Mexico Medical Student |

Before we moved to GDL, I had to drop my friend T-Mobile to get Cingular so we could get the North American plan to get “normal” (ie, not $1.49/min international roaming) minutes down here for both of us to use to keep in touch with friends, family, businesses, etc. I bought a nice Nokia 6230 phone. Unfortunately, it still isn’t supported by iSync on Mac, but I digress… The problem is that every phone company in the US demands you use its chip and only their chip. By “chip” I’m speaking of GSM, which is what 90% of the world uses. I know Sprint, Verizon and Nextel (which uses some odd hybrid) still use CDMA, so I can’t speak to that.

Anyway, a month ago I waited in line forever to get a chip for Telcel so I can use my awesome but dormant Motorola V600 as a local “just me” phone. Friends assured me this would be no problem, but the phone complained, “Enter code:” upon sticking the chip in because it knew it didn’t have a T-Mobile SIM. That “code” is a manufacturer code that will never be given by Motorola, and obviously less so from T-mobile. It’s some keyed number from your hardware ID string to prevent unauthorized service. The same thing happened when I tried our Cingular phone, just to test. That sucks, because there is NO technological reason why they won’t work.

I refused to pay $50+ bucks for a crappy, practically disposable phone when I had a perfectly good hot-rodded phone w/Bluetooth and the works just sitting in a drawer. Such began the month-long campaign to flash and unlock my phone.

After wading the deep underbelly of warez sites, eDonkey2000, and far more pornography ads than I care to have seen (they come almost guaranteed, like it or not, when searching for “black market” software), I have succeeded. Long story short, after MANY MANY failures for drivers, bad flash software, software in French, Portuguese and some other unknown language (God only knows what viral infestation was unleashed on my PC laptop thorough this process, but I re-formatted the drive for other reasons anyway), I finally got it unlocked. Not only did I get it unlocked, but I have it working at a software revision that is a LOT newer with lots more options in the menus than when I first bought it. I can take this thing to Singapore and have local service in minutes, this phone is so global-ready.

Here’s a picture of the process.

Just had to share…

P.S. for those who have no idea what the subject means, it reads (in Leet): “phear (fear) my eleet (elite) haxor (hacker) skillz (skills)”

In the administration panel of this site, it shows the last few searches performed. with a domain name of ‘benzo.org’, I understand why someone would come here and think it had something to do with benzodiazepenes, but upon arriving (and having it explicitly stated in the “About” tab above) it should be clear this site is not about that. Yet I constantly get searches like ‘ativan’, ‘klonopin’, ‘xanax’, etc. No big deal, but this kinda takes the cake:

how long does it take to come of [sic] 1mg of xanax of 9 months use

My non-medically-authorized-by-any-recognized-authority advice: taper gradually (say .25mg/dose) over as much time as you can stand or how many doses you have left, whichever comes first (consider a refill if not enough). And for the love of Pete, see your doctor.

It’s hard to come face-to-face with one’s limits, but one has to swallow that big-ass horse pill. I can only manage a low B on a biochemistry test, when, oh I don’t know…that was my f*cking major with who-knows-how-many undergrad and grad hours. I got probably 4 wrong just because I wasn’t careful and equally as many from my studying the wrong professor’s notes on vitamins. Yeah, when they put molecular dynamics and protein folding on the exam, I will make them weep…

Seriously, I don’t know what’s going on with me…I got all geared up after my last round of exams, ready to study and start kicking ass for the next round only to find myself barely having the energy and interest (which is more scary) to put real sweat and tears into studying. Coping with my ADD is nothing new, but I swear it’s getting a lot worse, like an inverse proportion of distractability to importance/urgency. My sleep is whacked, which it usually is, but especially so as of late. It’s hard to concentrate when you haven’t had good sleep, period.

But I’m not going to get down on myself because I am not super-student. I have a lot more going on in my life that has nothing to do with medical school, and it will always be that way. For me, I don’t think I would have balance in my life if I studied to the point where I got an A in everything or got a 98% on the USMLE Step 1. It does make me upset that so many of my fellow classmates are all about hoarding information rather than sharing it. I don’t feel I’m in competition with them, so I share with most people just about everything, whether it’s notes, a helpful website or just stuff that has nothing to do with class, like MP3 CDs I’ve made for friends or helping someone find a good restaurant. I’m not one of the “popular” people (which is not unexpected considering my #1 priority outside of studying is spending time w/Claudia), so I guess I miss a lot of crib notes passed around.

