Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Our family fitness has taken another leap forward this last week with our joining in a virtual race across Australia. For us its more of an amble than a race and we are not in it to win it, but for the fitness.

Jadeen and Erin and Mercedes also received their first mentions for running on the web – though Jadeen was published in the news paper for her running a few weeks back.

I bought a Garmin 310XT training computer watch gizmo and Jude and I have been using this to track our heart rate, speed and distance, and cadence for running and cycling. Here’s the list of our activities on Garmin Connect – you can see the maps, distances and all the details by opening up any of the specific activities. You can even use the player feature to overlay the different metrics and see them play out over the whole course. See the SheepStation Creek course I did on Sunday with Mick.

Photography stuff

After reading this article about 7 ways to get your photos seen, I created a book of photos at Blurb. It is coming soon. You can preview and purchase the book here if you are interested – it makes a great coffee table book.

I have published more photos in our Dreamcoat Photography family portraits section on Flickr. We are in the process of developing our new website for this and are now taking bookings for clients.

Swearing an Oath

Finally, I have sworn an oath this week after following the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd’s lead. We have both made this oath and encourage other men to do the same.

I swear:
never to commit violence against women,
never to excuse violence against women, and
never to remain silent about violence against women.
This is my oath.

Well it was stupid really. I have had enough experience with emergency departments now that I should have listened to my inner voice of reason and not bothered going.

Anyway – I didn’t. Late Saturday night my Uvula decided to get inflamed and swollen. I was a little worried when I tried sleeping that I couldn’t breath and was choking on it. After some will I? wont I? games I rang my doctor father in New Zealand (waking him at 4:45am his time) to ask his advice. He suggested going to the hospital. I don’t think my father has ever waited in a public hospital emergency waiting room. He is always on the other side of the wall. Anyway forgetting this fact I then ran the local hospital 24 hour nursing line. They advised the same thing. So now all I had to do was decided if I could drive without choking, passing out and crashing thus killing myself in the process. After some more will I? won’t I? I decided against calling an ambulance and drove myself the 20 minutes to the hospital. I parked and went in at 3am. After being seeing in about 10 minutes by a nurse who oohed and aahed and said “my yes it is swollen we will have to get a doctor to see you” I sat and waited. Fortunately I took my walkman and 2 books. I had finished the first book, and was starting on the second at 7AM. at 7:25 I was seen by a doctor who took all of 5 minutes to examine me and tell me to go home and take 2 over the counter anti inflammatory pain meds. Bah Humbug!

I went home took the meds and went to sleep.

I am recording here for evermore my intention never to go the hospital again unless an ambulance takes me! My advice for anybody is that if you can walk or drive chances are you don’t actually need to go to the hospital. Wait and it will be all ok. If not the ambulance will get you anyway.

And if I had done some Googling before I went I would have found this fantastic advice at http://swollenuvula.blogspot.com/ and these yummy pictures.

I have lots of things in draft format to be posted on here. I will endeavour to get them all written in the near future. Some pressing client issues are to be dealt with first however.

So in the next few days look for posts on:

• Why I was in hospital most of last night
• Live Mesh - How to set it up and use it (being written by aManda)
• Photosynth – what it is, how to use it and the ones I have created so far
• Books I have read lately (mostly so i can stop tripping over the stack beside my desk that isn’t getting put away until I write this post)
• And if I get time, the next VBA primer.

Ok back to work!

I have to start by saying I don’t dislike doctors at all, after all my father is one/. However I really detest going to see my specialist. Not that he’s not a nice bloke, and not that he hasn’t given me good care in his own way over the years. I have been seeing him now for my graves disease for 9 or 10 years, including the radioactive iodine treatment he prescribed for me a couple of years back.

However, the scenario is this. I arrive at the rooms tonight at about 7:57 for an 8PM appointment. I am called into his room at 8:08. I sit down and we talk briefly about my latest blood test and how I haven’t been taking my medication (I ran out because the appointment had been postponed and I didn’t have a script). Anyway it turns out My thyroxin levels are back to normal, so the radioactive iodine has mostly worked. Most of the thyroid is dead and gone but there’s enough left to give me normal levels again. 5 minutes later I am out at the counter and paying the bill. This is the part I detest. For a 1 minute appointment of which I used 5 minutes, I am charged $120 with a $30 discount. Yes I get $40 odd back from the government, but I really detest paying effectively $1440 per hour. Really its $480 or $120 per 15 minutes.

Grrrr

Thanks Doc. At least I am cured (for now).

We have been exercising using the Wii fit for 4 days now. I have discovered to my chagrin that I have very poor inner muscle strength. While I am pretty fit, and quite strong in my legs and arms I struggle a lot with my abs and waist muscles. They are very weak and I find it a very hard to balance on one leg for example. My twitch muscles are also not finely controlled. The Wii fit  program is making me focus on these exercises and they are hard. Today I spent 20 minutes exercising and one of the exercises was actually standing still as possible. I found that very hard and it is actually harder than it sounds – it hurts after a while using muscles you don’t usually use to keep still. Like wise balancing on one leg and moving the other leg is very difficult. I am enjoying the Ski Slalom, though I find I tend to miss a few gates here and there.