Free and Easy Photo Retouching

Blog Notice: I wrote this originally as a Google Doc and then pasted it to my blog. The formatting on this blog version is a bit off from the copy/paste differences. I'm putting it here to make it easier to find when searching Google. If you want to see the better-formatted version use this public Google Doc.

I wrote this for a friend who was new to image touch-ups. I’m making the document available to anyone who wants it. It was written for Gimp 2.8. Only a few items are here to get her started, I’m not covering Gimp in depth.  

Table of Contents:

1 through 4 … Initial Gimp downloading/installing/setup

5 and 6 … Opening the original image

7 … Cleaning up the Background

8 … Tuning the Levels / white balance

9 … Hints on making colors look more accurate

10 … Saving your image

Addendum … Comparing the results and an example of HDR Toning

1. Install “Gimp” (GNU Image Manipulation Program … the free software world’s answer to Photoshop)
   
   … download it for Mac from http://download.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.8/osx/gimp-2.8.14.dmg
   NOTE: This is a direct link and will change as new versions come out. If this link has stopped working, click on the Windows/Linux link below and click on the “Show Other Downloads” link and look on that page for a link to a “.DMG” installer to find the Macintosh version.
   
   … download for Windows & Linux from http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
   
   NOTE: Your Mac must be running OSX version 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”) or newer. If you are not, I can find some alternatives but it might be a bit difficult. 10.6 came out in 2009. Anything from 10.6 through 10.10 will work.
   
2. Copy the image to your Mac. You can do this any number of ways including email ing from your phone.

3. Start Gimp
   
4. You will want to make sure you see the Toolbox as it is the easiest way to find the most commonly used actions. It looks like this -->
   
   
   If you do not see this somewhere on your screen (Gimp uses multiple windows on most computers, the Toolbar will probably not be part of the main window but a second floating window), press Control+B (on Windows, if that doesn’t work on Mac, go to “Tools” and select “Toolbox” or “New Toolbox”).
   

5. Open the image (you should be able to drag and drop it into the Gimp window or use the “File” / “Open” command).
   NOTE: For this tutorial I used this image (copyright 2015 Kay O’Neil, all rights reserved):
   
   
   When DONE with all steps in this document we will have:
   
6. When opening the image, it may ask you if you want to convert the image to RGB. If so, click “Convert”. For web posting this is the best option anyway. If not asked, don’t worry about it.
   
   NOTES:
1. I’m going to try and give keyboard shortcuts, but I use Gimp on Windows. If a keyboard shortcut doesn’t work and you can’t find the tool I am speaking of in the tool palette, just let me know which step didn’t work and I’ll write more details on how to find it.
   
2. Don’t get frustrated. Any time you make a mistake you can easily undo it by pressing “Control+Z” or going to the “Edit” menu and choosing “Undo” at the top of the menu. You can undo multiple steps. If you go too far back you can “Redo” them with the “Edit” menu as well, just like a word processor.
   
3. You may not need to do every step below for every image, this just gives a list of things to consider. Feel free to skip some steps if, for example, your background is already how you want it.

7. Background Cleanup: (if you don’t care about cleaning up the background, skip all of the steps in this item and go to Levels, if you are careful with making sure your subject is on a clean background you often won’t need these steps)
1. SIMPLE: If you want to remove the  background so that it is purely on white, there are a few things you can do:
1. Click the Rectangle Select Tool (top-left of the Toolbox, looks like a dashed rectangle) and drag it around the parts of the image you want to KEEP like this (the dashed rectangle in the image below is from using the Rectangle Select Tool to draw the rectangle):
   
   
   
2. CROP the image at this point to remove most of the area we want to get rid of by going to the “Image” menu and clicking “Crop to Selection” to get this:
   
3. REMOVE THE SELECTION RECTANGLE by pressing Shift+Control+A or by using the “Select” menu and choosing “None”
   
   
2. ADVANCED: If you have an image like this one that can’t be completely cropped, and don’t want to retake the photo (or can’t), you can remove the rest of the background with this process. It is more complicated than just cropping, but not extremely difficult once you’ve done it a time or two.
1. Using the Rectangle Select Tool again (hashed rectangle in the Toolbox), select all of the background you can safely remove without affecting the subject of the image:
   
   
   
2. Click the Clone Tool in the Toolbox or press “C”. It looks like a small rubber stamp. In the Toolbox it is in the left column 15 down from the top.
   
