Wed, 12 Aug 2009
Impressively simple solution to shoulder pain
For the last ten years I've been suffering from heavy shoulder pain due to a shoulder impingement syndrome. (In short: two bones are too close together, so there's too little space for the shoulder tendons to move, so they become inflamed and hurt a lot.) I've seen different doctors about it, the usual proposals were either regular physiotherapy, pain killer injections or an operation. I didn't really like the idea of the injections or the operation and had been forever putting off the physiotherapy, mostly because it just never seemd to be a good time to tell my boss that I'd have to start coming late or leaving early on a regular basis for the weeks to come and the "slow stretch" I had postponed it to just never showed up.
When the pain again got worse a couple of weeks ago I decided to once more see a doctor about it, mostly hoping that in the years since I last did so they might have come up with an alternative solution. Contrary to his colleagues I had consulted earlier this one actually put most effort into finding out, what had actually caused the syndrome in the first place. After establishing that I had never had an accident involving my shoulders and didn't go in for any sports worth mentioning we turned to professions, in my case IT. His prompt response: "Oh, in that case it's the mouse, maybe also the typing. Get a trackball and a wrist rest. I'll bet you'll feel significantly better after a few weeks already."
I wasn't too sure if that would really help that much, my typing is already pretty ergonomic and - considering I only use Linux and on that mostly command line programs - how much strain can I possibly get from using my mouse? Also, while I had never really used a trackball I still considered them rather awkward and kind of 80s. Also I seriously doubted if such a small change could really influence a condition that had been giving me serious pain for more than ten years. However, at least there was an alternative including neither operation, nor heavy drugs or regular obligations, so I decided to give it a try. I looked a bit into the current supply of trackballs (takes a VERY short time, there are like six to eight proper ones) and in the end got a Kensington Optical Expert Mouse. I actually found its price (over 90 Euros) pretty exaggerated but I still bought it, mostly since it had overall very good reviews and was the only one with a decent scroll facility.
After using the trackball for a couple of weeks I have to conclude: it worked. Really well! After some intial getting used to I now use my trackball just as fast and accurately as I used my mouse and, most importantly, the shoulder pain that had been a more or less constant bother during the last ten years is almost completely gone!
So why am I posting all this? Well mostly because I was really sceptic about (1) using a trackball at all and (2) that it would really make that much of a difference, and I guess a lot of other people feel the same. So this blog post it mostly a recommendation. If you work with your computer a lot and suffer from shoulder pain when lifting your arms or sleeping on the side, check if it might be an impingement problem, they're actually not that rare. And if it is and it's not caused by any other obvious reason do try a trackball. They also come with three buttons and a scroll wheel by now and are really not all that awkward once you get used to them.
Posted at: 15:34 in /english/personal
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Tue, 09 Jun 2009
Travel plans
I'll be on the road a lot in the coming weeks. All events (except our anniversary of course) are conferences and thus excellent coffee/beer/key signing possibilities. If you'd like to meet up, drop me a note by mail or irc.
- 11./12. June 2009: CBLOS'09, Flensburg, Germany
- 26.-28. June 2009: Off to the Harz mountains to celebrate our first wedding anniversary
- 17.-24. July 2009: ICCBR-2009, Seattle, WA, USA
- 25.-31. July 2009: Debconf 9, Cáceres, Spain
Posted at: 23:18 in /english/personal
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Fri, 29 Aug 2008
Where's Meike?
As September is traditionally the "conference month" I'll be travelling all around Germany within the next weeks. So, inspired by Matthew, here's a short list of events I'll attend in September 2008. If anyone's up for a coffee, keysigning or something let me know!
- August 31st to September 4th 9th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, Trier, Germany
- September 5th to September 7th 3rd Congress on Solidary Economy Bremen, Bremen, Germany (Will probably arrive on Saturday)
- September 23rd to September 26th 31st edition of the Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Kaiserslautern, Germany (Will probably arrive on Monday)
Posted at: 22:30 in /english/personal
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Tue, 01 Jul 2008
What everyone's been waiting for
Posted at: 12:01 in /english/personal
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Fri, 13 Jun 2008
A Debian Love Story ...
