Year: 2006

Strattera

First, for the mac people…. Try this: hit ctrl-opt-cmd-8 on your keyboard. It is my new favorite mac thing.

Medi-cal approved my new meds! Very exciting. I’ve been taking them for about a week now. Hopefully they will work. I always have so much hope. Strattera is the new drug and it is usually prescribed for ADHD. Apparently, it sometimes works for autistic people too. I sure hope so. So far, I only feel side effects. They are not so bad as usual, but still pretty strange.

I have been very tired and falling asleep at random times, which is not something I usually do. Also, a little dizzy and nauseous, but not as bad as I usually get from switching drugs. The strange part is that everything seems kind of surreal. I have been more spaced out than usual and feeling very ‘out of body’, even when I am doing things that are completely in my body, like walking or driving. It is a strange drug induced haze that I don’t really like, and can’t really get out of. I am hoping it will go away when the meds start to kick in and am avoiding increasing the dose until it isn’t so bad anymore. I am still taking my ‘old old’ meds along with the Strattera. If things go well, I may be able to stop taking them at some point. That would be nice.

Sometimes I am so tired of living in this test tube and having no idea what life will be like from day to day. It is really hard to make plans for anything. I want to go to Florida/Baltimore in April. Soon it will be time to get tickets but I have no idea if I will be able to travel. My 40th birthday is a month from today and I have no idea what I want to do. I like birthdays and am especially excited about this one. It seems like an accomplishment, even though it is really just another day. When I was younger, I never thought I would make it to 40. I don’t even think I wanted to make it to 40. As it turns out, I am glad to still be here.

Read more »

December

Red Wave
I dropped my classes. i am very sad about that, but relieved too. It was too much. So much work and trying to deal with meds (or lack of them). I just couldn’t keep up. It is very similar to what has always happened when I’ve tried to do school, but with one major difference. Since we actually learned by doing things, I still know everything I learned and can use it for my work.

Read more »

Seattle

I am in Seattle now, in the atrium of our hotel. K has a social work conference here that started yesterday and ends today.

atrium

“The Atrium”

Read more »

Work, Weariness, and Warcrack

Work has been very busy lately. I have one very big job, and possibly several other smaller jobs coming up. I am hoping to be able to partner with d. We will try a test run with one of the smaller jobs. We have almost completely opposite skills and completely opposite ways of working. I think that is a good thing. She is very organized about the initial process of signing up a client, including managing expectations, writing contracts, and charging realistic prices based on actual time worked, rather than pulling some random number out of the air like I tend to do. She is also skilled at graphic design and has experience making web sites. If I had my way, I would stick to the (x)html/css and back end coding for the site and do technical support for the client after the site is complete. I would leave the business stuff, front end design, and client management to someone else. Could be a match made in heaven if we can somehow merge our oppositeness into a working business.

It is getting harder to keep up with school. The ‘side-effect’ of feeling better lately is that I have lost the super-focus that I was having when I was undermedicated. I have also been very twitchy and shaky which is quite annoying. It is a strange balance. It is still hard for me to get out, but not as hard as before. The main difference is that I am not completely exhausted like before. I can do a wider range of things, but am back to having a one second attention span. Going to see the doc on wednesday, but not sure if I am ready to continue experimenting with new meds and/or doses and timing of meds.

I am tired of waiting and waiting to find the right combination of drugs and going through long periods of terrible side-effects until the next drug or dose kicks in. I will probably keep experimenting, but am thinking of taking a break for a while and going back to figuring out ways to make myself feel better even when things aren’t so good. It has been very hard to do that while continuously messing with my meds, and I am hoping that taking a break will help, at least in the way of keeping things stable for a while. One of my best skills is adapting to life under less than ideal circumstances. It is impossible to adapt to something that keeps changing.

Read more »

Pictures: Fall 2006 featuring Nikkyo

K put some new pictures up on our site… Fall 2006 featuring Nikkyo. Cat pix, fall holidays, and some random people shots.

rock on

body rocking head nodding legs shaking hands twitching it is electrical it is all i can do taking k to see tenacious d tonight 🙂 maybe that will help

WordPress Love

I love WordPress. My first thought about making new websites for clients, friends, or myself is “How can I do this with WordPress?”. In most cases, there is a way. I have used more open source php/mysql content management systems over the years than I can count, and at this point WordPress is my favorite by far.

The code is clean. That is the thing I love best. The file structure makes sense. It is usually pretty easy to completely customize a site design by altering only the theme files. In most other systems that I have used, hacking the core files is part of customizing the design, and updating the core files can be a nightmare. I do end up hacking WordPress plugin and widget files from time to time, but that usually has more to do with function than design.

A basic install of WordPress is small and fast. I like that. The plugin system is excellent and the developer community is incredible! It is nice to be able to customize site features as needed, rather than having to install a gigantic supersystem every time that overwhelms clients and has a negative impact on site performance.

My favorite WordPress plugins and widgets:

Read more »

White and Nerdy

This video is from Weird Al Yankovic’s new album Straight Outta Lynwood. It is a parody of Chamillionaire’s “Ridin Dirty“, and it is very hilarious. Thanks to Lord Matt for the tip 🙂

Confusion, Rambling, and AASCEND

I am so confused. About everything. One minute I think the meds are starting to finally kick in, and the next that I will have to stop taking them because the only effects are bad ones. I suppose it is a good sign that I occasionally think they are working. It has been a very long time since that thought even entered my mind.

Today, me and K went to the AASCEND‘s 6th Annual Conference On Autism and Asperger Syndrome. For the most part, I am glad we went. It is always good to be around other autistic people. It reminds me that I am not alone. I still need to be reminded.

