Saturday morning coffee [October 3 2015]

The ‘c’ key on my Yoga 2 Pro is giving me problems. Sometimes I’ll have to hit it 2 or 3 times to get it to work. It’s really starting to piss me off. You don’t realize how often you need a ‘c’ until you look up at a document you’ve been working on and it looks like someone wend crazy with a red pen underlining misspelled words. I’ve really lost faith in Lenovo with this machine.

There’s been another mass shooting, this time at Umpqua Community College in southern Oregon. Ten people were killed and another seven injured Thursday when a 26-year-old gunman opened fire in a classroom at the community college. Very sad. It gets harder and harder each time something like this happens for me to defend my pro gun position. There’s just no place for this kind of thing in our society. I don’t have an answer, but it’s obvious that what we’re doing isn’t working.

Reuters: “A new electronic drug capsule engineered to deliver medications directly to the colon could potentially offer a more effective and cheaper option for treating people with gastrointestinal conditions, according to researchers at Purdue University in Indiana. The device is comprised of two parts, one carrying a drug payload and the other housing electronics designed on the same principles used to trigger a torpedo.” – The capsule contains a magnetic trigger that separates the capsule and releases the medication. I worked on a project team that was researching something like this when I was an undergrad in chemistry. Very cool stuff.

Speaking of cool developments, Nanowerk News is reporting that “[r]esearchers have for the first time developed a technique that coats anticancer drugs in membranes made from a patient’s own platelets, allowing the drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors and the circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize. The work was tested successfully in an animal model.” Anything that can be done to improve the targeting of cancer cells without wrecking healthy cells is a good thing. Nanotechnology rocks.

Are you a visual note taker? If so, you should drop by this site and check out 50+ Awesome Resources to Create Visual Notes, Graphic Recordings, & Sketchnotes. I desperately want to learn how to take visual notes. I’ve tried it a few times, but can’t seem to make it work. I envy the people that can do this.

Google announced some awesome new hardware this week: two new Nexus phones – the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5x, the Pixel C Android tablet, a new Chromecast, and Chromecast Audio. The Nexus 6P is a spectacular device, and the Pixel C will surely become the poster child for flagship Android tablets. The announcement of the Nexus 6P has muddied the waters for me as I was just about to pull the trigger on a Samsung Galaxy Note 5. I was looking at the Moto X Pure Edition, but decided that I really wanted a Note 5 for the camera, active digitizer, and Samsung Pay. The Nexus 6P lacks the active digitizer and Samsung Pay, but offers similar camera performance and a pure Android experience. Tough choice. Actually, now that I write it out, I think I’ll stick with the Note 5….or not. Ugh.

With the introduction of the Nexus 6P, Android now has the top six best mobile cameras on the market. This according to the DxOMark website. The top ten, starting at the top: Sony Xperia Z5, Samsung S6 Edge, Google Nexus 6P, LG G4, Samsung Note 4, Moto X Style, Sony Xperia Z3+, Apple iPhone 6Plus, Apple iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S5. Note that the Galaxy S6 and Note 5 have the same camera as the S6 Edge, which puts them in the same slot. My wife and oldest daughter have the LG G4, while my youngest daughter has the Galaxy S6. I can tell you that the images captured by those devices are spectacular. My S5 takes pretty good shots, and both the G4 and S6 put it to shame. Smartphones have become the new point-and-shoot camera of this generation.

Gizmodo: “Tom Scott has an excellent video explaining the basic physics behind the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift in not-so-sunny Scotland. It enables boats to travel between two canals, one of which runs 80 feet higher than the other.” – I remember sitting with my mom one evening a little more than a year ago and watching a special on the Falkirk Wheel. Very cool engineering.

Due to a recent mishap I’ve had to make extensive use of our current healthcare system. I’m amazed that the system works at all. To say that the system is disjointed and full of incompetence would be putting it kindly. Actually, calling it a system is probably a misnomer because that assumes that things are connected in some logical fashion. They are not. And now that the bills have started rolling in, I find it a confusing mess of “billers”, adjustments, and insurance company EOBs. Let me give you just one example of the craziness that is our healthcare system. During an ED visit I had several X-Rays and CTs taken. Fast forward several days when I had to see an orthopedic surgeon in his office. I had to contact the hospital, request that the studies be placed on a CD – seriously, a CD – and hand carried them to my appointment. Hard to imagine in this day and age that those images couldn’t be stored “in the cloud” and simply accessed at will. Here’s the kicker. When I arrived for the appointment, the orthopedic surgeon ordered a completely new set of X-Rays because he “likes to get his own images”. Then he sat down to view the images on my hand-carried CD and couldn’t open it using his office-based EHR system. It wouldn’t read the image type. Zing! And yes, I received bills for both the ED and office taken X-Rays. I have other crazy stories from the past several weeks, but won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, the current healthcare model sucks.

Harvard Business Review: “…findings from our research using six years of data from nearly 3,000 acute-care hospitals suggest that it is the communication between caregivers and patients that has the largest impact on reducing readmissions. In fact, the results indicate that a hospital would, on average, reduce its readmission rate by 5% if it were to prioritize communication with the patients in addition to complying with evidence-based standards of care.” – Huh, imagine that. It appears that communication is important. I found communication lacking when caring for my mom. Some facilities, like UCSF did a good job of communicating with both my mom and the family. Other facilities, like the two we used in the Central Valley, failed miserably at communicating information. It made a tremendous difference in her care.

The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch went on sale yesterday. Love that watch. If I go with the Note 5 mentioned above, I’ll likely pair it up with the Gear S2. Below is a quick review by Flossy Carter. Love this dude’s reviews.

Football season is well under way and it’s been awesome. There have already been some upsets among the college ranks…cough, Ole Miss. UCLA is playing well and look good to take the PAC-12 South. They play Arizona State today. Look for them to take care of business early and win that one. The NFL is chugging along. Nothing really stands out there besides the quarterback shuffle that’s taken place secondary to injuries. My Cardinals look great. Unfortunately, they’ve done this to me before, i.e. started out strong only to finish on life support. I’m holding my giddiness until around week 10. They play the Rams on Sunday. It’s a very winnable game, but those division games can be a bugger. Not to mention that the Rams have an angry pass rush, and Carson Palmer is getting hit like a pinata this year. They really need to keep that dude upright if they have any hope of making a playoff run.

Have a great weekend everyone.