   The Clone Tool will allow you to copy one part of the image over another like a brush. The selection we made protects the rest of the image. To do this we need to tell the Clone tool which part to copy from.
   
   Until you have told it where to copy from the tool will show that it isn’t ready with this:
   
   
1. To define the area to copy from … Press and HOLD the Control key and move the mouse slightly (keep holding the Control key). The disabled circle shown above should disappear and you see an empty circle like this:
   
   
2. WHILE STILL HOLDING Control … click the spot shown below:
   
   NOTE: Click a very tiny bit to the LEFT of the Rectangle Selection (above the Rectangle Selection, as shown, but very slightly to the left). If you click too far to the right, you won’t have enough room in the copy area to cover the selection. You can do this over if you need to.

3. Now that you have told Gimp where to Clone from, you can just paint over the background area to remove. Don’t try to fill the entire rectangle, just paint over the area we want to remove. (note: this is the simplest way to do it, there are better methods but they get progressively more complicated):

   Notes:
1. There is still a small area on the left to deal with later, but you just repeat the process above after we’re done with this area
2. Notice that the selection rectangle is still there. This prevents you from accidentally painting over the subject.
   
   
4. See the area in the rectangle that looks a little different? We want to smooth that out using the Heal Tool … luckily it works much like the clone tool. Select the Heal Tool from the Toolbox or just press “H”.
1. Like with the Clone Tool, we have to define an area for Gimp to use for healing. In this case you can click the exact same spot while holding the Control key that we used in the Clone Tool image above.
2. Once you’ve clicked the anchor spot, use the mouse like a paintbrush and just go over the border line that you can see in the Rectangle Selection above. When done the image should look like this, which is good enough for this region.
   
   
   
5. Repeat the above steps for the small area to the bottom-left of the subject. For a quick repeat of the process:
1. Rectangle Select the area to remove (avoiding the shadowed area, which we will deal with in the final step for cleaning the background):
   
   
2. Clone Tool (hold Control and click where the circle is shown):
   
   
3. Use the Clone Tool (you don’t need to reselect it, you already chose it in the prior step) to paint over the background area:
   
   
4. That actually matches up pretty well, but you can also go over it with the Heal Tool at this point to be sure. All done it will look like this:
   
   
6. DELICATE: Now to get rid of the remaining portion that is couched in shadows from the subject. You aren’t going to get this perfectly as a beginning but it will be acceptable for now. The process is actually pretty simple.
   
1. REMOVE THE SELECTION RECTANGLE by pressing Shift+Control+A or by using the “Select” menu and choosing “None”
2. Clone Tool … control-click anywhere on the plain background area near the tail (we want to camouflage the rest of the bad background, but without more serious editing it won’t completely disappear, just be less noticeable). Then very carefully click the Clone tool so that the edge of the tool doesn’t go over the tail but does on the background on the bottom on either side of the tail. Done properly you will see this and we are ready to do color adjustment with Levels:
   
   
3. Levels … this section will adjust the color levels of the image so that they look more vibrant. This section is VERY EASY and I would have preferred to do it first, but if you were going to fix the background the colors will adjust better if done after editing the background.
1. If you have a selection made, REMOVE THE SELECTION RECTANGLE by pressing Shift+Control+A or by using the “Select” menu and choosing “None”
2. Go to the “Colors” menu and select “Auto” -> “White Balance” and you’ll get this:
   
   Doing the Auto -> White Balance should be the same as doing:
   “Colors” -> “Levels” -> “Auto”
   
   
4. OPTIONAL: There are many other ways to tune the image with the menus under “Colors”. It is up to you at this point to start figuring out what you feel is the most accurate image. Some things you can play with to adjust the image:

   
   
1. Colors -> “Levels” … will allow you to fine tune the levels of light and dark in the image. Play with the various things in this menu to see what it can do, hit “Cancel” if you want to go back to the Auto White Balance (or just “Undo” with Control+Z if you OK it and don’t like it).

