But it is not because I don’t have anything to say. It is because I lack the ability to make my voice speak for my brain. It frustrates me terribly and even causes me to question Yoda. If Yoda does not have the answer, who does? (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397590 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:26:29 +0100 1397590 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/257761851/ Maybe that is an unfair title. I think that most of the time, I am not an idiot. But there are a few things that I am repeatedly stupid about and no matter how many identically bad experiences I have, I do the same thing over and over again. The first thing is having too many things going on at once. It does very bad things to me, but I think it is unavoidable. To stop it, I would need to stop working and learn how to be happy being even more broke than I already am. I am lucky to have help from people and be able to live a good life, but I want to be able to contribute my fair share. Plus, I am a geek and geeking costs money. The second thing is insanely undercharging for my work. I learn things from one time to the next and try to avoid past mistakes, but it still happens almost every time. I am working on a project now that has easily taken 10x as long as I thought it would, and I was already providing a huge discount. I love the site and I really enjoy working with the client, but I am making about $2/hr. again. It is my own fault too. I was happy to provide the discount. In a short amount of time, the site was created and most of the content entered. The organization had wanted a lot of features but did not have the budget for them. I provided a list of things that could be done for their budget and all was good. Right around that same time, I started working on another site for an organization of a similar size and with similar needs. This organization had found a great online solution that would do everything my client wanted for a relatively small monthly fee. I told him about it and we switched the project over to the new system. My job was to design the site, build the template, and add content from the old site. This is where I become an idiot. I did not charge extra for this even though the site was practically finished in the original system. Why not? Because I thought that it was my “fault” that we switched systems because I suggested it. I am pretty sure that does not make any sense. As I look at the itemized estimate that I sent, I realize that I had completely forgotten about it. The estimate was great. Stated exactly what was included and what was not and how much it would cost for things that were not included. Since the price was so low, template customization was not included beyond the very basics. This was reinforced under the ‘Assumptions’ part of the estimate which states that the design is not custom. Since then, I have customized several templates heavily and built the final one from scratch, including custom images. I also threw in a flash slideshow. I am very happy with the site and so is my client. There is still more work to be done, but it is near the end. I did not charge him extra for anything. I had told him that I would let him know if something would cost extra. Somehow, it never occurred to me to do this. I like my client and his organization and knew they were on a budget. There is a part of me that really wants the site to be as good as possible with whatever system we are using, and that part of me took over the job. I could have stayed with the first system and never even mentioned the new one. The site would have been exactly what he contracted for. I also could have suggested converting to the new system as a separate project with a new estimate. I did not do either of those things. I am confused. At this point, I am sure that the only chance I have of working is to work for myself. I am lucky to love what I do and to be good at it, but how long will I keep working for $2/hr.? All of my clients make way more money than I do and I doubt any would consider working for that price. I don’t know what to do. Everybody I talk to has tons of “Why don’t you just…” solutions. They make it sound so easy, but it is not. If I could just… I would! Rehab might pay for me to take a 10 week business course with a “tutor” to come with me and translate afterwards. I wonder if that will help. I can barely imagine being in a class for 3 hrs. twice a week plus time with the tutor, but I feel like I have to try if given the opportunity. K is very busy at work too. We have 4 sets of houseguests coming in the next 4 months. More things, but it will be nice to see everyone. I hope I can get all of my work done by then. Not likely since my folks are coming on Friday. Oy. I better get back to work now. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397591 Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:39:26 +0100 1397591 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/244521874/ It is so hard to do things lately. Too hard. Hard to think. Hard to work. Hard to play. There are very few people that I can stand to be around. The rest make my skin crawl. It is loud in my head. Too loud. Sometimes it is background noise. Now it is very loud. I hate it. Sometimes it gets so loud it hurts. Hurts like an ice-pick being jammed into my head repeatedly. That keeps happening lately. I don’t know why. Emergency meds help, but knock me out. Sometimes K can help. Not really sure how she does it. Thanks K. When it is bad like that, it makes me cry. I hate that. I try to avoid it for as long as possible. Still, it almost always happens anyway. I know that crying isn’t bad but I hate it. Brings back bad memories. Crying is not bad now but it used to be. It can make everything worse if people are messing with you. Nobody messes with me now. Just my own brain. Ridiculous. I say that I am an autistic person who does not want to be cured, but when things are so bad, I am not sure if that is true. When I woke up this morning, I was confused and disoriented and it was very loud in my head. I didn’t have enough energy to deal with it. I just wanted to wake up like a normal person does. Sometimes I want to be ‘normal’ so bad. I want to be able to work. I want to be able to play video games. I want to read. I want to be around people easily. I want to be able to make plans ahead of time. I can’t do that now. I never know what life will be like from one minute to the next. I hate that. I am whining and complaining. I am very lucky in about a million ways but sometimes I have to get bad things out of my head. This morning when I woke up, the only way I could think of was to pound on my head with my fist. I know that is not a good way to do it. But it helps. Like cutting and burning do. I don’t do those things anymore. I think that writing is better than those other ways but you have to be able to think to be able to write. At least enough to get paper, pen, computer, whatever. Lately it is hard to remember things for more than a second. Worse than usual. Not sure why things are like this now. Probably because there are too many things going on. It happens every time but still I choose to believe that it will be different the next time. It never is. But I can’t give up hope. Things always get better. Then there are too many things again. Then things get bad again. circle circle circle circle circle. 41 years going around that circle. It is all I know. It is not all bad. Lots of good parts too. I am rambling. Went to the water. It helped a little. Nice day out. If there was a magic pill that would make me better, would I take it? I don’t really know. Anybody reading this who thinks about these kinds of things, would you take it? I am confused. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397592 Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:05:35 +0100 1397592 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/241123009/ Shikibee dinged level 70 yesterday The ding: Shikibee and Riverstar celebrate: Translation: Shikibee is my main character in an online game called World of Warcraft. 