Wednesday, April 30, 2003

latest bittorrent link

http://66.51.206.234/



update on my injury

well, i guess this is one of those injuries that someone you know gets once in a while and you are always thankful that it didn't happen to you. unfortunately, this time i drew the short straw. i have had a hard time determining if i have been making any progress at all, and i should really write these things down, because i am making progress. i'm just disappointed that i haven't been getting faster. i've been thinking about the last 3 weeks or so and if i had made any progress at all since then and i have realized i have made lots...but i still have a lot of recovering to do. i can finally lye down without having to twist my body in an awkward position. i feel like the disc has pretty much moved back in place. and all i'm dealing with now is the inflammation, internal healing/scarring and the damage to the nerves that need to heal. well, i don't want to count my chickens beore they hatch. i'm going to see the doctor tomorrow to discuss the mri results. also, i have an acupuncture appointment later in the day. acupuncture will definitely help out if my own pronosis is right, but i can't seem to shake off the inflammation fast enough to speed up progress. i think i will make an appointment with the pain clinic tomorrow and what they want to do is inject me with steroids....one time deal....and with the dosage they prescribe should be relatively harmless.



here are some more info o how to deal with severe inflammation by controlling what you eat.

#1 thing to avoid is simple carbohydrates

#2 avoid dairy

#3 avoid spicy food



food that you can enjoy

chicken, seafood. non starchy fruits and vegetables.

Saturday, April 26, 2003

today wasn't the normal pain without much progress day.



i finally got the protein bars (thanks to erik and wendy). so now i'm able to eat without having to walk to the kitchen and prepare something.



then afterwards, i went to get the mri done. the mri was pretty much what imagined it to be. i knew the hole they put you in was small, but damn, its much more cramped in there than i imagined. basically it will wake the inner clausterphobia in you. for you minor clausterphobics, you might experience this once and hope you'll never have to do it again. for you moderately and majorly clausterphobics, i hope they are willing to sedate you cause its not for you. laying in there for 30 minutes, i was wondering how they are able to get so many people in there without problems. luckily i wasn't clausterphobic....but it still made me a little uncomfortable being in there. imagine having about 6 inches above your head in a solid chamber and not having the luxury of moving your head to look...or any part of the body for that matter. good thing i was drowsy with about 2 hours of sleep from the night before. maybe if i had a little caffine in me, it would have been a different story.



jafterwards, i went to go see the acupuncturist that i first went to when i was initially injured. and i realized that the place that my parents took me to was a total rip off. the doctor was an idiot. an experience bullshitter at that. basically, the acupuncturist would feel around to find your sore spots. a gift that my acupuncutrist has in spades. but the place my parents took me to...the doctor would say...."any pain here?" and just keep digging his fingers harder into your skin after you say..."no...no....no....yes!" a total fraud. this guy shouldn't be in business. i feel bad for the patients that go to him. they don't know what they are missing. he also reuses needles. i'm sure they are properly cleaned, but the acupuncturist here uses disposable ones. and after a second visit with the one here, i have a lot of confidence in acupuncture. and if done correctly, you can really benefit from it. my wrist for example. i injured both my wrist doing freeweight preacher curls...the left one finally healed after about 3 months or so. the right one is still in bad shape. but this tells you that its something that the body can heal on its own, but for some reason or another, my right wrist hasn't had the same luck. so acupuncture will definitely help in this case. sticking needles in there will make the body think that i injured that area, and that the repair process will be stimuated. pretty simple concept, but is there an alternative? surgery is overkill. and obviously i can't put my wrist in a cast for half a year for minor wrist pain that only is felt when i'm lifting moderately heavy objects. so along with my back, i'm also going to ask her to put some needles in my wrist. i have been worrying about my wrist too, but after it clicked that my wrist can be easily fixed with acupuncture, it was a load off my mind.



