Thalamus, an Old Pic & some To-Do's

Thalamus

Yesterday, after I mentioned thinking of the thalamus as a primitive brain, I wanted to make sure I was correct and I found this nifty rotating picture in Wikipedia.  I like Wikipedia and I think the people who voice their opinion against it are uninformed.  The Wikipedia entry for Positive Psychology, for example, cites 151 references as the basis for that particular entry and the entry is litered with footnotes to each of those 151 references.  Also, the wiki entry on the Limbic system shows a self imposed type of warning at the top of the entry from Wikipedia warning that the factual accuracy of the article may be compromised due to out-of-date information as of November, 2010.  Some of the best references I have to use for my Senior Research Paper (SRP) came from the references cited in Wikipedia.

The Hollywood Trainer Weight-Loss Plan By Jenkins, Jeanette (Google Affiliate Ad)

Sweet - I had a Logan Timeline webpage up from yesterday's picture inquiries and noticed a background picture of the first graduating class from Logan (back in the 1930s).  The picture had other pictures on top of it so I could not just drag the picture to my desktop but...I could look into the HTML that was generating the page and grab the picture from a link in the code.
I noticed Logan opened on it's current campus back in 1973 which is a date I cited for when Dr. Goodman first started with the college but, I may have gotten my dates confused.  He did start as the president of Logan in 1993 and I'm pretty certain he taught at the school prior to that time and may have been in the early 70s.

The source code behind that page looks pretty typical and, due to my extra work on codecademy.com I recognized pretty much everything in the code ...javascript, jQuery, CSS, etc.
I lost my 23 day streak of coding at codecademy yesterday because I forgot about it until right after midnight and spent all my computer time on my SRP.  I think I still have my KhanAcademy streak going which, is a little over a month straight of working math problems.  That site has 390 different mathematical skills that one may gain proficiency.  So far, I've been able to demonstrate proficiency in 315 different math skills.  The program starts with basic addition and subtraction and runs all the way through calculus.  I didn't realize I knew so much about math but, I have taken about every undergrad math class ever offered.  thinking ....the site might be a little light in the field of combinatorics - maybe I can help them out in that area by writing some new lessons.  I'll have to have a little extra time in the day to conquor that endeavor.

Need to think about things - get updates out to some people ...most stuff can be jotted down here then copied and pasted into an email.

Clinic - the last thing I noted was my clinic location could not be changed to the Montgomery Health Clinic by Dr. Gould for the purposes of practicing the Internal Health Specialist (IHS) techniques I had learned from Dr. Loomis.  If I end up dying this year it will most likely be related to the excessively long commute I take to clinic (50 miles, one way).  Since I don't regularly have to be at the main campus of Logan then most days will be limited to those 100 miles of driving for clinic.  My first couple years at Logan consisted of 100 miles per day due to road construction on highway 64/40 and, combined with everything else, that was about my limit.  During the time I was back in Minnesota for my grandma's funeral last year I did learn that several of my uncles have a similar situation when it came to driving in that they also, all have a tendency to fall asleep at the wheel.  I have wondered if this could be due to Pickwickian syndrome.   Some, but not all of these uncles are overweight and non of them smoke.
Some of the drives I had back & forth to clinic were downright terrifying at times due to the number of close calls I've had.  Fortunately, the only thing I've lost thus-far is my left sideview mirror when I ended up hitting a reflector pole on the side of the highway.
I've been hitting the gym very regularly since about a week before clinic started and I think that has helped.  I do stop at a gas station every time I have a clinic shift and usually stop at the one closest to the clinic before I head out on the highway.  I'm thinking maybe I can locate another gas station midway through my commute to provide an extra stop where I can get up and move around some, that should help me stay alert and safe.  hmmm, lol - this has me thinking of this past Thrusday's commute home.  My shift went until 3:30 and I had a youngster's basketball game to get to at 5 p.m. back close to where I live.  I think I clocked out around 3:26 and by the time I finally made it to the basketball game I'd already missed the entire first half of the game with only 2 1/2 minutes left before the start of the second half.  It literally took me an hour and 20 minutes just to get to the Missouri/Illinois border.  There were no accidents, just a light dusting of snow on the ground.
I can't really be concerned with that now.  I did call some outside counseling service provided via Logan last week to try and get an appointment to talk with somebody there and see if they had any ideas to help me keep my head in the game and fully engaged so I can eventually graduate.  Any help I can get.  I haven't heard back from them so I'll leave them another message today.

