I really don't remember how much I shared previously about this whole foot thing, and I don't really feel like reading over it and trying to tie it into more recent happenings. Thus, I am just going to start at the top and paint the full picture from start to present.

Sometime when I was somewhere around 16 years old, I joined a basketball team for the local group of home schoolers. I was never very athletic, but since I was tall for my age, I held the defense pretty well.

On night during a game, I had the opportunity to jump and catch a missed shot. After I caught it and began my descent to the floor, I landed wrong and rolled my ankle. I was able to pass the ball to one of my teammates, but I was hurting for the rest of the game. After a couple days of taking it easy, the sprain seemed to heal up pretty well... or so I thought.

A couple of years passed and I noticed a very distinct popping in my ankle. It never really hurt at first, but as time progressed it got painful. It was bad enough that it was affecting my sleep, and thereby impacting my day-to-day life. One day, I let it get the best of me and had a bit of an emotional breakdown. My mom saw this and decided that I needed to get my foot x-rayed, so she took me to the doctor.

The doctor there said that it looked like I had an infarction of some sort down towards my toes, but that there was no sign of anything causing the popping. He told me to just take some over-the-counter painkillers and use ice, and that seemed to take care of the pain. However, the popping never went away.

I saw other doctors for it and got a good dose of radiation from the X-rays, MRI, and bone scan. None of them came to any conclusion other than I had bone spurs up by my toes, and one said that I just had tendonitis and that it would go away after a few days (he apparently didn't understand me when I said it had been going on for a couple of years). I did receive cortisone treatments for the bone spurs, but they didn't really do any good; they actually caused me more pain for quite a while.

When the doctors said that the only thing left to do was exploratory surgery, I thanked them for their time and moved on with life.

The popping has continued since then and has had chronic pain spells along with it, but I've been able to deal. That was, until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to go for a bike ride.

This bike ride was by no means my first, not even over an extended period of time, but it did seem to be the one to drive me to seek further treatment. After a little less than 6 miles, I noticed my foot was aching, so I called it quits. For the rest of that evening I was pretty sore still and decided to hit up the ibuprofen and ice packs.

By the next day, I was unable to walk worth anything. Putting weight on that foot was pretty painful (I'd rank it an 8 or 9 on the 1-10 scale that doctors use), and the pain radiated all the way up to my knee. I continued the ice and ibuprofen, and decided that if I was still hurting on Monday I would go see a doctor.

Monday came around and I was still hurting, so I got an appointment for that afternoon with my primary care doctor. Unfortunately, I got the last appointment for the day, and by the time I got to see the doctor, she really didn't seem to care at all. Any time I would try to talk, she would interrupt me, and her attitude was less than professional. All my previous visits though were very pleasant, so I just attributed it to the end of a long Monday. She did tell me to continue with the ice and ibuprofen and just to stay off my foot for a couple of weeks as much as possible. She said that if after a week or so I was still in pain, I should go see an orthopedic specialist (for whom she gave me a referral).

A week passed and I was still hurting, so I called the specialist. I was able to get in the next day to see him, which was a bit of a relief to me.

After examining my foot, bending and twisting it every which way, he was finally able to find the motion that made it pop, and the popping was quite painful. He said that he was pretty certain it was a bone spur, scar tissue, or a torn ligament, and that to correct any of these issues would be pretty straightforward and require simple outpatient surgery. However, before committing to such, he ordered a CT scan.

The CT scan was this morning at 7:20AM (which meant I had to be awake at 5:00AM and out the door at 5:30 to be to the hospital no later than 6:30). After fumbling around with finding the right parking garage (it looks much different in the dark than it does in the daylight), I made my way up to the 10th floor of the hospital to the radiology department. After checking in, receiving my armband, and waiting for another 20 minutes to be called back by a technician, I was on the table with my feet in the middle of a tubular-looking machine, not dissimilar to that of an MRI. Another 10 or 15 minutes elapsed while the table moved me about in the machine and the images were taken, and I was on my way to the office.

Now I'm waiting until Tuesday to meet with the specialist again to go over the results of the CT scan (and get copies of the images, which I plan on sharing). While I am eagerly awaiting a diagnosis and treatment plan, I am not looking forward to surgery of any sort. I have never had any surgical procedures since my infancy, so I really don't know how to feel about them, other than scared. The other thing that freaks me out is the whole bit that the specialist said about "chiseling" the bone spur off my foot. [insert shudder here] It just sounds painful, especially given the fact that I have broken bone spurs off my fingers before, and even though I've broken bones including vertebrae, I have yet to experience a pain like breaking that bone spur off.

