Goals are to be reached, wounds are to heal · 2008-09-17 12:58
It's been a while since my last update. To be honest I haven't really felt like it, even though I've had bloggable material. The constant background pain of my knee has slowly resided. Now it's little more than an occasional annoyance, usually triggered by overly-tight dressing. One thing I didn't know about the human body is that we need skin to form a scab over a wound - when we lose skin, scabs don't appear.
For the last three weeks, and to right now, I have an area of raw flesh visible over my knee. Needless to say, this needs constant attention to prevent infection and is the bane of my life. The damn thing smells like a vagrant because I haven't been able to get the dressings wet, therefore no washing of that area.
I think I've learned my lesson already - I just want the damn thing to heal. The nurse who does my dressing every day reckons another week. I hope to christ she's right.
I will always wear all of my gear, every time, even for short trips, from now on.
The Hoon reckons I got off light - now I know what it's like to be in a motorcycle accident. I'd have to agree. I had always wondered what it was like, now I know and it didn't cost me any digits, toes, limbs or broken bones.
In unrelated news, I've finally managed to weigh in at a hefty 80kg. This has been a goal of mine since about this time last year, when I started working out in earnest. "To be a bit of a bruiser" was the aim, I seem to remember. Finally, after eating everything in sight for months, and going to the gym 2-3 times a week, I've done it. Feels great, looks much better than skinny nerd too :-)
Nanny state strikes again · 2008-08-27 16:11
Apparently, it is illegal for a pharmacy to sell me the same high-strength painkillers 2 days in a row. Something about the amount of codeine.
I had to limp a few more blocks to the next pharmacy where I purchased the equivalent of 3 packets of the high strength painkillers (the high strength ones contain 15mg codeine phosphate and comes in a pack of 9. I bought a 48 pack that contains 10mg codeine phosphate.
Ridiculous. People are going to get high on fucking banana peels or whatever, whether or not you make it legal. For the rest of us it's just an annoying pain in the arse (or in my case, knee).
Like last year, I heard they are going to make crack pipes illegal. It's a bit stupid, I thought. Why not just make crack illegal? Oh.. right. THEY ALREADY DID.
The government is supposedly "family values", by this current logic, sex before marriage should be illegal. They don't do it (apparently), so it ought to be illegal for anyone else. Right?
Don't climb out of your playpen or I'll leash you!
Fucking arseholes deciding what's good for me and what's not!
FAIL · 2008-08-26 15:54
What did I do to deserve this?
Last weekend, after a very lovely Saturday spent walking around waterfalls with my lovely sister and her boyfriend, I awoke the following day to my phone ringing. My mate had just got his bike license and was in the area. He came over and after I finished having breakfast, we left to have coffee in Katoomba. Now because my bike was still in the shop from the last prang, I rode his bike with him riding pillion.
You can see where this is going.
The coffee was great. I was feeling good, alive and aware of it. Winter is almost over - it's very nice and mild and sunny in the mountains at the moment. Going around a corner along the back way from Katoomba to Leura (Right here, thank you), I found myself lying on my left hand side with the bike on my leg, sliding. We didn't slide very far because I wasn't going that fast. About a metre.
My guess is that we hit a little patch of oil. It only has to be little - the contact patch on the front wheel of a motorcycle is about the size of a 20 cent piece. Imaging going around a corner and hitting one of these little blobs of grease. Instantly, the front slides out from under you and you're left sliding along the bitumen. That's where we found ourselves.
I was wearing all my gear except my Kevlar® reinforced pants. A nice big hole was warn into my boots - I would now be missing a toe if it weren't for that. Also my nice new jacket got a large scuff up the forearm. A little bit of a scuff on my new gloves.
Massive rip in the denim jeans I was wearing where it hit the pavement. My mate got up, stood there looking at his brand new bike, me underneath it. I think he was having the same sort of shocked feelings I experienced last week. It took a bit to convince him to lift the bike off my leg so I could stand up. I wouldn't have blamed him if he left me there at that point. (He is still my friend though)
I stood up, and it really started to hurt like a mother. Shakily took off my gloves and helmet. Passers by had rushed over to help and make sure we were OK and, god bless 'em, one of them offered me a cigarette. I told him I'd rather fall off the other side of the bike, but thanks for the offer.
I spent most of the day at the hospital waiting for someone to dress my wounds. You can see photos on my flickr page, if you're into that sort of thing. Quite nasty what the impact did to my keyring. Look at the scuff marks on the keys! I'm going to be extra careful what I put into my pockets from now on - Imagine if those keys had have been facing the wrong way. I could have been deprived of my manhood.
That ring used to be a circle.
It's funny, I bought a new jacket and gloves, and they turn out to be cursed. 2 times I've worn that shit, 2 times I've crashed. They say things come in threes. Well, let's find out. I should get my own bike back this week some time.
This lovely spring weather we're having is the ideal condition for riding.
Comment [1]
Keeping this one handy · 2008-08-22 16:04
It's only a matter of time before I can use this one at work...
Doing what I do best · 2008-08-19 11:36
I got myself into a dilly of a pickle last week (read: fucked up big time and made a complete knob out of myself in front of cute girls).
Here's my confession: I'd just purchased a brand new Alpinestars leather jacket and gloves. Purr. I went to grab my bike from the distant parking lot (which is another story), ostensibly to make sure nobody nicked it after the sun went down. Really I just wanted to wear my new gear and ride. A couple of loud mouthed chicks were close by, yapping away on their phones. "I'll give em an earful" I thought, hitting the ignition and warming my beast up a bit. I had just installed a jet kit, and she was sounding much happier and louder.
Jumped on, took off, *bang* I go down on one side.
