Trust Tommy

Since Saturday night last, I’ve been dealing with very bad knee pain — the worst in several years of pain.

We had a meeting with the physio and a surgeon on Wednesday morning who told us that since we’d exhausted other methods of relief (painkillers, ice, electronic stimulation), we should try cortisone injections into the knee joint. I recognized the name from somewhere but didn’t place it until afterwards: corticosteroids, from House M.D.

That was fine with me. I’d realized long ago that life was simpler if you just got over fears of needles. Even them talking about putting me under anesthetic for a time didn’t bother me. Indeed, the only spanner in the works came later.

“Oh, if we give you these, and you go back to walking as you did before, the stress on your knee will negate some of the effects of the injections, so I think we’ll put you in a cast to force you to rest it.”

That seemed fine once again. I’d had casts before – it was no big deal, until I remembered RENT

The local drama group that I’m a member of are doing “RENT: School Edition” in April, and I was dearly hoping to audition for it. Would being in a cast hinder my attempts to get in the cast?

Eventually though, I decided to take the injections as soon as possible — the sooner I’m in the cast, the sooner I’m out of the cast. The brief thoughts I had of waiting were quickly dashed when I thought to myself “I haven’t been able to go to school because of this pain.. how do I think I’ll survive until April?”

So all I can do now is rest my leg as much as possible until 8am on Thursday. I’ve got my new crutches. Surprisingly, I didn’t find it too difficult to adjust between having two crutches instead of a cane — the most annoying part is the fact that I can’t text and walk at the same time!

*EDIT: Yahoo confirms it but further googling throw doubts upon it. Having said that, articles like this aren’t going to help the introduction of these scanners. What do you think?

The introduction of ‘total body scanners’ (also known as ‘naked body scanners’ due to their clarity) where the subject’s body is ‘clearly defined’ has always been dogged with criticism. That said, they are installed at Heathrow Airport and many seem content to bear them. UK Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said last week that the images produced by the scanners were deleted “immediately” and airport staff carrying out the procedure are fully trained and supervised.

As it happens, those measures don’t seem to be in place universally, as it was revealed on the BBC’s Jonathan Ross show last Friday that Indian actor Shahrukh Khan had passed through a body scan and later had the image of his naked body printed out and circulated by Heathrow security staff.

He said:

So as you can see, they still have a long way to go.

I was at home last night, reading my New Yorker, when this fell out from between the pages:

You’re meant to fill it out, and just stick it in the postbox. Am I the only one who sees the problem therein?

Obviously, since you’re writing your credit card details on it, you should put it in an envelope before sending it away, but what about the people who don’t realize what they’re doing?

It’d be nice if the New Yorker had a little note at the bottom telling you how to not be the victim of credit card fraud.

So, as well as the strikes on Tuesday, the other great topic of conversation is the torrential rain that we’ve been having. It has led to floods, which are awesome – as long as it’s not your house. I mean, it’s lovely to watch all the bad things happening because of it when you’re wrapped up in a cozy blanket and listening to it pounding off the roof. It provided the soundtrack to me going asleep last night and was also there when I groggily groped for my phone this morning, silently deciding that I’d sell my soul for another few minutes in bed.

The Collison house hasn’t seen any flooding really; big puddles are the closest we’ll get. I suppose it’s something to be thankful for – but when friends in another part of the country have the week off school because of them – it’s hard to be appreciative.

When I was being dropped home today by friends, they convinced me to wait into the car for a while (about 10 minutes) because when I first tried to exit, I was met by someone throwing a bucket of water over me.. or so it felt. In true Irish style, though, when I’d gotten into the car not 5 minutes earlier, it’d been dry.

So, yeah, the floods aren’t really affecting me, so if the rain would stop – that’d be lovely thanks :)

I briefly touched on this subject in Markets, earlier this month.

I’ve been on Twitter since February of 2008. I’ve seen people come and go; there are some people I’d like to see more of, and some who I think should learn to shut up every once in a while (and maybe even me sometimes)

I think that among Irish tweeters there’s an annoying lack of originality and diversity, but even worse, there seems to be one set way of doing things, and those who try to do their thing outside of that way get lambasted and put down and get branded as ‘idiots’ or ‘fools’ who are ‘doing it wrong’.

Photo owned by pasukaru76 (cc)

This came to the fore when people started complaining that SimplyZesty tweeted their new blog posts from their account, and also Niall and Lauren, the authors, would do likewise. Reading over this, I thought I’d forgotten something; some little detail. Some incendiary device that’s got everyone in a hullabaloo. Are people honestly getting really worked up about a tweet? Unfortunately they are.

It’s as if there’s a Gestapo going around making sure everyone’s conforming. Surely the marker of company success is by the customers; and whether or not they like and buy and use the service. How other companies operate should be of little concern of yours, right?

There seems to be a problem too that people have a bloated sense of their own importance; you maintain that numbers aren’t important, and then snobbishly treat unfollowing someone as the ultimate thumbs-down in the Gladiator arena. ‘Following’ isn’t this holy covenant. I treat it flimsily; I don’t give a dingo’s kidney whether you follow me back. I follow you because I get something out of your tweets. I only care if you follow me if I need to DM you.

The great thing about Twitter is the diversity; the opportunity to chat with people that you wouldn’t meet or engage with otherwise. It’s in your interest to follow people whose views differ to yours, who live in different locations, are in a different culture; generally do things differently. In doing a startup, the last thing you want it to have your partner(s) being your clone – you want people with skills that supplement your own.