70 is currently the highest level. It is a rite of passage for a game geek and unlocks a new level of gameplay. It is customary to say ‘ding!’ in the chat window when reaching a new level. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397593 Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:00:12 +0100 1397593 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lbnuke/~3/236239660/ I have been so busy with work lately that it has been very hard to keep up with non-work websites. Since most of the sites do not need much ongoing maintenance, this has not been a big problem, but Autiblogger has been needing some TLC for a while now. I had to shut down on-site registration a while back due to an insane number of splogs and anyone who wanted a blog had to contact me. Not ideal. Autiblogger has now been updated to the latest version of WordPress MU! This new version includes security updates and more tools to regulate signups. This means that Autiblogger registration is open again! I would like to extend a huge thank you to Andrea Rennick for doing the update! It went quite smoothly with a minimum of downtime. She also added some spammer protection above and beyond what the software itself provides. Andrea runs the WPMU Tutorials site. In other exciting autistic community website news, aspieSocial has passed the 70 member mark and is becoming a nice community with quite a few regulars, interesting discussions, and some great bloggers. I get very excited about the ever expanding network of autistic community websites. When I first came on the scene 3 years ago, there were just a handful, most notably Wrong Planet, a site started by 16 year old Alex Plank (now 21). Now there are many community sites, and thanks to Kevin Leitch, the Autism Hub, a network of autism related blogs. I think these sites are very important for educating the general public about autism and especially for helping autistic people to find each other. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1397594 Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:43:15 +0100 1397594 http://lbnuke.com/2008/02/08/aspie-handbook/ From Rands In Repose: The Nerd Handbook Your nerd might come off as not liking people. Small talk. Those first awkward five minutes when two people are forced to interact. Small talk is the bane of the nerd’s existence because small talk is a combination of aspects of the world that your nerd hates. When your nerd is staring at a stranger, all he’s thinking is, “I have no system for understanding this messy person in front of me”. I know that not all aspies are computer nerds, but if this article were to be more generalized so that computers could be replaced with any special interest/obsession, I think parts of it could function as a an aspie handbook too. All standard disclaimers about gross generalizations apply. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1234572 Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:35:06 +0100 1234572 http://lbnuke.com/2008/02/04/the-importance-of-logic/ Today is the 8 year anniversary of K’s and my first date (Thursday is our 4th wedding anniversary ). Difficult times and all, these have been the best 8 years of my life. K has changed my life in so many ways and opened my mind and heart to possibilities that I never thought were possible. Before I met K, I had never wanted to live with anyone other than random friends and strangers. I thought it would drive me insane and even thinking about it put me into an immediate state of panic. For some reason, that did not happen when I thought about living with K, and I have loved every minute of it since the first day she moved into my house in Berkeley (with aforementioned random friends and strangers). I have loved it even more since we have gotten our own house. A few other things that have changed: People that I care about now receive holiday and birthday cards. I can be myself at home. For the most part, I am myself wherever I go, but much shyer and constantly aware of trying to appear normal. This means expending tremendous amounts of energy trying to focus on what is going on around me and making sure I don’t do things that make me look ‘weird’ even if they make me feel better, like rocking back and forth or jumping up and down. I have done things that I would have never before thought possible like going to Europe and enjoying a surprise party. There are many more things, but I will not list them all here. I will say that these kinds of things happen because of a kind of trust that I have never had before. I have been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between truth, logic, and trust. Over the years, I have learned that logic can be situational. That lesson has saved my sanity more times than I can count. I do not necessarily need things to fit into my own logical framework, but I do need them to fit into SOME logical framework. I have a lifelong fascination with World War II that is focused on trying to understand the conditions in the world that allowed the Nazi Party to come to power and exterminate over 10 million people and how the US could nearly wipe two entire cities and their mostly civilian populations off the face of the earth by dropping atomic bombs on them. I have come to the point where I can understand the desperation that would allow people support the Nazis, and the fear of punishment or death combined with feeling powerless that would stop them from speaking up. I do not think I will ever understand the inhumanity of what the Nazis or US government did to so many innocent people. This kind of situational logic can make sense of things that would otherwise seem completely illogical. Unfortunately, it can not make sense of everything. One thing that I have learned from being with K for all these years is that there can be truth without logic. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever learned and it is still very difficult to accept it at times. Here is an example: Truth A: I tell K that I hate surprises and make her promise never to throw me a surprise party. She agrees. Truth B: After knowing Truth A for years, K throws me a surprise birthday party. When I think about this, it seems completely illogical. Why would she do something that I specifically asked her never to do? But nothing is that simple. There are other truths to consider — other variables and frameworks that affect the situation: Truth C: K loves me and wants me to be happy. She is aware of what is going on in my head and in my heart. She would never do anything to hurt me. Based on my simple logic, these 3 truths can not coexist and all be true. But they are truths, so they are true. This tells me that I need to look outside of my own logical framework to understand. Understanding things is very important to me. Variable 1: Internal logic - In a closed system, there can be internal logic. Every person has their own system of internal logic. It is closed in the way that everything affects it and you can not undo things that have already happened. It is open in the way that it is constantly changing as new information is entered into the system. In the case of this example, Variable 1 is K’s internal logic. This is my interpretation of that logic at work: Truths: Lori does not like surprises and has asked never to have a surprise party. Lori has had a very difficult year and has been much more isolated than usual from people. Lori is sad and doesn’t understand why people would want to be friends with her because she doesn’t like to be with people very often and is not always so good keeping in touch with them. K’s Internal Logic (as interpreted by me): It is Lori’s 40th birthday and it needs to have a proper celebration. Lori has friends that love her just the way she is. There are reasons for this that Lori easily forgets when she is