Time for another random musing.

I've been on the internet for way too long. It's good that I'm no longer using it at home (I'm quitting cold turkey). However here is a list of recent random stuff I was searching:

1. The first description nephrology. (Aretaeus of Cappadocia - he also came up with the term diabetes).
2. Housing styles in the United States from Octagonal, Italianate, etc.
3. NCAA tournament
4. Increasing productivity
5. Origami project
6. Oregon Nike project
7. Infinite pools
8. Travelling to Turkey
9. Meteora and other cool monasteries
10. Corfu and Santorini
11. Scrabble tournament
12. Design of the colliseum

Oh well, just looking at the list I will need to figure out to concentrate on the essentials.

Later,

J

Dinner

A and I invited Pascal and Kerri over for dinner tonight. Both Kerri and Pascal has quite a bit of experience in evaluating steaks. Kerri is from Iowa where her uncles owned a meat-locker facility, while Pascal used to be a manager for a restaurant. It was the first time for all of us trying the Omaha steaks. I thought it was pretty good, but I'm no steak connisseur. It was definitely a higher grade of steak than the supermarket and it is on par with some of the steaks I've had for weddings. But the best part for me was the cheesecake with raspberry (we bought it) with the special sauce.


J

Reply from cartalk

Thanks for submitting a puzzler suggestion.

If your puzzler is the one about the helium balloon and the car, or any of the
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As you know, Ray is in dire need of puzzlers that are somewhat less lousy than
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If we use your puzzler on the air, and if you happen to catch us, we will of
course deny everything. If you threaten legal action, you may get a CD or a
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Again, thanks for writing.

Sincerely,

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Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers

Hey Car Talk guys,

I have a puzzler for you guys based on a real life experience at the gas station. I bought 12.901 gallons of gas for 2.249 for a grand total of $29.01.

Here's the puzzle:
How many gallons of gasoline (DA.BCD) do you have to buy at $2.249 to come up with a total of (AB.CD).

Hope you talk about this puzzle on the air, especially since it has to do with cars rather than apples:)

JH

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China Trip Christmas 2000. (I found this thru my email to Rob)

I had a great time in China, here is a summary of what I did there.
The flight from LA to Beijing took approximately 12 or 13 hours. On the plane, I
saw the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. The movie, starring James Caan
and Randy Quaid?, were about two quarelling neighbors. The next movie was a
rather strange French movie, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the first one. I
fell asleep for the third movie.
The airport in Beijing was really nice. I was actually expecting an old airport,
but this one was fairly new and modern. The tour guide took care of our luggage
and check-in, so he took us directly to the restaurant. For this tour, all the
meals were paid for and there were 8 to 10 dishes/meal. Since I havn't had a
decent Chinese meal in over 5 months, I was really glad to be part of this
trip.
The first stop in our tour was the forbidden city. The forbidden city used to be
the living quarters for the emperors in the Ming and Qing dynasty. The last
person to live there was the last emperor, Pu Yi, who was there until the
1920's. After the communists took over he was assigned to be a gardener at the
forbidden city. What irony! The archictecture was really impressive, my only
regret was that we didn't get to see the palace treasures. The next stop in our
tour was the summer palace. There was a huge man-made lake which helped to cool
the temperature down in the summer. It was almost completely frozen in the
winter with a few cracks here and there. There were some really foolish people
who ventured out towards the lake. It was a pretty comical sight when we saw a
bunch of guards going in the middle of the lake to catch them. The next day, we
went to the most famous cultural landmark, the Great Wall. It is truly an
awesome sight to see first hand. I have no idea why they needed to build a great
wall, since there were mountains in the background. A few of us in the tour
decided to climb up one stretch (about a mile) of the great wall. It was kinda
scary to look down, but I tried to concentrate on the steps. When I went down, I
decided to count the steps so that I didn't have to look down. In all, there
were 1732 steps on the way down.
The next city that we visited was the ancient capital of China, Xian. Xian is
the place for the famous terra cotta figures. Xian also has the world's largest
and oldest remaining city wall. They are not done excavating the site --
according to the guide it will take another 100 years to finish the dig. Part of
the problem is that the technology is not quite advanced yet. In total, 40 years
and 750,000 workers took part in the construction of the mausoleum for the
emperor.
Gosh, this email is getting rather lengthy. After Xian, we went to Shanghai. In
a really short amount of time, Shanghai has transformed itself into a really
modern city. I think that Shanghai may have the edge in the number of
skyscrapers in comparison to Manhattan. The freeways had a lot more loops and
levels than the ones in LA.
We also went to a number of smaller cities (relative to Shanghai and Beijing).
It was really amazing for me to see all the development even in the smaller
cities. Still, there is still a large part of China that I havn't seen. Maybe in
a few years I could go back.
That's about all. Have a happy new year!

You are a Social Conservative (31% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (76% permissive) You are best described as a: Republican Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating

This is advice from someone who does research.

1. What is the question for today?
2. What could be the answers for the questions?
3. What experiment can discriminate among them?
4. What techniques are used in this experiment?
5. What materials: chemicals, solutions are needed?
6. What are the protocols?
7. What results do I expect?
8. Analyze and discuss the results.
9. Is the question answered? What is the next step

Renal Fellowships

After much thought, I've decided to apply for renal fellowships this year. The main reason is that I've decided to go into academic medicine and it would be nice to get plugged into a research project as soon as possible. Here are the places I'm thinking about applying

University of Washington

Seattle is a beautiful place and I've got good friends in Walla Walla. However their renal program is in disarray after their program director got fined by Medicare for billing compliance

UCSF

Fantastic place if I would like to do clinical research. The main PI that I'm looking into is Glenn Chertow. My sis is also next door at Berkeley

UCLA

Location, location, location. Unfortunately, housing prices are up the wazoo here in Los Angeles. I've also got a bunch of family and friends there.

UCSD

Fantastic weather and another place that has a strong clinical research program in acute renal failure. Ravi Mehta does a lot of work with the PICARD (Program to improve care in acute renal disease) group.

UT Southwestern

Of course the sentimental choice since I'm there right now. If it weren't for the compassionate hemodialysis (ie dialyze me before I die) and the VA it would be a very compelling choice. I'm very excited with what Chris Lu is doing with TLR-4 receptors. My wife also has a lot of roots in Dallas.

University of Colorado

This choice is more of a gamble. Big risks, yet huge rewards. They are creating a medical industrial research complex a few miles in the southern Denver suburbs. The downside is the head of the medicine program James Schrier got fired for opposing the move. I just need to know more about how good they are in promoting their fellows to junior faculty.

University of Michigan

I believe this program and Johns Hopkins has the best balance between basic and clinical research. On the other hand, I hate Detroit sports teams with a passion!

Harvard/Brigham and Women's

This is the primier place in the country for basic research. The Man for acute renal failure (Joe Bonventre) is there. I heard rumors though that you need to apply for grants even before entering the program.

Yale

Yale has been making strides up my rank list. The main downside is its location. However in terms of research, it is the only program to have faculty that I'm super interested in both clinical and basic science research. Lloyd Cantley who is does some nice work on acute renal failure. Recently, he has a well-cited publication about mesenchymal stem cells in ARF. On the clinical research side, there is a junior faculty Chirag Patel who does translational work in developing markers in acute renal failure (my topic in resident's talk)

Johns Hopkins

I'll be interested in working with Hamid Rabb in ARF. He's a peripatetic wanderer, so I'm not sure how long he'll be in the program.

I'm trying to fix my garden (ok bad puns, but I love them)

At first I was horrified that I might have lost all 200 of my previous posts. But luckily I'm able to see it from the edit view. It was fun reminiscing through my journal, and I realize that by not writing in my journal I'm forgetting all the cool stuff I've done or thought. The hard part is putting it back into public circulation.

I may need my sis' help in restoring blogger (If you are reading this in Beijing, let me know if you can fix it by the time you get back to berkeley).

Procrastination

Alas, procrastination has been chief of my 7 deadly sins. Ok, I've sinned a lot more than that but don't tell anyone. I've decided to blog more frequently now that I have the time during my consult months. However, I will need to go back to serious mode in September when I'll lead my Parkland ward team. I just need to brush up on my writing skills as I will apply to nephrology fellowships this year.

Here's a list of what I need to do. In no particular order

1. Clean the house
2. Pay the bills
3. Get my car license renewed
4. Finish book by Burton
5. Finish Nephrology MKSAP
6. Copy Pulmonary MKSAP
7. Buy flowers for wife
8. Plan Austin trip
9. Buy board review books
11. Apply for renal fellowship (Finish ERAS)

Penguin Sex

My, oh my. After such a long time away from blogging why on earth did "J to the Izzay" (my gizoogle nickname) decide to blog on this. Sometimes in life crazy coincidences occur that make you realize that God has a sense of humour.

About a week ago, I had some free time from my nephrology rotation so I decided to go to borders and just chill ... Anyway, on the bookshelf I decided to pick up a book. The inveterate reader that I am started to read the book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. This book is primarily about nonspiritual thoughts on Christian spirituality. In the intro of the book, he wrote about how he first fell in love with jazz when he first heard a sidewalk musician play the saxophone. As he played, there seemed like there was no structure, resolution, but he had the pathos to be immersed in the music for what seemed to be an eternity. For him, that was akin to his Christian experience when he couldn't quite predict what riffs God would play in his life. I just chuckled when this strait-laced Christian dude from Texas tried to reach out the pagans at Reed college. Yet in a way they expanded his conception of God beyond petty Republican or Democratic politics.

What does this have to do with penguins? He probably is the first Christian writer to write a chapter to penguin sex. Oh well ... I'm probably the second. To be honest, I don't quite remember what he had to write about sex however the mating habits of penguins are a wonderful analogy of love. Every year emperor penguins walk days and nights to the breeding ground in the harshest winter environment on earth to find love. They march one stubbly webbed foot after another through miles and miles of barren ice to their primordial mating ground. There the females fight over the choicest male to mate. With tender strokes they caress each other, the quiet of the antarctic ice broken by orgastic bleats. After the female delivers the egg, she shuffles the precious egg to the male partner. Soon afterwards, she leaves the male to incubate the egg until she returns to the ocean to feed. After months of waiting by papa penguin, she returns as the eggs hatch to give back regurgitant fish and krill to her baby penguins. Then it is the dad's turn to go back to the ocean to scavenge for food. This cycle repeats until the penguins grow big enough to fend for themselves.

So after my wife finished the bar we decided to go see a random movie. The title was March of the Penguins, but of course it was more about penguin reproduction ;)

Jizzo

You are Romans.

Which book of the Bible are you?

It has been a while since I have posted. Unfortunately that means that my writing skills has atrophied beyond belief.

Here are a few things I'm thankful for:

Being married to the best wife in the world :)
Learning medicine under Dr. Foster.
Having family with a crazy sense of humor.
John Kerry losing the election.
Sleeping well every night (except when I'm in the hospital)
My new computer.
Subscribing to Uptodate and New England Journal of Medicine.
Having friends who remember my birthday.
Sleeping in on my day off.
La Madeline fruit tart.

JH

After looking at Justin's secret website, I decided to do the grammar quiz. Even though my grammar is atrocious, here are the results:


You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!


How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Got into UT Southwestern!!!!!

Yayyy, I'm really excited that I got into my first choice program. It is a very hard core residency program, but with the new 80 hour work limits it should be an improvement. It is an amazing residency program, but they are definitely a bit cocky. Their webpage has a picture of the nobel prize (they have the most number of nobel laureates for an internal medicine department), and they talk a lot about the Southwestern brand. I'm glad I chose it though, because they will push me to become the best internist I could be.

Soli deo gloria,
John

I'm posting because it's Saturday, and I'm in LAB!!!!!! Ok, I came in because Jeff promised that he would buy me lunch. Ok, the real reason why I'm in lab is because I'm hoping that I can get a paper out of my efforts from last year.

Updates:

I'm loving cardiology. I think I must have read over 500 EKGs (I prefer the German acronym) this month. I'm getting pretty good, but sad to say the computer is probably still better than me :( Alas, even surgeons can seem like they know how to read an EKG by reading the computer description.

Match day is coming this thursday. I hope I get into Parkland.


John

Current music: Jesus Freak -- DC Talk

Match List

1. Parkland - UTSW
2. Baylor Dallas
3. Presbyterian
4. HCMC
5. U of M

Anyway, I was just talking to Steve Fu who is on faculty at the VA. I was absolutely beside myself that at this stage in life, that one must still kiss up to the powers that be. My impression was that it was illegal to tell people what your first choice is. Aargh ... I hinted to people that I liked Parkland, but I never said outright that it was my first choice.

Current music: Curbside prophet -- Jason Mraz

Valentine's Weekend

Anita came to town this weekend. It was absolutely awesome to have her here with me. It is always an explosion of love whenever she is here. I decided to do everything I can to make her stay as enjoyable as ever. We went back to my place where I tried to suffuse my apartment in a romantic environment. Lights down, candles, flowers, and a home cooked meal. I'm still learning how to cook, but Anita was very encouraging.

The next night we went out to winter formal which is the equivalent to prom for medical students. I saw a number of my friends there Gully, JP, Tsega, JLee, UnRuh. There I pulled out all of my dance moves (umm ... all 5) with Anita. We also gambled with fake money. I had this really unique strategy of betting. I started with a bankroll of 10,000 so I started betting with 100 dollars. Lost it all, then I bet 200 lost it, then I bet 500, lost it, then I bet 1000, lost it, then I bet 2500 which I won. I then stopped gambling. To make this strategy work well, I would then bet again at 100 and ramp upwards until I win. Anita looked absolutely fab with her red dress which hugged all of her curves. Meanwhile I looked dapper in my interview suit :) It was too bad that Anita had a curfew, otherwise we would have danced the night away.

The following day we went to T4C. After the sermon, I found out from Gloria that I was in charge of teaching the 5th and 6th graders. That itself is a terrifying experience, but it was doubly so when you did not have a lesson plan prepared. Fortunately Anita was there to help me with the kids.

All in all it was a good week, but alas it's always too short.

John

Ok, so I cheated. I was originally Martin Luther, but I prefer to be Augustine :)

"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine! You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson