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There’s turbulence, and then there is turbulence:

The other night I was flown out to a small community at 1 am on a medivac plane for “breathing problems” only to discover a patient in extremis from status asthmaticus. ETT, steroids, multiple puffers via tube, permissive hypercapnea to prevent barotrauma, and a ketamine infusion later, I managed to get the patient to an ICU alive. The real trouble was trying to bag a patient on the medivac flight during an electrical storm (there is no ventilator on the medivac plane – the old one broke and the new one is not here yet). I now know when the pilots yell at me that it’s going to get rough, it REALLY gets rough. Apparently all flights up here had been cancelled that afternoon prior to the medivac and didn’t resume until the afternoon after the medivac (this includes the big 747 that comes into Inuvik every day). Looking out the front of the cockpit when we came in to land was friggin nuts. The view of the runway was disturbing as the runway would be in view one second and then the next moment it would be out of view either above the cockpit window, below the cockpit window, or on either side of the cockpit window. The medivac nurse flies up to every other night on medicvacs, and he has said that it’s never been that rough flying before. When we landed, the plane bounced several times and even went sideways. Both of us were trying not to throw up and still take care of the intubated patient. The pilots looked a little scared coming out of the plane and told us that they were relieved to be on the ground. I have since learned that if I die on a medicvac, the government would only pay out 300,000 dollars to SlantyWife. That sucks big time.

Julie its your birthday… Happy Birthday in advance to Julie, who shares a birthday with SlantyOJ.

SlantyOJ, SlantyByMarriage, Blondie and I are leaving for a week to the islands in the north.

Hopefully SlantyNet will survive, Slanty2D will be caretaking and presumably will have to be better than SlantyOD.

In other, random news, apparently a new heart pump now undergoing trials has a strange side effect. Look Ma, no pulse!

This came up in conversation with Slanty2D a few days ago. We were talking BBQ (yum!) and I asked him if he had read the article about “Living Large In America” that I linked to some time ago. His answer was “No, I can’t be bothered to register for those news sites”.

Which is fair enough. Really, it actually takes a couple of brain cycles to make up the appropriate fake information for the registration (and who can remember it really??)

Which is why I’ve taken to using BugMeNot, a service which creates a database of fake registrations that people have contributed. In FireFox, it can be installed as a plugin where, when you are on a page requiring a registration, you can right click and select BugMeNot to see whether there is some generic information already available. A plugin is also available to those of you crazy enough to still be using Internet Explorer.

An interesting footnote to the pointlessness of registering for news websites can be found on BugMetNot. Seems that if you work for a news agency that requires site registration, according to their terms of service, you are obligated to register on BugMeNot by filling out this concise registration form.

For all you politically oriented karaoke fans…

Sing a long

I regret to inform the Slanty audience that Tina the Elephant has passed away…

“God speed little doodle”
– Ned Flanders

Next time you are diving make sure they Count You!

Hollywood of course made it into a movie Open Water.

By the way I just wanted to ask what anyone thought of Spiderman 2 – as I had at least one very geeky complaint to make about an otherwise excellent movie

Good for him, good for us. I much prefer the ‘decriminalization and ticketing’ then the straight out ‘illegal and tie up the court system’ method.

Why should a speeder that could possible kill someone while commiting their crime just get a ticket, while someone carrying a couple joints end up in court. I applaud our current government for stepping into the 21st century on this particular law.

“I fought the law and
the law won.”

Since SlantyOD has gone to visit the inlaws, I’ll be taking his spot as designated random stuff poster. And boy, what stuff have I got for you.

• Living large in the USA (Washington Post, registration required) A frightening look at the culture of big food and overeating in the USA. The main subjects in the article are, of course, extreme examples but the facts and (I feel) the gist of the article is spot on. (ganked from MeFi)
• I guess you still gotta call it air rage. In an unexpected reversal, drunken airline attendants beat on passengers. (also from MeFi)
• Real estate has many “buzzwords”. Unique decor is one of them. (Link is to an eBay auction for the sci-fi obsessed.)
• Speaking of real estate, for those of you that don’t know, Blondie and I are looking for a house in Vancouver. We put a bid slightly above the asking price in on this cute little house but were outbid by 40K on an offer without conditions. Seriously, that’s what half-a-million dollars buys you in Vancouver.
• Terror in the Skies, Again? If you read a bunch of blogs, you’ve probably seen this already. I personally have my doubts that this event happened as described. This Salon writer also has doubts. You can read the MeFi discussion, where the opinion tends to swing towards doubt (but there are some pretty big swings) — there are also quite a few links in there.