Torn ACL Uncovers a New Hobby

On February 20th I was psyched to be out on the basketball court.  I had missed a few sessions because of work and the local schools having snow days and vacation.  It was the first game of our normal Friday Faculty & Staff Basketball League (FSBL).  I was on a fast break with only one person to beat, I crossed over from right to left, when I planted my left foot – CRACKLE & POP.  I just fell to the ground and could not walk.  After a week of my knee seeing no improvement, I was sent for an MRI.  The results were not good: torn ACL and ruptured lateral meniscus.  So I scheduled surgery as soon as I could.  I wanted to be on the road to recovery as soon as possible.

On March 30 I had my ACL reconstructed.  Since my patellar tendon was “worn”, the doctor decided to reconstruct the ACL with a hamstring graft.  He also had to remove some meniscus, but said it was only a small portion deep and most of the meniscus was left intact.  The doctor and I consider the surgery a success.  I am one week removed from surgery and have decent movement, but a lot of bruising which is expected.  I have been to physical therapy and am on the road to recovery.

The downfall to this injury is a long recovery.  It takes about 18 months to get back to 100%.  I will not be able to do any moderate activity for about 6 months and probably closer to a year until I can play basketball.  Maybe I will get a round or two of golf in in the Fall.

This injury gave me the opportunity to investigate new hobbies.  I have never really had a hobby, most of my downtime is spent playing a sport; basketball, bowling or golf.  Time for something new.  If you have been following my blog, you know that

my house has many critters.  We have a Boxer, Bearded Dragon, Veiled Chameleon, Hermit Crabs, Tropical Fish and a recent addition of a Tiger Oscar.  I love all of these critters.  We have been to some pet stores and love the salt water reef aquariums.

So knowing that I was “going under the knife” and could not play sports for awhile, I began researching marine aquarium and reef keeping.  It is very involved and very interesting.  It involves understanding biology, chemistry, fluid dynamics and even plumbing.  So I am going to give it a try.  I am going to chronicle my knee and reef progress both on this blog and Facebook. Nemo Fish!

Summer Winding Down, Time to Refocus

There are a few more weeks of good weather here in Buffalo (hopefully).  It has been a great summer with my family.  We invested some money into our house adding on a patio which also meant 5 yards of dirt, plants, etc.  I also had a great vacation in Toronto.  We took our boys to the Toronto Zoo and Centreville.  Good fun for all!

Now that the summer is almost over, it is time to refocus.  I am back to class, taking Modern Geometry.  I also have some large projects ramping up at work.  All to keep me busy during the Buffalo winter.  Best of all, back to blogging!

Anniversary Full of Cliches

My wife and I just celebrated our 7th Anniversary this past weekend with a nice dinner without the kids at The Dock at the Bay Restaurant.  The food was was good, but was a bit disappointed with the menu.  They used to have nice menu books with a decent selection, now it is a laminated pamphlet.  Other than that, the dinner was great.  However after dinner is where the evening started to get interesting.

We went outside to the patio bar where a cover band was getting setup to play.  The band, The Strangers, sounded great and performed covers to some great tunes.  This prompted us to find a table and get a few Coronas.  As the crowd grew, and the rain past, we gained a certain appreciation for being married.  We were surrounded by middle aged, divorcees fitting just about every cliche in the book.

I know that I might get the same treatment as the Seinfeld gang in the end, but here it goes:

Pony Tail Guy – just looking for a friend; Ray Band case on one side, obnoxious cell phone on the other; spiked hair, 3in. pony tail, silk shirt (chest showing), and bare feet.

Groupie - larger woman; see-through dress, cut way too low on all accounts; dancing to every tune, sometimes the only one on the dance floor.

General Ladies – having a good time; dancing in rhythm; way past their prime, but I salute them.

Muscles – not much rhythm; thank God there is a fire fighter that could actually pull me from a buring building.

And then there were the couples…

A-holes – prototypical couple from SNL; somewhat good looking, but stuck on themselves; “Wanna Dance Babe, Dance, Wanna Dance Babe, Wanna Beer Babe, Babe a Beer”

Major PDA Couples – illustrated below; these were the tame ones; I have not seen this much making out since my last high school dance circa 1996.

Hot Chick with Old Guy – great body, great face and 15 years too young for him; they seemed genuinly happy; way to go old guy!

I learned a lot about appreciating where I am in life, my beautiful family and my gorgeous wife that night.  Seven years and she is still with me.  A friend of mine still thinks that I won her in a card game because there is no way someone like her ends up with a guy like me.

I LOVE YOU Stephanie.

Dinner, $60
Drinks, $40
Gaining an appreciation for your relationship with your wife and family, Priceless

To My Wife – Happy Valentine’s Day

I Love You, Stephanie.

Love, Mike.

Oracle VM – Xen Hypervisor

Oracle did what we expected and hoped for, they released their virtualization product, Oracle VM, today at OpenWorld. Oracle VM (aka Oracle Virtual Server and OVS) is Oracle’s implementation of the Xen Hypervisor and more importantly management tools for your virtualized infrastructure.

The Oracle VM product will be freely available on OTN on Wednesday. Oracle will be selling support for Oracle VM at about the same rate as Unbreakable Linux support.

I am sure the Linux purest are grumbling heatedly over this announcement. But for those who have to support real systems, it will be a huge step in the right direction. Oracle is also releasing a Oracle VM Manager, which manages the Xen environment in a web-based application similar to Virtual Center for VMware. The next release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, 11g, will have a full featured management pack for Oracle VM. Both management products are very promising and have been the missing piece of Xen going mainstream.

I talked to one of the members of the product team in depth. He gave me a demo of the Oracle VM Manager and discussed the history behind Oracle VM. I guess they wanted to release the product months ago, but had to re-write pieces of the Xen Hypervisor to work in an enterprise fashion. We also discussed some of the future steps Oracle VM will be taking, and without disclosing too much information, they are going down the right path IMHO.

I would suggest browsing Oracle FAQ on Oracle VM at http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/docs/ovm-faq.pdf

For more information see, http://www.oracle.com/technologies/virtualization/index.html

Skitch is pretty darn cool

I finally received my beta invite to Plasq’s Skitch, from the makers of Comic Life. Skitch is a screenshot capture and editing program that has some amazing features. I was able to create and link to the below image in seconds using Skitch and MySkitch.

 

If you click on the above image, you will be taken to MySkitch which has some blog type features for shared screen shots.

 

To fully understand the robust features of Skitch, visit the website and sign up for the beta or better yet, watch the video below. It is astounding!

 

Math and Science Funny Pics

Different levels of the blog

I have been playing around with two really nice applications, Tumblr and Jaiku. I am planning on using WordPress for longer blog entries, Tumblr for quick, short posts and Jaiku to aggregate all of it together with my .mac Blog and Photocasts.

Tumblr is…

To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.

You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.

Jaiku is…

• Create your mini-blog

  Post Jaikus, add icons, customize your design, share your Web feeds

• Follow your friends

  Get their updates, see their presence, add comments

• Get Jaiku on your phone

  Text Jaikus from any phone. Share your availability, location, and calendar from your smartphone

I plan on keeping the content more current because Tumblr makes it so easy.  I will post any cool info on:

• Mac
• Linux
• GTD
• Virtualization
• Web 2.0
• Science
• Math
• and maybe something fun if I can find the time

My Tumblog is http://mradomski.tumblr.com, my Jaiku is http://mradomski.jaiku.com, and of course my Blog at http://mradomski.wordpress.com.

I hope to see you on Jaiku, etc!

Black Friday Deals

For those chomping at the bit for Black Friday, here is The Official Black Friday website. The site has all of the “known” or “leaked” deals. You can view scanned in ads, as well as a nice spreadsheet of all of the deals posted so far.

Photo to Sketch

Thinker Software has a pretty cool, free application, Photo to Sketch, that converts photos to:

• Pen sketch
• Pencil sketch
• Brush sketch

This is a pretty neat application, if any one knows something comparable to OS X, let me know!