Don’t get me wrong, with tiny few exceptions, most everyone I’ve met is cool and don’t mean to “screw” anyone over. Some professors, on the other hand… LOL

Ok, that’s enough for today. I need to start getting to bed earlier, so off I go.

Steve,

I got the news today from the San Jose Expo about the video iPod. I think that’s awesome, I really do. I really don’t have any desire for most music videos, but the ability to at least take my own videos to show family/friends was the next logical step from the photo iPod. Using the ties Apple has with Disney to make ABC broadcast TV shows available immediately is totally the best, and I fully expect more to come. I also think it’s great that you made the iMac G5 what it should have been from the beginning: a truly capable multimedia hub for the family room, not the study room.

However, the lack of TV input, much less PVR capability leaves the iMac short of stellar. I mean, how many times are we going to see our photo collection? The video iPod was expected. Of course with you, we can never be sure, but it wasn’t the jaw-dropping, blindsided-by-a-2×4 kind of moment. Personally, I would have liked to see more text readable on the screen for the music file data; a 320×240 resolution might be great for a 2.5″ screen, but on a TV it certainly won’t win over those who want archive-quality video. I really, really hope that by Macworld 2006 in January or at any time before the Christmas holidays that you unveil the thing for which I’ve been waiting most anxiously: an Apple Tablet form-factor PowerBook. I don’t know what you would call it (please not “iTablet”), but I like “Mac Slate” or “PowerPad.”

The days of the Newton are long gone, I understand that. PDAs have been and continue to wane as “big” computing technology gets smaller. My overpriced Palm Tungsten T5 (supplanted all-too-quickly by the Palm Lifedrive and TX) is too small to be a decent note-taking computer with a wireless keyboard and woefully inadequate to jot notes. Even if I had my thin, portable 12″ PowerBook back, it’s difficult to transcribe diagrams on the board or overhead with a word processor. Moreover, I often have digital images from scans or from professors’ slides…it is a nightmare trying to use that as a template for labeling with Word. Dealing with the learning curve of Illustrator or Canvas to simple annotate what a professor is pointing at on a projector screen locally on my computer is not an option.

You know from your iPod sales and research that convergence is about lifestyle as much as convenience. How much more a part of the human lifestyle can a computer be than a book? A PowerBook, although nicely named, is anything but. Slap a Wacom tablet’s sensors onto a sheet of transparent acetate on top of an LCD panel, and you’re halfway there. You already have InkWell in MacOSX–do you really think such technology should be limited by the tiny few graphic designers who have tablets? Most of them don’t use it for writing anyway. Please don’t make me go buy a Windows Tablet PC. Please! I co-exist with Windows just fine, but a tablet computer would be such a personal, always-at-the-hip part of your everyday existence; to think I’d have to deal with a Windows XP environment so intimately, well, it’s not pleasant. I refuse to go down the dark path of Linux on my tablet. I’m in med school now; I don’t have a weekend to compile drivers to see if I can get bluetooth working or tweak /etc/X11/xorg.conf settings to see if my pen works like something more fine-grained than a twig. I love UNIX and always will, but I want things to work. That’s why I buy Mac; I always get the best of both worlds.

Except with a tablet. Just buy a company who makes tablets, slap your logo on them, and let it loose with Intel-based MacOSX–I don’t care what chip is inside. I care about the software that runs it and the interoperability with peripherals and networks. I care about the natural elegance of MacOS, the natural intuitiveness that I know would drive a Mac tablet interface. I think of using Microsoft Journal or OneNote to record my most personal sketches in the most primitive and personal way–with a pen–and I want to weep, not just because of how bad it would be with Windows, but how good it could be with a Mac.

Please consider this humble request. Your ever faithful disciple,
–ec

After a raucously detailed biochem exam today (it actually wasn’t that bad except for major clinical questions on vitamin deficiencies), it’s time to restore my homeostasis.

Ahhh…that’s better…

One many have heard before

…. sure to offend

How do you hide $100.00 from a surgeon?
Put it in a book.

How do you hide $100.00 from an internist?
Put it under a bandage.

How do you hide $100.00 from a radiologist?
Put it on the patient.

How do you hide $100.00 from a cardiologist?
.. you can’t!

In my busier days now, my contributions will be smaller…but I will try to keep them going.

It was a good sports day: the Green Bay Packers (which were embarassingly at 0-4) beat the Saints 52-3. I don’t want to hear about the Packers being a has-been team. Yes, our defense sucks, but the losses of the last three games added up to a measly six points–it was just a slow start. They need to get their asses in gear if they are going to have a decent shot at the playoffs, though. But still, 52?! That’s nearing basketball score territory.

Another awesome win was the Houston Astros beating the Atlanta Braves in a record-making 18 innings. Roger “Rocket” Clemens came through as a reliever in the 15th inning to pitch three shut-out innings on a day he wasn’t even supposed to pitch! Incredible. Now the ’stros face the Cardinals in the NLCS. I would have said if the Astros got this far, they’d lose to St. Louis easy, but after how deep everyone went this last game, I’m not so sure. Play ball!

Oh yeah, and the Dallas Cowboys beat the Eagles. Not a huge Cowboys fan, but they are better to watch now that they have a halfway decent QB. The best part of the game was watching McNabb constantly go to ground. Sweet.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I swear I’m not making this up: today is Porn Sunday, sponsored by xxxchurch.com, “The #1 Christian porn site”

Ok, I’ll give that a few seconds to sink in…

Make sure you see “Pete the Puppet” (under “Porn Patrol”) and the “Prayer Wall”, where you get stories like these:

I have been married for 7yrs and been together for 9yrs. After been married for five months my husband came to me and confessed that he has a addiction to prostitutes,porn,phone sex ect. On our 7th wedding anniversary he went out and bought yet another prostitute so the next day I moved out.

It took her 6.6 years to figure out the guy’s not going to just “grow out of it” and start showing up to church on Sundays? Perhaps Pete the Puppet could have helped had he come sooner…er, would have shown up sooner.

I’d love to be there at one of their rallies…after showing a 5 minute clip of Jenna Jameson with three guys, they immediately follow it up with, “Do you see now? Do you see the kind of filth that our society can watch, as easily as a download to your computer? That clip probably only takes 4.35 minutes on a non-weekend night to download, providing no other applications are using the connection. Pray during those 4.3 minutes and ask for the strength to not press ‘Play’!” Do they honestly expect guys to get to this site and say, “Gee, I guess buyin’ hookers and spending my kids college money on phone sex is not what God wants from me…” Idiots.

And just so you know I’m not a sleaze (usually), I found this via ABC News. Another web site had this priceless quote by one of the founders that pretty much sums everything up:

Foster, 34, says it was June 2001 when he was hit with the skin-and-sin epiphany.

“I was in the shower praying, and I said, ‘God, I want to do something huge for you,’” Foster recalls. “He said one word to me: ‘Porn.’”

There, now that I have your attention…heh. No this isn’t about hysterectomy, it’s about two important topics I think the public needs to be more aware of that aren’t getting the news they deserve because of more “juicy” stories such as Rove squealing like a little piggy in front of the grand jury or Delay’s death throes

Cervical cancer vaccine

“You have to get students in grammar school, middle school, high school (vaccinated) before they become sexually active,” she said.

Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women and their No. 2 cause of cancer deaths, resulting in about 3,000 deaths in the United States and nearly 300,000 around the world each year.

Doesn’t matter how many people could die with our religious-right legislature: if they were promiscious they deserved it. It will be available in the private sector only. At least it exists.

http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/10/3/223530/406

Niacin deficiency is a subject that we studied in biochemistry when discussing vitamin B3, or niacin. Without going into details, a disease characterized by this vitamin’s deficiency is pellagra. Diets whose main source of carbohydrate is corn are particularly at risk for this disease because niacin is not available in corn, usually. One notable exception is tortillas, where the normal preparation of the hard corn kernels involves soaking them in lime (Ca(OH)₂) or lye (NaOH) solution which releases niacin from the corn kernel, preventing pellagra.

I’ll let the slides speak for themselves: