I had been dreaming to write this post one day for over 1,5 years. I finally can. It's about how I cured tendonitis and about numerous strategies I have tried. My intent is to share the experience of going through different strategies and helping others with this condition realize their options.

Tendonitis is a tendon inflammation, which could be caused by various reasons, including repetitive actions, in my case - typing. Because of the inflammation, you start feeling pains in the affected area, whenever the action repeats (and later, even when you're resting) and it then spreads to the adjacent areas. So, in my case, it felt like my whole hand hurt and I couldn't really point to a specific place. In short, it hurts very much to type on a keyboard.

I remember how I found out something was wrong. I was deploying a project and it was a nasty deploy. Many things went wrong, I was very emotional about that, but I didn't realize it was not because of all the bugs we had. It was because my hand hurt. And so I started doing the research.

Here I should make a small note, that I was living in Russia at that moment, so I was very reluctant to immediately go see a doctor. Even a good paid clinic here could turn out to be a scam and you have to be very careful to choose the one with decent doctors.So I decided to postpone that (I now realize, I was probably wrong) and do the research myself.

Among numerous strategies, the first and most obvious one was rest. Easy to say. Can you imagine a programmer who can't write a code? So, well, I tried using my left hand only when typing and switched mouse to my left hand (yay, skill learned! not so difficult, btw, only takes a week to get used to). Needless to say, it put additional pressure on my left hand and actually decreased my productivity. The affected right hand, however, did not get better. It hurt, probably because I was still using it to do other stuff. And, any movement aggravated the visious cycle of inflammation.

Then I had this crazy idea, that, well, if I can't type with my hands, then maybe I should switch to my legs. I thought, if this guy could play a guitar with his legs, then typing should not be any more complicated. In reality, it actually takes quite a dedication to train everyday and I soon realized it will not be as easy as switching the hand on the mouse. I still think it'd be very cool to learn to do that: imagine you can type while drinking tea and holding a mouse. I bet the productivity would rise.

At that time I was living in Thailand so I thought it would be a good idea to give massage a try. Of course, not every massage in Thailand is good. In fact the majority of those, who claim they are professionals only finished 2 week "certified" courses, which is like claiming that you're a programmer if you learned to make websites in some visual editor. Luckily, I was told about a good place run by an old lady with more than 20 years of experience. And she was really good. At $4/hour you got out a new person. Only thing is, it made my hand feel worse.

One day I realized that the fact my hand hurts so much simply aggravates my procrastination. I couldn't work because I felt miserable. And then I decided maybe it was time to see a doctor. I was even ready to go for a surgery (which is a last resort in treating the condition) - I later realized that docs anywhere would probably be very reluctant to offer surgery. They'd rather drug you to death. And, well, doctors in Thailand are fun: they would easily prescribe you a bunch of stuff you never heard of before. And there I was, googling a prescribed medicine which side effects included severe intestinal bleeding in some cases. I decided not to give it a try and it seemed an especially poor choice given the not so huge benefits it promised (not very effective anti-inflammatory thing).

One of the things I googled and never tried before was ice patching. I was ready to try anything now, so I started by applying ice to my wrist, but ended up putting my whole wrist in a container filled with ice and cold water numerous times a day. It helped. I could type with my two hands again. The interesting side effect was that my right hand became very insensitive to cold. After a month of daily pratice, I could hold it in an ice tub for 2 minutes (as opposed to 10 seconds with my left hand). But eventually, I realized it stopped working and pain came back. And so did the frustration and procrastination.

This summer I gave it a try with a Russian doc and, while not saying anything new to me, he gave me a brochure with an ad of immobilization splints for the wrist. Somehow I felt I should try it. I bought one. In a couple of days I was back to the keyboard. I even bought a second one for my left hand, which started to show similar symptoms. This splint was a life changer for me. For a long time I thought my only option would remain surgery, yet this seemingly simple device cured most of the pain and put me back to work. A few pictures of this thing:

It basically immobilizes the wrist, but you can still do many things, including typing, holding objects and performing normal everyday operations. The only times I take those things off is when I'm at the gym or in the shower or otherwise using water.