Shocked, I get up and just stare at my bike, unable to comprehend what had just happened. It was so fast, I was unable to process what had just occurred, never mind why it had happened.
Another rider came over while I was standing there gawking and picked my bike up for me.
I'd forgotten to take off the disc lock and just took off.
A few seconds of carelessness, and my weekend plans were ruined; my pride splattered onto the cold bitumen like oil leaking from a battered old Holden. My wallet took a severe beating. We all managed to survive, however scarred!
I should get my bike back this Friday, after they replace the bent disc and brake caliper, it should come in at around an even $1000. Spew.
Anyway.
Finally, I have some breathing space at work after finalising a SOAP interface for the document management system I'm writing at work. Basically, we wanted to prevent any users (and by users I mean other software) from having to do their own SQL queries, as it means more strong ties in with the system.
The whole idea of using SOAP (SOA if you like wanky sounding buzzwords) is that, in theory, one can move from using one system to another transparently. Even if it's one that I wrote :-) It's just another layer of abstraction.
I toyed with the idea of writing or using an expression language, but we might as well ask the user to supply their own SQL. In the end, I opted for 2 different interfaces: one allowing simple inner joins to be specified by having the user specify which field to match what value on, and what value(s) they want returned.
The other I used a similar interface to the old ioctl system calls - i.e. send a magic number (the operation) along with a blob of data (arguments to said operation - an array of Strings, in this case) and return a blob of data (in this case, a multi-dimensional array of Strings).
Pretty high level stuff - not much oxygen available when one's working at that altitude. If I had stayed up there any longer I might never have come back down to earth! I do like Java for one thing though: it's really easy to make high level design changes, and have the result quickly. It's good like that. Being a relatively simple language, there are plenty of refactoring tools out there, but even without them it's easy enough to make sweeping changes.
Time for me to STFU and GBTW
Comment [2]
Woof · 2008-08-01 13:14
A sadist, a masochist, a murderer, a necrophile, a zoophile and a pyromaniac are all sitting on a bench in a mental institution.
"Let's have sex with a cat?" asked the zoophile.
"Let's have sex with the cat and then torture it," says the sadist.
"Let's have sex with the cat, torture it and then kill it," shouted the murderer.
"Let's have sex with the cat, torture it, kill it and then have sex with it again," said the necrophile.
"Let's have sex with the cat, torture it, kill it, have sex with it again and then burn it," said the pyromaniac.
There was silence, and then the masochist said: "Meow?"
Comment [1]
Roll off · 2008-07-22 11:06
Well, didn't we have fun last Saturday! I can't remember the last time I've had such an idiotic grin on my face. Hanging off my bike like a monkey, trying to scrape my knee on the deck around corners. I managed to pass a few people (you know that drafting thing from "Days of thunder"? it works). It's amazing how much it chops up your tyre, dragging your bike around corners.
My best lap time was 1:47.00 - 46 seconds off the record.
Seriously considering getting into some 125cc MotoGP racing.
More from this day here.
The Hoon's guide to Oran Park · 2008-07-18 15:48
- The Kink, setup for braking as you won't have time to stand up for turn 2, so get used to heavy breaking while leaned over.
- Fast entry on angle - designed to suck you in - apex + exit off camber but it widens so feels too slow on exit (hint: just slide through to maintain speed), pull in to setup for #3
- Depends whether using dogleg or not, slight off camber, just like up #4 as # is very important
- Very strong positive camber uphill, but wheelspin can be a problem - important as getting exit here adds speed through to #7 in almost one sweeper (I drop onto right knee before exit bridge)
- Takes quite a tug to change, the front wants to lift uphill
- Positive camber, but drops away/flattens out wide, so hold exit tight as possible building speed for the flip-flop. can feel way too slow on exit due to positive uphill camber or panic if too wide too early (i.e. go in late) Important for speed here all through flip-flop
- Flip-flop - this is where markers are important. Build slowly, watching how your turn in & exit points change with speed. The only way to do this is with markers as you cannot see.
- Similar to #8 as is uphill positive camber - surprising how much speed lose due to hill (you can go in faster!!). Also important for slingshot down the straight - keep close to the wall, keep an eye out for riders coming out of pit lane at the end of wall.
Wait, what? · 2008-07-18 10:27
So far so good, I've moved into the new place in Leura without too much drama. My good friend Rohan, whom I've known for donkeys years, has a truck license and helped me move. Amazingly, I filled up a 2 tonne truck with my shite. Appreciate the help, mate.
Last night I tuned my alarm to some local station. I woke up to some dodgy aussie song about the 2000 Olympics. Like a clean version of Kevin Bloody Wilson, one for the whole suburban family. Then the crime report for the mountians that week .
Some teenagers charged with kidnapping because they jumped in a dudes car and made him drive somewhere. Car parked at the station with handbag on passenger seat has it's window smashed and purse taken. More teenagers arrested breaking into an empty house. Some guy was arrested for being intoxicated and chucking a pole through a police car window.
Violence against police cars? Is that the worst the mountains has to offer?
More and more I feel like it's an area you could probably leave your house unlocked in while you nip up to the shops. In Sydney there would be no fucking way you could do that and get away with it for long.. people getting stabbed, shot, home invasions, torture, murder, random bashings, all sorts of crazy shit to make you paranoid.
I haven't even had a weekend in my new place. This weekend I'll be busy on Saturday, I'm going to a ride day at Oran park! No chance to relax Saturday. I'm going to try and put my knee on the deck. Must remember to get a lap timer.. :-)
Comment [1]
Tally ho · 2008-07-17 15:44
Finally got my shit sorted WRT Axis2 and JNDI datasources. Here's a hint: if you've filled out context.xml and web.xml with the right stuff, and you're getting the error:
Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null'