Last Post Before Vacation

This will be my last post before heading back to LA! It may be my last post for the year too. I'm pretty much all packed up and ready to go. I had to make sure to take with me all valuables and important documents. Good thing Southwest allows me 2 luggages free. I sure have a lot of stuff to bring back. I had to mail a few medical books back because they would be too heavy. I'll probably take a shuttle to the airport this time instead of driving myself. With 17 days gone, the parking fee would cost at least $102. The shuttle would cost about $22 one way.

I also completed my Lego project for the pneumatic wheel loader last week. Also with the spares I still have, I made a Go-Cart this weekend. I spent less than 5 hours on it and I'm pretty happy with the results. It's got a working 2 cylinder engine and steering. It's also a big model at 6x10 inches. Overall I like my own creations better than what's available (past or present) from Lego. I guess if you want something nice to be built with Legos, just do it yourself!

I also had the time to really play around with the Apple iPod Touch this week. The movie capability is awesome. I downloaded 14 movies, 24 games and many applications. I loaded a bunch of MP3s too. I'm glad I got the 32GB version. Right now I'm using about half of the memory. I also built a small stand out of Legos for the iPod to watch movies on the plane. The viewing angle of the stand is fully adjustable!

Happy Holidays!

Only 17 shopping days left till Xmas and 12 days before I have my vacation! It's my first vacation since March. I have already gotten my Xmas gift from my girlfriend Ivy: iPod Touch 32GB! It's such a cool little device. I never understood why iPhones were so popular until now. The iPod Touch is basically an iPhone without the phone. I'm just amazed at the functionalities it has and the speed of the processor. It sure makes my Palm TX from last year look like a dinosaur. I mean, going online on the Touch takes a few seconds and web surfing is almost like a desktop computer.

My gift to Ivy this year is basically a cash shopping spree of the same cost of the iPod. It seems like Ivy's having some hard times finding the stuff she likes (mostly specific clothes), so I guess cash is the best gift for people like that!

Also this weekend we got our first real snow! A couple of weeks ago we had some snow flurries, but this weekend is the first snow accumulation that totally covered the ground.

In other news, my Discover credit card recently was subject to identity theft and use. Good thing Discover people caught it on the same day it got used by the thief and cancelled my card right away. I got a call that day from Discover asking if I had used the card at a Shell gas station and Polo. They didn't tell me how much money got charged, but I bet they became suspicious because the transaction took place out of state.

Anyway they are launching an investigation and I'm not responsible for those charges. Good thing I'm done with majority of shopping and won't need the card until my trip to Hawaii. I have to wait a week before I get a new card. This is such a bummer because I have to relink all of my online payment and banking accounts to the new card. I had identity theft of my Paypal account last year that also resulted in me getting a new Discover card.

My free time recently are spent working my mind on Legos. It's like a 3D puzzle, but with hundreds of different parts. I find it pretty challenging because you have to plan things out and imagine your design, otherwise there'll be a lot of trial and error. The new Technic parts are much more advanced than the ones I played with 20 years ago, so you can't just snap blocks on top of another. The new Technic parts also make the result model stronger and more realistic.

I have finally finished the Excavator. My current project is the Wheel Loader. Most of the parts I have are basically from 3 Lego Technic sets and spare parts from Amazon and eBay. The pneumatic systems are from Lego Education. Lego Education provides these pneumatic components for robotic projects. The parts I will have left after completing the Wheel Loader probably won't allow me to be too creative. So, after the Wheel Loader, I'm thinking of building a Tricycle or Go Cart.

What I Did on a 4-Day Home Call

Happy Thanksgivings! I didn't go anywhere because I am on home call. My call month will end in about 6 hours. It sucks to spend a 4-day weekend alone. Both of my collegues drove home. One of them actually have 5 days off because of a cancelled clinic on Wednesday. This weekend I end up going to the hospital twice. Both are for non-emergent consults, and one of which turned out to be idiotic.

Any way, because I have nowhere to go, I did do all of my shopping online. I find price comparison online is much more efficient and often you can save on taxes. I can also avoid the crowds by shopping online. I noticed Amazon and other places started having a mark-down starting 12am Thursday. So I did my shopping all on Thursday. I only bought a couple of things. My girlfriend is getting me the Apple iPod Touch 32GB!!! Finally I can get rid of my old Palm TX.