- First encounter: LinuxTag 2005. Both were staffing the Debian booth. She was a speaker on debian-women, he organised the DebianDay
- First feelings unfold: on #debian.de
- First I miss you: During DebConf5, he was there, she wasn't
- First gift: A Debconf5 shirt and Finnish chocolates
- Next reunion and first kiss: At ApacheCon 2005, both were staffing the Debian booth
- Preferred secret love notes medium: planet.debian.org
- First "public appearance" as a couple: Berlinux 2005, both staffing the Debian booth and giving talks on packaging and user motivation
- First relationship-stress-test: Both joining the DebConf6 orga team -- passed!
- First anniversary: Exact date retrieved thanks to www.debian.org/events/2005/
- Official engagement announcement: Over a planet.debian.org post
- First Inter-DD-Marriage: Today in two weeks!
Debian, I owe you!
Posted at: 00:20 in /english/personal
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Mon, 31 Dec 2007
Happy new year!
The year is almost over and a lot has happened. I finished my studies and got engaged, (Again, thank you very much for the many, many congratulations and warm wishes!) now, just before the year is really over I decided to finally make another commitment.
Now, I guess the first thing I'll turn to will be Tasks and Spätzle. ;)
Posted at: 19:01 in /english/personal
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Sun, 30 Dec 2007
Without words ...
Intercultural disclaimer: In Germany it is customary to buy the wedding rings
on the occasion of the engagement and wear them on the left hand until the
actual marriage. Afterwards they are worn on the right hand.
Posted at: 16:37 in /english/personal
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Fri, 19 Jan 2007
Storm's over
Kyrill crossed Hildesheim yesterday evening. Some parts of the city got hit rather badly with roofs being completely untiled and trees falling on buildings. It seems we were lucky to only lose a few tiles, since there have been reports of debris flying about in our street yesterday and the little park opposite our house looks not too good today. No disrooted trees though. However, in the next street a poplar tree was disrooted and fell on a car killing one man and injuring two others, one of them severely. Guess that explains the many ambulances going by yesterday :/
This morning, with daylight back most things seem back to normal. There's quite lot of stuff lying about and the river has really high water and also carries a lot of debris, mainly boughs and twigs though.
PS: What bothers me most, ist that most news services today have headlines such as "Storm "Kyrill": The best Photos from our readers" and similar. I hate it when people have nothing better to do than to pull out their f***ing mobile phones and take pictures whenever something bad happens and this is not exactly helping!
Posted at: 10:54 in /english/personal
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Fri, 12 Jan 2007
Happy New Year! and some resolutions
Slightly belated, but still: Happy new year everyone!
We spent the holidays with my parents, pretty relaxing, didn't do much but lie on the couch, do crosswords and watch my sisters dwarf rabbit, that my mom hat to "rabbit-sit". Christmas was as usual a three-generations celebration and quite nice.
On the 4th we went to see Irie Révoltés. Absolutely great concert!! We danced our hearts out. But, you know what? The best is not only seeing a great concert, but having the next day off. Sleeping in 'til way past noon, waking up with a beep in yours ears, a smelly pile of cloths beside your bed and every muscle sore. Have a wonderful breakfast with eggs and sausage, spend half an hour under a hot shower and spend the rest of the day humming melodies and tending to your aching muscles. Wonderful!
Unfortunately the new year didn't continue that great. I caught a nasty cold and spent the last four days in bed. But, oh well, it's getting better, I can almost breathe soundlessly again!.
Generally, this is going to be a very important year! In the middle of December I registered my Magister (comparable to a master's) thesis. I've got six months to finish it, so the first half of this year will be used for that. Once the thesis is handed in, the final (really final this time) exams start, first a very long written one, than an oral one, this will take until October. After that ... well, we'll see. I've set my mind on a PhD, since I'd like to pursue an academic career, so the next step will probably be trying to get a PhD grant. First things first though ...
Resolutions
Finally this is probably the first new year I really made some new year's resolutions. I'll put them here, so I can nail myself down to it over the year:
- First off, there are some things that I simply hope to keep the
way they are:
- I live in a wonderful relationship that I hope will simply go on forever :)
- Also, I have quite a cool job (several actually), that I hope I can keep for another while.
- I changed my eating habits quite drastically during the
last months. I used to love everything "Just add water": teas,
soups,puddings ... RAMEN!! Luckily it didn't reflect on
my weight, which is pretty constant, but still I know that
stuff is 90% chemical crap and who knows what it will lead to.
