That's a good idea

Breathingthroughschool recently told that my blog has been put on the Breathingthroughschool blog roll. I was just over there reading some older posts and happened to take a look at the blog roll. The blog roll has my blog listed as "RT Scribe", instead of "Respiratory Therapy Student".

There's another blog out there that's called Respiratory Therapy Student Blog. My blog's called Respiratory Therapy Student. Those two names are just too damn similar. I've been thinking that one of the blogs needs to have a name change. I'm going to change the name of my blog to "RT Scribe". The url will remain the same and will still be http://rtscribe.blogspot.com

I don't have Respiratory Therapy Student Blog listed in my blog roll because the lack of correct spelling, punctuation and grammar pisses me off. I'm not a literary genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I do use spell check and "sort of" use good grammar and punctuation.

Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) Sung to Rockstar by Nickelback

This is bad. Really bad. So bad it's funny. Really funny.

Pandemic Ventilator Project

If you ever wondered if you could build a ventilator in your basement, if you really had to, take a look at the Pandemic Ventilator Project.

Working more

It looks like I'll be working at least 4 days a week until I start school. My boss has decided that I should be responsible for resolving some intransigent problems that haven't been addressed properly. The problems are technical ones that have lasted for months or years and really haven't been tackled with any seriousness. I started working on two of those problems last week and I'm almost finished with one of them. I must admit that I really liked work last week.

I suspect that I could be working full time hours, until school starts, but would like to avoid doing that. On Wednesdays I end up sticking around in the big city and don't start the homeward commute, to the little city, until 11:30PM. On Wednesday evenings, I usually get home at about 2AM. The prospect of getting 2.5 hours of sleep and then starting a 4:30AM commute to work, on Thursday mornings, doesn't appeal to me.

My savings for school have been diminished quite a bit, so working more should be a good thing as far as my finances are concerned.

School starts in 192 days...

It's about time

I've finally gotten a copy of EGAN'S Fundamentals of Respiratory Care. I've been coveting that book for quite a while. The ninth edition just came out this month. That's now my favorite book. I was pleasantly surprised by what was discussed in the first five chapters of the book. I was expecting applied Anatomy and Physiology in the first few chapters. Applied Anatomy and Physiology doesn't start until chapter 8.


These are the Titles for the first 5 chapters of EGAN'S Fundamentals of Respiratory Care (Ninth Edition):

Chapter 1: History of Respiratory Care
Chapter 2: Quality and Evidence-Based Respiratory Care
Chapter 3: Patient Safety, Communication and Recordkeeping
Chapter 4: Principles of Infection Control
Chapter 5: Ethical and Legal Implcations of Practice


Those chapters clarified a few things, for me, that I thought I was going to have to ask an RT about.

Why I hate you

If you live in a place that doesn't get cold or have snow, I hate you. I have many reasons to hate you.

This is why I hate you when I'm at my bus stop at 5:45AM:

This is why I hate you, when I'm walking to someone's apartment after work:

When I go for a walk, and I get caught in a snow storm, this is why I hate you:

A watch I don't hate

I generally hate wearing watches. In the past when I've tried to wear a watch, I found that I was constantly taking it off and putting it down somewhere. Unfortunately, when I put the watch down I could never remember where I put it. So, like most people these days, I haven't regularly worn a watch for several years because I use my cell phone to keep track of the time.

A few months ago, I decided that I should get used to wearing a watch. As an RT student, and eventually an RT, wearing a watch could come in handy when I'm trying to measure someone’s pulse or respiration rate.

My efforts to train myself to wear a watch haven't been working to well until recently. Things finally changed, when I took a hammer to one of my watches.

The watch that I was trying to get used to wearing fell on the floor one day and the back came off of it. I couldn't quite figure out how to get the back of the watch back onto the watch, so I thought that I would give it a few taps with a hammer. Unfortunately, for my watch, I started to get a little frustrated and started pounding on the damn thing until I broke it real good. I also discovered that taking a hammer to something, while it's on a ceramic tile floor, is also not a good idea. Ceramic tile can, and will, chip when hit with a hammer.

A few days after my watch got hammered, I went over to the local pharmacy and bought a cheap Timex. I'm quite pleased with the watch, because I don't detest wearing it. I actually have trouble remembering to take it off, before I go to bed at night. I try to avoid wearing a watch when I'm sleeping, because I will invariably smack myself in the face with it. I think it's the watch's wristband that makes all of the difference. It's not metal and it's not leather, which seems to make it less objectionable on my wrist.

My new watch:

Maybe he's not an idiot

I pride myself on my ability to change my mind...

I may have formed a negative opinion of my new boss prematurely. I had a long talk with him yesterday and he doesn't seem nearly as clueless as I thought. I'm going to delete my "My new boss is an idiot" post, because it's probably just a spitefull baseless rant that doesn't have any value.