Surgery Simulator 2013

Not really sure how to feel about this one. It's a neat concept, applying awkward Envirobear and QWOP (awkward) controls to surgery and should feel a bit more natural than it does. The problem I'm having with it is the 3d nature of the controls, I find that these types of games work better in 2D than 3D so you're only really dealing with the awkwardness of the controls rather than that and spatiality (eg: am I lined up properly to grab the bonesaw?). Also, grabbing objects is arbitrarily difficult... while you have a key for each finger and the thumb for some reason you're only able to flex 4 of them at a time.

The short version is that I really wanted to like it but I just couldn't. There! That said, there's nothing stopping you really from going out and trying it yourself - have a go, it's free!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/BossaStudios/surgeon-simulator-2013

No breaks!

I've been through a few shifts as a pharmacist with my new employer (same as before, different location), and a few points of contention have come up that I need to find a solution for. The first is the lack of face to face patient time... to date it seems that mainly they're interested in my prescription checking abilities and not in my warm patient manner with patients, or related counselling/Medschecking abilities. I'm hoping it's not always going to be this way since that would not bode well - it's the patient contact that really keeps me doing this. Not as much of a deal-breaker as the second though... The second point is that contrary to what we discussed during the entry interview, the manager feels that pharmacists don't need to take breaks - that standing in one spot checking prescriptions for 8 hours or more (without bathroom breaks or a lunch break) is expected. I remember him saying as much to the students there as if it was a point of pride, that you need to get used to it or you won't succeed. I'm going to take a stab at getting a break in during a lighter period next shift, just to see how he reacts.

The sad thing is that he did address taking breaks during the entry interview before I transferred over... as if it was common, that it really depends on the load at the pharmacy and who you're working with at that time. Personally I think it's dangerous to do a whole shift without breaks: First your eyes can "glaze over" and you stop seeing things clearly making it more likely for errors to get through. If we were dealing with say a chair that might not be such a big deal, but with medication it can be harmful or even fatal. I actually had to slow down quite a bit towards the end of my last shift since I was catching myself on the edge of making mistakes. Second, putting patients at risk in that manner also puts your license at risk - putting your ability to practice at risk in this manner isn't worth it. Third, it's unnecessary and unpleasant. I get headaches and snappy if I don't get a break to eat partway through a shift, I don't want to be -that- person in the pharmacy that people are afraid to approach because I'm being -that- way.

Really, patients need to be put first and this practice does not put them first. Unless the place is swamped next shift I'm definitely going to fit one in, it's unreasonable otherwise.

Frozen pipes

After yesterday's shift, I came home to a plumber in the house for the second time this week to defrost some pipes - Toronto's cold snap is not agreeing with our house. This plumber thinks that the front wall of the basement where the city's water pipe is coming in is not insulated well enough. That much is obvious when you stick your hand in the hole in the wall where the access is and feel around - it's cold. The city's water comes in, then goes up that wall and along the ceiling after. The plumber feels that the water's freezing along that section of pipe that's going up the wall. For the time being we're going to leave water running to make sure there's no freezing over again and look at more permanent solutions next week. More likely than not we're going to have to tear down a big section of wall and really insulate the stuffing out of it.

1st day at new job

Just finished the first day at the new job. Things went relatively well... but I do feel that they are understaffed. The manager told me they lost 3 people recently due to various transfers and relocations so that probably  contributed to it. I hope that some of those were pharmacists since that would explain the relentless basket backlog. I had time for a few Medschecks while there was another pharmacist on, and did counselling etc... but whenever I returned to the workflow always felt like there was another fire to put out. I'm not a slow checker either, I know I'm fairly quick so that it went that way surprised me. I'm only going to do things at a speed that I feel that I can be professional with - both my license and the health of patients are more important than just getting things out.

I saw a few things that made me suspicious of corners being cut, such as prescriber information not being written down on verbal prescriptions and people using other peoples' logins to verify prescriptions. It has only been my first day at this place though so I don't know if this was something isolated to today or is a more systemic problem. Definitely will have to keep my eyes open.

