Random Gloats: Narrow escapes or, "My leg! My leg!" and "L'ecroulement de livejournal"

[ed_rex]

I felt like I played my best game of the season on Sunday. I was running hard, I took a decent turn in goal, and was aggressive against the opposing teams best players.

I even managed to make it home without any blood flowing for a small wonder.

But maybe two hours after I'd showered, I realized that my right knee was starting to bother me — no, to hurt — quite a lot. Indeed, by the time I'd finished supper, maybe four hours after the game, I could barely bend my at all. Just sitting down in a chair required me to carefully position my left leg, sink to the seat, then manually swing /em> my right leg over and (more or less) into place. I could make it up stairs only with difficulty and down was painful indeed.

By the time I was ready for bed, I found it difficult to pull of my slippers and getting into bed required an elaborate maneouver that finally included Raven lifting and (slowly!) swinging the recalcitrant leg onto a cushion. She also, bless her, spent quite some time rubbing some kind of liniment into the joint and she barely complained when I swallowed a couple of ibuprofen.

Weird thing is, I couldn't tell you when the injury occurred. I didn't limp during the game, nor did I immediately afterward. Was it a twist? Did I get kicked? No idea, though a twist or sprain was my best guess, going on the assumption that I would have noticed a kick to the knee.

Regardless, though I didn't think it was a serious injury, I know that soft-tissue damage can take a very long time to heal. I was seriously concerned that I wouldn't be able to play this coming Sunday and the thought that I might miss the rest of the season worried at the back of my mind.

More depressing still was the thought that I was only just starting to get into some kind of decent shape and that this would be a huge set-back on that score.

All of which is to say that I am thrilled — thrilled! I tells ya — by the pace of the recovery.

Monday saw me still limping but in considerably less pain and, by days end, I was climbing the stairs almost normally and was able to get into bed knees first. Raven did the liniment rubbing again and this morning I awoke without a limp and barely even a twinge.

Suggesting a round of badminton tonight would probably be begging for trouble, but tomorrow ...? We'll see.

To say that I'm relieved is to put it very mildly indeed.

* * *

On the other hand, Livejournal has been down for at least 24 hours and I find myself jonesing quite badly for my reading list there. The Dreamwidth technology is just fine (more than fine in some ways), but the critical mass certainly is not.

I signed up here as a precautionary measure, a year or two back when LJ peremptorily canceled a number of accounts for what, on freedom-of-speech grounds, seemed worrisome reasons, so DW's explicitly pro-free-speech philosophy was extremely appealing, as was (and is) its non-profit, cooperative business model and its very sensible, slow-growth planning. But I nevertheless find myself missing LJ badly on a personal level and also on a political one, since I learned, during the last denial of service attack, that LJ is one of the major remaining popular arenas for free speech in Russia, a country in sore need of same.

In truth, at least in terms of my own "friends" list, few are posting any more and fewer still (I think) are reading my posts, but I miss it and I miss the various feeds and communities I read there as well.

So here's hoping that LJ's recovery from whatever it is that currently ails it be as speedy as was my knee's.

Comments

[evilawyer]

Livejournal has been acting sporadically acting badly for me (in a technical sense) ever since about April this year --- can't sign on, can't move around friends list or other journals without everything crashing to a halt, keep getting told that the server has timed out, etc, etc. At first I thought it was my on my crappy wireless connection, but it even happens on my office broadband, so I'm figuring it's LJ.

that LJ is one of the major remaining popular arenas for free speech in Russia

One which, I won't be at all surprised to hear, is what is behind ever single one of their technical troubles --- application of the rule "Silence is Golden" by somebody or something in action. And, as a global citizen, that makes me feel bad. But as I myself was using LJ only for personal fun, and not to get news or information of any sort of real significance, I got to the point that it was too much of a hassle to bother going there. I still go there, but nowhere near daily and I never cruise around to new journals or journals that aren't on my friends list unless they are pretty much dumped in my lap by people on my friends list. Which makes me a bad global citizen, I suppose; if everyone thought like me, LJ would probably be shut down as a viable platform for free speech in Russia, I suppose and that's what someone may well be trying to do. But the glitches (and, frankly, some of LJ's more obnoxious marketing-spying techniques) are interfering with my perception of the place as somewhere fun to be. That's what I signed on for way back in they day and, since LJ hasn't been delivering that to me for awhile, I've found it surprisingly easy, after the first couple of weeks of tech trouble and no answers from support, to overlook any feelings of solidarity with my fellow humans and focus just on me and how much I wanted to put up with the frustrations I was putting up with to get onto LJ for five minutes at a stretch. Not enough to do it, it turns out. But then, that's me.

Watch out for that leg. My friend and I walked three days after she had a bad bounce off a trampoline. She felt fine during those three days, but at the end of our walk, he knee made popping sound and now she can't bend it or put much weight on it without feeling like it's going to give way. Tendons and muscle do, indeed, take a long time to heal.

Malicious, yes

[ed_rex]

One which, I won't be at all surprised to hear, is what is behind ever single one of their technical troubles --- application of the rule "Silence is Golden" by somebody or something in action.

Yes, LJ has definitely been the victim of repeated (and major) denial of service attacks, and somebody (I'm not clear if anyone's sure who it is. For whatever it's worth, Medvedev himself condemned the attacks of last April.

My switch-over to DW came about a year or two (amazing, that I'm not even sure anymore) ago, after some pretty arbitrary account shut-downs and what I thought were ominous signs of a possible shutdown of the service itself, with layoffs &ct. I wanted a back-up, and like DW's philosophy.

Now that, I'm feeling, as you said, like LJ deserves my continued support for political reasons (if nothing else, I'll probably maintain my paid accoujnt there).

We'll see. For now, my reading page here on DW sometimes doesn't change for days, so I spend a lot more tim e at the old haunt than here.

Thanks for the warning vis-a-vis the knee. I'll keep monitoring it closely. Your friend's experience sounds very scary indeed. Maybe I should a doctor, even though it's feeling better now.

[silverflight8]

Glad to hear your leg's gotten better :D and yeah, you've probably already heard - DDoS attack, again. *runs off again*

I did hear ...

[ed_rex]

Thanks about the leg. I'm afraid it's going to make me miss this week's soccer after all, but I'm grateful I'm walking more or less normally.

Meanwhile, the renewed DDoS attacks have me feeling more loyalty than ever towards LJ — but at the same time, I'm glad I'm using DW as well.

P.S. I'm looking forward to your reports on the move and all that will go with it!