Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Update
I want to say I had a wonderful weekend in Houston. Nothing like going to a wedding and hanging out with friends.
So Wednesday I had an awesome time on the freeway. It deserves a blogging. Liem was in town so I went to hang out with him. Believe it or not they were doing construction on the highway. Just running into traffic in El Paso is weird since, there's never any traffic. But then I ran into traffic and I was at a full stop. After a good 20 minutes, I went about a mile and I saw the left lane was close. I was obviously fustrated because traffic shouldn't come to a complete stop if one lane is closed. Then 20 minutes later, again the next lane closed. Finally I find out all the lanes are closed and I and detoured into the service road. As all this is happening I notice they're fixing the signs on the highway. I was furious. How can you close down the entire highway to just put up signs? Yes the signs above the freeway. I can see it reading, next 5 miles expect hour delay.
Speaking of El Paso, the women are something else here. Ok so they're not the Telemundo girls. I got that. But what I don't understand is how every woman is a mom here. How did I end up in the worst town possible for a single guy?
Finally, women are horrible at team playing. Wingmen take one for the team not the other way around.
So Wednesday I had an awesome time on the freeway. It deserves a blogging. Liem was in town so I went to hang out with him. Believe it or not they were doing construction on the highway. Just running into traffic in El Paso is weird since, there's never any traffic. But then I ran into traffic and I was at a full stop. After a good 20 minutes, I went about a mile and I saw the left lane was close. I was obviously fustrated because traffic shouldn't come to a complete stop if one lane is closed. Then 20 minutes later, again the next lane closed. Finally I find out all the lanes are closed and I and detoured into the service road. As all this is happening I notice they're fixing the signs on the highway. I was furious. How can you close down the entire highway to just put up signs? Yes the signs above the freeway. I can see it reading, next 5 miles expect hour delay.
Speaking of El Paso, the women are something else here. Ok so they're not the Telemundo girls. I got that. But what I don't understand is how every woman is a mom here. How did I end up in the worst town possible for a single guy?
Finally, women are horrible at team playing. Wingmen take one for the team not the other way around.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sigh
I've been trying to blog but I've been too lazy. But this health care reform thing is really bothering me. I think good intentions have bad consequences. One thing I've noticed since I've worked in a hospital is patients need to take responsibility for their health. People get fat and do nothing and expect hospitals to fix them. I work in the military system so it's basically universal health care and patients taking no responsibility for their health is a common theme. The hospital has no leverage to force them to do anything and have to spend tax money for their endless laziness. Why should I pay for people who can't control themselves and become severely obese? I understand if you are newly diabetic and got hospitalized. But then it should be your responsibility to learn about the disease and learn to keep yourself out of the hospital. I'm sure insurance companies will find a way to make everything more efficient. But I feel like it's going to be a sink or swim kind of thing and really I see the whole thing start with lots of sinking. I feel the field is going to be like the military system where you have to wait three months for an appointment. I can go on and on about the bad things about the military system. And I can say some good things about it too but honestly the bad overshadows the good.
I think our money should be going into preventive medicine. If we spent a trillion dollars to prevent these diseases, I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing drastically less sick people. I know it's so much more efficient to prevent diseases. I know it's impossible to prevent all diseases. But it's so obvious how naive people are to these disease when you talk to patients. Spend more money on education please.
One final problem I forgot to mention earlier is, less appealing towns need healthcare too. Living in El Paso, I know how short they are in providers. And it's a pretty consistent problem in smaller cities. Sure, cities like LA and NY and other big cities will do fine finding providers. I hope they address this issue since it's already hard enough to find doctors to come here. How are they going to find doctors when they aren't willing to pay as much?
I think our money should be going into preventive medicine. If we spent a trillion dollars to prevent these diseases, I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing drastically less sick people. I know it's so much more efficient to prevent diseases. I know it's impossible to prevent all diseases. But it's so obvious how naive people are to these disease when you talk to patients. Spend more money on education please.
One final problem I forgot to mention earlier is, less appealing towns need healthcare too. Living in El Paso, I know how short they are in providers. And it's a pretty consistent problem in smaller cities. Sure, cities like LA and NY and other big cities will do fine finding providers. I hope they address this issue since it's already hard enough to find doctors to come here. How are they going to find doctors when they aren't willing to pay as much?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
I play Tetris for a Living
So I had another shower epiphany. So I'm sure I've complained a lot about work. And sometimes I gave y'all a glimpse of what goes on at work. But I don't think I've ever really broken down what I go through. Nursing is basically a game of Tetris.
Have you ever played Tetris on b-type? You know where you start at a level all discombobulated and have to clear a certain amount of lines to clear that stage. Well remember how a-type was where you just start with a clean slate and clear lines indefinitely until you lose. Imagine them combined, and I think there is a setting like this but I don't know what it is called. Just imagine, you start a stage all scattered but this time there's no set of lines to clear, just a time limit. Pieces start to fall and of course, it's chaos but it's more like organized chaos and you can handle it. You start to pick away at the little gaps but soon enough you realized you cleared enough lines and you're four levels above where you started and pieces are dropping faster. Of course you're a pro so you're just dropping the pieces the right places but for some dumb reason you just miss a piece and now you just compounded your problem. So now the entire time you're spending all your efforts fixing this one small mistake. You're so busy laying pieces down you can't even see what piece is falling next. You just just lay down pieces on the fly and hope you can rely on your instincts to place them. But oddly enough twelve hours have past and time is up. And it's not "Time's Up Game Over." It's more like, "Time's Up, still clean up your mess then it's game over." It's as if when the time is up, no longer are the pieces dropping at a million miles per hour and instead you can take your time and use up your own time because you're paid on salary and it's awesome to stay at work longer than you have to. Now you have a clean slate and can go home.
I won't lie, I do have a good day and I get to go home on time. I figured in the nursing world, going home on time actually means, going home within an hour of when you're supposed to. And I love the fact that on paper we do 12 hour shifts but when you read the schedule, it's scheduled from 645 to 715 so we're doing 12.5 hour shift. What's funny is the reasoning for that extra half hour is because we're supposed to get a half hour lunch break during our shift. I won't lie, I only had a couple other jobs and I didn't take them too seriously but don't most jobs include lunches as part of the work day? So ok on average I do 13 hours on every shift. Not bad since I'll just work 3-4 days a week. Sounds pretty good right? Well you see sure it's nice when you have 3-4 days straight on and have a 3-4 day weekend. Nope we don't do scheduling like that. For some reason we like to do like two days on then one day off and then a day on then two days off. So this awesome idea of planning a weekend getaway doesn't happen because you get crapped on.
So now imagine playing tetris, but now you have to deal with grumpy co-workers because just about everyone has this fantastic schedule and everyone is just burnt out. Dumb things happen and patients die or end up in the icu, pretty long story so I'll probably talk about in another post. And at the end of the day, you have to tell yourself, it's time to go get some rest so you can do this all over again in less than 10 hours. And while I'm complaining about scheduling, I just want to say I don't know what companies do this but some how if I take a week of leave, I have to work 60 hours the week before I leave and 60 hours the week I come back. It's as if I never left. LOL?
Have you ever played Tetris on b-type? You know where you start at a level all discombobulated and have to clear a certain amount of lines to clear that stage. Well remember how a-type was where you just start with a clean slate and clear lines indefinitely until you lose. Imagine them combined, and I think there is a setting like this but I don't know what it is called. Just imagine, you start a stage all scattered but this time there's no set of lines to clear, just a time limit. Pieces start to fall and of course, it's chaos but it's more like organized chaos and you can handle it. You start to pick away at the little gaps but soon enough you realized you cleared enough lines and you're four levels above where you started and pieces are dropping faster. Of course you're a pro so you're just dropping the pieces the right places but for some dumb reason you just miss a piece and now you just compounded your problem. So now the entire time you're spending all your efforts fixing this one small mistake. You're so busy laying pieces down you can't even see what piece is falling next. You just just lay down pieces on the fly and hope you can rely on your instincts to place them. But oddly enough twelve hours have past and time is up. And it's not "Time's Up Game Over." It's more like, "Time's Up, still clean up your mess then it's game over." It's as if when the time is up, no longer are the pieces dropping at a million miles per hour and instead you can take your time and use up your own time because you're paid on salary and it's awesome to stay at work longer than you have to. Now you have a clean slate and can go home.
I won't lie, I do have a good day and I get to go home on time. I figured in the nursing world, going home on time actually means, going home within an hour of when you're supposed to. And I love the fact that on paper we do 12 hour shifts but when you read the schedule, it's scheduled from 645 to 715 so we're doing 12.5 hour shift. What's funny is the reasoning for that extra half hour is because we're supposed to get a half hour lunch break during our shift. I won't lie, I only had a couple other jobs and I didn't take them too seriously but don't most jobs include lunches as part of the work day? So ok on average I do 13 hours on every shift. Not bad since I'll just work 3-4 days a week. Sounds pretty good right? Well you see sure it's nice when you have 3-4 days straight on and have a 3-4 day weekend. Nope we don't do scheduling like that. For some reason we like to do like two days on then one day off and then a day on then two days off. So this awesome idea of planning a weekend getaway doesn't happen because you get crapped on.