   
   
2. Colors -> “Hue and Saturation”

1. You can make washed-out colors more realistic by sliding “Saturation” a bit to the right. Be careful, just a little too much can make the image look cartoonish.

2. You can brighten/darken the entire image while preserving color saturation by sliding “Lightness” a bit to the point where you like it.

3. Mix and match the above until you hit the spot you like. You probably don’t want to bother with “Hue”.

10. Don’t forget to save your image :) Use the “File” menu.
    
1. To save it to a file that you can post on the web/Facebook, use “Export as” and save it as a JPEG (just end the name with “.jpg”), PNG (end the name with “.png”), etc or use the “Select File Type (By Extension)” (just click the + sign to open up the list) and select the format by hand. For most cases JPEG or PNG is going to be best. JPEG will be a bit smaller size for a photo like this, PNG will preserve more detail and is better for editing it again later.
   
2. If you want to keep editing an image that has some extra things like layers and such (not covered in the above information), you can use “Save As” to save in the native Gimp format.

Addendum: Results:

This image used “Colors” -> “Auto” -> “White Balance” combined with “Colors” -> “Hue and Saturation” with Saturation bumped only to +5 and Lightness bumped up by +20:
 

Compared to the original

          

Addendum: HDR

The following image is a fake HDR image using Photoshop (not free) HDR Toning. A real HDR image would look more accurate and wouldn’t have the “glow” effect (unless you wanted it) but this gives you an idea of what an HDR photo might look like of the subject. Many cameras, even fairly inexpensive ones, can do limited HDR built-in. I’m not suggesting this is necessary, but it is something to consider. If you want to get very very complicated or install filters you could achieve the same with Gimp but it goes beyond the scope of this quick start. I’m just including it as I briefly discussed it with the person I wrote this document for.

Note: true HDR requires information that isn’t present in a single image, cameras that do HDR directly take a series of photographs at different exposures and merge them. You can also do this with a standard camera by taking multiple shots with high, normal and low exposures and merging them in Gimp or Photoshop. This takes a lot of time and based on the amount of effort it takes, if this is the type of photo you would like, I recommend looking at buying a camera with a good HDR function (many cameras do poor HDR). Some smart phones do HDR as well. However to get the truly rich HDR pictures you see on many photo sites, you need to do the merging in separate software to tune all of the details.

Installing Clockworkmod and root for the Lenovo A10-70 / A7600-f / A7600f

UPDATE 8/31/2018:
Well, I turned the tablet back on after a couple of years. I should have done it a couple of months later because around that time custom ROMs for this tablet started creeping out on XDA. 

You should probably IGNORE my old post here and instead go look at these links (and search for newer ones since this update).

1. Aim OS Nougat 7.1.2 (this is the one I ended up trying)
1. Aim OS recently went into dead mode, no longer making ROMs, but the existing ROM isn't affected. 
2. Detailed install instruction post (should also work as a base for installing the others listed here)
2. LineageOS Nougat (7.1.2) 
3. Resurrection Remix Marshmallow 6.0.2 ... may have performance benefits over CM13
4. CM13 Marshmallow (6.x) on the tablet
5. Original OEM ROM for 4.2 (just in case you need to revert) ... instructions. And a link to the USB drivers (for your Windows machine to communicate with your tablet). 

ENJOY! I won't be back to this post as the custom ROMs definitely do a better job of carrying this tablet farther. Read through the threads for the ROMs that interest you to see if there are any gotchas. There are apparently some other ROMs for the same chipset out there (MT6582) but may not be tested on this specific tablet. If you want to look for even more ROMs here is a place to scan. 

UPDATE 9/22/2016:

I know this guide has been linked a bit from places like XDA. At some point a long time ago I lost root on this device after an OTA update and, really, it wasn't worth it for me to go through the various steps again. However tonight I found a simple way to get root back on the device (I'd started using it again as my phone took a dive).

NOTE: I'm unsure whether this abbreviated process will work for your A10 / A7600F without having been rooted with the original longer method detailed below. Chances are 50/50 that something will go wrong if you attempt to do this updated portion first. However it may help those folks who have rooted, updated, and then lost root.