Read more »

If life was like Unix…

Apologies to the non-computer-geeks… What?Sudo (superuser do) is a utility for Unix- and Linux-based systems that provides an efficient way to give specific users permission to use specific system commands at the root (most powerful) level of the system. comic by xkcd

10 Things That Are On My Mind

Side effects. They have come and they are annoying. Hopefully, they will go away soon! Autiblogger. Added user level plugins and a nice new theme today. School. Almost done with the CSS class. Maybe the best class I have ever taken. I learned so much in 8 weeks and got every question that I’ve ever …

Read more »

thought interrupted

thought interrupted
split second -chop- to another
thought -chop- next </stop> come and gone
can’t even open a website what was i was going to do?

stuck can’t go out. have to go out. have to get out of here. can’t do anything here. typing. time goes by. can’t do anything. just type. have to get out of here. homework to do. can’t do it. at least final project is done. just a few more things to hand in and one peer review.

accidentally failed the database design class. thought the final assignment was due on sunday like in every other class, but it was due on thursday and grades were posted friday. confusing. but all the due dates were posted on the first page of the class at the top. green letters even. sux. i needed that class. have to take it again now. only half price. teacher said if i hand in assignment, i can still use it as a prerequisite for another class. maybe i’ll do that if it’s not too late. but i can’t even do it. it’s not even so hard. just can’t do it.

so hard to do things. stupid meds. fish oil didn’t do anything. went to see the doc a couple of days ago. increased dose of old meds. hopefully that will help but it takes a few weeks to start doing anything. no side effects yet except for being very tired. i hope it works. now it is 2/3 dose of old meds and 2/3 dose of new meds. can’t take full dose of new meds because it makes me stop breathing. old meds can have side effect of sudden fatal liver damage. wtf? supposedly it is less likely to happen if you are taking the drug for a long time. I have been taking it for a lot of years. i hope new dose works. things have been hard for so long. at least i can code.

Read more »

Mac Freeware

Some of my favorite mac freeware * Adium – multi-protocol instant messaging client Butler – application launcher with many other handy features Camino – mac-like gecko browser. not as many features as firefox, but faster. ClamAV – Antivirus program, because you just never know… Colloquy – GUI IRC client ColorTagGen – Use the eyedropper to …

Read more »

Life

Life is very busy. Good and bad. It has been hard to keep up with school assignments these past few weeks, but somehow I’ve gotten everything in on time. Sometimes it is easier to do things on the last day.

My last CSS test was really hard. It took me almost two days to finish it. I had no idea there could be so much math involved in CSS! I learned so many things while I was taking the test, but it hurt my brain pretty bad.

Read more »

Autistic Planet Site and Store

I put up the Autistic Planet website, which is pretty bare bones at the moment. Eventually, I would like to add information about all of the sites, and possibly interviews with the people who run the sites that I don’t. For now, it is serving its purpose of being a central location that links to …

Read more »

Autistic Planet

Autistic Planet t-shirt graphic

I decided that I need a single name to refer to all of these autism related websites that I am hosting, running, and/or creating. I want to have a website explaining what each site is and ways for people to help support them. I got this idea because I am trying to raise money to move all of the sites to a reliable virtual private server and off of the not completely reliable shared server they are on now. I am feeling extra responsible for server reliability since starting Autiblogger!

My first priority is fundraising to get money to pay for the server. It is not cheap and there is no way I can afford to pay for it myself. I’ve decided to sell products, all or mostly made by autistic people, and to put all of the proceeds from those sales towards keeping up these sites and others like them.

I registered the domain name AutisticPlanet.com after trying about 50 other domain names that were already taken. Then, I created a graphic (above) that I will put on t-shirts and other products and add them to the list of items for sale.

Read more »

Oakland Aspieland

The Oakland Aspieland forums are no longer active. Please visit the resources page for a list of local and online resources for people with Asperger Syndrome, or click here for asperger’s and autism related posts. Thanks 🙂

Linuxworld 2006

Linuxworld 2006
I’m at Linuxworld at Moscone Center in San Francisco. It is the last day. I almost didn’t make it here because I’ve been so busy and kind of freaked out about getting homework done, which I still haven’t.

I accidentally took a class that started 2 weeks before my other two classes end. Oops. This week is the final project for both the CSS and JavaScript classes. Third class is about datbase design. Next week, the class I have been most excited about starts. It’s an advanced CSS class and covers the whole CSS 2.1 specification. The one I am taking now is more of a workshop that focuses on real world CSS problems and solutions.

But, I digress… Linuxworld. With some encouragement from K, along with a reminder that Linuxworld happens only once a year in these parts and that I would be really bummed if I didn’t come, I hopped on a BART train and made it here 10 minutes before the doors to the expo opened. I am really glad I made it here. Geeks everywhere. Servers. Open source open source open source everything. And t-shirts. It’s always fun coming to these things on the last day because people are always giving away their stuff so they don’t have to haul it back to wherever they came from. I also got a tiny usb hub, a few live linux distro cds, and of course, pens and magazines. There weren’t many live cds to be found that would run on a mac. They were either already all gone, or being worked on. The Gentoo folks still had one G4 mac disk, and were kind enough to burn me an intel version too. Gotta love that geek hospitality.

Read more »

Autiblogger

I am working on a new project to provide free blogs to the autism community. Autiblogger.com is now in the first public testing phase. It is powered by WordPress MU, and so far all is going very well. I have been wanting to set this up for a while and am very glad to finally …

Read more »