Status report

You've probably noticed that I've not been posting much recently… My apologies for that, I do have a backlog of topics I want to get around to posting, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to do so.

I seem to be crossing a number of tipping points which is making things much more difficult for me. In particular, my balances rather severely affected. I can still walk, but am prone to falling. This is probably the biggest reason I've not been posting much, as I spend my days on the ground floor and my computer is in the basement. Stairs are scary!

The bandage they gave me
was a bit oversized.

I don't have much use of my arms and hands at all anymore which I'm going to say is probably the biggest reason why my balance is shot. No arms, no balance. As a matter of fact, I took quite the fall the other night. I was standing behind my son while he was brushing his teeth for bed. For some reason for right knee buckled and I fell backwards clipping the edge of the toilet with my right eyebrow. Leaving quite the boxers scar About 1/2 inch long. My four-year-old was very good about it and just asked why I had a hole and was leaking. Got lucky on that one though. Another inch or two towards the toilet seat and it could've been much worse. Ending up with more than just a "sexy scar" for the ladies.

My speech is just starting to be affected, just enough to start messing with my voice recognition. I'm also finding I'm speaking more softly, mumbling and having to repeat myself more. Fortunately my voice bank is all ready to go. Hopefully I won't need it for quite some time.

Steve Gleason Super Bowl ad for eye tracking
with Microsoft surface

Between these two issues, I'm starting to seriously consider alternative computer options For you zero, constant access. I've been monitoring Tobi eye tracking for some time, which is the solution I think I will go. They have a nice package for sale with the Windows Surface2 & Eyetracker for about $3000. Expensive, but the prices came way down from where It was.

That being said Tobi has a partnership steel series gaming trying to bring eye tracking mainstream. These are due out this summer,  should drive the price down even further. Going to try to hold on until then…

But! Still rolling!

With everything that's going on, and the balance issues the wife and I have been looking to move. We find a place that should work out for us. I ground floor apartment with elevator access from the garage. This should at least give me more in the way of computer access. Took a long time to find a good apartment that would be good for the family, accessibility and my mental health. But finally found one. We just put our home up for sale.

We both hate to move. We love the neighbors and the neighborhood fortunately however we are only moving a few blocks.

So until the dust settles sometime in July, I don't expect to be able to spend much time in front of the computer. But please, feel free to follow my daily adventures on twitter until then.

Milwaukee battery powered heated jacket.

Jacket heating zones

Back in the fall, my father had his birthday and he's a bit of a wimp with the cold. So we thought that would make a cool gift to try to buy him the Milwaukee battery-powered heated jacket. Especially now that he will be spending more time Montréal and it's a lovely winter climate.

As winter arrives, he loaned it to me to try out for a few weeks as he was going to be away and I needed to go collect my son from daycare in my wheelchair (with the help of an assistant).

Winter has posed to serious issues for me, And sometimes you absolutely need to leave the house to attend appointments or whatever.A

First off is due to the amount of muscular atrophy, I don't have as much muscle mass to keep one. This my core body temperature is at risk of dropping much more quickly.

It would seem winter is getting a bit out of hand here in Montréal

Secondly, and is apparently a fairly common issue for people with ALS is the cold can really exaggerate muscular spasticity. I have found that on occasion, being outside at -15 or less (And this year we've had cold snaps down to -40 before Wind chill!). Even for a very short duration, say transiting the distance from house to car of around 40 or 50 feet can be enough to trigger a rather serious reaction. To give you some idea, on Christmas Day we visited my wife's parents place for dinner. When they left the house around midnight, I had to walk a very short distance to get to our warm vehicle. By the time I made it from the door to my vehicle, the muscles in my jaw tightened to the point that I could no longer hold my mouth. I had to talk soon my teeth. And my legs were stiffening up to that point I could barely walk.

The most annoying about this, is my body starts reacting this way and as though I have hypothermia. But I don't feel cold at all… Once everything warms up, I'm okay.

The jacket works as advertised and has three heating modes. When set for high, the heating zones actually do get quite warm (but comfortably so) for a duration of up to 4 hours. But I'm finding consistently of the less, closer to three.

The jacket is not constructed as a winter jacket. I would say more of a spring or autumn jacket men's for the person that works who is someone physically active in the cold, humid environment. The biggest issue I found using it as a winter jacket is it did not have a sufficiently good windbreaker. Once we got down to about -10°C, the call would go right through the arms and the non-heated areas. He really does require a shell.

