Hey all, the server that walljm.com lives on is going to have maintenance done soon and there will be a few hours of downtime. see the note below:
There will be up to one hour downtime on May 11th between 8p-1a PST
in order for us to ensure that the host machine will reboot cleanly.
There will be up to two hours downtime on May 12th between 8p-1a PST.
Walljm.com has slowly been evolving through the last 7 years that I’ve been blogging. This represents the 6th version and a slightly new philosophy of presentation.
At this point, none of the sub pages have been converted yet, a task that I will get to when time permits and I’ve been able to think out how I want them to look exactly. I’ve wanted to implement something using a bigger footer for some time, but hadn’t been able to come up with something I liked.
The new face of walljm.com is one post per page. This reflects the slower nature of my posting style. I’ve removed the linklog from the normal stream and put it down below, but I’ll probably include it in the archives. The most recent photo and/or regular post will appear on the front page. I’ll probably add some navigational aids below the post for jumping either to the archive for that month, or for clicking through posts one at a time.
I hope you like it. I do. :)
Well, I’m well and truly tired of driving now. I covered about 2000+ miles between Sat and Mon. The trip down to Dallas with Jon was pretty crazy, occasionally harrowing and for the most part very very long. ;)
But I’m home now, and I’m in need of a roommate. Applicants can contact me via email. ;)
Jon is unpacked and ready to start the spring semester at the University of Dallas. I have the whole apartment to myself. I think I shall throw a party, so expect invitations in the mail sometime soon.
Addendum: Because it sounds confusing on a second reading, I’m not throwing the party cause Jon is gone and I’m happy about it, but because the apartment feels so empty with him not there that I feel compelled to come up with ways to fill it up.
I’ll admit, this post is prompted more by the fact that there isn’t much on the front page than my anything else. I feel compelled to explain myself, which isn’t, by necessity, a bad thing.
Past few weeks have been dull. Not in the sense that there hasn’t been things going on, but in the sense that in spite of the things going on, I still feel a bit empty, like I’ve misplaced my ability to focus on my goals and want very much to take a long long vacation. ;)
I got bogged down with a cold a week or so ago, and that has made me want to stay in bed. I’ve not been able to concentrate on much of anything since then. I am feeling better though, and the Thanksgiving holiday is coming up. I took a few days off last week, and I’ll be taking a few days off around thanksgiving, so that should help restore thing a bit I hope.
I’ve been watching for people to describe on the train, but there have been few really unique characters. Or maybe I’ve just become used to them.
I was going to say more, but I think I’ll let it go at this. Look for my article on Faith, which is coming soon, and some posts on photographic lighting.
I’ve not disappeared. Honest. I’ve been engrossed in the idea of Faith, its implication, and its role in Christianity. I’ve been spending a good deal of time thinking about it. It has lead me to some research into Epistemology (fascinating field of philosophy), some research into the Doctrine of Scripture, and some other things. I have the text of my sermon last Wed that I want to publish here, but its not ready. After writing it, I discovered there was a good deal more I wanted to cover. I hope to do that in my sermon today. After that I’ll revise the two texts and publish them here for your review.
In the meantime, I delivered the latest Spiral of my project and it was well received. I’ve still not had much time to photograph stuff, but I will try to post some photos from my camping trip a couple weeks ago.
Cheers!
You know how life is like a train, and sometimes you’re in the Engine and in complete control, and sometimes you’re in the Kaboose, just hanging on?
Oy. Life, of course, is cyclical, and the last couple of months have been busy, but unlike other months when I’m busy (because I’m pretty much busy all the time), these months I’ve also been worn out, a situation that I had hoped would be avoided by the surgury I had in Jan of this year, but unfortunately has not had the miraculous rejuvinating effects I had hoped (at least, the effects I felt immediately following didn’t stay).
I have to apologize to my readership. When I posted three weeks ago that I was going to be on the site less often, I hadn’t intented to not post at all, but work was demanding enough creative energy that when I got home, I had nothing left to work on other projects.
But I seem to have a bit more creative energy to give to this now, so updates will resume. I have photos set to post every other day for the next week or so, so enjoy those. Links will resume also, though less frequent than previous levels. Anyway, thanks for the break, I needed it. Maybe now I can climb up from the Kaboose and make my way back to the Engine.
