I screwed up my shoulder sleeping about a month ago. Hurt like hell but instead of babying it I engaged in two days of rigorous physical activity because, well because life is busy and sometimes you just need to get shit done. On the third day it hurt so bad I only slept about two hours and I couldn't lift my hand above my waist. I was unable to open the shop for the first time ever. I called a friend of mine who had a hippy witch doctor guy who got him walking when he put his back out. The guy makes house calls and he had a spot in his schedule that day. So Darren the Eastern medicine hippy witch came by, stuck needles in me, pressed burning plants into my flesh, poked and prodded all over and harshly criticized my life style choices. The arm hurt a bit less and I was able to move it up to my belly button. He said it might be a frozen shoulder in which case I was fucked and wished me good luck. Next morning it hurt significantly less and I was able to use it for work. My shoulder loosened up and started making clicking clunking noises. Darren had mentioned that this might happen and I should take it as a good sign. Third day it hurt crazy bad. Not the sharp pain I had in the beginning but a deep muscle ache, felt like when the strongest guy you know hits you in the shoulder as hard as he can. Next morning there was almost no pain but still plenty of clunking around. Couldn't believe the pain I had when going to sleep was gone in the morning. Now's the bit that I found interesting. He told me to take pro biotics, stop drinking, smoking weed, eating sugar, drink lots of water, change how I breath, drink apple cider vinegar and take magnesium. He said not to worry about tobacco, it was the least of my problems and that while I should quit it hadn't much to do with my shoulder problems. He also said my guts were inflamed and that they were the the reason my shoulder got fucked up. Meridians, blocked channels blah blah blah... I chronically have no faith in doctors, be they in white coats or dudes burning mugwort on my body. They've come close to killing me more than once, saved my life once and I think they generally aren't as competent or as knowedgable as they let on. But fuck it, I decided to give hippy witch doctorism a half hearted try. So I already drink a lot if water and take magnesium for muscle pain, I had those two covered. I cut back my drinking to every other day and a bit less on the day's I did drink (on the order of one or two beers). I started taking pro biotics and drinking vinegar. I didn't stop smoking weed, it'd take me months to smoke an eighth, most weed smokers I know wouldn't call me a weed smoker. Crazy shit, I went down two belt buckles (well more like one and a snug half) in three weeks. If I lost weight it was negligible. I think it was mostly reduced inflammation in my gut. I don't really feel any different, or healthier or any of the shit I'd hope I would from these results but it's still wild to go down two belt buckles in three weeks.
Dude go to a physical therapist. It’s entirely possible you have a rotator cuff or labrum injury. At the very least they can help you prevent another injury like this in the future. Shoulder injuries are the #1 problem I see in my line of work. Almost all of them are due to bad shoulder mechanics. Here’s a quick test; push your shoulders all the way forward. Now lift them as high as you can. Push them behind you as much as possible and then pull them down as low as possible. That’s the position your shoulders should naturally rest. Let go and you’ll most likely notice a huge difference from actual resting position. As your shoulder rolls forward it rotates the humerous, which forces your rotator cuff muscles to be impinged or work at a terrible angle. It can also put undue stress on the labrum. The longer your shoulder is in this position the weaker these muscles become and the more prone you are to injury. Nutrition and generally living healthy works wonders on the body, but it can’t solve bad mechanics.
News from Cleveland Clinic - First and foremost, no transplant yet. The numbers just aren't there. Whatever is going on is complicated and poorly understood. It's believed that some amount of my chest pain is not directly originating from my heart - the current guess is micro-hypertrophied skeletal muscle in the chest wall. Second, there is a pharmacological issue. There are several different manufacturers for the drug that I was taking, one that is known to produce quality drug with known filling agents that do not interact with the drug metabolism. I not only didn't have the good manufacturer, I had the literal worst one. This manufacturer buys drugs, equipment and filling agents cheap from India, pakistan, and several other places not known for their quality pharmaceuticals. Because of this problem, it's possible that the medication I was taking is either the incorrect drug, the incorrect dosing of the correct drug, or else contains filling agents that interact with the drug metabolism, or some combination of these issues. The doctor confiscated my bad drugs and sent them out for testing. I've been switched to a different dosing of a different beta blocker from a manufacturer that doesn't cut corners, and batch-tests every lot of drug that is produced. Took my first dose monday evening and I can already tell it's not the right choice. My fatigue is through the roof and I'm dizzy just sitting in this chair. I have a call scheduled for friday to discuss things thankfully. Third, he wants me off the gabapentin ASAP because it directly interferes with getting me up and active. I have an appointment with a pain management specialist coming up to hopefully begin a wean off that onto something else. No idea what though. No answers yet, essentially. This new doc found something that he knows he can fix, the drug issue. After we fix that we re-evaluate and try again.
