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My Eyelid Keeps Twitching

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

For 5-6 days now my top eyelid of my right eye keeps twitching.

Initially I was not a bit worried, even so I was not sure what it meant, I assumed it was probably due to a few bad nights of sleep I had (hey, I am a parent with young children) and it was going away real soon, but after a few more days, no sign of going away (and the kids have been sleeping thru the night fine), so .. new research into the anomaly was required with good ol’ Google.

The good news is that I am not in the first stages of a stroke, neither the twitching is my imagination (wife actually sees my eyelid contract) .. apparently this is something called “Eyelid Myokymia“.

The definition as per emedicine.com is:

Background: Myokymia is the spontaneous, fine fascicular contractions of muscle without muscular atrophy or weakness. Eyelid myokymia typically involves the orbicularis oculi muscle of one of the lower eyelids; occasionally, the upper eyelids also can be affected. In most cases, eyelid myokymia is benign, self-limited, and not associated with any disease. Intervention is seldom necessary. Rarely, eyelid myokymia may occur as a precursor of blepharospasm, Meige syndrome, hemifacial spasm, and spastic-paretic facial contracture.

Pathophysiology: The pathophysiology of typical eyelid myokymia is not well understood. The focus of irritation is most likely the nerve fibers within the muscle. However, pontine dysfunction in the region of the facial nerve nucleus also has been implicated. Possible precipitating factors include stress, fatigue, and excessive caffeine or alcohol intake.

So, I am either Stressed, Tired or Drunk … or all of them combined :D

Upon further research it seems it’s common to have the bottom eyelid to twitch .. for me is the top one, which is rare, but not uncommon .. the story of my life :)

Luckily I do not have any major meetings to attend to this week, otherwise it would be quite embracing to be speaking with clients or techs and constantly have your eye twitching at them, somebody might take is as you making a pass on them, and worst, try to collect on it :)

A few more good nights sleep, is what the doctor would have prescribed .. so I’ll do my best to oblige.

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31.10.2006 General 26 Comments

Rea & Leo – Ep 6

Friday, October 27th, 2006

When I was a kid living in Portugal, I used to love reading “Disney” comic books, used … nah, I still like them even these days :) .

Anyway, one of my favorite comics of all times, was a series of stories published in the late 70′s, early 80′s entitled “Goofy Does History”, on those stories, Goofy played very famous characters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Midas, Marco Polo, etc .. and one of them was “Galileo Galilei” ..
Comics Col Brasil Disney Abril Patetafazhistoria Icon 4
Yep, this exact comic is on my bookcase

I remember that one of the great things about those stories was how for example, at such young age, I learned how Gutenberg published the first book ever, and that that book was the Bible, or that Galilei experimented that two bodies of different mass and weight would fall at the same rate on a vacuum (the “Falling Bodies” theory), these are things I would only hear about many years later in High School, but there I was at the age of 5, and thru comics, I was learning.

A fact that didn’t went unnoticed, so these days, I spend some time looking for those same comics in english, so my children can read them and while having a laught with them, they are also learning.

Anyway, enough nostalgia, our next cartoon episode, was based on my re-colection of the Goofy Galilei episode, where he tests his Falling Bodies theory by asking a heavyset woman and her puny husband to leap from the tower of Pisa into an old mattress to test his theory that they would both fall at the same time (hey, it was a cartoon book after all).

On this episode, we illustrate that sometimes you just feel like trowing the deadbeat customer’s server’s from the 10th floor, but hey, if you have to do it, might as well make a science project out of it and test the great master’s (Galilei) theory.

The sketch was done a big on a hurry, I had the idea on my mind and needed to give it to Paulo @ Yellowicon/Iconbase within 5 minutes so he could do the final Art; To illustrate how on a hurry we were, I had to capture the sketch on my MacBook Pro Webcam since I had no scanner around and there was no time to wait until I got back home.

Issue6-Draft-1
The Draft

Issue6-1
The final Art

In the end, I love the result, it’s a funny Gag, and I am sure Relio visitors and other friends will have a laugh at it , and who knows, a few might do a google on Galilei and learn something from it (especially those who wont have a clue what his theory was).

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27.10.2006 Computers / Internet, Toonz, Work No Comments

Plasma Bummer

Monday, October 9th, 2006

I just bought a used paid (yes, used, I am cheap, long live ebay) of Sony MDR-DS5100 Cordless Headphones with Surround Sound.

These headphones costed upwards of £350 when new, so when I managed to grab them for less than £80 .. I was happy.

Ebay Sonymdrds-1160393598-334
Back on Ebay

But my happiness was short lived, I received them on Saturday, proceeded to plug them to my XBOX 360 via the Optical connection, sited on my comfy leather chair, ready for a round of Oblivion … when this crackling noise started to appear.

After much investigating, I find out that Plasma TV’s, like the sun, give light in the infrared spectrum, it’s not visible to the human eye, but interfere major time with IR receivers.

Now, if we talking about a remote control, it’s no big deal, but for wireless sound, a major problem, you get cracking noise all over, and depending on the colors on the screen, the noise gets louder or goes away for moments, this is not a problem with CRT or LCD TV’s .. only Plasma.

So, now I have to sell them again, just 2 days after I receive them, and go search for a “Radio” wireless set instead.

Who would have tough my TV had so much in common with the SUN, every day you learn something new :)

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09.10.2006 General No Comments

If it can’t go wrong … it will

Monday, October 9th, 2006

A few days back, and we had an outage at Relio.

Outage
Check out the dip on Friday
Simple put, Rob took down one of the 2 routers we use, to upgrade it from FreeBSD to OpenBSD for better IP usage, with OpenBSD we can save 2 ip’s per allocation, currently each time we allocate an IP block, we set aside 3 ip’s, one for router 1, one for router 2, and one for gateway.

With OpenBSD on the routers, we only need to use 1 ip .. how it works, I leave to the Sysadmins, but it has the potential to save us loads of IP’s in the long run, since we are getting new ip’s soon from ARIN, it’s worth doing it now.

So, one of the routers was put down, which meant while the upgrade was being performed, all traffic was routed to thru the second router and a single provider (Time Warner – TW) .. and thats when trouble happened, all of the sudden, mid-way thru the upgrade, the TW link went dead, and with the second router down, we had no way to go out thru the other providers as usual.

What’s the odds of it happening ? very slim, but it happen .. So the guys had to get on the phone with TW and get the link back up, we were dead on the water for about an hour and eventually the TW link was restored and we were back in business, since the second router has been upgraded and we are back 100%, and with a bruised ego.

It just goes to show, you work with a system for years, it’s so reliable that you think “I can rely on it for a few hours” while you take other system down for an upgrade, and BINGO .. your uber-reliable system goes down the one time you need it up.

Is it Karma ? Cosmo-misalignment ? Ex-Wife’s curse ?, who knows ..

One thing this episode made me realize .. we have/had a big flaw on our system, even so the US DC was the only one down, the UK went down as well, why ?, because even so we have a great DNS system, with a separate physical server for each DNS as the book recommends, both DNS servers site on the same datacenter, with it down, it was a matter of minutes before some ISP’s started to drop the sites on the UK, that while they were UP, they had no DNS; So, we are now moving the DNS2 server to the UK to prevent it from ever happening again.

The good thing was, the forums http://www.relioforums.com site both off-network and off-dns .. so they were up and people were able to get information during the outage.

After 7-8 years on this business, you think you know and seen it all, then something comes along that smacks you right on the face and tells you never to forget that SH*T Happens and you need to always be prepared.

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09.10.2006 Computers / Internet, Work No Comments