failure weblog

after finishing up that last entry, i did some stuff around the house and eventually got into bed and started reading wired magazine. a little after 1am i got a call from jamie. she was at the continental club and had gotten a flat tire. she said she could change it, but she was concerned about some of people hanging around in the area. so i got up and got dressed and headed over there. (it’s only a few minutes drive.) we put the spare on, then tried to think of somewhere nearby we could go so we could eat something and she could get some “good” coffee. (that “good” was her qualifier — she doesn’t like the coffee at house of pies. i think maybe she was dropped on her head as a child or something.) we couldn’t think of anything, so we went our separate ways.
sunday jack came by and picked me up and took me over to their house. they’d gotten their jetta back from the shop a week or so earlier, but when jack had gone to give me a ride home in it the thing started overheating so he’d had to turn around and switch to their van. he was in the jetta, and said they’d taken it back and it was running well. going down 59 it started overheating again. we had to pull over several times and stop and let it cool down before we made it to their house.
i had easter lunch over there, which was king ranch casserole. somehow, their family developed a tradition of sloppy joes for easter over the last few years, but they switched it up this year. sue’s brother shawn was their with his fiancee, as well as chip and chip’s dog. the other visitors left, then it turns out sue was on call and she had to leave for work. at this point in the story, the jetta situation becomes important. well, that and the fact jack had four sleeping children. i was stuck. we watched iron man, which was okay. then we watched natural born killers, which i hadn’t seen in years. there are things i like about it, but while some of the visuals and storytelling techniques are cool, it kind of starts to get old after awhile. the dialogue is pretty nice, but then it’s a tarantino script. then we started watching dazed and confused. sue showed up around 3am or so and drove me home. i hadn’t really planned on being out that late, since i had work in the morning.
tuesday morning i had my ortho appointment. unfortunately, i didn’t really learn anything. he pretty much just looked at it and said “yeah, it looks like it’s getting better.” everything else was along the lines of “who knows with crush injuries? they’re all different and you don’t really know.” i asked him about the fact that my foot and ankle stay swollen pretty much all the time since i’m on my feet so much now, so he wrote me a prescription for a t.e.d. compression hose. i’m planning on going by a medical supply store to get fitted for one here soon.
since i couldn’t get any guidelines on driving or anything other than “if you feel like it, but don’t push it” i went ahead and started driving to work. my ankle has hurt some when i was in stop-and-go traffic for awhile, but nothing too horrible. i’m never really sure at what point i should stop “taking it easy” and when i should start to try to do stuff with it to get it better.
yesterday sue came by with the kids and picked me up. we ate at quiznos, dropped by michaels, and then went to a dollar theater and saw paul blart: mall cop. there were some funny things in it, but it wasn’t all that great. i suppose it was worth $1.50.
earlier today i finally made all those old blog entries from 2003 and before october 2004 live. you know, the ones that were lost in a server crash, then even further lost in a desktop crash, but then i recovered off the desktop hard drive when i found most of them in some cache files while i was trying to do data recovery on the drive.
i decided to get an apple tv and try to play around with boxee, but then i started talking myself out of it. (i’ve talked myself out of getting an apple tv at least 3 or 4 times over the last couple of years.) then i decided to go ahead and do it. i didn’t feel like going to the galleria, so i headed to meyerland. except i guess the apple store went away at some point. so i had to go to the galleria. the guy at the apple store then actually talked me out of buying one, suggesting i get a used mini since i wanted to play with boxee and the mini would give me a full functional computer hooked up to my tv. but once home i determined his estimate on the prices of used minis was off. so now i’m not sure what i’m going to do. maybe i effectively talked myself out of buying any of these options for awhile. it’s not like i watch that much tv anyway. while i was in the galleria i went by the borders there. they didn’t appear to have much selection at all on 50% off cds. on the way home i stopped by the one near my house, but i didn’t buy anything there either.
i’m also starting to flounder on what engine to get and put in the bel air. it appears i can get a gm built crate for about $2k, but it doesn’t include manifold, distributor, etc. like the edelbrock crates. (nor does it have as much hp or torque.) it’d also be nice if i had a mechanic who i thought would be interested in talking about this sort of stuff. as it is, i feel pretty much on my own about any decisions, and there is a lot i don’t know about engines and what all it takes to get one in and running (what parts need to be replaced, what additional parts are needed, etc.). if only there were some sort of place that was a collection of information about stuff, like virtual pages of books or something, but all interconnected…kind of like strands on a web, and you could have a thing where you could search for the information you wanted and find lots of resources instantly. like maybe even via computers. yep, that would be pretty cool.

back on thursday april 2nd when i complained about my digestive system and cutting my foot, i had no idea that my digestive system would feel like its thunder had been stolen by the cut foot and thus do everything within its power to prove that it and it alone is enough to provide me with major misery. thursday night it spent from around 10pm until around 8am re-enacting what it might possibly feel like to have two feral wildcats hellishly fight their way from one end of my digestive system to the other. appropriately, once the wildcats relented, i spent pretty much the whole day friday in exhausted, semi-delirious sleep.
i had originally thought perhaps i might make it to the geek gathering taking place friday night, since the drama was over and i wasn’t feeling like my guts had been invaded by a slightly retarded alien who was mistakenly gestating in my bowels instead of my chest. but as the time drew near, even though i managed to eat something and keep it down, i realized i felt like i’d just been put in a potato sack and used as a punching bag by george foreman for about 30 minutes. it was better for me to just stay home and immobile.
i had been looking forward to my ortho appointment on tuesday, hoping to find out there was no ligament damage and it would be okay for me to start driving and such. unfortunately, on monday the ortho office called me and canceled. they rescheduled me for the same time a week away, so i’m now supposed to have my visit this coming tuesday. i went ahead and took the bus to work and home, getting rides one way or the other a few times as well. a 10 minute or so drive for me is about 1 hour by bus (40 or so if i time it exactly right).
i went to work every day (well, except today, which is a holiday), but i’m working about 5 hour days right now. at some point my leg seemed to improve as far as swelling and pain, but the last few days it seems to have gotten stuck. my ankle and foot swell up fairly quickly and stay swollen most of the day. (i don’t get to put my leg above my torso much.) i’m still limping some, don’t have feeling down the front of my leg, and going down stairs is not very easy.
i did go ahead and allow myself to drive a few times since the doctor didn’t keep his appointment. but i’ve kept them to short jaunts. i drove to get bubble tea one night, to kpft for technology bytes on wednesday, to the grocery store last night, and today i drove to the house of pies for lunch. (first time i’ve been there in over a month! and why were there so many hot alterna-chicks there today?)
borders has been having a 40% off sale/clearance on some of their cds. since i hadn’t really been making much in the way of purchases over the last month plus, i made a trip last week and today and went through their stock and picked up some stuff. the trip last week was almost all country, the one today almost all rock. here’s the haul:

