Anyway, you could find the new site at http://zinkolabs.com. It naturally has an RSS feed and I also created a new Twitter account: @zinkolabs. I’ll be releasing new versions of all of my apps under the new branding soon.

• Live tiles support. More will come around this but initial support allows you to select an event you want to show on the back side of the app’s tile.
• Recurring events. This has been a highly requested feature from users that makes it very easy to track events that recur every year (e.g., birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). Turn this on for any events you want to always have the next and last instance of it in your list of countdowns.
• Fast app switching support. Mango has lots of improvements on this front and this update of Calendar Calculator makes the most of them. Switching back to the app now should be nearly instantaneous in most cases.

In addition, there were a few minor bug fixes but nothing major or really all that noticeable. I’m going to work on updating Meds Tracker next and then will get back to the next set of popular customer requests for Calendar Calculator.

After a few failed attempts to find a solution by searching the web, I ended up just playing with the dialog and found that the “Print using black ink only” option shows up for specific types of printer paper and not others. I was using “Glossy Photo Paper” which turned out to be one of the types that the option is disabled for. I switched it to “Matte Photo Paper” which happily brought it back. The print quality was fine too so, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t any downside to printing on glossy paper with these two settings. Hope this saves someone some time and some money on wasted color ink cartridges.

I’ve updated the tabs below a couple of times now as it’s become a bit of a group project with a couple of folks over at prettytheworld.com. Some of which have worked hard at getting this song figured out and a new video has shown up that really helps in confirming things. Anyway, here’s my latest version which builds on mannion14′s off PTW.

Standard tuning with capo on 4th fret
Note: chord names below are not taking capo into account
VERSE:

e --------0---------------0---------------0---------------0----------
B -------------------------------------------------------------------
G ----2-------2---2---1-------1---1---2-------2---2---2-------2---2--
D --4---4-------4---2---2-------2---0---0-------0---0---0-------0----
A -------------------------------------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------------------------------------

CHORUS: Asus2 – Emaj – A/F# – Dsus2

    Asus2                           Emaj
e --------0---------------0---------------0---------------0----------
B -------------------------------------------------------------------
G ----2-------2---2---2-------2---2---1-------1---1---1-------1---1--
D ------2-------2-------2-------2-------2-------2-------2-------2----
A --0---------------0------------------------------------------------
E ----------------------------------0---------------0----------------

    A/F#                            Dsus2
e --------0---------------0---------------0---------------0----------
B -------------------------------------------------------------------
G ----2-------2---2---2-------2---2---2-------2---2---2-------2---2--
D ------2-------2-------2-------2---0---0-------0-------0-------0----
A -------------------------------------------------------------------
E --2---------------2------------------------------------------------

PRE-CHORUS (except before first chorus):

e --------0---------------0---------------0---------------0----------
B -------------------------------------------------------------------
G ----1-------1---1---2-------2---2---2-------2---2---2-------2---2--
D --2---2-------2---4---4-------4---0---0-------0---0---0-------0----
A -------------------------------------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------------------------------------

As always, if you’ve got any corrections, let me know in the comments section and I’ll update the post accordingly. And, again, thanks to Mannion14, Jlynall, and Andreas on prettytheworld.com.

I was very optimistic and excited about being able to see perfectly after dealing with glasses/contacts for 20+ years. That led me to interpret all of the descriptions of the cons and the recovery process in their most optimistic form. While I think it’s near impossible for a doctor to describe to a patient exactly how they’re going to feel during recovery, I certainly had a different experience from what I envisioned it being. My imagination just wasn’t capable of processing how it would feel to have extremely poor vision for as long as it ended up taking for me to fully recover.

I’m finally getting around to write this after weeks of slacking. I read countless posts describing a really large variety of recovery experiences and found each and everyone of them super helpful even though the majority were not all that encouraging. It kind of feels like I owe describing my experience for all of those still to go through similar experiences in the future. I’ll warn you it’s probably the longest post I’ve ever written but I remember reading some long ones when I went through this and appreciated the detail so I’m going to let it flow.

The actual surgery was really no big deal. It tooks about five minutes per eye which barely even gave me any time to build up any anxiety. I just focused on staring at the light the doctor asked me to stare at and my eyes had been numbed up so I could feel some pressure but nothing beyond that. It was definitely the case that no step of the actual procedure hurt at all. It’s just a bit strange to know and sort of see someone scrape your eyes with tools and definitely a bit weird to smell the burning from the laser but, again, it was all so quick that you didn’t have much time to dwell on anything.

Immediately after the surgery, my vision was much better than I had expected. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but I could totally get around on my own without any problems. I also didn’t experience any pain at all; the closest to pain was scratchiness that just felt like my eyes were really dry but that was just discomfort at most and totally manageable. The only thing I remember having a real effect on me was a pretty high sensitivity to light. I started to have to turn off lights in the house, dimmed my computer screens, and would have to turn away from bright scenes on the TV. I wore sunglasses everywhere.

