Akako

“What is that?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly of late. And also the biggest drawback of Amazon’s new ebook reader, the Kindle.

The Kindle is basically a really nice screen designed for reading text. Sounds boring, right? Pretty much.

Unless you happen to spend the vast majority of your time reading. Maybe you read a lot of books and articles for your job. Maybe you like to read a lot of magazines and newspapers. Maybe you like to read a lot of novels and history books. Maybe you do all of the above and don’t like the inconvenience of having so many books that it takes up half your house, you can never carry what you want with you, your eyes get screen fatigue by 5pm, etc. In that case, an e-ink ebook reader complete with an added 2 gig memory card is exactly what you want.

The screen is so gentle on the eyes you forget you’re reading from an electronic device. You can easily bookmark or highlight passages. You can switch between books at will with your place automatically saved and opened right back to the next time you select that reading. You can look up the definition of words inside the text using the built-in Oxford dictionary. You can carry your entire personal library with you all the time.

I’ve been putting a lot of medical material on it that I’ve gotten off the internet. I have access to several excellent resources like Uptodate and used to print out reams of paper for learning, reference and teaching. I now port it over to the Kindle so not only can I read it repeatedly without it getting all wrinkled and coffee stained, but I have it with me wherever I go. Journal articles are a little harder to port easily and in a readable format but really anything with text (and most pictures) is fair game.

There are other ebook readers out that, but one thing that Amazon added was a wireless radio, the same kind that is in my cellphone, and provided free access with it. It has a built-in portal to Amazon’s store whereby you can browse and buy your books anywhere Sprint has cellular service. You can also subscribe to newspapers (and magazines) and have them wirelessly delivered to your Kindle each morning. I tested out a free 14 day trial with the Wallstreet Journal and it worked amazingly. You can look up things on Wikipedia and even use the vast majority of the internet (text and basic pictures mostly).

The Kindle bestows +30 nerd points when equipped. e.g. Dr. V, my program director, future fellowship guru and at-that-time rotation attending kept telling me about this book The Tipping Point. So as we’re walking down the hall to see a patient, I took Akako (Amazon encourages you to name your device and given my fancy for Japanese females…) out of my white coat, downloaded it and started reading it before we even got to the patient’s room. Tech Nerd Five!

Overall, no matter how cool a device is, if it isn’t functional it isn’t worthwhile. At the end of the day, the Kindle has made my life much easier.

And why is that question a drawback? Because people only see Akako when I’m reading, which means I keep getting interrupted when studying.

Substory, my editor removed from the above: My whole family is full of avid readers. My brothers and I have whole walls covered with books. I owned over 200 books by the time I was 12. I used to get a kick out of people asking me “how many of those have you read” and seeing their bug-eyes at the reply “all of them, of course.”

Voegle

My least favorite month this year–the cardiovascular intensive care unit. 

Actually, it’s hasn’t been that bad so far.  I’m learning much on a subject I was not very familiar with previously.  Unfortunately, it’s also one of those rotations that are so busy I have little time to read independently which is one of the integral aspects for concrete learning.

Rounds take forever–several hours for only a handful of patients.  The nurses, pharmacists and nutritionists don’t round with us, which is unusual for an ICU. 

The attending is intense, probably a vixen in her younger years and likely a little crazy.  Her empathy for her patients is unmistakable. 

The nurses are as bad as ever.  I thought a hospital with Magnet status would mean a hospital with excellent nurses.  Instead, I think it really means nurses are in enough positions of power so they are able to make sure they never have to do any work or take any responsibility for their mistakes.  Drugs go unadministered.  Orders are missed.  Patient’s complain that they are treated like unwelcome guests.  Weights and I/Os are not done or obviously wrong.

The patients are nicer than on average.  Most of them are living pretty shitty lives confined to wheelchairs due to their lungs and heart failing them.  Many will be dead in less than a year.  One decided to stop coming to the hospital and just be treated symptomatically by hospice.  She wanted a beer.  So I had the privilege of pouring her a cold one in a frosted mug in bed 9 of the CVICU.

Gnarls

I have never felt so bad on a good day as yesterday.

Our team got its ass handed to it on call the night before with quite a few admits and sick patients. I was already dragging hard when I left post-call, but instead of being able to crash into bed, I had to take my son to his three year checkup. I’m sure I must have looked psychotic continually contorting my face to keep my eyes open and myself awake. I felt that awful kinda crap feeling you do when you’ve been awake way too long, but with a child to watch over, all that takes a back seat to responsibility.

We got a cookie and milk then played on the playground awhile. Then we headed to the opposite side of the mall and rode the merry-go-round, first on a horse and then on a dragon. That was followed by some OJ for the little one and Moroccan Mint hot tea for me.