feeling bad. I will throw her a surprise 40th birthday party so that she will know that she has friends who care about her. I will do it in the least stressful way possible - Have the party at home. No one yells surprise. It will make Lori happy. In this framework, it is completely logical to throw me a surprise birthday party. Even though it was totally outside of my own logical framework, the party had its intended effect. It made me happy. I had a great time and I was reminded that I have great friends that care about me. My own completely logical logic would not have led to these conclusions. Sometimes, logic is not completely logical, especially when there are human beings involved. It is things like this that make life very confusing. Thinking about all of this makes me realize the importance of logic and truth and how it can be especially important to autistic people that have a hard time deciphering hidden information. By hidden, I mean that it is never communicated directly. This missing information can be the difference between understanding and trusting someone, and isolation from people because of not understanding or trusting them. To a person who takes things literally and is not so good at ‘reading between the lines’, understanding the logical framework of something can be very important. It seems to me like many people automatically understand things based on a shared logical framework that I have never had. It is the framework of human interaction and includes a set of common beliefs that seem illogical to a person who is not operating within this framework. I am not sure if other people have to work so hard to make sense of these things or if making sense of them is even so important to other people. K is a person who makes sense to me and a person who understands me. That is a rare and beautiful thing and there is not a moment when I do not know how lucky I am. One more reason why K rules — She just got us tickets to the sold out Grateful Dead show (to support Barack Obama) at the Warfield tonight! She checked online because sometimes they release tickets on the day of the show. Genius! The show was sold out again a few minutes later. Happy Anniversary, K! (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217861 Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:13:23 +0100 1217861 http://lbnuke.com/2008/01/28/41/ Today is my birthday. Makes me happy K took me to see Phil Lesh and Friends in the city (SF) on Saturday night to celebrate and today we will celebrate again. Not exactly sure how yet, but I do know that birthday cake will be involved. If it is not raining we will go and walk around the by the water. It is very wet outside at the moment and the sky is dark, but it is not raining. I will assume that means it will be a nice day. It is a glass half full kind of day. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217862 Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:45:09 +0100 1217862 http://lbnuke.com/2008/01/18/macworld-2008/ Today was the last day of Macworld. It makes me sad, but there really wasn’t anything left to do there. I saw everything on the expo floor about 5 times, the user conference was over, and I sat in on as many classes and demos at the expo as I could stand. I am fried as always, but can’t wait for next year either. Macworld makes me happy. I got here at 6:30am on tuesday morning to pick up my badge and wait on line for the keynote. It was already wrapped around the block. 9am came and the keynote started and but we were still outside. Hundreds of frozen lemmings. I got into an overflow room at 9:30. The Keynote: An Outline (more…) (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217863 Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:48:35 +0100 1217863 http://lbnuke.com/2008/01/06/aspiesocial/ ***Anouncement!*** There is a new website for adults on the autistic spectrum who want to meet each other just for the sake of socializing. It is called called aspieSocial.com. If this sounds interesting to you, please come and join us! Social is usually not the first word that comes to mind when thinking about autistic people, but the truth is that many of us have an interest and a desire to be social. It just doesn’t always work out. I am sure there are lots of different reasons for that but there seems to be a few that are common to people on the spectrum. One of the most common things seems to be that, for some reason, the set of rules that seems obvious to most people for socialization and interaction are either unknown to many of us and/or do not make any sense at all. When I was younger, I did not know the rules. There was no good reason why I shouldn’t know them. My parents tried crazy hard to teach them to me. My brother learned them with no problem. Other kids at school knew them to the point where harsh punishment would be given to those of us who were clueless. Over the years, I have learned many of the rules and use them as often as possible. For instance, when you see someone you know, you say hello and ask them how they are doing. The standard answer to this is some form of “Fine. How are you?”. You answer in turn and then talk about the weather or a sports team. Depending on how well you know the person, this can also include what you did for the weekend or will be doing next weekend. People may or may not pay attention to or care about the answers. It does not seem to matter as long as there is no ‘awkward silence’. Any silence at all is awkward. This is called small talk. I believe that in many cases people actually care how each other are doing, but the things that follow the greeting often seem random and pointless. Worst of all, there are many situations in which lying is appropriate and expected. I can not at all understand why this makes any sense. What is the point of talking about nothing just so it is not quiet? Why is quiet bad? If people are going to lie, what is the point of talking at all? If you are expected to not tell the truth if it will make someone uncomfortable, what is the point of having any communication at all? These rules seem to defy logic. I do not think I will ever understand them. When I first started meeting other autistic people, I discovered that things do not need to be that way. Not everyone understands, follows, or even agrees with these rules. It was a huge revelation for me. It was the first time I was ever with people who are like me in that way. When I went to my first meeting with other autistic people, suddenly the thing that made me feel so different for so long — like I was the only one in the whole world who was missing this critical understanding of how people work — was changed forever. A certain kind of core loneliness was relieved. I have been very lucky to make some very close friends over the years, but I still am kind of clueless about what to do when I am with people who I like but am not very close to. I find that when I hang out with other people w/asperger’s or other types of autism, it is much easier to socialize. While some of the rules are expected (such as not being mean to people), others are tossed out the window. It is suddenly okay for there to be silence. The conversation seems much more real even though there may be fewer words exchanged. One night a few weeks ago, me and my friend d (aka zippityd) were out having drinks at a local bar and talking about making a website. She was thinking of making some kind of aspie social or dating site. We decided that one thing missing from the quickly growing online autistic community was a site just for being social, like myspace, but not like myspace. I have wanted to do something like that for a couple of years now. It was my original plan for the aspieland domain name, but at the time the open source solutions I tried were not ready for prime time. Then I got way too busy. D is very busy too, but there are faster, easier ways to make an online community these days. I suggested we use ning, an