SNOW

We have had a very cold December in Houston this year. In the short year and a half we have lived in Houston, it has snowed both winters and we have had 1 major hurricane. Maybe we should have stayed in MI!




As you can see... we did get some pretty big flakes coming down. There was even enough sticking in some places for people to make snow men, have snow ball fights ect. Lisa said her kids were going crazy.

School news:

I am now 6 days away from being done with my pre-clinical medical education!!! Our last day of class was yesterday, and now I just have 4 more tests before I am done. This mini block we have studied genetics and ARTS (age related topics = geriatrics and pediatrics). With the block only being 2 weeks long, it has gone by very quickly.

Genetics is interesting to me, but there are about 90 disorders we have learned, and each has quite a bit of information to memorize (inheritance pattern, gene involved, chromosome location, type of mutation, presenting symptoms, treatment options and so on). And even though our genetics professor is very nice and good at teaching, previous students have said the exam is something to be feared.

The ARTs class has two of the best doctors we have had as teachers. The material is really just explaining how, in many ways, old people's bodies are very different than adults and kids are not just smaller adults.

Then there is a PPS exam covering the things we have learned about the basic physical exam (this is in addition to the clinical skills exam with standardized patients we already did). This test should be not too hard, but the problem is it covers hundreds of pages of reading in our text, so preparing for it in such a short amount of time will be tricky.

Then the last test is the dreaded end of basic science exam, or EBS. It is made by the NBME (national board of medical examiners), who also write the STEP board exams. It covers everything we have learned over the past 1.5 years, although we only have 2.5 days to study for it after our other exams are done! I have been preparing somewhat already, but it is a very different test than the kind that we are used to. It is 200 questions in 4 hours, and the format is all "clinical vignettes," or short clinical presentations followed by multiple choice questions. I guess that some students have trouble with time, because there is so much to read before you get to answer any questions. So although it is supposed to be a knowledge exam... it seems like test taking skills will play a big role, as they usually do.

Finally, I have received my schedule for rotations for the entire next year! We were able to submit 4 different choices for our schedules... and mine looks nothing like any of my submissions. They did it by a lottery system, so I must have been picked at the end. However, I am still fairly happy with what I got. As of right now, I have neurology in January, family medicine in February, OB/GYN for March and April, pediatrics for May and June, 2 weeks break, Surgery for July - September, and Internal Medicine for October - December. I am thinking about putting family medicine off for later and instead taking an elective for that month in pathology or radiology. I have heard from many older students that the family medicine shelf exam can be very hard if you have not had internal medicine yet, so doing an elective instead might be a good idea. Plus I might be interested in radiology, and path is a good review before the step.

Anyway, that is the scoop with me. I'll be home for Christmas... in one week!

Thanksgiving in Texas

Our Thanksgiving break has been great! Sara came down on Monday night, and we put on a Thanksgiving day feast for three. We weren't entirely sure how much food we were making, but it turns out there was tons! We probably could have fed 9 or 10 people if we had a slightly larger turkey. You can see all of our pictures by going to the my photos link on the right.



On Friday, we went to go get a tree, although in Houston that means picking out a pre-cut one at Home Depot. Still on the agenda is the Ballet tonight, and lots more studying for me.



I am in the home stretch now for my pre-clinical curriculum. I will be totally done in less than three weeks now! I took endocrine and GU/GYN exams last week, and now we have two weeks of classes left for genetics and something called ARTS, which is geriatrics and pediatrics... I think. The third week is for the genetics exam, the ARTS exam, the PPS exam (over physical exam stuff), and then finally on Friday the end of basic sciences exam. That test is a standardized exam that covers all of the things we learned in last 1.5 years. It is made by the same people who make the STEP 1 boards, and it is meant to be used as a pretest. It doesn't affect our grade at all, but we have to pass it to go onto clinics. Oh and during the second week of the genetics/ARTS classes I have my PPS practical exam with standardized patients. So it will be a very busy three weeks, but after that I will never be a full time "classroom" student again.