Revised Steps are simple:

•  Download Kingo Root (not King Root, that failed) APK version for Android. 
•  Run Kingo Root. 
• If it fails, reboot, and try again (mine failed the first time)
• Assuming Kingo Root worked the second time (if not, see the original detailed steps below) ... DON'T REBOOT yet (when I did this, the root disappeared, so I had to run Kingo Root a 3rd time)
• Install a Root Checker and verify root access
• Install (first time) or uninstall and re-install (updating is fine if yours was out of date) SuperSU by Chainfire (other SuperSU may or may not work, Chainfire worked for me)
• REBOOT
• Re-run Root Checker to verify root access (don't run Kingo Root before this) ... it should be using SuperSU  to grant root, NOT Kingo
• If rooted, uninstall Kingo Root
• REBOOT
• Re-run Root Checker to make sure SuperSU continued to work after removing Kingo Root.

...

ORIGINAL STEPS:
Just some notes that hopefully someone else finds useful. I bought a Lenovo Idea-series A10-70 (also known as the A7600-F) tablet for myself and my parents bought one for my grandparents. I wanted to get ClockwordMod recovery installed on them both just in case they did something bad on theirs and so I could play with ROMs if any new ones ever come out for it (I doubt they will, the Mediatek 8121 chipset seems like it never got developer love, but you never know). I also wanted to be able to remove some of the default apps that the grandparents will never use.

These notes may help you get there if you're having problems on the same or very similar device. The biggest issue I had was that all of the other instructions (linked) were in Russian or French. The other issue was the need for a different USB driver during pre-boot to get the flashing program to work.

NOTES:

• I'm not storing these files online for the future, so if they have disappeared I'm sorry, but please don't ask me for online copies.
• These instructions are for the WiFi-only version of the tablet. At one point I had found a CWM Recovery Scatter file for the 3G version. I can't promise that this works for all versions of the A10-70. Mine is the 16GB WiFi-only version. Even if you have this same model these instructions are AT YOUR OWN RISK. And doing all of this will VOID your warranty. [caveats done]. 

1. DO NOT UPGRADE TO ANDROID 4.4 IF YOU HAVEN'T YET unless you KNOW that you won't have the reported WiFi issues (I was lucky, I didn't). See later on in these notes for Android 4.4 upgrade notes. 
2. Make sure you have a data-capable USB cable. Yeah, the one that came with mine doesn't seem to do anything but charge. Data functions are removed. But if you're seeing this at all you probably have one somewhere. 
3. Make sure you have the main Android SDK USB device drivers installed. If you can't communicate with the device via "adb devices" to see the device. You can get them from here. Once you've downloaded and extracted them you need to edit 'android_winusb.inf' to add these lines:
   
   ;Lenovo A7600
   %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_17EF&PID_7731&MI_01
   
   (courtesy this post)
   
   NOTE: If you have a 64bit system, and who doesn't, make sure to add them to the [Google.NTamd64] section, not the 32bit [Google.NTx86] section. 
4. Plug in the device while it is booted up. Make sure you've turned on USB Debugging. Then open your Device Manager and you should see the USB device marked as missing a driver. Right-click it to install the driver from where you extracted it for step 2. 
5. Grab this file to get the Mediatek MT65XX Preloader driver. Extract it somewhere. No need to edit another .ini file. 
6. Power off the tablet and unplug the USB. Then plug it back in while it is powered off. During this time it will load just enough to give you a charging screen. Keep Device Manager open, watch for the MT65xx Preloader device to appear with the missing driver icon. It will go away quickly so make sure you right-click it to "Update Driver" as soon as it appears. As long as you start the driver update dialog before it goes away you can complete this step fine. 
7. Now you can follow the instructions here. I've verified that the ClockworkMod Recovery image in this link (from the instructions post) does work on my A10-70.
8. Summary of the instructions (I didn't come up with these, I'm just giving them to you in English with notes from my experience):
•  Extract the files from the link above (CWM Recovery Lenovo A7600F.zip). This uses SP Flash Tool to do the updating
• note: to get the MT65XX Preloader driver you downloaded a different version of SP Flash Tool for it. Ignore that SP Flash Tool, just use the other zip file to install the MT65XX driver and then delete that version of SP Flash Tool. 
• Open the extracted directory 'CWM Recovery Lenovo A7600F' and then go into 'SP_Flash_Tool_v3.1336.0.198'. 
• Right-click on 'Flash_tool.exe' to run it as Administrator (might not be necessary, but I seem to need to run a lot of Android flashing tools as Administrator and it is frustrating to realize after many attempts not doing it that this was what stopped things from working). 
• Click 'Scatter-Loading' and load 'MT6582_scatter_LVP0-WIFI-ROW.1.016.01.txt'. You can see a video of this process (from the earlier linked post).
  