• first ten years – david allen coe (columbia)
• the ultimate charlie daniels band – charlie daniels band (epic/legacy)
• hell yeah – horrorpops (hellcat)
• 16 biggest hits – johnny horton (columbia/legacy)
• the wolf – shooter jennings (universal)
• the essential kris kristofferson – kris kristofferson (columbia/legacy)
• the definitive collection – jerry lee lewis (hip-o)
• pontiac – lyle lovett (mca/curb)
• c. w. mccall’s greatest hits – c. w. mccall (polydor)
• will the circle be unbroken – nitty gritty dirt band (capitol)
• no depression – uncle tupelo (columbia/legacy)
• 89/93: an anthology – uncle tupelo (columbia/legacy)
• rowdy – hank williams jr. (curb)
• the pressure is on – hank williams jr. (curb)

a lot of this is stuff i’ve wanted on some level or another for various reasons, but didn’t want enough to pay full price for.

• the singles 81>85 – depeche mode (mute/reprise)
• open season – remixes and collabs – feist (cherrytree/interscope)
• fever ray – fever ray (rabid/mute)
• minimum-maximum – kraftwerk (astralwerks/emi)
• public warning – lady sovereign (def jam)
• complete discography – minor threat (dischord)
• the moldy peaches – the moldy peaches (rough trade)
• portishead – portishead (go! beat/london)
• talking heads: 77 – talking heads (sire)
• the best of rob zombie – rob zombie (geffen/universal)

i got feist mostly due to a postal service remix i’ve heard and liked from this album. the minor threat album is a remastered version, the original version of which i already own. i’m almost positive i already owned that talking heads album on cd, but i haven’t been able to find it for a couple of years (if i owned it) so i bought it. the fever ray album, which is an album by the girl from the knife, was actually bought at soundwaves a week and a half or two ago — i got the hrc to take me by there after we ate lunch at tacos-a-go-go because i knew the album should have been out by then. the hrc was just accompanying me, but she ended up buying 6 or 7 albums for herself (by the knife, adult., and grandaddy). i only got fever ray. haha. anyway, feist was at one time the roommate of the lady who does work under the name peaches, and there is one song on the feist remix album she was involved with. i love the way the music by peaches sounds. unfortunately, her songs are highly sexual and raunchy (i mean highly) so i have yet to buy any peaches albums. it’s sort of funny she evidently used to be a school teacher.
oh yeah, i also picked up a movie that first time at borders:

• hot rod – andy samberg (paramount)

that movie is hilarious. it’s stupid humor, but it’s really funny. to me it’s kind of like napoleon dynamite, but more slapstick and silly instead of odd and obtuse. but both sort of take the way elementary school age kids think and act and have older people behave that way.
i never mentioned that a while back i managed to score a madman statue on ebay for a decent price. i didn’t know the number (the run was of 1500 i think), but when it arrived it was #144. nice! unfortunately, when i opened the box the statue version of the lady from the movie misery must have gotten to him because both of his legs were shattered at the shins. *sigh* i was originally thinking i would make an insurance claim on it, but i think i may try to keep it and piece it back together instead.
cathy: why’d you call yourself voltron?
dave: i don’t know. maybe ’cause it’s super badass!
cathy: you’re weird.
dave: hellz yeah, i am!
(from hot rod)

ha ha. this recently popped up on facebook…

thanks but no thanks, facebook. i think i’ll wait for the “add as messed up, lying, money-grabbing, ex-wife” option.
oh wait. that “x” to the far right has hover text that says “do not show this person”.
never mind, problem solved. ;&nbsp)
(for the record, i don’t harbor ill will toward tamara due to things in our marriage. there were difficult as well as really good times. what i do still feel ill will toward her about is her behaviour during and after the affair, including during all of the divorce settlement proceedings. she was less than honorable, less than respectable, and less than fair — and everyone involved knew it. i worked very hard to try and understand what happened in our marriage and why she had an affair, and to try and be able to reconcile. she lied. i worked to end our divorce fairly, based on our history and situation. she lied. i also have been continually upset by her revisionist re-imaginations of our collective past once she decided to “move on”. it’s these flaws in her character that took advantage of me and my attempts to have faith in her that i still have a hard time getting past. i wish she could have been the person she had the capability of being, but she wasn’t. maybe one day she will.)
addendum: what i have come to realize through the many times i’ve spent going through all of the stuff she left behind (clothes, school notes, papers, letters, personal writing, etc.) is this: she was pretty much always fscked up. i mean weirdly obsessive, highly self-critical, both hyper-rational and hyper-irrational…with a huge hole in her heart or soul that she couldn’t find anything to fill. she was unrealistic about so many, many things. i thought i had a pretty good understanding of her, i thought we were fairly honest with each other, and i truly loved her even with the flaws i knew about — but she kept frightening concerns and irrational thoughts and perspectives locked inside of her head (that probably no one ever saw). it seems an odd conclusion to reach given the complicated mess i and the rest of the world saw in her, but i guess it was, to be cliche, just the tip of a giant mess of epic proportions — a jumbled mess of dark confusion and sad misunderstanding. it’s weird to know that her secret concerns… fears… hatred… disappointment… were probably dooming us from the beginning, and i was clueless about the bizarre contortions going on inside of her. i guess the pure randomness of it all meant it was as likely to work out as to explode into a giant fireball, or melt down and just disappear. oh well, it was only my future, my happiness, my life at stake. i still believe she has the ability to truly be a great person. and it’s too late for that to be her legacy on my life i suppose, but i hope she manages to pull it together someday.