Brussel Sprouts

As I was reviewing a pathology lecture about thyroid diseases, I found out why I hate brussel sprouts. Apparently spouts and other cruciferous vegetables are goitrogens, that is they contain compounds that interfere with thyroid hormone synthesis. Now theoretically this is only an issue in places with endemic goiters, but I am not going to take any chances. No sprouts for me!

Murmurs of Discontent

Part of our Patient, Physician, and Society course this fall is doing a few "special sessions" where we learn the particulars of a specific kind of physical exam. I was introduced to the male genital and rectal exam a few weeks ago (yikes!), and this week I did both my neonatal and pediatric sessions. The neonatal was the most fun, because we basically got to play with a newborn baby (about 12 hours old), while a neonatologist showed us what we should be doing. Babies can be cute (when they aren't crying), but this one promptly made a mess of himself, so we had to skip a few parts of the exam. In the pediatric exam, I had a good day. I was able to really see his optic nerve with my ophthalmoscope, which I think I've only done once before. Also, when I listened to his heart, I correctly discovered a systolic murmur without the doctor first telling me that it was there.

We are now studying endocrinology and genito-urinary + gynecology (GU/GYN). The lecturers so far have been pretty good, and the material is fairly interesting. One gyn lecturer has brought us warm Shipley's doughnuts every day!

Again, if you don't play games, skip the rest of this post.

So I had been thinking about COD4 MW2 as a game I might want, but I think I have decided not to get it now. I really enjoyed the single player campaign of the first one, but it was way too short. I did play the multiplayer a bit too, but now I don't know many people who will be playing it for PC. Also, they have decided to change the PC version's multiplayer so that it does a peer to peer match up system (instead of dedicated servers), similar to battlenet. This sounds like a terrible idea to me, and this chart on digg explains why. Besides the lag and smaller game size issues, the inability to add mods or custom maps is really a slap in the face to the PC gaming community (there won't even be developer's console access). It seems to me that this just gives them a way to control 3rd party development and possibly release map packs later on for money like they do for consols. The greatest strength of the PC was its devoted fans who generate extra content for games at no cost.

The sad thing is the game is already on track to sell tons of copies for the 360, so Infinity Ward probably will just ignore the PC crowd, since there are much fewer of them anyway. Now I don't really care about MW2 that much, but it sets a poor precedent for future games. The way Valve updated TF2 over time and released new map packs for it was great (some control over content is good), but it would stink if they started charging 15 or 20 dollars for each upgrade. And other companies will undoubtedly do a much worse job than Valve of taking care of their games. Plus, open development gave us games like TF2 and Counterstrike in the first place! What does everyone think... is this a good idea or bad idea?

What to play?

GI exam is over, and it was very hard. Luckily, these feelings were prevalent among my class mates, so maybe some questions will be thrown out (though not likely). I think I passed, but otherwise it was not my best exam. HST is on Wednesday, so after this post I have to stop procrastinating and start learning about all those things that Dermatologists consider important... zits and warts mostly.

If you don't play games... ignore the rest of this post.

It seems that I have developed a routine where around this time of year I start looking through gamerankings.com, bomb, and other sites to get myself caught up on what has happened in the world of gaming. I don't follow the news as thoroughly as I used to, probably because I have less time to play games now. So instead of waiting eagerly for anything decent to come out to fill up some empty time, I now have to carefully pick out what games are actually worth spending my precious free time on.

One thing I noticed this fall is that my PC is now two years old. When I first built it, there were a lot of exciting PC titles coming out. Bioshock, COD4 modern warfare, Crysis, and the Orange Box (with Portal, Episode 2, and TF2) all came out around that fall and kept me busy for my entire senior year at Hope. Two years later, I am looking back and noticing that PC releases have been SLOW since that time. Left 4 dead was good but I didn't play much beyond the demo. While most games are multiplatform these days, the games coming out for PC lately have been ones that I would rather have on a console (Braid, RE5, ect). I kind of ignored Far Cry 2 and Mass Effect, but neither seemed like must play games from the reviews I read. I hope that Starcraft II, Diablo III, and HL Episode 3 will come out (among other good games, hopefully) and give me a reason to fire up the PC and get windows 7, and maybe a new wide-screen monitor.

