Christmas photo follies

As some of you should know by now, we decided to just use a picture of our little ones for our Christmas card this year. It was fast, easy and we thought they turned out well. But getting one photo that was decent enough to use, well, that was not fast or easy.

Alex would only smile for a split second, Jessica wasn't feeling well, and tried her hardest to muster a smile, but it just didn't work. And Aubrey, well, she is just Aubrey. You never quite know what you are going to get with her.

In the end, we managed to salvage one that was decent enough. Jessica still has a bit of a grimace, but she is trying.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Chuck: Our new favorite show

Years ago, I started watching Alias. My wife sat down and we were both immediately engrossed. It became our weekly show, the one we would set time aside to watch together. And if one of us couldn't be there we either taped it (in the old days), or (confession here) downloaded the episode. It was a lot of fun. We knew that, every week, we had that time set aside for a little escapism. Our enjoyment of this activity waned a bit during the third season (our least favorite), but we stuck through. After Alias went off the air, we were sort of in a void. There just wasn't anything that we both wanted to watch. My wife fell in love with Gilmore Girls, and is still enjoying catching up on past seasons on DVD. I would see the occasional episode, and while I found much of the dialog witty, it didn't really draw me. We sort of started watching Lost at the beginning of the second season. But, to be honest, it started to get a bit too weird for us. For the most part, we have not really watched too much TV together since that time. Not a huge loss, as there are better things we can do with our time. Still, we missed having a show that we sat down to watch together every week. We tried with Heroes last season, and while I enjoyed it, it was too dark for my wife's taste (and this season is too directionless and, well, just bad). Enter Chuck. I happened to catch the pilot episode and found it quite enjoyable. It managed to straddle numerous different styles. On the one hand you have an action/spy show. Similar to Alias, the main character has to hide his spy life from his friends and family. Yet the show also mixes in well the geekiness (or nerdiness) of the main character and his friends. It manages to balance humor with action nicely. To be honest, it is a very pleasant breath of fresh air. The cast is great. Each one is likable and believable (relatively) in his/her role. The interplay between the characters is handled well, not too heavy handed, but again with just enough tongue-in-cheek to keep you smiling. We have been catching up on some past episodes we missed, and are, unashamedly, big fans of this new show. The news that it was picked up for a full season (and possibly a second-it is hard to tell for sure due to the writer's strike) came as welcome news. At least thus far, they have managed to make it work well. And for the other nerds that may be watching, there are ample nerd and geek references (subtle for the most part) that keep me on my toes, watching for them. It is a lot of fun to have something that my wife and I both look forward to watching again.

Um, my brother wants to be. . .

Whew, dusting off the old keyboard here. Been a while. But I had to share, this was too ridiculous. 4:30 this morning. I was on call for General Surgery (and Pedi Surgery and Vascular Surgery and Trauma and ENT). Other than a vascular patient who decided she wanted to try to die and hemorrhage on us (she's as okay as she can be, at least not bleeding like a stuck pig anymore) it was a pretty quiet nite. One of the joys of being the junior Surgery resident on call is that you have the glory and honor of having all outside phone calls that want to talk to a Surgeon directed to you. You get a page that starts with 333** with two other numbers (the **), and when you call back, you are connected to the caller. This is usually either MDs from other hospitals calling to transfer someone to us (because they are too complicated, the patient that is, or because they are too lazy, the MD that is), or previous surgery patients who have a question about something. These calls can be a real pain. So, the pager goes off. 333**. Outside call. My guess is, at this time, a sick person has shown up at another hospital and they want to send them our way. I dial the number, hear the beep that tells me we are connected. "Hello, this is PJ with Surgery." "Um, yeah, my brother, well, he wants to be a woman." Silence. "Do you do that surgery?" "No. No, we don't do that surgery. General Surgery isn't even the right person to call for gender reassignment surgery." "Well, can I talk to the person who does it?" "No, no one here does it." "Um, can you give me the number of someone who does?" "No." Click. This has to be a prank. No one in their right mind, lest anyone who actually is considering gender reassignment, is going to have their drunk sounding brother call at 4:30 in the morning. My money is on one of the other Surgery residents who are on research this year and have the time to pull a lame prank like this. Needless to say, it made a fun story to tell the other residents this morning. What a classic line. "Um, my brother wants to be a woman." Priceless.

Blogging From Word

Being something of a tech geek, I couldn’t help but jump on the chance to download and install the beta of Office 2007. And as a blogger, I thought it might be fun to see how well it works blogging from Word.

We’ll see how this shows up on my blog. Mostly just for test purposes.

Ramble on. . .

-Writing so Dis Con Nec Ted. . . A great song, by the way. Understated, incredibly thunderous bass, and almost uncomfortably restrained vocals, it is one of my Rychian favorites. -Back from Houston. What an incredible experience. It was life altering. Okay, so I am full of crap. It was awful. Not in a really bad sort of awful way, just in a "I spent $1000, plus $500 in airfare, $160 in hotel and $35 for a car just so I could take this idiotic test?" sort of awful. Let the good times roll. -On call tonight. Got here to the ICU at 5:30 this morning, hoping to leave by 8:30 tomorrow morning, with no plans for sleep. Now that is what we call quality patient care. The drive home is always adventerous as well. -Got a new review up over at Blogcritics.org (I am now a writer over there, mostly music reviews). What makes this one fun is it is the first review I have written for a CD the band's publicity company sent me. Sort of fun to get free music. -Graduation approaches. That is a bit of a surreal thought. When I graduated from my undergraduate institution I didn't think it was a big deal. I knew I had another, much more significant hurdle before me. Now that I am there, at the cusp of that hurdle, well, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal either. My wife assures me it is. I think I am a bit blinded by my proximity to the occassion. But I have to admit, I do like the thought of actually being a doctor. In training, of course. But I will still have that MD. -Along those lines, I have had numerous people lately call me Dr. Jones. I want to correct them, it just sounds so wrong, so dirty of me. Then I remember. The only thing between me and that title is one month (from tomorrow). I would have to actively bust my hump to not actually graduate. And so I leave it alone. And secretly, I really like the sound of Dr. Jones. -I have wanted to blog numerous times in the past week, but the slate has come up blank. Hence the ramble. -It is high time to take out the contacts. They have been in since before 5:00 am, so my eyes are getting a bit tired. -It is also high time to end this entry. I have been composing it for about 5 hours now, in little spurts, sometimes not even a whole sentance at a time. D ow N (San Chonino is probably the only one who will get that)

With benefits

I have been a student for a long time. It has been a total of 22 years now. That is, obviously, the majority of my life. I am used to being a student, with all that entails. And there is one thing that being a student doesn't generally entail. Benefits. While I will still be in training, it suddenly dawned on me that I will be employed. And with employment comes benefits. And in our case, Dartmouth-Hitchcock has some pretty nice benefits. I was investigating how much it was going to cost us for our health insurance. See, last year they decided to increase the health insurance premiums for students with families by about 200%. Needless to say, we felt the hit. They sent out an email about how they are going to go ahead and raise premiums even more for students with families this year. In order to keep that increase minimum, they are also going to increase deductibles and decrease benefits. Sounds like a great deal, no? I suppose that is what happens when you are so dramatically the minority. Well, me curiosity was piqued. How much was I going to have to pay next year for health insurance? So I did a little research and found the answer. And then I called my wife to tell her the news. It is free. Yep. Dartmouth-Hitchcock pays the premium for all House Staff as well as their eligible dependents. We were thrilled. That is a huge help for the next year. So, while I was at it I thought I would look into the disability benefits. There has been a big buzz at school about disability, with the option to purchase disability through Duke if it is cheaper than where we will be going. Well, guess what. Disability is free as well. So is (limited) life insurance. This is a whole new world to me. One I look forward to entering. All at about $7.00/hr.

All-time greatest gaming moment

I have numerous favorite gaming moments. My Saturday afternoon marathon of DOOM II that resulted in me being locked in the University Library. My first time firing up Half Life (though that game makes my list of all time game disappointments as well). My first time playing the full 3D of Descent II (boy, I would get dizzy playing that one). The final cutscene of Starcraft. Reverting from hyperspace to see Kharak burning. But one moment tops them all. Finally dying. And knowing I wouldn't be coming back to life. Shaking off my immortality, discovering my true identity, and no longer being The Nameless One. Planescape: Torment. When I played it I had never really played a Dungeons and Dragons RPG. I didn't really know anything about the setting, the story, the mechanics of the game. I just found it for a good price, decided to give it a try, and slogged my way through it until I understood how to play. And I became engrossed. Planescape: Torment had more emotion, more passion, more intrigue, more wonder than many epic books I have read. The characters were brilliant, the choices felt important. The story was fascinating. I relished every line of text I could read (and anyone who has played it knows there is a LOT of text in Planescape: Torment), looked forward to the next revelation of who my character was and what brought him to his current state. And to finally reach the end, wrap up all the loose ends, discover the secrets of my traveling companions, and accept my fate in the Blood Wars, well, it was a cathartic experience. Games that great are hard to come by. It isn't often electronic media can connect with the player on such an intellectual and emotional level. Planescape: Torment did that for me. It is, withouth doubt, my greatest gaming moment of all time. Anyone want to share theirs?

Yes, I am a geek

Yes, I am a geek. No question about it, I don't try to hide it. My latest expression of geekdom is the following: Yes, I went into Best Buy with my little son and a digital camera. Yes, I took a picture of him playing the a box of Galactic Civlizations II. And yes, I did it to win a Galactic Civilizations II T-Shirt. And I won! There is my little man, Gal Civ II in hand, having a good old time playing with the box. So now, thanks to the friendly folks at Stardock I will be getting a Terran T-Shirt. I will wear it with my gamer nerd pride!

Before and After

While I have not been blogging about it here, I have been at my other blog site. At the beginning of the year I decided it was really time to get my butt in shape. I had made such decisions before, but hadn't ever really stuck to something consistently or long enough to see the results of my labors. This time was different. So here they are, the results of my pretty darn hard work since the 3rd of January (that was the first day I realy gave it a go). In the photos below I am wearing pants that, on January 1, 2006, fut me better than any others I had. Not too tight, but not loose at all, these pants fit me just right. You can see that no longer is that the case: It has been a lot of fun to see the difference. Now to keep it up!

Dirty blogs

This shouldn't really come as a surprise, but I enjoy blogging. I enjoy writing blogs and I really enjoy reading the blogs of others. When I have the time, I enjoy surfing random blogs using such services as Blog Explosion or BlogMad. I also avail myself of the traffic generating features of those services as well, but to be quite honest, that matters less to me than it used to. For those unfamiliar with those services, you surf the blogs of people who have signed up and earn credits for each page you view. These credits, in turn, can be used to get your blogs to show up in the rotation of blogs being viewed. Each service has a "ticker" that forces you to view a blog for a certain amount of time (ranging from 20-30 seconds in the sites I have used) before you can move on to the next blog if you want to earn credit for viewing that blog. And so, often, I will open multiple tabs in Maxthon and be surfing multiple blogs at the same time. In doing so, I have been fortunate enough to come across some really great blogs. But I have also noticed something. There are a lot of dirty blogs out there in the blogosphere. And by dirty I don't mean vulgar, profane, pornographic (I am sure there are plenty of those, but I choose to have my surfing settings avoid those ones). By dirty I mean cluttered, busy, confusing. It is astounding the number of blogs I have surfed to that have a grimy layer of ads, links, banners, buttons, and just general garbage before I ever even get an entry. If I can't see a decent portion of the blogger's most recent entry without having to scroll my browser window, I refuse to even look at the blog. And it isn't as if I have a little browser window. I don't have it maximized, but since I run my resolution at 1600x1200, my browser window is usually around 1280x960. In other words, my browser window is plenty large. I know that there are ways to "make money" from your blog (I put that in parentheses because, really, how much money do you think individuals really make from their blogs?). I also know it is fun to have lots of little gizmos and gadgets in your sidebar (heck, I have a cool little Flickr badge with some fun photos here in this blog). But when they become this huge monstrosity, filled with maps, buttons of all sorts of different sites, photos, playlists, friends, archives, links, etc. I just stop looking. For me, the joy of blogging (and reading blogs) is getting to read the thoughts, ideas, and works of other people who I wouldn't get to read otherwise. But when those thoughts get buried under a barrage of AdSense ads, banners and links, the effort and frustration to find them often outweighs the payoff. Or maybe I am just lazy. ;)