  NOTE: 
• If it worked properly, then none of the items in the list of images (PRELOADER, MBR, etc) should be checked. Before I had the USB drivers installed properly I was seeing ALL of them checked before I had selected them. If you see that you may be having similar issues.
• Double-click on the '[ ] RECOVERY' item to open the file selection dialog.
• Select 'CWM Recovery.img' and press "Open".
• If your tablet is powered on, power it off.
• If your tablet is connected to your computer via the USB cable, unplug it. 
• In the "Smart Phone Flash Tool" window, click the 'Download' button. 
• It will probably tell you 'Not ALL images are correctly loaded ... '. Click 'Yes'. The status bar should show "Searching" in the 3rd column. 
• Plug the USB cable into the tablet but don't press any buttons. 
• The Smart Phone Flash Tool window should almost immediately begin downloading the ClockworkMod Recovery image and end with a big green "O" for "Download OK". 
• Close the green "O". Close the Smart Phone Flash Tool program completely. 
• Unplug the USB cable. The tablet should still be powered off. 
• Power up by pressing 'Volume Up' AND the Power/Lock button on the side at the SAME time. You can release them both once you see the "Select Boot Mode" screen. 
• On "Select Boot Mode" it will PROBABLY already be on the [Recovery Mode] option, if not, use the 'Volume Up' button to scroll to that option and then press 'Volume Down' to select it. 
• You SHOULD see Clockwork Mod. The first line will be 'CWM-based Recover ...'. If so ... you got it!
• NOTE:
  Doing the next list of steps ended up breaking the root I had working with Kingo root. You may want to SKIP the next few lines and just use your Power/Lock button to shut off the tablet from CWM and then use Power/Lock again to reboot normally. However I'm not sure if this will have issues with CWM later on. See notes at bottom. 
• NORMALLY you would do this:
• Use the 'reboot system now' option to boot your tablet up. 
• Clockwork Mod can disable the 'recovery flash' option. My first tablet didn't need this but go ahead and do it. It just makes sure Lenovo doesn't overwrite your but go ahead and use the Volume keys to arrow down to this choice and hit the Power/Lock button to select it. 
• The next screen allows you to root the device. Go ahead and do that now. Saves us from needing to bother with Kingo root (which did work for me when I did it on the first tablet). 
• Done with the basics :) If you skipped using CWM's root then you can use Kingo root to root the device. 
9. If you want Android 4.4 and haven't updated it yet, do your System Update process over and over (ie, do a System Update and let it reboot, then check for another one, there were 4 or 5 for me) until it says you are up to date. More likely than not Android 4.4 is the newest version this tablet will see. It is not supported by Lenovo any longer and other projects like Cyanogenmod have not adopted this model.
   
