Cameron's Thoughts

Mackinac Island Trip Planned

Yesterday I finally got hotel reservations setup for my trip to Mackinac Island this summer. I haven't taken any vacations anywhere in years and decided I should finally get around to doing that. I remember Mackinac Island being a fun place to go when I was younger, so I thought it would be a great place to take the kids. Got a nice room with lake-front view setup at the Clarion Hotel in Mackinaw City. Also purchased a package with ferry rides to the island, entrance to an indoor waterpark near the hotel, carriage tour on the island, and a ton of other stuff. Also plan to go across the bridge at some point, not sure what we'll do on the other side, but we will figure that out when we get there.

Doctor Visit

So, on Thursday, I finally went to see a doctor. But, this actually has nothing at all to do with my previous posts about seeing a doctor. I went to see a chiropractor. All week, my back had been killing me, and it was getting worse and worse. I wasn't sleeping well as I was waking up every 30-40 minutes in pain. I wasn't able to work very well as I couldn't sit or stand still for long periods of time and was just generally exhausted. It also sucked as I hadn't been on the computer much lately as I didn't even feel comfortable sitting at home in front of the computer for more than short periods of time. Thankfully, Kim is an awesome friend and realizes that I was going to put off seeing the doctor as long as possible, so she just found a doctor and scheduled me an appointment. I have now seen the doctor twice and it is amazing the difference it makes. I seen a chiropractor back in Charlotte about 5 years ago and had similar results. I only stopped going then because the insurance ran out. This time around, my insurance is very strange and this is going to cost me a ton at first. It's worth it though, as my back being out of alignment pretty much throws the rest of myself off and makes life miserable.

Doctors Trip Upcoming

So, I have finally decided to go see a doctor. This is kinda major, as I have a distrust for doctors and the medical profession in general. A couple days ago, I had some more issues with depression, and this was worse than I have ever experienced. I realize at this point that I can no longer control this myself and I may need some counseling or drugs, or both. Additionally, sorry to anyone that I have been an ass to in the last couple of days.

Test Posting From New Phone

The April Post

I've begun to realize that my mind is really mostly in control of itself and just kind of does it's own thing. I am now to the point where I have mostly gotten away from depression (I am worlds better than I was a year ago), but it still pops up from time to time. And the odd thing is, it's often when I should otherwise be in a really good mood. Today was somewhat not a good example of this. I was really depressed pretty much all day long, and there was certainly a trigger that caused it to happen. Basically, I was left a message on my phone that was very misleading and it panicked me. I later found out what the message was really about and I should have been able to move on with my day no worries, but I wasn't able to. All day long my mind was wondering and I really couldn't focus on anything. I really don't think I got much done, and I feel bad for my co-workers if that is the case. What bothers me the most though is that I could not snap myself out of this. No matter what I told myself to try and make things better, it just didn't matter. Consciously, I knew I was fine, but subconsciously, I was a mess.
Anyhow, I now feel better once again, and I also am glad that I have gained much more confidence about myself in the last year or so. If anything, I think that has mostly helped me overcome my mental issues I have experienced. People who read this would probably noticed that I never wrote about these types of issues a while back, but that was because I kept it between myself and a couple of really close people that I trusted. Actually, only two people knew about any of this until recently, even most of my close friends did not. Anyhow, I now am to the point where I feel that either you can know this about me and be understanding, or I really don't care much about you. So, if anyone was wondering why I may have not seemed like myself today, this is why. I don't want any pity or sorrow from anybody, so please don't think that's why I am writing this. I just think that writing about it is another way I can try and get past these issues. I hope one day I can look back at this post and be glad it's over.