i came home and passed out after an exhuasting day out. the doctor should receive the mri results in 24-48 business hours. i'm hoping he can write a letter so that i can work from home without prolonging or further causing the injury. my parents called me today, and he said he found an acupuncturist in korea town that guarentees that he's able to "fix" the problem. and my dad wants to take me there. i am quite satisfied with the acupuncturist here and have high hopes on what she'll be able to accomplish. not that my parents are racist...but when i told them that the acupuncturist was not of asian descent, they were really mad at me asking how in the world i go to non asian acupuncturist...considering it is a method that was invented by the chinese..... well (A), the doctor that they took me to was korean, and he was a very expereinced acupucturist, but a total fraud. (B), i've had exceptional results with this one before, (C), being asian has nothing to with being a good acupuncturist. the one i go to studies the art, goes to conferences every year to fine tune her abilities. the one in gardena probably has never been to a conference in his life, and just got into the business by learning how to stick needles into people from maybe one person. now who do you think would be a better person to go to? i also believe that koreans...especially people like my dad, over simplify everything that he does. like if he wants to start a business, he'll have it rolling in no time. great compared to people that have ideas but never do anything about it. research on how to run that business well is never done, and he learns as he goes. so what you are left with is a business developed without any talent involved. you can say this about a lot of the korean stores. no heart or soul can be found there. why does the place exist? out of convienience of the business owner and the customers. not because it was a dream of the person who built it. koreans are known to operate lot of small stores. you'll find a lot of them, but the percentage of good ones to all the korean stores out there is below average. not that there aren't good korean stores out there with talented business owners and workers. good luck finding them because remember they are all business men/women. the person they refer will more likely be a friend's business they want to help out. its just part of the culture.



i expect to be walking a lot better, maybe even perfectly straight by monday if i'm lucky.

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

yesteday was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life...when i was to find out that NewsRadio was finally coming to DVD. but i heard this news groggy from the medicine and bummed about the progress i made the last 2 days. so i felt numb...indifferent about it all. if it wasn't for this injury, i would have been doing carwheels...or at least attempt some.



it is true that spicey food is bad for inflammation. i have tested this 3 times, and all 3 times, the inflammation just feels like it balloons up like someone was pumping air into it. erik is picking up some protein bars at costco....this should help me stay away from food that my parents bring me (all spicy), and trips to the kitchen.



some politikz. a second term for president bush? i think not. his above average approval ratings doesn't mean that he's gonna get reelected. sure, he saved an oppressed country. did some great things. but he brought a lot of heat to the US. it seemed like the majority of this country was against president bush. even when the armed service men were asked, their response was pretty much "we are just blindly following orders and hoping for the best." it is true that the ones that protested look like the fools now. but you can't blame them. we were lead to think that way from the media, and even from the president. if he had just told the truth, he at least would have had more support rather than the whole world protesting against the president's actions, including our own country. truth being that we have to save an opressed country, who has a big hand in terrorism in america, and this opressed country is under an more eveil than evil dictator that its own country is powerless to overthrow. and the UN sure isn't wanting to do anything because most countries want to save their own resources because they are not the target of terrorism and don't care if we are terrorized. if he had said this and just been honest, we would have had more support for this war rather than us looking like we were picking a fight with a country that the president's daddy never finished. then there would never had been this stuff of "show us proof of WMD" because there would have been a lot less focus on that. what president bush is guilty of is bad PR with the press, the public, and the world. and that is a big part of the presidency. with the bad PR, bush has caused a lot of damage behind the scenes. and in the end people would rather avoid these conflicts and look the other way rather than be the idiot agressor with bullshit excuses. as long as we have a good democratic candidate, bush won't be the next american idol...errr...president.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

American Idol 101

here's the reason why clay is going to win. why carmen continues to stay on. why niki made it so far last year. and why tamyra was 4th when she should have been the one to win it last year. it has all to do with the "save factor". when the audience feels like their favorite contestant needs the help to continue on, probably because they performed so poorly, they will get a lot more votes than they will deserve. this is why carmen continues to stay on. every week, she does so poorly, and the judges chew her up. so even people that don't vote all the time will feel like they need to do their part to "save" the person. this is why niki made it so far last year. and this is why tamyra lost because she was so much better than everyone, while the savers tried to save their favorites, all of tamyra's fans stopped voting because they thought she had this in the bag.



