How about checking to see if there are any obvious, physical causes of the pain, and treating them? Specifically, I mean myofasical trigger points. Trigger points can cause chronic pain and other dysfunctions in the body, and can persist for years if not treated. I had numbness and tingling in both hands (left first, then right several months later) that I finally discovered was caused by trigger points in my scalene muscles (these tight muscles in the front and sides of my neck were either directly or indirectly putting pressure on the nerves to my hand). I highly recommend The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Claire and Amber Davies. Very well-written, with clear illustrations and directions for finding and treating almost all of the major muscles in the body. I'm nearly symptom-free, and expect to be fully recovered within another week or two. Please be aware that I am in no way affiliated with the authors nor the publisher.
Of course, it's quite possible that something else is causing the pain, but trigger points are more common than most people think, and they're quite easy and inexpensive to diagnose and treat.
Allow me to relate a problem I've been fighting for over a year now.
I used to sit at my computer at home the way I've seen many folks sit at theirs: slouched down in a low-backed chair with your back at about a 40-70 degree angle and head upright (with nothing supporting it besides my neck) looking at the screen. I spent probably six or seven years doing that on a regular basis for hours on end with no apparent problems. At work I sat correctly in an ergonomic chair with everything set up properly, keyboard and monitor at the proper height and all that jazz. During this time I also did weight training and martial arts quite regularly, and I was quite healthy and rarely sick.
Then one day I realized I had a dull pain in my back, just between my left scapula and spine, that got a little worse when I moved my head certain ways. Thinking I'd just injured myself in one of my non-sedentary hobbies, I went to a chiropractor who managed to fix me up in about three or four weeks, and I was symptom-free again. Then the pain came back, and I went back to the chiro and got re-adjusted and felt fine, the pain came back again...and so on for a few months. Eventually I started feeling pain and tingling in my fingers and hands, and severe muscle cramps in my upper back. It also spread to both sides of my back.
I finally saw a doctor who referred me to an osteopath (D.O.) who gave me almost the same therapy (the manipulations felt identical, in all the same places, even though he claimed that osteopathy and chiropractic were quite different) as the chiropractor had with some acupuncture added in. Again he'd get me fixed up, and I'd relapse, and so on for another few months.
Oddly enough, even though they both told me that proper posture was the key to feeling better, it didn't sink in exactly what I was doing wrong the entire time. I figured that since I sat properly at an ergonomically-organized workstation at the office all day and had completely given up my strenuous hobbies that I couldn't be doing anything wrong.
It took weeks of googling before I finally found a concise, lucid explanation for what was going wrong: the way I'd been sitting at home (at the PC and the TV) was putting stress on my scalene muscles, which were helping to stabilize my head and neck in that position. Those muscles in turn are connected to the first two ribs at the top of the rib cage, and the first rib was being pulled slightly out of position by the over-developed and tense scalenes. It fit with what the osteopath had told me ("Your first rib is out of place") and the treatment I'd been getting the entire time. I just kept yanking everything back out again with an hour or so of video gaming or internet chatting while slouched and relaxing.
So, now I'm pursuing treatment with my chiro again since my insurance stopped paying for the osteopath (who was being billed as a physical therapist, even though he didn't seem to operate much differently from my chiropractor). I'm just hoping I didn't wise up too late to fix my back for good. I'm now sitting up straight at home, and I can definitely tell that the postural correction is what I needed. Although my back is still a bit sore, my symptoms aren't nearly as bad as they were at their worst; practically no tingling or pain in the arms and hands, and the muscle cramps aren't as bad, nor are they getting worse.
So kids, your parents were right, sitting up straight IS important, because you can cause very serious health problems with a few years of bad habits.
The National Hurricane Center is tracking Hurricane Ivan, which is currently on a path similar to the one that Frances just took. It's projected to be here by this weekend, if it does hit Florida (and if their predictions hold true). NASA has already stated that they won't even have time to put on a "band-aid" fix by then, so if Ivan hits, they've got very serious problems. FYI, I live in Orlando, due west of Kennedy Space Center, and I'm getting rather weary of tropical weather systems.
Near the very end of Jack's reply, he says something to the effect of, "If you'd like us to get the spec done sooner, here's where you can send money."
I'm not too sure how throwing money at the problem will solve it, as it seems to me that time is the real issue. Of course everyone says that time==money, but perhaps in this case not for all reasonable values of "time"?
Some major FCC rules about media ownership were ruled as "arbitrary" and therefore illegal, most importantly the one preventing a company from owning the cable system and television stations in the same place.
There goes the main premise of Weird Al's movie, UHF.
Erm, not that it isn't obvious, but people do tend to take you more seriously when you ARE polite and articulate. A million emails saying, "M$ su><0rs" probably wouldn't help. Just take a moment to say something coherent and calm, and you'll do a lot more to help the cause.
Recently, in my Intro to Japan class, we have been discussing stereotypes and how we use other groups (another country, religion, or...another OS) in order to define who we are. Basically, when we say something like, "Windows is unstable," we are also saying that other operating systems ARE stable.
The point is, though, that by defining what Linux is in terms of M$, you put a big restriction on what you can say. There are features of Linux that just don't have a "mirror image" in any of the Windows line, such as the option to go comepletely GUI-free, the ability to customize the whole kernel to suit your needs, and BogoMIPS (had to throw that one in). While it's important that we point out what Linux does in comparison to the alternative, we have to remember to point out the things it does simply because it makes sense to do so.
