Spent a couple of weeks on my back with suspected Sciatica. Lots of painkillers and sleep. Lovely weather outside which made things worse, beginning to doubt if I'll ever finish this Coastland project. Kinda. Painkillers made me too groggy and out of sorts so I stopped taking them. Ended up going to an Osteopath (William Hauxwell). His diagnosis was that it wasn't Sciatica - no shooting pains down my leg, no pins and needles, etc - but a couple of dodgy vertabrae and iffy muscles. Made sense. My Mam has Sciatica and she used be crippled with pain shooting down her leg and I just didn't have that type of pain. Mine was pretty much located at the base of my spine only. William did some muscle and bone work on my lower spine, some deep massage and some acupuncture on my upper back (always had trouble up there). Pain in my lower spine eased. Not sure if it was William's treatment or it was getting better with rest anyway. I've been back to him since and will go again a few more times because I generally just feel better after a visit. So, that was an end to that wee drama.
Thankfully I managed to do some work from home on designs for Calor during the second week - even if I couldn't sit for more than 3-4 hours it was good to do something and feel involved. We had already developed a customer extranet for Calor, where customers could log in and see their outstanding bills and place orders online. Now we're working on a dealer extranet, where Calor's commercial customers can take in orders and assign them to runs, which they can plan, for their vehicles to deliver. All going well so far.
Last week a few of us from the office went to london for a conference on cloud computing. We'd been to a similar one in Dublin last year which was excellent, really inspiring, and pretty much made us feel we were on the right path as far as the company was going. Bigger venue this time, more people, but less wow factor. Made us realise we're doing an awful lot more than an awful lot of companies who had stands there. Definitely thinking about having a stand at the next show. Wasn't a waste of a day, some fine nuggets of information to be had which will make things interesting in the future. Certainly in terms of what we can offer customers, either in development terms or in terms of strategy and what they can do to maximise their efforts online.
Work's going great at the moment. Lots of projects and some new clients as well - some cloud computing stuff, some integration stuff, some bespoke development and some brochureware, a good healthy mix of client types. Even took on a new developer. Can't complain about the way things are going given the world the way it is these days.
Still think Ireland will begin to pull out of this recession either in the last quarter of this year or first quarter of 2010. Unless something mental happens. Can see it's bad out there, job losses are going through the roof and Ireland Inc is on target for unemployment levels of around 13%. But, that said, the last few years have seen a huge increase in immigration numbers. A lot of those went into construction, and that whole area is a large part of the problem between developers and banks helping to nose dive the economy. Too many houses being built, then being sold at inflated prices and people who shouldn't be allowed take (and should know better) on mortgages being given them by corrupt banks more interested in short term profits at the expense of sustainable long term investment. Of course, having a government asleep at the wheel and lacklustre toothless Financial Regulator who was one of the boys didn't help. Enough to make you spew. The way I'm looking at it is that it seems to be an extremely rapid decline overall, much fatser to bite than the one in the late 80s early 90s. To my thinking that means we should hit the bottom of the cycle far quicker than back then. It won't be pretty by any means, but it should mean the country can at least begin to stabilise the patient quicker and begin to start finding solutions to a recovery. Of course, it's the perfect time to take advantage of things too and if a company can survive, or start up, and manage to get through to the up-swing then it's at a distinct advantage.
Easter saturday I woke up with a sweaty fever, pain in my upper abdomen and referral pain mid back. Lovely. Has to be pancreatitis. Again. Not funny. Lots of lemon water, sleep and no food. just to give the damned thing a rest. Was seriously thinking of admitting myself to hospital again, but the thoughts of 4-5 hours queuing before another 4-5 hours in triage wasn't very appetising. Thankfully I have my consultant's mobile number so I'll text him the symptoms later today. Feeling much better now though, although my right kidney feels as though it's been punched. Not much they can do with the pancreas, but at least it only flares up every so often and isn't a continuous never ending pain. Methinks that'd be far worse. Might have to have a stent put in the duct if worse comes to worse. But fingers crossed it can be self managed if I keep an eye on my diet. Still, I can see the damned thing giving me grief for a long time into the future. My guess, and hope, is that I can manage it without intervention. Otherwise I'll be extremely pissed off.
Off to see the parents today. Their birthdays are coming up this week so I think I'll get them a new computer, something simple and easy they can't mess up. They have one of those old iMacs, they multi-coloured ones that look like a big bubble with a curved screen that hurts my head. No doubt I'll have to fix the DVD/Video/TV as well, something 'techy'. Last time the highly technical fix was to plug the damned machine in. Parents!
Also have to do up cards for Gillian. She's going into business with one of her clients who has been selling some of her images as greeting cards from his shop over the last few months. He now has enough sales and feedback to take things to the next level. Which means I get to work for free for herself. Again. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass knowing one end of Photoshop from the other end of InDesign. Hopefully the trade for me will be some free time - pancreas allowing - to finish my damned project.
Fingers crossed.