I also watched the movies Untraceable and Pineapple Express. I like Untraceable - it's almost like the Saw movies, but less gruesome, better plot, and more suspense. Pineapple Express is a waste of time and not even funny. It's about pot smoking junkies who witnessed their drug dealer commit a murder.

In my other spare times this weekend I thought I'd do something with my spare Lego parts. With what I have available I decided to build an excavator powered by pneumatics! It's my original creation, and it took a lot of trial and error. I'm still missing a few parts, especially the pneumatics components. I have those parts on order and once I get them it'll be as simple as hooking up all the hoses, 4 switches, 1 pump and 4 cylinders. This also has a homemade air tank to store compressed air! I made the tank out of a small shampoo bottle. I'll post more photos once it's complete.

It'll be 3 weeks before my vacation. My mom will return to LA tomorrow. It seems like whatever needs to be taken care of in Taiwan has been done.

Passed ABIM Exam!

It's been a while since my last post, haven't it? I guess I was more busy than lazy during the last month. First I found out that I have passed the ABIM exam! I had a feeling that I would pass it. I only slept a few hours the night before the test due to anxiety, but I felt prepared and the questions were similar to MKSAP 14. I'm glad I bought the book and CD series. I found MedStudy books to be inadequate for preparation.

Last month my aunt and grandmother came to LA to visit. But I wasn't able to meet my aunt in LA since her stay was only 2 weeks. I was able to meet my grandmother for a few days in late October.

From October 24-29 I went to San Francisco for the ACR annual scientific meeting. Yes, I was just there in September! This time the airfare and hotel were prepaid, so I spent a total of about $450 of my own money (to be reimbursed later). My girlfriend Ivy flew to SF again for the weekend. This time we were able to meet with a couple of her grad school friends and visit Alcatraz. It was my second time at Alcatraz! For some reason October weather is much warmer than September.

I then took an extra 2 days off and flew down to LA! That's when I was able to meet with my grandmother. My bro Fred came home for a dinner. The last time that I visited LA was the July 4th weekend. So I finally got to assess the earthquake damages in my room. Luckily there were only a few damaged toys. On Halloween night I went with Ivy to a huge Hollywood block party! Some of the costumes and clothes, or lack of, were outrageous! I went as a knight and Ivy went as a sexy nurse. Both of us got a few comments at the party! My next trip back to LA would be December holidays and we plan on a trip to Hawaii!

My mom and grandmother just flew back to Taiwan a few days ago. It sounds like there were some damage to our rental house from the summer typhoons. Here in Ohio, the last leaves are falling. No snow yet. Our temperatures are still in the 50's now (was 70's in the beginning of November), but I have started noticing more cloudy days.

Nostalgia

I bet all of us have seen things that remind us of our past. I was at Walmart today buying ice cream and checking out LCD HDTV's because my girlfriend Ivy needs a new TV set. The toy section is next to the electronics, so I thought I'd check out what kids are playing with now besides video games.

I came across a Lego Technic excavator model that looked strikingly similar to the one I had owned back in 5th grade (1988-1989). Of course that Lego model has since been broken up and gone, even though I liked it so much. As a comparison, I found these photos:

The photo that says "8851" is the one I had as a kid (introduced in 1985) and the other is the 2008 reincarnation of the excavator.

I don't know if Lego is trying to bring back classic models using modern blocks, but either way the new one looks just as cool. It's one of the models that I wish I still had.

In other news, my aunt and uncle are currently visiting my family in LA. My bro Jack has photos up, but you'll need to get permission from him to view on his Picasaweb. Looks like my grandma is going to arrive from Taiwan on Tuesday with another aunt. I should be able to see my grandma when I go back to LA at the end of October.

By the way, the colors of fall are starting to show up here in Columbus. I started seeing trees turn golden yellow/brown starting last week. The leaves will be gone in a month and snow will be here in a couple of months.

I missed the storm while having fun at SF!

I have posted my photos to SF on my Picasaweb. It was an awesome trip. The Rheumatology board review lectures were much more superior to the ones in New York last year. I stayed at the very expensive ($250/night) Stanford Court at Nob Hill. It's next to the scenic cable car intersection on Powell and California and waking distance to Chinatown. The lectures were at the hotel ball room.

