What's wrong with Medicine?

Sometimes, it just rains...
 
Wife has been coughing alot lately, me too for that matter... She has
phone appt with doctor today, great idea, btw, keeping costs down...
probably some kind of bronchial infection, it's been going around...
 
I help out by going to the pharmacy to pick up some meds he's ordered
for her... There are 3 packages and 3 months worth of prescriptions!
About $125 - oh my.
 
Certainly, if the condition persists that long, I would think we might
be trying other things by then. We have cheaper mail-order refill
perscription options by then as well.
 
I am going to consider this a "click the wrong box" sort of problem,
but it illustrates the importance of patient responsibility and taking
care of your own self.
 
I know too many lemmings who just unquestioningly do what the doctor
says. Speak up people, ask questions.

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Free Read! - Personal Effects: Dark Art - Chapters 1 thru 4

Download now or preview on posterous

PEDA-Chap1-4.pdf (1766 KB)

Something for you to read, see if this book is something for you.

 

I have my own copy, am reading it now, but just in case you'd like to see what all the fuss is about...

 

 

Posted via email from Wunderphul

Pictures of Julia

 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from juliaposz's posterous

It has just arrived! - Personal Effects: Dark Art

I just started reading, and the cool "extras" just invite you into the story.

 

Posted via email from The Wunderphul posterous site

Moon landing trivia

We are coming up on the 40th anniversary of the 1st Apollo moon landing (July 20) in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to touch down, kick some dirt around, bring back some things and generally kick off a whole generation of geeks (like me!).

Actually, we were already gearing up for things, from the famous President Kennedy speech, to (and I think more importantly) the support the teachers got in school for science and especially space related things. Everyone was interested in space exploration. There were books, cartoons, lots of stuff to keep this budding generation of geeks ready to go. Some of these early 3-4th grade readers I still have, having rescued them from my closet at my family home in Minnesota.

Of course, I was late in the generation. The engineers that were at NASA and other places like Lockheed and Boeing were earlier (older?) in the generation. But for all of us, it sheparded in a time of excitement and of hope.

I remember Walter Cronkite (who now is suffering from cerebrovascular disease and is not expected to recuperate) and his distinctive reporting style on the CBS broadcasting network as the launch, flight, landings and returns of the Apollo missions were carried out. I would sit up late into the night during those missions to watch and listen to everything the television (black and white, btw) could give me about each of those men that went on those journeys into space. I remember creating a table of all of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, who was on them, who actually flew, who did space walks, and how long, how many orbits, and for the Apollo's, what the objectives or landing sites on the moon were.

I even own an old style phonograph record of the audio highlights of this first Armstrong/Aldrin landing (Apollo 11) and I distinctly remember that the first reported words on the moon where not that "one small step" sentence, but something more pertinent to the mission. That bit of trivia I'll leave to the readers to ascertain, or if you cannot find it out, then drop me a note and I will help you out.

For other interested trivia (thanks to George Hrab- check out his #121 podcast episode) there were 10 other things, for example: The Apollo 11 flag was purchased from a Sears store local to the Manned Flight Center. At the time, Annin & Company was Sears supplier of nylon flags. From what I've read, it seems impossible to confirm this for sure at this time. In an interview in 1992 with NASA Chief of Technical Services, it's indicated that the flag may have been purchased through a government supply catalog, which also may have been locally procured. Nonetheless, an interesting sidelight to Sears history, which I wrote about over in my technology blog. Have a look.

There are probably more than 10 things, a lot of history is probably lost in the course of life and the moving forward part of life. Maybe there will be a lot less lost because of the "internet age" -- don't you think?

Posted via email from The Wunderphul posterous site

Personal Effects: Dark Art

Back in the first part of the year, I posted that Sigler and Hutchins are really good authors giving the old school publishing industry a run with an alternate business model.

JC Hutchins' latest book, Personal Effects: Dark Art, is out, at bookstores and online, I've ordered my copy, and a prequel is playing in the feed at JC's site, and at Podiobooks. The book is a supernatural thriller, great storytelling, and will keep you up at night, either reading, or scared to go to sleep. The book is also different, in that you get some "personal effects" like ID cards and photos and if you call the phone numbers with some of the items, you get the character's voicemail; google the characters and institutions, you will find real websites to further shore up the storytelling infrastructure, like the hospital website or the main character's myspace page.

Personal Effects creator is Jordan Weisman, of the Alternate Reality Game storytelling genre. Think The Dark Knight, Year Zero, and I Love Bees.

Maybe you won't be a simple passive reader, you might become active in the story, because you can find out things that the characters themselves don't know... or do they?

Posted via email from Thomas's posterous

Great Post by Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer

Today, Phil revealed this great story at (link, he was reading about it at SFGate) about quantum entanglement

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

wow, I am thinking, two homeless men

he goes on to say, that the article said that two other people witnessed the attack and observes that

Oh, too bad! There goes the defense; the observers collapsed the wave function. Otherwise, he could’ve pleaded guilty and not guilty.