online community for making online communities. I had played around with it in its beginning days and then forgot about it. I was reminded again because this years macworld conference is using ning for a macworld community site. I like the way it worked and suggested it to d. A week or so later, she sent me a link to the first draft of aspieSocial. She had opened an account and created the whole thing just like we talked about! I was very impressed and even more excited. This site was going to exist. Thanks d! We invited a few people and they told a few people and there are now 35 members. If you are interested in something like this or know someone who might be, come visit us at aspieSocial.com! (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217864 Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:41:29 +0100 1217864 http://lbnuke.com/2008/01/04/dragthing/ I was browsing Macworld online this morning and watched Jason Snell’s video about DragThing, a utility that replaces the mac OS X dock. It can also be used in addition to the standard dock. Half way through watching the video, I could barely wait to try it. I downloaded it before the video was over and installed it right away. It took me a little while to get it all configured, but so far it totally rocks. I like the mac dock but I have so many things on it that they are hard to find. I run my cursor back and forth all the time trying to remember what I was looking for. Drag thing organizes dock items in several ways. There are options to create multiple docks, each with the option of tabbed sections. Many themes are included and the docks can be moved around. I chose the blueprint theme and created one dock with 6 tabs (main, docs, folders, URLs, dev, and misc). I am also using the ‘process dock’, a dock showing all open applications. I chose to show these as drawers that need to be clicked to open (hover over is another option). One cool thing I noticed is that even with the drawers set to open on click instead of hover, I can still drag a file to a tab and the dock will open so I can drop the file onto the program I want to open it with. Docks with drawers closed: DragThing is shareware. It is free to download and try and $29 for a single user license. I will try it for a while before I pay for it, but even after just one day I can see how this could easily become a ‘must have’ app. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217865 Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:26:58 +0100 1217865 http://lbnuke.com/2007/12/01/if-brain-fried-ramble-code/ I am too busy. I suck at being busy. It is my worst thing and it always ends badly. I am not sure how to not be busy. It is a vicious cycle. As soon as I start feeling better, I want to do things. All the things that I can’t do when I am sick. I want to work. I want to play. Sometimes, I even want to see people. I was sick for so long. First a year of bad meds and then cat scratch fever. I was lucky that the meds thing got straightened out before the CSF, but it is only very recently that I can enjoy it. Suddenly, I find myself feeling great! I still get tired and confused, but that is ok. It is part of how I am. After such a long time of not being able to do things that I wanted to, I feel like it is a race for time to do them now that I am feeling good. I would love to think it will always be like this, but the truth is that it is not and never has been. The thing is, I think it could be like this most of the time if I didn’t have stress. I know that is impossible, but it would be possible to have much less stress. Only problem with that is I would be stuck not doing anything I want to do again. I am stressed by working. I am stressed by traveling. I am stressed by being around people. My brain gets overloaded and bad things happen. I get sick. The screaming in my head that is kept in the background by the meds gets louder. My brain shuts down. I twitch like crazy. I become miserable and useless. I have no idea what to do about this. I want to work so badly. I love what I do. It is like being paid for doing puzzles and arts and crafts. When I code, my brain is in a happy place. Everything makes sense. It has to. As an added bonus, I get to take that code and turn it into a (hopefully) beautiful thing to look at. I am not a graphic artist by any means, so even the art part is like a puzzle. I combine graphic art made by actual artists, with photoshop skills and an eye for detail, and create an entirely new thing that never existed before. What’s not to love? I was wanting to go to Florida to see my niece Hannah and the rest of my family for a whole year, but couldn’t because of being too sick. Then all of a sudden, I was okay to travel. It is a rare and beautiful thing. There was no way I wasn’t going to Florida. The trip (airplane, etc.) went pretty well thanks to Dramamine and, as always, being with Karen made everything better and more fun. Being in Florida was even okay. I love my family, but I hate Florida. I can’t deal with the hot and humid weather. We completely lucked out with that. Not insanely hot or humid. Last time I was there, I couldn’t even stand to be outside for more than a minute. Got instantly exhausted and dizzy. It was really great to see my family. Hannah is beyond the legal limits of cute. It was so nice to get to know her better and see her sweet smile. I really loved getting to see her with my brother, sister-in-law, and parents too. They are a family. I am so glad they live so close to each other. Sometimes it is hard living so far away. Sometimes I wish Florida was in Nevada. My cousin Eric was there too. It is always nice to see him and my aunt Wilma and uncle Pat too. Sarah’s (sister-in-law) family was there too. It was nice to see them too. So nice, that we brought her sister Sam back with us. She will be going to acupuncture school in Berkeley starting in January and has been staying with us this past week. She magically found a great place to live in Berkeley on her fist try and will be moving in today. Bad Apples Haven’t had enough rambling yet? Then on to the saga of the bad imacs. Me, my dad, and my brother all got new aluminum imacs last month. 2 out of 3 of them were duds. There was a problem with the ATI graphics cards. The whole computer was unstable because of it. Black screens, blue screens, strange graphics, freezing, etc. Windows X 10.5? There has been a firmware update for the graphics cards released that appears to fix the problem for most, if not all, people. Thankfully, my brother’s was fine from the start. Both me and my dad returned our computers and got brand new replacements. All is good now. The new imac came with Leopard and now that it works, I have been loving it! The screen is huge! Not only is it 24″, but I have been using Spaces, a new feature of Leopard where you can have several “desktops” and easily switch between them. For example I can have photoshop open in one desktop, giving it the entire screen to itself, mail and safari open in another, Firefox and BBedit in another, etc. Time Machine is totally cool too. I can’t even believe how easy it is to back up. You plug in the external drive and the mac asks if you want to use it for Time Machine. You click ‘yes’. That is it. Your hard drive is being backed up every hour and saving daily, weekly, and monthly backups for as far back in time as the drive will allow. When it gets full, it asks if you would like it to delete the oldest backups to make room. Unbelievable! I will still make daily clones as soon as super duper is Leopard ready, but Time Machine offers a different kind of backup that is easier to use, automatic, and frequent. Just a few more things to ramble about before I go… K - I am so very proud of K! She has been saving the world as always. In recognition of her hard work, she has gotten a promotion at work and is now a supervisor, which is the direction she has been wanting to go. Congratulations K! It makes me happy to know that