DocRoland's Xanga

Nasty Star

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 04:39:46 GMT

So I was browsing the internet and came across this.

NASTY STAR!

Otherwise I have nothing of substance to post.

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Pressure from the peanut gallery ...

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:48:39 GMT

I don't post for a couple of days and people make comments in OTHER posts about posting absences, so here I am. Work recently has been exhausting. New residents and increased responsibility = tired DocRoland.

"Sexy 1900 steel conglomerate tycoon!" This one is especially for my friends in New Jersey, I imagine this place is right around the corner from you guys. Another video to make you laugh, but as before, due to language it's probably not safe for work.

I'm not an anime fan, I just saw this out on the internets. It's a mix of Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" and anime from "Black Heaven". It makes me think of the movie "Office Space" which is probably one of my top 5 favorite movies ever.

Hopefully ya'll are having a good week out there in Xanga-land. Oh yeah, if you can't tell, I'm really getting into these videos.

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Autonomy

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:02:20 GMT

I'm finally getting autonomy ... which after 4 years of medical school and 3 years of residency is a little refreshing, and scary. Mind you, my attendings have to be there for the induction (putting the patients to sleep) and extubation (removing the breathing tube), and some of the important stuff in between, but it's finally MY case - my plan, my implementation. It's strange though, how you approach something when it's YOURS.

Now all bets are off on other days when the attendings want to do everything ... but today it was my show. Thank God for small victories.

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Not feeling too well ...

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:14:42 GMT

Both Jonna and I ate something bad last night, we think. Anyway, according to our GI tract, we feel bad today. She's sleeping on the couch, and I'm playing on the computer, which is probably what I'd be doing if I felt fine. Go figure.

Finished my "In Training Examination" yesterday. Painful. There is something about a 7 hour test that really just makes you feel down. It's the last time I take it for no credit. Next year, it's imperative that I pass, since I can't be board certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology without it. Mind you, passing it doesn't make me board certified, there's another oral exam that I have to take, but it's yet another step along the way.

Saw these super funny videos the other day. "400 babies!" Just watch 'em, you'll see. Not exactly safe for work due to language, so watch at your own risk, or turn the volume down. Have a good Sunday.

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A lot more powerful than I thought ...

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:15:03 GMT

Very quickly ... I figure out how to change a couple of things on Xanga and now it seems a lot more customizable and powerful than I thought. We'll see if I use it more. I think I like the pulse option, since it's like Twitter, which I want to try, but you can't make the "Pulses" private, which I kind of want. So we'll see.

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Getting into the social networking ...

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:41:38 GMT

I'm trying to get more into this, as I've said before. What I need, is a little help from my friends. Microblogging. Twitter is a microblogging service - very popular. So I'm going to ask people to sign up and then try to add me, DocRoland, as a friend.

I have my Twitter now set to only display to friends. If I am going to microblog about my mundane stuff, I thought I would make it private to friends and family only. Let me know if you sign up, I'm going to try to start using it more and more if people do.

I'm also using another service called last.fm, which is also the url, if you're interested. It's social networking mixed with internet radio station. If you sit at a computer during the day and like to listen to music, it's something worth trying out. If you like Pandora, you'll probably like this, plus is has the whole social networking aspect mixed in. If you decide you wanna look me up there too, it's also DocRoland.

For Mac users out there (though maybe it's a PC program too, I'm not totally sure), I've started using a program called "Flock". It's built on the Firefox base, but it's connected up with a lot of social networking software. I'm actually blogging straight to Xanga from within the browser. Super cool, you might wanna check it out.

Finally, I'm also trying out del.icio.us - it's a place to create a public set of bookmarks, at least semi-public. It does a couple of things. One, it allows you to access bookmarks from anywhere (though again, I'm not sure who public they are) and two, it allows you to share bookmarks with people and see if what you bookmark is something that other people are bookmarking. Kinda cool.

Ok, that's it. Not that interesting, but I told myself I would try to blog everyday and see what happens.

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Pope reaffirms what I already thought ...

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:48:58 GMT

MSNBC is reporting, " Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches."

Ahhhhh, sweet victory again for Catholics everywhere. Since I'm a devout Catholic, this of course is like music to my ears. For the rest of you "Protesters", think long and hard about your relationship with the Pope, and how you can make it stronger.

Easily the worst Xanga person ever

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:58:48 GMT

I never post, I think partially because the more interesting parts of my day are privacy protected. Oh well. Sometime I've been thinking about recently is setting up a better webpage, and I'm looking at some software online to make that happen. I keep saying that I'd rather blog someplace else, but everyone I know who blogs with any regularity does so here. The other thing I've looked at are the short blog services, or the social networking type thing ... Twitter, Pownce (still trying to get an invite) and Jaiku. Does anyone out in Xanga-land use those? It'd be a little easier for me to post those oneliner type blog entries.

Ok, time for me to get back to studying for my "In Training Examination".

Insomnia ...

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:04:48 GMT

So I'm pretty sure I suffer from some sort of insomnia, and I'm not totally sure why. It is at least partially due to a couple of things. 1. I've never needed that much sleep. 6 hours is always what I would consider a full night, and I can function an entire day on 3 hours without batting an eye. I've never thought this was a problem, since I tend to like being up at night and it's incredibly conducive to both work and study at night. 2. My work schedule is totally jacked up between calls and late shifts over the last 3 years, and therefore my own personal clock doesn't get into a good rhythm. Though it is this same personal clock which will get me up off the couch at approximately 5am without an alarm pretty much without fail, it's kind of freaky and useful, at the same time.

I think now though, the insomnia thing is becoming a problem. If I fall asleep on the couch early in the evening, and by that, I mean 10pm, and for whatever reason I wake up off the couch after a couple of hours, I find it difficult to go back to sleep. This would be the reason why I am blogging at 2:30am. This is a problem since it's just contributing to my screwed up unnatural schedule. Mostly though, I think it's a problem because it's making me inpatient and short tempered in my personal life. I also have less energy to contribute to my personal life, since while I think 3-6 hours of sleep is somehow enough to function, it's really only enough for me to be full speed during the workday, and my home life gets whatever is left over, which many days, isn't a whole hell of a lot. Anyway, I know my wife reads this from time to time, so if you're reading this now, I'm sorry. I expect my wife to be flexible and understanding because my job isn't, and while my wife understands the pressures my job places on me, you can only expect so much from people before they become a little annoyed, a point I imagine my wife passed up years ago.

Anyway, I don't know how many of the rest of you in blog land ever have trouble sleeping, but it kind of sucks. That's my professional medical opinion. I'm off to find something that might make me a little sleepy.

2 things, then I'll leave you alone

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:13:42 GMT

1 - I don't get ESPN-U, so I'm not getting to watch the lacrosse that I really want to watch this season. I'm annoyed, because I get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN-HD, ESPN Classic, and ESPN News (I think). ESPN Classic, these are games that have already happened and don't matter anymore, yet no ESPN-U. Dumb.

2 - You want to hear some interesting SXSW music this year, download the torrent with the music. Looks like you can download a 3gig torrent with about 700 songs from the festival. Sounds like a good way to find some new music.