Thursday, April 28, 2011

'Trying Hard12' on PlentyOfFish

Oh, my gosh. The more I re-read this fellas postings on the PlentyOfFish forum, the more unlikable he becomes. This fella is a real piece of work. I expect people to act like that when they're in their early teens, but not as grown adults.

Maybe he's a nice enough guy in person. Maybe. Personally though, I think that when people behave this way online, it's a pretty big red flag. People may suppress certain behaviors and personality traits in real life, but they remain there, and they will doubtlessly emerge at some point. Yeesh.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Patellar tendinitis

I need to remember the following tips when it comes to treating patellar tendinitis. I've discovered that physicians aren't always up-to-date on practical methods for treating this condition, or even pharmacological considerations.

This text has been excerpted from the message board of a vendor's website. I was actually kinda impressed, since a lot of vendors fail to write in a logically coherent fashion. There were a few errors, such as the capitalization of the adjective "patellar," but apart from that, this text was pretty well written.

The best course of treatment for your condition will vary depending on the severity of your Patellar tendonitis, and also the degree of inflammation and scar tissue development.

If you have an acute injury (relatively new), and it is swollen, tender, red, severely inflamed, or hot to the touch you should apply Cold Compression Therapy (also known as the R.I.C.E. method) by resting, icing, compressing and elevating your knee. At this point the inflammation is inhibiting adequate blood flow, which is a necessary process required for your body’s natural healing process. Apply ice to your injury will effectively reduce the swelling and inflammation enough to allow for blood flow to reach your injured Patellar tendon.

If you have already reduced swelling, but the area is still relatively inflamed you should continue to apply ice to get rid of the rest of that inflammation. You can also begin to introduce Portable Ultrasound Therapy which allows for deep tissue warming and massaging on a cellular level. This warming and massaging effect will ultimately break down any scar tissue that has started to form around the tendon, and also get rid of any cellular waste. Applying these two therapies at this point will ensure that your injury doesn’t get much worse than it currently is.

If all of your inflammation has been reduced, but you are still experiencing a dull ache, pain after activities, or notice you have lost a considerable range of motion in your knee and leg you most likely have a significant build up of scar tissue in and around that injured tendon. When normal healthy tissue is injury, scar tissue will form as a “band-aid” solution for your tissue. This scar tissue is meant to aid your tendon in rehabilitation, but unfortunately that tissue is also much denser and less fibrous than normal healthy tissue. It is almost like your body has replaced a rubber band (healthy tendon) with a piece of string (injured tendon with scar tissue). Obviously your flexibility and movement just aren’t the same. Our bodies will then force this scar tissue to operate as normal tissue, which creates more micro-tearing and results in the formation of additional scar tissue. The portable ultrasound will get rid of this scar tissue once and for all – allowing you to regain mobility and reduce pain in your knee. You can also incorporate the use of a Blood Flow Stimulant such as our Inferno Wrap to increase the flow of nutrient and oxygen rich blood to the site of your injury which will speed this healing process and work well with the Portable Ultrasound.

If you are convinced that your injury is healed, and you have taken care of most of that scar tissue but you still experiencing periodic pain you should apply both Cold Compression and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy. Use of the Inferno Wrap and Freezie Wrap will maintain good health of your injured tendon, because previously injured tissue is always much more susceptible to re-injury. In that case you can use the Inferno Wrap each morning and evening, then incorporate the Freezie Wrap after you exercise or after any sort of activity that may have resulted in more intense pain and could cause swelling or inflammation in the tendon.
[/The best course of treatment for your condition will vary depending on the severity of your Patellar tendonitis, and also the degree of inflammation and scar tissue development.

If you have an acute injury (relatively new), and it is swollen, tender, red, severely inflamed, or hot to the touch you should apply Cold Compression Therapy (also known as the R.I.C.E. method) by resting, icing, compressing and elevating your knee. At this point the inflammation is inhibiting adequate blood flow, which is a necessary process required for your body’s natural healing process. Apply ice to your injury will effectively reduce the swelling and inflammation enough to allow for blood flow to reach your injured Patellar tendon.

If you have already reduced swelling, but the area is still relatively inflamed you should continue to apply ice to get rid of the rest of that inflammation. You can also begin to introduce Portable Ultrasound Therapy which allows for deep tissue warming and massaging on a cellular level. This warming and massaging effect will ultimately break down any scar tissue that has started to form around the tendon, and also get rid of any cellular waste. Applying these two therapies at this point will ensure that your injury doesn’t get much worse than it currently is.

If all of your inflammation has been reduced, but you are still experiencing a dull ache, pain after activities, or notice you have lost a considerable range of motion in your knee and leg you most likely have a significant build up of scar tissue in and around that injured tendon. When normal healthy tissue is injury, scar tissue will form as a “band-aid” solution for your tissue. This scar tissue is meant to aid your tendon in rehabilitation, but unfortunately that tissue is also much denser and less fibrous than normal healthy tissue. It is almost like your body has replaced a rubber band (healthy tendon) with a piece of string (injured tendon with scar tissue). Obviously your flexibility and movement just aren’t the same. Our bodies will then force this scar tissue to operate as normal tissue, which creates more micro-tearing and results in the formation of additional scar tissue. The portable ultrasound will get rid of this scar tissue once and for all – allowing you to regain mobility and reduce pain in your knee. You can also incorporate the use of a Blood Flow Stimulant such as our Inferno Wrap to increase the flow of nutrient and oxygen rich blood to the site of your injury which will speed this healing process and work well with the Portable Ultrasound.