   HOWEVER:
• SOME people have had serious WiFi issues with this version of Android. I don't, it works fine with my Linksys EA6500 router, but that doesn't mean it will work fine with yours. My guess is the Mediatek WiFi driver is unstable with SOME routers in Android 4.4. If you update to 4.4 and have this problem, you'll need to go find instructions for downgrading to 4.2. I didn't think to make a backup of Android 4.2 (which came on the unit when I bought it in October 2014) so I don't have one for you. 
• There is a very REMOTE chance that Cyanogenmod might support this in the future, or do enough work to allow a developer to do so. Cyanogenmod has been experimenting with support for the "Android One" phone, which is based on the Mediatek MT6582 chipset. I'm not sure if the MT8121 chipset will be close enough to matter and people would need to create configuration files to support the tablet's other hardware (screen size at the least). However given that the A10-70 uses the MT65xx Preloader ... perhaps they are similar chipsets
10. ROOT NOTE: using the ClockworkMod Rooting process broke my SuperSU install that had already been done on the first tablet. Titanium and other utilities couldn't gain root. I used Kingo Root at this point but it did not get back to a usable Root state. I WAS able to use 'su' while in the adb shell, but not with the other apps.  The first time you run Kingo it may take a lot of steps to get things running but it does work in this combination. Once that is done I still have some issues. I ended up doing the following to fix this (test between each step to see if you fixed it along the way, I did enough weird things getting to the fixed point that I'm not sure what was needed):
• If you've done something that disabled root, like telling CWM to root during reboot, just download this update.zip file found on the french post linked earlier and install it from an external SD card. It will root you and install SuperSU which can then be updated from the Play store.   
11. Install whatever root tools you might want (Titanium Backup, ROM Manager, SuperSU, Busybox, etc). 
12. Do a backup of your customized image and save it somewhere. 

Disability Kicked My Butt

Note: This is a public blog posting of something I put on Facebook ... I'm mostly posting this in case someone is searching for similar information on conditions they are suffering from and ESPECIALLY to help people considering Epidural Steroid Injections / ESIs for Spinal Stenosis. Find the section near the end talking about Arachnoiditis and know that if you are suffering from Stenosis I personally recommend NOT doing injections. The risk is small but once you've got it you are stuck with it. The closer the injection comes to your spinal cord the greater the chance of something going wrong.

If you have stopped by and want to ask any questions related to my conditions please leave a comment or email me

Well it is official. Many of our close friends and family know, but plenty of others do not. I'm "Retired". Or rather I'm on Disability for the forseeable future (and have been since January 2013). Today marks the end of my 18th month on Disability benefits from Cisco and I've been contacted by Cisco to let me know they're putting my severance letter together and closing out my HR stuff. A heart-felt thanks to Cisco for being best-in-class with regards to how they treat their employees (and a giant sigh of relief that I went on Disability exactly on the day that, had I not, I would have been transferred to Belkin ... which provides noticeably less benefits in cases like this). Absolutely no sarcasm in that, Cisco treated me excellently.

While the circumstances are unlucky no matter who they happen to, I have been extremely lucky in the process. I have income protection insurance through Cisco that covers about 50% of my income at the time of termination (technically 67% of my base, but didn't count my bonuses/commissions, stock grants or health insurance costs). Darien and I have been able to make that workable for a year now and soon she'll be seeing positive income from her new business so we are optimistic that we'll continue to be comfortable. It is definitely a huge step back from what I was making and that is a large part of why we chose to sell our huge house in the mountains and move. After multiple back surgeries over the years with significant complications (I'll give a summary at the bottom of this for the medically curious) I just can't keep up with even a desk job, even after investing in ergonomic equipment and having a home office for a decade. And all of that plane travel I did for a couple of decades? Absolutely no way. I got to the point where I needed 12 hours laying down after a plane flight just to relieve pain and let my legs work properly again. 

The luck comes in to play that my conditions are recognized as permanent and disabling without my needing to fight constantly to prove it. MetLife approved my benefits through retirement age without my even asking (I was going to, but I didn't need to) last November. The government recognized the same thing and approved my SSDI through retirement age in February (I don't see additional income from SSDI as it just lowers what MetLife pays each month to meet my income insurance level but in a year it will provide me with Medicare). I'll still need to be examined every few years just for them to cover their policy requirements. And maybe someday I'll get REALLY lucky and they'll find a magic bio-solvent that will remove the scarring and nerve tethering in my lower spinal cord and I'll be able to return to work. 

Until then I'll be continuing to work on things here and there. I might take some contract work. I won't likely see any additional income from it since it would need to pay me more than my income protection insurance provides ... instead if I get paid by contract work it will just come out of my disability payments. But it will help me stay mentally active and trained on skills. One project I'm definitely going to be doing will be helping improve and maintain Custom Cranium's (Darien's business) electronic presences ... though that will just be a few hours each month and not provide any direct income. 

