
$200 of good, clean, explosive fun!
I had my one week check in with the eye doctor today. He says my eyes have healed up and I can wear my contacts again. Woot! I’ll be able to see on vacation next week!
There’s a new kind of contact for my condition from SynergEyes for my problem. There is a big waiting list to get the diagnostic kite (whatever that is) so that I can be fitted. Not one to wait patiently, I called up Synergeyes and simply asked for them to send the kit to my doctor. They were helpful and are going to call him directly and see what can be done to speed things up.
Who knows if it will help, but if you don’t ask, you never know.
I knew this day would come sometime. After wearing my contacts for 18+ hours a day, everyday, my eyes have finally rebelled and decided not to cooperate any more.
Bright light had been causing me pain and I finally went to the eye doctor yesterday. My eyes have been injured a bit a nd need time to heal. What that means is no contacts for a week or until everything is healed up.
Due to my condition, keratoconus, this is a big deal. The condition does more than just make me nearsighted, it creates a smearing of what I see. Kinda like permanent double vision.
Special contacts basically give me 20/20 vision by correcting for the myopia and the optical bending that causes the smears. Most people wouldn’t know that I’m legally blind without my contacts. Without my contacts, I need to hold things about six inches from my face to have any chance to read it. Even then, I need to squint to see anything. I do have glasses, but they can’t correct for the smearing or fully for the near-sightedness. As a result, the glasses extend my reading range out another foot or so.
To write this on the computer, I need to lean far forward and increase the font size on the computer pretty high. Spending more than 45 minutes or so trying to read or use the computer guarantees a headache and sore eyes from squinting.
While this sucks and all, I have it good compared to some people and their eye problems. There are many people that never get a chance to see well at all. In that respect, I feel very lucky that I get to see normally most of the time. Of all the maladies that people suffer, I got off easy compared to many.
So what does it mean? It means I can’t drive or really work. Work involves a lot of reading and computer work. I can’t watch TV, it’s all a blur, even with my glasses on. So while my eyes heal, I basically need to walk around with my glasses off and do nothing.
Too top it all off, the dog chewed off the end of my glasses where they rest on your eyes, so I need to go out and get new frames for the lenses.
So I will see you all in a bit. Until then, do good work.
Tonight I will be speaking to SMPTE Hollywood about digital media stuff. They spelled my name wrong, but here’s the panel I’ll be on.
Specifically I’ll be talking about “practical issues involved with creating portable media from traditional digital media workflows – transcoding content to the right format as well as metadata, XML conversion, DRM, storage and network/transport”. Thrilling stuff folks!
If you a television turbo-geek, please come heckle.
Warning: The SMPTE web site has a very 1999 design feel to it, so any creative types or designers should be wary, lest your eyes bleed. I’m not kidding, it would toss Jason Kottke and Khoi Vin into a epileptic fits if they ever saw the site.
After our nice find of Java Juice as instant coffee, Michele was on the look out for other options. While shopping at the 99 Ranch Market (an Asian supermarket in LA), she found a box of Casa Coffee.
Last weekend, the hard drive in our media server died. This sucks, but is not the end of the world, we had backups. This is the second time the hard drive in the media server has died. My best guess is that this is due to excessive heat.
To prevent further losses, I’ve replaced the hard drive with a pair of hard drives in a RAID set. A RAID is basically telling two hard drives to act as one. If one fails, you have the other. I also bought an external hard drive to do even more backups.
But I need to address the heat issues. Michele is insistent that the covers stay on the computer. So, the easy method, leaving the sides off, is right out.
That meant using forced air blown through the case. I had a ultra-quiet Cooler Master fan and a grill for another project I never got around to doing.
In the last week, I’ve gotten a half dozen emails about advertising on Cruftbox and three different headhunters called me to offer jobs.
Wha? I am simply not that in demand. My unhealthy fascination with junk food alone should scare most people away.
What happened? Did someone post me on a milk carton or a bathroom wall?
Last weekend, we helped our friends with their garage sale. They advertised and set up the sale. We brought over our crap, err, our fine pre-owned items and helped out with the sale and watching the kids.
In the middle of everything was this fantastic item.