If you are convinced that your injury is healed, and you have taken care of most of that scar tissue but you still experiencing periodic pain you should apply both Cold Compression and Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy. Use of the Inferno Wrap and Freezie Wrap will maintain good health of your injured tendon, because previously injured tissue is always much more susceptible to re-injury. In that case you can use the Inferno Wrap each morning and evening, then incorporate the Freezie Wrap after you exercise or after any sort of activity that may have resulted in more intense pain and could cause swelling or inflammation in the tendon.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Novelty Bobble

Been reading some postings by another guy named Novelty Bobble. He is a real... well, let's just say that he lacks civility and maturity. I'll leave it at that.

Some of the people that he and Lobohan have been conversing with, on the other hand, have exercised remarkable restraint.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Lobohan

Read some postings by a guy named Lobohan. He's being a bit of an -- unreasonable person -- today.

Actually, I wanted to use a four-letter word that begins with "d," but I decided against it.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Pro dancing? Hardly!

I'd like to continue a thought from my previous blog posting.

I read some comments on that POF forum from people who scoffed at the need for a clean floor. They said "We just want to have fun. If you want to do the kind of dancing that needs a clean floor, you should go somewhere else." I see several obvious problems with this.

First is the notion that they just want to have fun. Well, so do other people who want to do dance. Who's to say that this dance should only be for the folks who don't need to move their feet and thus, don't need a clean, stickiness-free floor? That's basically reverse elitism.

Second, and this is pretty obvious, that kind of response is just rude.

This, there is this implicit notion that if you just dance to have fun, you'll be safe. Again, that's wrong. There are all sorts of moves that could be damaging to one's knees if you have a sticky floor. If you're just shuffling in place, no, but some kind of aggressive turn could be cause for hurt.

Why do I mention the knee? Because the knees can be pretty delicate. I know this from personal experience, as I'm nursing an injured knee right now. My friend Melissa, a practicing nurse, could tell you stories about people who tore their ACLs from moving in just the wrong way on the wrong kind of surface. Gotta be careful, folks.

I understand that these folks want to have fun. I just think they were being kinda childish about it, and that they were unwilling to take reasonable precautions that any dancer should know. Heck, I'm not a great dancer by any means, and yet I knew about these things long before I learned anything about how to dance!

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Trying Hard12: He's trying too hard to be unreasonable

Let me elaborate on this Trying Hard12 fella.

I came across a discussion on PlentyOfFish about some singles dance. One guy complained that people were venturing onto the dance floor with damp shoes, stating that this was making the floor sticky. I don't doubt it. This was apparently referring to some dance in February, so I'm guessing that the shoes were probably salty as well, thanks to the wintery weather. That would definitely make the floor kinda sticky.

Now that's bad news. Even before I took any dance lessons, I already knew that one shouldn't track mud or water onto a dance floor. I didn't know any real moves, but I could have already told you that that would be a bad idea. Heck, even if it didn't make the floor sticky, it would still be less than considerate.

Apparently, this Trying Hard12 guy didn't understand that. Now, if he disagreed with that need, he could have simply made a case for why wearing dry shoes wasn't necessary. Instead, he threw out snotty remarks like "You're a real complainer, aren't you?" Not exactly a sign of maturity on his part.

He wasn't the only one. There were some cool and rational heads, but a few other people were also childish. I could tell that trying to jump in would have been futile, since it's very difficult to intervene when people are acting like children.

Sadly, it seems like common sense and common courtesy aren't all that common anymore.

Some people didn't think the floor was sticky at all, or they didn't think that a dance floor needs to be clean. One person even said, "If the dance floor was bad, I would have noticed!" I'd like to make a couple of educated guesses.

My first guess is that the dance floor was probably stickier in some spots than in others. That's what you'd expect when people are tracking water and salt onto the floor. Second, I'd guess that the scoffers were probably dancing the way a lot of people do -- mostly moving their upper bodies, without a lot of confident foot movement. It's the kind of dancing that you typically see at a bar or club, the kind that lends itself to the unfortunate "white guy dancing" stereotype. There's nothing wrong with dancing that way, but when you do, you probably won't realize how important it is to keep the floor from getting tacky.

Friday, April 22, 2011

POF abrasiveness

I understand that some people like to vent on the Internet. Heck, that's part of why I have this blog. Some folks tend to step way over the line, though.

Came across a few postings on POF by some guy named "Trying Hard12". Boy, this fella is a real piece of work. He's obviously a very unpleasant fellow, based on his postings.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

OOP misconceptions

I read an old Internet posting wherein somebody basically scoffed at object-oriented programming. He dismissed it as nothing more than the natural outcome of being able to call functions.

This shows that this person had absolutely no understanding of what object-oriented programming (OOP) truly means. Sadly, there are a lot of folks like that out there. A lot of people, including some computer science majors, think that OOP basically means keeping one's data private and using a set of public functions in each class. That's not it at all. It's not even a good example of information hiding, for pity's sake.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Bittersweet

I remember some pleasant times during my high school years. Some pleasant people, too. So why do I often think back on those years and remember the unpleasantness?

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Danny Boy!

O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer's gone and all the roses falling
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
O Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so.

But if ye come and all the flowers are dying
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.

And I shall hear, though soft, your tread above me
And all my grave shall warmer, sweeter be
For you will bend and tell me that you love me
And I will sleep in peace until you come to me.