Luckily though, my lovely girlfriend, Emily, has said she would be able to take care of me the day of any surgery, and I know several others who would be able to help in some form, so there is some comfort in the midst of the turmoil.

I appreciate all the prayers and support that I have received to date. I'll try my best to keep everyone up to date on the situation as it progresses.

I'm really tired so this is going to be short and to the point.

I hurt my foot playing basketball when I was about 16. It gave me problems after that and I went to see a doctor when I was 17, but they didn't find anything. I let it slide.

I went for a bike ride a couple of weeks ago and I've been in so much pain since that my sleep schedule has suffered. Over the last couple of days, I've only had 6 hours of sleep.

I went to see a specialist today, and he believes it to be a bone spur causing me pain. I am going for a CT scan on Friday, and I'll go back to see the specialist next week to discuss the CT scan and further treatment. He said that it'll probably be outpatient surgery and that they'll chip the bone spur off. He said it would only be a couple of days that I would be unable to walk, and that recovery would be 6 to 8 weeks.

If I'm not as freakin' exhausted as I am now, I'll share more after I see the doctor again. For now, I'm going to try to (not) sleep.

...isn't dead; it's hibernating.

Tonight after Emily and I got back from dinner, I stopped the car next to the mailbox to get the mail. In the mail was a white card from Houston Police Department, notifying me that my car had been towed and that I was responsible for the fees to release it.

On the card was listed a blue 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer, the associated VIN, and the license plate number. If you've been keeping up with my life much, you'll know that I did recently buy a 2009 Lancer.

Now, my car is not blue as you'll see in the pictures on the link above, but everything else about that notification matches my car. People have suggested that maybe the police officer who filed the report or whatever took and took down the VIN, made a typo in doing so. See, I would agree with that, but the fact that the license plate number matches the number on the temporary tags from when I got the car is just weird.

I'm going to be calling the police department first thing tomorrow morning to find out what's really going on here. My worst fear with it is that somehow my VIN and everything was copied and that either I have an illegitimate car, or someone else does with my same information.

Earlier this year when I went to the doctor for my blood pressure, she noticed that I was shaking a fair amount. At the time, we both attributed it to the blood pressure being high, and we moved on.

Later in the year, when I went in for my initial consult about my back, the other doctor I saw noticed I was shaking. I didn't notice it, but she thought it was from the pain I was in with my back, so we didn't really labor over it any.

Well, my back has been pretty much better (though not 100%) for a couple of months, I've experimented with removing caffeine from my diet, and there has really been no improvement for the tremors.

I have mentioned it to my doctor again since then, and she hasn't really put any focus on it other than an "oh". I'm really starting to get tired of it though, because it's starting to affect my day to day living. For example, I haven't been able to type very well today because I keep hitting extra keys, hitting intended keys multiple times, or missing the keys all together.

Also, I've noticed that my legs are really weak and I have a bit of a "bobbing" in my head when I'm at rest. It's really starting to frustrate me to the point that I'm taking it out on others, which I really hate to do and by no means intend.

I have an appointment for blood work and a follow up next week, so I'm going to talk with the doctor about it then. I really don't want to find out that it's something serious like Parkinson's, Peripheral Neuropathy, or Multiple Sclerosis, but I need to find out what it is and get it taken care of.

In other news, I'm looking to trade my body for one in better shape. If you have any leads, please let me know.

Well, now that the dust is settling, I think it's high time I clue everyone in on what I've been up to this week.

Some of you may have seen my Facebook status updates about moving, but have no clue where or why. For that, you need a little back story.

Sometime a couple of months ago, my buddy Efren mentioned that he was looking to get an apartment and was asking me for recommendations. I pointed him towards a couple of different places, but after thinking about it and talking with Emily, I decided to offer splitting a 2 bedroom with Efren, thereby saving us both some cash. He was excited at the offer, and we started the process shortly after that.

Sometime in the middle of November, we took a visit to The Bordeaux and looked at the one unit they had open (2 bed/2 bath). We were both pleased with the apartment and with the terms, so we ended up applying. This last Monday, we met at the leasing office here and signed our lease and started the move-in right away. I had scheduled Wednesday through Friday off to handle moving out of my old place and cleaning it to avoid losing my deposit, but I ended up working Monday evening and Tuesday evening to get the primary necessities (is that redundant?) moved.