My first year at Baylor I found time to play Crysis in the fall (which I had put off due to TF2), and I played Super Mario Galaxy and Metal Gear 4 in the spring. I am currently playing Metroid Prime III, and GTA4 is still sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to give it another shot. I was so bored the first hour I played that I put it down and haven't gone back, but everyone says it is so good I feel like I should try again sometime.

Here is a list of games I am considering for this year. I'll order them roughly by how excited I am to play them:

- Uncharted 2: among theives - PS3
- Infamous - PS3
- COD 4 modern warfare 2 - PC
- Flower - PSN
- Final Fantasy VII - PSN (I have never played it before)
- RE 5 - PS3
- R & C: a crack in time - PS3
- Braid - PS3/PSN or PC
- Trine - PSN or PC
- Batman Arkham Asylum - PS3

Uncharted 2 seems to be getting fantastic reviews from everyone and looks like a great game. Infamous didn't have perfect reviews, but the game looks awesome. Flower and FFVII are cheap and both seem like something fun to do. And the first COD modern warfare was such a thrilling single player campaign, I might replay it and then move on to the sequel. From about RE5 down I am not sure if I should waste my time. Let me know what you think, especially if you have played some of these before (or are currently playing)!

Mint

Good for more than just Mojitos...

About a month ago I was reading slate.com and ran across this article about mint.com. The article is really more about the success of "web 2.5" companies, but when I read it I was curious what features the website had to offer. Lisa and I did budgeting the old fashioned way, with an Excel spread sheet and online banking (irony intended for you old folks). After exploring the website, I decided to give it a try for a while and see if it could replace our normal budgeting process.

Mint is a start-up company that runs a website where you can manage your money and use their tools to set up a budget. One neat thing is that you can give Mint your login information for your online banking and online credit card sites (they use the same encryption that the banks use, so it is secure), and Mint will automatically connect to those sites and pull over information about recent transactions each time you log in. This makes it useful already because you can go to one website now to see any recent purchases, whether from your bank account or any credit cards you might have, all in one list. It then lets you set up budget categories, and it will try to assign each transaction you make to one of the categories. It often messes up, especially if you make custom categories, but it is very easy to look over recent purchases and assign them correctly. Also, individual categories can be set up to "roll over," so if we don't spend all of our clothing budget one month, the extra will be added to the next months budget (this makes Lisa very happy), and if you overspend there will be less for next month.

Also cool is that I have student loans administered by three different entities (actually that is not cool), and Mint can login to those web sites as well and keep track of how deeply I have signed my life away. Currently the service is free and I hope it stays that way, but so far it has been so useful I might even consider paying if that is what happens.

Now budgeting takes all of 3 minutes a week, and we can check to see how we are doing anytime we want. I have never used Quicken, and it might be better for those with more complicated finances, but Mint.com is a neat, free tool to check out.

In Med school news, I have tests coming up is less than a week. The new schedule keeps them coming at a rapid pace. Dermatology has been completely unappealing so far, and it has been neat to learn what rheumatologists actually do besides rheumatoid arthritis. GI has been somewhat interesting though more complicated.

I heard from faculty talking at the curriculum committee meeting yesterday that hospital volume is VERY high right now due to flu season. Regardless of what Glen Beck and Bill Maher may tell you, flu vaccines (including H1N1) are safe and effective! Get them if you can!

Disappointment

I recently read an article about the Kindle which got me thinking that it could be a good Christmas present. Especially since the next Wheel of Time book is coming out this October!!! The author who is taking over the series has decided to break the last book into three smaller books (thank God) with the first coming out on the 27th this month. I thought it would be neat to have a Kindle, where I could get the whole series on one device and maybe start doing a read through of the series.

However, I noticed that the Kindle store has no Robert Jordan books at all! In fact, I also discovered that none of the Harry Potter books or LOTR books are available for Kindle either. I thought by now that Kindle's library would include such popular novels, but I guess not. I know that in Harry Potter's case, the lack of e-book format has something to do with JK Rowling being against electronic publishing for some reason. I am just worried that if books like these haven't been converted over yet, then there are probably going to be other titles that i can't find for it. And while the price has dropped to $260, that is still a lot to pay for a device that can't display all the books I want to read on it.