Random Notes 23

I have been very quiet on my blog lately. Aside from days that have eleven, twelve, or even thirteen hours of staying in the office, I am also constrained to post anything about work here. A mild form of writers' block may also contribute to the low output, because even the emails I make seem to be incoherent sometimes.

Being active on Facebook everyday also made me post my status updates, to be seen by my growing Friends list by force (unless they block me from their News Feed).

Anyway, I was "reprimanded" by someone who actually has nominal authority over me. And no, I'm not talking about work - it's a Medicine thing. It would have been acceptable if I was still in a training program, following the rigid hierarchy of the medical elite. But at this point in my life, I felt that it was uncalled for - I had a different set of work-related commitments and was certainly not able to fulfill this trifling matter.

After the stern "reprimand", I posted this on Facebook:

If you don't respect who I am and what I now do for a living, then I can't be your friend.

The resulting comments made me smile - it was a cross-section of friends that really understood who I was and what I stood for. They made me smile and realize that, in the end, true friends will stand by you for as long as you are reasonably correct.

I am writing this loose collection of thoughts after arriving from an all-nighter. A few of my former trainees went out and we sang, drank, and talked until morning. It has been a long time since I had an all-nighter. I wish it could have been cheaper for me though. Hahaha!

I had also enrolled myself in UPOU for the next semester. I wish that the coursework for this semester turns out to be accommodating enough to allow me to work. I need to get good grades - after all, this is my career move par excellence.

I am now watching K-On! and it is so cool! The opening theme is worth the price of admission alone. I listen to it repeatedly and never get tired of it. Seriously.

The Complainer 2

I blogged about someone emailing me that I complained too much. That was about 22 months ago.

I would like to think that I have mellowed a bit in terms of audibly complaining - after all, I did complain about everything before. Still, for some people, I complain too much.

It is not my fault that I have had my two ankles sprained during a 'forced' basketball game. It was an unfortunate accident that manifests itself intermittently whenever I walk for more than 2 blocks.

Cut me some slack. I've been standing up and walking around for most of my professional life. If you had two bum feet, you'd complain too.

My Life As A Collection of Games

I don't usually see my life as one great narrative that I can tie everything into without any complications. There are secrets to be kept - those of my family, my friends, my workplace, and most especially my own. Besides, though it seems that I am able to string together a few sentences into a coherent idea, I can't create something that would not bore anyone to sleep.

Flash-based games would be a good way to express some more exciting experiences in my life. Oops, I mean JavaFX (since I've been learning Java for quite some time). A quick game would not be boring, and it would place the player in the (unenviable) position of being me during those moments.

Not everyone had been lucky enough to work a 24 hour shift in the ward or an Emergency Room of a government hospital. I remember working as a clinical clerk in a dimly lit Pediatrics ward, always on my feet giving IV medication, extracting blood, performing procedures - while suffering the onslaught of mosquitoes. I also fondly remember being the Junior Ward Admitting Physician On Duty (quite a mouthful) - where I only slept 2 hours a day and spent the rest of the time either caring for my no less than 5 patients and doing a census of the service's patients.

Who can forget my life as a surgical resident? It's no Grey's Anatomy game, I'm sure. (After all, that show did change my life.) It's more mundane than you think - trying to make sure that every call from all pay patients get answered throughout the night while also making sure that there would be an assist for each emergency operation. And bonus stages would be: making sure that all paperwork is done - medical-related and clerical alike; budgeting the precious 6 hours of "me" time away from the hospital; suppressing the urge to shout "Unfair!" while being grilled alive for the mistakes of your casanova chief resident.

And working in the Emergency Room of the biggest university-affiliated government hospital should be interesting too. How can you cure all patients in a reasonable amount of time when you are short on resources, manpower, heck, even stretcher beds? Diner Dash can't hold a candle as far as time management is concerned.

I'm a sucker for Final Fantasy, so an RPG would be a best fit. Normally doctors are stereotyped as healers (White Mage types) but then again some of us also depend on our equipment to heal - a Mystic Knight type would not be far off. Also, the inordinate time we spend on trying to be a doctor, the workload, and the incremental rewards are perfect for level grinding. There is always a greater evil lurking in the shadows - be it a rude resident from another department, a power-tripping senior resident, or a surgical consultant with a known dislike of your medical school's graduates.

Those should be interesting games. Or maybe not, since I haven't heard of all these games that already exist.

The Guileless Physician

After a long time, I found myself as the guileless physician if only for a few minutes.

My girlfriend Joy, who just came from a fabulous Boracay vacation, was in a hurry to finish up her OPD duty when another patient came into the door. The patient was escorted by one of the hospital employees, who appeared to be her friend.

Joy told me to examine her. From the get-go, it was apparent that the patient was suffering some kind of upper respiratory infection - dry, nagging cough. I did my history taking in the usual manner of graduates from the best medical school along Pedro Gil Street. I also did a systematic physical exam - old habits die hard.

But when it came to writing up my chart, I hesitated for a bit.

Of course, I knew that there were no rales, wheezes, or retractions during my chest exam. The rest of the physical exam was normal - no enlarged lymph nodes, no swollen tonsils, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I hesitated because for an uncomfortable 20 seconds there, I strained to remember the archaic acronyms that I used to litter my charts with - (-) CLAD, NVE; AP, DHS, NRRR; ECE, CBS, (-) R/W; globular, NABS; FEP, PNB (-) edema.

