Johnny [Life & Code]

Tore my ACL while playing badminton. An awesome jump, delivered a smash at a impressive angle. On landing I slipped twisting my ankle and entire weight of my body fell on the right knee. After 15 minutes I was walking out of the club with the idea of a 10k ride (cycle) back home. Probably I was high on adrenaline/endorphins. But as soon as walked 20 meters, I couldn’t take another step.

Friends helped me out. Few days later a MRI confirmed the ACL tear. Sought opinions from 3 surgeons. A day later I was scheduled for ACL Reconstruction.

Day 0 : Wheeled into surgery. Got shots of anaesthesia in my spine. 5 minutes into the procedure I started feeling my knee again. Then some new shots to my neck and i’m out for next 4 hours. Woke up in recovery room. Crying with pain in my thigh and knee.

Day 1 : High fever. Unable to move my leg. Felt like a dead log.

Day 2 : Realised that morphine (a better refined form .. Fentanyl ?) is being pumped in to me 24 hours.

Day 3: Fever continues. Unable to therapy. But was on CPM.

Day 5 : First time moved around 10 meters (felt like 5 km) to physio rehab. Was able to walk holding support ramps. Did some weight excercises. Morale boost.

Day 6 : Fever started fading.

Day 7 : Discharged from hospital. Realized I lost so much muscle mass. Right leg is very lean.

Day 8 : Woke up at brother’s place. Good food. Ate like a hungry pig.

Day 11 : Regained some strength in the thighs. Able to move around confidently with support.

Day 16 : Moved back to my own place.

Day 17 : Afraid to bend my knee. Looks like I’m resisting to bend the knee.

Day 18 : Able to sit with around 90 degree bend in my knee. Noticed some muscle development.

Day 19 : 90 Degrees knee bending

Day 21 : Mental battle is tougher than actually bending the knee.

Day 22 : Walking without support (crutches). Yay!

Able to handle stairs without support.

Day 25 : 95 – 100 Degrees. Moving to Squat exercises.

Started riding on a stationary bike. Able to walk  small distance with little limp.

Day 31 : 115 Degrees. Knee feels stronger.

Day NN : Recovery still continuing. Yet to build muscles. And regain those remaining degrees. But I’m confident now that i would be back to 110% in few months (yeah .. months!).

I should confess that I’m not a very fit athlete. I’m just a ordinary clumsy guy who started playing a bit. So this is my recovery timeline. Rehab is the tough part. Painful and needs a good amount of will power to keep doing it. It is going to take a long time to get back to my running (hopefully a marathon!). Can’t wait to get back on my bike (cycle).

One thing I kept remembering was this “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever” (Lance Armstrong). In this case it is literally true.

Notes :

• Do research. Learn about the injury and the procedure before you go in. Helps a lot. Realize that you have options on the graft being used.
• Ice is the best pain management you got. I personally don’t like pain killers.
• Most of the online materials on this subject give times lines for fit athletes. So don’t get discouraged if you are not. Keep at it.
• Mail from nice people at Bangalore Bikers Club

Misc :

• Fun when you are on a stretcher and pushed around. Profound
• Scary part was not the surgery, but the catheter in my arm. Got over it after a day.
• Enjoyed the royal treatment. People always around you. don’t have to do anything. Everything is there as soon as you think about it!
• I was without a laptop for about 15 days.
• Long phone calls from stoned friends.

(Would try to add more information and keep this post updated ..)

Life :

Bought a PS3 (“Cameron”) yesterday night around 1930 IST.

- Dreams are powerful. aren’t they ? . Lesson learnt.-

Code :

Probably load it up with Linux later.

Itz a bit late. But before my amazing MMU decides to put this event into swap, I just want to write it out. Here goes :

• Introduction into practical real-time programming in userspace on Linux : Lennart Poettering
  • This is one of the best talks that i was in. Very practical. Now if i want to write a real-time process in linux, I know where / what to look for.Enjoyed it !
• talloc: The Power of C : Rusty Russell
  • This was very usefull since we are using talloc in the mapi provider for evolution which we are writing now. And also how the underlying talloc works over malloc.
• How and Why You Should Be a Kernel Hacker : James Morris
  • zero technical information in this one. Probably thatz the reason i (and almost all) enjoyed this talk. His talk was a very casual narrative of his experience on how he became a kernel hacker. I would dub this talk as “The spirit of a open source hacker.”
• The PulseAudio Sound Server : Lennart Poettering – Red Hat
  • Basically a demo of pulse audio. How it works. and some internals. Now i know why it rocks and it is called ‘compiz for sound’ or ‘ear candy’.

Those are some talks that i really enjoyed listening to. And some others too that i was in like ‘open moko’ / ‘mozilla’ / Danese Cooper’s ‘treking with elephants’ and some more

FOSS.IN/2007 was designed to inspire new contributors. It is very clear that they (the organizers – Team FOSS.IN) didn’t want this to be very technical (Ulrich Drepper commented that his talk was rejected beacause it was `too technical` and he had to redo something else ). Hope to see more technical talks (and the right balance for beginners ) in the coming years.

Overall it was fun ! Great work ‘Team FOSS.IN’ !! Looking forward for FOSS.IN/2008 .

Soon after the release of openSuSE 10.3 , Contributors recieved Boxed versions of 10.3. (I recieved it few weeks back) . Feels Good !!

Awesome .. Had lot of fun (hacking). Learned a lot !!

This week I wrote more lines of code than ever .. . The idea that i worked on wasn’t so big .. .. but they were fun to work with … Ate lot of junk food !!

I managed to get the grammar check service running (DBus Interface).. Got a plugin working for Evolution (partially .. the UI part is yet to be completed )

Idea @ http://idea.opensuse.org/content/ideas/grammar-check-serverservice-for-desktop-applications

I wish everyday is like this ..

Yep .. 22 now (< fading echo > aaahhhhhhhh!!! ! < fading echo >). Well .. Thanks for everything. Thanks to everybody who have been with me through this wonderfull journey (long way to go). Many unique experiences. Lot of good memories. Many have helped me without even knowing that they were .. thanks again … Came across amazing people (yep itz u) My heart felt sincere thanks to all my friends, mentors, teachers, well wishers, family (close and distant) and *.* .. Without u guyz i wouldn’t have made it till now (yep ..a few know what i’m talking about.)

Thanks a lot.

Update 1: Today was one of the most *peaceful* day .. I was calm .. No chaos .. Felt better … awesome ..

Update 2: Ice tea tastes good !! (nothing can beat coffee )

Update 3: Thanks buddy swen and punnen .. BTW swenny .. check ur mailbox ( nope not ur email )

Quoting from AustralianIT.com :

“Under Mr Noorda, Novell grew from 17 employees to more than 12,000 and became one of the most important technology companies to come out of the 1980s.”

He died on monday after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 82 years old.