in the study

Sometimes things happen that are best left to the imagination, food poisoning, C. Diff infections, major trama to an extremity.  Well, 12 days ago at 3:15pm my pinky, yes the smallest of my phalanges, was rendered useless to me for the next week and 1/2.  Yep, my pinky got smooshed.  It was a random collection of events (bad judgment, big part of lake, unseen wake) that ended with my pinky between two boats.  All things considered, however, I was very fortunate to sustain only soft tissue injury.  No broken bones, no loss of motion or sensation just a really nasty wound (more graphic pictures of my finger after the break).  As you can imagine - typing and other activities requiring a pinky have been rather difficult the past week or so.

Otherwise, I've been hanging out with friends playing games, biking Cades Cove and doing a lot of working and reading.  I learned a new game, a group version of the classic battleship game.  Everyone is given a sheet of paper where you mark your ships and after everyone has placed their ships turns are taken lobbing bombs.  It is somewhat a bingo/battleship collage.  It was fun watching and learning.

As to school, recently I did surgical subspecialties (last month) and am currently on Emergency Medicine.  Surgical subs consisted of ENT, Urology, Ortho and Ophthalmology (hence the pic).  I have to say I had expereinces in doctor's offices I've never seen before or probably will never see again.  It was fun and I learned alot.    I've really been enjoying the ED or emergency department.  For the longest time I've considered doing Family Medicine and then doing a fellowship in Emergency Medicine, however, all the doctors I've spoken to have highly suggested I just do the Emergency Medicine residency if that is my interest.

Well, count this as your warning - graphic pictures after the break - and this time they are real.

It has been a while since I've been able to spend time with missionary friends and this past week enjoy spending time with them.  We did some tubing, hiking and then after the left I was able to ride Cades Cove.  Learned a bunch about Zambia and life across the pond.  Hearing about medical problems overseas really gives life to what we learn in school.  Hearing from individuals who have had malaria multiple times and the descriptions makes me really understand why it is such an important global health issue.  Below are some pictures from the hike.

So, I've continued to work on Android and believe I've figured out how to enable the wireless in it.  I've built a case for it (hat-tip to borglabs).  Once I get time to test the instructions I've found for the WiFi under android it will be much more useful and then I'll post instructions on the build process and everything I compiled to make the process a piece of cake.  Currently I'm running donut but would like to get eclair running once I figure out WiFi.  I'd like to post some pictures but right now my PivotX install isn't working for uploading the pictures from last weeks trip to PA and the case later.

Update -------------

Well, got PivotX working again by updating to the latest dev branch.  Image insertion works again.  Wierd things is I never upgrade and it stopped working by it self.  Hum . . .  Enjoy the pics

Well, it took rebuilding my HTPC, countless forum post readings and finally just trying something to figure out installing Android on the board was quite easy.  I don't have any pictures or anything, just search Google for a video of the IGEPv2 booting.  Mine doesn't look much different.  I'll have to say it isn't worth much right now since the current kernel doesn't have wifi enabled - my next project after Step 2 CS next Monday. 

The process of installing it was quite simple.  I just used Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit by following the instructions on the Andoid dev page for compiling on a 64-bit machine.  Once that was all setup, I went to Project Rowboat, downloaded donut and compiled it.  Used the same tool-chain from the Rowboat project to compile the kernel for it and prepared the card as suggested on the Ubuntu Wiki page at http://wiki.myigep.com/.  Inserted the MicroSD card and waited for about 5-10 seconds before the Android logo appeared it booted.  Very simple, yet very obtuse finding the instructions.

Along those lines, I also built and installed Ubuntu 9.10 on it.  The performance was a bit sluggish compared to android which just flew.  I'll have to play around to figure out what OS I'll end up with but given I want it in the car and I'm ultra familiar with Java, I'm leaning to Android.  When I get a chance I'll post pictures.

Tired and sad.  Two words to describe how I feel right now.  What a wonderful month of learning and adventure.  So many amazing things and people.  How cool it was to discover so many individual with similar interests.  I'll be posting more tomorrow from the hike, but I'll post a few photos from the hikes right now.

Day 19 --

Everyone split-up today and went different directions enjoying the beautiful weather.  Some went bordering, others hung-out at camp and enjoyed the sunshine while others went for a hike on Rainbow Trail almost getting to Mt. LeConte.  The snow became knee deep and thus they had to turn around but they really enjoyed the beautiful views.

I on the other-hand went home to do laundry and rested for most of the day.

Day 20 - 

Today we went to The Lost Sea and did the wild cave tour.  It was great fun.  Our guide, Shane, was really enjoyable and really tailored the tour for our group.  It was funny to hear him really enjoy having a tour of adults rather then children.  The lake in the cave is huge.  In the 70's they went diving with sonar and couldn't identify any walls or floor.  Thus the floor is deeper then 3500 ft and the back wall is farther then 3500 ft.  That is a huge cavern.

After finishing we went to a place call Joe's for the best burgers in Sweatwater, TN.  The burgers were really good.  They were really good.

Well that's all for now, enjoy the pics.

All good things must come to an end and certainly the lectures went out with a bang.  We had 3 lectures spanning from 8am to 4:30 pm with 3 breaks (one for lunch).  It was a marathon session but very interesting.  The lectures were over Space Medicine, Toxicology (i.e. venomous and poisonous animals) and making a Wilderness Medical Kit.  It became one of our first beautifully sunny days and during our few breaks we made sure to enjoy it.  All the pictures of us today were on the front porch of Tipton Lodge where we had all our lectures and was the headquarters of all our scenarios.

Day 16 was a day full of lectures as will be day 18.  Day 17 was our final day of scenarios.  The posts are a day late and a bit short in content because as a camp we exceeded the daily bandwidth allotment and I didn't take time yesterday to write.  Yep, no internet yesterday so I couldn't post anything about Day 16 or 17.  It made me lazy :).

On day 16 we had lectures for a bunch of different topics.  We learned about Dive Medicine, a recent medical trip to Haiti, preparing to lead a wilderness expedition, making a medical kit and lots of random facts.  Some of the most intriguing were from the dive medicine lectures.  Did you know: