10 August 2011
By yay
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So with current global financial shenanigans, I have been reminded that the Australian dollar’s lofty place in the world currency market will not last forever (and who knows, may crash tomorrow). THEREFORE tonight I felt it was time to buy the very expensive textbook I’ve been thinking about for a while.
And, well, even though it’s free shipping and they don’t put all your books into a single package anyway, a trip to Book Depository is not complete with a single book… THEREFORE it was my duty to spend all the money I saved by going there in the first place.
Well! I was delighted to see that in the last five days some Stella Gibbons books have been republished. I only recently became acquainted with Stella Gibbons when Cold Comfort Farm was published in a $9.95 Penguin edition a couple of years ago. CCF (aside from being congestive cardiac failure) is a parody of the “agricultural romance” novels popular in the 1920s. It is freaking hilarious.
After reading CCF, I searched online for more Stella Gibbons and there wasn’t a whole lot around – Nightingale Wood was occasionally available although I didn’t get around to buying it, but not much else. Today I learned that there are (at least) two more CCF books (one not out yet), plus another novel called Starlight – these were only re-released in the last five days! So tonight I have ordered Conference at Cold Conference Farm, Starlight and Nightingale Wood. And I am eagerly awaiting Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm which will be released in a few months.
I also purchased An Anatomy of Addiction – a book about two bigwigs in medical history and their erm experiences with the new miracle drug of their time, cocaine. Sigmund Freud is well known enough. William Halsted doesn’t have quite the same household name status – he was a surgeon who was very important in the development of modern surgical practice – he was a big fan of sterile technique and the use of anaesthesia (I think most of us would agree that anaesthesia is a welcome component to the surgical process). Should be an interesting read.
Now we just play the waiting game and see how many days the deliveries will be spread over…
In other news, yesterday I finally took care of 18 months worth of shredding. I do not recommend saving your shredding for this long, particularly if you work in an area with a high volume of bits of paper requiring shredding. Oh if only backyard incinerators were still legal!
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05 August 2011
By yay
In Uncategorized
So it appears that I have been a bit of a failure in the blogging department lately. Oh well. I am currently having a spot of annual leave. It’s not that I don’t like work, but I am so looking forward to retirement.
Today I went on an adventure to The Powerhouse Museum with a teacher friend who has Fridays off. We actually visited the Powerhouse a few weeks ago but ran out of time that day and missed a few things. And there are a few new exhibits since then anyway.
So. Of note today (not an exhaustive list):
1. The very large tower in the photo above. It is not a part of, or at all related to the museum apart from being on the way there from the station. I looked at it from all angles and was none the wiser. On google maps it appears to be hollow. A friend finally informed me this evening that it’s a smoke stack!. So there you go.
2. The magical grand piano with a floppy disc drive that records what you play and plays it back – not as a recording, it moves its own keys. I actually saw this on a school excursion ~12 years ago and at that time it was pretty amazing. We’re talking about the days when 2Mb was the inbox limit for most web-based mail, no-one had digital cameras and mp3 players were rare and primitive. So I was pretty excited that it’s still there, although it’s not giving demonstrations anymore.
3. Behold! A double flageolot! (on the right)
In other news, I bought a Xaphoon a few months ago. It is a fun instrument.
4. Space
The space exhibit is pretty cool. It has a zero gravity simulator which is a little trippy, lots of replica satellites and whatnot, some bits of space ships or launching things or something… space suits, an emergency pod thing (basically a metal ball that falls in the if things go wrong…), space food, videos where astronauts say stuff about astronauting….
5. Love Lace is part of the big design dealie they have going at the moment. It appears that lace has been redefined to mean “anything with holes in it”. Anyway, there are some interesting pieces there. The female urinary and reproductive systems made out of human hair was perhaps the most interesting…
There were many other notable things to see but I don’t want to overdo this blogging lark.
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04 January 2011
By yay
In Uncategorized
It appears that I have forgotten to blog for a while. So perhaps a spelling lesson is in order.
I have noticed recently that a couple of nurses are not aware that the spelling of bowl and bowel are… well… different.
This morning I learned that Mrs Gummy’s dentures were ill-fitting and she had left them in a bowel overnight.
This made me laugh. Might not have made Mrs Gummy laugh when it was time to put the dentures back in though.
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23 October 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
So the recent troubles with losing the envelope containing all the secrets of the universe have reminded me that backing stuff up is important.
Therefore I will be writing my passwords on another envelope and putting it in a Very Safe Place. In light of my lack of neatness, I may well write the passwords on a few envelopes and put them in a few Very Safe Places.
If anyone who knows where I live has an envelope that they feel would be suitable for the role of password keeper, please send it with a brief explanation of why you think your envelope is fit for such an honour. Applications close whenever I feel like it.
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22 October 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
I’m very pleased to announce that I have found the back of the envelope with all the passwords to my life written on it. It was kind of under the floor rug. However it appears that I actually wrote the passwords on the front of the envelope. Luckily the passwords can still be accessed by turning over the envelope.
Very glad that I found it – there’s no way I would have guessed or remembered what I changed my computer password to. Which would be ok in most situations but apparently to reset the password on a Mac, you have to reboot the computer with the operating system disk in the drive. I have the disk. But for some reason my computer won’t read it (the disk can be read by my other computers and my computer can read other disks…), so I actually installed the current operating system from a copy of the disk that I borrowed from the guy at the shop where I bought the real one… anyway, that could have got messy.
In other news, if your urinary tract infection can be diagnosed from 20+ metres away by anyone with a nose… um… yes, it’s time to take some antibiotics.
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21 October 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
Don’t you hate it when in a moment of post-email-being-hacked panic you change all your passwords and write them on the back of an envelope due to this being probably the most secure place to store them and then some time later when trying to install new software on your computer you realise that you have no idea what the new password is for your computer and the envelope is nowhere to be seen due to your failure to deal with paperwork for the last few months…
At any rate it does seem that the back of an envelope is a very safe place to keep passwords.
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16 October 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
Some time ago, I had a very very very very irritating patient who frequently represented with the same condition then refused all treatment.
As I stood in her room explaining the options (a) accept treatment, b) go home), the patient said, in a threatening manner:
“Do you want me to NEVER COME BACK to this hospital?!!”
Um well, actually that would be really great. Let’s try it!
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03 October 2010
By yay
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Patient: The doctors in this place are terrible! Always changing my medications! I usually take 400mg of Brainium Plus and they’re only giving me 200mg!!! And I always take my calcium three times a day and they’re only giving it to me once!! SO INCOMPETENT!
Yay: hmm well that sounds like it can be easily fixed. I’ll just get your notes to see what has happened.
Patient: Hah! RED TAPE BUREAUCRACY! It’s a joke!!
…. Yay potters off to get the notes… looks at the page in the admission papers saying “Medications”… the table is blank except for “See green sheets”… Yay flips through the folder to the green sheets. Ah! It’s the patient’s home-made medical record that he has lovingly put together with everything from the painful toenail when marooned on an island off the coast of Greenland to the time the aspirin fell down the toilet and the patient had to take paracetamol for his headache instead… and then the list of medications.
Yay: er.. sir the list of medications that you gave us indicates that you are taking 200mg of Brainium Plus and calcium once daily.
Patient: well I’ve been taking 400mg since last week and the calcium three times daily for two weeks!!
Yay: yes but doctors often have to rely on the patient to tell us how they take their medications…
Patient: but I gave them the list!!
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03 October 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
This is the first time I’ve been awake to see daylight saving commence. I’m pleased to report that my computer and phone both skipped from 1:59 to 3:00 unprompted. I am not pleased to be an hour more sleep-deprived than I’d planned.
In other news, tonight as I was driving home from work at 43 minutes past midnight, through the mist an ice cream van loomed into sight going in the opposite direction. I wonder where it had been… or was going…
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25 September 2010
By yay
In Uncategorized
The first term is, I believe, a description of vertigo, which is referred to in the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine.
The sixth term is a phrase used many times in discussion with the assistant minister at my old church. I always thought his introductions were excellent…
“How to scare cockatoos” – Pooka is working on that one. I believe that Pooka is the reason we get more passionfruit on our side of the fence than the neighbours do (they own/maintain the vine however). However I’m not sure how well Pooka would fare against those claws and beaks…
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