Here comes the sun

OK. I don't think it's going to snow again. That was a long hard winter.

Some signs of spring, and the fast approaching summer, in my neighbourhood:

Damn college kids :-)

Oops

Yesterday at 4AM, I decided to get some work done. I decided to apply some patches to a couple of servers, at work, that needed some patching. Unfortunately I accidentally logged into our mail server and started patching it. One of the patches required a reboot, so I did the reboot. Actually I tried to do a reboot. It didn't work out so well.

The server didn't come back up. I was in a different city and couldn't go in to take care of that fact. After 45 min of desperate hoping, I decided that I had to get someone to go into the office to see what's going on. I called a coworker who lives close to work and got him to go into the office to see what was up with the server not coming back up.

When he got to the server he gave me a call and told me that the server was stuck in a part of the POST (Power On Self Test). There was a message at the bottom of the screen that contained the phrase "...press F2 to continue." I hate that. When you reboot a server it should just boot up normally. It shouldn't ask you any stupid "are you sure" questions. My coworker pressed F2 and then the server came back up.

Unfortunately, after the server came back up it wasn't accepting mail from the Internet. After about an hour of testing and coaxing, I finally got the damn thing to behave the way it's supposed to.

Oops. Doing something on the wrong server is a bad thing. Rebooting the wrong server and then not having it come back up, on its own, is an even worse bad thing.

I hate computers.

I say that at work a lot. People think I'm joking.

I know what's wrong (with everything)

I just had a revelation. I know what's wrong (with everything). Smooth talking weasels. If somethings seriously messed up and "that's just the way it is" there's a smooth talking weasel someplace, who's responsible.

If a smooth talking weasel suffers from some sort of "unfortunate incident" and I'm somehow responsible for it, I'm wondering if I can use something that I would like to call "the smooth talking weasel defence".

Me: "Your honour, I had something to do with that unfortunate incident. He was a smooth talking weasel and he had it coming."

The judge: "OK. You're free to go."

Me: "Do you validate parking?"

Very stupid and funny

Very stupid. Maybe I shouldn't find this funny, but I do.

Arterial Blood Gas Sampling

I was talking about donating blood today, so I started thinking about Arterial Blood Gas Sampling and the fact that that will be part of my job as an RT. This is a video about taking an Arterial Blood Gas Sample.

I don't have to

Why are all my coworkers demoralized at work, when I'm not? I've been trying to figure that out for a while now. I tried to convince myself that "I don't care", but that's not really the case. If I find myself unemployed, between now and September, that definitely would be a financial hardship. A financial hardship, that would be best avoided. I also have a great deal 0f sympathy for my coworkers who are becoming increasingly demoralized and almost despondent, about their workplace, so "I don't care" isn't exactly honest.

I woke up yesterday morning with one thought on my mind. I DON'T HAVE TO.

I don't have to have a job. I don't have to put up with any crap at work. I don't have to get pissed off at work or about work. I can get by. I can dig a little bit deeper into my retirement savings and get by. I don't have to quit my job because I can stick it out for a few more months and save some more money for school.

Wrong answers

Until recently, whenever I was asked family history questions by a Doctor, I was giving the wrong answers.

There is a history of Diabetes in my family. There is a history of Heart Disease in my family. There is a history of high blood pressure in my family.

According to the BMI (Body Mass Index), I'm about 30lbs. over weight. I currently weigh about 220lbs. According to the BMI, I should weigh about 190lbs! 190lbs. doesn't seem reasonable for someone my size. I think a weight of 200lbs would be more sensible. I'm going to try to lose about 20lbs. in the next 5 months.

No crazy diets for me. Lots of long walks and a bunch of healthy eating should do the trick. The biggest challenge will be, the eating out for lunch, when I'm at work. Restaurant food just isn't very healthy...

Spring is here

Window wide open.
Lying on the couch.
Listening to the birds.
Falling asleep.
Spring is here.

More changes at work

Almost everyone in my department, is now looking for a job. My new boss isn't making much of an impression on my coworkers. My old boss is now an IT head hunter.

My least favourite person at work, got fired last week. His replacement started a day later. A couple of people, in my department, are convinced that they will lose their jobs.