A friend of mine just had heart transplant surgery. So far it's a big mixed bag of positive and worrisome outcomes. The surgery paralyzed half his diaphragm making his already laboured breathing harder. He has had a lot of trouble with fluid retention, which mostly seems to be coming from certain drugs used to treat other complications. His kidneys are giving him hell, once more because of drug complications. It seems like half is new heart isn't working very well but there is hope it will kick into gear down the line. He is able to stand up and take short unaided walks a few times a day. There are no signs of rejection. I hope you get a heart someday and I hope it goes as smoothly as it can.
Thanks for the support. In the span of one day I got two ten-minute, curse filled rants about the drug thing from one of the nation's leading cardiologists. He says that it has become almost impossible to do his job because of the amount of oversight that every single pharmaceutical manufacturer and medical device company requires to make sure they aren't pushing bullshit. Maximum effort.
I'm back from NYC. Chinatown was amazing, got to do some kung fuing, and just generally hang out with people I don't see that often. I enjoyed it a lot, and hope to do a bigger write-up later on. I'm also planning on going back next year at the least. Now that I'm back, my next mission is to get more students. I've been putting 0 work into marketing, and the results have been proportional. Where I'm getting stuck is that I hate the entire premise of marketing; I hate everything from the buzzwords and the obviously massaged and manufactured wording to the insincere enthusiasm. Meanwhile, if I told people why I love what I do, they wouldn't believe me, because it would sound like the worst kind of nonsense that people make up about a martial art. I also don't teach MMA, which people have decided for some reason is the gold standard for self-defense (even though it isn't). From what I've heard talking to some small business owners, it's all about word of mouth and building relationships in this town. But social interaction is at best draining for me, and I find 99% of people I interact with dull and uninteresting. This is at least partially on my end, of course, since my brain can't stay on one topic for very long, but even just the act of speaking is frustratingly tedious and slow. The answer is probably "do it anyway," but I think my dislike of the whole process shows through and makes it pretty ineffective. (Social media has the same issues.) I do have some ideas for online stuff, and that may have to be enough.
I find that often in those situations you got to find a good partner by your side. Someone that will “market” you , while you focus on providing the best service. Then, the synergy kicks in. God I hate that word. But yeah, providing a great service vs marketing it is two different things. That might require 2 different people. And it’s so frustrating! I see awesome people not get any business and average at best people get a ton because of the marketing skills...
That would be my ideal. But I have to be careful, too: as the teacher in this scenario, the responsibility is on me to build things to a large extent. So I have to balance not abdicating with knowing my limitations.
do you get headaches? the main thing stopping me from an occasional fast (i'd probably start with just ~36 hours) is headaches, plus a weak feeling i sometimes get if i don't eat for a long time. it probably does not help that i have no body fat. not sure.
Thanks for the invite. Maaaaayyyyybe. I'm getting back from the Caribbean Thursday night. I've been eating like a king, a fat king at that, and it would do me good. It may be too weird on my body with reverse jetlag at the same time, so we'll see how I'm feeling when I wake on Friday. Did two fasts last year, a 72-hour and a 60-hour. Decided I'd go with two 60-hour fasts a year. It's about time for the next.
I'll join. I just quit cigs yesterday. I think I kinda like this depravation thing. I have been only eating vegan during the past couple of hours (mainly caloric heavy drinks) and I like how light I feel.