On Thursday night I went out to eat with my colleagues Heather and Snow at Chinatown. I found the food at Chinatown to be way overpriced - easily 2-3x the prices in LA. On Friday night I went out with Heather to eat at Marche at Ghirardelli square, which was quite expensive too, but worth it compared to Chinatown. The restrauant overlooked the bay and Alcatraz.

My girlfriend Ivy flew in late Friday night, so she came directly to the hotel. The next day, after my half day of lectures, we went out to tour San Francisco. The hotel gave me two complementry 3-day cable car tickets, so we rode the cable car! It was Ivy's first time. The cable car was bumpy and jerked hard. At one time we had to stand on the side of the car. It was quite an experience! Ivy and I toured Fisherman's Warf and had a plate of fresh cocktail prawns. We rode the Blue and Gold fleet to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Later we had clam chowder at Boudin's and then for dinner we had sushi at Chinatown.

We walked a whole lot on Saturday. I'm glad I have Ivy, who puts up with all that walking. I even got blisters afterwards, but her feet seemed totally fine.



The whole trip cost around $2000. I hope to get reimbursed for the full amount. My next trip is October 24-29!

While I was at SF I was freaked out about Hurricane Ike because my flight back to Columbus on Sunday would transfer at Dallas. Luckily Ike rolled through Dallas on Saturday, so my flight was not affected. However, Ike rolled through Columbus Sunday afternoon in the form of wind storm. So by the time I got back Sunday night, there was wide spread power outage. The wind was reported to have gusted >70 MPH and it blew down a lot of trees.

I had to throw away $30 worth of food from the fridge. Walmart and Target were totally out of flashlights, and the only things left were scented candles. Good thing I had flashlights already, but I still had to buy candles to save on batteries. Power slowly came back for the street signals and street lights, but I didn't get my power back in the apartment until 3 days later (Wednesday afternoon).

OSU vs. USC

In about 3 hours I will be on my way to San Francisco! Looks like I may meet up with a high school friend, Jessica, for dinner on Thursday. It seems like my lecture schedules are 7am-6pm on both Thursday and Friday, then 7am-1pm on Saturday.

Ivy will fly in on Friday night and we will probably meet up with some of her friends Saturday. But of course, I'm gonna try not to miss the OSU vs USC game!!!!!

Yes, the big game is this Saturday.....Don't miss it! It's not often these 2 major teams match up. The kickoff is 5pm PST at USC.

Also, remember to register to vote in the November elections! Deadline is sometime in October I think. McCain/Palin all the way!

Labor Day Weekend Trip

I uploaded photos from my trip with Ivy to visit her sister's family at Urbana, IL. They just moved to the US from Taiwan in August. Ivy's brother inlaw is studying at the University of Illinois until May 09.

Ivy flew in Saturday morning. The drive was 5 hours long from Columbus to Urbana on Saturday afternoon, but we utilized our time pretty well. It's a surprise that Urbana is not in the middle of nowhere. They have pretty nice Chinese and Taiwanese resturants there.

Ivy's older cousin, who's been in the Chicago area for about 4 years, also drove down to Urbana for a visit. We made our way back to Columbus Monday morning at 3 o'clock.

Here's a bit of a bummer news: While shooting photos at Urbana, my Canon 40D suddenly stopped working. It was having the "busy error." I didn't lose any photos, but the camera is apparently stuck in "busy" mode. I searched online and it seems like other people had similar problems before. I took out all the batteries for a whole day, but it still would not fix itself. My compact flash cards are working fine. I guess it's a trip to Canon for service. Good thing it's still under warranty, but it sucks to have something this expensive break after only 9 months of ownership.

Post Boards

I had taken my IM Board exam today! I felt moderately prepared and I finished the exam on time. But then I made the mistake of looking up the questions that I wasn't sure about when I got home. Damn! It seems like I missed quite a bit of questions. Some of them I changed the answers to the wrong ones! I just get confused with all the information in my head. Any way, I feel I did better, but the truth will be known in about 6 weeks. This exam costs $1000 to take.

This Saturday Ivy's going to fly into Columbus to visit me and her sister's family in Urbana, Illinois. The drive from Columbus to Urbana is 300 miles or 5 hours. We will drive to Urbana Saturday and return to Columbus on Sunday. I'm not sure if we will be visiting Chicago or not since it's another 2.5 hour drive from Urbana.

In about 2 weeks I'm going to make a trip to San Francisco for a Rheumatology review course. I'm going to be staying at Nob Hill Marriott. Ivy's coming along too since the hotel is paid for by OSU. I'm going to see if I can meet up with any friends if they are around the area. If not, then there's another trip in October!


In other news, because of the board studying I've gotten pretty out of shape. Because I somehow lost my previous running shoes, I went to Sports Authority today and bought a new Nike "Shox." It was on sale for $90 because newer models came out. When I looked at the newer models, there weren't much difference besides the color and some padding on the outside.

I also got a personal protection device for the times that I exercise on the trail.

Lastly some recent new straps for my watches.

My Birthday

Today I turned the big three 'O. Leaving the 20's behind feels weird. The feeling is much different than leaving the teens. I felt like going into the 20's I get to do a lot more stuff that I couldn't do as a teen. But going into the 30's I feel like there's going to be certain things I can't do any more. Seems like it's down hill from here.

It sucks to spend another birthday by myself. There was a drug rep dinner today, but I didn't feel like going. Without the drug reps I really don't have anywhere to go for good food or decent cake. My parents bought a cake and they'll celebrate my bday in LA. Luckily my girl Ivy sent me a box of chocolate strawberries.

Ivy's also flying here at the end of the month. We are planning on a drive to Illinois to visit her sister's family.

Is it moving time?

When I was in med school at OSU, I started moving things back to LA even 1 year before graduation. I drove back to LA with my car filled with stuff that I probably won't use or miss during the last year at OSU. Right now it's less than a year before I leave OSU again, but I haven't had the time to move any thing back. A lot of things in my apartment will end up being thrown or given away. I probably won't be doing a moving sale like last time. Starting with my next flight back to LA (in October) I'm going to be checking in my large luggages. I need to bring home all the smaller non-essentials throughout the year so that my little Prius can haul the bigger things next summer.

Scrap Computer

While taking out the trash today, I saw a computer system sitting next to the dumpster. I thought, "Wow! I'm either very lucky today or this is just a pile of crap." Well, I didn't wanna hang out at the dumpster too long looking at the computer cuz there were people around. So I quickly hauled my find back to my apartment.

I took a look at the open case. It seems like everything is still intact inside. As far as I can tell (did a quick search online), this is a Pentium III 500MHz computer from the last century. The RAM, mother board, CD drive x 2, floppy drive, hard drive, CPU, wireless Ethernet, sound card, video card, and power supply are intact. I don't know if any of it works, and I guess I'll figure that out piece-by-piece when I have more time in a couple of months. I left the 15" CRT monitor at the dumpster.

Half Way There!

This is the half way point of my fellowship! Just one more Fall and Winter, then I should be back to California. I'm still preparing for my boards in August.

We have just one new fellow this year and her name is Zhang (Snow). So that leaves me, Heather and Snow. That means I'm on consults 4 months this year instead of 3. I'm doing consults this month also, so it's back-to-back from June. I'm already pretty tired.

Last weekend I spent a refreshing weekend at LA! I met up with Ivy, my family and my cousin Alice from Taiwan. She's here to get a driver's license and it looks like she passed it! My mom and bro Jack will take her to San Francisco this coming weekend. I also watched the movie Wall-E and it was a very nice movie. We had a big BBQ at out house and one of my uncles came as well.

In August Ivy's sister will be coming to Illinois with her husband to study for a year. Ivy's niece will come also. Then in September and October I plan to make trips to San Francisco for medical conferences. I'll share photos then!

Summer!

Yesterday was the longest day of the year! It doesn't feel very hot now, although 2 weeks ago we were having temperatures in the 90's. The days are starting to get humid though. Also, fireflies are starting to show up! You don't see this in LA! I recorded a short video of fireflies just outside of my window. The cicadas are starting to buzz too.

TV Ads

I found these ads from Accutron and Bulova.