So now imagine playing tetris, but now you have to deal with grumpy co-workers because just about everyone has this fantastic schedule and everyone is just burnt out. Dumb things happen and patients die or end up in the icu, pretty long story so I'll probably talk about in another post. And at the end of the day, you have to tell yourself, it's time to go get some rest so you can do this all over again in less than 10 hours. And while I'm complaining about scheduling, I just want to say I don't know what companies do this but some how if I take a week of leave, I have to work 60 hours the week before I leave and 60 hours the week I come back. It's as if I never left. LOL?
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Manly = dumb?
So I was listen to the radio on the way home and it was John Tesh and he was giving tips about increasing female bullies at the work place. Of course I listen to see if I were getting bullied. I won't lie, I had a bit of relief to hear I wasn't. But he basically was saying women get bullied more since they actually pick up on the subtle things like smirks and such. I guess (men) we're too busy looking at the skimpy clothed women that we don't notice these things. Moral of the story is, women read into the little things too much.
Which leads to the main topic of this post. Every time I do something stupid and I have to justify it, why do I always say, because I'm a man. Or why is doing dangerous stuff manly? A portion of my childhood consisted of blowing stuff up and burning things. Why did I never see the girls do that? Are men just stupid and easily amused by fire or we just doing manly things? Are we too busy looking at the big fire or giant screen tv? How about the powerful guns and cars?
Which leads to the main topic of this post. Every time I do something stupid and I have to justify it, why do I always say, because I'm a man. Or why is doing dangerous stuff manly? A portion of my childhood consisted of blowing stuff up and burning things. Why did I never see the girls do that? Are men just stupid and easily amused by fire or we just doing manly things? Are we too busy looking at the big fire or giant screen tv? How about the powerful guns and cars?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thanksgiving Afterthoughts
I had three thanksgiving dinners in one night. Twice during work and once after work. So finally I got some days off so I went to my parents place. Which brings me to my first topic. Humans are the only species that I know of that will look out for their parents after their independence. And after working on the ward for quite some time, I've seen so many families overcompensate for never helping their parents. And I don't want to be one of those guys. I also tried so hard to gain autonomy while under my parents house. Now I think about when they die, I want them to be satisfied with their life. And my parents are so bad with technology. They had this hd tv and I just showed them how to use it. However I see a lot of myself in them since usually I'm the last one to learn about the newest of technology.
And working on the ward I realized I'm thankful for many things. I'm thankful I'm healthy. I'm thankful for being accident free. I'm just lucky in many ways and I've seen some of this heart attack survivors and they just say its a good day because they got to live another day. I'm thankful for the soldiers overseas. As much as I'm bored in garrison, I know if I went over there I'll be complaining about the lack of running water or all the comforts of the states.
And every year I set goals and try to improve but I realize, people never do change. And when you get old enough your brain deteriorates and you just start acting like a kid. So I try to live everyday like it's like my last day. Life's depressing. Work just makes it even worse.
So my last topic is about work again but one thing I have realized is kids are very tough. It's very American to protect kids but honestly I've seen some sick kids and they fight with everything they've got. I've never been interested in doing peds but. Now that they're dicking me over and not letting me go to icu, I want do learn something new. They have about 4 free slots I hear in the icu but I'm not going to get one so bleh. I thought I joined the army to do thing where at the end I could say I didn't waste my youth but I'm saying the same thing.
Fixed all the fob typos.
And working on the ward I realized I'm thankful for many things. I'm thankful I'm healthy. I'm thankful for being accident free. I'm just lucky in many ways and I've seen some of this heart attack survivors and they just say its a good day because they got to live another day. I'm thankful for the soldiers overseas. As much as I'm bored in garrison, I know if I went over there I'll be complaining about the lack of running water or all the comforts of the states.
And every year I set goals and try to improve but I realize, people never do change. And when you get old enough your brain deteriorates and you just start acting like a kid. So I try to live everyday like it's like my last day. Life's depressing. Work just makes it even worse.
So my last topic is about work again but one thing I have realized is kids are very tough. It's very American to protect kids but honestly I've seen some sick kids and they fight with everything they've got. I've never been interested in doing peds but. Now that they're dicking me over and not letting me go to icu, I want do learn something new. They have about 4 free slots I hear in the icu but I'm not going to get one so bleh. I thought I joined the army to do thing where at the end I could say I didn't waste my youth but I'm saying the same thing.
Fixed all the fob typos.
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