now my reasoning why clay will win is because he's the guy that everyone will want to save. not because he needs it, but its because he's such a likable guy. with his money, he'll do good in this world. where as ruben will probably will probably use that money to buy more food and continue to gain 30 lbs a week like he's been doing since the show has started. there is no doubt that ruben does have the best talent out of the group this year (another reason the audience want to help clay all that much more). with or without american idol ruben will be doing some serious work with his singing career, provided he doesn't die of heart disease before the show is over. not to put clay down at all because he does at least have talent enough to make it to top 2. just not as good as ruben's voice. so its really down to how much the audience wants to save clay and help him get to #1 rather than #2 verses how good ruben really is. and i think clay will definitely get more votes when its down to ruben and clay.



still think candice coleman should have been brought back. i would have taken candice over carmen any day. and candice probably did have it in her to honestly make it to at least top 5, not squeak by on pity votes like carmen.



interesting facts. out of the 12 singers, there are 6 left. and out of those 6, 3 of them are wild cards (they originally weren't finalists). also, the top 3 singers (clay, ruben, kimberly) are from 1 of the 4 semifinalist shows. candice was also part of the semifinalist group that clay, ruben, and kimberly was in. that was a really good group. and i'm sure if she was in any other group, she would have made it for sure. one other comment is that fox has really been dragging its heels on this show. they are eliminating the contestants 1 by 1, and obviously the judges are getting bored of what excited them in the first place. who wouldn't get tired of an artist after watching them for 16 weeks straight? the judges are just bored now. they are asking the contestants to be different and more entertaining. an unfair demand considering the contestants have evolved in the direction of the judges prior recommendations. they are asking for something probably impossible. they want to be surprised after all the contestants have given it all they got. randy needs to shut up. "yea dog...that was good...but that was didn't do it for me....i dunno man...it was just aiite dog." yeah. tell america every week what an idiot you sound like when you've brought boredom onto yourself.

Monday, April 21, 2003

so another week passes and i'm still prisoner in my own home. not much has gone on in the last week. wendy was gracious enough to pick up a gamecube for me. so i got 2 extra controllers and mario party 4. diem made a post on her blog yesterday. sounds like she's having a blast. i'm going in to get a mri done this thursday. hopefully it will reveal that i won't need surgery. i am finally able to lye down flat with only very minor discomfort, which should speed up the progress and let me get some descent sleep for a change.



i'm finally starting feel that i've run out of things to keep me occupied. i'm just doing things to keep me occupied, so i don't go insane. my latest downloads have been season 1 and 2 of x-men on the FOX network. then it was Ducktales. I think I have all but a handful of episodes. now i'm starting the most challenging collection of all. The Twilight zone from the late to mid 60's. none of that new crap. i have close to 100 episodes so far. which means i'm about 2/3 of the way done. and the other 1/3 is hard to come by. i have come up with all these different tips and tricks to get the downloads going through kazaa lite. pretty sure i won't have a complete collection. but that's better than spending $500 for the 48 dvd set.



one thing that did happen is that i was able to do my taxes, almost completely paper free. all i had to look for were the school loan interest forms that they had sent me that i discarded into a plastic bag, also known as my misc filing cabinet. i had also lost my w2 forms. being stuck at home, and only having a day and a half to complete it, i was getting a little frantic. so i gave turbo tax online a shot. and wow. i'm never doing taxes without turbo tax again. last year, i used taxact, and it wasn't nearly as good. i ended up losing a few hundred dollars last year because i did not know the proper time to file my losses in the stock market. turbo tax costed me $70 this year....way more than i was expecting. i'm definitely going to look for better deals online rather than paying full price because i've waited till the last minute. turbo tax is so convienient. i can download my w2's right from the website. and i can download my etade data right into in. right then and there, i have completed 65% of the forms i need to fill out. just click through the rest and you're done. i couldn't be a happier customer. i ddn't have to mail anything. i had to go jump through multiple hoops california has set up so i can file online. but after that got taken care of, i got away scott free without having to send a single piece of paper to the IRS.



i only have 2 weeks left before my vacation time runs out. i really hope that i'll be able to make it into work by then.