(I know the optimal human would have three eyes, but I am
actually quite happy with my average two.)
So, I've cut down on that quite a bit and now have a subscription with an organic farm nearby that delivers so called Abokisten (subscription boxes?) that are delivered weekly and contain different vegetables, fruit, a loaf of bread and some cheese. The boxes' content is kind of randomized, so you get something different every week. It's a pretty neat service, since the food is really great, the price is reasonable, it's delivered right to my door, and (most of all) it makes me cook! So, here's another Keep that up!
- So much for the keeping, now for the changes/tasks: I guess the first is, of course, my thesis and exams. I plan to do those as good as possible. I'll be something of a challenge though. This is the first time I do such a large "project" (the thesis takes six months) all on my own, and (most worrying) at home. So here's a test on self-discipline!
- Although I've done a lot of acting in my "younger years" (haha) I've always been rather unmusical. This has been nagging on me for quite a while, so I've taken up playing the Blues Harp last month. I picked that instrument since I love the Blues and it's also easy to learn but still very flexible (and cheap). So far it's been huge fun but the art is, as always, keeping it up.
- There's this little blog I'm maintaining, that has been horribly neglected over the last year, so another resolution is to post here more often. (This way posts also won't have to be so horribly long, such as this one.)
- I couldn't help but notice that that geek girls top ten which Erinn mentioned (congrats by the way :)) contains but one European women. So here's something to do as well. There's quite a bunch of pretty impressing ladies over here, too. (Even AFTER 1950,dear CNET) And it seems, they need a bit more visibility. Maybe there are some things that can be done about that too ...
So, lots of plans. I hope publishing them here will help sticking to them. This also concludes my "little post", I hope the next will follow in a more timely manner.
Posted at: 18:56 in /english/personal
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Sat, 05 Aug 2006
1st Anniversary
According to our rather rough (and slightly guessed) reverse calculations, it is today exactly one year since the man who introduced me to xfce4, M*A*S*H, and an incredible amount of happiness entered my life.
Many happy returns!
Posted at: 19:46 in /english/personal
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Thu, 27 Jul 2006
What life's been like
It's been quite a while since my last post, so this will mainly be an update on what I've been up to the last weeks or even months.
Overall the past time has mainly been pretty busy. It was the end of the semester, a time that always brings a lot of work, and in this case it was the end of my last semester, which adds a little extra pressure to the whole business, since I didn't only have to take care of the usual stuff, but also had to arrange for an appropriate topic for my upcoming thesis, which is always a kind of a "balancing act". Things are however looking good now and I am quite confident that I'll be able to spend the six months I have for my thesis on a subject that actually interests me, my tutors, complies with the official guidelines, has some purpose beyond getting me a Master of Arts AND EVEN has a realistic chance of actually working out! Yay academia!
Apart from university work I've been kept additionally busy by my jobs, which unfortunately also both had a kind of peak during the last weeks. The problem about this is, that actually both of them were intended to be "only-jobs" since they both provided me with enough money and consumed just as much time as I could spare during the semester. But then I got accepted for both of them and absolutely couldn't decide which one to chose (one was at the university as a teaching assistant, the other at a pretty cool IT security consultant's) so I did both and have been juggling those two, my studies and actually getting to sleep/eat every now and then during the last weeks. This has been pretty exhausting, but on the bright side, I have a little spare money now to spend while the holidays. (Luckily both bosses are on a 3-4 week trip in August :))
One thing that suffered rather greatly from my very tight schedule this semester (apart from my horribly neglected sweetie of course) was my Debian/Free Software work that got almost entirely stalled ever since I returned from DC6. So I hope to be using the more quiet summer months to spend some time on this, maybe write a nice new talk and package some things I've had my eyes on for quite a while already.
Oh, and I'll sleep. A LOT!
PS: Last night, to celebrate the end of the semester, we went to see the Pirates of the Caribbean double feature. Hilarious!! Go see it!
Posted at: 15:04 in /english/personal
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Fri, 02 Jun 2006
Cool sysad trick #3625
When moving your MX to another server, remember to also change
your MUA's settings to query the new server instead of the old one.
Should you have sent mail to my alphascorpii.net account last month and not
received an answer, this is why. I finally noticed now and am currently in
the process of answering these mails.
And there I was, wondering why there is so little mail to the shiny new address ... Hngh!