The next day, I went in for a post-op check up and was still seeing reasonably well. I had some double vision in both eyes and neither were close to 20/20 but I could still do pretty much anything I wanted. The doctor took a look and said things were progressing well. She warned me though to not get too excited about that though as she expected things to get worse before they really improved.

It turns out she was right as I woke up the following day with worse double vision (or multi vision to be more accurate). The day after that things were even worse, plus I started to feel some of the pain she had warned might eventually pop up. The pain was a burning sensation and was at its worst as soon as I woke up in the morning. It took several minutes to gradually get my eyes to open up. It wasn’t terrible but certainly more than just discomfort at this point.

My surgery happened on a Thursday. The following Monday I got the “bandage” contact lenses removed. This was brutal and definitely qualified as pain. It was impossible for me to open my eyes, they just fought me the whole way and I’ve never experienced so much tearing. After a long while, I was able to open them up some which helped as they hurt the most when closed. Any eye movement when closed would lead to a scraping feeling against my eyelids. Not fun at all.

My vision at this point was pretty poor. Felt like looking through a pane of glass that had semi-clear grease spread across it. It was hazy and blurry with more and more double vision. The other downside was that I constantly felt my eyes now. It wasn’t unbearable but very noticeable and constant. The only thing that helped was using the “Refresh Plus” eye drops. They provided a cooling sensation and kept them from drying a lot which helped ease things along. I was using those drops at least every ten minutes if not more often.

The next day I woke up to a feeling of my eyelids being stuck shut. Used plenty of rewetting drops once again and got through it and decided to head into work. Looking back, this was just plain dumb. I got on the elevator with another person and realized I could not see well enough to determine if I knew the person or not even though they were just around five feet away from me. Looking at a computer screen was completely futile regardless of what resolution/zoom I used. This was pretty depressing and an example of what I mentioned earlier about how hard it is to appreciate how down this kind of thing can get you before actually experiencing it.

Got a ride back home after a few minutes and surrendered to the fact that it wasn’t going to be this week that I got to go back to work. These next few days were the worst as far as vision quality went. Starting aroundday 7-8, things started to show some subtle improvement. I was able to use the computer a bit, albeit only in high-contrast mode and at 200-250% zoom on a 30-inch monitor. To be clear, it’s painful to use a computer that way and far from productive.

Finally headed back to work on the following Monday (day 11). Used a lot of drops, had very blurry vision, but was at least able to participate in meetings and talk to folks. I was still having plenty of trouble recognizing people which was sort of surreal. Most people didn’t know what I was going through as I looked totally normal but I apologize to anyone who I didn’t wave back at or acknowledge.

Things fluctuated for days. Sometimes things got slightly better but then regressed. I drove for the first time 27 days after the surgery. I couldn’t really read street signs but was totally able to see well enough to drive safely on my usual route to work. It had been so long that I really just started to get used to not being able to see well. Eventually, I started wearing contacts again which felt amazing but not something I ever thought I’d need to do again (at least not so soon after). The contacts at least helped me totally get back to normal.

Almost five months had passed and while my vision had improved a fair amount, it was still far from perfect. I started to experience pretty bad headaches and also some scarier symptoms like the inner half of my vision in my left eye would gray out and gradually come back to me over ten seconds or so whenever I’d squat down and back up. I could also see distortions in my vision that corresponded directly to my heart beat; I could basically see my heart beat. I headed into my general practitioner who ran some tests but asked me to go see my eye doctor as well to see if it could be related to the PRK recovery. It turns out my eyes had been on steroid drops for longer than they could deal with and that led to the symptoms. She had me quickly taper off the steroid drops and the symptoms were pretty much gone a few days later.

I had been wearing contacts for some time at this point and had to get new ones every couple of weeks or so as my eyes healed and the prescription changed. About a week after getting off the steroid drops though, I realized I was watching TV in bed after taking off my contacts and could see better than I would have expected. I decided to try to go without contacts the next day and things were pretty good. About a week after that, my vision was perfect. Good, good times.

Long story short and to summarize, my eyes turned out to be very slow healers. I dealt with poor vision for almost five months though some of that time made much easier as a result of wearing contacts. The good news is it’s been over seven months now and both eyes are 20/10. Looking back, I feel like it was all worth it and can only appreciate how long it took when I read a rough journal I kept along the way.  Getting off the steroid drops ended up being the thing that led to things finally getting better. I’ll never know when the right time to have gotten off the drops would have been but I couldn’t be happier now. I’m also extremely happy to know I’m not going to have to go through a “touch-up” surgery that my doctor was pretty sure I’d have to undergo again after my eyes stabilized for a few months. Going through this all again for a second time would have really been a serious downer.

That’s my story and I hope it helps someone out there. If you have any questions, I’d be glad to answer them in the comments section below.

• Added a “Countdown Details” page that comes up when a user taps on one of their Countdown items. The page defaults to showing the number of years, months, weeks, and days to or since the event. The display is configurable though by simply tapping on the various cells to toggle them on/off. This is useful for those folks who’ve been requesting the ability to see just the number of weeks remaining, etc.
• I know of two users who lost all of their Countdown items as a result of the theft protection feature that wipes your phone after too many incorrect pin attempts. While I’m not providing a backup to the cloud feature, this version includes a new “share countdowns via email” feature that can be used to send yourself your countdown items for backup or to share them with a friend.
• It also included a couple other minor changes but nothing anyone would really notice.

My setup is simple but does have a few things that made the search a little bit more difficult. I have two displays my Windows 7 desktop: a Dell 30″ and an Acer 27″. My plan was to find a KVM that allowed me to connect my laptop (2011 MacBook Pro) to the Dell 30″ monitor. One of the first things I noticed when reading reviews for the myriad of KVMs there are out there is they’re still quite a flaky slice of hardware. I also noticed many people having trouble getting high resolutions working well; the Dell 30″ runs at 2560×1600 and it was a deal-breaker to not be able to get that on both machines.

I ended up picking up an IOGear 2-port Dual Link DVI KVMP & Multimedia Switch (quite the mouthful). It’s model number is GCS1782. Getting the video to switch was actually quite smooth and required little to no tinkering. The only mistake I had made was picking up an Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter instead of a Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter. Both machines were switching seamlessly and I couldn’t notice any difference in quality whatsoever. Pretty happy at this point.

The only thing left to do was to get my wireless keyboard and mouse also hooked up to the KVM. This took a bit more effort but also ended up working nicely. My main difficulty came from the fact that my keyboard is a Microsoft Natural Wireless Ergonomic Keyboard 7000 and my mouse is a Microsoft Explorer Mouse (wireless). I experienced all kinds of problems from no input coming from either the keyboard or mouse to erratic behavior (e.g., one key press on the keyboard would generate 5+ characters or the mouse would only move left/right but not up/down). After spending over an hour of trial and error with it, here are the steps that ended up working for me.

1. Turn everything off. Power down your computers and disconnect the AC Adapter on the KVM.
2. Connect everything which should be pretty straightforward. Make sure to connect the keyboard and mouse to the two USB ports on the back of the KVM that are specifically meant for them.
3. Connect the AC Adapter to the KVM.
4. Turn on the computer that’s connected to the currently selected port on the KVM and wait for it to boot up. Don’t worry about typing or using your mouse yet.
5. Switch to the other port on the KVM by pressing the button on the front of the actual KVM.
6. Turn on the other computer and wait for it to boot up all the way.
7. Now, try to switch KVM ports by using your keyboard’s hotkey: press the Scroll Lock key twice and then the Enter key. If it swapped, then that’s goodness. If it didn’t, you’re on your own (sorry).
8. Try using your keyboard and mouse on both computers now. If they seem to work then you should probably just be happy at this point and not follow the rest of the steps. Mine didn’t work at this point so continue if you’re also experiencing problems.
9. On your keyboard, press and hold the Num Lock key, press the ‘-’ key, and release the Num Lock key. This should put you into HSM (Hotkey Setting Mode) on the KVM. You won’t be able to see anything to tell you this but if you heard some beeps from the KVM you’re probably in good shape.
10. Press the ‘M’ key now which should toggle the Mouse Emulation Control mode on the KVM. At this point, I saw my Windows machine recognize the mouse and start working perfectly.

If things don’t work for you at this point, you might want to keep messing with the various HSM keys you can find in the manual. I can at least confirm it worked perfectly for me (so far, we’ll see if I experience any flakiness over time) and that it did require some tweaks in my case to make it work.

The first thing I tried to do was copy a bunch of MP3s from my computer to a USB stick. Like I’ve done on my wife’s car a ton of times, I’d then connect the USB key to the car and “record” the songs on to the car’s hard drive. Turns out that’s not supported; playing MP3s off a USB stick is, recording songs from it is not.

Okay, so that’s a downer and kind of lame but I should be able to copy MP3 CDs to the hard drive then. I already have a bunch of them that I used in my old car so it won’t even be all that much work to get the collection going. Well, that’s also not supported. Again, I can play MP3 CDs just fine; I just can’t record from them.

In the end, the only media I can “record” from seems to be Audio CDs. Thankfully, it works for both: original CDs or ones I’ve burned myself. Not the end of the world, but definitely a little disappointing. I still really like the MDX but I could have liked it a whole lot more had it not been as crippled as it seems to have been made.

Basically, the “fixed” schedule option allows you to maintain the same schedule you started with regardless of when you last took your meds. When using the “sliding” schedule option (which is what I’ve named the only scheduling model available in previous versions), the next time to take your meds is calculated based off of the last time you took them. This is still what some users may want for certain medications but the new “fixed” option should be really useful for others.

Note that you have to specify “fixed” or “sliding” per medication in your list and all of the meds you already had in your list will automatically upgrade under the “sliding” model. To have them use the new “fixed” option, you’ll need to edit each med, click on the “fixed” button, and set the next time you want to take that medication. The new fixed schedule will be based off that time from that point forward.

If you have any questions or feedback, use the “Send feedback” button in the app to reach me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I get a chance.