people will have an opportunity to learn from her and benefit from her years of experience. Warcrack - Shikibee has joined a new guild and is about to ding level 50. Rehab - I am meeting with someone once a week who will help me research if there are jobs available where I can do contract work from home or with a very flexible schedule. I would really like that. Freelancing is great because I set my own hours and don’t have to answer to anyone except my clients, but I work all the time and barely make any money. If I did contracted work instead, someone else would be dealing with the clients, setting the prices, and all of the other business related things that I can not do. Even splitting the money with an agency or other company, it is very likely that I would make more money than I do now. I hope something like that could work out. I was hoping that I could keep my current clients and stop taking new freelance jobs if there were contract jobs available instead. Wordpress 2.3 Update - This one went much more smoothly than the last two. I wish there was a way to manage tags, but from what I understand, the dev team is waiting to find out what people want rather than starting with a ton of features that people may or may not use and then having to change them later. I am looking forward to 2.4 and the new admin changes. Joomla 1.5 - I am working on a new client site with Joomla 1.5 RC3. It has been very stable and the code is MUCH cleaner than before. I love the new templating system and look forward to its final release and the updated extensions that will follow. If you are planning to integrate any kind of forums into your site, stay with 1.0.x for now. phpBB3 - Love it! Tons of improvements over phpBB2. Current release is RC8. This update has been a long time in the making. I am hoping that converting from older version will not be total hell. I have finally run out of things to ramble about for now (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217866 Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:29:08 +0100 1217866 http://lbnuke.com/2007/11/06/os-x-keyboard-shortcuts/ cmd: key | shift: key | opt: key | ctrl: key Shortcut Description   General cmd-W Close Window (does not quit program) cmd-Q Quit Program cmd-C Copy cmd-X Cut cmd-V Paste cmd-N New Document / New Window cmd-O Open File cmd-S Save shift-cmd-S Save As... cmd-P Print cmd-Z Undo shift-cmd-Z Redo cmd-A Select All cmd-F Find cmd-G Find Next shift-cmd-G Find Previous cmd-, (cmd-comma) Preferences cmd-H Hide - hides current program shift-cmd-H Hide Others - hides all other programs cmd-+ Make Text Bigger cmd-- Make Text Smaller cmd-0 (cmd-zero) Revert to original text size cmd-? Help cmd-M Minimize Window to the Dock ctrl-opt-cmd-8 Reverse Window Colors       For Text Editing (i.e. Pages, Word) cmd-B Bold cmd-U Underline cmd-I Italic cmd-T Show Fonts Panel shift-cmd-C Show Colors Panel       Finder (Including Desktop) cmd-I Get Info shift-cmd-N Create New Folder       Browsers cmd-R Reload Page in Safari or Firefox F5 Reload Page in Firefox cmd-[ or cmd-← Back in Browser cmd-] or cmd-→ Forward in Browser cmd-D Add bookmark in browser cmd-T New Tab in Safari or Firefox Does anyone else have any favorite mac keyboard shortcuts? (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217867 Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:19:42 +0100 1217867 http://lbnuke.com/2007/10/21/recap/ Things have been slowly getting back to normal (whatever that is). Both lumps are a lot smaller and I am not so tired anymore. I have even been able to work some. A nightmare has come and gone. My body and brain have been to all sorts of new places. Most of them sucked. I don’t have cancer. I feel a need to make a bulleted list. I love bulleted lists. Timeline Beginning of September - Start having bad pain in my right shoulder and arm. Notice a lump about the size of a pea above my collarbone. Go to the clinic the next day. Get chest x-rays and blood tests. Doc thinks he feels another lump in my breast and tells me to schedule a mammogram and ultrasound. It is my first mammogram. I am 40. Good timing. Start having fever and night sweats. Very weak. Can’t stay awake. Pain everywhere. Lump is the size of a marble. There is another lump in my armpit. Fever gets higher. Call clinic. They tell me to go to emergency room. Get more blood tests and IV fluids. Me and K go back to clinic to get test results. Doc is grim. Lump is the size of a 25¢ gumball. Looks like lymphoma. WTF? Schedule a biopsy. Doc marks priority as urgent. I am panicked. K is in hell. My folks come to visit from Florida. I am completely terrified of surgery. Biopsy is my first time in an operating room since I was born. I choose the option for local anesthetic. I am way too freaked out to be totally put under with a breathing tube. I would rather feel the knife. Turns out I don’t feel anything. Surgery goes fine. Pain comes later. Still, not so bad. Doc finds a second lump in my armpit during surgery. Receive a letter from Summit saying they want to do a second mammogram. My folks come. K does everything. We wait for results. They are late. I am on the edge of panic for a whole week. Breathing takes effort. The doc finally calls. “Do you want good news or good news?”, “Good news please.”, “It’s cat scratch disease!”, “No way!”, “Yes. That’s why the test results took so long. We did extra tests to be sure.”, “Thank you. Thank you very much!”. Me, K, my mom, and my dad all cry. It is the best thing ever. It was a crazy roller coaster for all of us. For the rest of my family and some other close people too. I learn things. Some things I already know are reinforced. Some things I think I know… I don’t know them at all. Things Karen is the best partner in the whole world. I can count on her always. She will take care of me. I will take care of her. We are a team. My family is there for me too. When I can only think the worst, I realize that I want to be with them. If my life was to end too soon, I don’t want to travel the world. I want to be with K. I want to be with the rest of my family. It is primal. My friends are there for me. Sometimes, I have no idea why. I am more thankful for this than I can ever tell them. Thank you TC, D, Nancy, Susan, and everyone else who babysat me, sent emails, left comments, thought good thoughts, prayed, sent good energy, distracted me, etc. I want to believe there is a god. Even though I strongly identify as Jewish, I lean towards agnosticism. How can anyone know something like that? But I find myself praying and being thankful that other people are praying too. I still wonder, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t think I can ever believe that god is some giant old white guy wearing a dress and living in the clouds, but I feel something. God? Energy of the universe? Something my brain is creating to keep me sane? I don’t know, but it feels like a miracle. The odds of cat scratch fever were low. It is finally a good time to fall into that small percentage of people who are different. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217868 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:01:15 +0100 1217868 http://lbnuke.com/2007/09/24/relief-the-photo/ I am tired and weak and and I’ve never been happier K took this picture yesterday at the Greek Theater where we were seeing Phil Lesh and Friends. I was too tired to even sit up for most of the show, but I had a great time anyway laying on the grass and listening. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217869 Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:38:36 +0100 1217869 http://lbnuke.com/2007/09/21/cat-scratch-fever/ I am going to be OK. I have cat scratch fever! Not lymphoma! I am so happy. Still in shock a little. My parents and Karen were all here when I got the good news. We had a happy cryfest. I am so happy. Did I mention that? Thanks to everybody for everything! Antibiotics will fix me. I have never been so happy to have a disease in my life. I have no words for the kind of relief that everyone here is feeling right now. Thanks again to everybody for your support and kind words and good wishes and company! (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1217870 Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:32:00 +0100 1217870 http://lbnuke.com/2007/04/20/useless/ I have not been able to do anything today. No work. No play. Couldn’t go out. I worked a bunch of long days and nights on the server move and the site upgrade for my client and now I am totally useless. I am pretty sure I have a bunch of work to do, but I can’t figure out what it is. I tried to make a list, but it just confused me more. K is going to help me figure it out this weekend. My mom helped me brainstorm about ways to make money to pay for the new server and I realized (after doing tons of math yesterday) that I can actually offer people more disk space and bandwidth than I could before. I need to find at least 13 more people paying $100/year to be breaking even. Not sure how I will do that. I am considering doing a promotion of including a free blog with new hosting accounts. If I ever have time again, I will figure it all out. I also need to update my business site because it is 3 years old and WAY out of date. My demos are especially out of date and the content does not accurately describe my services anymore. I am booked up until June, so can not take on any more website clients until then. I have 5 projects in the works, but am waiting on content for three of them. It is very frustrating to have so much to do and not be able to do anything! I wish I could at least go outside or play a video game. I can play with the kitten. That is a good thing. I wish I could hire someone to run my brain. They would keep it organized and running smoothly, and I would do all the things that would be able to get done once it was working right. I suppose that is what a business manager does. I am glad it is Friday. This morning I was convinced that it was Thursday and argued with K about it. I even made her check the calendar. Somehow, I missed a day this week. Not sure which one, only that it wasn’t Tuesday or Thursday. Yesterday, me and K went to the dentist. It is hard to get me to the dentist even though we have a great dentist. He is right around the corner from my old house in Berkeley. Ever since the first time I went there, over 10 years ago, I have been asking him to pull out my top left wisdom tooth. Every time, he has some reason why it doesn’t need to come out. After having my teeth painfully cleaned and being reprimanded for not flossing every day, the lady who looked at my x-rays said that I needed to come back and have both top wisdom teeth pulled. There is no room in my mouth for them and one of them (the one I have been trying to get pulled) is pointing sideways and doesn’t do anything except hurt when I eat carrots. I made an appointment for sometime in May. I am not looking forward to it at all, but am glad to finally get my tooth pulled. K will come with me because she rules How come I can write this, but can’t do anything else? Except twitch. I am very twitchy today. I don’t understand how thinking works. Is it really as easy for other people as it seems? Why aren’t other people stuck in their house not even able to watch tv? I am not stupid, but somehow end up being totally useless sometimes. I did help my brother get some info about an imac earlier. I guess I’m not totally useless. I wonder why I can talk about computer stuff almost any time, even when my brain won’t do anything else. It is all very strange. Oh well, what can you do? Back to doing nothing now… asperger, beedragon, server, work (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=558174 Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:07:05 +0100 558174 http://lbnuke.com/2007/04/18/web-20-expo-boring/ I was very disappointed in the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday at Moscone Center in SF. I wasn’t expecting much since everything I was interested in was part of the conference and not the expo, but I thought it would at least be fun and interesting. It was not. I was glad I left late for the city. I stayed home in the morning to work on the big site upgrade that I am doing. I reached about hour 25 of what will most likely be a 30 hour project that I will get paid $300 for. I suppose $10/hr. is a big improvement over the $2/hr. I was making last year. I am happy about the job. It is for a long time client who has sent me many referrals, and the updated site will make it much more usable for us both. I digress. Back to the expo. So many of the things that I consider to be the future (and present) of the web are open source projects with large enthusiastic development communities. The small expo floor was filled with large corporations and smaller startups focused on selling their products to other companies. The people I spoke with were sales reps rather than developers. GoogleDoubleClickAmazonMicrosoftAOLeBayNokia. For sure these companies are contributing a lot to the current and future web, but I had expected a bunch of geeky web developers excited to learn about new technology, trade mashup ideas, or at least argue about which programming language is best. I think the conference might have been more like that, but the expo was for marketing, not learning. There were some interesting products there for sure, and if I was a big company with lots of money to spend, I may have been more interested in some of them. Walking around and hearing sales pitches was boring me, and I am almost never bored. It only happens when I am in a place where I have no interest in what is going on around me and no freedom to retreat into my own brain. If I am in a situation like that for too long, I will end up in my own world anyway and start seeming retarded to anyone trying to interact with me because I can barely talk and I hear things too slowly to respond to them. It is also about the point where I start bumping into people because I lose track of what is going on outside of my head. Nice Luckily K was there! Somehow she manages to communicate with me no matter how slow my brain is at any given moment. Thanks to K, the day was not a complete loss. She met me at Moscone Center and we walked around the expo together. That was nice. We entered some contests, K more than me because she had business cards with her and I didn’t. There was a contest to win a copy of Adobe CS Web Premium. We both entered. It would be great to win that! We got the obligatory pens, a bright orange t-shirt, and a tiny green stapler. After that, we had some dinner at the Metreon and then BARTed home. I was completely exhausted, but ended up working for a little while before finally getting to watch Jeopardy on DVR. I have been very tired the past few days. Not sure if it is from working so much or meds, but I am still feeling much better than before. I don’t know if I will be able to go to Hannah’s birthday party or not, but I am finally starting to feel like traveling might not be a horrible nightmare, so hopefully I will get there at some point in the near future. web, work (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=558175 Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:10:09 +0100 558175 http://lbnuke.com/2007/04/12/test-for-rsync/ this is the latest post. (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540926 Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:19:42 +0100 540926 http://lbnuke.com/2007/04/09/dedicated-server/ My new meds are still working much better than the last ones. It is still hard to concentrate, work, play, and read, but for the most part, I am feeling about a million times better than I was just a short time ago It is easier to be with people. I had a really good weekend that turned out to be very social and I didn’t even hate it at all. On Friday, I met D at the White Horse for a little while. It was very