The loss of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson on the same day nearly made the interwebs grind to a halt. When I think of the influence of each of these celebrities in my childhood, I’m reminded of that poster of Farrah that existed in every teenage boy’s bedroom, and the multitude of video hits by Michael Jackson that really transformed the video era.

I think what has hit me most is that I am at the age where some of the celebrities of my youth are going to start fading out.  Not that Farrah and MJ were my heroes growing up, but I start thinking of someone like Clint Eastwood — that day will be a sad day for me.

I had to stop watching the news coverage. I was disappointed that the coverage took the spotlight off the Iran election. We are so fickle, as indicated by the rapidly changing pace of trending topics on Twitter!

Since I’ve been blog playing this weekend, I decided to go back and revisit some of my posts from my first ankle surgery (follow the history here).

• The first difference is that I have barely blogged this time.  Why? Not sure, but mostly because it was almost a repeat of the first surgery.
• Time at home: the first surgery I was out for 6 weeks; this time it was only 4 weeks.  I attribute this to literally being horizontal the whole time post-surgery.  I didn’t really venture out too much, but I did work from home a lot, with the leg up, ice pack attached, and kept busy online (which made the time fly by).
• Physical therapy: Last time I started it about 2 months post surgery.  This time it will be 6 weeks out.  And I am going to pretty much do it by myself, considering I’ve already done it. I start on Thursday.
• Getting back to walking: timewise, I am 2 weeks ahead of schedule, just like everything else I mentioned so far, but I am pretty much where I was last time.  One week after getting back to walking, I am doing pretty well walking in the boot, and can almost walk without crutches, but I have done that a bit in the house and got stranded.  I still can tweak things a little that make it difficult to put weight on my foot.  I remember that same thing happening the last time too.
• Standing shower: It was almost 2 months out before I took my first standing shower.  The shower chair is certainly a blessing, but it gets old after a while.  Yesterday I figured out how to get into the bathtub for a shower, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get out!  It was scary because I’m really worried about slipping and twisting my ankle and I have so little flexibility in my foot right now.  I just kind of had to do it, but I needed to put the shower chair back in there today so I could navigate my way out of there more easily, without stress.

So if history is any indicator, I expect that I should be walking pretty well sometime by the end of July.  I will be moving from the boot to an ankle brace at the end of this week.  That will definitely require crutches for another 2 -3 weeks.

It’s nice to know this will soon be behind me.  And even better to know I’m out of ankles and both of them are fixed!

This video comes via @gwynnek’s blog On-Dot-Gov, highlighting the international appeal of using social media in government.

Anything that mentions user-centred design in context with Government 2.0 is a required watch in my book!

So, I have my blog up and running, and I know from experience there’s nothing less exciting than someone blogging about how they configured something in their blog.

The Happy Pitbulls

With a fresh palette for blogging, I plan to shift my focus.  Yes, there will still be the ongoing adventures of Fifi and Zero, the crazy yet lovable happy pitbulls of Woodland.

I’ll also be shifting the focus to talk more about social media and how it can be used by government, non-profits, and businesses alike to communicate, engage and inform.

Then you get the geeky gadget stuff, like about my iPhone and Macs.

And of course follow the saga of my ankle surgeries (and I am well on the road to recovery on the left ankle).

Then, just for fun, I’ll throw in news of the weird, Red Sox baseball, the infamous “not about work” topics, hidden camera fashion updates and more.

So…more of the same, but it’s just time for a fresh start.

I have maintained a blog at the address hellohappypitbulls.com since 2003, using a variety of different platforms and hosting solutions.  Today I got a bug to move from Typepade to Wordpress, and after some unsuccessful attempts to migrate my content from one to the other, I have decided to have a completely fresh start.

So there you have it.  Welcome Hello Happy Pitbulls, v 5.0.  (You were sure I was gonna say 2.0, huh?)

Stay tuned for more configuration and tweaking.