Uncategorized » Jerry Fahrni

Ridiculously random thoughts

Aug 232011

- There must be interest in the HP Touchpad because I can’t find one to save my life. I spent the better part of three days chasing down internet leads and visiting all the places in Fresno that used to sell them. HP obviously had the price wrong. Just a few weeks ago I was willing to purchase a 16GB model for $299, but ran into a problem at the Staples I visited. With that said I was never willing to pay $499 for the same model.

- HP used to make awesome calculators. I used to collect HP calculators, and still have several vintage models. I’ll never forgive HP for discontinuing the HP-11C. It’s still my favorite calculator. Mine was stolen from my high school locker in 1987. I’ve never replaced it. My next favorite is the HP 32S. I used it until the day I stopped being a pharmacist.

- In my opinion the Asus Eee Slate EP121 remains the best option for a slate tablet PC available today. The problem is the battery life; less than 3 hours. That’s a deal breaker for me.

- In my opinion the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the premier Android tablet on the market. Still not compelling enough to make me buy it. Hoping the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet offers more. I’m ready to try another slate.

- Looking for a new phone. Eliminated iPhone and Windows 7 Phone. BlackBerry has nothing exciting enough to compel me in their direction. Looks like I’m sticking with Android. Droid 3 is at the top of my list. It’s not 4G, but I’ve become quite accustomed to a physical keyboard. Hated the physical keyboard when I bought my Droid. Go figure.

- You know, Windows Live Writer is pretty cool. I started using it a couple of months ago. Simply type what I want, wait for an internet connection and publish it. Simple.

- The Oakland Raiders took Terrelle Pryor in the supplemental draft. That’s funny. How could they go wrong given their history of drafting quarterbacks: JaMarcus Russell 2007, Andrew Walter 2005, Ronald Curry 2002. Need I say more?

- Speaking of Terrelle Pryor. The NFL sure taught him a lesson. Let me see if I have this straight. Break the rules in college. Check. Get to play in the bowl game. Check. Decide not to declare yourself eligible for the NFL draft. Check. Get suspended. Check. Enter supplemental NFL draft. Check. NFL says whoa their son, you broke the rules so we have to punish you severely. Check. Pryor has to wait a couple of extra months before earning millions. Check. I don’t see a difference in the outcome. Do you?

- Median household income in 2009 in the US was approximately $50K. Median NFL player salary is approximately $770,000. That means the average person in the US has to work about 15 years to earn that. Think about that for minute. Now do the math on these (all rookies by the way): Cowboys signed Tyson Smith to a four-year, $12.5 million deal which is entirely guaranteed. Bengals signed A.J. Green to a four-year, $19.6 million deal, all of which is also guaranteed.Denver signed Von Miller to a four-year, $21-million deal. The players are complaining that these contracts are “low”. Chew on that for a while.

- My girls started back to school on Monday. Bummer. The last place on earth to learn anything is in school. The schools focus too much on testing, instead of focusing on thinking.

- Data is no longer king. What you do with the data is. The more data you collect, the more confused you become. Figure out how to use it and you’re no longer confused.

- Anyone besides me hate the character (Brenda) that Kyra Sedgwick plays in the Closer? She’s a real hypocrite.

- A friend of mine told me today that one of the physicians in the hospital where he works “is out of control”. Would you allow an employee or contractor you hired to get out of control and keep working? Didn’t think so. So why do hospitals?

- Three services worth paying for: Evernote Premium, SugarSync and Google Music. I know, I know, Google Music is in beta and it’s free. When they start charging, I’ll pay for it.

- Decided to sit down and read for pleasure a bit over the weekend. Grabbed Dominant Species by Michael E. Marks for my Kindle DX. Half way through it. So far, so good.

- The Kindle DX is still my favorite reading device. An LCD screen just can’t compete with eInk for that purpose. Period.

- Healthcare has forgotten about the patient. We spend a lot of time working on protocols, evidence based medicine, technology, efficiency, rules, regulations, “safety”, etc. Somewhere along the trail we left the patient behind.

- Healthcare and education are over regulated. The rules and regulations are suffocating everyone in these professions. Who suffers the most? The patients and the students. We’ll all pay for it latter on.

- “Business” is killing innovation. In my opinion “businesses” rely on the sheep effect instead innovating. And we all know what happens to sheep. I’ll give you a hint, it ain’t pretty. So is innovation dead? Not yet, but the days of truly innovative thought may well be over. I think we’re in for incremental changes from here on out.

- Form has overtaken function. Too bad because function is where it’s at.