Accutron - "Second to None"


Accutron - "Timing is Everything"


Classic Accutron TV Ad


Bulova - "Time Flies" Part 1


Bulova - "Time Flies" Part 2

Father's Day

What did you give for Father's Day? I picked out the Accutron Gemini 26C02 for my dad. It's the first significant gift. Accutron is the upscale watch maker of Bulova. Accutron watches are Swiss made while Bulova are Japanese made. I like Bulova for a long time because my first analog watch was made by Bulova purchased in 1994. Before that I had always worn Casio digital watches.

Bulova/Accutron make time pieces in use on the space shuttles. The particular model I chose for my dad is the Gemini, which uses Valjoux 7750 movement similar to some models of Rolex, Tag Heuer and others. It has a chronograph and tachymeter. I ran my dad's watch against a quartz watch and it is accurate to less than 1 second in 5 days. That's darn accurate!

I like the watch so much that I'm saving money to buy myself one too. I have a couple of automatic watches (Swatch and Seiko), but they are not very accurate (both gain about 10-20 seconds per day).

In other news, I'm flying back to LA for July 4th! It'll be my last visit to California until I visit San Francisco in September and October.

Young Bowser vs Adult Bowser

Air Mattress Incident (Part 2)

Ok, so you heard about my air mattress. A couple of days ago things got worse. Another seam broke off as I had predicted. It's amazing how large the mattress can stretch because the resulting bump was humongus. The bed became slanted and it was hard to sleep. Also the bed was so big it had deformed into an oval shape. It used to be rectangular. Being oval, it actually extends to my bathroom door. I finally broke down and had to buy a replacement.

I did research and a regular queen sized mattress would have cost around $300 and an air mattress around $30-60. I was only gonna be in Ohio for one more year.

So, I went to Walmart today and bought a $40 queen sized air mattress. I had to purchase the air pump too. I have to throw away the old pump because it was integrated into the old mattress.
The new mattress is smaller and it has an integrated pillow. The seams are more comfortable to sleep on too. The longitudinal seams of the old mattress were very uncomfortable. Then, my sheets now fit perfectly.

Air Mattress Incident (Part 1)

So I was on my air mattress bed yesterday, and all of a sudden it started to make a popping sound, then a ripping sound. I felt my bed move and then rise up. I was like WTF! I thought my bed was gonna blow.

It looks like one of the seams ripped apart and caused a huge longitudinal hump on my bed. Luckily it's not in the middle, or my sleeping space would be effectively cut in half. That means I'm gonna keep using it. I'm too cheap to buy a regular bed since I'm only in Ohio for one more year and the air mattress is pretty firm.

My bed continues to make ripping sounds when I lie on it, and I think the other seams will probably give away too. I just hope I can continue to use it even if they all rip apart. I hope the bed doesn't turn into a large round ball when all the seams rip.

In other news, yesterday I joined Facebook. It's a pretty nice website. I found a lot of friends on it...much more than Friendster, which I don't use often. Facebook also has a better search function for your friends. I think partly because they require you to use your "real" name, you can search for a friend without knowing their nicknames or email addresses.

Recurrent Dreams

Up to this day I continue to have vivid dreams about my previous dog Bingo. This happens maybe once per month, and it happened last night.

A few times I would dream of him coming back to life, and the rest are the good times we had together. Every time, though, I would vividly remember the sparkle in Bingo's eyes. It's the same sparkle I saw when we dropped him off at the vet in December 13, 2005. It's the same farewell sparkle. Then, many times, I would wake up in tears. Even though it's almost two and a half years since Bingo left us, I still carry thoughts about how great and loyal Bingo was. He's my gold standard for a dog, partly because he's the first one I had. We would always compare our current dogs to Bingo. Every time our Bowser or Yoshi do something similar, or even opposite, to Bingo, we would point it out.

I do know my memory of Bingo is forever. I was with him the day I carried him home in 1992, until the night we took him to the vet. There were many years that I was away for school at UCSD and OSU, but Bingo never missed a chance to wag his tail when he saw me home. There are no two dogs the same, but I sure wish to have Bingo again.

Back to Work!

I had just returned from my vacation at Taiwan! It was so sad that the China-loving KMT won the presidential election. Now that they had won, they are no longer saying they love Taiwan and they don't identify themselves as Taiwanese anymore. Now it's "ROC" this and "ROC" that. I think a lot of Taiwanese people felt cheated. The Japanese and American goverments had expressed their dislike of KMT and worry that it will give into China. Any way, I'm usually not so deep in politics, but I'm sure the voice of Taiwan won't be dead on the next election.

