Happy Jewish New Years!

My sister sent me this, I thought it was funny:

Note: No, I am still not any more Jewish than I am Catholic, but this made me laugh

T minus 1 week to block 1

Yes, the first block of 4th semester is only 1 short week away, meaning I'll be 1/3 of the way done the semester, and 1/3 of the way closer to being a 5th semester. Of course, there is a lot of studying to be done between now and then, but time really does go by quickly here. Also, I think I'm in a much better place, as far as being caught up, than I usually am. Since we have two classes which are 1/2 semester (behavioral and pharm), we only have two exams per block, which means a lot more time to study for each. Hopefully this will result in better grades in all of my classes. Back to studying...

Tintamarre Diving

Yesterday, I went diving with a couple of friends at Tintamarre island, about 3 km off of St. Maarten. I've never been diving there before, but it was probably the best dive I've done while I've been here and I'd highly recommend that any divers here take a trip out there. As usual, we went with Dive Octopus, the only people that I'll dive with anymore. Tintamarre itself is a small island (about 80 acres) that used to be inhabited and was the site of the first airport in the area, but is now deserted. It has a very nice beach though and I'd like to go back out to visit the island one day.

The first dive was the Japanese Garden. It was the nicest reef that I've been to so far. As soon as we hit the bottom (about 50' down), we saw a nurse shark that was just sleeping under a ledge. I wanted to pet it, but decided to let this one sleep. The reef has a bunch of channels cut through it and varies in depth about 20 feet from top to bottom, so it's a lot of fun to swim through and around. It also seemed to be more colorful than most of the other reefs around the island.

After a 30 minutes of deco at the surface, we traveled to another site on the opposite side of the island to visit the wreck at Tintamarre, which is an old tugboat. It wasn't the biggest wreck I've seen, but it was probably the most enjoyable since you could penetrate nearly the entire thing. It is very open and still very much in tact, so there's really no risk at all of getting lost or tangled in anything. It was neat to stand in the wheel house, where the steering wheel mount is still standing, and look out over the front of the boat. After we had all been through the boat, we explored the reef around the wreck, which was also nice. Sally (our divemaster) found a dead lobster which she stuck on her head. That made me laugh and if you've been diving, you'll know that smiling quickly makes your mask fill with water. As soon as I cleared my mask, she put the lobster on someone else's head and my mask was quickly full of water again. Oh...we saw another nurse shark on this dive, but this time I decided to pet it! It got a little scared and took off pretty quickly, which was unfortunate because I was hoping it would want to play!

The picture was taken by Sally, but not on our dive. She's got a couple thousand dollars worth of camera equipment at the shop and takes some pretty great underwater pictures. If you are looking for somewhere to dive...definitely go with Octopus Diving, and ask them to take you to Tintamarre!

McCain = Batman? Maybe...

Something is not write here...

I really could have gone for a pepper steak, but I'm not quite sure what a peppar steak is.

And before the e-mails begin, I am aware of the spelling mistake in the title...it was done on purpose. Were you one of the people that thought I did that by accident? Honestly?

First exam of 4th semester...check!

We got the results back from behavioral today and I am very happy to report that I got a 96%! The class average on the exam was very high though also (87%, i think). Although I have done better on other exams before, this one took the least amount of effort. My advice for doing well in behavioral...study exactly what she puts on the slides. Examples on the exam were very similar to the examples given in class, if not exactly the same. If she gives you a list of examples of primary prevention, for example, know that list.

Also, most of the questions are very subjective, which I'm not at all a fan of. But, this trick is to put the answer that you know she wants, not what you think is right. For example, if she tells you that a patient comes in and says that he doesn't feel he has anything to live for, the best thing to ask him would be if he's considered killing himself. This seems awfully blunt to me, and is not what I'd probably say. But, since I mostly paid attention in lecture, I knew that's what she'd want me to say! There's also a small chunk of the test that is common sense and you'd probably be able to figure out without even taking the class. Finally, it's very important to listen to what the patient tells you and not assume anything. If a patient is afraid of a mammogram because they're afraid it might hurt, the best way to treat her would be to give her pain medicine prior to the exam. The questions does not talk about unresolved guilt, blatant refusal to take the exam, or anything else, so nothing else would be the right answer.