you know, pandora is really cool. i know i’ve said it before, but it deserves repeating.
here’s the deal: you put in a song or artist you like, it creates a “station” for you based on that song or artist. then the station randomly plays songs that are similar in some form or fashion to what you put (vocal style, instruments, beat, genre, etc.). you can give a thumbs up to songs you like and thumbs down to ones you don’t, and over time the station centers more (hopefully) on what you like about the original artist/song. so you get to hear a bunch of songs you’ll probably like — some of which you’ve probably never heard. it’s a great way to find new bands based on bands you know you like. and you can have multiple channels based on different starting points.
it’s really a neat offering. unfortunately, along with the rest of the online music providers and streamers (like soma fm), they’ve been getting screwed by soundexchange and the copyright royalty board (crb) and seem to always be near death due to the unfair royalty fees the idiots want to hoist on online music providers.
anyway, that’s really all just background, as the story i want to tell is how something weird happened with my pandora account a few months ago. i logged in and suddenly there were all of these new stations i hadn’t created. unfortunately, this magical musical fairy godmother didn’t have good taste in music. i mean, it almost made me give up on humanity entirely. it was that bad. and it was in my pandora account! i wiped out the channels and continued on my way.
a month or so later i noticed most if not all of them were back. so it wasn’t some one-time random anomaly — this poor being, whoever they were and however they were in my account, was serious about choosing this list of…”artists.” i wiped them out again, and this time changed my password even though i didn’t think anyone knew the password.
a month later the crap was back, now with even more friends. at this point i really didn’t know what to do, but it appeared my evil musical fairy godmother wasn’t going away, so i emailed pandora support:

From: slacker@failure.net
Subject: pandora station oddities on my account
To: pandora-support@pandora.com
 
greetings. i have this odd problem where somehow someone with crappy taste in music (in my opinion) keeps adding channels to my account. this has happened on several occasions. i delete them and then they come back. a few weeks ago i went so far as to change my account password, even though i don't think anyone has or had it. the last time i logged in, the channels were back (bon jovi, rick springfield, nickelback, alien ant farm, etc?) and i even noticed they'd added an artist to my list of bookmarked artists. (i mean... lifehouse. seriously?) this stuff happened on numerous dates, including 2/28, 3/10, 3/11, 3/12, etc by looking at the add dates.
 
anyway, i was just wondering if perhaps there is a problem in the backend database or something where my account is somehow tied into that of either a small child randomly pressing buttons or an alterna-rocker in their early 40's with a secret love for crappy male crooners. in either case, is there any way y'all can exorcise this sad ghost in the machine? (and if the person who happens to get this email really really likes kings of leon and...whatever a micheal buble is...i apologize for talking smack about your...uh..."taste" in music. sorry, i tried to be nice. really. if it makes you feel better, you can make fun of my music too.)
[...]
for what it's worth, i really appreciate y'all and what you're doing. it was a cool idea, and i've tried to promote it by word of mouth, as well as do my part to help online stations such as yourself and soma fm not get screwed over by the royalty board and soundexchange. i'm sorry a bunch of greedy idiots want to fsck good things up because they don't understand the value or how things should work (killing promotion for small artists so the big guys can make some more bucks is pretty lame).
 
anyway, thanks for any assistance.

later the same day i got a response:

From: xxxx@pandora.com
Subject: Re: pandora station oddities on my account
To: slacker@failure.net
Cc: pandora-support@pandora.com
 
Hello TeRRY:
 
Thank you for taking the time to write us here at Pandora. I apologize that you are having some issues.
 
I believe I see the issue - you have 2 iPhones and a Samsung Blu-Ray player associated with your account. Are all of these devices yours? If not, I will remove the associations with your account.
 
Also, thanks for the kind words TeRRY. We strive to connect people with music they will love. It's rewarding to hear that we have succeeded with you. Thanks for spreading the word to so many people - that means EVERYTHING to us.
 
Let me know on the devices and we'll get your account back on track. Thanks Terry.
[...]

i replied the next day…

On Apr 1, 2009, at 6:43 PM, xxxx @ Pandora Support wrote:
> Let me know on the devices and we'll get your account back on track. Thanks Terry.
 
hey josh. thanks for the reply. i do have an iphone and a samsung blu-ray player. i don't have 2 iphones though. i'm not sure how my account would have gotten on a second iphone. although i did buy an 8-gig when the 3g first came out and then returned it 2 weeks later for a 16-gig. i'm sure i wiped the device...but maybe if pandora remembers the device id outside of the account info being stored on the iphone? i don't know. anyway, i'm assuming i can re-associate any of my devices if you wipe the association from your end, so if you want to be safe you can go ahead and wipe all of them and i'll just reconnect the ones that i am currently using.
 
> Also, thanks for the kind words TeRRY.
 
it's not hard to find kind words - y'all have a cool product and i've found new bands through pandora that i've gone on to buy cds from. these aren't platinum-selling artists that are pushed by their deep-pocketed record labels -- these are independent artists and artists on smaller labels who stand to benefit the most from your kind of offering (and stand to be hurt the worst by those same deep-pocketed record labels who don't care about these kinds of artists in general, despite their lip service to the contrary).

josh wrote back a little later:

Thanks for writing back - I have removed the iPhones - you will need to sign in on it - let me know if you have any trouble. Thanks again for the words - You truly GET IT..... very cool. Rock on Terry

so, thank you josh at pandora support. hopefully this will resolve my problem, and any poor musical choices on my pandora account in the future will only be my own. so far the bad music hasn’t come back, but the last times it took a while. hopefully my pandora account was somehow tied to some other iphone, and that was the source of the poor musical choices. if it was your iphone, please don’t hate me for my disparaging remarks about your love of generic altra-rock and male pop-rock crooners. i noticed the last time you’d also put the classical composer bach in, which gives me hope. (even though you’d also added an all-live bon jovi channel, which kind of took the wind out of my new-found hope’s sails.)
for those interested, here’s the page for my pandora account:
http://www.pandora.com/people/slacker8
side note: as cool as pandora is, sometimes it’s annoying to have to run it in a browser. so i run the pandora desktop app on adobe air on linux, and i just started running pandoraboy for mac. being able to stream it over the network through my samsung blu-ray player (and thus play it over my home stereo) is pretty slick too.

