greg.blog

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Work is a pain! Prototyping Reclining Workstations.

    This is a slightly modified version of an internal p2 post I did at work to try to gather ideas. I decided to publish it publicly to share with others and try to gather more ideas before I go and buy something. Background I had spinal surgery about 2.5 years ago now, I’ve been kinda muddling…

  • Seems like a milestone for this blog.

    BOOM! Apparently I started my trial project at Automattic ten years ago today. Ten year Automatticversary is on July 18th. Still a great place to work. Also this has happened in the meantime. You started on 2011-07-18. Of the 1,469 other a12s, 49 (3.3%) started before and 1,420 (96.7%) after you.

  • 2020 Rehab Review

    I guess for most folks 2020 has been a crazy year, though I think for me it was mostly more of the same. COVID complicated things a bit, but rehab is really what is hard. The year didn’t go how I expected, but there were still quite a few accomplishments. Mostly no knee braces! After…

  • First Hike in Over Two Years

    Very exciting day! I went with my wife and kids (5 and 2) for a hike near our house. It is a trail I had been on countless times in the past and had often also run on. I don’t think I’ve hiked it in at least three years. I had spinal surgery about two…

  • Exhausted but I think Dreem is Working

    It has been about a month since I started using Dreem and I am now 18 nights into the core part of the CBT program. Feels and looks like it is working. I’ve been fairly optimistic for the past week or so. A big part of it – the toughest part – is the sleep…

  • Sleep Tracking: Apple Watch vs Dreem

    For a bit over three years I’ve been tracking my sleep mostly with a an Apple Watch and great little app called AutoSleep. I’ve been suspecting for quite a while that the tracking was not really sufficient. My legs and muscles twitch a lot, and I wake up a lot. Because the Apple Watch sleep…

  • A Miserable Four Months of Medication Experimentation

    March till early July was filled with experiments for adjusting my medications. It was pretty terrible. I was trying to reduce how much pain I was in. Particularly in the afternoon when I couldn’t focus, and at night when I was trying to sleep but couldn’t. Unfortunately when I talked to doctors about it, the…

  • PT: Strengthening My Lungs

    My spinal cord getting slowly damaged from T5-T8 over the decades means that pretty much every muscle below my armpits are weakened in some way. Lungs rely on a lot of muscles and even getting aerobic exercise won’t necessarily strengthen those muscles. Starting in September of last year I began exercising them with this simple…

  • Great Recovery Movie: The Martian

    I’m currently re-watching The Martian for what must be the 20th time this year. It has become my go to movie when I am in too much pain to focus. Often I don’t even want to watch anything new. So many things feel so unpredictable and take so much thought that I would rather rewatch…

  • Laminectomy for an Arachnoid Web. My Experience and Recovery

    It is now about seven weeks since I had surgery to remove my arachnoid web. I thought I would write some thoughts on how recovery has gone since surgery. I think my big takeaway is that spinal surgery is really damn painful. A lot more painful than I expected. I had brain surgery to remove…

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