Joerg Jaspert: LPI?
That mad duck
writes about the LPI exams during DebConf and isnt sure if he should do them or not.
Well, first a reply (in a blog, yeah, shudder) to one of his points - yes, Klaus
had something to do with this LPI offer. He was my initial contact for LPI, getting the
UK LPI people in the boat, and then also made the contact to the “Area Operation Manager”
who was the one that offered the special pack in response to one of my requests. So yes,
he had a lot to do with this.
Second, the “What do I need LPI for?”. Good question. It really depends. Do you have
a good job? Do you have a good track record with your work and is that enough for your
(possible future) boss? Or is it likely you get one of those that don’t look at
what you are actually able to do but instead look at some “certification” from
$whoever? Or the company you work for does support for $some-other-big-company and those
ask for certifications. Those are the cases when it (can) help to do those exams.
If one just wants to do it “for my own fun/private stuff”, then I dont think its
the right motivation.
I personally don’t have any certification and dont think I need one. I only thought about
doing such an exam for a minute as I had “the luck” to win 2 LPI vouchers during Cebit,
so it would be free for me.
Meanwhile, Gian-marco, my future flat mate, had spent the day packing up
everything that was left in my old flat, where I had left an utter mess.
A colleague of mine was to sublet the place starting that Saturday, so there
were roughly 48 hours left to empty and clean it, and to hand it over. There
are more pleasant things in heaven and earth than to have someone else empty
your flat for you.
Morphine is a really crazy drug. Most people think of it as fuzzy and often
joke about taking it if only they could get their hands on it. Having made the
experience, I'd rather not take it again unless I have to. Watching television
turned out to be impossible, even the weather report went too fast for me.
Visitors appeared sort of blurry, I would often not follow the things they
said, and it was definitely impossible to entertain thoughts for prolonged
periods of time, or to engage in any sort of productive thinking. Organising
a cleaning lady for my old flat and giving instructions to my cousin, who
would hand over the flat took all my energy
On Friday, I was to have an important business meeting with three people, so
I organised a room in the hospital and asked the nurses to put me on optional
morphine so I could be a bit more present during the meeting. As
a consequence, I could press a button once every ten minutes for a dose of
morphine, and with this new level of control, I began to reduce the drug
amount in my blood gradually.
The meeting did not take place in the end but I came to regret my choice to
reduce the morphine at around midnight, when the pain in my knee became
unbearable. I kept pressing the button for more morphine like a madman, but
the device would only deliver a new shot every 10 minutes. The nurse was not
authorised to change that and instead gave me other pain and sleep medication,
but not even the combination of morphine, Tramal (an opiod), Novalgin,
Mefenacid, and Paracetamol could dampen the level of pain, and so I spent
almost three hours in real agony, biting the pillow with tears running down my
cheeks, until finally the medication won, I became indifferent (thanks to
Temesta) and drifted off into sleep.
After breakfast the next morning, the morphine applicator suddenly had a fit,
started beeping, and pumped more drug into my body than it should have. It
took me about 20 minutes or maybe an hour (who knows ) to put my brain
together, realise what had happened, and come up with a way to lift my finger
to the button to call the nurse. Despite the horrible night, I told them to
remove the morphine because I'd rather stand the pain than have my brain
mushed like that, plus there are always plain morphine injections delivered by
humans instead of machines.
In fact, the next night I could feel the pain approaching and since it's
easier to suppress pain than it is to remove it, I asked for a sleeping pill
and a morphine injection. The injection did three things: first, it hurt so
much that my knee immediately became pain-free while nerve central was
occupied trying to figure out what the heck had just happened in my right
thigh. Second, it did not take three minutes to kick in, and it kicked in so
strongly that I just barely realised that my head was suboptimally positioned
on the pillow and the lights still on, but failed to do anything about it.
I did not wake once until breakfast. And third, I am glad to know that
morphine does actually (still) work. Pain is complex, fascinating, useful,
sometimes even pleasurable to some, but when you know the cause and you'd
rather make it stop, it's comforting to know that there are ways the
previous night had instilled some doubt in me.
From then it was all downhill and I left the hospital after eleven days on
Thursday, got by without pain medication the same day and off the sleeping
pills the next night. Two days later I was already racing around town in my
wheel chair:
By now I can actually walk again, albeit slowly, and even though I still
cannot lift heavy stuff or get my hands wet, my hands are a lot better; on 21
May, the casts shall be removed and I'll be able to bend my knee again, but it
may take up to a year to return to sports, such as running, to which I had
just become addicted. In fact, I can comfortably claim that I had just
reached an acceptable level of fitness just before the injury. Tough luck.
My mother has come to Zurich twice already to help unpack and with her
invaluable help, as well as the help of Gian-marco and several others, we are
actually almost done moving in. Ironically, it's actually quite annoying to
sit and watch others do your work; I would have helped as well, had the roles
been inverted, and yet I am still greatly indebted. Human relations tend to be
funny like that.
Let me end with two points: first,