sunday night my body decided it wasn’t too excited about something i’d eaten recently and determined mass evacuation was the best course of action. i managed to sleep okay despite this situation; however, when i woke up in the morning my body told me i needed to head toward the bathroom. i got out of bed, put my left (injured) leg forward and put my weight down on it, and immediately felt a piercing pain on the front left pad of my foot. i thought i’d stepped on some of the stray cat litter crystals my cat occasionally leaves around the house to sabotage me with, but the pain made me quickly realize if that were the case she must have taken the sabotage up a level and sharpened it into a makeshift crystal shiv. i dropped back onto the bed so i didn’t step on my foot again, and to try and see what was going on down there. unfortunately, i can’t really bend my injured leg very well so i couldn’t see my foot. then i saw blood dripping from my foot onto the floor. i figured that wasn’t too good. after sitting there a bit dripping blood, my body reminded me it was serious when it told me earlier i should head to the bathroom, so i jumped up and managed to hop into the bathroom. after dripping blood in the bathroom some, i managed to get my leg and foot angled just enough i could see something barely sticking out of my foot. i reached down and grabbed the edge of it and pulled it out. it was some shard of clear plastic or glass about 1/4 inch wide by 1/4 inch high, and somehow i’d managed to shove it pretty much all the way up into my foot. i got some toilet paper and held it on the spot until it mostly stopped bleeding, while i let my body continue its cleansing of my digestive system. so began my monday morning.
i had hoped to practice driving my pickup over the weekend to see if i thought my knee and ankle could handle it okay, but i hadn’t gotten to do that. there was a meeting at work in the afternoon with several vendors and such i wanted to attend, so i decided to go ahead and try driving. after sitting for 3+ weeks, my pickup still managed to start up okay. after trying my leg some in the driveway, i got on the road. it was a little awkward as far as the amount my knee would bend, and it hurt a little, but not too much. in my state of focusing on getting back to work and driving i forgot my cell at home, so i’m glad things went alright. unfortunately, the ride there was in the middle of the day and there wasn’t much traffic, but the ride home was around 5pm and there was a lot of stop and go traffic. i didn’t feel intense pain or like i messed up my knee or anything, but it started hurting enough before i got home to make me decide maybe i should put off driving until i see the ortho doctor again to see what his opinion is on what i should and shouldn’t be doing. i called his office the next day and have an appointment for the 7th.
i applied online for a credit card with 0% interest until june 2010, and was approved. so hopefully here pretty soon i’ll start the process of putting a new engine in my bel air. yea.
yesterday i called hpd reports division to find out info about the police report. after about 30 minutes on automated hold, a person got the incident number from me, the date of the incident, and my name, then said “okay, your report is ready. you can pick it up at 1200 travis.” i asked about that, then asked how much it cost (since i’d seen some cost stuff when finding the phone number to call) and she said $6. then she added or i could use “vectra” (?) and pay $7.50 online with a credit card. i assume that’s a web-based report ordering thing. from the conversation it sounded like she’d already sent my report to be printed, so i figured i should go ahead and go downtown to get the report as i didn’t want to pay the $7.50 and then also get a bill for $6 too. the hrc came and got me and i went to the building and picked up my report.
neither of us had eaten, so i decided while we were already downtown we should eat at frank’s pizza. during the drive, i looked over the report. it appeared they used the license plate to get registration info on the car. but the driver was just listed as “jamie” and there was no insurance info. they also didn’t really get the description of the accident completely correct, as in the drawing it made it look like they were turning right and only partially blocking the lanes. but whatever, i guess. there were accounts from two witnesses. evidently one of them had just gotten dropped off at his job at petco by the two people in the car. he claimed he didn’t know them very well. i guess that’s how they got the female’s name. both of the witnesses basically corroborated my story. i also noticed the acronym “fsra” was written in several places by the info for the other car, but i didn’t know what that meant.
while we were eating at frank’s, a cop walked in and got some pizza. i had left the report in the car, but as we were leaving i asked him if i could query him about something. i explained the situation and asked if there was some way i could go about seeing if there was insurance on the vehicle or what the status of the investigation was. he told me i should go by the hit and run division offices, which are over by the municipal courts. the cop actually asked if the report said “fsra” or something else on it, and i said it said fs-something…i think ra. he responded in surprise and said it must have been a pretty good wreck as that’s for “failure to stop and render aid”. i thanked him for his help and we left.
i decided since i was in the area and it was still an hour or two before 5pm, i’d go ahead and drop by the hit and run offices. we drove the short distance over there and i went and asked about my incident. the secretary said the name of the officer investigating it, called his desk and he was in, so i went in and talked with him. he said he’d been looking into the case, and basically the guy is a loser, on drugs, living from place to place. the officer had gotten in touch with his wife, whose name is also on the vehicle, but she said she hadn’t talked to him in several months and she’s been trying to find him to serve him divorce papers. evidently she was crying on the phone because she’s shocked at what a fsck-up her estranged husband is or has become. the officer said she said she’d taken insurance off the car when her husband took it and left with it or whatever, so he’s sure there was no insurance on it. he said if they caught him i could sue, but there’s not going to be any point. i didn’t really care about suing, other than to cover my personal medical expenses and motorcycle losses. i was hoping there would be vehicle insurance though. i guess progressive (my motorcycle insurance) and my personal healthcare providers are going to be eating this one unless they can get money out of mr. read or his mostly unidentified companion who was driving.
so… on march 7th, 2009, in front of the petco on the 2100 block of shepherd, a 2006 green 4-door hyundai with Texas plates 359kym, driven by “jamie” with douglas read (the listed registered owner of the vehicle) as a front seat passenger, pulled out in front of me quickly and then just as quickly stopped, completely blocking both lanes. after i put on the brakes and tried turning to my right some, i hit them and my left leg was smashed between my bike and the car, jamie screamed and i hopped off my bike as it fell to the ground. douglas (doug?) read then said “go. go! go! go!” and jamie squealed the tires and they took off. my bike was totaled.
so thanks “jamie” and douglas read. many happy returns.

