Check out my new blog!

Those of you who follow this blog (both of you...), check out my new blog over at keithneedsascooter.blogspot.com

For The Fallen

FOR THE FALLEN.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

LAURENCE BINYON

 

Clinician1

Hey all,  If you are an NP or PA, try Clinician1.  Its free, and you can enter to win an iPad! :http://clinician1.com/contests/ipad

Win Free Sex!

The greatest tabloid headline of all time. I'm just letting you know about about a chance to win a free sex toy.
Check out the way cool blog post on the LELO Lilly over at ToyWithMe.com, and learn how to enter to win one! (here's a hint - one way is by writing blog posts about the contest....)
In case you didn't know, LELO toys are high-end, expensive (but worth it), rechargeable, and generally of silicone, or bpa-free hard plastic. Check out the review here.

Prop 8 will probably pass.

O.K. California...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? You have no problem electing a young, progressive president, but then at the same time you approve a dark-ages measure like Prop 8. WTF? We're going to have a state constitution that effectively says "All people are equal, except them queers"

Wow. What a year.

Man. I though life had fallen on me like a ton of bricks last year. Its been nuts this year. Flying back and forth to Houston to visit Dad in his last days (one more trip in December for the memorial, then Mom is coming here for the Holidays...) Combine that with getting rid of one car (I bike commute 4 days a week now) as part of a commitment to lower our carbon footprint as much as possible. CFLs, buckets in the shower, compost heaps, vegetable garden, fruit trees, you name it, we are probably doing it, considering it, or have tried it and found it didn't work.

Now if only I could win the lottery, quit my job, and afford to insulate my house, replace all the windows and doors, install the solar electric system, repipe, rewire, rip out the lawn and sprinkler systems for more vegetable gardens....

I need a nap.

Road ID

Hi all.

Those of you know me have heard that I started to commute to work on an electric bicycle. In the few months I've been doing it, I've almost wiped out several times. Once was a dropped chain causing the rear wheel to lock, another was a bee stinging me INSIDE my lip (don't ask...). Anyway, I've started thinking about what might happen if I do wipe out and I'm unable to call for help. Now I've found it - its called the RoadID, and its a little engraved plate with your information on it, that can be mounted on a wristband, ankleband, shoe, or even as a dogtag with your choice of image on the other side. Speaking as an ex-EMT (I'm now a nurse practitioner), I was taught to look for ID bands or necklaces, but not to look for wallets. For one thing, people are afraid of getting sued (there was $300 dollars in that wallet!)

I've got one on order, and if you run or cycle, you should consider getting one. Heck. I think I'm going to get one for my brilliant but no-common-sense 7 year old to wear all the time.
I'll put a link in the sidebar, if I can remember how to do it.

He is dead.

My father, Lynn Elwood Anderson died this morning at about 7am Texas time.  He passed peacefully in his sleep after a year-long battle with cancer.  He fought valiantly for most of the year (he played golf about a month ago), and then went into a rapid decline.  He is no longer in pain.

Check out Facespooks.co.uk - appear in your own movie!

Report

More bad news

After a hi-res CT scan last night and a meeting with a surgeon today, my dad has told me that he also has multiple tumors in his liver, and that there is no surgical option. He will have a minor procedure tomorrow morning to get a biopsy and to place a stent to open up a duct that is being blocked by the tumor. Hopefully this will improve his liver function, and make him better able to withstand Chemo, that they are talking about starting next week.

Chemo is a palliative measure at this point. It may prolong his life and give him a better quality of life for longer, but it is unlikely to cure him. We can hope.

Bad news

This past Wednesday I learned that my father has a 4cm mass in or on the head of his pancreas. This was discovered while he was on a business trip to Norway. The good news is that he lives near MD Anderson Cancer center in Houston, one of the best in world. The bad news is that pancreatic cancer patients have a less than 5% chance of living past 5 years, even under optimum conditions. In worse cases, the prognosis can be a little over 4 months. My father may not live to see Christmas.

Keith Anderson

Snow!

SNOW! It snowed in Redlands today! It snowed in "Sunny and 72" Southern California (and Redlands is not up in the mountains...) What's up with that? I'll have to see if I can remember how to host pictures. It was purty...

OK, OK, it was about an inch of fluff that rapidly turned into slush. All over SoCal there were people doing 20 on the freeway because they heard snow was slippery. Never mind that it melted as soon as it hit tarmac, and was no worse than any other rainy day.

Keith Anderson, NP

Long time no post.

