Tarantino and Hatch sliders
By Derek | August 18, 2019
Good day today. Watched several movies, still catching up on ‘70s Westerns. Also hung out with a couple of friends, and watched The Hateful Eight. Tarantino, nuff said.
Good food today, Jill spoiled me with hatch sliders with hatch bacon, hatch Monterey Jack, hatch guacamole on a hatch bun, with a side of hatch pork sausage stuffed mushrooms, and a chopped salad with homemade peach balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Amazing.
Another good friend stopped by later and was able to pick up a couple of sliders also.
Still doing my walking practice, still closing at least the stand ring on my Apple Watch.
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New iPad ordered
By Derek | August 17, 2019
Pretty good day today.
Been walking more and more as I can, to work on getting mobile. It’s getting easier.
Got caught up on The Expanse (through Season 3) and started watching Agents of Shield.
Got my younger son’s new iPad ordered. There’s a sale on the Air 3s on B&H right now. It took him a bit to save up the money, but he finally got there. He’ll be so happy when we get his stuff all transferred over to it. He’s already sold his previous one!
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Admitted to the E.R.
By Derek | August 16, 2019
Yesterday wasn’t a great day. I ended up with weakness in my left leg, and a fever late last night. Jill called my surgeon and he suggested I get into The ER. So we did. Spent most of the night in the ER, was admitted to the hospital again early this morning and got assigned to a room around 4am.
They put me on antibiotics and let me go to sleep. Once I woke up they worked on scheduling an MRI for me. Of course, the MRI machine here at the hospital is too small for my shoulders, so they had to get an ambulance to transport me downtown to a larger machine. That was successful, and the doc got to look at the images.
The MRI showed that I have some blood in and around the the surgery area. They don’t think it’s causing any real problems, but the doctor is ordering me a brace and antibiotics and they are sending me home.
Instead of doc seeing me for follow up in two weeks, he wants to see me next week.
He asked Jill to watch me closely and call doc if his temperature goes over 101.4.
Feeling much better today than yesterday.
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Gone home
By Derek | August 14, 2019
Did a bunch of walking this morning, got tired and laid back down around 11am.
When I woke up around 2pm, I heard that my doctor cut me loose.
Been home for a few hours now, resting in my great recliner.
Waiting on dinner from Ericks.
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Visitors
By Derek | August 13, 2019
Good day today, got up and walked a few times. Climbed fake stairs with the PT crew.
Nurses had me out of bed, and seated for most of the day.
Broke out the Bluetooth speaker, so that we could jam out for most of the afternoon & evening.
Had several great visitors!
Playing Minecraft with my boy right now.
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Surgery went well
By Derek | August 12, 2019
Surgery went well, started a bit later than we were originally told, but went well.
Spent yesterday late afternoon resting, and chatting.
Got dinner right before the kitchen closed at 7p. Good thing, too. Nothing since midnight, and I are a light dinner, as instructed, at ~7pm last night. 24h fast, I did not expect.
Got my headphones in last night, downloaded music playin’ (WiFi sucks here, what a surprise) and a new ebook to read. All set after my long nap yesterday afternoon.
Woke up feeling refreshed this morning, surprisingly little pain. Doing well.
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Surgery scheduled
By Derek | August 11, 2019
I will be going for surgery on Monday, Aug 12th, and will spend 2-3 days in the hospital. There will be a 3 to 6 week recovery period.
As you [may] know, I’ve had back issues for some time. A couple of years ago, I had a really bad episode and was down (bedridden) for about 4 weeks. Last October another episode happened, and I was down for about 3 weeks.
Since October, it has only gotten worse, and recently, it’s gotten much worse, despite the fact that I have been treated, and have had physical therapy, and have lost weight.
Since about 2 weeks ago, I have numbness in my left leg constantly, as well as occasional numbness in my right leg, which makes it difficult to walk even short distances, or exercise.
I have elected to take spine surgery, as my back issues are not getting any better.
The plan is perform a laminectomy [1] from L1-L5 and a spinal fusion [2] between L3 and L4.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminectomy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_fusion
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Upgrading my MacPro
By Derek | June 4, 2018
I upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro to High Sierra today. What’s that, you say? High Sierra only supports 2010 and up Mac Pros? Hah. The Internet delivers.
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Automating Handbrake
By Derek | February 4, 2017
Last night I wrote a script to automate HandBrakeCLI.
I ended up needing to rip a DVD with many chapters that were originally individual movies, that I had foolishly lost the sources for. (Always keep backups of your source files!)
Generally, when you rip a DVD, you want the Title to be one movie file, with individual chapters. This script instead creates files for each chapter of a VOB Title.
My chapter-ripper.sh script can be found here:
https://github.com/derekmoyes/handbrake-automation
Keep reading for an explanation of the script, what it does, and how it does it.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Home Automation with HomeBridge
By Derek | March 14, 2016
I found a cool project called Homebridge; it lets you bridge Apple’s HomeKit (and therefor Siri) to home automation items that aren’t natively HomeKit compatible.
tl;dr I have my WeMo lights and my Craftsman AssureLink garage door opener added to my HomeKit configuration, along with my HomeKit native Ecobee 3 (which is not actually discussed here).
Topics: Apple, Home Improvement, Linux, Me, Photos, Technology | No Comments »