Not Quite Back!

Well I left the house and took a car ride for the first time since my surgery today! I went with a friend who was training his pigeons, we left about 1 p.m. and got back shortly after 3 p.m. It was nice to get out of the house, but I found out that I'm not quite ready for prime time yet. I laid down when I got home for a short rest after taking some medication and woke up at 8 p.m.! I still feel tired, so I guess maybe I'll need to take things a little slower, but watching his team take off and fly for home as a unit was worth it!!

Update

Well we managed to finish the season with 5 lofts participating. Each loft won at least 1 race with only Bullseye Loft belonging to Bob Doher accruing more than 1 win. I count that as a successful Old Bird Season season. Young Bird races start in a week and I am busy training the new Race Secretary. I will be late starting this year as I had problems getting a racing team bred for this year due to personal problems during the year. My father died from a fall after a 3 month hospital stay, and I myself am recovering from back surgery that I had last Monday. We have a few young birds, but they will need a lot of training before racing. Hopefully with the help of my wife Brenda and my grandson Josh, we will be able to get them trained and join the club in the races just a few weeks late. Then they better watch out cause between the 3 of us we out to be able to take the club to town! Wish us luck!

Races

Well we got our first race off tonight, I was beginning to think it would never happen. Our Race Secretary quit 2 weeks before the season started. Since I was the only member with any experience with the software I became the default race secretary. It was my fault that I knew anything about it. Between weather systems we finally sent off a race we feel that we can trust. I am definitely going to train someone else how to operate this software as I'm already the secretary/treasurer and that's enough to keep me busy! Hope the weather holds tomorrow!

Babies

Well I finally have some baby birds, as soon as I get my film developed I'll scan the pictures in. I've had requests for pictures of my birds so I thought I would do both at the same time.

Breeders

I've decided to let 3 pair of breeders lay in hopes that I will be able to work them in around my next, as yet unscheduled procedure. These will be some of my favorite Sion strain. Keep my fingers crossed and see what happens!

More Precedures

Well on the 9Th I went into the pain specialist for a caudal epidural injection to help dissolve scar tissue on my spinal cord so that when the permanent spinal cord stimulator is installed it will hopefully maximize the performance and therefore relief. Yesterday felt like I had been given a series of Kidney punches by someone that knew what they were doing. Today it's just really sore, tomorrow should be better!

Real Bummer!!

Well they took the temporary unit out last Friday and by the time we had driven back home everything had crashed as far as the progress it had given me. Now I'm really looking forward to the permanent unit. I had felt good enough that I tackeled tasks that I just didtn't have the ambition to do before. I have to wait a month before the new installation and I can't wait!!

Progress

Well now that I've been reprogramed it's definitely making a difference on my level of constant pain. It's much lower, which is what the doctors were wanting to see. This might actually work, I presently have 4 programs to choose from and I am using different ones for long periods to see how well I tolerate them. Depending on the pain I have on a certain day I may sometimes need to vary the stimulation due to my body becoming adjusted to one program. They have to take it back out tomorrow, since this is a temporary unit, bummer!

The Trial Run

Today was disconcerting. The spinal cord stimulater did not seem to be working as expected. When I would increase the stimulation to where my back was getting some good stimulation, my legs would do a Saint Vitas dance which eventually became painful and I would have to turn it off. To shorten along story, I finally called Andy at Boston Scientific and explained my problem. He offered to meet me on the fly as it were as he was going from one place to another, to check it out. He was wonderful, he reprogramed my unit and restored my hope that this would help me have some real progress in dealing with my back pain. We shall see what we shall see.

Big Day!

Today was a big day. I was implanted with a temporary spine core stimulator. This will be used in hopes of blocking or interferring with my back pain signals being sent to my brain in the hopes of reducing my medication load. That would be excellent! As the saying goes, Time will tell!

Thing #23

Nebraska Learns 2.0 by the Nebrska Library Commision is probably just about the best online course on Web Technology that I have ever seen!! It's done in plain english so no matter how old you are you can learn from this. NLC Keep up the good work!!

Thing #22.

In this exercise I reviewed Library Related Podcasts and the one I thought would be most useful to me was "Uncontrolled Vocabulary" as after reviewing recent past episodes it seemed to be the most current of them all. When I went searching for a Podcast for my own use I found one about racing pigeons and it is now linked in my blog.

Thing #21

I was surprised by the amount of videos on an obscure hobby such as racing pigeons. Although they for the most part are not of high quality you still get the idea that these people love and are proud of their pigeons. The hardest part is sifting through the videos to find one that you want to use for a specific purpose. Seeing all the different videos was still very fun to watch. You Tube could be a useful rescource site.

Racing Pigeon Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMf_9QvoI58
This is a You Tube video showing racing pigeon owners that participate in the sport mainly for the love of the birds.

Thing #20

If you want to find books for purchasing that are of the older variety try using Biblio.com. The site worked for me, I found a signed copy of my favorite book and on top of that the shipping was cheap too!!

Thing #19

This is an easy application to use if you are already familiar with most of the MSOffice type programs.

Thing #18

This was my favorite exercise so far as I can see a ton of uses for Wiki's! Not just at the library but for myself also.

Thing #17

Wiki's, this will eventually become one of the best applications of shared knowledge and views on almost any subject I have seen. Wiki's in my opinion should be used by any organization, club, or group of individuals for facilitating the gathering of pertinent information on subjects that would always be tailored to their specific needs. I can see where collaborative effort could be done much faster and with good information in much less time than using the old mail systems, both traditional letter mail and electronic e-mail!

Thing #16

Library 2.0 is definitely going to challenge people, in order to stay current a Librarian will need to monitor the web and try to at least be familiar with most used communication platforms that are available to the public for free usage.

Thing #15

Winter

View more presentations or upload your own.

When you decide you have had just about enough of winter, here are some scenes that will let you know we don't have it so bad.

Thing #14 Tagging & Social Bookmarking

When doing this exercise I was thinking to myself that I could possibly use this to find other books about a subject that I may not have read yet. Being able to get to my bookmarks from anywhere is definitely the best feature!

Twitter

I can think of lots of uses for Twitter both in the libraries and for clubs or organizations that would want to notify its members of new information that they may be able to use!

Thing #12

This exercise was a little difficult for me but I actually figured it out on my own, was I surprised! I'm not sure yet how I will use my LibraryThing but I like the idea of being able to find members that may have subject matter that is related to my interests. They may actually send me looking for a tome that I want to read!

Thing #11

Web technology as far as software is concerned is becoming facinating for me. The more I learn, the more I want to learn. Once I'm homebound these technologies will allow me to communicate in another way other than just the telephone. Taking this course was probably one of my wife's better ideas!

Thing #10

Here's the trading card I made for flickr.

Thing #9

Too bad I'm not a teacher this would have been great!

Thing #8

I can see where family and organizations could really use this to help stay in touch and to be able to show photo examples of what you may be talking about!

Thing#7

I think with more time spent on specific searches for RSS feeds I could really cutomize it to what I like not just general content. Now if I can just figure out how to send my RSS feeds directly to my blog page I would be all set!

RSS Feeds

This exercise confused me at first but now I've subscribed and actually pulled up and looked at my feeds! This is smooth!