Yeah I’m in, though I’ll be running something slightly different. I’ll be fasting from the 26th to the 3rd, with one keto meal on the 28th. I stumbled upon intermittent fasting about two months ago and have been absolutely loving it. I wish I had started before I did the majority of my endurance events
Here's something you learn in school and kinda forget until it happens: you can get rubella even if you were vaccinated. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but my GP insisted on an additional week of bedrest after seeing my results. I'm OK with that, thankful for feeling well enough to enjoy three weeks of medical leave. For the foreseeable future, my time is divided between reading up on Traveller and GURPS and porting my thunderstorm simulation project from C++ to Rust. The latter is extremely tedious and the result is going to be less efficient performance-wise, but I'm doing it in hopes of making the long-term maintenance less of a pain in the arse. Though, honestly, it's worth the effort purely for memory safety reasons. The abovementioned game idea with GURPS is something that I'd like to pick your brains about, Hubski. I want it to start as a slow-burning campaign in a hard sci-fi setting. It's the year 2170, humanity slowly colonises both the Earth's seabed and the solar system alike (unmanned travel at up to 0.01c speeds, fusion power and second-generation Martians are a thing), and all the other details. No aliens, though. In terms of general tone, humankind is somewhat enlightened but ultimately pragmatic rather than unwaveringly idealistic (in Star Trek terms, leans more toward DS9 or ENT than to TNG). I could write you a 10k design document about the setting, but let's keep it minimal. The player characters start their four-year tour of duty as workers/officers on the Titan's first mining colony. They can pick almost any roles in any section, from second in command all the way down to Dave Lister. For a first session or two, there will be almost no action, as I want the players to get familiar with the station and mingle. Afterwards, month or two after the end of the events of the last session, they'd witness a series of malfunctions that should hint them the possibility of mission sabotage, possibly even injuring one of the characters a bit in the process. Most of the game will depend on how they'd like to go from there, but it's likely to gradually escalate from "it's important to maintain peace and put stop to rumours" to general unrest to panic over the span of 10-15 sessions. You get the idea, hopefully. While all that happens, players will notice that various things are missing or being misplaced, hydroponics develops problems bordering on unsustainability, the number of malfunctions in their department(s) rises in both frequency and severity until at some point someone will disable the communications array, effectively cutting them off for weeks. And it's not only off-world communication, but the local comms are almost guaranteed to go down as well. That's my setup for the second half of the campaign when I'll whip out Call of Cthulhu rules and mythos. It doesn't need to end there and I'd gladly make a continuation. Either for new characters trying to piece together what happened or let the survivors figure out how to deal with this new threat to reality in a world that's supposedly ruled by science with mankind on top of its game. Regardless, that's a very high-level idea with some unlikely to change details mixed in. I usually don't do that much planning as a GM and tend to play it by the ear with only general notes/guidelines. Now, do you think it's viable or should I stop writing campaigns while sick and medicated? It sounds great in my head, but I'm afraid it would be, for lack of better word, too subversive. Opinions? Suggestions?
that sounds like a lot of fun, but you'd need to be aware of the patience level / desire for slow-burn of the players you get (if this is something you actually play on running yourself). pace adjustments are an important/overlooked part of running tabletop games it's a lovely concept though
Thanks! I do plan on GMing and most of my players are into this sort of slow development, but it's a good point regardless. The simple fact that it's a closed environment is a device that stood the test of time (e.g. most dungeons made since the dawn of RPGs), but guaranteeing there's always something interesting to do becomes nontrivial without setting up combat encounters. It could be a prison colony or something that can potentially become equally volatile, but I'm not sure how to do it passably.
Good morning Hubski. I decided to stop drinking coffee because it turned into a pretty mad addiction. Several cups before and after basically every class I had which sucks. I don't really know why I stopped but after spending some time outside the city and in nature I think I just came to a collective realization that I'd been unhealthy af and using several forms of speed to get through the day. Had a holy shit moment looking at the stars with friends and feeling more connected than ever. It's easy to forget about these things when you're grinding away in the city and getting increasingly socially isolated. Working at the pizza joint on the birthday suxxxx but hopefully I can get the shift changed.
Holy fuck I'm tired. Ended the hiking trip with Birthright sick. Spent an extra 5 days in Jerusalem in order to recover and ended up worse than I came. Off to a remote farm for 8 hours 6 days a week. Waking up to hating this decision suddenly. Giving it a couple days - maybe.
I just realized that I posted twice in last week's pubski like five minutes thinking it was this week's pubski. It's snowing a bit right now in New Jersey. I was supposed to have a class tonight but it got cancelled. However by midnight tonight, I have to take an online quiz for my Auditing class. I'll probably spend some time later studying for that before taking the quiz.
My half marathon is this weekend. I don't feel my training was very good but time is up. I think 2:20 might be possible but a big stretch. 2:30 is my achievable goal. And I wouldn't be too surprised if I am in the 2:40s. I'm putting this down so i have it written somewhere. I'll report the results in next week's pubski.
My 19th birthday is in a couple days (February 27th) and I'm at the loneliest I've ever felt, and I feel so guilty about it. I just dropped out of college to pursue a dream of moving to Canada that might actually be achievable. I have some very good friends, the nicest people I've met after a couple of years of existance that have bothered to stick around and the couple others who I only talk to through messaging services but still have a decent impact on eachtother's lifes. I've started going to a gym really close to my house that, for the first time ever, I can pay for myself since I've got a boring office job with good pay for an 18 year old. I've lacked intimacy and the comfort of a lover's companionship for a good chunk of my young life (which would be around 2-3 years since I'm so young still) I recently found Hubski after looking for reddit alternatives at work, and you guys are a really cool bunch. I love seeing all the travel blogs and articles on China and life experiences. The Oma and Opa stories really stuck to me. I hope to stick around for longer.
Well, the Valentine's date was romantic and this one feels.. right. I've been seeing him since November and it's been... right. I just feel like, for once in my life, I can have a romantic life and a normal life. I'm also going to be recording next month.