When I realized that I have slightly dislodged the skill of creating an efficient physical examination note with "public static void main", "ipconfig /all", "shutdown -y -i5 -g0", I felt a small tinge of guilt. For five years I was a virtual automaton - writing those things down with modifications for significant PE findings - and now I seemed to have lost my touch.

Frankly, my patient did not notice it - but I did. And it had me thinking about things again. Which made me more tired than the whole 14 hour stay I had in the office.

Oh well, nothing that a little ambling around the Internet couldn't solve.

Pac-Man versus Installing an OS

I have now used the OpenSolaris 2008.11 Live CD that arrived in the mail on my sister's laptop. I was tinkering with the installation since yesterday, and am very excited to use the OS for learning - especially since I had been using Netbeans on SXDE 1/08 while studying Java.

And since the internet connection has come back on after being disconnected last night (grrr...), I tried to get online using my desktop PC and find the lacking Broadcomm ethernet driver from a BigAdmin article. I was successful.

The first acid test was web browsing. 2008.11 came with Firefox preinstalled, which meant that Gmail, Facebook, Friendster, and Wikipedia was working. But Flash was not part of the distribution, so YouTube video was not working at all. Good thing that unlike SXDE, OSOL comes with a graphical front-end for IPS so I proceeded to look for a Flash package.

It turns out that I needed to sign up using my Sun ID (fortunately I had one - from my time in the Java forums) for me to be able to get a certificate and login to the extra repository. Okay.

I then tried to install Flash but it gave me a cryptic error that SUNWcsl needs to be version XXX.111.something. Uh oh - logic tells me that I might need to upgrade to the bleeding edge version of OSOL, which is build 111. The CD would install build 101, and that might be the big difference.

So I tried to play around a bit with the IPS GUI (Package Manager) but it did not allow me to do "Update All". The GUI persistently generated an error about my catalog needing to be refreshed. Googling the error gave me some fixes - they did not work. While I was frantically searching for a workable solution, I go on Facebook and 400 people were saying that Manny Pacquiao won over Ricky Hatton. In round 2. TKO. Lopsided victory. Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! Ad nauseam.

I'm proud of Pac-Man as the next person. But this time it seemed like overkill, like someone was deliberately underprepared for the match. Anyway I'm not a big boxing fan and fixing an operating system issue would be a better use of my free Sunday. But then my search skills were failing me so I sat down with my sisters in front of the idiot tube and watched how Pac-Man slaughtered Hatton in 2 on free TV. I did have the option to watch streaming video but I was distracted by the technical challenge in front of me. Besides, free TV had loads of mind-numbing commercials for roof sealants, wanna be senators (Kuya Efren and Tito Boboy? give me a break) and 1/3 of the screen covered by your favorite products.

After the match, I decided to give it another go. This time, I was allowed to do a global update - time will tell if it does go through.

558 packages will be updated
10 packages will be installed

443.51 MB will be downloaded

This is going to be a long afternoon. It's okay, I have The New Statesman and the original version of Ocean's Eleven to keep me company. Joy is enjoying her short Boracay trip because of the long Labor Day weekend - but I can't be envious of the fact that she is away from a reliable computer connection. Hehehe. 370+ MB to go.

On Staying Online

I guess I should be content to be online sometimes but not all the time. Even as I paid extra just to have DSL service, it's still not a guarantee to have an uninterrupted internet signal.

For the past two days my total online time had been less than an hour. I would be lucky enough to get an email out or two, and then I lose the connection. In my previous job, I would be getting an "APIPA" - an autoprovisioned IP address.

I call in to PLDT customer service and the problem is seemingly solved by making sure that the line providing my signal is connected securely to the distributor box. Crap. There's a thousand reasons why it could be dislodged at any one time.

I'm not saying that having an internet connection is absolutely mission-critical - after all, I was able to survive 5 months without a reliable connection. It's just more convenient and less time-consuming for me to access the internet at home instead of some internet cafe that would not allow me to download files in their slow, bloatware-ridden computers.

Oh well. Since I'm spending more than 11 hours somewhere else anyway, I shouldn't mind that much.

It's just funny that sometimes I am the last to embrace new technology but I get so enamored with it that I become an advocate. For two years, I saw my friends texting on cellphones but never paid attention - now I can proudly say that I can keep up with the latest trends as a loyal subscriber for 6 years. I was also late to get on the DSL bandwagon but it did broaden my horizons and allow me to do decent coursework on my Diploma in Computer Science.

I'm crossing my fingers that this won't be a recurrent problem, or else I would be forced to get the more expensive option of wireless broadband.

Scripted

I stumbled on this video from my previous employer and it was so funny that I literally fell from my seat while watching.

Viewers would be well-informed if they have the proper frame of mind while watching the video. These are agents and supervisors that have been taught on how to market anything. But even so, the whole thing seems like it was ridiculously scripted and patched together to drive home single word talking points - "fun", "friendship", "professional". For any serious business person, these do not really make sense.

Personally, I still see some friends there who are trying their best to do what is asked of them. It's just a shame that at the end of the day, their singular effort is combined to make what amounts to bare-faced snake oil salesmanship. It is also a little bit misleading for potential applicants to show only the favorable parts of a whole picture - then again, there is enough word-of-mouth disclaimers that exist to debunk the video.

At least they learned their lesson from a year ago - now if you Google the name Callbox Sales and Marketing Solutions, you'd find at least 70 free press release links before you arrive at something else. A little over a year ago these four blog posts made quite the splash on Google. Now the images have been lost since the original free provider has taken them down, but you get the picture.

For a company that prides itself as riding the trend of the "global marketplace", they still have some agents declaring that "IT is obsolete". I am shaking my head in disbelief.