SRP - my goal was to get 20 pages written by Monday.  I need to work on this again today.  I have to work yet so ...I should be able to spend at least four hours on this today to get something written.

Lab Interpretations.  Lab 4 assignment will be due tomorrow (Monday)

Minor Surgery - oh wow - this first class meets this Saturday at 10:30 a.m.  ...good thing I'm doing this little review or I may have forgotten about that entirely.

Marketing - I did get signed up for a Working Women's Survival show being held in St. Charles this month.  I'll be working a Sunday shift from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on February 24th and there is a 6:30 a.m meeting on Thursday morning on February 21st.  That's going to be one of those 184 mile driving days (84 miles to Logan then the 100 miles for clinic)  BUT - I'm off on Fridays, should be anyway unless something comes up so, I need to keep that in mind.  I currently have 7.25 hours of marketing which, is good enough for a C in that class.  I need 15 hours to get an A and that marketing event on the 24th is worth an additional 6.25 hours which will bring me up to 13.5 hours (probably worth a B) then I'll only need one more event to ensure I get an A out of that class.  I should be OK with that driving as long as I stay awake.  I need to keep in mind a lot of the troubles I had before when I did all that driving was because it was every single day and went on for 13 weeks before I could get what should have been a regularly scheduled day off.  I know if I'm going to clinic in the Fall of this year it will also be a daily event but, by then I will have no more classes to deal with at the main campus ...

Internal Health Specialist (IHS) Certification - this went well on Friday.  The hours I need to make up were from the fourth session which will be repeating this year on April 6th/7th.  April 7th is 63 days away and I know that because that is the date of the Go! St. Louis 1/2 marathon I'm signed up for.  Anyway - I'm signed up and registered for April 6th to complete the attendance portion of getting the IHS certification and, will at least be able to treat patients on my days off over at the Montgomery Health clinic.

Financials - ....hmmm, i'm just copying over the headings from my last update I sent out via email.  I did spend a little over $2,000 last week thanks to my most recent financial aid to get caught up on my bills.  At least my electricity and water won't be turned off again any time soon so that isn't something I'll have to worry about, at least not for this semester.  I really wonder why there are zero provisions for financial aid when student drops under 12 hours at Logan.  There's a couple issues here.  One is that taking a 4 hour class, as I did in Tri-8, with clinic is a LOT different than a 4 hour classroom type of class.  It may be listed as only a four hour class but, I had to be there every single day, Monday through Friday as well as the occasional Saturday as well as the volunteer days with the Salvation Army and the St. Patrick's center.  Also, it is not unusual to work an 11:30 to 3:30 shift but not be able to see a patient until after that time.  So, you have to be there during the earlier time slot but then need to stay in order to see your patients and before you know it, the 4 hour shift has morphed into a 6 or 7 hour shift.  Not to mention as a Tri-8 we have to play errand-boy by transferring laundry & x-rays to and from school & clinic.  I'm just not sure how the credit hours are calculated for clinic.  A four hour class like Pathology meets 4 hours per week and is worth 4 credit hours but, a scheduled clinic shift of 12 hours per week year round is also worth 4 credit hours.  I'm sure there's a reason, I'm just not sure what it is.

I think I'm going to relegate the remaining updates to my email.  I need to be more specific with the next steps I have to take in each endeavor and I find myself going off on tangents here.  ;)