well, on monday i called to try and set up an appointment with a “regular” doctor’s office. unfortunately, i’m a new patient anywhere and new patients are second class citizens with doctor’s offices. so when i called they said the earliest they’d be able to see me was probably early next week. my response: “uh…i could be dead by then.” i was sort of joking, but the unexplained sudden dizziness did not make me feel comfortable. i get colds or fevers every now and then, but anything outside of that and i worry that my body has something horribly wrong with it since i generally don’t have odd transient problems. she offered me an appointment for friday morning. even though it was days away, i went ahead and took it because i figured with recent events, it’s probably good to go ahead and be established at some doctor’s office so you aren’t treated like a new patient everywhere if you really do need to see a doctor.
the dizziness continued to subside though, and by late tuesday it was mostly gone. i had decided to stop taking anything since i didn’t know what was causing it, so i wasn’t even taking ibuprofen or acetaminophen. i decided on wednesday i felt well enough to go to the radio show, so dwight came by once again and picked me up. i went ahead and took a couple of acetaminophen since i decided that probably wasn’t causing the problem. things at the show went okay.
at some point sue came by and i went to ikea with her and the kids. it was sort of a dry run to see how my leg would do being up and around for awhile. i didn’t walk the second floor, and we cut through a lot of the first, but i was out and up and moving around for maybe about 3 hours from the time i left my house until i got back. i bought a couple of semi-opaque white glass candle holders (one to replace one i’d chipped a month or two ago). after sue brought me back home i laid down and put my leg up for awhile.
friday morning jack came by and took me to the clinic. the doctor checked me over by doing various tests to see if it was my brain or my inner ear that was messed up, and decided i have benign vertigo or some term i’m forgetting. anyway, she said it’s pretty common. basically, there are small particles in the fluid in your inner ear (the inner ear is what is used to determine your orientation and movement). normally these particles are i guess in a reservoir kind of area, but sometimes one or more of these particles will end up in one of the three loops of your inner ear that provide orientation and movement information to the brain. normally a slight movement of the fluid moves some small hairs in the loop that tell your brain how much you are moving and in what direction. with the particle in there, it really pushes on the hairs when the fluid moves, which causes your inner ear to send bogus info to your brain that tells it your are moving/rotating like crazy, but your brain trusts it and is trying to compensate. anyway, she said it normally lessens and goes away on its own within a couple of weeks. there are some exercises you can do (called simont maneuvers or something), which attempts to rotate the fluid in the loops to wash the particles out of the loop. it’s kind of like trying to rotate a garden hose to get all of the water out of it, except it’s in your head. *laugh*
things managed to finish up right around lunch time, so a co-worker came and got me and i ate with him and a few other co-workers at goode company bbq. from there i went ahead and had him take me back to work. i hadn’t been there in basically three weeks. a lot of people came by to see me and ask me what had happened, how i was doing, etc. i didn’t really do much work, but i did manage to hang around and then get a ride home with a co-worker when he left for the day. he’s going to be out next week, so i got him to give me his parking card to use in case i end up deciding i can drive myself to work this coming week.
my leg has continued to get better. it’s actually been noticeable to me. i’m still limping some; still have loss of feeling on the front of my leg; still have swelling and some pain in my knee, ankle, and between; and still don’t have very good range of motion with my knee. but over the last few days i’ve been able to be up and about and/or sitting for several hours at a time without ending up in a lot of pain. hopefully none of the damage will be permanent, other than what i assume will become scars on the front of my leg. (and scars are cool, so that’s okay.)
over this last week i really started wanting to get another motorcycle. not just get one, but get one and go on a trip somewhere. i’m not sure if it’s because i’ve been stuck at home so much, because i know i don’t have a motorcycle right now, because i feel like i want to “get back on the horse” so to speak, or what. i spent some time looking at some websites for a couple of companies, but i can’t really tell much until i see some in person.
i got the bill for the ambulance ride: $487.50. that’s $415.00 for basic life support (i guess that means for having me on a stretcher), $50.00 for miscellaneous supplies (some tape and a neck brace?), and $22.50 mileage ($7.50/mile). i’ll be submitting the bill to my insurance company. i’m guessing they’ll be wanting to find out who the jokers were who caused the accident and then took off, since i’m sure they’d like to be reimbursed. (i still need to get a copy of the police report to see if the cops have done anything.)
the last couple of days i finally felt good enough sitting for awhile that i was able to start messing with some of my old hardware, which i am trying to build into an xp box to do some exchange lab stuff with. my asus motherboard continued to have problems building an os on a hard drive. i tried different hard drives, i tried different ide cables, i tried only using one ide connection and then only the other — no luck. i’m not sure what’s bad, but something isn’t right. i feel bad ditching it because it’s got some pretty nice features, but i don’t know what’s wrong with it. i pulled it out of the case and put in another motherboard i got my hand on about 4 years ago. it’s a gigabyte dual pentium 3 (1.26 ghz) board with 2 gig of memory on it. it’s a server class motherboard, and it actually came out of a 1u server enclosure. it’s a non-standard gigabyte build, so it’s got an extra lan port, no built-in audio, only one pci slot, heat sinks but no fans on the processors, etc. but it’s atx format so i was able to just swap out the motherboards and re-use everything else. after playing around with it some, i finally managed to get xp pro installed on it today. i am downloading and installing updates on it as i write this.
i also finally got a couple of offers for credit cards with 0% interest for 1+ years in the mail. so i’m hoping to get one or both of those and have enough credit on them to put most or all of a new engine for the bel air on it/them. then i’ll use the cash i’ve got in the bank to pay for the installation, and pay off the credit card(s) before the 0% is over. it’ll be nice to get the bel air on the road again. *sigh* i’m still trying to decide how much engine i want to put in it. the last engine was a 350 v-8, so i think i’ll stay with that. it’s just a matter of whether i buy a stock crate or something with more oomph (and how much more). i want to keep it a 3-on-the-tree manual shifter, just because they’re somewhat rare and i think they’re cool, but that means it’s not really a racer. (i can do first to second fairly fast, but it’s not simple, smooth, and fast like a straight shifter or something.) anyway, that’s also going to be in the works for me here pretty soon hopefully.

