The Venting Thread

[apl68]

Does it feel glue-y or cotton-y inside? Or does it just hurt?

Do you/have you had any suggestions of diabetes in your family or yourself?

Any past injuries? New shoes? Change in exercise routines?

Can you massage out any tenderness or stiffness, or does it stay uncomfortable whether you do that or not?

Differential options exist.

M.

It works out fairly quickly when I get up on it.  I've hurt it a couple of times, but the last time was probably 13 years ago.  It hadn't given much trouble since healing from that.  We have little family history of diabetes, and that that was linked to obesity, which I am not.

It does seem like it could be correlated with a change in shoes.  Although I don't see why, since these fit well and the left foot has been okay.

[clean]

Interesting... I first though Plantar Fasciatis (spelling) , but that would feel like an ice pick in the bottom of your foot first thing in the morning.
The cure would be orthotics (real ones, not off the shelf, but the ones molded to your feet by a podiatrist).
They are not cheap, but they are transferred between shoes and your feel will thank you!  (I buy New Balance shoes as the inserts that come with them are easily removed to accept the orthotics. 

[mamselle]

PF is a possibility, too, yes.

But that is most often exacerbated by a weight gain, although the imbalances in shoes can also cause it.

Have you checked the soles of your feet for plantar warts?

Might or might not have the effect you're describing, but sometimes they're weird.

M.

[apl68]

The soles look normal, and I'm still my usual skinny self.  The foot usually feels okay in the morning.  Most of the pain occurs when standing up after sitting for a while at my desk.  It is concentrated mostly in the instep.

[mamselle]

Then, how old are the shoes you're wearing?

Insteps, heels and other external and internal parts wear at different rates/in different ways.

Sounds like an imbalance there, indeed.

Can you try either wearing a different pair of shoes entirely, or look at the wear patterns on the outer soles and insoles of your shoes, comparing R and L and looking at any other pairs that are more comfortable.

I go through a pair of Reebok or other walking shoes in about 6 mo. in a normal year. Lately, staying in more, it's gone for about a year, but once the external L heel on mine wear down, I know they're not long for this world (everyone has a different sensitivity--that's my (sorry in advance) Achilles heel, there).

And the place it hurts might not be the place the greatest wear is located. Our skeletons adapt to angular displacement along the trajectory of weight-bearing movement, so, for example, your neck can hurt because your lumbar area's out of alignment: the spinalis muscles pass the responsibility along reflectively, up and down the spine, trying to spread it out, until someone along the line says, "Ouch!"

The part that complains may be on the opposite side and the far end of the spine from where the imbalance is; same with your foot. The heel, if made to angle out too far, could be creating stress along the instep, either straining tendons/ligaments/muscles, or actually causing some kind of slight bone wear (even, in extended or extreme stress moments, tiny bone chips can be knocked off if they're continually bumping up against each other, and there are 14, I think, bones in that area of the foot, so there are a lot of spots for wear and tear, literally.)

So, look at the soles of your shoes, as clean suggested, or look closely at an old pair and compare the wear patterns with the new pair.

Sorry. Ask a dancer...

ETA: It's also possible there's something wrong in the construction of that one new shoe, or even in how they're now made--I had a new pair of shoes, of a type that I'd been getting for years, and it turned out they'd changed the last (basic form on which shoes are made) to accommodate those whose feet are now longer in my size range, and I had to start all over finding a different maker because the alignment just didn't work any more for my feet.

It might be good to do some movement work on both feet as well, just to strengthen them. Instep muscles can always use a bit of stretching and strengthening.

Either a good modern class or a beginning ballet class might be useful. Dance instructors understand feet and good ones help without hurting.

M.

P.S. Oh, and I came here to fuss about a stupid little 10.00 cord I got that apparently won't take the 'strain' of multiple photo transfers from my phone to my computer. I'm cat-sitting and now I'll have to stop back home to get the one I usually use, which works just fine for many, many more than this one does. I got enough off the phone to allow for what I needed to do on it, but I'll have to do a longer session later, when I can be more efficient.

It's always more fun solving other peoples' problems...

;--}

M.

[Harlow2]

Is it unusually hot where you are?

Super-heated dust which has risen near the ceiling (if that's where your alarm is) might do it.

Or is it due for a battery change?

M.

Makes sense.  These are hard wired and no battery chirps.

[Harlow2]

I've had smoke detectors go off from high humidity or a dramatic change in barometric pressure.