I really do wish I could keep working. I loved many of the jobs I've had over the years as well as the great people I've met through them. Some days I can get a fair amount done before I just can't focus or deal with the pain of sitting and concentrating on work. Other days, and they are random, I simply can't crawl out of bed for hours even with increasing pain medications. Towards the end of my active working my work performance was really suffering and I would have so much pile up that I'd have to crunch even more pills and pull all-nighters just to get mediocre work turned in. It wasn't fair to me to hurt like that and it also wasn't fair to my manager even though I never got significant complaints and until the weeks before my 2013 surgeries he didn't know how significant it was. Some co-workers did when they saw me squirming in meetings or using a cane to get from the car to the customer. I hate being "on the dole" but ... I crunched the numbers and I actually put nearly as much into my Social Security as I will be taking out. And I paid up on my income protection for 15+ years of work just in case it ever got to this point. 

I worked through the pain all of my adult life. I put off surgeries as long as I could safely do it (when I first started hurting they said to fix it would be a 20% chance of losing the use of one of my legs and 5% chance of losing use of both). 

So ... this is it. I'm officially declaring it. I'm a gimp and, at least for now, I'm retiring. 

I'm not saying all of this because I need a pity party. I'd have posted a lot MORE on Facebook or this blog if that was my style. I'm posting this to empower myself openly to slow down and experience what I still can. 

/Geoff Baysinger - 7/12/2014

PS. For the medically curious these are -some- of my permanent spinal conditions that eventually piled up on me. It isn't the complete list and doesn't count things like torn shoulder ligaments, ankle breaks, etc that are indirectly caused by back issues. It is just the parts of the list that really get to the heart of the matter. Some dates show onset of the diagnoses though obviously they had to exist earlier than that to present for diagnosis. Other dates show when I had surgery, which brought on complications that are actually what did in my ability to work. 

... 1989 (age 18) - Herniated discs (L4/L5 & L5/S1)

... 1992 (age 21)

• Spinal Stenosis (L4 - S1) ... masked by herniation pain and likely present from late teens ... told at that point about surgical risk of losing leg function and that I had stenosis of a level the doctor hadn't ever seen in someone younger than 45 and usually in age 60+, which is why they never thought to look for it.
• Degenerative Disc Disease

... 2003 (age 32)

• Surgery: Laminectomy L4-S1 (removal of bone to open nerve root canals) by Dr. Cathleen van Buskirk in Boulder, CO... failed due to invasion of scar tissue that made the nerve root compression worse than prior to surgery and causing 4 neurosurgeons to refuse to do further work and for me to expect to live with the pain and progressive loss of my right leg function until I finally found an Orthopedic surgeon who would treat me in 2004.
• Failed Laminectomy Syndrome - yep, that's right, turns out that surgery has a high enough rate of failure that it has it's very own diagnostic code. Sometimes the "conservative" procedure is the most damaging one of all. 

... 2004 (age 33)

• Surgery: TLIF (360 degree Fusion) L4-S1 (aka my pelvis and bottom 2 vertebrae are now one large piece after being opened both through the back as well as abdomen to add reinforcing hardware via moving my intestines to the side to reach the spine from the front ... yes ... ouch) by Dr. Ken Kurica in Colorado Springs, CO. 13 hours on the table, 7 of which were spent working on my right Sciatic nerve cluster. My right leg still works, mostly, thanks to that extra work.
• Myelopathy (aka "dead/dying nerves affecting muscle function") causing paralysis of my right Soleus muscle in my calf. Means I can walk and "fake" a normal gait but can't push upwards to tip-toe with my right foot/leg and makes running properly impossible. Caused by the Sciatic nerve impingement from Stenosis and Failed Laminectomy Syndrome.
• Neuropathy (aka "dead nerves affecting skin sensations and pain") causing burning/tingling/numbness in various locations (feet/toes, left outer thigh between waist and knee). Caused by Stenosis. 