[it's my first post ever, please be kind;-) ]
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You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
How about checking to see if there are any obvious, physical causes of the pain, and treating them? Specifically, I mean myofasical trigger points. Trigger points can cause chronic pain and other dysfunctions in the body, and can persist for years if not treated. I had numbness and tingling in both hands (left first, then right several months later) that I finally discovered was caused by trigger points in my scalene muscles (these tight muscles in the front and sides of my neck were either directly or indirectly putting pressure on the nerves to my hand). I highly recommend The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook by Claire and Amber Davies. Very well-written, with clear illustrations and directions for finding and treating almost all of the major muscles in the body. I'm nearly symptom-free, and expect to be fully recovered within another week or two. Please be aware that I am in no way affiliated with the authors nor the publisher.
Of course, it's quite possible that something else is causing the pain, but trigger points are more common than most people think, and they're quite easy and inexpensive to diagnose and treat.
I used to sit at my computer at home the way I've seen many folks sit at theirs: slouched down in a low-backed chair with your back at about a 40-70 degree angle and head upright (with nothing supporting it besides my neck) looking at the screen. I spent probably six or seven years doing that on a regular basis for hours on end with no apparent problems. At work I sat correctly in an ergonomic chair with everything set up properly, keyboard and monitor at the proper height and all that jazz. During this time I also did weight training and martial arts quite regularly, and I was quite healthy and rarely sick.
Then one day I realized I had a dull pain in my back, just between my left scapula and spine, that got a little worse when I moved my head certain ways. Thinking I'd just injured myself in one of my non-sedentary hobbies, I went to a chiropractor who managed to fix me up in about three or four weeks, and I was symptom-free again. Then the pain came back, and I went back to the chiro and got re-adjusted and felt fine, the pain came back again...and so on for a few months. Eventually I started feeling pain and tingling in my fingers and hands, and severe muscle cramps in my upper back. It also spread to both sides of my back.
I finally saw a doctor who referred me to an osteopath (D.O.) who gave me almost the same therapy (the manipulations felt identical, in all the same places, even though he claimed that osteopathy and chiropractic were quite different) as the chiropractor had with some acupuncture added in. Again he'd get me fixed up, and I'd relapse, and so on for another few months.
Oddly enough, even though they both told me that proper posture was the key to feeling better, it didn't sink in exactly what I was doing wrong the entire time. I figured that since I sat properly at an ergonomically-organized workstation at the office all day and had completely given up my strenuous hobbies that I couldn't be doing anything wrong.
It took weeks of googling before I finally found a concise, lucid explanation for what was going wrong: the way I'd been sitting at home (at the PC and the TV) was putting stress on my scalene muscles, which were helping to stabilize my head and neck in that position. Those muscles in turn are connected to the first two ribs at the top of the rib cage, and the first rib was being pulled slightly out of position by the over-developed and tense scalenes. It fit with what the osteopath had told me ("Your first rib is out of place") and the treatment I'd been getting the entire time. I just kept yanking everything back out again with an hour or so of video gaming or internet chatting while slouched and relaxing.
So, now I'm pursuing treatment with my chiro again since my insurance stopped paying for the osteopath (who was being billed as a physical therapist, even though he didn't seem to operate much differently from my chiropractor). I'm just hoping I didn't wise up too late to fix my back for good. I'm now sitting up straight at home, and I can definitely tell that the postural correction is what I needed. Although my back is still a bit sore, my symptoms aren't nearly as bad as they were at their worst; practically no tingling or pain in the arms and hands, and the muscle cramps aren't as bad, nor are they getting worse.
So kids, your parents were right, sitting up straight IS important, because you can cause very serious health problems with a few years of bad habits.
When will you stop beating your wife?
As a relatively recent Ivy league graduate (in engineering), I can assure you that many of us still need to work for a living.
The National Hurricane Center is tracking Hurricane Ivan, which is currently on a path similar to the one that Frances just took. It's projected to be here by this weekend, if it does hit Florida (and if their predictions hold true). NASA has already stated that they won't even have time to put on a "band-aid" fix by then, so if Ivan hits, they've got very serious problems. FYI, I live in Orlando, due west of Kennedy Space Center, and I'm getting rather weary of tropical weather systems.
Near the very end of Jack's reply, he says something to the effect of, "If you'd like us to get the spec done sooner, here's where you can send money."
I'm not too sure how throwing money at the problem will solve it, as it seems to me that time is the real issue. Of course everyone says that time==money, but perhaps in this case not for all reasonable values of "time"?
-Peter
You don't have to be articulate or even polite.
Erm, not that it isn't obvious, but people do tend to take you more seriously when you ARE polite and articulate. A million emails saying, "M$ su><0rs" probably wouldn't help. Just take a moment to say something coherent and calm, and you'll do a lot more to help the cause.
The first firewall in the industry to allow system-level access with just one buffer-overflow attack.
Recently, in my Intro to Japan class, we have been discussing stereotypes and how we use other groups (another country, religion, or...another OS) in order to define who we are. Basically, when we say something like, "Windows is unstable," we are also saying that other operating systems ARE stable. The point is, though, that by defining what Linux is in terms of M$, you put a big restriction on what you can say. There are features of Linux that just don't have a "mirror image" in any of the Windows line, such as the option to go comepletely GUI-free, the ability to customize the whole kernel to suit your needs, and BogoMIPS (had to throw that one in). While it's important that we point out what Linux does in comparison to the alternative, we have to remember to point out the things it does simply because it makes sense to do so. [it's my first post ever, please be kind ;-) ]