well, things have taken an interesting turn. around 6am thursday night / friday morning i woke up and went to roll over and something was wrong. my head turned, but it didn’t really feel like the rest of the world moved in sync with me. i sat up and noticed i felt dizzy. i was a bit worried, but hoped it’d pass, so i laid back down and went back to sleep. i woke up around 10:30am and it was still the same. i got up and walked to the bathroom, but i had to hold on to the door frame and walls and such, as my balance was off. this was pretty disconcerting, as i really didn’t know what would be causing it. i didn’t feel bad in any other way.
i called and texted a couple of people to see what they thought, and the general answer was inner ear. i was a bit relieved at the thought it might just be an inner ear infection. i also had to cancel on going to lunch with some of my co-workers. i had been looking forward to that for awhile, but i my equilibrium was too off to feel comfortable going out and doing stuff. so that sucked. i was still worried what might be causing my dizziness though, so when jack called around 11am i asked if he could take me to a doctor. i don’t have a regular doc, so i planned to go to a doc-in-the-box at a grocery store. i’d been to one some months back at an heb, so i figured i’d go there. jack and the kids picked me up and took me. i went in and told them, but they said dizziness as the only symptom wasn’t something they could do and i needed to go to a regular clinic. they gave me the address of an “urgent care clinic” further down westheimer, so i went outside and jack drove me to it. i filled out the forms and waited for some time. eventually they saw me. the doctor didn’t seemed too worried about it. they said my blood pressure and pulse was a little high but nothing too odd. she figured it was related to either my allergies or laying in bed so much the last couple of weeks. as i was getting up to leave the office, i got dizzy and had to sit down. then i felt clammy and sweaty and went to find a bathroom, as i felt like i was either about to pass out or vomit. i ended up doing neither, although i got close to both. she prescribed me 10 tablets of meclazine, which is for nausea and motion sickness. jack came back and picked me up. we went by target and he went in and bought me some gatorade and water. on the way home, he stopped by quizno’s and picked me up a sandwich.
the more time i had to sit and feel fuzzy and not know why, the more down i got about it. i felt like my leg was getting better, but then this happened. by the time saturday rolled around and it hadn’t gone away, i was feeling pretty down. it wasn’t pronounced — i never felt like the room was spinning and i had to hold on, just things would shift like you’re on a ship or something and i start leaning off a bit. i had been planning on going to a co-worker’s meat and martini party, but if i were dizzy i didn’t think i could. after talking with a few people on the phone, i ended up feeling a little better about things, and decided maybe i should go ahead and go the party, even if it was just for a little while. otherwise i’d just be sitting at home in bed feeling bad about things. i had convinced the hrc to stop by the city market in luling on her way home and pick up some brisket and sausage for the meat and martin party (okay, i didn’t really have to convince her…just ask her to pick some up for the party since she was going to be at city market in luling anyway :), so i was glad the luling meat could make it to the party. the hrc agreed to accompany me to the party, since i can’t drive myself. (and even if i could, now i was dizzy to boot.)
i would have enjoyed the party more if i hadn’t been dizzy and my leg wasn’t messed up, but i managed to sit in one place for a few hours and be okay. i talked to several co-workers i hadn’t seen since before the accident. i got the prescription filled for the meclazine, and i took one saturday evening.
sunday i woke up and things were still the same. sue called and said i should probably keep taking the medicine so i took another one. the potts came by around noon and brought doughnuts and such. most of the rest of the day i slept. i think the medicine makes me really drowsy. i can’t tell it helps with the fuzziness / dizziness though. the best i can describe it now is like when you’ve got a buzz from alcohol. like you move your head and then the room moves a little later, or you stand up and go to walk and things don’t feel quite completely stable. it’s still kind of disconcerting to not know what’s causing it. i think i may try to get an appointment with a doctor’s office on monday and see if they can maybe try to figure it out (blood test or whatever). or maybe it’ll go away on its own.

i was a bit worried when i made plans with the progressive rep to meet me at my house for this morning. i’m not much of an early riser generally, and since lately all i do most of the time is lay in bed with my leg propped up i’ve not had much incentive to get up in the morning. so i was a bit worried she’d knock on the door at 8:15am, and i’d be groggy and disheveled and half-naked or take 20 minutes to answer the door. plus i wouldn’t really be able to tidy up the place at all because i’m slow-moving and have limited capabilities.
worrying about this caused me to wake up around 9am and not really be able to get back to sleep. i did on and off until around 10am though. i decided i should go ahead and get up and get ready.
she ended up coming by between noon and 12:30pm. they offered me $6885 for my bike title, or about $4k if i chose to keep the bike. i looked up my bike on blue book a few days ago and it showed $6k. they figured about $1k of custom parts on the bike, which was about what i came up with. then they have to do sales tax and tt&l i guess, plus my $250 deductible. and the blue book price was based on 24k miles and i had 33k. so i thought $6900 seemed pretty fair.
i thought about keeping the bike and taking the $4k, because i think other than the fork most of the damage is cosmetic-ish. i mean, i was thinking i could get the bike and use the $4k to put on a raked out new front fork, maybe a different gas tank, plus any odds and ends, and hammer out the rear fender, and have a good start on a nice rat bike. i could even sell other parts off of it to make more money for it. but in the end my more practical side won and i just took the extra $2900.
the progressive rep was pleasant to work with and i was pretty happy with the way everything was handled by them. it was a better experience than i had trying to deal with the health insurance stuff so far. and i’m afraid that may only get more difficult, depending on what if anything goes on with the people in the car who were actually responsible for the accident but took off. the progressive rep still hadn’t seen the police report, so she didn’t know the status of the case.
that said, here are some pics of the bike that were taken when it was at the tow yard (march 9th)..

this is the side that hit the car. if you look at the fork, you can see it is bent back toward the bike and to the bike’s right. the front tire is the first thing that hit the car. i’m pretty sure it pushed the tire all the way to the body of the bike, as there is a dent on the back of the front fender and i can only assume it is from something on the main part of the bike. you can also see there is no rear mirror (or mount pole). and obviously the tank is banged up. that was probably the second thing to hit the car. here’s a closer look at the tank…

as you can see, it collapsed the tank wall. the chrome badge must have bent in and then bent back…i guess. although it is entirely possible it was actually my knee that dented the tank because it was between it and car…i’m not sure about that though…might be a little high and forward for my knee (but i did feel myself lift up and my knee cap move). i think maybe the handlebar went above the trunk so the tank actually hit the car directly. (but there was a small dent behind the badge on the other side of the tank, and i’m guessing the one place on my right knee that hurts may have done that.) i didn’t smell gas or notice any fluids on the ground (although i might have missed that), so i don’t think it actually ruptured the tank.
here’s the back of the left side…

i’m not sure what made the top portion of the rear shock get all those dents on it. it’s hard to tell in the pic, and i didn’t notice it at the tow yard, but the whole rear fender (under the seat and running back) is bending away in the pic (shifted more over the right side of the bike). at the end of the fender it’s probably shifted about two inches or so.
and here’s a view of the tail end of the bike…

