The Hunt for a Better (and Available) Breakfast Sandwich

A couple of weeks ago I awoke to find I was fired up to complete....things.  Not wanting to let this moment pass, I leapt out of bed, made some tea, and then settled in front of my laptop to tinker with my Coast Guard resume and transform it into a Medical Recpetion resume.  After half an hour that was complete.  I printed it off, put it in my folder, got dressed, grabbed a box of CD's that Heather wanted to sell/trade/donate, asked her if she wanted a breakfast sandwich from Tim Hortons (to which she said yes), and walked out the front door. 

I drove over to the Vancouver Island Health Authorities' (VIHA) human resources building and after navigating the halls wound up in the basement seeking to submit my resume.  I was informed that VIHA no longer deals in paper resumes.  It is all done over the internet.  So I left there, hopped back in the car, drove downtown and parked near the Tim Hortons.  It was 11:30am and their breakfast menu goes til noon so I figured I would try and get some money for Heather's CDs before that.  Went to Lyle's place, a used cd/record store, showed them the CDs, was told that Heather's CDs were worth nothing to them so just left them there.  Went back to Timmy's for my breakfast sandwich.  It was 11:45am.  They told me they were out, and would not be making more.  {sigh}  I, however, was not in a mood to be detered. 

I left Timmy's, leapt in the car, drove home, cracked my laptop and tracked down a recipe for a resonable facsimile of that breakfast sandwich which like everything that day was eluding me.  Found this website, and got right to baking.  90 minutes later?  We had this.

Tasted pretty damn spectacular.  The only problem (or blessing depending on how you look at it) was the recipe made 16 biscuits.  So guess who had Nate's breakfast biscuits 5 days in a row?  {smile}

The Distance of 108 Miles...

A couple of weeks ago I left the comforts of a blustery and dark Victoria to join my friends Chris and Catherine and their two kids Eric (aged 5) and Caitlin (aged 7) on a trip to Chris' parents place in 108 Mile House.  His parents are a wonderful couple.  His father is English (or Welsh or something equally Anglo-European) and thusly has an understated, dry, sense of humor, which has been passed down to Chris.  His mother is equal parts motherly warmth and cut-the-bullshit-no-nonsense.  When I was 18 years old, it was the basement of their old house in North Delta that I had moved into after I had moved out of my parents house.  I have thought of them as surrogate parents ever since.  Chris' Dad, Peter, loves it when I call him dad.  Ok.  Not so much.  {grin}

So, how does this trip factor into my knowledge journey?  Well, a couple of things were learned during my time there.  First off there was the rudimentary basics of operating and effectively using a chainsaw. Once we were armed with that knowledge we took advantage of the second thing learned.  Apparently it is illegal to cut down the trees in the green spaces around 100 Mile House (and surrounding areas including 108 Mile House), HOWEVER, you are allowed to traipse through the forests and chop up and cart away as much deadfall as you like!  

One day I want this life!!!  A life of getting up the dawn after a big wind storm, putting on layer after layer of warm woolen clothing, loading a tobogan with my axe, my chain saw and a thermos of coffee or hot chocolate and going on a search for fuel as the snow drifts gently down.  Finding an alder or spruce collapsed in a tangle of branches.  Taking my axe to the thinner branches and chainsaw to the bigger ones until I have whittled the tree down to the trunk, then using the chainsaw and cutting that trunk into transportable logs, loading up the tobaggan and carting the logs up to the wood shed.  When I  have the full tree dismembered and relocated, going inside and grabbing a warm lunch, then heading back out to chop up those logs into firewood and kindling.   Once that is done, sitting on the couch in front of the fire with a book in one hand and my lady fair snuggled up beside me enjoying the same or surfing the net on her laptop, while texting on her Iphone and watching a show she has PVRed. {Grin} {Sigh}  One day.  One day.

"But what about this new attempt at getting the blog published on a regular basis mentioned in the previous post?" you may be asking.  Well, this all boils down to a challenge that Chris put to me while in 108 Mile.  The premise?  We each choose three things that we would like to do on a daily basis but have thus far failed to achieve.  In my case it was this blog, doing some sort of exercise, and brushing and flossing.  We would then keep track of what we complete each day and log each activity as complete or incomplete over the course of 12 days.  The winner at the end of that would get something from the other.  In my case it was for Chris to play a game of chess with me.  In his case it would be for me to cook breakfast for him and his family.  