Another problem I noticed was the wait times being given out seem sufficient at the time, but because of the technicians disordering the baskets for the people waiting (they unintentionally LIFO them I think) the ones that need to get out first are pushed back or put on the bottom of the stack. I think this is indicative of what's going on here - people are working hard but not as efficiently or as organized as they should be. I can deal with this kind of thing eventually since these organizational habits can be easier to change... The other stuff (unprofessional shortcuts) I really hope isn't happening on a regular basis since that's going to be more difficult to do anything about.

David Attenborough Calls Humans a "Plague Upon the Earth"

I love David Attenborough. It's a risk for him to take a position like this on an issue like this but I'm glad that he has. It falls in line with much of what he's said and done in the past.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/david-attenborough-calls-humans-plague-upon-earth.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Job Success!

Well, that was much simpler than I expected. It wound up being a simple internal transfer and we wound up discussing shifts and when I was coming in before he even looked at my resume. Everyone seems nice there, so this whole switching locations business seems to have worked out much nicer than I could have expected when it started. So, tomorrow I get my first -real- pharmacist shift (yes!).

Complicating the mix is that while waiting for this one to sort out, I applied to a couple other positions. One wants to talk over the phone, I think it's a phone screen. I'll see if they can hold off on that phone call until next week so I can get a better sense of how the work environment is at this new place first.

Progress

After my initial reaction to finding out about the potential position in my present employment location not being available anymore, it took me a few days to calm down. It's hard to really say how much something that gets to you really does until you're trying to relax. I had a hard time these past few days. Anyways, the person in charge of the hiring for the area returned my call placed a few days ago and said something is opening up close to where I'm working. That location has a good reputation too and the hours sound reasonable. I just have to get a hold of the manager there to chat about it and if I don't screw that up then it should be mine.

I'm trying to keep my expectations in check, but if I'm able to pull this off and get a few good shifts per week without having to fight too hard for them it's almost the ideal situation. Fingers crossed.

First Person Tutor: A Game of Grading

http://gradinggame.com/prototype.html
This is a surprisingly interesting game. You're a tutor sentenced to grade papers to pay off your student debt - the professors employing you inevitably want you to fail each student based off of social media criticism of the prof. Most of the errors I've found so far are single word spelling/repetition errors, but that doesn't mean that it can't mix it up later on with more advanced grammar. I just haven't seen it yet.

I think it's a pretty cool concept for a game and will definitely be playing this later on tonight to show my wife, she loves this language stuff

Back to the drawing board

This has been a frustrating week for a number of reasons, hopefully writing it out will clear my head a bit

To set the stage: I'm licensed now. I've been working as an intern, and have been in discussions with my manager regarding positions. There was a theoretical position opening up due to an impending departure that would have been mine up until she decided to turn it into registered technician positions. I was crushed (after work... not during) and now I need to go back to the drawing board to figure out what my game plan is. It certainly wasn't anything I did as I was exceeding expectations and she said as much then and previously.

There is a chance they might keep me on in the region so there is some hope - I'm just in no position to be relocated long term. I really do hope this works out in such a way that allows me to stay local

I woke up this morning with a wicked migraine partly because of that and partly because of sleep lost thinking about it. I really need to let this mood/condition blow over so I can get on with things so I'm going to be taking it easy today.

Boil the Frog

http://static.echonest.com/frog/

This is a neat website, where you can punch in a few artists and it'll come up with what should be a logical transition between the two of them songwise. Say, heading between Weezer and Lady Gaga in 18 songs (or Iron Maiden in 14 songs - somehow Maiden's easier to get to than Gaga from Weezer). It's a neat toy, I doubt it'll keep my interest long but it's interesting to see what it can come up with in the meantime

Beertone

http://gizmodo.com/5974774/forget-pantone-heres-beertone

I saw this on Gizmodo this morning and thought to share it. My wife and I have been going through paint colors for the house in anticipation of the drywall getting done so I've seen quite a few of these types of things, but I've never seen anything that would let you match a color to a beer. Apparently once you find your color you're able to get the RGB, CMYK and SRM values right off the card. Could be useful for those who want to grade the color of their beer while on the go as well as those who want to match their walls to their beer (I want to sleep in the stout room...)