you can’t see the tire so you can’t see how much the rear fender is bent, but you can see that the metal chromed license plate mount has broken and the left blinker is bent at the mount point. i’m guessing the blinker probably hit the car when the back end of the bike swung around with the leftover forward momentum of my bike that wasn’t stopped with the front fork.
the only other thing that i know for sure hit the car and is obviously showing it is my leg, and it’s kind of beat up too. perhaps i’ll upload a pic or pics of it at some point.
after she left i heated up some of the microwaveable soup the hrc and mini-hrc had brought for me, and had that and a big red while i watched a bit of daytime court tv before getting back in the bed. man, they have a lot of ads for lawyers trying to get you to sue people to “get what you deserve” during those shows.
this evening i went to james coney island for supper. i had noticed a motorcycle pulling into the parking lot, and when i walked by it i noticed a black “x” over the headlight in electrical tape. the only other times i’ve seen that it was people in todo moto. when the two guys got up to leave, i asked them if they were in todo moto. i think i had met one of the guys 6 months or a year ago at west alabama icehouse. they stopped and talked to me for awhile. they’re a rambunctious lot, but they do some interesting things with motorcycles. kind of made me wish i’d kept angelina. ah well.

late sunday night / early monday morning i sent an email to my managers at work telling them i wouldn’t be able to come in due to my leg not being able to handle more than 2 or 3 hours of me being upright/sitting. i also told them about the problems i was having trying to get an orthopod’s office to take my personal health insurance, but that i was contacting the work h.r. department to see if they could help me.
monday during the day i called the person in h.r. i’d been given the name and number of on friday, and i explained the situation. she said she’d call her contact at the insurance company and see what could be done.
sue and her two daughters picked me up for lunch and we went to chick-fil-a. i was a little nervous with the plethora of excited kids running around, but it went okay. sue dropped me off at home and then went by petsmart and picked up some cat food for me. for which i’m sure lenin is most appreciative, even though she doesn’t know it.
an hour or two later i got a call from my departmental manager saying he’d explained the situation to his boss, and he suggested i try getting in touch with some of the places that are related to the company i work for. (i work in the medical center, don’t you know.) they gave me some names and numbers, so i called an ortho office and explained things and they said they take personal insurance for vehicle accidents. yea! so i made an appointment for tuesday morning.
monday night i watched some pbs and ate a container of tropical fruit the hrc and mini-hrc had brought over for me the day before. i then took a shower in preparation for the next day (showers aren’t quite as simple as they used to be) and went to bed.
tuesday a co-worker came by around 10am to pick me up and take me to my appointment. he drives an rx-8, which is a rather tight fit. but i am thoroughly appreciative of him taking the time to help me. i told him he could just drop me off, but he offered to stay with me. after waiting a long time in the waiting room, they took me back. they took me and did more x-rays on me, quite a few more than the e.r. had done, and several involved me being in pretty uncomfortable angles with weight on my left leg. (like standing on a stool on my tip-toes and bending and leaning my knees forward until they leaned against the x-ray board. and holding there. ouch.) that done, i went back to the exam room and waited for the doctor. he came in and asked me what had happened, then he proceeded to wiggle and bend and stretch my knee and leg. he said he couldn’t see there was any ligament damage, but to schedule another appointment for 3 weeks to let the swelling and such get back to normal and see if he missed anything. he said i had what they refer to in the business as a “crush injury”. (technical mumbo-jumbo!) basically no broken bones and little or no external skin lacerations, just everything between the bone and outer skin gets…well…crushed. broken blood vessels and capillaries, messed up nerves, squished muscle tissue, etc. he said there isn’t much they can do to make it heal faster or anything, you just have to wait it out. i asked him if he could give any kind of estimate when i should be able to go back to work, and he said that was pretty much just up to me and when i felt like it, since time to heal varies a lot. he asked if i had crutches, and said i should probably use at least one to get some pressure off the leg, but that it’s good that i was moving around some and bending it and straightening it out. he also mentioned i might want to switch from ibuprofen to tylenol since ibuprofen thins the blood and may cause more internal bleeding. so on one hand it was comforting to confirm no broken bones and have someone with lots of knee and ankle experience say things looked intact — on the other hand, i really didn’t gain much new knowledge about how to deal with things, what i could expect, or how long it might take. the doctor left and the nurse came back in and asked if i needed a doctor’s excuse for work. i said work had been pretty understanding, but i guessed i should get one just to cover my bases. she asked for how long and i said i didn’t know, so she made it for the 3 weeks until my follow-up appointment. i told her that was fine and i could always cut it short if i felt better before then.
i left the office and as we were getting ready to leave the parking garage i asked my co-worker if he wanted to go ahead and have lunch since it was already like 12:30pm or 1pm or something. we used to work in the area, but moved a couple of years ago, so i asked him if he wanted to eat at miller’s. it was good, but by this point i’d been standing or sitting for 3 or so hours so my leg was starting to hurt pretty badly. i took half of my food and got a to-go back and we left. (evidently he joked later to a co-worker that he knew i was hurt because i only ate half my food and took the rest to go.) he dropped me off back at my house and i climbed into bed.
tuesday afternoon while in bed i watched bottle shock through netflix’s instant watch on my mac laptop. it was an interesting story. overall it was nothing great as far as films go, but i enjoyed watching it since i learned a bit of (probably semi-true, manipulated) history about napa valley and its place in the wine world, and wine-making. i’m also beginning to think i’m not sure i can appreciate streamed movies. once the pipe gets fat enough that good quality pictures can be sent to decent sized screens (and/or they can cache enough of it locally) it should be okay, but i think i care too much about the image of most films i’m interested in to feel satisfied with the current video quality i’m able to see. still, it’s kind of nice in a pinch to have a wide selection of on-demand films to watch.
in the evening, jack came by with all of his children and we went to chuy’s. i was there for a couple of hours, and by the end my leg (especially my knee) was hurting pretty badly. i think being up twice in the same day for 2 or 3 hours each time, mixed with the walking around and x-ray bends i did at the doctor’s visit and lunch, was a bit too much. i checked my medicine cabinet and i had 3 extra-strength tylenol geltabs that expired in 2007. i took two of them and laid in bed. it took quite a while for my leg to not hurt too much.
wednesday for lunch i ate with the whole potts family at le peep. sue stopped by a walgreen’s and picked me up some more ibuprofen and some acetaminophen. i got back home and immediately hopped into bed.
over the last few days my progressive agent and i had been trading voice mail messages. i finally managed to get in touch with her. i made plans for her to come by my place thursday morning.
around 7:15pm i took a couple of the quick-release acetaminophen capsules sue had bought for me. around 7:30pm dwight came by in his mustang and picked me up and took me to kpft for the radio show. jay is not currently in the country, but everyone else was there. i think they all thought my leg looked pretty nasty. i managed to get through the show okay, although it started hurting some more the last 30 minutes or so. on the way home, i got dwight to go through the drive-thru at a jack in the box and i picked up some curly fries and 4 tacos (that’s pronounced like “tack-o” not “tah-co”).