nice to see her. She is one of the very few people that I can ‘talk geek’ with. It is a rare and beautiful thing. We have other things in common too that make it easier for me to hang with her than it sometimes is to hang other people. She came over and had dinner with me and K. After dinner, we all went to Velvet to meet Lorena and Tess. It was a good night. We played pool even though we were all sucking pretty bad, even D who is actually good at pool. There were a few obstacles like a giant pole and huge speaker in the way of making certain shots. Still it was fun, even though my knuckle is still a little swollen from smacking it into the giant pole while trying to shoot around it. Eventually, I completely lost all focus of what was going on around me and went into my own special world where it is quiet and stimuli is almost non-existent. I think D ended up in some other world too. I am lucky to be able to do that. Otherwise I would have needed very badly to get out of the bar immediately. Yesterday, me and K went to Spin’s birthday party. That was lots of fun too. Happy birthday Spins! Nice people and a custom ‘Pin the Tail on the Tigger’ game with Spin’s features imposed on Tigger and magnetic tails for pinning that was made with obvious love for her by her guy. He even had a special ‘tail’ for himself which was actually a heart that matched the heart on the card that he gave her (at least I assumed that card was from him. Only saw the outside, but it had an identical heart). Very sweet Other than that, me and K did some errands and even had a little bit of quiet time to watch Prehistoric Planet and for K to start a puzzle that she has wanted to do for a while, but hasn’t had the time. And then, tragedy struck… (not really. just having a sudden flair for the dramatic) I have often thought that it would be great to have a completely managed dedicated server. In my fantasies, this was paid for by my clients who I provide web hosting for. In real life, this is not the case. I recently made a very big mistake. A website that I finished for a client went public a couple of weeks ago. The main content of this site is audio of a weekly radio show. Huge mp3 files being played through a flash audio player. I have never done a site with audio as the main content and had no idea how much of a load it puts on the server! I went from using between normal and high server resources to using thousands of times that much, causing the VPS I was on to fail repeatedly for me, my clients, the other 7 people sharing the VPS, and all of their clients. Somehow, the sites stayed up. When LiquidWeb claims 100% uptime, they are not kidding! If I had known what kind of load the new site would put on the server, I would have charged much more for hosting, but now I feel like the mistake was mine, and the client based their decision of where to host partly on the price I quoted them. I will charge more in the future. Now, I must move to a dedicated server which costs twice as much as the VPS and has multiple times as many resources. The problem is that even with all of the money I make from hosting, it is not even enough to pay for the VPS, let alone a dedicated server. I host a bunch of sites for free for myself, family, friends, the autistic community, and other random projects. In the past, I have charged way to low of a price for hosting, often $50/yr. That was fine when I was on a shared host, but not anymore. Even though cheap hosting is all around, my hosting has a lot to offer, like 100% uptime, nightly offsite backups, 2 hour hardware replacement, blah, blah, blah. All of the things that I am paying so much money for, or more accurately, what my family is paying so much money for. They are helping me out yet again until I can get enough clients to pay for it. Good thing is that I now have the disk space and resources for a bunch of new clients. Now, I just have to find them! If anyone needs good reliable web hosting, please let me know! The new server is built and ready, just waiting for me to transfer the files, settings, and databases from the VPS. I will do this late at night in a few days at a time when I will also be doing a large site upgrade for a client with a very busy site. I think this will be the best time since their site will be down anyway. I have lowered the ttl to 5 minutes on all accounts so that there will be as little downtime as possible when I change the ip addresses for my nameservers. I really hope it is a smooth transition. Luckily, the LiquidWeb folks are amazingly helpful, and will do much of the work for me, including moving the accounts and resyncing all of the data a final time after the VPS is disabled, so no data will be lost in the process. Once this is all done, whenever I need more resources, I can just add them to the server or move to a new server without having to worry about propagation times and changing ip addresses. That is one great thing about dedicated servers. No one else to worry about. Total freedom. I will be trying to think of other ways to raise money to pay for this too. If anyone has a million dollar idea, please share. Thousand dollar ideas are welcome too! I am trying to keep advertising either off of this site completely or to only do it in a non-annoying unobtrusive way. Ideas about that are appreciated too. This site gets much more traffic than my business site, so it makes more sense to advertise here. Only problem is that this site is NOT a business site and it is hard for me to think about making money off of it. It feels wrong, but so does not being able to pay for my own server! I will try to stop panicking (and rambling) now and get back to work. life, meds, ramble, server, work (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540927 Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:56:15 +0100 540927 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/26/server-load-share-this-and-no-trip/ Earlier today my site started loading crazily slow. I checked other sites on the server, and they were all like that. I called LiquidWeb and they told me that it was because of having a really high server load and using more memory than I am allocated. Hard to pinpoint the exact cause because it depends on everything that is happening on all of my sites. The guy said that if it keeps happening, I will have to move to a dedicated server (on a VPS now). I really hope that doesn’t happen! It will cost at least twice as much per month as the VPS. Not sure what to do, especially since my next client site will be using tons of bandwidth for playing huge mp3 files and I already agreed on a hosting price of $100/year because I had no idea about the server resource problem. I also didn’t know how gigantic their mp3 files were at the time. Dang. I finally got the Share-This plugin to work nearly right. Problems in IE. Surprise. Sending email returns people to a blank page. I give up! Sometimes, I really hate being me. Usually, I like it okay. I am very lucky in a lot of ways. Most ways. But once in a while, I get very down on myself and very jealous of other people. I get tired of having a hard time doing basic things like reading, traveling, talking, leaving the house, working, even playing video games! It makes me feel like an idiot. I know that there are lots of things I am good at, and that sometimes those basic things are not hard at all, but when they are, it is very annoying. How can it be hard to play video games? That is completely ridiculous! (more…) life, meds, plugins, ramble, server (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540928 Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:20:08 +0100 540928 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/23/house-of-tape-the-photoshoot/ The other day, K went around taking pictures of the many duct taped things in our house. Even though it is kind of pathetic, it also cracked me up to see them all at once. Sometimes you just have to laugh. I added a doorbell shot to the