Posted at: 13:50 in /english/personal
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Sun, 28 May 2006
Lost my mobile phone
I case you wrote me a text message or called me on my mobile phone
lately and never got a response, here's why: It's gone.
I lost it
some when between arriving at FRA airport on Monday evening and looking for
it before going to uni on Wednesday morning. I already checked with the
German Rail's lost and found service which - unsurprisingly - was little
helpful. Basically they now have all my personal info, a detailed
description of my mobile phone (Siemens C55, blue, battery empty, sim card
pin-protected, transparent sticky tape on back that holds the battery
cover) and told me to call back later since they haven't found anything
yet. I have not yet given up completely, but for the moment please don't
try to call or text me on my mobile phone. Use my home number or (much
better) Email.
The phone was nothing special, but I am still pretty unhappy about its loss, since I don't have the money to get a new one (this one was a gift, yet another reason why losing it sucks bigtime!) and it holds a few numbers that I don't have anywhere else.
Oh well, just not my week. At all.
Posted at: 23:21 in /english/personal
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Sat, 01 Apr 2006
For those who wondered ...
I am still alive and ki^W^W^Wrenovating. Unfortunately net access took a bit longer than expected and I am still offline :(
According to my provider I'll get my line on Thuresday the 6th. Yay!
I am now at the uni, trying to work through my two-week backlog. Please be patient.
See you soon, hopefully!
Posted at: 14:21 in /english/personal
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Fri, 17 Mar 2006
Moving, again
Another move, another new address, another new phone number, another (snail) mail forwarding form, another city, another flat. Packing boxes and bags again ... I am once more on the move. (And slowly getting good at it ;))
This is my last day in Leipzig. *sigh* My internship here is over. Can't say much on how the internship was, since I signed a whole pile of NDAs, but I guess I can say that is has been a very educational experience and I learned a lot. Leipzig itself is still awsome and I'll miss it badly! It is such a great place to live at and I hope I'll return here one day. But for now I am returning to Hildesheim to finish my studies and write my thesis. No idea yet what will come after that. A few vague plans, but nothing ripe for decision. So, no prognoses yet. Nothing endures but change ... :)
I'll probably be offline for the next few days, since the phone/net connection isn't there yet. I'll occasionally check mail/irc at the uni but please allow for a little lag until I have settled in properly.For now, a last good bye from Leipzig. Be back soon.
Posted at: 10:40 in /english/personal
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Thu, 24 Nov 2005
Oh it's good to be back home!!
The fair was rather straining, especially since I was there on my own and a normal fair day included about 3 hours of car driving (half of it in a horrible 7 line fair traffic management system) and about 9 hours of standing around, all tarted up with pantsuit, high heels, make up et al., smiling, looking attentive and not as bored (and in pain) as I was. (No, there are no pictures!!)
Anyway, enough whining. I am back and made an almost full recovery (Save some big bruises on my right leg, of which I have no idea where I got them. Probably bumped something against my leg when taking down the booth again.) and there are now much more pleasant times ahead. The Leipzig christmas market opened today and I plan to pay it a visit sometime this weekend. (Yea, I know, kitschy, sentimental, commercialised, ... but it's fun anyway, so shut up and have a gingerbread.).
The second highlight of this weekend will be the Skatalites concert I'll see on Saturday. For those who don't listen to Ska, the Skatalites can be considered to be among the "founding fathers" of today's Ska music. They were most popular around '63 - '65, today they are of course all pretty old guys (And girls they bring Doreen Shaffer, yay!!).
But they still do some considerable rockin! And it is to be supposed that there might even be a fair amount of enjoyable skankin' going on among the faithful followers of the acustic and sensual delight that is good Ska music.
Posted at: 17:09 in /english/personal
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Tue, 15 Nov 2005
Off to no-bandwidth land
Wish me luck :)
Posted at: 00:17 in /english/personal
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Mon, 10 Oct 2005
Settling in ...
So, my formerly dull workplace now features:
- Several tech/programming books. (I hardly ever look into them, but this sort of stuff somehow always gives me a feeling of home.)
- My own tea cup + my own tea (Tastes much better than what the resident coffee machine coughs up.
- A cute postcard I got from a cute guy after moving here.
