I have successfully prescribed drugs for and treated my first patients.
Fine, they were cats. And fine, if I’d prescribed the human version to other humans, it’d be illegal in most states.
I’m not losing any sleep over it.
Abbie and I have been working on a wedding website for all our guests for quite a while now, but it’s essentially done save for adding extra arrangements for accommodations that we’ll be setting up in the next few weeks and a strange glitch with Google Maps that has been frustrating the hell out of me for the last month. At least, that’s all we think there is left to do.
Take a look. What else would you need to know or want to see if you were a guest? (Or, if you are a guest, in which case: Hi guest!) Should we have a blog to keep people updated of changes, vendors, menus, general planning progress, etc.? Some sort of comment system? More photos?
The biggest question is: Does it work? Does it look okay? If it does not, please let me know, and tell me which browser you’re using. I know there are some issues with older versions of Internet Explorer, but the rest are workable as far as I know.
Okay, so apparently if you call the IT line and speak with someone else, they will just reset your password automatically within 30 seconds of calling, in contrast to the past week of calling them constantly and contacting administrators that have better things to do than sign some forms that say some grad student can bring those forms over to someone else to sign and fax over to someone else and then go take a 15 minute class on how to log on to a computer before his password can be reset. No confirmation of birthdate needed either, although I’ll just briefly mention that it’s 3/11 and also that I accept anonymous gifts, not to put ideas in your head. Also, if you would like to help fund a wedding, that’s also an option too, not to put ideas in your head (again).
On Tuesday morning I totally rammed into some lady’s car. Hers was basically untouched save for a few scratches from the license plate, but ours is going to run us Allstate $2000. Perfect timing, seeing as I have virtually no large expenses coming up anytime soon, unless you count sister’s birthday, Christmas, dad’s birthday, replacement and/or cleaning of the numerous things the cats are peeing on these days (i.e. everything in the apartment), increasingly large winter utility bills, taxes, auto insurance, ring insurance, computer insurance, insurance insurance, and a fricking huge-ass wedding. Absolutely perfect timing.
Who am I kidding? Abbie pays for all of that stuff. She’s the sole breadwinner.
We spent the majority of the morning filing police reports, calling insurance offices that weren’t yet open, and doing other fun activities.
Later Tuesday morning afternoon I discovered that three of my five pipettes were missing. One was returned; two are still lost, and as expected, they are the two I use the most. Awesome. Also, I left my keys in the car after Abbie dropped me off, so I couldn’t get into my lab or lock it when I did get in. Three remaining pipettes went untouched, thankfully, but who cares? I rarely use those anyway.
Yesterday I managed to lose my hospital ID. Can’t get into the hospital (theoretically), can’t get into the student lounge, can’t use the underground tunnel to avoid the weather and/or weird people walking around campus…reading books…in shorts…running into people.
This morning I called the IT people to have my medicine password reset. I rarely use this password, and so I’ve forgotten it. Turns out I need to contact my department administrator, get some sort of higher-up approval, and possibly attend yet another pointless computer training session on how to log in and create strong passwords (that clearly are not memorable whatsoever) so that I can get a new password and use a single program to identify mutations, which has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with patient records or any sensitive information in the least. Can’t I just, like, confirm my date of birth or something? (By the way, it’s 3/11, and I want these. Also, this or this or both. My Paypal ID is bdf@uchicago.edu, and I do not object to donations unless they are overly large, in which case I will only object to them under my breath.)
Not a good week.
Another of my posts is up on The Differential, Medscape’s group medical student weblog. Head over there to read about the podcasts that get me through the day.
Once again, the Cancer Research Blog Carnival is coming to you straight from this here weblog, and it will once again be all nosugrefnebified. (It’s a word. Look it up.) (Fine, it’s not a word, but it should be. Give it time.) (Okay, that was enough time. It’s now a word. Look it up.) Check back here on December 7 for all the hot cancer action.
This will be the fourth edition of the carnival. For previous editions, see #1, #2, and #3. If you would like to submit a piece on the topic of cancer resarch for the carnival, which will surely bring you grand acclaim and much notoriety, leave me a link to your post(s) on the carnival’s submission page, in a comment on this post, in an email to me, or anywhere else you think I might stumble upon it. As this will be going out to press on December 7, let’s shoot for a December 5-ish deadline.
If you would like to host any future editions, which will come out on the first Friday of every month, let The AC of the bayblab blog know.
We initially had hopes for our dog to become valedogtorian upon finishing his dog class. PetersDigest on why our dog is going to be okay despite our complete ineptitude.
At the risk of fully transforming this weblog into an unequivocal anti-smoking campaign, which, to be sure, I’m not consciously trying to do in the least, I found this story from NPR a few days ago interesting.
There were no cigarette executives on hand to deny that smoking is harmful, as in the famous Congressional tobacco hearings of the 1990s; the star of this Senate Commerce Committee hearing was the Federal Trade Commission’s smoking robot…The machine has been used since the 1960s when tobacco companies started making ‘light’ and ‘mild’ brands in response to growing health concerns, but Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic testified that for some time, the agency has known the robot doesn’t accurately reflect what people inhale when they puff on a cigarette.
…
Cathy Backinger with the National Cancer Institute testified that tobacco company documents show cigarette makers have long known that smokers get just as much if not more tar and nicotine from ‘light’ brands, but still use the FTC ratings to market their products…’Smokers erroneously saw these products as viable alternatives to quitting, and as a result, many more smokers continue to smoke who might otherwise have quit.’
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Yesterday, [New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg] said Congress has another urgent tobacco issue to tackle with the FTC smoking machine. ‘The FTC should not allow this rating system to continue if it cannot stand behind it, and big tobacco should not be able to hide behind the FTC method to justify the claim that ‘light’ and ‘low-tar’ cigarettes are healthier.”But cigarette makers say they don’t market ‘light’ brands as any safer than regular full-flavored cigarettes. Bill Phelps is a spokesman for Philip Morris USA: ‘Smokers should not assume that brand descriptors such as ‘light’ or ‘ultralight’ indicate the actual amount of tar and nicotine that’s inhaled from a particular cigarette.”
Right. Wait, what? What exactly does the “light” refer to then, Bill? Actual weight of the cigarette? More brilliant white paper?
Maybe I’m just going out on a limb here, but when I buy light mayonnaise, I usually expect there to be less fat in it. Same thing with dressings, peanut butter—pretty much everything. When I drink light beer, typically there are less calories. When I buy jambalaya that is advertised to have “lower sodium,” I expect—not always, but usually—there to be less sodium in it. Maybe your industry works differently or uses a different English dialect or something. Where I’m from though, which happens to be exactly where you’re from, “light” is used to assuage peoples’ health concerns and usually refers to a product that has “less bad shit.” You do know that tar and nicotine are bad for you, right?
I’m getting tired of this crap. It’s getting really old. On the bright side, as Leo reminds me, I won’t be out of a job anytime soon thanks to these people.
Another of my posts is up at The Differential, Medscape’s group medical student weblog. Check it.