I hate to sound whiney ( I really do ), so let me just say that life is pretty good here. In spite of not having enough time to do everything I want (which, I must admit, is a pretty long list), I am blessed and thankful.
See you later!
You’ve probably been wondering where them pictures are, haven’t you? Well, I’ll tell you. They’re sitting on my hard drive. ;)
As you may have already guesed by this point, I’m about to tell you I’ve been busy. But, I am not going to apologize. ;) The shifting stresses in life move all the time, its a bit like the tide in that respect, and the tide has come in for things here at my job, you know, the one that pays all the bills. I feel myself being pulled in one to many directions, so walljm.com is being put on the back burner so I can focus on more important things.
So what does this mean to you my loyal viewers and readers? It means posting will be sporadic and subject to my moods. I’ll post as I have time and gumption. I can say there are some things in the works that will be fun to announce when they are ready. There are things to look forward to, and I am not putting the site on hiatus like I did last time, just shifting its priority back behind a few other things that need attention.
I hope not too many people are heartbroken. ;)
Jason
I got home from SF, had a great time. Sarah graduated! I got to see her family again, and spend a bit of time on the beach. Good times all round.
I’m a bit worn out though. I’ll get some photos up later today, and regular 7am posting of photos will resume tomorrow. Thanks for being patient. The grueling month of May is nearly over. Its been a blast, but I really think I need to avoid scheduling that many things that close together again. ;)
Every so often the Internet ebbs and becomes boring. Not much is happening online. But, at home, things are hopping, and because of this I find myself with not really enough time to keep on top of it all.
So a small break is in order. I’ll get a new batch of photos ready to post in a few days, and I have an essay I’d like to post in the near future also. I am flying to San Francisco this weekend for Sarah’s graduation and when I get home I’ll resume a normal posting schedule. So, in the interm, its been lovely weather here in Saint Louis, and if you live around here then you should go outside and enjoy it. ;) I have a lot of archives, and nothing makes me happier than when you peruse them, so make yourself at home, I’ll be back next tuesday.
I was off in my own little world and didn’t realize that I had run out of photos in my queue, so um, I’ll get right on that. I have a few more Ireland photos yet to post and then back to more STL related imagery.
This has been a test of the emergency broadcast sytem. no wait. this was no test. um. This has been an example of the emergency broadcast sytem.
Thanks.
Look ma, I have a google home page!
Google pages is finally taking new users.
I have some errands I have to run today, but I’ll post a new Ireland photo this afternoon.
I’m a sucker for site stats. I love to know as much about who visits here and why, and how often. It feeds my ego, its true. :)
First, for those who may be new, and there are a few of you, some history about walljm.com. The sites name is derived from my own name in the manner of the common network admin username system of taking the 5+2 last name, first and middle initial. Walljm was my username in college.
The site was first conceived and put up in January of 2001, a mostly static site to showcase my photography. I didn’t do much with it until a year later when it was made over into a weblog, just as the blog revolution was getting started. Though not a first comer, I was an early adopter, of which fact I am proud.
Since then walljm.com has gone through several redesigns and a number of significant changes. The site is built with custom code using vbscript and asp, the languages I knew at the time, largely because microsoft was the only platform I had freely available to me. The CMS is not slick (though I was using ajax like techiques two years before it was popular [yes, this is me bragging]), nor is the code that generates the site especially pretty, but I like it. The reason I haven’t migrated to one of the popular and robust blogging engines available is two fold. The first is that in spite of the flexibiliy offered by both MovableType and WordPress, neither are quite as flexible or perfectly suited to the exact needs of walljm.com. Its like an old pair of comfortable shoes, my data is clean and enjoyes a robust data model. The second reason is that walljm.com was first conceived as a space to learn, practice and keep myself informed of technilogical trends. Walljm.com is largly responsible for my understanding of programming languages, web usabilty, html, css, and javascript.
