Friday, April 06, 2007

False precision

I think the thing that bothered me about my experience with the chiropractor was the false precision involved in some of the discussion. Saying that with a pinched nerve I was at 45% function didn't impress me. No x-rays, no real way of knowing what was wrong other than my own description. And then saying that it would take exactly 57 visits to cure the problem and it would just happen to cost $4000 seemed pretty dubious. That plus the application to finance the bill over 5 years wasn't what I had expected when I went there.

Putting ice on my back several times a day and stretching has really improved things to the point where I can move around without too much pain, although I can't sit for extended periods without my back getting tight.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Bad back

I did something to my back on Monday morning and wasn't able to stand up straight for two days and I still am having trouble moving around. I can't drive and can't do much of anything. I visited a chiropractor today, and that helped a little, but I'm not sure I've got the money to go back 57 more times, as was recommended. That was a pretty surprising recommendation based on the little bit of consultation involved. I've had good luck with chiropractors in the past, but they were also covered by my health insurance. Now, I don't have any coverage for chiropractic and I don't think I can spend $4k on that.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Florida - Ohio State

I picked Florida from the start and figured they would play Ohio State. I think Ohio State has a slight edge at point guard with Mike Conley and if Greg Odom plays well they could do well inside, but the Gators have too much for them. I think the experience will also make a difference if the game is close. I don't expect it to be very close though.

Sunday, April 01, 2007

More Apple TV

One thing that is clear from using the Apple TV is that it's helpful to keep your iTunes library organized. I've got too many playlists and too many videos which won't play back on the Apple TV. I'm not sure that converting them is going to be a good idea because of the decline in quality.

It also looks like you can get access to your iPhoto library or your Aperture library, but not both at the same time. You could turn off one or the other, but not have both active at the same time. Not sure I like that feature either.

Apple TV first impressions

I finally set up my Apple TV today. It was easy to get it up and running, although even though I have used iTunes since it came out, I was not familiar with the Devices list, which is just a way of saying the column on the left side of the screen. Once I figured that out and entered the right info, everything worked pretty well. I had some trouble with accessing a few of the movie trailers -- they either loaded very slowly or not at all. Others loaded quickly and played fine. I watched some TV content -- free stuff from the iTunes store. It wasn't in HD, but it looked fine from across the room, just not close up.

My chosen podcasts seemed to fill up the entire Apple TV, so I turned that feature off and just streamed them which worked nicely. I did load 450 photos I took yesterday from my Aperture library and wasn't as excited about that as I wanted to be. The images can only be viewed as a slide show which has no manual advance feature, so it doesn't work well as a way to review images. Even if it had manual advance, it doesn't allow you to rate the images. That would be great since it's nice to see the pictures on a big screen. I do like the idea that I can look at things I've produced without creating DVDs, so that alone should make the Apple TV something I'll use quite a bit, along with the podcasts and easy access to the iTunes library.