Flame on!

We tried removing the lining for my present winter jacket (shell) and using this jacket in its place. While that works quite well, between the weight of this jacket and my winter shell. I found it to be quite heavy, and I was unable to move my arms, and as you know, my arms are suffering from significant atrophy. But with the shell on, want wise it was much more comfortable.

The temperature was controlled by the power button located on the left lapel. We push and hold for 4 seconds to power on, and when ready to go it lights up. Due to the placement of the button, and the difficulty of pushing it, I am unable to actuate it myself. I require assistance. But those light up quite bright, and my four-year-old finds that be pretty cool. :-)

The jacket, complete with the charging unit and one battery retails for about C$200 at Home Depot. I find this to be quite well priced in the jacket is very well made. But unfortunately, because it didn't need to use my shell over top of it I can't justify going to buy one for myself. It doesn't quite suit my needs, as matter of fact it complicates things a bit.

That being said, they do have a hooded jogging suit version which is much lighter and retails for C$150. I think this might suit my needs much better, It should be sufficiently Lite that would fit well in my existing winter jacket with the liner. It should not add as much weight or inflexibility. I plan on trying this out.

The Blue Ant

No… not this guy!

A few months back I came a cross the blue ant commute hands free device, which seem to address an issue I've been having with my iPhone. Which is, hands-free answering, and while I've jailbroken my iPhone to allow hands-free control, the one big thing that's missing is the ability to verbally answer a call. Sure, I can activate Siri and place a call. But if someone is calling me, I still have to pick up my phone and physically answer it.

Honestly, I think this is probably the single biggest accessibility feature missing from Apple products. Voice triggering. I really wish they would add it, if they had I very likely would not have jail broken my iPhone.

What caught my attention was that once this devices. With your phone, it acts like any other hands-free device but allows voice activation. I could toggle Siri simply by saying "launch phone control", which is essentially the same function provided by the jailbreak with hands-free control. But if someone were to call me, the blue ant would ring, in the same way as it would a Bluetooth headset but, having integrated with my phonebook it will verbally tell me who's calling and all I have to do is send say "answer".

Needless to say, with failing dexterity this is rather interesting.

I've been using it on and off for couple months and surprisingly I'm not finding it quite as useful as I had hoped. First of all, I'm told that the audio quality for the person I'm talking to is quite good. Better than with other hands-free devices. However there are three things which I find really get in the way of regular usage.

1. Voice to text speech recognition… Not so hot.
   I use this far more frequently than I do for making or answering phone calls.. Updating my status on Facebook, sending text messages or quickly replying to an e-mail. I use voice to text quite a bit. I have found that going through the blue and commute significantly diminishes the recognition accuracy. Which is really quite unfortunate.
2. Another device to carry around…
   For me, the whole point of going to the iPhone and keeping with my was the reduction of things that they needed to have attached to my waist. Providing the maximum amount of functionality for the least amount of stuff. The blue ant commute, would require me to carry around another device. And at this point, verbally being able to answer calls does not add sufficient utility to justify.
3. Cannot verbally hang up

   

   we've all been there

   It's great to be able to answer hands-free, but if you can't have some other means to end the call. You're still required to manually terminated either by manipulating your iPhone or the blue ant itself. This might not sound like that big of a deal, but when you want to get off the phone with the telemarketer or someone who just… Won't… Shut… Up…

The blue ant commute usually retails for around $100 Canadian. I however found it on sale for about $70.

Don't get me wrong, the device does have its usefulness and is I've said, the audio quality for regular phone calls is really quite good. It is small (almost the same dimensions as the iPhone 5), easily portable and is something that can easily be attached to the side wheelchair, your belt and so forth as it's intended to be mounted on the sun visor of your car. I should however point out, I've not used it in the car yet.

So, if you do not want to jailbreak your iPhone (and with IOS 7, you presently can't anyway) this could be a pretty good way to get some hands-free control back. Sure, the Bluetooth range on the blue ant isquite good and I can probably use it throughout my house, but because of the limitations mentioned above, I still prefer to carry around my iPhone. It is presently Velcro to my waist. 