Monday, April 14, 2003

all speculation but...i think the herniated disc is definitely showing signs of moving back into place. every day, it seems like there is less and less discomfort/pain when i try to lye down flat. i think i am a few days away from being able to completely lye down flat without any discomfort. which i hope it means that i'll be able to stand up straight. it will still mean that i'll still won't be able to walk normally until the disc moves further back. and after that i'll definitely have to limit my physical activity for another 3 months....so if i do go go the gym at all in the next 3-4 months, it will be strictly off limits on anything that puts pressure to my lower back. i'll probably just work on cardio and body fat loss.....cause i definitely have gained some during the injury and before while i was bulking up. i'll probably walk to school mondays and wednesdays for health reasons.



as for the injury that has already taken up 6 weeks of my life, and possibly a few weeks more, i've been wondering if this was going to be a life altering experience. and so far, to be honest, other than being stuck in bed all day, i have been able to keep a relatively good attitude towards all this. i have not fell into depression to where i thought i had to make a journey to crawl out of a cave, raise my fist into the air, and swear that from now on, i'm going to stop to smell the f'ing roses. its not that i don't miss doing things that i've been deprived of....going outisde....walking...hiking...hanging out...working out....just about everything that isn't tv/computer related. i guess its not a bad thing i'm doing well...relatively speaking. friends taking time to visit definitely has played a big part in keeping my spirits up. and i shouldn't rely on a foreign intervention to make me appreciate more things in life. if i want to bring on this change, its something i'll have to do myself, injury or no injury.



the weird thing is that you would think that lying in bed for a month or two would seem like an eternity. but that is not what it has felt like for me. it just feels like a slightly extended weekend. and when i do make it back to work and going outside, i think i'll be able to pick up without missing a beat......the downside to it is that i would have used up all my sick and vacation hours without it feeling like i got any kind of rest or vacation at all. being in bed doesn't mean that i have been getting good rest...because i have stopped taking that cyclobenzaprine hcl that was supposed to help me sleep with discomfort. without taking it, i am able to sleep 4-7 hours a night probably tossing and turing probably the whole night. i stopped taking it because i would wake up in some uncomfortable position and have aggravated the inflammation by morning. its only when i stopped taking this the inflammation subsided and i was finally able to make some progress. so you can see i have taken all the time off without any benefits at all. oh well. i shold stop complaining...my injury, even though it is a long term injury, there are far worse injuries things that can happen to a person.

Friday, April 11, 2003

went to the doctors today. i was mistaken. the x-ray can't detect herniated discs...just bone fractures and stuff like that. so it is a herniated disc. but i'm going in for a MRI to see what point we are at. i think i'll stop blogging until i hear some good news. i should definitely have some news in about 3 weeks.

Thursday, April 10, 2003

well, good and bad news. the x-ray results came in and they said everything appeared to be fine. the bad news is, if everything is fine, what the ~!@# is the problem? i'm going to see the doctors again tomorrow, and see if i can schedule an MRI.

Wednesday, April 9, 2003

just came back from a 6 day stay at my parent's place in Gardena. I could have, and maybe should have stayed longer there, but i wanted to leave there before it got too depressing. they don't have the internet. and all my friends are at SD. and with my parents being gone all day, you can see how one can easily tire himself from all the nothing one can do. so i came here so that i can socialize with people that come by to visit, and also through AIM.



other than that, there's not much else that has gone on during the whole week that i was gone. i've been to an acupunturist 3 times, and i think the first one i went to in LJ wsa the best. i'm planning on going to the chiropractor tomorrow. hopefully i'll be able to drive. i'm still not able to walk much at all. all i can do now is pray, rest, and hope for the best.

