Strange but True

Every once in a while the planets align, mother nature makes the earth calm, and God reaches down and creates an event that we thought we would never see.

Bert bought a car!

Creative City Planning

Recent drive back from center city Philadelphia. This is driving south on Broad Street. Any other major US cities where parking in the middle of a major road is OK?

Medical Mistakes and IT

eWeek has an article about a recent report doubling the estimated deaths from medical mistakes (almost 200,000 per year). The report represents revised methodology for collecting the data. The big surprise is that IT is negated as a possible solution to the problem. EMR and CPOE solutions have been touted as a way to reduce mistakes, but the article cites "failure to rescue" and some common critical medical conditions as chief contributors. A related article discusses physician resistance as a larger barrier to CPOE adoption than cost of systems.

Traveling Around

A bit of business travel this week in New Jersey. Drove up from DC, and in the west/north part of NJ around Trenton. Very pretty part of the state that still seems pretty rural and has nice views of the Delaware river.

It's hard at times to comprehend the amount of travel on Interstate highways, particularly between DC and NY. Just packed, and not just on rush hour. Did we ever expect these highways to become our main roads? At the risk of sounding old, I do remember the southern NJ turnpike with occasional trucks and not bumper to bumper. And I-95 between Baltimore and DC is crazy crowded all day long.

This Land is Your Land

If you haven't seen it yet, the Jib Jab web site has a new song parody of "This Land is Your Land".  Brilliantly offensive.

News Round Up

News I've been following in the past week includes IE vs. the World, iTunes milstones, Electronic Voting Machines, and the Value of Microsoft Office. Commentary in my News Blog.

Japanese Beetles

It's getting impossible to keep roses alive with the Japanese Beetles. They seem to want to eat Roses, Zinnias, and Four-O-Clocks. And we seem to be the only property where these are planted.

Touching the Gulf of Mexico

I was in Tampa this week on business and touched the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. As proof, I submit the following image.



That big toe is unmistakable.

Bloglines Enhanced

Bloglines celebrated their anniversary with an update of their services. This is a web based RSS reader I've been using to save time scouring the news. One new feature is an easy ability to create web links in a blog style to comment on the news. Since I spend most of my news time in there, I'll probably shift this type of entry over their, and save this space for more detailed news comment and other personal links. See this link to see how it looks. I'll probably remove the RSS feeds of interest on the right navigation here as well.

Travel Updates

Back from a business trip to the Tampa Bay area. Details in the travel log.