Two things I have learned in the past week

This past week has been one for the books. There's been a number of very interesting things going on in the background that could prove to be very good for us (myself and my wife), but I'm not going to comment on them until they actually happen. Don't want to jinx it! I've also applied to get my status changed with the regulatory college from being an intern to being a practicing pharmacist. It's taking them a while to get to it but I can't blame them given that everyone that just passed the exams must be applying all at the same time.

Ok. Now to the column topic.
This week has been an educational one in some more human ways than I would care to admit. I like Soundgarden. A lot. Their new album's pretty good too. Anyways, I was listening to some of their old stuff, really getting into it and started "rocking out" in a door frame and smacked my head into it. Still wearing the mark almost 5 days later but at least it's almost gone. When you do something like that and the wife's commenting on the size of the hockey puck on your head you can't really say much to regain your pride - just that it happened and that you're sucking it up. Lesson learned: don't head bang in a doorway!

Next lesson: Barbecues. I wanted one really badly, especially since buying a house - now we're able to actually have one! We have a couple of friends that had a spare that they weren't using and we thought we could fit it into my car. What a mistake that was. We had to disassemble the entire thing practically and it didn't fit into the car even then. We had to use my friend's car to take it over. Because the barbecue was already used there was a bunch of crap in the bottom of it and the briquettes... it was leaving a mess. Even with the car liner it was leaving a mess. Also some of the screws and nuts were rusted so they weren't coming apart easily which prevented us from disassembling some crucial pieces that would have let us fit it into my car. Anyways I guess the short version of the lesson is if you're moving a barbecue don't bother disassembling it and just wait until you can get access to a vehicle that'll let you move it in one piece (or as close to it as possible). I think we spent 3 hours out on the street in cold weather with tools trying to take that thing apart - it didn't win but it almost did!

CatStop continued again

So, I'm waiting by the back window watching a grey and darker colored striped cat. It's hanging around an old firepit that we're not going to be able to use (it's illegal now - besides, it's crumbling). It only has one option from where it is: to walk in front of the Cat-Stop since it can't get out of the pit due to the height of the snow on top. It walks up to it, sniffs the side, looks at the front and slinks away over to another part of the yard. I was expecting shock and awe, not "I'm annoyed, I'll go over here". After I went out to chase the cat off I moved the CatStop to where the cat was going to hopefully let the unwelcome annoyance know that he's not welcome there either.

Am I doing something wrong? Does this not work? Do I need an array of 5 of these to properly cover my yard?

Penumbra Black Plague, Requiem

Just finished playing through Requiem (the last of the trilogy) and am left with mixed feelings. The first one (overture) started with quite a bit of promise and a few rough edges to work out. Black Plague (the second) largely resolved the rough edges, got rid of most of the annoying combat and was a fairly well rounded experience. There are enemies present, but you spend your time hiding from them since you can't fight them. I've got a soft spot for stealth games so that's a plus. For the most part the puzzles make sense and are solvable by anyone who's spent time with these sorts of games. The real negative for me in this is the voice for Clarence, a 'personality aspect' you pick up part way into the game. The voice was super annoying, and the dialog didn't do that much for me. Well on its way to achieving its potential, it's too bad the third installment didn't follow the same trajectory.

Requiem dispensed with any story for the most part and presented itself as a set of puzzles. Even with the annoying voice over (Clarence) for most of Black Plague, I still preferred it to Requiem largely because of the story elements. Removing them really hurt the package... I've read someplace that Frictional Games originally intended it to be a trilogy and did most of what they wanted to do in two games and intended on leaving it there. The third (Requiem) was apparently an afterthought and it feels like it was. The graphics, puzzles and sound are all there and acceptable given its age, it's just that it lacks that 'something' to draw you in. The moving block puzzles that didn't pretend to be anything but, and an audio commentator that announced how many keys you had left to find did not help to draw me in at all (it took me out of the experience). Not a bad experience by any means, it just feels unnecessary.

CatStop continued

Just installed it behind a high traffic tree in the backyard. I could hear some noises being created as I walked in front of it so I know it's doing something. Hopefully I'll be able to see it work successfully soon!