Your Carharts...

...should have to be checked in!

I just finished reading my National Physical Therapy Exam again courtesy of the FSBPT. 5 hours of stress, headache, and suicidal ideation and I decided to take a few days off!  Flying from Cody to Denver for the first time. Hard not to chuckle a little at the stacks of carhart jackets and boots people are trying to squeeze into those little plastic bins. 

6am flight. That's all I have today.

• Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Kuhn 
• Still Alice 
• A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness - Ghaemi 

On the Docket: 

• All The Strange Hours - Loren Eiseley
• Start with WHY - Sinek 
• Phantoms in the Brain - Ramachandran
• Battle Royale - Rowaiaru
• Doctors: The Biography of Medicine - Nuland 
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives - Mlodinow 
• Ready Player One - Cline 
• How Doctors Think - Groopmman 
• Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Aspergers - Robinson 
• Second Opinions - Groopman 
• One for the Money - Evanovich
• Every Patient Tells a Story - Sanders 
• The Fifth Discipline - Senge
• Only What They Could Carry - ??
• Under the Banner of Heaven - Krakauer
• Hippocrates Shadow - Newman 
• Consciousness Explained - Dennett 
• Death of the Guilds - Krause 
• Painful Yarns - Lorimer Moseley
• The Best Practice - Kenney 
• The Black Swan: Impact of Highly Improbable - Taleb 
• Dan Brown Books -  The Da Vinci Code
• Checklist Manifesto - Gawande 
• Blink - Gladwell (re-read) 
• One Step at a Time - Bliell 
• Courage to Teach - Palmer
• The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking.. - Hutson
• Blindness - Jose Saramago
• The Road - McCarthy
• The Postman - David Brin
• Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
• A Canticle for Leibowitz - Miller
• Alas, Babylon - Frank
• Z for Zachariah - O'Brien
• Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? - Kant

Note to self (again)...

Rule #1: Keep Your Mouth Shut
Rule #2: You Reap What You Sow
Rule #3: No One Can Help Your or Be Helped By You if You Won't Help Yourself
Rule #4: You Do Not Know Everything
Rule #5: Pull When Possible
Rule #6: First Seek to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Rule #7: Do The Job, And Do It Well

Can Anybody Help Me?

Want a checkbox to write this sentence (a very small portion of a much larger project) and it's not working... Any ideas??? Much longer (non-functioning) version here: MvtDscROUGH

Does anyone reading know PAXScript?



var FOXTROT,NOTES:String;
function LowerFirst( InStr: String ): String;
begin result := LowerCase( Copy(Instr,1,1) ) + Copy(Instr,2,1000);
end;
begin IF SF.GetFieldText('ExamMeasurement','ZZTRNSTYPE')='' THEN
   FOXTROT:='' ELSE
   FOXTROT:='Patient is able to perform ' +
   LowerFirst(SF.GetFieldText('ExamMeasurement','ZZTRNSTYPE'));

SF.AssignFieldText('ExamMeasurement','ZZTRNSNOTE',FOXTROT+NOTES); END; END;

In the near future...

A couple of years ago I totaled my 97 cadillac deville on the back end of a surburban sliding down a hill.  I bought a second ruined car, parted it out, and used parts/money from that to franken-car my deville back together.  The post showing a couple random pictures of taking the engine out is my all time highest viewed blog entry.  You can find it here:  http://www.denverlancaster.com/2009/06/its-like-legos-but-i-swear-lot-more.html

Fast forward several years.  Things I've learned to do on my car (in no order):

• General maintenance/service:
• Replace the brakes.
• fuel filter
• spark plugs, wires
• air filter
• oil change
• anti-freeze change
• rotate tires
• serpentine belt replacement
• Take apart and clean out the EGR valve
• Replace fuel pressure regulator
• Service brakes/rotors
• remove fuel injectors/fuel rail
• recharge A/C
• remove/install coolant tank
• remove/install AC Compressor
• clean mass airflow sensor. 
• remove/install water pump
• remove/install radiator
• remove/install alternator (ugh)
• remove/install wind-shield wiper assembly
• remove/install belt tensioner for serpentine belt
• remove install belt tensioner & pulley system for water pump (other side of engine!)
• remove/install manifold intake, service gaskets.
• remove/install starter (under the manifold)
• remove/install Blower Motor
• replace serpentine belt with shorter belt to run car without broken AC compressor

I become more deadly with a ratchet and screwdriver every time something breaks on my car.  I still have a couple projects to do: 

• remove/install rear suspension, replace with passive system
• remove/install front bushings
• there is a problem with the oxygen sensors to fix related to codes PCM p0171, p0151, p0154, p0174. 
• HEADGASKET!!!!!!!! DAMN IT!    Looks like I'll be removing the engine again.  Maybe.  So far, it runs without overheating. 

Undiagnosed as of yet: 

• Rough/long start when engine is cold. When taken up to running temp, and then allowed to sit for 40 minutes to an hour and a half with the engine off after being at running themperature, the car doesn't turn back on!!!!!!!!!! WTF?

So, if you're int he Cody, WY area, and feel like helping me pull a cadillac engine, let me know.  Alternatively, if you want to buy an engine, let me know.

Readings and Musings 8.31.12

Another collection of random things that have caught my attention.  In the future, I will try to put out this list of things a little more frequently.

The Best Argument in Favor of Open Access Science is All Of Them @Kevbonham  I shouldn't have to explain why this matters.  More information here: Open Access Publishing

Develop a Web Presence - tips and ideas for boosting your web presence, from social networking to blogging.  I'm still on google.  Maybe I should make a switch to boost my street cred. @adachis

Ridgeway & Silvernail 2012.  Innominate 3d Modeling: Biomechanically interesting, but clinically irrelevent.  @Dr_Ridge_DPT

Dr. Ridgeway was kind enough to supply with the full unedited prior to submission full text here.  Thanks!! 

Patients understand that they are in pain. Health care professionals like to try to explain why patients are in pain. But it's a spinning plate trick - to tell them what we know about pain without invalidating what they KNOW about how they feel, and how they believe it impacts them. I like the article What predicts outcome in non-operative treatments of chronic low back pain? A systematic review (Wessels et al. 2006) for this reason. Changes in cognitive and behavioral measures may be more predictive for treatment outcomes of chronic low back pain than physical measures. But more research needs to be done (click me). What I like about this review, and it ties back into other articles (like Mannion 2001), is that we shoud do more to address patients' beliefs about pain, fear avoidance, coping, and mood. I don't think these questions can be addressed without LISTENING to how patients feel, and what they understand about their pain. 

These info graphics are so cool:  Mobile Healthcare or validation for my interest in developing software.
More digital information: HIPAA Devices: 2 Myths Debunked, 1 Proven True from @WebPT.  Ipads are HIPAA compliant.  Cloud storage is safer than hiding money in your mattress.  Digital storatge is safer than paper storage. 

Forward Thinking PT Posts by @joebrence9.  The latest post is about the neuromatrix model of pain developed by Dr. Ronald Melzack.  The brain uses a vast integrative network of systems to interpet threats to the system contextually as pain. Cool stuff.  One of my major interests as a #physicaltherapist (when I get a license).

Extending Marketable Skills!

Baby steps.  I've already identified 3 or 4 resources now for coding my goal project.  A thanks to Paul Burton for showing off his code for using the android BT to connect to a L2CAP connection (wii hardware - think balance board).  The purpose, or goal of all of this, for me, is to learn to code and build OPEN SOURCE tools clinicians an use, and involve more CLINICIANS in the building process.   I'm learning.  And will blog about my learning, and share resources as much as I can.  Would love to find more, or involve more people.

This is going to be awesome.



3 weeks ago: Javascript (for posterity).  Then PAXScript (to modify EMR at the clinic where I work), and now I'm playing in Android!  By far the best learning resources I have found for all of these have been http://www.codeacademy.com and http://www.thenewboston.org.  Both supply learning tutorials for different programming tricks and have helped me learn exactly what an API is!  Very cool stuff.  Without further adieu, I present to you my bean counter! 

You can install this to your very own android phone by tapping here in your mobile browser. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but you can if you're curious.  I isn't harmful.  Will put an APK on your devices, run and install from there.

About my app:  I made a logo from some wrinkled paper, and old school project, and GIMP editor. I'm coding everything from the ground up using an application called Eclipse.  Immediately below is a short example of one of the manifest for my application called Bean Counter.   

At start up, there is a 5 second splash screen and a Hal9000 clip "Everything is going very well here."  So awesome.  After that it goes into a main app menu where you can select lots of options.  Right now there is only MainActivity (I'm working on thinking of a better name).  Selection takes you into a counter. counter++, counter--.  Simple right?  Sure it is.