... 2012 (age 41)

• Cervical Kyphosis C4-C7 (aka, nerves being crushed from spine in lower neck due to vertebrae being rotated front-to-back instead of back-to-front). Caused by years of overcompensating for lower back pain by tilting my head and shoulders badly. Onset was mid-2000s but finally bad enough to be treated as it was causing the loss of my hand and finger coordination as well as Neuropathy and Myelopathy in my arms and shoulders.
• Spinal Stenosis L3/L4 (natural progression a decade after fusing the levels below). 

... 2013 (age 42)

• Surgery: ALIF (Fusion from the front of my neck) C5-C7 by Dr. Matt Gerlach in Westminster, CO on 1/21/2013. Required to correct Kyphosis C4-C7 (C4/C5 not fused as it was opened up once the 2 vertebrae below were corrected).
• Surgery: XLIF (Fusion from the side below ribs) & Laminectomy L3/L4 along with removal of old hardware from L4-S1 by Dr. Matt Gerlach in Westminster, CO on 3/8/2013. Stabilizes the L3/L4 level to relieve Stenosis.
• Surgery: Emergency repair of Dura Mater and Arachnoiditis mass removal by Matt Gerlach on 3/22/2013 ... during the surgery on 3/8/2013 where they fused my L3/L4 they also removed accumulated scar tissue on my Dura Mater (the soft tissue outer casing of of the spinal cord). However they didn't realize how weakened the tissue below the scarring was and at some point shortly after sewing me up a 1 inch hole blew out of my Dura Mater causing 2 weeks of spinal migraines and allowing over a liter of spinal fluid to leak from the spine and fill the surgical cavity opened during the XLIF procedure.
  [surprise finding: fully formed Arachnoid mass in Cauda Equina (see next). This was removed hoping it would not reform but imaging a few months later showed the mass had reformed and later imaging showed the degree of scarred nerve tethering was inoperable]
• Arachnoiditis ... simply put the spinal fluid in my lower spine, Cauda Equina, had coagulated/solidified into a jelly causing the nerves inside the spinal cord from L2-S1 to twist into a spiral and be permanently tethered to the walls of the Dura Mater. Likely present for 8-9 years prior to diagnosis. Possibly due to Epidural Steroid Injections done in 2002 or due to leaking via pinhole tear in the Dura after my surgery in 2003. Will never know what caused it.

 ... 2014 (age 43)

• Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction ... the joint connecting the sacrum (mine being fused to my lumbar spine) to the pelvis has begun to deteriorate and cause pain both walking and resting. Just in the beginning phases on this and luckily treatment for this has been advancing significantly in recent years. Not doing anything about it for now but ... someday it will likely need work. 

Does anyone LIKE Quicken Loans?

2 months ago my loan got transferred from GMAC to Ocwen. No problem, updated payment, everything was quiet. Now Quicken is buying our loan and in 6 weeks I've spoken to 2 different agents who cold-called me trying to get me to refinance (umm, hey, idiots, my loan rate would be lower and you already HAVE my loan, so obviously this is just trying to shark me for fees). I finally sat on the phone for 15 minutes to let them get their spiel down before I told them to quit calling me.

In that same time I received deadtree spam not once (PO Box) but twice (the other came via FedEx??). Both the same spammy flier not actually containing the information I need to send my payments to the right place. This one claimed I am eligible for HARP (Home Affordable Refinance Program) loans because my house is worth less than my loan. Which is completely not true anymore. Maybe it was a couple of years ago.

Then today I go to the post office and am told that I have a First Class letter from an address I don't recognize but because the person who mailed it to me put it in a Priority envelope I had to pay $4.48 postage due. We have multiple legal things (selling house, insurance messes, etc) so I paid the $4.48 and opened it and guess what was in it?

That's right: another flyer from Quicken telling me they would own my loan soon and I should refinance. Again with no information about payment.

So I called and explained it. Lucky for me I have a scanner. So they just got a scan of the documents with a request for a check for $4.48. Not because $5 is going to make or break us but because if I didn't do that I'm sure the idiot in their mail room would keep doing this to other people.

PS. This is the second time ... for the same house ... that the loan has been bought by Quicken in 10 years. They must really love me. I didn't like them then either. I may well refinance. Just to get away from them.

PPS. Wow, almost 2 years since I used my blog instead of ranting on Facebook directly.