During the move, I had to terminate my internet service at the old place and schedule an installation of it at the new place. Luckily, I was able to get AT&T's uVerse service for $20 less than I was paying for the same speed DSL each month. The installation was scheduled for sometime between 1:00PM and 3:00PM on the 3rd, which was Thursday, but the installer didn't call to say he was on the way until sometime after 6:00PM. I had a lot of packing and moving and cleaning stuff to get done at the old place and had planned to head back over there to do just that after 3:00PM, since the internet would have been installed. But no, I didn't get back over there until sometime after 7:00PM. Grr.

Well, the kinks have all been worked out and Efren and I have moved in to the new place. I still have about 4 Rubbermaid tubs to unpack yet, but after spending all of today cleaning I just have no motivation to touch it. I told Emily that I would get it all done tomorrow morning, but I don't know that I'll get all of it done. We'll see.

So yeah, that's it in a nutshell. I'll get some pictures of this new place after I get everything unpacked. If you're in Houston and would like to see the place though, let me know.

(12:14:04 PM) Teddy: there are plenty of steakhouses
(12:14:18 PM) Skudd: in texas? pfft
(12:14:20 PM) Skudd: i don't believe you

Last night I didn't sleep too well; I kept waking up from some really awkward dreams. One of these dreams was incredibly disturbing though, and I feel like sharing it with you.

In the dream, my Dad, a friend -- a young black man who happened to be a county police officer -- and I were driving down I-65 in Indiana, and we were in heavy traffic. At some point we noticed that the traffic was becoming quite erratic, in that some cars were pulling off to the side of the highway while others were speeding up to very dangerous speeds. In order to keep up with traffic, we accelerated and pulled out to the front of the group of cars where we noticed a roadblock.

Because we had no choice, we stopped the car and the police officers who were running the roadblock pulled us from the car and told us to get far far away from it. My Dad and I were really confused, but we saw that our friend was talking on his radio, calling for backup. He was obviously very disturbed, so this was a serious issue.

Shortly after that, I saw the other officers close up a steel box around our car, and sparks started to fly. As this progressed, I could hear screaming and cries of fear, but something wasn't right with them: They were my screams.

I looked around me to see what was really going on, and I saw a young lady (no idea who she was) absolutely terrified by the sounds of her own screams. But what was weird about her terror was that it was being shown by her jumping around; In her face and voice she was as calm as could be. This all escalated to the point that nothing but the screams could be heard, and everyone fled the area.

At that point it had my adrenaline up so high that I had to wake up and walk around the apartment to calm down. I'm a firm believer that dreams can be used by our own bodies to highlight areas we may have overlooked previously, or by God to show us areas we need focus on improving, or to show us answers to questions we may have asked about our day to day life. This dream doesn't fit any of those categories though, and it has me really confused. Usually I am able to trace a dream back to something I had seen or done before, but not this. About all that is consistent with anything I've done is the crazy traffic (yay Houston!).

At any rate, there's an awkward read for you. It might make a good sci-fi film if anyone wants to expand on it.

I am working on putting together my own dynamic DNS service, similar to dyndns.org. I will be needing some guinea pigs in the coming months to take part in this project, which will provide you with your very own myname.faildns.com hostname which you can update as you see fit.

Initially, you will be asked to work with this service manually via your web browser or other similar methods, but eventually I should be providing a client of some sort for Windows and Linux.

If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail at tim AT faildns DOT com.

Well no, not sharing them with you. But I've been trying to figure out how to share the movies on my computer with my XBox, since I'm sick and tired of plugging my computer in to the TV when I want to watch one of them, then unplugging it when I'm ready to use my computer again.

Those of you who pledge to promote Microsoft products would probably suggest using Windows Media Center. But since I'm taking that tone, you're wondering why I own an XBox 360 if I'm not a Windows fanboy. Well, quite frankly, the 360 is probably the one thing Microsoft has done (somewhat) right.

No, I'd much rather use this computer I have plugged in to just power and networking as my media server. On that computer, I can mount my network shares from my Windows computer (sigh), then use the power of Linux and uShare to turn that power-and-network-only computer into a media server.

Luckily, I found this article that outlines how to do it. Of course, you'll want to adapt the article for your flavor of Linux, but otherwise it does the job PERFECTLY.

*** Tim just reached level 10 in laziness!