- The average person is uh, uh, hmm. I’ve met many people in my 41 years and very few look beyond their shadow. “The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future.” –Gifford Pinchot. We’re in trouble.

- Trying to find an Arizona Cardinals game to attend this year. Here’s the schedule. The Steelers game looks promising. Seahawks game would be nice – New Years Day.

- Google+ is great, but I find myself going back to Twitter time and time again. Why? Because it’s so easy to post things on Twitter.

- Never got into Facebook. Friends and Family, but nothing “professional”. Don’t care for the games either.

- By the way, photo sharing apps for smartphones are the worst idea ever. I’ve seen about all the photos of food, beer bottles, cats, dogs, mountains, oceans, beaches, etc that I can handle. People should be required to take a class before they’re allowed to use them.

- Saw Conan the Barbarian (2011). Not as good as the original (1982) with Schwarzenegger, but still worth seeing.

- It’s been a dry movie Summer for the Fahrni crew. I’m going to have to double my efforts if I have any chance of seeing 50 movies in the theater this year. Things could definitely be worse.

- Most of the presidents in my time have at least given me a sense of leadership, control. I don’t get that with President Obama. From him I get the feeling he’s pulled off one of the biggest practical jokes in the history of the United States. Funny.

- Just ate my bodyweight in cheesecake. Time for a nap.

Free registration available for Pediatric Safety Summit September 28, 2011

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Aug 182011

In just over a month the first ever Pediatric Medication Safety Summit will be held in Bellevue, Washington. As the name implies, the one day event will focus on pediatric safety in healthcare. The lineup includes some big names like Michelle Mandrack, Director of Consulting Services at ISMP and Mark Neuenschwander, President of The Neuenschwander Company, co-founder of the unSUMMIT and barcoding evangelist. Pharmacy CE is available.

Early Registration for the event is $150 if done by August 30; $200 after that and $300 at-the-door. However, if you contact Casey Cram, Director of Marketing at Talyst by Friday, August 25 she will waive the registration fee. Her contact information is below. Just tell her Jerry sent you.

I will be in attendance. Hope to see you there.

More information can be found at the Pediatric Safety Summit website.

Contact information for free registration:
Casey Cram, MA Director of Marketing
425.289.5726 Direct
1.877.4.Talyst Toll Free
CCram@talyst.com

Ever wonder why forklifts have roll cages?

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Aug 162011

I’ve driven my share of forklifts. I had several manual labors jobs before deciding to become a pharmacist. In fact, it was those manual labor jobs that helped me decide to go back to school and become a pharmacist in the first place. But that story is for another time.

I was searching for something completely unrelated to forklifts when I came across the video below. I was both horrified and amused.

ASHP’s Handbook on Injectable Drugs is online and interactive

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Aug 152011

I received an email this morning informing me that ASHP’s Handbook on Injectable Drugs is making the leap from paper to electronic media. Welcome.

You can get a peak at the open beta test going on now, just follow this link. I played with it for a while. The UI needs a little work, but it’s nice to see it online.

Cool Pharmacy Technology–Rowa Vmax

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Aug 042011

I became aware of Rowa Vmax a few weeks ago when I read an article about CareFusion purchasing the small German-based company.

From the Rowa brochure:

The Vmax Hospital from Rowa provides hospital pharmacists with an extremely flexible and high performance storage and dispensing system. When combined with the wide range of product options (almost) any thing is possible:

High level of scalability in terms of capacity and speed

Input speed per machine: up to 900 packs per hour

Output speed per machine: up to 2,000 packs per hour

Safety features: UPS, backup storage drive, stock scan, user identification with various permissions, refrigerator with data logger

Recording of expiry dates and batch numbers

Conveyor system: for optimised stock picking and commissioning for the wards

Combined with perfect integration into the hospital’s stock control system the result is clear, streamlined medicines management.

Stock intake, recording, storage and order picking for the wards: all of these previously manual activities can be done with Rowa in a fraction of the time normally required. Qualified personnel can now do qualified work, on the wards for example. This is a huge advantage, especially in times of increasing pressure on hospital staff budgets.

More fanboy douchebaggery

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Aug 022011

Someone, actually several people, posted this on Google+ today “Android is No. 1 in 35 countries, approaches 50% global market share”. The article attached to the headline can be found here.

Simple, right? Of course. It’s just someone passing on a bunch of shipment numbers from an article.

Enter the Apple fanboy:

#1 by what measure? Sales volume (# of units)? That is interesting, but Android still appears to be a very very distant 2nd (or maybe 3rd) in terms of application ecosphere for both users and developers. Compared to iOS, the typical Android app is flaky/buggy and incomplete….Android may be selling a lot of handsets, but they have a very long way to go to be the “#1″…”

I hate it when someone throws out an opinion like it’s fact. Saying something is better than something else with nothing more than an opinion is absolute worthless. Can you say something is faster? Sure, if you have the numbers to back it up. Bigger? Yep, piece of cake. Tougher? Absolute, if you have the data to prove it. More apps? If you know how to count. But to simply say something is #1 because the alternative is “flaky/buggy” makes you sound like a complete idiot. Unfortunately this is typical of the conversations I get into when iPhone users see that I use an Android smartphone or when I say I prefer Android over iOS. They just can’t understand why I’d use an “inferior device”. First of all I don’t think my Android smartphone is inferior. Furthermore I have reasons to choose Android over other operating systems, but they are my own. My opinion, my choice, my smartphone.

Is Android #1? I don’t know. I don’t care. And just in case you were wondering, the next time you feel the need to tell me how great your iDevice is, do me a favor and keep it to yourself.

Tablet hunting – the Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q550 not so good

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Jul 302011

I’ve been contemplating a new slate tablet PC. The market is full of them, which should make choosing one a piece of cake. Unfortunately it’s turning out to be much more difficult than originally thought.

The most common problem, for me at least, has been short battery life. Less than four hours just isn’t an option, which eliminates what I think is the best slate tablet on market the Eee Slate EP121. So you can imagine my elation when I saw the specs for the Fujitsu STYLISTIC Q550. The screen size of the Q550 is a little small, but the pen and multi-touch input along with the claims from the manufacturer of extended battery life, up to 8 hours, caught my attention.

Palm scanner for patient identification in NY City hospital

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Jul 282011

Reuters: “A New York City hospital has stopped asking many patients to dig out health insurance cards and fill in endless forms, instead identifying them by scanning the unique lattice of veins in their palm.

The new biometric technology employed by New York University’s Langone Medical Center was expected to speed up patient check-ins and eliminate medical errors.

The system also has the virtue of not requiring the patient be conscious at the time of check-in, as is sometimes the case in emergency rooms.

The scanners are made by the technology services company Fujitsu and exploit the principle that, as with fingerprints and iris patterns, no two individuals’ palm-vein configurations are quite the same.

Using near-infrared waves, an image is taken of an individual’s palm veins, which software then matches with the person’s medical record. The initial set-up for a new patient takes about a minute, the hospital said, while subsequent scans only take about a second.”

Taking a break…

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Jun 282011

I started this blog more than two years ago at the behest of my brother, Robert. He and I used to spend a lot of time talking about technology and he encouraged me to put my ideas in writing in the form of a blog. It took quite a while before I finally took his advice, but eventually I got around to it.

It’s been quite a lot of fun, but my desire to keep up this blog has finally run its course. I find little interest in pharmacy technology these days as everything has turned into rehashed content presented under the guise of something new. The technology world has become one of followers with few true leaders and I find myself becoming more and more disgusted with “revolutionary” products and ideas. There are few real thinkers left in the world.

I watched Iron Man 2 last night with my girls. At one point in the movie Tony Stark tears his house apart to build the equipment necessary to synthesize a new element. Funny I know, but that image isn’t much different than one of the founding father’s of this country. Men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the like weren’t beyond punching a hole in the floor of their home to build a clock for example. Those men were truly revolutionary thinkers. My brother and I have discussed the loss of such minds over time, and it’s disheartening.

I told myself when this blog was no longer fun that I would stop. Well, I’ve reached that point. I find myself generating more rants than informative posts these days. In fact this post went off in the direction of a rant for just a moment. I had to reel myself back in just to finish it up. But I’m not ready to completely give up on the idea of having a blog just yet. After some thought I’ve decided to just ignore it for a while and see if my interest returns. I’m skeptical that my interest will be jump started, but I think it’s worth a shot. Most of the time when I tire of something it’s usually for good. We shall see.

For now I’m taking a break.

Conclusion of the ASHP Summer Meeting 2011 (#ashpsm)

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Jun 152011

I attended one final session at the Summer Meeting today before heading back to the hotel to pack up my stuff, have some lunch and head for the airport; which is where I’m sitting now.

The session was titled Mobile Devices and Social Media: Enabling Your Professional and Personal Lives, and was delivered by Bill Felkey and Brent Fox. It was great. I thought I was pretty technology savvy, but I quickly found out that I still have a lot to learn. As with many sessions at this year’s Summer Meeting, this one was recorded and should be available at http://ce.ashp.org shortly. Do yourself a favor and go watch the audio-synched presentation. You won’t regret it.