Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Day of Ear Surgery

Published on February 27, 2008 in Tympanoplasty. 7 Comments Tags: ear surgery, hearing, Tympanoplasty.

As is tradition on my blog, I type this post in the back seat of a car. I just left the hospital a little while ago, 6 PM.

I woke up this morning at 4:30 AM to get ready to go to the hospital. As I showered, I felt a mix of excitement and terror, mostly terror. Not allowed to eat, my biggest problem in the morning was hunger, but I got over it.

I arrived at the hospital at 6 AM, checked in, and went to a waiting room. I didn’t end up going in for my procedure until around 8 AM. It was five hours long! The hospital staff were remarkable friendly and professional. A comedic side note, I love the new trend that’s observable everywhere, a pain scale from 0-10.

My next memories are a blur of unconscious actions like dealing with hospital staff, adjusting myself, and relieving my nausea – somehow.

I have a hilariously massive bandage on my head right now, covering my right ear. I have to go back to the hospital in a week to get the stitches behind my ear removed. I’ll also be heading back a few weeks later for a follow-up, at which point my hearing will be accessed again. I shouldn’t notice an improvement in hearing until after I’ve healed. In addition, while I’m healing, I can’t partake in any physical activity whatsoever.

The no physical activity aspect is a massive bummer to me because I’m taking Phys Ed (Gym) right now. In lieu of physical activity, I’ll have to write a two-page paper for every day missed. Great! Those will add up.

But – that’s not what I’m going worry about right now. As I should, I’m just going to rest up. I’ve decided to take tomorrow off from school, too, for good measure.

As always, I’ll keep you posted.

Ear Surgery

Published on February 26, 2008 in Tympanoplasty. 4 Comments Tags: ear surgery, hearing, Tympanoplasty.

I’m taking the day off from school tomorrow to go for an “elective” surgery. That is to say, it isn’t necessary or life-threatening. I’m choosing to do it, for good reason, after waiting for years.

Every person has characteristics that define his or her childhood. One’s location, parents, and consumed media establishes the “brand” of his or her adolescent years. These factors determine whether the childhood was wonderful, miserable, or somewhere in between.

What defined my childhood, and somewhat defines me to this day, is my right perforated eardrum. It’s exactly what it sounds like: I have a hole in my eardrum caused by constant ear infections as a child. Throughout my entire life, as long as I can remember, I have had significant hearing loss in that ear. To add insult to injury, I’ve had to wear earplugs while bathing, every day, as long as I’ve been able to bathe myself.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, or even complaining. I’ve completely adapted to it and it’s just part of the daily routine, like going to the bathroom.

And the hearing loss? I’ve managed to deal with it throughout my almost-finished high school career. Over the last few days, I’ve told people about what I’m doing, and they were shocked to learn that I have hearing loss at all. I’ve worked very hard to conceal it.

I’ve literally waited my whole life for what is going to happen tomorrow. There is a good chance that I’ll be able to reclaim a slightly more “normal” lifestyle by getting a good deal of my hearing back.

I’m excited, hopeful, and terrified.

Reconsidering Commitments

Published on February 19, 2008 in Apple, Ideas, Productivity, Ricky and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: adium, Productivity, quicksilver, twitter.

One of my heroes, Merlin Mann, did a talk at Macworld called “Living with Data“. Although I was disappointed that it didn’t deal with my favorite second officer of the USS Enterprise, I enjoyed it. It’s long, but very entertaining. As I watched it last night, I found myself inspired.

I thought my personal productivity system was air-tight. I’ve been getting my tasks done – or so I’ve thought. But as I listened to Merlin’s talk, one point in particular resinated with me.

At 25:12 in, Merlin asks, “Who gets access now?” That is, who will I let interrupt me as I’m working? I looked around my desktop. Gmail notifier, Twitterrific, and Adium are constantly demanding my attention. I’m changing my use of these applications. I’ve decided to only use Adium when I’m actually open for conversation or have to post where I am, I’m axing Twitterrific in favor of the canonical twitter website, and I’ll check my email twice a day or so.