collection. Here are the very exciting photos… Welcome to our house! Please ring the doorbell before it falls off. But wait! There’s more… (more…) house, pictures (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540929 Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:21:46 +0100 540929 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/22/more-wordpress-plugins/ The first plugin of today is not actually a wordpress plugin at all, but it works like one (at least one that has a slightly complicated installation). It is called iBox. Installation is relatively simple if you are comfortable with uploading and modifying files. Kind of a pain if you’re not. There is some code that needs to be added to the header.php file of your theme, an image that needs to go in the root images directory, and two files that need to go into your theme’s main directory. (more…) plugins, wordpress (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540930 Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:55:16 +0100 540930 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/20/plugin-update/ I have given up on the Share This plugin for now. No time to mess with it anymore. I am back to using the social bookmarks plugin, but I like the way Share This works and looks much better. When I have more time, I will try again. Yesterday, I added the WP-chgFontSize plugin, which is pretty cool. I wish it used ems or percentages instead of pixels for the font-sizes, but can see how that might get tricky with the javascript. I added some code to include a link to return to the default font size. It was bugging me that the only way I could return to the default size was to delete the cookie from my computer. I like to have an ‘undo’ option whenever possible. If anyone else is interested in having this option, here is the code: In the wp-chgfontsize.js file, right after this else block (around line 82): } else { document.write(' <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="chgFontSize_increase();"><img src="' + chgfontsize_imgincdea.src + '" title="Increase Font Size" alt="A+" id="chgfontsizeimginc" /></a> '); } Add this: document.write(' <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="chgFontSize_change(15);" title="Default Font Size">default</a>'); Replace the 15 with whatever your default font size is. Just when I thought I was finished experimenting with plugins for today, I realized that even when using <code> tags, the code was not displaying right in this post. Hyperlinks were actual working hyperlinks, image tags were showing the image, and   html codes were making spaces. Enter my newest plugin, Code Markup, which makes the code tags work right. It is kind of annoying to use a plugin for something that is supposed to happen automatically, but it seemed like the quickest, easiest solution to make it work. Still, you gotta love that there is a wordpress plugin for just about everything! I am using 26 of them right now on this site. code, plugins, wordpress (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540931 Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:38:39 +0100 540931 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/19/good-things/ I am finally feeling better! It’s only been a few days, but I am hoping it will last. So far, I haven’t had any trouble breathing at all with the new old meds. It has been easier to think, easier to work, easier to play. Still can’t read, but maybe that will come later. Last night, I did something that I haven’t done in a really long time. I actually called people to see if they wanted to go out. K and A and R were going to see AC/Dshe in the city (San Francisco). I didn’t want to go because the show didn’t start until 11pm and I thought I probably wouldn’t want to be out in the city that late. (more…) life, meds (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540932 Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:39:16 +0100 540932 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/14/160/ So much going on. New meds. Well, not exactly new. Same as the last meds only in a different formula and dose of pill. Started yesterday. So far, so good. I can breathe. Hopefully the new kind of pill will not give me the same kind of allergic reaction as the last time. I realized when I picked it up this time that ‘trouble breathing’ is listed in the package insert as a possible allergic reaction, not as a side effect. The good news is that the side effects of strattera are finally wearing off. My body feels more normal and the strange sores that I’ve been getting underneath the skin on my hands and feet has almost completely disappeared just as suddenly as they appeared shortly after I started taking the meds. Mystery solved. All those blood tests for nothing. It has been very hard to work. Even hard to play. I am half playing while I am writing this. Turning in quests. It has been fun playing warcrack with the mac guild, the Reservoir Dogcows. Nice folks. I still haven’t played much in groups, but when I did, they were very helpful. Tsayad the night elf hunter (that’s me) is almost level 40. That is a cool thing in world of warcraft. For hunters like Tsayad, it means you can start wearing mail armor instead of leather. It also means you can get a ‘mount’, which is an animal that you ride on so you can go a lot faster. For a night elf, the standard mount is one of several giant cats. Cool. I have so much work to do. I sure hope these meds kick in soon! I wonder if I will ever be able to read again. I suppose I should be patient. There are good things too. We got a harness and a long lead for Nikkyo and have been taking her outside in the backyard. She likes it Mostly she sniffs the other cats and eats grass. Cats sure do like to eat grass. (more…) life, meds, nikkyo, plugins, warcraft, wordpress (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540933 Thu, 15 Mar 2007 04:38:34 +0100 540933 http://lbnuke.com/2007/03/03/duct-tape-plumbing-and-bad-medicine/ Our house is held together by duct tape. Ordinarily, I am a huge fan of duct tape, but using it to hold floor tiles together, lock doors, and replace drywall is getting kind of old. On the other hand, it works pretty well for all of those things, so I am also thankful for it. Unfortunately, duct tape will not fix everything. After a month of increasingly regular visits from roto rooter, we now have a lovely home video of the inside of our pipes which was taken by them yesterday. In the line between our bathroom and the city main, there are several breaks, some roots, a couple of fractures, cracks, and one large hole. Nice. The entire line needs to be replaced if we want to be able to remove roto rooter from speed dial. (more…) autism, life, meds, ramble (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540934 Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:39:30 +0100 540934 http://lbnuke.com/2007/02/08/web-20-the-video/ The term Web 2.0 has been overused to the point of barely having any meaning. Some people use the term to refer to the way in which the web is changing into a more personal and interactive environment where anyone with access can participate without having to be a computer geek. Other people use the term to refer to the individual technologies that are bringing these changes about. I have no idea what it actually means. While I am not a big fan of the actual term Web 2.0, I am very excited about the trend of providing people with easy access to cool technology and letting them run wild with it. The best explanation of Web 2.0 I’ve seen yet is this video that I stumbled across on youtube today and watched 4 times in a row. I think non-geeky types might enjoy watching it too. The Machine is Us/ing Us Video is disabled due to slow loading times. Click here to watch it on YouTube. video, web (Source: LBnuke) LBnuke blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=540935 Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:54:08 +0100 540935