At home we made pasta for dinner and watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone before putting him to bed early so I could finally enjoy the restful sleep of the weary.

Juno

It’s 10pm and I should be dead as I’m going on 40 hours awake.  In another time, I probably would have been, but something happens when you get responsibility and spend the first 30 hours seeing patients and supervising medical students then spend the next 10 taking care of your family.  I’m ready to collapse and will feel like crap when I wake up. 

Summer is waking up and the days are full of energy.

And yet I can’t keep my eyes open to type or finish this movie. 

Night.

Lifestream Feeds

I’ve been able to add my Digg and Amazon Wish List to my tumblr feeds.  In all, the following feeds are automatically imported in my Lifestream powered by Tumblr:

1. Flickr
2. WordPress
3. Youtube
4. Twitter
5. Digg
6. Amazon Wish List

I gotta say…

Last Saturday was a very good day.  It started with waking up early to drive Ikuko to work.  On the way home I stopped by Walmart to get a couple birthday cards for her and look for some cheap necklaces that she likes so much.  Nothing they had was tolerable even with the dirt cheap prices so other than the cards I just got her a few pairs of comfortably boring panties.  As I left the store a few flakes were falling gently from formerly spring sky.  Since Target wasn’t going to open for another half hour, I headed home to grab the boy to take with me.  We spent the next few hours browsing through Target, picking out necklaces and outfits.  After years of having trouble finding clothes big enough to fit my beautiful sex goddess I took a cue from my son and went to the kids section.  She actually fits the kiddie clothes. 

Next we journeyed to the grocery store for the weeks shopping and to grab a cake.  Then back home to clean the house, do the weeks laundry, prep for dinner and about that time the call came to pick Ikuko up. 

Spontaneously, instead of heading right home we detoured to the local co-op.  I’d been wanting to try my hand at roast lamb but had never been able to find a leg of lamb at any grocery store of meat market.  Some locals had mentioned that the co-op might have some and surprisingly they did.

While we were there I can into a patient of mine.  An elderly local dentist who is as sweet as they come, but has no interest in listening to my medical advice.  Her whole family are doctors, making the lack of compliance difficult, and her daughter an anesthesiologist was in town and she wanted to introduce her to my wife and I. 

Back home I had fun trying out a leg of lamb for the first time and throwing a little birthday party bash.  Halo was enjoying it more than anyone even though it wasn’t his birthday.  He insisted on relighting the birthday candles after the first go-round so that he could blow them out too.

A week later is his birthday, so Iku and I both are taking off and looking forward to more family time.

Technorati Tags: birthday,lamb,cooking

Live Writer goes Live

Woke up this morning, to find the laptop had rebooted itself. Automatic updates had been installed including for Live Writer, which hadn’t been working since I transitioned from XP to Vista. On a whim, I tried LW again and this time it connected.

So this is a test post. Checking to see if it’ll publish and it will include photos uploaded from offline.

Lifestream

A while back, Yongfook changed his old blog to a new Lifestream.  The concept is simple and elegant–the internet is full of free services for publishing different media (video, pictures) and types of text (blog posts, links, twitter-style what-I’m-doing-now posts) that are free and well designed.  The blog itself is nice but really only seems worth posting when you’re writing a significant portion of text.  When the post is smaller, or just about a single picture it seems a bit overkill.  Jay Parkinson, M.D. seemed to think similarly and switched to a tumblelog from a blog to simplify his publishing.  I tried Tumblr and liked it well enough, but it still wasn’t as crystal as Yongfook.com.  Then I found a Tumblr theme by Heather Rivers that was similar to YF and set up my feeds in the Tumblr settings to import my Flickr, WordPress, Del.icio.us (which hasn’t worked yet), Youtube and whatever else I may want later.  I’m quite happy with the results and it has refreshed my interest in blogging.

April

You’ve started another month.  This time you’ll be the senior resident of a general medicine team at the veteran’s administration hospital.

On the plus side, the work load overall tends to be somewhat less with more time to study and teach, parking is available on the days you’re on-call and post-call, you can enter all your orders in the computer, your students can actually write the notes while you just tag addendums, and you have less physical ground to cover as your patients are more centrally located.

The bad includes all the typical VA crap: substandard quality of equipment, laboratory, radiology, and nursing; tons of beaurocratic nonsense; and a vaguely disconcerting smell.  Also, you’re on overnight call every 4.

So far your students seem to be very hard working and competent, your intern the same and your attending quite reasonable.  The weather has gotten quite a bit warmer so it’s actually fun to be riding your moped into work.

You think this will be a good month.

Merry More

We added a couple ferrets to our family yesterday–an albino and named Susie after the Calvin and Hobbes character and a light grey we’ll be calling Hobbes.  Susie is aggressive and violent; Hobbes is reserved and methodical.