Hmm. Six months since my last post again. Drat. Well more later on numerous topics - Lasers, autism, other toys, new coffee maker. Busy time.

Also, check out the Epocrates search bar on the right. Look up your medications!

Dell Home Systems XPS M2010

Dell Home Systems XPS M2010

OH MY GOD! I'm in love. Never mind that the thing costs 9 grand (totally tricked out, that is...) and weighs over 20Lbs! DualCor, 20" monitor, removable bluetooth keyboard for cryin' out loud! Its my ultimate laptop. Will somebody buy me one? Please? Please? I'll be your friend...

Joe Haldeman Diary, April-May 2003

I just found the funniest commentary on the Iraq war. It was written and posted in April of 2003, by Joe Haldeman, Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction author. I'll post the text, and then a link to the actual site, so you can see the rest of it:

I just got this delicious observation from Steven Utley, by way of Michael Bishop and Greg Frost:
"This is the Vietnam II Preflight Check.
1. Cabal of oldsters who won't listen to outside advice? Check.
2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
3. National boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
4. Unshakable faith in our superior technology? Check.
5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
8. SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
9. Fear we'll look bad if we back down now? Check.
10. Corrupt Texan in the White House? Check.
11. Land war in Asia? Check.
12. Rightists unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
14. Soldiers about to be dosed with our own chemicals? Check.
15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
17. B-52 bombers? Check.
18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
19. Infighting among the branches of the military? Check.
20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
21. Local experts ignored? Check.
22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
23. Local conflicts since before the USA has been a country? Check.
24. Against advice, Prez won't raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don't go our way? Check.
27. Unpopular war? Check.
Vietnam II, you are cleared to taxi."
Actually, I think it would work better with just the first ten, or the strongest ten. Once you start committing analogy, though, I guess it's hard to stop.
Joe

Joe Haldeman Diary, April-May 2003

What has to be one of the funniest short pieces that I've seen in The Onion in a long time.

Laid-Off Zoologist Goes On Tranquilizing Rampage

SAN DIEGO-Twelve San Diego Zoo visitors and two employees were brutally sedated Monday, when laid-off zoologist Dr.

LinkedIn

OK folks. I just joined LinkedIn (check out the button on the sidebar). Joining gives you access to gobs of other people, and you can search by lots of different criteria (name, education, profession, location etc.)

Give it a try.

Dakota's anti-choice law

So. South Dakota's govenor signed the new anti-abortion bill into law. I recommend the Lysistrata solution. If the men of South Dakota are worried that women will want to end unplanned pregnancies, then the women should remove the problem. No sex, no unplanned pregnancies. Case closed. See how long they last.

Life reassessment

The main reason I haven't been fencing recently is that my wife and I have been re-examining out lives, in an effort to simplify. If you have been following this blog, you will have seen that my son is autistic. My wife and I recently attended a 4-day parent training for an autism therapy program called Relationship Development Intervention (RDI), developed by a man called Dr. Steve Gutstein.
RDI is the first therapy system that actually seems to treat autism. The most common therapy system for autism is called ABA, or Applied Behavioral Analysis. ABA tends to use behaviorist theories to get kids to behave well (no rocking or head banging, or whatever) by rewarding them for positive behaviors (sit in the chair for 5 minutes and I'll give you a cookie...) It turns out this does not teach the kids to think for themselves, so they still freak out if faced with a new situation. Dr. Gutstein actually thinks that ABA only teaches the kids to be more autistic.
RDI, on the other hand, attempts to recreate the parent-child, master-apprentice relationship, so that the kid can learn how to deal with new situations, by seeing their parents do it. You can read all about it (including a paper that should be published soon, that demonstrates autistic kids getting better - that is no longer testing as autistic) here.

Anyway, part of the process is to see what can go from your lives to make way for time with your child. We got rid of basically everything for a while (hence the no fencing) to see what we could really do without, and what we needed. Time for ourselves (as adults), especially exercise, was definitely a needful thing. I have also learned that there is an fencing group starting up at the gym for the university that the hospital I work at is a part of. They also meet at a time shortly after I get out of work. I'm really hoping this works out.

I passed!

WooHoo! I passed my national certification exam! I was a little nervous there. I know I usually do well on multiple choice exams, but the questions were tricky, and the testing environment less than perfect. Anyway, I'm now Keith Anderson, APRN,BC, NP. That's: Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, Board Certified. What a mouthful. Thats nothing... If I include all the degrees as well, its: Keith Anderson, APRN,BC, NP, BA, BSN, MSN.

Ain't I a little full of myself this evening?