What this story taught me, I guess, is that you should never stop. Not once through all this time I considered quitting to program or quitting the gym. It's an especially valuable lesson for those, who like me, are trying to make it on their own with their ideas and projects. I may not have created a successfull startup yet. But curing tendonitis sure is a success to me. Enough to keep moving.

I recently got scammed on Amazon - I bought an especially bad book on SEO. I hate when that happens, not just because I lose money, but because I waste my time and attention reading the first chapters. And even though I learn to be better at guessing which book is good or bad, it seems to me, that having a good checklist that I always follow would improve my chances. Hope it will be helpful for someone else.

1. Search Google and Quora for "Best book on...". Most times, you probably know the name of the subject you wish to explore. For instance, say I'm interested in body language. I could go on Quora, type in "Best book on body language" and find this question with a couple of great books in the answers: Ekman is indeed a leading expert on emotions and his book "Emotions Revealed" is a well-written work; Navarro's "What every body is saying" is a bit more pop, but still a good one. Here you go. Google results are a little less useful in this particular case, but are worth looking at. This doesn't always work, but when there are some people recommending it on Quora, the book already has good reviews on Amazon and you don't have to worry too much about the quality of those reviews. I expect this to change as Quora community gets more affected by spammers. The idea for all times is to seek reviews in places where spammers have not put their leg yet.

2. Check reviews on Amazon (5 steps). Now, let's say you couldn't identify a good book from Quora or Google. You can now try Amazon, typing in your subject. So the best books are at the top of the search results and you click on one of them.

• Read the negative reviews first. It's a good technique that allows you to see if the book is a scam - the content is copied, too generic or just pure trash. I've never seen anyone written "it's a scam" as a review for a really good book. People who don't like good books usually disagree emotionally, but they don't claim this book is a scam.

• See if there are any 3-4 star reviews. The book on SEO I recently purchased had all 5-star reviews at the time and I was stupid enough not to pay attention to that. Evidently, those reviews were from the same guy under different accounts.

• Read carefully through a couple of good reviews, see if they are too generic. A good-good review is the one that tells you something about the book. Like who would most likely benefit from it, what are the most important points discussed in the book etc.

• Check reviewer's account and his other reviews. This scam book I bought had reviewers that only posted their reviews for 1 or 2 other books, in many cases the review was copypasted. Because it was too generic, it worked for both books.

• Check if a good review is from a user who actually bought the book. Amazon marks those reviews as Amazon Verified Purchase.

3. Beware of kindle-only books. Because it is becoming increasingly easy to publish ebooks, you should be especially aware if a book has no paper copy.

4. Check who's the publisher. If it's O'Reilly or someone else famous, you're not likely to get an awful book. Until the situation with quality control for self-published ebooks changes, publishers will remain one of the lines of defenses from poor writing.

5. Google the book and the author. If I'm still not convinced, I'd google the author and the book. If the book has 20 5-star reviews on Amazon, there must be at least a couple of blog posts mentioning it, right? Not so for the scam-books.

6. The importance of cover is forgotten. If a book has a good publisher, it will invest in a good cover. If a book is self-published the author usually has 2 options: either have a crappy cover or a very simple cover. I'd trust the second option. A good example of it would be "Start Small, Stay Small" by Rob Walling.

7. See if there's an audio version. You don't have to listen to it. Just check Audible for an audio version. I'd give a book some bonus points if it does have one.

8. See if it's the first edition. Obviously, books which have multiple editions are more likely to be useful.

9. Always download free sample for Kindle and at the very least check the table of contents. Then, make it stay there for a while. Don't rush into buying it.

Would love to hear some other tips. It really feels like hard work to choose a good book and I'm looking to make it easier.

This post is not about tattoos, but I will start with them. I personally dislike them. Smaller ones, big ones, don't matter. I think there's nothing more beautiful than a clear pure skin. However, many people have tattoos. Many people whom I'm interested in have them. And you never ever make a mistake of telling them, even with your best intentions, that you dislike tattoos. Why? Because they can't change the fact they have it. They may dislike it themselves, but they can't just remove it completely and easily.

And so, my point would be, that it's probably not a very good idea to tell people about something they can't change. You are not validating them. You're only invoking the negative feelings amongst which there probably would be some sort of implicit anger directed at you. And the words you've spoken don't make them happy in the long run.

I easily said to a person "Listen, you can't actually do anything valuable, because you have no skills and knowledge, so you can't fully understand what I'm talking about". Because I knew that though it may hurt at the moment, it's in this person's power to change this in the long run. And as mean as it may sound, it has to be said sometimes (in a very friendly manner, of course). However, I wish I kept my mouth shut about the tattoo. And I wish I could tell one thing from another more often.

So I've been browsing okcupid again and in some girl's profile I read "do not message me if you think rape jokes are funny". That's interesting, I thought. Because, honestly, I don't have any specific opinion about rape jokes. Maybe some of them are. But, if you ever try to tell a rape joke to a victim you're probably be the biggest asshole in the world, even if it is indeed hilarious. So it seems that the degree of fun of the joke doesn't matter at all.

My assumption would always be that many jokes may potentially hurt someone. Sometimes you can easily tell if it would hurt the person - like some of the race jokes, for instance. In other cases, as in religion or profession jokes, it may be harder to guess. And so, the harder it is to determine whether a joke is appropriate, the more cautious you would have to be.

Truth is, people who say that racist or rape jokes are totally okay just don't feel insecure about being subjects of those jokes. However, every person has something to feel insecure about. Once you make a joke about it, even if it's perfectly acceptable by the community morals, you're crossing the line. And that is what should be taught to people, not that some sorts of jokes are a taboo and others are not.

What kind of education would you like for your children? When you think about it that way, it makes even more sense than when it's only about you. When I have children, I don't want them to get good education. I want them to have the best one. And I just can't accept that the current educational system is the best, because I believe there's always a room for improvement. And there are certainly ideas out there that deserve to be tested.

Kids at school spend a significant amount of time studying and reading literature. I wouldn’t be much wrong if I say that a lot of them simply do not read the books included in the curriculum and cheat this way or another. Bad kids, maybe? I don’t think so. Seems more like a poor curriculum, boring books that teach them nothing about the real life. Now some may say they actually do and that’s understandable, but I would argue that. I believe teaching literature should be partly replaced by the essential subjects that contribute to the quality of life. I'm not saying fiction is useless but there are certainly things out there that are much more important.

“Passion” is the word you most likely will find in 90% of the programming job descriptions. And most job applicants will tell you how passionate they are about programming. They may even be sincere. Yet they are wrong or it's simply a hypocrisy and I will prove this to you.

Let's start with the word passion itself and remember what does it mean in relationship. In most of the cases it means this feeling of excitement about the other person that does not last long. So, unless it evolves into something more stable, like friendship-love kinda thing – it's usually gone. And it's a good thing, don't you think? It gives you some space – otherwise you'd be totally obsessed with it forever and get nothing else done in your life.

Now let's get back closer to the programming jobs. I assume, it'd be fair to argue that people mean something else by passion there. What I believe they want to say is that a person should care about the quality of the code he produces, about solving difficult tasks, about user experience and about the product in general. And it's taken for granted that a person would act that way in any circumstances.

What companies and job applicants forget, when talking about passion is that a huge part of it depends on the environment and conditions. Even the most passionate person would get bored when facing the environment he doesn't enjoy and the project he doesn't like. And nobody knows for sure if you're going to enjoy it or not, until you take the job. Let me even suggest, that a significant number of programmers wouldn't enjoy it at an extent companies would want them to. They also forget that passion goes away. Unless passion is replaced by something more valuable, like hard-working habits and commitment – nobody's happy.

It's understandable when companies seek for passionate programmers. That's because they want the job done well. And though nobody will ever tell you that, what they're really doing by this, is using people's sincere feelings for their own profit. I believe it's not the same as just paying people for their skills and time, it's slightly worse. But not to worry, they all get what they deserve. Passion-mode does not last long and eventually companies are left with what this person really is.

Fuck that.

Nobody's getting my passion, cos it's not for sale.

Follow me on twitter, I will not ask you to be passionate: http://twitter.com/romansnitko