Colour mostly - my shoulder & upper arm are now a nice shade of yellow, while purple marks have appeared on my left pec like someone with inky fingers grabbed me from behind. The area between my neck and the joint is also still a little swollen and warm to the touch compared to the other side, confirming that there's a lot of metabolic activity and some inflammation going on locally, presumably as part of the damage repair process. It's been frustrating to find I tire quickly, and various parts ache after just a few minutes of standing, where they are trying to support a load while compensating.
Although things are still stiff and tender, I seem to be pushing my own limits occasionally, which is good because it should help to re-establish mobility and strength when it comes to it. Hoping to manage going to bed tonight, for the first time.
Chris has also been unwell, suffering severe tiredness & exploding tummy syndrome. She was in bed about 8pm last night, and slept through to 6.30 - pretty tired!
In other (IT-related) news, the house is now networked with powerline adapters (WAY better than wireless) but my NAS box from D-Link was DOA and has had to go back, so we don't yet have our central back up and data repository sorted. I've read that it's possible to connect directly over the internet, if one can set up the gateway etc correctly - if it appears secure and feasible then I may well have a go. I had a look this morning at my ebuyer account, and the last RMA was 2004, returning a failed MoBo, so that's a pretty good history from them.
I'm already getting itchy feet on Linux distros, since so many have been released in the last few weeks. Mint Debian with Cinnamon as the desktop looks really neat and quick. Dream Linux (basically Ubuntu 12.04 with low-latency kernel and some AV tools, very much like Ubuntu Studio) also ran quickly from a bootable memory stick, and Linux Mint 13 (Maya) with the Cinnamon 1.4 desktop again ran really well, with some of the classiest animations I've seen yet in a linux distro. Finally, there's a new release of Sabayon Linux (SL9.0) out as an upgrade for existing users, and I'm half tempted to plug my 'archive' hard drive back in just to see what it looks like.
Another driver to change is that there have been new releases of my favourite software, and Comice is lagging badly behind the curve in terms of what's in the repositories. DigiKam is up to 2.5 with various refinements and better tools. Audacity has just has version 2.0 released, and this is very much a 'coming of age' upgrade to the already intuitive and powerful interface (the plugins are excellent as well). Finally GIMP 2.8 has been released with the highly desirable 'single window mode' (previously there would be at lest 2 floating toolbars plus a main window as the only option) and a bunch of new and powerful tools.
I could just install the upgrades myself, but then they wouldn't be maintained by the software manager, and might get broken in further upgrades.
And the final driver is that I'm starting to want to get back to a better way of working. I've found Comice to actually be better than OSX in the way it does window size management, but just don't like a dock-based system. If KDE wasn't quite so heavy on resources I'd have gone straight back, but I've also come to really like some of the little bits of rationalisation that have come from an Ubuntu heritage, like CD/DVD behaviour being logical (ask the OS to play or eject the disc, and it does it without fuss). Sacrilege to a Linux purist, but good sense to someone who wants to use the computer to watch movies. I'm also impressed that *most* incarnations of Ubuntu seem to have fixed their font issues (U studio seems to be the exception) and is now on a par with Apple.
So I'm just not sure yet. Might well do a trial install of Mint Debian on t'other box (with the AMD processor) just to if I like it. That may get donated still, but we'll have to see.
And if you want to try Linux risk-free, I really do recommend downloading UNetbootIn (available for Windows, mac and Linux) and making a bootable USB stick. You might be surprised how well it works - I watched a DVD in Mint 13 Cinnamon running live from a stick, and it was glitch-free.