And then I got to thinking about Quicksilver. I love Quicksilver; it’s an application launcher on steroids. One of the plugins I use for Quicksilver is the Camino Bookmarks plugin. I can evoke Quicksilver using my keyboard shortcut (command + enter), type the first few letters of any website I’ve bookmarked, and press return to load that page. For example:

f – facebook
g – gmail
r – google reader
d – digg
p – pownce

Because those time-suck websites are so easily accessed, I go to them far too often. My new productivity experiment is to disable the Camino bookmarks feature of Quicksilver and see how much of my life I get back. Instead, I’ll check those sites in the morning, at night, and maybe when I have a free moment at school.

It’s amazing to realize that the tool you appreciate the most to save time is what’s actually causing you to habitually waste it.

Cleaning an iTunes Library

Published on February 18, 2008 in Apple and Tech. 0 Comments Tags: ID3, iPod, iTunes.

I’m the proud owner of a shiny new iPod Touch. It’s a considerable upgrade from my previous portable music player – a 6GB iPod mini with a broken headphone port. It served me well as a car iPod, though.

The iPod Touch is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a wonderful media player and an even better Internet and email device. But, when you’re looking at your iTunes library on its superb screen, you realize just how badly your ID3 tags and album art are.

I spent a large part of this holiday (happy President’s Day!) cleaning up the cruft from years of accumulating music. Luckily, there are some great pieces of software on the Mac and web services to do this.

iEatBrainz (Freeware) – The Mac OS X client of MusicBrainz analyzes any tracks you feed it and compares its musical ‘fingerprint’ with a known database.
Album Art Thingy (Shareware) – This inexpensive app looks up your currently playing track on Amazon.com and tries to find artwork. It does lyrics, too.
Amazon.com (Service) – Whatever Album Art Thingy doesn’t get, you can get yourself by searching the MP3 store.
Last.fm (Service) – This social network site helps see if you’ve done your ID3 tags right.

It’s really worth it to clean up the cruft from your iTunes library. You’ll not only delete music you don’t like anymore, but you’ll have a greater appreciation for the music you do like. The album art browsing in iTunes, Front Row, and an iPod is really great looking, too.

Good luck, and be sure to share your experience in the comments.

MacBook (Pro) Matshita SuperDrive 2.1 Solution

Published on February 16, 2008 in Apple, Matshita SuperDrive and Tech. 38 Comments Tags: Apple, Matshita, superdrive.

Countless Macintosh users have been troubled over the last year by a firmware-corrupting update that Apple Inc. released for Matshita disc drives in MacBook and MacBook Pro computers, SuperDrive 2.1 Update. Possible solutions were premiered, but none proved permanent. I wrote this post to help those affected by this problem; if you’re lucky enough not to be plagued by this issue, skip this post.

My complete personal saga with this issue lives in the Matshita SuperDrive category of this blog. I encourage you to read the buildup to my permanent solution. Through these personal experience and heartache, I have determined that the only solution for this problem is a SuperDrive replacement.

First, a recap of my experience. In August 2007, after applying to SuperDrive 2.1 update, I realized that my MacBook Pro wasn’t recognizing or burning certain types of media. I sent my MacBook Pro in for a drive replacement. Unfortunately, Apple’s technicians only reinstalled Tiger on my computer, which didn’t solve my issue. Although I was outraged, I decided to deal with the issue another time. In late December 2007, I came across a firmware patch for my drive and applied it. It was only a temporary fix, as many users have found out. Come late January 2008, I finally decided to try Apple Support again. After two phone calls, I arranged a drive replacement.

After twelve days, I had my computer back with a brand new HL-DT-ST DVDRW GWA4080MA drive.

I believe that the only solution for this problem is to call Apple Support and demand a SuperDrive replacement. As far as I know, Apple have not officially recognized the SuperDrive problem. Here are my tips:

Take names of your support agents.
Stay consistent with your story.
Don’t admit any firmware hacks, period.
Don’t take “no” for an answer.
Call back if you don’t get what you want.
Mention all of the articles you’ve read online of people saying its a corrupted firmware caused by an Apple update.
If you’re told to reinstall your operating system, tell the support agent you’ll do so and call back in an hour.
Email all of Steve Jobs’ email addresses. I’m serious. (steve@mac.com, sjobs@apple.com, sjobs@mac.com). Tell your story and show your disappointment in the company. You’ll likely get contacted by Apple’s Executive Office.

Please leave any thoughts and experiences in the comments. I hope every last person affected by this issue gets his or her SuperDrive replaced.