So, less dictating, more learning from others. :)

In English we’re doing a novel called The Cinnamon Tree, which is set in Africa. Before we began the class talked about polygamy; and we decided that there was an unfair Western bias toward our way being better.

‘An unfair bias that our way is better.’

Sound familiar?

Am I legitimizing or validating the Irish Twitter Mafia’s nonexistent argument by defending it? I don’t think so.

Cóir, the social Catholic, conservative Eurosceptics who campaigned so hard for a No vote, released this message to their supporters yesterday:

Dear

Just a quick update to thank you all and to give a few important messages.

- Firstly, from everyone in Cóir, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the magnificent effort you put into making the second battle against Lisbon such a truly inspired campaign. You’ve been a brilliant, wonderful team. God Bless you all. We’ll be sending a full report later this week.

- This is a grubby win for the elite, driven by fear and bullying. In the three days before the vote, the people were subjected to a media onslaught of Yes propaganda threatening ruin and isolation if people voted No. It was unprecedented and utterly disgusting.

- We succeeded, however, in raising several crucial issues, including, of course, the right to life, and the increased profile given to those issues in Lisbon 1 and 2 will make a big difference to our work going forward.

- In the next five days we need to make sure that every Cóir poster is taken down or we will face VERY stiff fines that we can’t pay! Can you ensure that EVERY poster you put up is taken down please? If you see a poster which you can’t take down please call us on 01 8746858 and we’ll get onto it.

- We’re looking to have a special Cóir meeting on November 1st and will contact you with further details shortly.

God bless

Niamh

Oh dearie me. Whatever about the rest, point 2 stinks of sour grapes – much like the fact that it’s only those who do badly in the Junior and Leaving Cert that bitch how it’s a crap system that puts too much pressure on the students. Lads, if one guy can do well, you all can.

But this isn’t about students – is it? Nah, it’s about Cóir.. big eejits.
_
Found via Suzy – Great comment from Rosemary by the way

The scare of this morning is over.

I woke up this morning and found a post of an unsuitable nature for this blog. Basically, something you wouldn’t want your mother/employer to see. It was stickied at the top of the blog, had no comment field and didn’t show up in my list of posts, and once I reloaded the page, the post was gone.

As it transpired, it was only John and Patrick having a laugh. Thanks guys. I really don’t have enough panic attacks at 07:28 in the morning.

Normal service….

Spotify is onto me! I’m not actually from the Netherlands!

Post title comes from watching too much Scooby-Doo when I was younger

I’ve been trying to figure out how many days it is between today and the Saturday before last. More to the point, has it been over 8 days? I ordered a book from the local O’Mahony’s, and they said that it’d be here within 8 days. “Said” was never legally binding, I know, but it’s a damn fine book that I ordered, and I want to get it read. Amazon’s Look Inside! thing isn’t helping. I’ve read the first five pages – not helping my yearning.

Speaking of ordering books, actually. One day recently I went into the bookshop in Castletroy – not the O’Mahoney’s – to buy some other books. A Stephen King one, for reading late at night under the duvet with a torch, because that’s what you’re meant to do with King books – and also one that they didn’t have in stock, which I had to order. Props to Meteor’s EDGE and Wikipedia being the source of all knowledge, I was able to give her the ISBN number on the spot.

On Saturday, while chowing down on some chicken in the Zoo (wonder if it’s made from the petting zoo ones?) I get a call from the bookshop in Castletroy. Because my mouth was full, I was kind of short with them. I got past the part where they said Hi Tommy, it’s Gerald (or whatever his name was…) from the Castletroy Bookshop here – that book you ordered is in, so I told them yes, I’d collect it as soon as I could.

Photo owned by greenkozi (cc)

The problem is – I don’t know what book I ordered. I have a feeling it’s Eagle Day by Robert Muchamore, a book I started reading at my cousin’s house and forgot to ask to borrow it. I didn’t think I’d be seeing said cousins for a while, but desperately wanted to finish reading the book, so I can see myself ordering it in. The thing is that the cousinss in question came out the weekend after and once I got wind of that, I asked him to bring the book out with him when he was coming, which he did. The book now lies on the kitchen table, just about finished.

I don’t want to go in and have to go through that entire explanation, finishing with ‘…and this is why I don’t actually need to buy this, sorry’. It would also be rather suspicious to ring them. “Oh.. about that book, what was it called..?”, especially then if I never show up for it.

Anyone got a solution to my conundrum?

And no, the first book I mentioned definitely isn’t the one I can’t remember. I checked.

My Skullcandy earphones seem to be doing something funky, the sound sometimes only works in one headphones, fading out and about. Normally, that’s fine, but some of my songs feel the need to split the male and female vocals between earphones. For example, California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas,

Males: All the leaves are broooown
Females: All the leaves are broooown
Males: And the skyy is greyyyyy
Females: And the skyy is greyyyyy

But thanks to my banjaxed earphones, I get:

Males: All the leaves are broooown
(pause)
Males: And the skyy is greyyyyy

…Which doesn’t sound half as impressive, does it?

So, I’m asking you a favour, can you recommend a good pair of earphones to me? I’d like them to be in-ears, because outer ear ones don’t cancel enough music, therefore making them unsuitable to drumming. Price range? Let’s say 50 euro or less.

Thanking you in advance!