Wow.  I had no idea a pressure change could do that

[Harlow2]

This is comparatively small but really vexing, and I hope quickly remedied. 2:45 AM the smoke alarm nearest (but not in) the bedroom begins to scream, but after 4 seconds quiets. 2 minutes elapses, and off it goes again. Then a few more minutes, and another scream.  Finally, just as I can begin to drift off again an hour later, it goes off one more time.  This happened once a year ago, also in the middle of the night, and on several subsequent nights. and I promised myself I'd call the electrician to replace these now 29-year-old alarms.  Tomorrow I will do that.  fingers crossed for quiet tonight.

But what happens in the middle of the night to set it off? Dust? Errant bug?

That's a great idea. However,  I think the HOA requires hard wiring so electrician comes next week.

I've had baby spiders hatch in an alarm and set it off.
I would suggest just getting the sealed battery operated alarms (they last 10 years, no need to change the battery during that time). You don't need an electrician for that, which will save $$$. I'm not sure they even still make the hard wired ones, except for commercial use. When removing the old hard wired ones, just be sure to turn the power OFF at the breaker box.

[downer]

I'm currently going through a process of putting an online course into a format that pleases people in the online education department. It means spelling out everything in precisely the format they want. I guess I can see that doing this helps to check that everyone is doing what they should be doing. But putting things into a restricted format also means that it all gets simplified and just makes me exclude elements that enriched the course. Maybe the overall effect is positive for the school, but I doubt they have any evidence for that. I suspect ultimately the goal is to go for a U Phoenix model where all classes for a course are done according to the same prescribed format and the faculty don't have much control over what is taught or how it is taught.

I guess the reason universities don't do similar surveillance of classroom teaching is that it is just too difficult to scrutinize what goes on in the classroom.

It is starting to make me feel far less interested in teaching online.

[AmLitHist]

Downer, we went to mandatory Courses of Record (CORs) a few years ago for a lot of the online classes at my CC.  Back then, I was still engaged enough to rail about academic freedom.  Nowadays, though, I've adapted to the mindset of, "If you want to pay me $80K+ to be a grader, I'm OK with that." That's not something I'm particularly proud to admit, but with retirement coming up in the next 5-10 years, it's pragmatic.

I've also adopted those COR materials and classes for my F2F and virtual classes, with some modifications.  I think it's stupid on the college's part--it makes me an awfully expensive grader/babysitter--but if they're going to pay somebody to do it, it might as well be me, even though the courses are far less rigorous than what I used to teach.  And it certainly frees me up to pursue other things and stress a whole lot less.

Of course, I complain about having to go into each COR to customize the little that I can each semester (deadlines, my own syllabus and intro/contact information, and such), but that's kind of third-world problems stuff. An added bonus:  it cuts down dramatically on student complaints that I'm such a meanie:  I just point to the COR rubrics and such and say, "I'm sorry, but that's what the college's Course of Record requires."

[downer]

AmLitHist, once you retire, will they have any need to replace you with a full time person? Soon they will be able to use AI to do the grading. In the meantime, a part time person will do I expect.

Once it is all automated, the administrators overseeing the faculty will be out of a job too.

[AmLitHist]

AmLitHist, once you retire, will they have any need to replace you with a full time person? Soon they will be able to use AI to do the grading. In the meantime, a part time person will do I expect.

Once it is all automated, the administrators overseeing the faculty will be out of a job too.

Good point, of course. They're already not replacing lines of many who took the recent voluntary retirement offer, and adjuncts are increasingly being used for online/virtual courses, which used to be the purview of FT people when we designed our own.

I teach English Comp I and II (also the occasional lit class, far less frequently than I used to), so AI/machine grading is less of an option than for my friend who teaches Gen Psych--all those COR sections are online open-book/-note multiple choice tests, with no interaction beyond very basic discussion boards, and no video lectures or other "instructor required" components. 

Of course, the ranks of admin continue to flourish, like mushrooms after the rain....

[downer]

At some point, I suspect that with pressure of funding cuts, higher-level admins will start outsourcing the lower-level admin jobs to AI or cheaper people in other countries. And if the education is fully or mostly automated, students will no longer need to go to college. They can take the courses from home.

Maybe we will go back to just 10% of people actually going to university, like the old days.

[Larimar]

Had another dental surgery yesterday. Will be on a liquid/mush diet for 2 weeks. Ugh.

[AmLitHist]

Ouch, Larimar. Sending good thoughts.  (When I had to have all my teeth pulled a few years ago, I more or less lived on cottage cheese and scrambled eggs for about a month.)