on friday the hrc came by and picked me up for lunch (we went to a dairy queen), then drove me out to the honda dealership where my bike was taken so i could get some stuff off of it. the guy at the dealership said he was pretty surprised i wasn’t hurt worse based on the condition of my bike. the progressive agent had circled all of the problem areas with the bike. i hadn’t even realized when i looked at it at the towing lot that the whole rear fender had been bent. in the end, he said they had $8212.36 just in parts so they didn’t even bother working up labor costs. so now i’m waiting to find out from the progressive agent how much they are going to offer me for it as a total. i’m still not sure i understand exactly how they value the custom parts that were on the bike. while i was at the dealership, i also took the opportunity to look around a little at the current bike offerings honda has. it’d probably be at least a couple of months before i would be getting a new bike, but it can’t hurt to look right? 🙂
the guy at the honda shop was nice and didn’t care about me getting stuff from the bike, so i grabbed my rat key ring, the “ride hard” ring off the handlebars, my allen wrench and paperwork and stuff from the toolkit compartment, my windshield mounts (as i wasn’t using the windshield at the time so i still have it, and i’d like to keep the mounts to go with it), and my license plate. i was planning on grabbing the chrome metal inspection sticker plate but i forgot about it. and i guess that’s the last time i’ll ever see my bike.
the rat key ring actually goes back all the way to my a&m days. it’s the rat head off of that hot wheel car that had a rat head (i don’t know if they still make that one or not), and was used as the identifier/insignia for a secret society i was in.
the “ride hard” ring was a cheap skull ring purchased in summer 2004 up in macomb illinois at a laundromat. my brother and i had ridden our motorcycles up to illinois for cornerstone, and we were doing our laundry. i thought it was kind of funny this vending machine had all of these different biker/skulls rings, so we bought a few. i put this particular one on my handlebar tube. it was called the “ride hard” ring because as we were leaving austin for our c-stone trip we stopped at a traffic light and a grungy man begging for money came up to my brother and said “you guys ridin’ hard?!” “you ride hard! heh heh. ride hard!” so i called it the ride hard ring, and it’d been on my bike ever since. which surprised me, as i always figured it’d come off at some point. but it never did. not even during the wreck. i’d just bought the bike right before that trip, so it was around almost as long as the bike itself.
friday i sent an email to a person that works for hr in my company. i asked her if there was a person in our hr who interfaces with our insurance company, and explained the situation i’m in. she gave me a name and number, but i didn’t get around to calling her before 5pm. so i’m planning on doing that monday when i get up.
the progressive agent had also called me about discussing the pay out offer on my bike since it is going to be totaled. i called her back and had to leave a message, and she didn’t get back in touch with me friday, so i’m assuming i’ll hear from her monday.
friday night i was having trouble sleeping. i ran out of the e.r.-prescribed motrin long ago, so i’ve been taking 3 200mg gel-tabs twice a day instead. (the 20 tablets the hospital gave me were 600mg for 4 times a day.) as i mentioned before, i gave up on the vicodin days ago, so the remainder of the 25 5mg tablets they gave me have just been sitting there. well, friday night my leg was making it really difficult for me to sleep so i decided to try a vicodin. i think it helped, but i’m not particularly sure. i don’t know if it’s because i hadn’t eaten in a long time, or because i was really tired, or both, or what, but i had some crazy dreams…or thoughts…i’m not sure if i was asleep all the time. i woke up a fair bit, so some of it may have been half-awake synapse firings. anyway, it was odd. i also took one last night about 30 minutes before i went to bed (since my leg hurt pretty bad the night before and the vicodin might have helped a little), but i didn’t have any weird experiences. as of right now i still have 12 tablets left, so as you can see i really didn’t use them that much.
saturday the hrc came by and got me and we went to lunch at tacos-a-go-go. she dropped me off at my house, but a few hours later she came back by with the mini-hrc in tow. they’d stopped by target and gotten me some microwavable soups, gatorade, a grapple (sp? evidently an apple with grape genes spliced in or something), a patrick the starfish cookie, a container of cut tropical fruit, and a get well card. she’d also gotten me some low-cut socks, as i’d asked her for some since all of my socks are mid-rise and they don’t feel good when my ankle swells. we all went to subway for supper, then they dropped me off at home and took off.
today the potts came by in the afternoon and we went and ate at pronto (italian) on montrose. we were originally planning on going to riva’s, but they are closed on sundays between 2pm and 6pm apparently. i’d never been to pronto before, it was pretty good.
from my outings over the last few days, i’ve determined that i can handle about an hour of being upright (which includes sitting) before my leg starts to hurt a fair bit. once i hit about two hours, my ankle is swelling and my heel and leg are starting to show bruising-like places (which i assume is from internal bleeding). i don’t really like to go past that too far, because the one time i did my leg ended up feeling like it was on fire and it hurt for a pretty long time even after i got off of it. so basically my leg can handle about two hours before i need to be back in a position where my leg is elevated above my heart. which kind of sucks, since it keeps me from being able to do much other than short jaunts, which then have to be followed with a pretty long period of keeping my leg elevated before the swelling goes down. on the good side, the swelling on my knee and ankle aren’t ever as bad as they were the first few days after the accident. and after being in bed overnight, or usually around 10 to 12 hours, my left leg looks fairly close to normal as far as swelling goes. the other thing i’ve learned is after having had my leg elevated for a long time, once i go to get up there is about one to two minutes of pretty intense pain in my leg as the blood rushes back in. then things sort of level out and it just hurts like it normally does.
i’m still not sure about the status of my knee or ankle, but hopefully i can get something worked out with my insurance so i can see an orthopedic doctor soon. and perhaps i’ll find out something about the status of the police report tomorrow, as i should be talking to the progressive agent and i think she’ll have a copy of the police report.