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

well, the inflammation seems like it's getting better slowly. yesterday was definitely an improvement. for example, i would describe my symtoms as heavy discomfort, and not use the word pain, agony, or excruciating to describe it. i hope its not cause i'm just used to the pain now. the doctor finally called back today (i guess he wasn't in friday or monday). and he got me a new prescription. NAPROXEN (aka NAPROSYN) 500mg to be taken twice a day. wendy was gracious enough to pick it up for me and bring it by. i only have taken it once so far, but i think it definitely works better than 800mg ibuprofen taken 3 times a day. i had been taken the ibuprofen with Flexeril (aka Cyclobenzaprine) 10mg...a muscle relaxant that helps me deal with muscle spasm's while i sleep. but i'm going to guess i shouldn't take that with the Naproxen because that also makes me drowsy. I don't want to accidentally go to sleep and never wake up again. Especially my roommate being gone for a week, that just won't be pretty. Even though I no longer have pain, just discomfort, i have to keep contorting my spine in some weird position. still can't walk much at all....and even if the inflamation is gone, my back is really contorted. i have to get it straighted out now by a chiropractor. i'll probably get the adjustment on friday.



so yesterday, my dad stopped by with a whole mess of korean food. basically consisted of cold noodles, korean bbq seasoned meat, pot stickers, and soup. i told him no pot stickers, but he still broght me a motherload. so if anyone wants to feast on pot stickers next time you're over, let me know. i'll start defrosting them. my dad also brought me these 3 ointment rubs...kinda like bengay....except made in mexico of all places. his acupuncturist gave him those, and he said they're good, and they can't sell those here....so i'm guessing they got some gnarly ingredients. coca extract perhaps? haha....ok...just did some research. the magical ingredient is arnica. bunch of warnings from people in discussion groups on not using arnica on open wounds, and definitely no eating.....i wasn't planning to eat the ointment but i guess i should definitely wash my hands thoroughly after application. arnica is toxic if eaten. come to think of it, i applied some of this arnica ointment, and took an induced nap yesterday (or maybe even passed out), and woke up with super dry hands....hmmm....gotta be careful.



its surprising it has been 3 weeks since i got the herniated disc. good thing time passes by faster as you get older. i think what has helped a lot are the tv shows that keeps me distracted. i'm all caught up on csi and csi miami. i'm 1/4 of the way done with watching all the sopranos that i downloaded. and i just finished downloading all the Alias epsidoes today. after that, i'm going to download all the seinfeld episodes. hopefully i won't still be stuck in bed before i get to all of those shows. another thing that's really helped me deal with the back injury is that just about everyone has been going out of their way to help me out and keep me company in a difficult time. i'm really thankful that i'm surrounded by such great friends. its true that i would be doing the same thing if one of my friends were injured. but it is because i've been molded into who i am today by all the kind hearted souls that i'm blessed to have as friends.

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

latest bit torrent site where you can get your csi, csi miami, 24, smallville, simpsons, and other shows before they even air it on tv.

http://torrents.noneleft.bm/



this is a link to kazaa lite. different than kazaa, because you download about 10 to a 100x more with this program. i've been averaging about 10 gigs a day with this thing.

http://doa2.host.sk/



corey clark has been kicked off american idol. just when he lands his best vocal performance, and gains some fans. was never a fan of corey anyway. if they are going to bring anyone back, my vote is for candice coleman. she has a very smokey and unique voice. kinda like in the category with nora jones. i was hoping that she'd be in the wildcard show. but she wasn't.



a 1000 hp cadillac straight from the factory.

the problem with a cadillac is that their badge/emblem is so infused with old grannies, and pimps from the 70's and 80's. they need to come up with a different line of cars...the way that honda, toyota, and nissan do with acura, lexus, and infiniti.