The utility of the blue ant is good, but just not sufficient to completely address my needs for day-to-day use at this point in time. So in conclusion:

Remote PC Start up Tools & Siri proxy

This is a little project that is kept me occupied for some time now, partly to do with a few difficulties in implementation. But the idea is to allow me to remotely start my computer without having to find my way to the basement to do so.

So why would someone want to remotely start the computer? Well I download quite a bit of media which is stored on the hard drive of my desktop and I use media streaming to send this content to one of my gaming consoles so I can watch it in the comfort of my family room which is on the ground floor. My desktop PC is in the basement separated by a flight of stairs with big nasty scary teeth and with mobility issues, I don't always feel like taking the chance. Especially when the lighting conditions are a little dark. For some reason this really messes with my balance, making stairs downright hazardous at times.


I tried a couple different apps, and hit a few speed bumps on the way that were not expected. Here's what I found.

First off, the speed bumps

Every motherboard on your computer nowadays will have a wired network connection. If you go through the BIOS is just about guaranteed that it will support some sort of wake on LAN functionality. Simply enable it, and you should be good to go right?

Well, not so much.

I have an older Asus motherboard that those sales for wake on LAN. I figured this should be enough. Enabled it, set the magic package and would only work immediately after shutdown. The motherboard power savings would shut down the network connection is well after a period of time. This caused quite a bit of annoyance.

So for about $10, about it PCI express network card. This solves the problems. Once the BIOS was set, the PCI express port maintained power, even after the PC shutdown.


Secondly, not all routers will support away, and set up. In particular Linksys routers (which is what I have) don't allow you to set the subnet mask 255.255.255.255 which is required to forward the magic packet the subnet mask needs to be set to 255.255.255.128. Contact Linksys cares technical support via twitter. They were very helpful with me for sorting this out.

How does it work?

Very simply, we will be using a computer or a smart phone to send what's called a magic packet over your local area network to the desired (powered down) computer. Once you BIOSes appropriately set up, your network card essentially never sleeps and monitors the network for the appropriate magic package.

There are a couple ways to send this.

iShutdown Is probably about the easiest way to go. Simply install the app on your smart phone and then from the link here, install the service on your desired desktop. Once everything is installed, with your PC running simply search for the server via the smart phone app. It should detect it right away. This will allow you to remotely start and stop your computer and has a very nice interface. It's also very easy to monitor several computers if you so choose.

This simplicity makes it well worth the $2

Your next the best option would be to try send a magic packets with depicus.com. This is also a very good app. Works flawlessly, but is a little bit more technical as it exposes you to more of the raw details. It however also has the scanning function to find computers on your network. But what is very interesting, is that also offer a free wake on LAN packet sniffer which will allow you to view magic packets that are being sent and received by your PC. Very useful when you're setting things up to make sure things are going to the right places

This is also $2 on the App Store.

Then there is the Siri proxy… My personal favorite!

If you've already figured out how to get Siri proxy running on raspberry pie, this edition is actually really quite easy, and it's free! If you are running Debian like me. Go here for information on the install

• open terminal and type
  aptitude install wakeonlan 
• test the install
• run that but that this is packet sniffer on your PC.
  By default it should be on port 7
• type this into terminal
  wakeonlan -p 7 YOUR_MAC_ADDRESS
• if everything ends working correctly you should see something like this
  http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-monitor.aspx

Once you are sending and receiving magic packets from your raspberry pie to your PC via terminal, is just a simple matter of adding the recognition block into your Siri proxy script, editing your Mac address, rebundling and restarting your Siri proxy.

#wake on LAN-------------------------------------------------    listen_for /wake up my (computer|PC|desktop)/i do           say "waking up your computer"     system 'wakeonlan -p 7 YOUR_MAC_ADDRESS'     request_completed #always complete your request! Otherwise the phone will "spin" at the user!   end

And this should be enough to get your serial proxy sending magic packet.

But having set this up, if I decide to watch a movie I simply voice activate my iPhone, tell her to wake up my computer and within a minute or so the media servers visible on the network.

Very convenient, very fun. :-)

If you're looking to set up a wake on LAN, I hope this helps you set one up.

Dealing with ALS, keeping the weight on

First of all, let me begin by apologizing for the long delay between posts. The progressive loss of function it is been a little more difficult to find my way to the computer. Also this is been causing me to have many more appointments at the house to deal with these issues.

Okay, let's get started…

I've been debating writing a post about diet for some time, but not being a dietitian I was convinced it was appropriate to do so. However, the other day when I was attending a clinical trial I ended up chatting with another gentleman also suffering from ALS and he was having some serious weight loss issues that was concerning him and his family. His progression is different than mine, he is much more bulbar and has much more difficulty speaking and swallowing than I do. He does however retain more strength than I do.

We started talking about the concerns of weight loss and it was very surprised and interested by the fact that my weight has been very stable for a long period of time and wanted to know my "secrets".

So what I post here is by no means extensive, but it is what I'm doing and I'll try to explain a bit about why. Please be sure to exercise your own judgment as weight loss for ALS patients can be quite dangerous and difficult to regain. If you have any doubts, be sure to consult with the nutritionists or a dietitian to make sure these are covered and are following well-informed advice. To begin with let me put these risks and context all begin by telling my first experiences messing with my diet.

Got my diagnosis… Enter panic mode

At about the time I received my diagnosis my average weight was between 180 and 185 pounds. This is a touch heavy for my frame, but bad not that at all. I immediately went into the the panic, realizing that there is no effective treatment and about the only thing that I could have some control of to try to influence things was my diet.

So I immediately went on a hard-core cleansing alkaline diet and at the time I took this intention to nutritionists who helped guide me through some of it. I committed to this diet for several months and did not allow myself any deviation to speak of. During this time I lost around 20 pounds. Getting down to 160 pounds.

This is starting to get too skinny for me, and I was dealing with fatigue and loss of energy quite regularly. After several months, I found that I was not able to slow or halt progression and returned to eating more "normally". By doing so I leave me a fair bit of weight and have stayed stable between 170 and 175 pounds. This is a healthy weight for my stature, even though I am losing muscle and gaining fat.

Once I met with my new doctor at the Montréal Nero, she explained to me that this is a fairly common knee-jerk response. The danger is that once an ALS patient is awake, and do not regain it. They have a longer survivability if they can manage to keep the weight on. I have seen this repeated many times in my reading on the subject.

Consequently, this is because my goal. But I do make it a point of avoiding processed foods, eating healthy and organic wherever possible.

Major difficulties and snacking

As a no longer able to prepare food on my own throughout the day, I'm no longer able to forage for a snack either. This means I have to find a way to eat enough to maintain an appropriate calorie load based around my three meals. Not much else.

Smoothies!

zombie ninja smoothie!

These are the my breakfast staple. I usually make a batch of 3 to 4 pints twice a week. It's just easier to manage this way, rather than making them one by one daily.

I started with the purchase of a ninja blender which is a very powerful and relatively inexpensive one. Costing about $100.What I like about it, is it doesn't blend in quite the same way. It has a bunch of "knives" that's spin around to finely chop the contents of the blender. It does not blend it into a completely smooth purée, leaving it ever so slightly chunky. This is better for digestion.

My ingredients are as follows, all quantities are to your personal tastes:

• frozen berries/fruit
  to ensure vitamin C and a high dose of antioxidants. Most importantly flavor :-)
• bananas
  usually one or two for potassium & vitamin B & consistency
• Goji berries
  considered to be a super food high in antioxidants. I add them dried, they rehydrate in the smoothy.

Meal replacement shakes The following is just my opinion, please consider it accordingly to make your own informed decision. Personally I don't take meal replacement shakes such as boost and ensure as at this point in time I don't feel the need to do so. I am getting abundant nutrition from what I consider to be better, more natural and unprocessed sources from my smoothie. Also, I don't believe it meal replacement shake is the best of ideas. I prefer to regard them more as a meal supplements to ensure that you get your requirement of vitamins and minerals. I also consider these to be highly processed foods, consequently not the best way to get your complete nutrition and maintain a healthy diet. Make an natural smoothie with a wide selection of fruits, veg and grains and I think you'll have more positive results. Finally, there are liquid. Meaning they will pass through your stomach rather quickly. A homemade smoothies such as this has to stay a while to be digested ;-) But by all means, if your doctor recommends it, add it to your diet. But don't rely on it.