I'm mostly just waiting for school to start. School starts in 147 days...

Working on Sunday

I have to replace a piece of faulty network equipment at 9PM tonight. My boss has agreed that the firm will put me up in a local hotel tonight, after I replace the equipment. There's a nice little boutique hotel around the corner from my office, so I'll be staying there.

The commute back and forth from work and home seemed pretty unreasonable, for today, given the fact that I will only be working for about an hour today. I'll stay in the hotel tonight come into work tomorrow and then take the train home after work.

I've been in the big city since 11Am. I've been wandering around the big city hanging out in book stores and doing some writing to pass the time. I think I'll go check into the hotel in a few minutes, watch some TV and then take a nap. I'll be back in the office at about 8:30, so that I can replace the network equipment at about 9PM.

I can sleep in a couple of hours tomorrow and still be in the office at around 8AM. I'm really looking forward to the extra sleep.

Maybe I should learn how to write

I'm not very happy with the quality of my writing, so I think I'm going to spend some time figuring out how to improve my writing. My knowledge of grammar is almost completely intuitive. I need to learn some of the rules and how to apply them.

I actually have several books dealing with the topics of grammar and writing. Funny thing about those books, I don't actually remember buying them. (Was that last sentence actually a real sentence or is it some kind of a grammatical abomination that should be destroyed for the good of the blogosphere?)

I used blogosphere in a sentence for the first time! Aren't I special?

Craniorectal Anastamosis

Craniorectal Anastamosis.

I've been laughing about that one for a couple of weeks now.

"I think you might have Craniorectal Anastamosis. It's a disorder that the medical community is only now starting to understand. You should go and see your doctor... If your doctor doesn't take you seriously, find another doctor and insist that you be tested for the disorder..."

"Some studies have shown that a sharp blow to the base of the skull, with a heavy blunt object, can be used as an effective treatment for the disorder. Hold still, this won't hurt for long..."

This Winter

This Winter has been pretty yucky. I was planning on doing a post on how yucky it was and then I saw a sign across the street, from the office building where I work. That sign pretty much sums up this winter.

Vocal chords doing what they do

If you ever wondered what vocal chords look like, when they're used to generate sounds:

I hate the bus

On Monday, I started taking a VIA Rail train from my home city to the big city I work in. Luxury. Absolute Luxury. Big ass reclining seats, a free newspaper and a guy who comes around and asks me if I want a coffee. Taking the train is much more civilized than taking the bus.

This morning I got to the train station, in my home city, only to find out that the train I was planning on taking was cancelled. The train was cancelled, because there was a freight train derailment on the way to the big city. No problem I thought. I can walk to the bus station and grab a bus to the big city.

When I got to the bus station a boarding announcement was made. I watched people board the bus. I started thinking that I should board the bus. My feet wouldn't move. I started to feel sick. Then I started to get angry. Then I started to think about the $100+ worth of commuter bus tickets that I had in my coat pocket. Those tickets will eventually expire and be worthless.

Freaking bus. I hate the freaking bus. I'm not taking the freaking bus. I'm going home. Maybe I can start a fire with all of those commuter tickets. Maybe I can start a fire with all those commuter tickets on the bus.

No more commuting by bus for me!

My trip home on Friday, by bus, from work took over four hours. That trip should only take about an hour and a half. There was some snow and a lot of stupid people driving on the road, so the trip home was quite the ordeal.

There was an idiot beside me who decided to turn up the volume on his headphones, so that everyone on the bus could listen to his shitty, "I'm a bad ass, POS, drug dealing, gangster with lots of bling bling" music. I wasn't sure if saying something to the guy was a good idea, so I didn't. I could very easily have gotten into a fist fight with the guy, if he said something stupid, after I asked him to turn down his music.

Fist fight on a 4 hour bus ride = Something to avoid

There's now a commuter train service, that I can use, between my home city and the big city where I still work. The train station in my home city is a little bit farther than the commuter bus station and the train station in the big city is a 10 minute walk from work. No more traffic and no more idiot drivers to get in my way, on the way to work! I start commuting by train tomorrow.

184 days till school starts (not that I'm counting or anything).

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...