Specializing in Disappearing

Well, it has been a long, long year and one that didn’t give me much to blog about but one that will give me a great story to tell. I’ve sorta disappeared this past year and it has been a good thing in getting thing done. I’ll be posting more often now that I’m in my 3rd year and have gotten other things worked out. I’ve started a new website since I’ve had some downtime with some great contributors. Check it out, I called it Galloping Galapagos. Anyway, starting my OB/Gyn rotation so I look forward to learning in a great environment here at UT Medical Center in Knoxville. More about my weird year later

A walk

Ever gone for a walk and just walked until you were lost. Then turned and walked until you sorta knew where you were walking again. Well my cousin and I did that yesterday and

Nice change of pace from studying all the time.

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5 weeks

What can happen in 5 weeks? In my case, I spent the last 5 weeks at Navy Officer Development School (ODS). It was very similar to the time I spent at Maxwell Air Force base when I was in Civil Air Patrol. I don’t know how to explain my time there other then a very regimented schedule with very little personal time built in. There was always something to do and if you were creative you could make some. I was able to fit in my 5 week a deep sea fishing trip, visiting the RI National Guard Air Show and visiting the Tall Ships in Newport. At the air show, I was taken to the VIP tent of the Blue Angels/Navy and had a great seat for the show. I’ll post some pics later and more info. But, I’m back if anyone wants to talk or e-mail, I can set my own schedule and I can wear a watch and use my cell phone anytime I want 🙂

Powerpoint Psychology

I’ve read, heard and seen many good presentation and article on methodologies in making excellent presentations using PowerPoint or Keynote. I just read this blog post which does a really good job summarizing most of what I’ve heard and adds some insight into common pitfalls and rational in the creation of a presentation.

There is one thing I should add that I heard in a presentation on creating good presentations. Create your presentation with everything you want in it and then replace as much text as possible with a picture, illustration or single words.

Nature’s Thermometer

Ever been out camping and wonder what is the temperature. Well, never wonder again . . . at least if you can count, add and listen to crickets chirp. Basically, count the the number of chirps in 13 seconds, add 40 to it and you’ll have a really good approximation of the outdoor temp. Kinda cool.

Source: Natural Clocks: Cricket chirps

Big Cave . . .

Saw this story on Fox News. Increadible. Taken from this story

Charles Brewer-Carias, from Zootaxa with permission of Magnolia Press
Inside the Cueva del Fantasma, in southeastern Venezuela. The two helicopters parked just inside the cave entrance give a sense of scale.

Life with(out) a laptop . . .

I’ve not been posting recently and until this past week, I’ve not had a really good reason. From Sunday to Wed. my church had revival meetings with the Steve Pettit Evangelistic Association. They were really great and were a good reason I didn’t have time to post. But now I have a better reason for not posting . . . my laptop (Powerbook G4 500 Mhz) decided to retire.

I really didn’t realize how much I used it until Thursday afternoon it started acting really funny and crashing. Well, it froze up one last time that evening when I was trying to read my e-mail. I restarted the computer and well, it didn’t. The screen went black and well stayed black.

I tried to coax it to start-up several time and even got it to start once long enough to do a quick backup. But, alas, my poor laptop has died. After I performed an autopsy the cause of death seems to be a bad processor. The last time I got it to startup, it crashed again and then as if a final good-bye beeped five times and the constantly flashed the sleep light in intervals of 5 flashes (meaning a bad processor). I can’t complain, however, because it has been though much. It survived ~5 years, always on, through one car wreck, being carried by my when I was knocked off my pins by a car in the UT parking garage and having both it’s hinges broken when I tripped walking up the stairs.

The good news however, all my data is safe and sound and I am able to use a different computer to access it. Now, I just have to get my hands on this new laptop.

Spontaneous Combustion

A while ago I heard on Paul Harvey that Woman were ~80% more likely to spontaneously burst into flames while pumping gas into their car. Later, I learned in my chemistry that one of the risk factors for Spontaneous Human Combustion was being a woman. I sorta laughed both off until I saw this while filling up my car.

As it turns out, woman are 80% more likely to reenter their car while filing up with gas. While reentering their car it is possible to have an undesired effect of generating static electricity while sliding across the seat. The net result of this static electricity with all the gas fumes is an explosion when the electricity is discharged on the pump handle as the first metal object touched.

Ouch.