Feeling Great

About five years ago, I had a slight tear in my rotator cuff. This should have told me long ago that I was really out of shape. I didn't realize what had happened at the time, I thought I just pulled a muscle. The pain never really went away though, so, after about a month I decided to see a doctor. If you know me well, you will know I can't stand to see doctors, so this was a big step. The doctor then told me that I had simply pulled a muscle and prescribed some pain medication. The pain wasn't really the main issue, I was just concerned that I wasn't getting better. This visit basically helped to once again solidify my feelings that most doctors are quite incompetent. Months went by and the pain did tone down a bit, but I never fully felt better. After about a year or so, I finally went and saw another doctor. This time, it was determined that it was likely a rotator cuff tear and an MRI was scheduled. The MRI confirmed this. I then started to do physical therapy which did help the day of the visit. I did this for a little while and then was left with doing some exercises on my own. I was very inconsistent with that. The one thing that always did help though was Celebrex. That medication did wonders for the constant annoyance of my arm. It was never a lot of pain, but just an endless annoyance that never went away. Over time, I basically got used to the irritation of my arm being sore, but the cold of the winter alway made it worse. Last winter I used up most of the Celebrex I had. I eventually ran out and this meant that I was going to need to see another doctor if I wanted more. I didn't have medical insurance for the longest time, so that plan was pretty much ruled out anyway. I do have it now though. The great thing is, now that I have been regularly exercising and lifting weights, my arm actually hasn't been giving me any trouble. It's quite great actually. Not only am I in the best shape I have been in the last 10 years, but the little aches and pains I've just accepted as normal are now gone. It's really nice now when people ask how I'm doing, and I can honestly say that I'm doing great.

Weekend Update

I finally ordered all the parts I need to repair my computer. I got a nice deal on a Antec 650W power supply at CompUSA's going out of business sale. I also got a new case that Brian had suggested, a motherboard and a new hard drive. The hard drive wasn't really NEEDED, but it will be nice to have. My dead Seagate is covered under warranty, but I want to try and recover the data off of that drive on to a new one. Then I can ship the damaged drive back for replacement. If I go ahead a stick all my SATA drives into this new box, I will have a total of 2TB of storage. I'll probably actually do this as the motherboard has eight SATA connectors and the case has five drive bays. Since I have two 160GB drives that are currently in RAID0 setup, I think I will convert them to a RAID1 so I have some reliable storage space.
In other news, spent the weekend assisting in the production of a short film for the 48/5 competition for the East Lansing Film Festival. This competition involved creating a five minute short movie over a 48 hour period. There was a long long night of writing Friday night, filming all day Saturday and editing that started Saturday night and went through early Sunday. It was completed ahead of schedule today. I'd have to say I'm fairly impressed by how it turned out. I didn't end up being as involved with this project as I have in some prior film stuff I had done, but I did get to play as an extra in one scene.
Finally, I made some further decisions on how I am going to proceed with the future of this website. I was planning to do a full rewrite and had Jan 1, 2009 set as my goal release date for that. After thinking it over, I think I am going to put that on the backburner and further work on the current code. This includes adding more features that I have been wanting, plus rewriting things in their current place. This actually worked really well with my comment system rewrite. Also, about the comments, currently you need to login to my site to post them; this will not be the case in the very near future. I've always wanted the comments to be completely open to anyone, but this of course opens the door to spam. I was using Movable Types built in comment support for the longest time, but now I am running off of my own code. I didn't have everything in place to prevent spammers from posting so I had removed the option for open posting, but I now thought of a simple idea that I will setup soon.

Working Out

Near the beginning of January, I bought myself a weight bench. I've been tinkering with the idea of getting into shape for a while now, but things I tried haven't really panned out. I was walking for a bit, but it takes a lot of time and I wasn't really seeing much results for all the time I was investing. Plus, due to the climate I live in, it's not really practical year-round.
Amazingly, I have created a workout program for myself and not only followed it, but in most cases exceeded what I set forth to accomplish. Based on past history, this is quite amazing. I often will try things and they will fall apart within a weeks time. At this point, I've been working out every other day since Jan 17th missing only a few days here and there for important events. Last week I had worked up to a full hour of weight lifting and tonight I got this up to an hour and fifteen minutes. I really didn't expect to notice anything for at least a couple of months, but I can already tell that I am in the best shape I have been since high school. Yea, I still have quite a bit of fat around the belly, but underneath there is some decent muscle at this point. I'm expecting much of this fat to slowly turn into muscle within the coming months. I hope to have some good follow up reports on this. Right now though, I am going to bed cause I am pretty destroyed at this point.

