Saturday, August 09, 2008

"the eagle has landed"



these were the words spoken by my wife when we got our phones in the mail. now, just to be clear, there is a backlog on iphones so the phones which came were my wife's and my parents' phones (none of which are iphones and we're all on one family plan now). however, this was a big step in my iphone access process. you see, i have had sprint service for 8 years. as a matter of fact, i recently checked my last bill and had a "congratulations on your 8 year anniversary" message. however, over time, and more importantly in my current job, i have become increasingly irritated with dropped calls. this even happens at our condo. i can have 4 bars then all of a sudden lost signal. this is even more aggravating when you have to make business or professional calls. people really get annoyed when you keep cutting out. so, we made the switch to at&t which, without a doubt has better signal reliability (although still a step behind verizon). just to let you know, i'm not entirely satisfied with this move because to sprint's credit, the voice quality of their phones/lines i feel is much better than at&t. you can drive in your car with the windows down and the other person can hardly tell. with all of our at&t phones, the background noise is much worse. however, background noise with a signal is still preferred over no signal at all.

having said all that, after we made the switch, i went to the at&t store and ordered my iphone, 3G that is. the expected wait was 10-21 days but one week later, i got an email that said the phone had arrived at the store. of course, the email says to wait for a customer service person to call to schedule a pick up time but whatever! i just went right to the store and it was there ready for me.

so, the pic above is me playing with the 2 loves of my life, my baby and my iphone. ha! just kidding!!! of course my wife and kid are the real loves of my life. the iphone would be a distant, distant 3rd.

tribute to norman

on a more serious note, i just wanted to write a short tribute to my good friend's dad, norman, who died last week from metastatic lung cancer. i've known my friend since 7th grade and what i always remember about his dad is his voice because it was on their answering machine growing up: "hello, this is norman ... " i always found it funny that the greeting sounded like he lived alone and didn't really mention the family.

to be quite honest, what was most troubling about the past few months with my friend and his dad was that he was diagnosed with cancer about 2 months ago and succumbed to it fairly quickly after diagnosis. you might think that he was in some remote area or never really saw any doctors but the fact was, he lived in a suburb and was being followed by many doctors, including a pulmonologist. i don't want to criticize any of his doctors because i know nothing about his prior workup and clinical condition but what angers me is that i feel his diagnosis should have been made much earlier. it's not like he all of a sudden became sick. he has had issues for longer than the past 2 months. of course some might ask, "would it have made a difference?" in his outcome but i don't think that is a relevant question. yes, lung cancer has a high mortality rate but with earlier diagnosis, there is a high likelihood that he would have been around much longer to enjoy his life on earth. and i'm not talking about keeping alive some demented and debilitated patient a few weeks longer to prolong his misery but i'm talking about early diagnosis with hopes at cure. well,what's done is done and i pray for peace and comfort for his family and friends.

Monday, August 04, 2008

cpr article

karen's friend kristi writes for the knoxville news sentinel and has an article about cpr covering the compression-only concept that i discussed previously. (am i really "discussing" it if i'm just writing about it on the blog and not actually talking with anyone? guess not. reminds me of a friend who asked if you could be a "wino" if you drank beer or liquor and not wine. initially i thought it could apply in general to anyone who drinks a lot but then the question was asked why that person was called a "wino" and not something else to which i had no answer. i guess alcoholic, alky, etc. could apply to such a person so it does seem that wino belongs exclusively in the realm of actual wine drinkers.) i had the honor of getting quoted in the article. check it out here. i can be korea's (or shall i say "korea-america"?) answer to sanjay gupta. watch out cnn.