I'm very glad, however, that the DPP supporters didn't become the wild dogs like the KMT did after they lost the 2004 election. This time there was no outrageous riots and no one said to boycott the new goverment. I'm glad that the DPP and its supporters have class and are not sore losers.

So that's my rant of the Taiwan elections.

During my stay in Taiwan I had the chance to meet up with a good friend of mine from NTU who is a 7th year med student/intern who rotated through USC last year. It was good times. I also met up with Ivy down south. The weather was on our side for 7 out of 9 days. It was very warm in southern Taiwan and rainy in the north.

Too bad it's back to work now. I'm rotating through Children's Hospital this month, so it's supposed to be busy. I did get some studying done on my long flights, but I still have a lot to go!

Blizzard of the Century

If any of you have been reading the news, Ohio and the Midwest got socked with the worst ever blizzard in March. We got over 20 inches of snow within 2 days, Friday and Saturday. The last record was 15 inches in 1910. This is the most snow I've ever seen, even more than the blizzard in 2004. The snow is so thick it's almost impossible to see steps on the ground. The snow comes up to my calves and is very soft.

Luckily the worst happened from Friday night to Saturday, so I didn't have to worry about digging my car out of the snow to go to work. I took a few photos yesterday and this morning. There were lots of people trying to dig out their car and I helped these couple of girls push their car back into the parking lot while another dig snow from under the tires. I decided not to drive until tomorrow when some snow will melt. The sun was out today and the photos are pretty awesome. The wind shaped the snow into weird formations on the roof of the buildings.

Back on Friday we had another round of fellowship interviews and I saw my friend from med school! He's from LA also, but lost touch when I lost my cell phone in 2005. So it's nice to catch up on old times. He was thinking of staying at my place Friday night because of the snow, but decided to head back to Indiana for his pediatric fellowship since he didn't have a sleeping bag or extra clothes.

I also started a Flickr site (uses the same account as my Yahoo email). I'm not sure if Flicker is something I would use regularly since it's not really a blog and also not really a photo album.

February Blues

Wow I almost forgot I have this blog! So it's been over 1 month since my last post. The lunar new year, Valentine's Day, and the lunar eclipse have all passed last month. This was my first Valentine's Day with a girlfriend, so it was extra special with all the stuff I got from Ivy.

February turned out to be the coldest month this winter. It seemed like we keep getting snow every other day and the temperature hovering around 20 degrees all the time. I was on consults last month so I had to brave the cold going from clinic to hospital. One of the days it was snowing really heavy and people were driving way too fast on the freeway. Then one SUV crashed into a car in front of me. It wasn't a hard crash and no one was injured, but I had to laugh at the guy speeding in the SUV. He really deserved it. In January we had many days in the 40's-50's.

Last weekend I had to chance to fly back to LA for a weekend visit. LA was raining on Saturday, but Sunday turned out okay. I didn't get to see my brother Fred since he just finished his 2 weeks of vacation. I did take some pictures around the house. When I returned to Columbus yesterday the temperature was 70 degrees!!! I felt I was still in LA. Any way today it really cooled down to normal.

Then at the end of this month I'm flying back to Taiwan for my annual trip! I'm leaving Ohio from 3/21 to 4/6. My time in Taiwan is short though, from 3/24-4/2. I'll meet my girlfriend in Taiwan for the majority of the time.

Playing with Photoshop

After going through my photos I realized I have over 25,000 digital photos/videos accumulated over 7.5 years! All of my photos are largely straight out of the camera without any post processing. Some are too dark, or the colors are off, and other just look bland. Then I thought I'd play around with Adolbe Photoshop CS2 to see if I can make some of my ugly photos better.

I picked a couple of photos to test out. Here is Grand Teton from Summer of 2005 before Photoshop:

And this is after Photoshop:

This is my buddy Bowser sound asleep on my bed from Summer of 2006 before Photoshop:

And this is Bowser after Photoshop:

Photoshop does take a lot of time. I was thinking of doing Photoshop on only a few select photos.

In other news, my trip to Taiwan has been largely finalized. I'm leaving LA on 3/23 afternoon and return on 4/2 night. I plan on meeting up with Ivy in Kaoshong for the majority of the trip.