I had my appointment with the doctor this morning. He said that if the witch doctor approves on Friday I can return to work next week. He also said that I should do a little bit of driving this week to get my back muscles used to it again. The boss is going to come by and pick me up later today and take me over to the yard to get my truck. It's going to feel good to not have to depend on the taxi service to get around, and will feel even better to get back to work next week.

I have the TV on in my hotel room and naturally it's on the sci-fi channel. An episode of Enterprise is on. A Klingon is speaking and he says "What is the honor of defeating a weaker opponent?" That's a pretty deep question. I've been in many fights in my life. Some of the guys I have fought were bigger and stronger than myself, and some weren't. I've won every fight I've ever fought as far as I can recall. The only ones that actually matter to me are the ones against the guys who were big...

While at Appleby's this afternoon I was talking with the bartender. After being couped up in this hotel for so long I guess I was a bit more talkative than is normal for me (I'm usually the silent type). While I was chatting with the barkeep one of the servers came up to me and said that I sounded exactly like the actor Sam Elliott. I've had people tell me that many times before. I guess it must be true. We must not hear our own voice in the same way that others hear it because I don't th...

I went over to Applybe's for lunch and wound up staying for a few extra brews. I was enjoying some good conversation and spent about three hours there. When I got back to my hotel room I was greeted by an email informing me that a bicycling friend of mine had been killed while riding his bike. He had been hit by an asshole in a car. So much for my good mood.

My visit with Captain Kirk wasn't altogether unpleasant. He tortured me a bit and then his nurse treated me to an ultrasound treatment on my lower back which did a good job of relaxing the muscles and easing the pain from the torture. The witch says that at the rate I am progressing his opinion is that I should be able to return to work in about a week. I see the regular doctor tomorrow and I am hoping that he agrees with that assessment as I am getting a touch of cabin fever couped up ...

I'm off to see the witch doctor again this morning. When I got up a little while ago I was pleasantly greeted by a much improved ability to get up and move around. This is a good sign to be sure. My bad hip is actually hurting me more this morning than my injured back. I think my hips have taken a lot of abuse over the past few weeks as I've tried to compensate for the injured back while walking. I'm almost able to walk fully erect once again. Not quite, but almost. The back is still h...

With all this time on my hands I decided to install the xgl xorg server and Beryl window manager to my Slackware system. It really wasn't that hard to do and the effects are great. I normally have four desktops on my system anyway, but now each desktop is on the face of a cube. To switch from one desktop to another I simply use my mouse or keyboard to rotate the cube. It looks pretty damn cool. There are also a lot of additional window effects that add a cool touch to things, like when mov...

I had a brief exam with the doctor this morning and got the scripts for more pain meds. I asked him to switch them from percocet and valium to something else as I don't want to start developing an addiction to anything. This time around it's vicodin and flexeril. As the muscle spasms aren't as bad as they had been I figure the flexeril will do ok. I then went from him to the witch doctor. It wasn't too bad to begin with. His nurse had me lie on a table and she used ultrasound and electric ...

Maybe it's just boredom. Last night I was seriously considering shaving off my beard. I went so far as to get out my shaving kit. It's a good thing I did as a glass bottle of aftershave had broken and emptied it's contents in the dopp kit. I took everything out, rinsed the stuff off, and toweled out the dopp kit and left it to air dry. As my beard is now quite full and has been growing unhindered or trimmed since the first week of December shaving it off is a big decision. I decided to let...

I have to say right off that I have never believed in ghosts or ghost stories. I've always figured they were just entertaining stories and never took them seriously. Until now. I have been working at my laptop burning some Linux distro discs and copying some stuff to flash drives. Just basically giving me something to do to amuse myself. I bought a new HP external CD/DVD burner today and have been playing with it. As I was burning an ISO onto a disc and watching the progress I got that fe...

This will be my first ever visit to a Chiropractor. For whatever reason I am not looking forward to it. I am envisioning all sorts of pain, some voodoo chants involving cutting off the head of a chicken, and all that. Seriously, I really don't know what to expect. I just don't like the idea of someone trying to move my spine around. It just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I can see all sorts of things that could go wrong with that, helped along by the 10 page form I filled out yester...

Never, ever buy Memorex blank CD discs. these things are total crap. I bought a stack of 25 of the High Speed CD-RWs and at least half of them are bad. They're great if you need a bunch of coasters, but otherwise avoid them at all costs. I have a bunch of stuff I want to burn and am now going to have to go buy some decent ones if I ever want to get this done. I'll never buy Memorex again. I've always had good luck with Sony discs and will stick to those from now on.

I just returned from this morning's doctor appointment. It didn't go exactly as I had hoped. He asked how the back was feeling and I made a point of telling him that it was feeling much better than it had last week, and that I thought that maybe with a couple of more days of rest I'd be able to go back to work. Damn doctor wasn't falling for it for a second. He made me do some movements like twisting, stretching, bending, and so on and so forth. Naturally it was impossible for me to do ...

I have to go back to the doctor tomorrow for a follow up exam. As my back is showing signs of healing, I'm hoping I'll be able to return to work soon. I know my back isn't up to returning to work tomorrow or probably even the next day, but I have hopes that they'll only recommend a few more days of rest. I know returning to work too soon would be a big mistake and probably put me right back in the same shape I was, but I don't want this to drag on for too much longer either. I'm keeping...

Language is an interesting thing. In Britain a fag is a cigarette. In the States it's a homosexual. Sucking on a fag in England means something far different than sucking on a fag in America. In the States we haul freight in a truck or a big rig. In England it's hauled in a lorry. If someone asks you if you want to shag, what comes to mind? If you're an American it's a dance. If you're English it means getting nekked and doing the horizontal mamba. Yep, I'm bored as hell and thin...