Yes, I got notified that yet another patent which I contributed to almost ten years ago was awarded. This one has todo with visualization of network health information, that came out of a system I built while in AWS. (Patent 12,335,117 B2) I really wish I could say how many that is, but I honestly have never kept an accurate list. Searching the Patent office is challenging, but I think it is my 10th…
It has been months since I was awarded a patient, so I was happy to get the note another was awarded this week. (I say this very tongue in cheek, since I am always surprised) This one goes back about six years ago, when I was building a new way to route Amazon retail website customer requests to the correct backend fleet. I think this was four teams ago in my Amazon timeline, which has gotten pretty long in my 15 year tenure.
Patient title: Group-Based Treatment of Network Addresses
I’m getting teased at work for having so many patents right now, another one was awarded this week.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Mark Twain
Amazon has this thing where when you submit a patient application and it is filed (so all the internal reviews are complete), you get a clear puzzle piece. Then down the road if the patient office accepts and issues the patient, you get a second puzzle piece with the patient number on it and this one is blue.
I finally got my first blue puzzle piece a couple years ago, I just got another one at the end of 2020. Given that I’m still working from home, I didn’t ‘pickup’ the blue puzzle piece until a couple weeks ago. (I had to go into the office to get something from my desk) But I did take a couple minutes to add the new piece to my ‘puzzle wall’. I know people that have so many of these that it fills their office windows.
I also just got e-mail this morning that another one of the batch I submitted several years ago was issued.
I took the last two weeks of the year off, I only had to spend about 5 hours on Monday generating a report. (sigh)
Tonight I’m making cinnamon rolls for breakfast tomorrow, the only time I get to have them is when I make them myself. (dairy problem) So while waiting for them to bake, I have been cleaning out folders in gmail. I came across this link I sent myself and had to share. Well worth the 5 minutes to read it.
It is odd how the process works, the two patients which were issued back in July 2019 were apart five which were filed at the same time. You tend to file them in batches when they all come out of a new project development. I got notified another from that batch just got issued, 18 months later….
Patient 3: Visualization of Network Health Information
The next time I stop by the office (which I’ve seen twice in the last ten months), I’ll grab a picture of the cool blue puzzle pieces awards you get at Amazon when a patient is award. You get a clear puzzle piece when filing a patient.
So I started writing this post months ago, for some reason never published it and have since had a second patent issued. What is odd/weird, the second patent was ‘filed’ at least a year before the first. I know a lot of people feel patents are out dated and this is doubly true for software patents, but the 10 year old in me reading books about Thomas Edison still feels it is cool.
During my four week post post-op follow up with the doc, I got a bunch of really good news. I got a schedule for slowing adding weight to my right leg (50% that week, then 25% a week) and he increased the brace so I could sit up to 80 degrees and then 90 degrees the following week. On week six, I was allowed to ditch the crutches and brace completely. March 29th was six weeks from my surgery, when I woke up that morning I ditched the brace and move the crutches to the corner.
I had already been slowly adding weight bearing to my right leg for the last couple weeks. My PT guy pointed out that 75% weight bearing, I could stand without the crutches, because I was only going to put 50% on my bad leg. When I realized this, I went pretty quickly to ‘walking’ with the crutches. I was only really using them when going up and down stairs.
Rosie was pretty amazed to see me walking around on Tuesday, she said that I was walking normally and couldn’t believe it. I get tired still if I go for any long distances and need to take stairs slow, but so far so good. Back to work next week.
For those that don’t know, almost a year ago (August, 2017) I tore most of the hamstring from where it attaches to the bone on my right side. The doctors call it a “Proximal Hamstring Primary Tear”, unlike most other hamstring tears, this won’t ‘heal’ on its own. Diagnosing the whole thing took a long time, because it isn’t a common thing and you can’t really tell without an MRI. So I tore it in August 2017, did the RICE thing for six months with it never really getting better and in December 2017 jump through the hoops to get an MRI.
The first orthopedic surgeon I saw was pretty amazed that I wasn’t in more pain considering how bad the tear was, but because I was functioning, he was strongly recommending just changing my lifestyle and dealing with it. He (correctly) pointed out that the recovery from the surgery to fix is one of the worst he knows. I noodled on this for several months and did the PT he recommended to make everything around it as strong as possible, but ultimately I realized I was living with a time bomb in me. I finally went and got a second opinion, but this time I went to a specialist for sports (the same doc that fixes the Seahawks actually) orthopedic surgery. The second opinion was basically the same as the first, it is a really bad tear and the surgery recovery sucks, but he said if I do the PT, there is no reason I can’t go back to Tae Kwon Do.
So there was more hoop jumping, finally was able to schedule the surgery for April 17th. That was almost two weeks ago now and everything went great. The doctor was happy with the outcome.
This was the third major surgery I’ve had in the last seven years, the previous two times were on my knee. In the past I bounced back quicker, with fewer issues, but every bad thing I’ve been told about the hamstring repair is turning out to be true. The first problem was my boding restarting from the anesthesia. I have never gotten constipated, but this time it was four days before I finally had a bowel movement. I was doing all the things you were suppose todo, but nothing was moving. Luckily once things got restarted, everything has been fine since.
So I knew that I’d be on crutches for six weeks after the surgery and there is no weight bearing for at least the first four weeks, then you are suppose to get limited weight bearing and ultimately walking without crutches. But the restricted movement thing is really annoying. I have to wear a brace for six weeks, but it isn’t to ‘support’ my leg, it is there to make sure I can’t bend more than 36 degrees at the waist. Basically they don’t want any stress put on the hamstring, which means I can’t sit up. That means eating is a real challenge, even sitting here on my laptop is a big issue. I got a special stand that hold my laptop up and I have pillows supporting me, but I’m only good to be in this position for about an hour.
Then there is the location of the actual surgery. There is no nice way to put this, it is in the middle of my right butt cheek. So even if I could sit up, I can’t sit in a chair because of this four inch hole that is slowly growing back together. The first week was really bad, but last two weeks ago the pain backed off a little bit. I stopped taking the narcotics about six days after the surgery during the day and switched to Tylenol, only taking a pill at night. Then around the time I went in for the 10 day post-op check up, I stopped taking them at night. I still can’t ‘sit’ in a normal chair, but the hole is becoming less and less of an issue.
I had the first post-op appointment on Thursday last week and the PA said I was healing very well. She put some jerry-strips on, but said don’t worry if they fall off the next time I shower.