It has definiitely encouraged me to post more frequently, but I fear I may have lost this challenge.  I will know for certain on Saturday, also know as tomorrow.  I shall petition for another challenge after this one regardless of the outcome.  I have found that a sprinkling of good natured competition is quite nice.  {smile}.

Next post:  My quest for a Tim Hortons homestyle biscuit!

A Test on the Quest...

It was a rainy night on November 2nd, when I left my girlfriends apartment with a confident, "I'll be back in an hour!"  I got into her Prius and drove the dark, windy, back roads out to Comosun College's Interurban Campus to put my quest for knowledge to the test for the first time.   Before I left, I had searched the interwebs to determine which of the many buildings held the classroom wherein I would meet my fate. 

It is a funny thing how something looked at on a 2D computer screen, in the light of day, fails to translate well when attempting to use that knowledge to locate it's 3D counterpart on a dark, dank night.  And thus I found that while I had left the apartment with nary a butterfly circulating through my digestive system, I had seemingly ingested a flutter of them between point A and point B as my worries of arriving late grew.

After navigating the parking lot, running to the building, and following the signs within, to the door marked "Testing In Progress", I entered the room to find myself the centre of attention.  Twenty-five women's heads lifted from behind twenty-five computer screens and stared at me while I stood confused.  Why were there all these computers?  Where were the booklets, scantron sheets and HB pencils?  Was I late?  From the front of the class came a woman's voice, "You must be Nathaniel.  You are just in time.  Grab a seat behind one of the empty computers."  With a nervous smile to the other ladies I made my way to a lone computer at the back of the class.

On the computer terminal was a screen that had two options, Test A or Test B.  The instructor then preceded to explain that all the tests were now paperless.   This test was a 50 question, multiple choice quiz.  The questions were chosen at random from a bank of thousands of questions created by the Vancouver Island Health Authority.  She told us when we were done the test to raise our hand and she would come over and take down the result.  We could then leave.  With those instructions given she told us to kindly close our medical terminlogy textbooks and turn off our cell phones. 

I looked around and saw that the textbooks used by those that had taken the medical terminology course were about 2 inches thick.  "Oh oh", I thought to myself.  The instructor then told us that we would be doing Test A and that we could begin when were ready.  

The questions were pretty straightforward and yet it was more challenging than I had anticipated.  I breezed through the first block of five questions, but then came up against one that I had no clue on:

 AD refers to the:  a) Left Ear

                                  b) Right Ear

                                  c) Left Eye

                                  d) Right Eye

So I skipped it.  I mean all I needed to do was get 36 right so I wasn't worried.  I continued on and slowly became more and more concerned.  It seemed to me I was skipping more and more questions.  Not only that, some of the questions that I HAD answered I was beginning to second guess.  It wasn't all Carditis and Infarction.  The test covered a lot more than my minor introduction to medical terminology had prepared me for.  My initial belief that this would be a quick "in and out" rapidly faded as first one lady and then another raised their hands.  Those two women seemed to be a catalyst for the others as hand after hand shot up until there were but three of us left.  I read over my answers one last time, with trepidation pressed the "complete" button,  and hesitantly raised my hand.  As the instructor come over my results flashed onto the screen.  Turns out I had answered 37 of the questions correctly.  74%!!  I had passed!!! 

The Pause continued... (and hopefully at its end {wink})

And now.... For your viewing pleasure!!! The conclusion to Nathaniel's Wonderful Adventure into the Mysterious World of Medical Terminology!!!  {overwhelming canned audience applause}  Thank you...  Thank you... It's a pleasure to be back.  This post was a couple of weeks in the making.  Not for lack of experience but rather for lack of a regular posting schedule.  <grin>  I seek to change that.  I will be writing about how in a couple of  posts.  However, words are cheap (and so easily written) and the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Onto the meat and potatoes.  Hhhmmm...  I must be hungry as that was two food idioms in as many sentences.  {shakes head} Anyway, so in my previous two posts I wrote of the wonder and magic of the more common latin roots used in medical terminology and then I drifted into an investigation into suffixes and prefixes.  I shall (finally) unveil what I have learned about the actual suffixes and prefixes that pertain to medical terminology.

Some word suffix basics:

• -Ectomy = Removal of
• -Gram    = Picture of
• -Graph(y)= The process of making a picture
• -Otomy  = To make a cut in
• -Scopy  = To use an instrument for viewing
• -Stomy  = create an opening

Next we move on to the possible prefixes.

• Macro- or Megalo- or Megaly- = large
• Micro- = small
• Hyper- = above normal
• Hypo-  = below normal
• Tachy- = fast
• Brady- = slow
• Peri- = Around
• Trans- = across
• Inter- = between
• Endo- = inside, within
• Echo- = using ultrasonic wave
• Electro- = using electricity

And there are colour specific beginning:

• Chloro- = Green
• Cyan-   = Blue
• Leuk-   = White
• Eryth- = Red

And lastly, there are the prefixes and suffixes that denote problems:

• Dys- = not working properly
• Mal- = Bad
• -Emia = Blood
• -Itis    = Inflammation
• -Osis  = Condition/Disease
• -Pathy = Disease

Armed with this knowledge I went bravely forth and tackled my Medical Terminology test.  It consisted of 50 multiple choice questions, I had an hour to complete, and I needed to get a minimum of 72 % (36/50) to pass.

That tale my friends is for another time.  Tomorrow, in fact.  And how can I make such lofty promises when all my concurrent posts have fallen short on delivering on a regular schedule?  Simple, I shall write it now, and post it tomorrow.  (I sure hope this works.  lol.)

Till then my friends.  Enjoy your own individual journeys!!

The Pause that Refreshes (an interlude)

I have been fighting a cold the last couple of days.  I think it is on the outs.  I, however, become very good at putting things off when I am in that state, as evidenced by this blog.  <sigh>  But I am back now and eager to update everything that has been going on.  Starting with my medical terminology endeavors.  But before I do I am going to digress.  So, lets get right to it, shall we?

Linguistics:Prefixes and Suffixes

When I was in public school the class that I could have done without most was English.  I didn't see the need to, nor was I interested in the theories of how sentences are formed or why they do what the do; I could talk and make myself understood, I could write and get my point across; These were things I just "got" (or so I believed).  But that was then and this is now.  Today as I explore the different pieces of the words that make up the terms so frequently used in the medical profession I find myself incredibly fascinated.

As you may have noticed from viewing my former posts the "quest" for knowledge is very rarely a straight line for me.  I started this blog with the intent of it being a "learn one thing new each day" type endeavor and find that I end up learning ten.  I thought that was just a phenomenon of the beginning (ie. large gaps in knowledge that needed filling to move forward), but it continues in these posts.  This will, most assuredly, be a reoccurring theme throughout these posts.  I will try not to bring it up too often, but I find it quite interesting {smile}.

The reason I bring this up is that while my search for insight into the different medical terms was fairly straightforward, I then started to look into WHY the words were organized the way they were (you know..... those topics I didn't care to pay attention to in high school).  And found it fascinating.  It lead me to the study of linguistics.  From there I delved into what makes suffixes and prefixes.

Linguistics is the scientific study of the human language.  It can be broken into 3 basic branches:  The study of language form, language meaning, and language context. To explore this topic in any sort of depth, be it basic level or otherwise, would take us down more rabbit holes then I care to count.  So in the interest of keeping these posts short(er), and thus more engaging I am going to shelve a deeper explanation for the moment.  What I am interested in is language form and of that topic only a sliver of it, called morphology(which, in part, is the formation of words).  Which leads to the next part...

Prefixes and Suffixes:

We are taught in elementary school that by adding little pieces to a word either at the front or at the end we can change that words meaning.  This is the job of the prefix (from the Latin præfigere "to fix in front") and the suffix (from the Latin suffixus "fastened below").  The prefix can change the meaning of a word in many ways and those ways are varied and confusing.  Take the prefix "un" for example.  "Un", can mean "not, or opposite of" or it can mean "reverse action".  Case in point is the word "unlockable".  Based on the first meaning this word means "not lockable" but in the second it means "able to be unlocked". (It was stuff like this that confounded and frustrated me in school because there were no hard perfect rules to the English language; there were ALWAYS exceptions....  well, except sometimes {grin}.  Now I find it fascinating and beautiful.  To speak and write the English language well is arguably an art form.)  Then there is the suffix.   