- Several sheets of paper, taken out of an (I assume) broken printer with notes scribbled all over them. I also had to organise the pen myself, but when I am working and need to take a quick note it's just so much easier to quickly scribble it on a piece of paper than type it in a file. Also, it nicely clutters up my table, which again makes it very homey ;)
Screw the paperless office! - Some food. I decided, that it makes me a much happier person if I can eat an apple or a cookie from time to time, so I usually bring some food with me now.
So, by now I'd say it's still far from an ideal work environment, but it's gotten better.
PS: irc also helps! ;)
PPS: Thanks to Erinn, I know now that my current tenancy is called subletting.
PPPS: Oh, and 7am is still much too ******* early!!!
PPPPS: I like Marc's new meme. :) My results:
- Meike needs him . . . now who might that be? ;)
- Meike needs to help hold up my arm . . . Uhm. Whatever rocks your boat, man ...
- Meike needs some work . . . soo. not. true.
- Meike needs it too . . . [...]
Posted at: 13:32 in /english/personal
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Wed, 28 Sep 2005
Viva Leipzig!!
Well, the biggest piece of news certainly is that I finally moved to wonderful Leipzig! I arrived here at the end of August and have since settled in quite nicely. So far I really love living here! My place is (rather by accident than by intent) in one of the IMHO most beautiful, atmospheric and interesting parts of the city. It's mainly populated by students and young families, most of them with a slightly alternative lifestyle and a rather left-tending (is this proper English?!) political view, which does a lot for the cityscape in this particular area. There's lots of really nice cafes and other places, second hand shops, fair trade stores, ... and basically anything else you might need or wish to have. All within comfortable walking/bike distance.
My place itself is rather small (a little one room flat with a separate bath and kitchen) but I feel at home there and after some "customising" I finally have everything arranged the way it suits me best. It's "interim rent" (no idea if there's a proper English word for that.), which means that the actual tenant keeps the place but leaves it to you for a few months complete with all furniture, equipment, tableware, ... etc. In my case, my "landlady" is a student who also does an internship at the moment, but in another part of Germany. Such arrangements really are a nice thing! The actual tenant avoids paying double rent and the other one doesn't have do move all his/her stuff around for just a few months.
Though, at first it felt a bit awkward, like living in someone else's place, but after putting some of my personal stuff up and replacing Metallica and Franz Kafka with Uma Thurman, the animal and some general Life-and-Linux-Memorabilia, it really feels like my place now and I really enjoy coming back home in the evenings.
My new job is pretty much okay, my workplace isn't the most cosy of all, and the work itself is a bit dull at times, but - considering that this is an internship - I know I could do much worse. So I am okay with it. What took (and is still taking) me most time to get used to are my work times and conditions. My job here mainly consists of coding, and usually I do that when I am in the according mood (which mostly means feeling creative). With some nice music or the radio on, feet on the table and some tea and/or sweets next to me. Now, on the other hand, getting up at 7 am, starting work at 8, sitting nicely on my office chair in an otherwise completely empty and featureless room, surrounded by dead silence, only alleviated by the humming of my computer and the scratching of my chair's wheels on the white tiled floor does *not* put me in that kind of mood! But I guess that's what "normal work life" is like and thus it's something I'll just have to deal with and get used to. :-/ At least for now.
(Any hints on how other people deal with this would be very much appreciated! So far I am doing my work okay. But I know I could do much better if I managed to dig up some more motivation.)
Last but not least, my mood that has lately been a bit melancholic has very much lightened up. My little journey had the desired clarifying effect, though, in a lot of very different ways from what I'd actually anticipated! But, alas, life has this funny way of always *not* doing what you expected it to, so let me just say that - little troubles aside - at the moment I am really happy! :)
Posted at: 13:53 in /english/personal
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Mon, 22 Aug 2005
Back in Hildesheim
Somehow, moving always is a very complex business. A mixture of all kinds of feelings, from anticipation to parting sorrow, everything in between and then some.
Especially if that move doesn't happen under the happiest of circumstances.
But, oh well. To quote myself: Life is just one damned thing after another. So there's not much use in looking back. There's a lot to do, lots of new challenges to rise to, work to tackle, words to say, thoughts to think and bits to move.
Another quote says:
"You cannot alter your fate. However, you can rise to meet it, if you choose."... So, I'll do just that, sort things out and look ahead to whatever comes next.
Wish me luck.
Posted at: 14:58 in /english/personal
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