T-mobile G1....FAIL!

T-mobile announced their brand new phone today, the G1, designed to compete with the iPhone. What I cannot understand though is why no company can even come close to matching the iPhone...a device which has now been out for over a year, with very few changes made in that time! Apple managed to come up with the iPhone when nothing even similar to it had ever existed. I don't expect most companies to be able to do that, but they should at least be able to come up to par after the bar has long since been set.

Here are a few of the problems which will keep the G1 from ever approaching the iPhone's popularity:
1. The biggest problem is that it's currently only able to run on T-mobile's network, which is one of the worst networks in the US. The only people that would buy this phone are those already on that network. They are not going to be seeing people dropping their current contracts, like many people did for the iPhone
2. It's UGLY! It's both thicker and heavier than the iPhone, with less functionality
3. No sync for calendar or address book to your computer...you better like google's apps
4. The music player is AWFUL! Again, they had something pretty fantastic that they could base their design off of with the iPhone. Why they chose to not even come close is beyond me.
5. No video player built in.
6. Only 1GB of memory built in! The lowest model iPhone has 8GB, with an option for 16. Rumors are that the 8GB is going to be dropped soon for an even larger size
7. I don't like the interface at all, although this is a personal opinion. It looks about 10 years old.
8. You can't even use regular stereo headphone! You either need special headphones or an adaptor. What was the logic behind this?
9. Web browser looks old (like the rest of the phone). Again, this is something that the iPhone has done well for over a year now, and T-mobile has taken a step back. They are missing some of the iPhone's functionality, while adding nothing new.

So, in closing, not even close. T-mobile should be embarrassed that in their attempts to compete with the iPhone, they have released something that is so far from the functionality, design, and ease of use of a device that is over a year old.

Edit: A commenter pointed out a very good point: Although they advertise their internet plan as unlimited, the fine print reveals that they've actually got a 1GB maximum!!

Happy Fall!

If you didn't know yet, today is the first day of fall, so happy fall!! Of course, you wouldn't know it in SXM, but it's apparently getting colder back home. In MD, the forecast calls for temperatures in the 70's all week. Not exactly what I'd call cold (although Heather would say otherwise), but it is definitely starting to get colder.

Here in SXM, we're in the middle of Hurricane season. Although there haven't been any hurricanes to come close to us, it has been pretty nasty out lately. It's been raining pretty much every day lately. Today looked pretty bad in the morning, but it's since cleared up nicely. I might even get to take the scooter back to school later for the Behavioral exam. Speaking of behavioral exam...time to get back to studying!

So many first semesters!!

The White Coat Pictures are still being uploaded! Currently, I'm working on getting all of the pictures of the students up. I'm too lazy to count, but I think there are around 175 of them. Overall, it's about 1.5 GB worth of pictures that need to be uploaded. They should be up by the end of the night, if the internet connection holds out. Here's a snapshot of my desktop while I was working on the post-production stuff (mostly cropping and color correction).

CPR and pictures

Today was the first of two CPR classes for the current 5th semester class. When the instructor sign in sheet came around today, it was nice to see that Dr Van der Waag had made me lead instructor (he's course director). Unfortunately, no raise is associated with that title, but they pay us pretty well anyway. We also had a couple of first semester students show up to start training to be instructors. The process is sort of long (you have to teach 3 classes, for which you're not paid), but it's good that they've volunteered since I'm out of here after one more semester! We got out an hour later than usual, but overall, the class went well. Assuming they all passed the written exam, there are now 31 more people walking around the island that are certified in CPR!

Also, the White Coat pictures are on their way up to my flickr site (flickr.com/photos/slevit). They're going to take a while to all make it up (as I've written many times before, internet leaves something to be desired), but they're at least on their way. I'm not too worried about it though since for my white coat, they had a guy come in that took almost a month to post pictures, and then charged you for every picture that you wanted! For this semester, they'll be up within a day or two, and they're FREE! Download them all you want, but please do respect the copyright ;)

here's a few: