DirecTV hotness

Well, as some of you might know I live in a high-rise apartment building in the NYC metro area, I got fairly psyched when I checked my mail today, and had a letter from MDU Communications in there - they actually operate the DirecTV system in my building. The letter told me that they have finished installing a MFH2 system. This is some really cool stuff, it means that I'll be able to get all of the HD channels that are offered by DirecTV. The technology used here is also really amazing. They've found a way to deliver programmng to up to 8 receivers in the apartment - the nifty device that does this is called the SWM-8 (single wire multiswitch). This little gem is installed where the dish and other electronics are, not in my unit - previously to get HD programming, I've got four satellite feeds coming into my unit and a multiswitch in a locked box inside my closet. Now they're gonna yank out that multiswitch, replace the four wires with one, and a few splitters.

Elected to FESCo

Well, I seem to have been elected to FESCo for a single-release term. I intend to serve the community well in this vital role. representing the triage and larger QA communities within Fedora, as well as be very active in the feature process for this release. Along with the territory comes thing such as resolving disputes, oversight of the various SIG's, etc.

I am psyched!

Well, I started physical therapy last Friday. Over the weekend, I kicked my own ass doing all of the exercises that the therapist had me doing. Today, I went back for my second appointment, and something that had caused me significant pain on Friday - stretching my arm out to my side as far as I could - was almost effortless. She then had me extend my arm out in front of me as far as I could, and I was able to fully extend my arm, something that she said no one had ever been able to do their first time! Again, this was without much effort or pain. Followed by some pully exercises, and I could definitely feel it stretching, but not to the point of pain. All in all a great day, and I can't wait to see my doctor next week to get some of the activity restrictions lifted hopefully. Sometimes it's the little victories in life that make you feel the best :)

Post-post FUDCon and surgery update

Well, I realized that I didn't do a post-FUDCon post (I suck), and figured that I'd provide an update on where my shoulder surgery saga is at. First for the surgery part - I got out of all my bandages and off the ice machine this morning, and have felt good throughout the day. I've been feeling so good that I think I'm going to discontinue the narcotic pain relief come Monday after a call to my doctor (just to make sure that they're not working better than I think they are :) ). I'm now a free man! For the FUDCon part, I was a Summit attendee as well. I was the fairly easy one to spot, my arm was in a sling (technically a Velpeau immobilizer) the whole time and I was in a great deal of pain (somewhat managed by Percocet). I have to give very heartfelt thanks to Paul Frields, without whom I don't know what I would have done (likely stayed in my hotel room in agonizing pain from trying to do basic things). Paul was originally supposed to stay with me for one night so that he could do some pre-FUDCon planning since I was going to the Summit and arriving Tuesday night. After he helped me out so much on Wednesday morning, I asked if he would mind staying with me throughout the week - without hesitation he did, and helped me through in my time of need. Thanks Paul! Hacked for a few hours on Thursday on Testopia, and several hours in the afternoon on Friday was a very productive discussion around Spacewalk (and me stepping out several times trying to call surgeons, that didn't go so well). The good news is that by Saturday, the pain had magically disappeared, and everything was in order for the FUDCon BarCamp day :) Started the day by giving a bug triage talk, which was well-attended. However, a Spacewalk talk was in that same timeslot, and while I consider myself good at many things, being in two places at once is not one of them. Sorry guys. Then I went on to Jeremy Katz's informative talk on git. Really a good source control system, and I look forward to working with it more (after all, Spacewalk is in a git repo :) ). Had a nice talk over lunch with James Laska over the where snake could go. Talked about templating, and learned about the Python templating that snake can do. Really cool stuff. After that it was into FUNC, which shows promise as a replacement for OSAD in Spacewalk. The one sticky point right now is that the overlord connects to the minion, rather than the other way around, which could cause problems in some security models. A lot of promise, though. Then there was the other talk that I was a part of, the one on Testopia. We're going to be using it as a proof-of-concept for Fedora 10, with a recommendation on usage for general releases to come after it, depending on how things work out for F10. Any questions on Testopia feel free to contact me, Dave Malcolm, Will Woods, or Jesse Keating. Wrapping up the day was a talk on the most awesome Cobbler, which will be replacing the provisioning functionality within Spacewalk in the foreseeable future! Hooray for single-purpose tools that can be integrated in order to perform much more complex tasks (aka "Voltronic Software" - thanks Michael DeHaan, that's a great term!) Then there was Paul's state of Fedora speech, and then of course FUDPub. All in all a really good day, and very productive.

Done with surgery :)

I'm feeling MUCH better than I expected I would post-operatively. I can't say enough good things about the EBIce Cold Therapy system they gave me - it's da bomb! Better than an ice pack, there's nothing that I have to do to get nice, cool skin, except be hooked up to it! It consists of the cool part, a hose, a cooler (looks like a picnic cooler), and the temperature control and power supply. What sucks is that I can't get it on by myself - I can't reach the hose hookup that's attached to my body. Oh well....