• greens
  this is usually I whole bunch of parsley forced detoxifying/cleansing benefits. However I have also used kale and spinach. Both of which are highly nutritious
• nuts & grains
  I added the following for a high dose of omega-3's and protein
• hempseed
  considered a superfood
• Chia seed
  Chia seeds become gelatinous hydrated. Thickening the smoothie
  considered a superfood
• shredded coconut
• almond butter (a lot like peanut butter)
• Greek yogurt 2% or higher
  for fat, probiotics (for digestion) and protein. Also consistency
• almond milk
  I don't do much dairy, never really have.this is a very good substitute high in protein and vitamin D
• Coconut water
  high in electrolytes

Being almost a liquid, I don't want to to pass through my stomach do quickly. So I always eat some bread or something first to help it stay in my stomach a little bit longer.To store them for consumption over the next couple days I use Mason jars in the fridge. Might see just a little bit of discoloration on the top by day three, but they're still good to eat. Also the Chia seeds need some time to become gelatinous.

Optionally you can also add other supplements such as whey protein (bodybuilding supplement). I used to add this early on, but I'm finding I'm getting more than enough protein from all the grains.

Creating monohydrate

You will no doubt find a lot of talk about the supplements and I am quite often experimenting with various supplements to see if I can find benefits. I recently tried playing with something called the Deanna protocol which claims to have seen some positive results. I've not followed strictly, but taking the supplements that I'm able to find and that I believe to be of most benefit. There's been several months and have not seen any results.

the Brand I'm presently taking
by optimum nutrition

That being said, I will discuss in one supplement that they've seen numerous references to and I believe is helping me immensely. And that is creating monohydrate which is a bodybuilding supplement which is intended to promote muscle growth and maintain cellular energy levels.

In my readings I have found numerous reports that creating monohydrate is about as effective as taking riluzole, the only clinically approved ALS drug. When I told my doctor about it, she encouraged me to keep taking. As a matter of fact she instructed me to increase the dosage I was taking.

I'm now taking a full 5 g daily into pills. One in the morning, one in the evening.

If you choose to take creatine monohydrate, be sure to do your homework first and by the good stuff. You can find it pretty easily, but I recommend getting it from a gym in raw form. I don't believe this is a good idea to buy it in fruit punch format as it has all sorts of other flavoring & sweetening additives. I also found the dosage to be lower.

If you're not careful about monitoring the dosage per pill/glass you may find it to be more expensive than it needs to be. That being said, creating monohydrate is not terribly expensive.

When to eat

This is something that I believe is often overlooked, but is in fact quite important. When you choose to eat can have a significant difference in how calories are metabolized by your body. This is something I play with and would encourage you to do the same.

When you go to sleep, your body does not require the same amount of calories. So having something that's higher in calories before going to bed at night is probably not a bad idea. Treat yourself, have a bowl of high-fat Häagen-Dazs ice cream (or the like) shortly before going to bed. Most of these calories will not immediately be allocated for your daily needs. Your body will know to store them as fat for the next day.

I don't do this every night, but like I said treat yourself to a bit of desert before bedtime. If nothing else, take half of your daily creatine monohydrate before bed.

Yes, there will be some debates about having too much bad fats in your diet. Don't get me wrong, you do not want to over do it. But the way I figure it is the immediate concern of losing too much weight is more important than the risk of developing a heart condition 10 to 20 years down the line… As you are no doubt aware ALS is typically terminal and less than five years.

Do however keep in mind eating too much junk food can result in skin conditions. So if you treat yourself a couple nights a week, I figure this is a good balance.

Old IPhone, New Life As Dedicated Dragon Mic

Back in July, I did a post about various microphones for use with Dragon naturally speaking. Some working better than others. The one microphone, that has always impressed me for its ability to comprehend what I'm saying but has been terribly convenient was the dragon microphone app for iPhone. The reason I found it not terribly convenient was because my screen lock would time out and locked my iPhone. Shutting down the microphone, often in midsentence.

Yes, I could easily go into the settings and change the timeout time. But the pain in the butt is that I

would have to do this every single time. Not to mention, I would have to remember to set it when I'm done. Not terribly convenient.

Then, for some reason the other day it dawned on me that I had by old iPhone 3GS sitting around doing nothing. So I decided to install the Dragon microphone app, and plug it into my PC to give constant power (not that it really needs this as the battery is still good) then I changed the lock screen timeout to "never".

This is working out really quite well. As a matter of fact, I'm using it at the moment and the recognition is near 100% simply sitting on my desk nowhere near my mouth and I'm speaking at a regular volume.

The only downside I have encountered so far is that I can no longer use the on-screen microphone button nor the keyboard on my PC to toggle the microphone on or off. I have to touch the iPhone. It does however respond very well to the "go sleep" and "wake up" commands. Unfortunately however, the Dragon Does not allow you to use your iPhone as a regular mic to your PC. Only interfaces with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Which is fine for me!

All in all, this is a great way to recover some use of the old technology. It was destined to be a toy for my three-year-old (cracked screening and all) or be recycled as it now has no resale value. This way I can use it just about every day when I'm in front of the computer, greatly extending its life and utility for me.

Don't have an old iPhone? All that you can find one which is off plan for cheap on craigslist, kijiji or the like ;-)

Oh Just Kilt Me Already!

That's right, I've decided to start wearing a kilt around the house. But before we get into talking about that, we need to make one thing clear first…

 

Okay, now that we've established the rules. Kilts are not dresses or skirts and exceptionally manly… Why am I wearing one? (As matter of fact I'm wearing it right now)

Kilts, in the traditional sense are supposed to be worn "commando", and although they are quite comfortable worn in this manner and provide good "air conditioning" its not exactly why I'm wearing one. Due to the illness, and the restricted movements of my arms I started finding it very difficult to go to the washroom on my own. Getting my pants and underwear off was not that big deal (it has become more challenging), but afterwards it's become nearly impossible to put them back on. For months, I would have to shuffle into my room in various states of disrobe, lie down on my bed and perform all sorts of gymnastics to get my pants & underwear back up. Then of course came the chore of doing them back up.

trying it on, fresh out-of-the-box

Of course, if you see my previous post about my status you will no doubt have noticed that I rate the function of my hands and arms in around 15% right now. Because of this, and the fact that I spend large portions of the day on my own, I needed to find a solution that provided a better "access" to prevent "accidents". So far the kilts solution is working out reasonably well. Much easier than dealing with pants and underwear. But the key to this is of course wearing them "commando". It's also for this reason, I wear them around the house only, kind of like pajamas. They are not intended to leave the house.

Sorry folks, a little bit more in the graphic details in this paragraph… Going to the washroom now is much easier. Especially to go pee. Because of the dexterity problems I do have to sit to urinate, this eliminates "accuracy problems". The kilt is very easy to keep out of the way when sitting. However, when I have to "drop the kids off at the pool" its a bit more challenging to make sure the kilt is out of the way. But with a little bit of effort, it is much more manageable then dealing with pants and underwear afterwards. So far I've not had any "misses".

So where do I get mine? I'm wearing a deluxe utility kilt purchased from http://www.utkilts.com/. Not the traditional wool type. A traditional wool kilts would be far too heavy and unmanageable (I used to have one for Halloween costume). The utility kilt is great and has some really cool cargo pockets on either side. There are surprisingly accessible and very easy for me to keep my cell phone in. They come in a variety of designs and colors and are fairly reasonably priced.

Before finding this website, I actually ordered mine from eBay from this company. Consequently I ended up paying a little more than I otherwise would have. If you order directly from http://www.utkilts.com/ it works out to be a little less expensive, saving you about $15. The kilts are shipped by the pound, with a minimum shipping cost of about $30. But adding more than one kills only adds about six dollars to the shipping cost, so if you are serious about wearing a kilt ordering more than one might be in your interest. As a matter of fact as soon as their stock is back in, I am going to be ordering two more deluxe utility kilts.

You can also check out http://www.utilikilts.com/ for more options. These people look to provide very good quality and I believe have been in business longer. They are however significantly more expensive. Don't be confused by the second, they're not the same company as http://www.utkilts.com/ 

Pros:

• very comfortable
• price for the kilts is reasonable. Ranging from $50-$80 depending on the design you choose
• makes "access" for nature's call much easier for me

Cons:

• you will no doubt have to deal with the jokes of it being a skirt. If this is a real problem I recommend the following kilted T-shirt as well
• can obviously be a little cold in the winter
• unfortunately shipping costs are little high here in Canada
• the fabric is a little bit stiff, even after the first wash. Making him a little bit hard to sit down comfortably and not on a wad of folded fabric
• pay extra attention to the sizing instructions! This is critical. They are not in size like regular pants

Conclusions:
very happy with the product, find them reasonably priced and work well as adapted clothing. I am buying more :-)