Friday, May 13, 2016

Getting down to it

Been a busy couple of days, working on class stuff, and I now have my first clinical rotation at Desert Springs Hospital in a couple of weeks, with the second required rotation either there, or maybe doing a ride along with AMR or Medicwest or perhaps North Las Vegas Fire, but we'll see how the first one goes, a description I will be posting here later on (with some details retracted or renamed of course, must make sure I stay within the privacy laws of course), and hoping it ends on a good note.

I haven't really mentioned much about how my shack in AZ is proceeding, but I now have just received the fiberglass mast sections today via FedEx.  I had thought about the vertical, but then after seeing an ad for an end-fed half-wave (EFHW) wire antenna at MyAntennas.com, and reading the reviews, I decided to go that route, since it has decent bandwidth on the bands I plan to use, and it should not require an antenna tuner to function.  Other than that, the only major hurdle to fix will be getting power to the shack, which I am continuing to work on.

Today I got the last shot for my hepatitis B vaccination at the health district, then decided to take in 'Captain America: Civil War' over at Green Valley Ranch this afternoon.  It was a pretty decent movie, with some surprising twists which should bode well for the upcoming films with Black Panther, Spider Man, and the rest of the bunch.

More to come later when I get a spare moment or three...

Thursday, May 5, 2016

To continue from earlier...

...it appears that my dad's bladder cancer has been licked.  He did his last chemo session earlier this week, and he will go for a follow-up visit with his oncologist next month to confirm none of the cancer remains.  Am hoping he will be able to get back on the road soon.

The weather has been slowly getting warmer, with occasional bouts of rain here and there for the last several weeks.

Getting back into the social issues, this whole mess about using the bathroom continues to occupy the thoughts of various groups, and I do tend to find the whole process wearisome.  I tend to agree with Divemedic's opinion on this.  While the need to protect children is of course important, women I believe do have some gumption to have the ability to express their displeasure to certain individuals who would use this newfound permission to play their own perverted games, and those same women will express themselves most eloquently and physically. :-)

Getting caught up

Been kinda remiss about updating the blog, but have had my hands full with personal, educational, and work matters, but now I think I am getting caught up.

On the election front here, looks like The Donald (as Trump was referred to years ago, not sure if he still is), is gonna be the definite Republican nominee for POTUS, while Hillary is of course the D's pick for President.

From what I see, they are both on the very extreme ends of the spectrum.  While Trump seems friendly to conservative and libertarian interests, I keep reminding myself of how things were near the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany.  Meanwhile, Hillary is definitely going to be an issue should she be elected.

Going the third-party route is being explored by Ted Cruz, but I don't think it would help matters. With some polls showing possible Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson pulling double-digits in the polls as a choice, any further muddling of the waters would make things seem like the 2000 election, where we didn't know for weeks who would be elected.

The current system in which the Electorial College winds up picking the winner is definitely in need of overhaul.  The popular vote has lost its meaning and to me now has zero influence on the election results.

More ranting and musing later once I get some sleep...