Hee Hee - I laughed myself silly

Posted via email from Thomas's posterous

Contagious

Coming up to the last episode of Contagious, by Scott Sigler.

The latest podcast episode was posted Sunday, only one left. You can get the feed and listen to all of the episodes where Scott reads them for free at
http://www.scottsigler.com/

If you like horror with a science bent, you're gonna love these.

Time, Sigler, Hutchins

Gotta love these guys. Their heart (and tons of time) has gone into their work and the marketing "buzz" is starting to pay off.

Give them a listen at Podiobooks.com (Infected, Contagious, 7thSon book 1)or at the author's websites. I just finished Sigler's Nocturnal and it was great!

The 3rd issue of RKMag is out!

Julia is also in this issue, check out the work that this fabulous group of kids is accomplishing.

Alternate link

Julia is on page 13 and 33.

Julia's in a magazine! part 2

Get your own - Open publication

Julia Graduates today

5th grade - she's done - now on to middle school.

Scary

More Wildlife at home

Today, I was quite surprised to find a deer in the yard. A poor picture, but it was the best I could do... (she moved away quite quickly when I approached)

Some tomato plants are loosing their leaves. I wonder why?

Adsense

Still after a few posts, the references to RUP from a few months ago are still pulling Adsense into those kinds of links. My post was a joke, but of course, Adsense isn't smart enough to figure this out.

I thought the thread between some former associates was a hoot, but then humor from a machine? Perhaps too much to expect...

Julia's in a magazine!

Get your own - Open publication

First thing into the pool

On vacation in Nice, CA. It's uncanny, I could have predicted this.

Obscure measurements

Recently, I send in a comment on the Technorama podcast listener line about this subject, what I said was that I prefer latency to be measured in nanofortnights. Chuck and Kreg didn't believe it, but this is a "real" measurement, obscure yes, but certainly in the days of the VMS operating system, with the TIMEPROMPTWAIT variable, in units per microfortnight.

A microfortnight is 1.2096 seconds, thus the nanofortnight is 1.2096 milliseconds. Both are plenty obscure, but they generally used to slow users down, allowing them to set the parameter properly only after having given the matter some thought.

Yes, the following week, I voice-mailed Chuck and Kreg with this info, so they wouldn't think that I was just making this up.

Late Afternoon at the Beach

At the end of day, nothing beats finding a bunch if shells in a cache. It doesn't matter at all if they are common shells... Nope, these are precious!

Technobabble

Technobabble (a portmanteau of technology and babble) is a form of prose using jargon, buzzwords and highly esoteric language to give an impression of plausibility through mystification, misdirection, and obfuscation. This is not to be confused with jargon itself, but rather technobabble is a conscious attempt to deliver jargon to outsiders, without insight or comprehensive explanation, to make unsound or unprovable arguments appear to have merit. (Wikipedia)

I recently ran across an excellent example of this, but more importantly, the comments are "priceless"...

---

... this new umbrella methodology also includes the Rational Unified Process for our Software Development Lifecycle. However, keep in mind RUP is a software process a, not a methodology, and the other part of the equation that Blueprinting methodology entails is Business Visualization which is a Business Engineering Process. RUP for instance focuses more on the scoping of a project from the perspective of what is the most technology complex business problem or event. Our Business Visualization Engineering Process focuses on cross-boundary value chain workflow of related business activities (components) and includes for instance measurement and simulation. ...

Commenter 1: I've reread this twice and still can't get it.....

Commenter 2: It’s code. Extract every nth character to form the secret message. N depends on a complex lifecycle method of complex unified workflow umbrellas from the perspective of technology visualization of rational business scoping. Get it now?

Commenter 3: Here is a classic message of yesteryear. Whenever I need a smile I always go back to this one. (posted almost 2 years after the original message)

Commenter 2: Cross-boundary value chain workflow? Huh?

Commenter 3: My cross country value pack of workflow volume measurement, regarding relative performance when compared to the business visualization engineering process until unified in measurement and simulation reality…is just fine. And you?

Commenter 1: from the essence of quantum physics the value chain of oxygen interfering with carbon dioxide has now required a new visualization of the underlying semantics required by the earth's warming interior as engineered by the "goriest" warming of the physical exterior related to relativity as bespoke by Einstein.

Bottled or Tap?

Around our house, we use tap water almost exclusively, but interestingly - there are lots of people who simply don't believe this is safe. Our own situation is a little tricky, in that we have our own well, and we do our own R.O. filtration for the main tap where we usually drink from. But this "lots of people" quote comes from a recent article on Skepticality regarding this very topic.

I encourage you to click this link, or the link above, for a read (listen) of this fine work from Derek and Swoopy.