Mental Status Report

My mind is quite out of control for the most part. It's something that seems to disturb me more and more each day. I used to be someone who felt in complete control of my mind and body. At one point I was able to easily mentally block out pain and hunger and such. Then something happened and I have lost this control. Not only that, but I have had actual emotions and feeling overcome me in ways that I can't change. The worst parts of this seem to come about every six months. I remember quite clearly about a year ago having major depression issues and also again I had a couple of weeks of these issues over the summer. This also happened a bit in the past too. The problems seem to have returned this past week. Today is the first day that I feel more in control. It's hard to really explain what is going on, but I just get this overwhelming sense that I am worthless and alone. Then I start to become really paranoid. The worst part is, I am completely aware that the paranoia is unjustified and I try talking myself out of it, but it doesn't really seem to help. Nothing seems to help really. I tried sleeping it away, drinking it away. No help. Anyhow, this isn't meant to be a pity post or anything. I avoiding posting anything while I was being most affected as I didn't want to sound like an asshole or anything. I really just wanted to get my thoughts out in writing to try and help deal with them.

Computer Issues

My desktop has reached the two year old mark now. Though, it's been non-operational for the last month. A while back my DVD burner died, but it wasn't the end of the world. I was backing up a lot of files to it at the time and my have over-worked it. It was, after all, the generic burner Dell gives out. At some point, I ended up subscribing to Netflix and along with that started to make copies of all the decent movies I rented. This was fine at first, I have 1.3TB of space on that machine. Though it may seem like a lot of space, once you account for the porn and all those DVD ISO's, it goes away quick. So, with some money I got for my birthday, I decided to by a new burner.
Now, I hate to turn off or reboot my computer. So, the burner sat in a box for a week or so. Within that time, I came home from work one night to find my computer off. And it wouldn't turn on. Being the tech I am, I did the normal troubleshooting such as stripping the box down to just the motherboard, RAM and video card. Still nothing. I decided to take the CMOS battery out as resetting the BIOS was the last idea I had. After I did that, all of a sudden the box started to power on. I was happy for about a half second. Then a flame came from the bottom side of the video card. This scared the shit out of me as I have never seen a literal fire inside a computer. After my reflexes powered the box off, the flame went out on it's own. I was able to get the box up and running with a crappy 32MB PCI card. This lead to me purchasing a new video card. Which of course, is kinda nice as it's better than what I had before. Being a mostly non-gamer though, it's not something I would like to invest money in. I could have bought another hard drive :)
Once my video card arrived in the mail, I had to test it out. I feared one thing in the back of my mind. I was worried there may have been damage to the PCI Express slot. And what do you know, the new card didn't work either. So, I realized at this point that I was now going to have to buy a new motherboard. This is not as easy as it sounds. My desktop came with an 'awesome' BTX motherboard. A failed attempt by Intel to redesign motherboards. Of course, they canceled BTX boards. Neither Newegg nor Tigerdirect even have a single one on their site. I checked out eBay. There were two different boards total. One was shitty, one was fairly better than what I have now. So..., now I am left with the decision. Go with the one single selection of BTX board I can find, or replace the entire case and board.
Couple more weeks go by. At this point, I have just been using my laptop and remote desktop to access my desktop. This worked well. That was, until I got an error from Window's saying it couldn't write a file to the disk. Long story short, my newish 750GB drive is dead. This was my baby. And now, my computer is basically in shambles.
Thankfully, I should be getting some decent money back from my taxes. I owe my mom some money, so she is getting the first dibs on it, but after that, I need to fix this heap of parts. I am also thinking that replacing the power supply may not be a bad idea. With the fire, and the dead hard drive, I think these issues may stem from the power supply failing. Also, it's not a very strong one anyways, it's only rated at 350W and it's running the power hungry Pentium D along 4 hard drives.
Anyhow, I've since been getting a lot of use out of my laptop, but I certainly don't want to kill this thing. I don't really like having it running non-stop.