The suffix is placed at the end of a word and its uses are a little more straightforward.  There are inflectional and derivational suffixes.  I was going to try and write the differences in my own words but the description given on Wikipedia is concise and well written.  I recommend you check it out.  

All this gives me a bit of a better understand and at the same time muddies the waters a little further, which is just like the English language. {grin}  Later today I shall be putting up Part 2 of my Medical Terminology post.  Until then, hope you are enjoying your weekend.  

Week 2: To Err in Latin is Divine...

I am currently unemployed.  Have been since the middle of August when I quit the restaurant that I had been working at for two years in order to pursue employment with the Canadian Coast Guard.  The only real experience aboard ships I have (aside from the training I received last month in for my Marine Emergency Duties) is from a week-long stint on a fishing boat 5 years back when I was hitchhiking Northern British Columbia.  But I have always had a love affair with the water and I like to help people. I think it may also have something to do with the tales of my grandfather working for Pacific Towing as a tug boat engineer, or maybe my father always talking about buying a sailboat when he wins the lottery.  But regardless, the thought of being out in the middle of the ocean on a ship buffeted by stormy weather gets me a little excited.

So what does all this have to do with the title of today's post?  Well, long story short.  I have completed the courses I needed to apply for the Coast Guard and I have submitted my resume. I was initially offered a 2 month position, starting the next day, which I had to turn down as I wouldn't have been able to get all my affairs in order in that time (and I had personal obligations that I couldn't duck out on).  Since then I have waited by my phone for a call with another offer of employment.  It has been a month.  No calls.  It is unfortunately the slow time of year for the Coast Guard in regards for hiring(I kinda lucked out being in the right place, at the right time, when I handed in my resume).  So my intent is to get a casual position with Vancouver Island Health Agency as a receptionist, but in order to do that I need my medical terminology certificate.  It is a 3 month course.  I intend to challenge the course.  To get my certification I must score above 72% on a 50 question multiple choice exam.  The full course costs 400 dollars.  To just write the exam?  25 dollars.  I figure it is worth my time, energy and rapidly dwindling back account to teach myself all I need to know.  That and it dovetails quite nicely into an entry for this blog.  

So.  I need to learn medical terminology.  I need to know my osteos from my laryngeals, my itis' from my opathy, my infarcts from my ..... something else.  See?  There is definitely stuff to learn here. 

So to start.  What have I learned thus far?

Well, to understand medical terminology I need to understand the roots of the words being used.  This gets me a wee bit excited, as something that I have always wanted to study is etymology.  And that is basicly what I have to do there.  

Some organ basics:  

• Osteo = bones
• Myo   = skin
• Neur  = nerves
• Card  = heart
• Derm = skin
• Vas or Vasc = veins & arteries
• Ven or Phleb = veins
• Arteri = arteries
• Angi  = blood vessels
• Hem(o) or Sang = Blood
• Encheph = brain
• Tympan or Myringo = eardrum
• Rhino = nose
• Oto = ear
• Ophthalm = Eye
• Crani = Skull
• Odont or Dento = tooth
• Lingu = tongue
• Esopha = Esophagus
• Hepato = Liver
• Chelocyst = gall bladder
• Gastro = stomach
• Colo = large intestine
• Ileo   = small intestine
• Thorac = chest
• Pneumo or Pleuro = lungs
• Mamm = breast
• Thromb = blood clot
• Neph   = kidney
• Scapul = sholder
• Brachi(o)= arm
• Carp(o) = wrist
• Costo = ribs
• Dorsa = back
• Pod or Ped = Foot

So that is just a few of the roots.  Oh, who am I kidding, that was all of the roots that I learned today.  {grin} Unfortunately, this is it for the evening.  Sorry it isn't all prettied up.  I'm tired.  It's late.  I'm going to bed.  But I have full intention of coming back here tomorrow and sprucing it up.  Full intention.  But you know what they say about intention?  Yeah.  Me neither.

Tomorrow: Basic Medical Terminology prefixes and suffixes.  I can't wait.  Oh, and I will post the second part of my HTML experiences.  Hope you are all having a great day!

Day 3 - 5: HTML Basics.... basically (Part 1 of 2)

 Hello Everyone;

Sorry there has been a three day lag between posts.  I am still trying to figure out what the best format for this blog will be.  I like the idea of a daily "I learned this..." but thus far I seem to have taken on a few things that are taking more then a day to put up.  What are your thoughts?  Would you rather I post something new everyday even if it doesn't fit with the theme of the week?  Would you like daily updates as to my progress? I am keen to hear everyones opinion.  I may not use it, but I do value it.
Now then, when I scoured the net to give me insight into the intricacies of using HTML I found this wonderful site! Not only does it offer a free step-by-step course, it breaks into two sections: Basic and Advanced. When I first started on this I figured I would cover the basic section in my post last Monday, but well, there are a lot of basics to cover and I wanted to be fully conversant in those basics to present them to you.  Here it is for your viewing pleasure.

First off, for those of you that aren't aware, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is THE markup language for webpages.  I didn't know this myself.  And you may be asking the same question I did after reading that, "What hell is a markup language?"  In short, a markup language is the behind the scenes directions that present the information you are seeing in front of you on any webpage.  These pictures of books on the side of this blog?  Described in the markup language.  The reason the title of this blog is bigger and bolder than the rest?  Markup language!  The colour, font and size of the lettering? ...  You get the point.  What is interesting about this is all you need do is right-click on any web page and click "view page source" in the case of a Firefox web bowser or "view source" in the case of Internet Explorer to see what HTML code looks like.  Feel free to give it a try right now!

Now then, if you have taken a second and checked out the source code behind the page you may have noticed a bunch of things; there are a lot of things that are enclosed by angle brackets (<, >), within those brackets there are terms that are different colours, and if you looked closely you may have noticed that different words are "paired"(If there is a <style> somewhere, futher on there will be a </style>).

First the angle brackets:  HTML is comprised of commands called "tags" and those "tags" must be placed with the angle brackets for the webpage to read them and carry them out.  They are like quotation marks around a sentence; they let the webpage no that it is time to sit up and take notice.

Next the colour coding:  The individual colour coding is unique to each browser.  In the case of Firefox it looks like this:

And lastly the colours; purple, blue, green, red and black.  The purple highlighting denotes tag commands.  This is the first word or words typed after the '<', and they tell the webpage that everything that comes after it will be acting or looking a certain way.  In the case of the screen shot above <title>  is saying that everything after it will be a title and the webpage will now feature the piece of text that comes after <title> bolder and in a larger font.

The blue is broken up into two uses in Firefox.  There is blue and blue underlined. Anything blue is a relation, location, or description connected to the purple tag preceding it.  It is blue underlined when it pertains to a website link.

The green text pertains to anything that is a comment within the code.  It will not showup on the website and is not read by the website.  Notice the "<!--" that starts and finishes the green area?  The '!' is a tag that explains just that to the website.   Web designers use this to give aid in editting the source code later on.  It is also used to hide "styles" and "scripts" from older versions of browsers where those two things were not supported to ensure that it doesn't show up as print on the screen.

The red "/" is used primarily to signal the end of a tag.  As you may have noticed initially there is a pairing between the <purple> tags.  There will be a <purple> followed somewhere down the line by a </purple>.  It is the "/" at the beginning of the later tag that tells the web browser that that tag has completed its action.  However, there are some cases where they don't need a pairing and instead can just finish a single line of code with a " /" and in the case of the Firefox HTML source code rendering it is red.  

The final color is black. It is everything else; it is the text that you will ultimately see on the screen, and it is the modifiers that describe the hieght and width of images that will posted, etc.  Now bear in mind that this is just how the source code is rendered on Firefox.  On Internet Explorer it is quite different.  I didn't spend a lot of time figuring out the differences but my initial observation is that Internet Explorer uses A LOT of colour, which I found confusing.  But I am guessing there is a rhyme and reason for it.  I just didn't have the time to adequately look into it.

So that is it, thus far, on the HTML basics (part 1).  My next post will be in a couple of days and it will be on "Cascading Style Sheets" or CSS (you may notice reference to it in the above screen shot).