In the intervening 5 years since walljm.com has been my home of the web, I have written 695 blog posts, posted 550 photographs, composed 123 poems, created 8 wallpapers, and posted 77 links. Not bad. At one point in time, walljm.com enjoyed just about 200 average visits per day. But like many bloggers, life for me got complicated and in August of 2004, I put walljm.com on hiatus, and naturally, traffic fell off. Walljm.com came back in June 2005 and I have been posting strong ever since. In January on this year, walljm.com was getting around 19 visits a day. Since then, there has been a steady increase in traffic, and I am now averaging 56 visits a day. At the current rate of growth, if it continues, I will reach my previous level of traffic in about a year. Here is a graph of the traffic over the last three months:
My most visited post in that time has been, Pop Goes the Sternum! or How I Had My Pectus Excavatum Corrected, the Aftermath, and the most visited photograph is Daniel and Jennifer on the Night Before, Liberty, SC I might also ad that 73% of my traffic is for the photography.
60% of my traffic each day are new visitors, down from 75% at the start of January, which means that some of you who find my site are sticking around and coming back. I just want to say thanks to all of you who come by and feed my ego. ;) I like creating for an audience. That is largely what drove me to come back from my hiatus, and what motivates me to improve the site and to continue to post photos. So thanks!
I know, I know, tags is a buzz word for really really flexible categories and using the Web 2.0 saturated moniker is, um, uncool. But why fight crowd. Truth is, my formal category structure here at walljm is clunky, hard to maintain and rigid. And “freeform categories” are not. So the ever popular tagcloud can be found here, and you will notice that all the posts and liks now show tags just beneath the main body of the post. This will hopefully make it easier for me to catalogue my posts and group photos and links in a much more intuitive manner. I’ll be working on tagging old posts for the next few weeks, as 1451 posts is a lot to tag. Over the course of the next several weeks, I may phase out some of the category links you see now and possibly impliment some different ways of viewing the tags, as the tag cloud isn’t good for finding specifics.
Oh, and comments and criticisms and rants about Web 2.0 are welcome!
There is no photo today because today is special. I officially shut the door on my 28th year of life sometime around 6am. I figured I would write a nice long post remenicsing on various things and writing about my accomplishments and goals for the future, but then I figured nobody would really want to read that, so I’m going to end this little paragraph here.
I had hoped to post a self portrait, and if I have time tonight I will before I go to bed. w00t!
Arrived safely, and are having a good time. This was the first chance we’ve had to find a internet cafe and check in. Can’t write much now, but I plan to come back this evening and post some of the journal entries I’ve been keeping.
Catch you later!
I’m only writing about this because writing about this sounded funny to me. I finally coded up a quick page that would let me do that quickpost popup window linky thing Movabletype implemented years ago. It was so easy to post links after that that I posted a bunch. Hey, maybe you’ll start seeing a lot of links in the link log now! lots! maybe!
I’m sorta busy with getting the details of my life sorted through since I’ve been away for a couple weeks. Until I can clear the back log and can carry my laptop home again, the blog will be put on hold. Shouldn’t last for more than a week, but I wanted everyone to know.
Thanks,
Jason Wall
Here is the longer post I promised you. I’ll post pictures in a couple days after I’ve had time to take the post operation shots and retrieve the pre operation shots from my mom.
Pectus Excavatum is a congenital birth defect that causes the ribs and sternum to grow abnormally resulting in a sunken cavity near the sternum. I’ve had mine all my life. The symptoms I’ve experienced seemed to become worse in the last couple of years. I’ve been easily fatigued all my life, and it takes longer for me to recover from physical exertion than is normal. Prolonged periods of fatigue caused me to get sick often and contributed to a low immune system.
A year or so back, Sean Cooney, a good friend of mine, told me he was having his corrected and encouraged me to do the same. Up until then I was under the mistaken impression that Insurance companies routinely refused the operations. When I had investigated having it corrected ten or so years ago, the operation was considered cosmetic. A lot of work on the part of families who have dealt with the problem have slowly changed that and today most insurance companies will cover the operation, and the surgeons who specialize in this procedure are a lot more education about the condition and its effects.
So, six months ago I started contacting doctors and tracking down the right people to talk to. Finally I found myself in the office of Dr. Weber who had been referred to me by Dr. Naunhiem. After an initial consultation, Dr. Weber explained that the PE (Pectus Excavatum) could very well be the source of my fatigue and that he would be willing to do the surgery. At this point, I was ready, so I told him to go ahead and we scheduled it for Jan 23rd. Dr. Weber has done several hundred of the pectus surgeries and I was confident that he would do a fine job.
PE is a condition found in 1 in 300 people in the US. It isn’t an uncommon birth defect. The defect affect people in different ways. It is also most often corrected in children under the age of 18. So it was that I found myself having to navigate Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, where Dr. Weber practiced and where the best facilities were for the operation.
I would like to take a moment to say, before I continue, that the nurses and staff at Cardinal Glennon were fantastic. They were, to a one, kind and professional. My post operative care was as pleasant an experience as I could have hoped for. And I would just like to say thanks to everyone who helped me throughout the experience.
I showed up at the hospital at 11:00am and after a very brief stop off at admissions was taken to my room. I had my blood pressure taken, they recorded my weight, I changed into a hospital gown (and thankfully some light hospital pants), and they inserted as IV. After filling out some rather humorous paperwork (it was a childrens hospital, and the form are designed for kids and babies, so how does one answer questions like, ‘Does your child feed himself?’ or ‘What is you child’s favorite toy?’) I was taken to the Operating room.
Before going to the OR, I did meet the a couple of the Anethesiologists, and met some of the nurses and interns who would be watching/assisting during the surgery. I opted to have the epidural (we’ll talk about that more in a moment). In the OR I sat down on the table and chatted with the staff a little. I was given a shot of something through the IV and a few moments later I woke up in my room. The surgery was over and had gone well, and I felt no pain, only I was cold as they were in the middle of moving me to my bed and getting me covered up.
The anesthetic used to knock me out worked so fast I don’t remember getting foggy or faling asleep. At one moment I was looking around, the next I was waking up.
Now, about the epidural. Most wonderful things epidurals. About the size of four human hairs, tiny tubes are inserted near the spine (where on the spine is determined by what section they are trying to numb) and an anesthetic is allowed to drip in and in my case, from my collar bone to just about above my navel I was completely numb. I had the epidural in for 3 days, during which I felt a bare minimum of pain. A little tightness and stiffness, but no pain from either the incisions or the bent ribs and sternum.
Now, the procedure that I had done is called the Nuss Procudure. The Nuss procedure is minimally invasive and involves making two incisions about 2 inches in length on either side of the rib cage, just below the pecs. A steel bar, bent to the right curvature of the patients chest is inserted and then turned over, bending the ribs and sternum to the correct position. The steel bar is affixed to the bone parts of the rib cage on either side and the bar remains in side the ribcage for two years while the cartilage and bone sets and heals in the correct position.
After three days of pain free lollygagging, they removed the epidural and started me on Percocet, a lovely narcotic cocktail composed of Oxycodone and Tylenol. I felt some discomfort during the transition, till the Percocet had a chance to build up in my system.
I got out of bed on the second day to walk a little. My journey down the hallway and back exhausted me. ;) On the fourth day they took me off Percocet and allowed me to take it on an as needed basis. I’m still taking 2 pills every 4-5 hours, but plan to wean myself off in a few days.
I showered on thursday for the first time, which felt good, and was walking and standing up and feeling much better. I came home on Friday afternoon.
I’m staying at the Spilger until I’m healed enough, and plan to go back to work in a week or so.
Prayers are appreciation, specifically that I’ll be in shape to return to work in a week. My chest looks flat, and I personally think it looks really good. My thanks to everyone who called, visited, prayed and thought of me. It was really nice.
Pictures in a couple days!
Other Articles related to my Pectus Operation:
The Pectus Journey: Before and After (photos),
Pectus Update: I Hate Sleeping On My Back
Although I have lots of time, my head is pretty foggy, so I’ll let this note suffice for a day to let everyone know that I am doing well, and thank you all for the prayers and well wishes and visits.
For those who did not know, last Monday I had my Pectus Excavatum corrected. I have been in Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital for the past five days and unable to get on the Internet. The surgery went well, I’m in very little pain considering, and will be posting a longer more detailed account of the experience along with before and after photos soon.
Thanks especially to the Spilgers for giving me a place to stay while I’m an invalid :), and also to Sean Cooney who had his done first and encouraged and prompted me to have mine done also. Without him pioneering, I may not have gotten up the gumption to go through with it. He has also given me advice and kept in contact, so I knew what to expect from the procedure. So thanks Sean.
Ok, a longer post tomorow, for now, my Percecet is making me happy!. ;)