Divemedic

This Week in the ED

I had a few notable events happen in the ED this week.

  • A man was brought in by EMS who was gorked out of his mind and was under arrest by the local gendarmes. He was tweaking hard. Unsurprising to anyone who saw him, his urine tested positive for amphetamines. It seems that he used some meth, beat up his elderly roommate, stole the roommate’s gun, and walked around the neighborhood firing off shots. I spoke with the first cop to arrive, and he told me that he ordered the man to drop the gun, and was only going to tell him once. To treat him, all I could do was give him 2mg of IV Ativan every hour to keep him calm. Two days later, he was still in the PCU and still feeling the effects of the meth.
  • A woman came in with abdominal pain and symptoms that made me think she might have COVID. I tested her for it, and she did in fact have COVID. When the results of her abdominal CT came back, she had a large mass in the head of her pancreas that was consistent with cancer. There were also masses in her liver and lungs. The Dr and I had to tell her and her husband that she likely won’t live to see Christmas.
  • A 95 year old woman came in after driving her car through the front of a store. She got the gas and brake pedals confused. In her defense, when she learned to drive, there was no brake pedal. All you did was say “Woah.”
  • Had a 16 year old with mono, and another one who had spinal meningitis.
  • A 30 year old jumped out of the car he was riding in and attacked a motorist in an apparent case of road rage. The target of his ire put the car in drive and ran over his ass. He became my patient, and it took up more than two hours of my time getting IVs, X-rays, giving pain meds, and all of the other things needed to treat an idiot with a blood alcohol of over 300 and a pair of broken legs. He is going to need surgery.
  • We got a new director for the ED last month, and she announced that nothing would change. This week, she laid off 25 nurses. The very next day was my day off, and they called me at home to ask me to come in and work a 12 hour shift for overtime.

Posting has been and will be thin. I have a major project coming up that I need to work on.

By Divemedic, ago

This Is Me Not Caring

When we last heard from the Eustis police, they were being tyrannical pricks*. So the news that an ambush style attack was carried out against police in that area doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t look to me like it was a deliberate ambush, but an impromptu one. The article also doesn’t mention whether the other people who were killed in the shoot out were bystanders or were involved in the ambush.

It could be that the two people killed in the house were victims of the original nutball who prompted all of this, or it could be that they were struck by bullets fired by the “brave” cops who were indiscriminately firing at the sound of gunfire in a “spray and pray” tactic.

Either way, I don’t care about the cops who were killed, and I don’t care about the crazy bitch who likely bought it. I will reserve my sympathy for any innocent bystanders. To anyone reading this who is a cop- stop being tyrannical cowardly assholes that slap unarmed citizens around, toss grenades into baby cribs, arrest parents who are demanding that you do your jobs, and rid your profession of the dead wood, and maybe I will care again.

It’s really a shame, because I used to have lots of love and respect for a profession that has lost its way.

* On a side note, the driver in the original Eustis case does not have any record of charges actually being filed against him in that county at any point this year. I am guessing that the State Attorney didn’t think that his behavior warranted criminal charges, still it cost him money to get his car out of impound. All for telling a cop that where he worked was none of his business. I would consider an attorney, were I in his place.

By Divemedic, ago

We Are Screwed

This is what a Harris rally looks like:

It’s obvious what her plan for getting elected is, and there is nothing that Trump can offer to people who are entertained by this. It’s all about “vote for me because I am black.”

Idiocracy is here.

By Divemedic, ago

Bears Repeating

Let’s say that you are making and selling a product. You sell that product for $4 each, but no one really wants it. You won’t sell any. What to do? You change the product you are making to one that people actually want, and now you can sell them at $4 each all day long.

Until someone sees how much you are making on it and offers a similar product, but for $3 each. Your sales drop as customers buy your competitor’s product. So you make changes to make it even better, and now everyone wants it. The problem is that you can no longer keep up with demand, so people who NEED that product offer you $5 each. A bidding war ensues, and eventually you are offered $100 each. Do you turn it down? After all, that would be price gouging…

Of course you take the money. All transactions are a combination of a willing seller and a willing buyer. All sales of all products are negotiable.

That happens every day with your labor. The labor that you perform is the product you are selling. Michael Jordan played basketball like no one else, so he made millions. When people saw the shoes he wore, they wanted to be like Jordan, so millions bought his shoes. He added hundreds of millions of dollars of value to the Air Jordan brand, so they paid him.

Robert Downey Jr made the Avengers movies what they are. Few people would pay $20 to see a movie starring Steve Smith. However, tens (hundreds) of millions of people did so to see RDJ in the Avengers movies. That’s why he makes $40 million per movie. Without him, that movie is a losing proposition. Without RDJ, this movie isn’t going to be made at all. This makes RDJ’s value in the movie industry sky high. No one goes to see a movie because some rando that no one has even heard of was 1 of 40 other nobodies in the costume department. That’s why jealousy fueled rants like this are stupid.

If you aren’t happy with the money you are making, you need to find a way to make your labor more valuable. No one is going to pay you $50 an hour for labor that literally anyone can do, because there will be a line of people behind you who are willing to do that job for $40, $20, or even $15 an hour. In order to make more, the value that you add to the deal dictates how much you will make. Simply saying that the employer owes you “a living wage” as you whine and complain on Social Media isn’t helping.

That goes for literally any job. That’s why Gordon Ramsey makes what he does- he adds enough skill to the deal that people are willing to pay $40 for a hamburger (not me, but people). Find a skill that is valuable and become good at it. It may take some time, but the money will follow.

We can’t all be Robert Downey Jr, Michael Jordan, or even Steve Jobs, but all of us don’t have to be making minimum wage, either.

By Divemedic, ago

Executive Action

THROATUS claims that she will sign an executive order in her first 100 days that will require Americans to turn in their guns, because Congress won’t act.

  1. If Congress won’t act, there is no Constitutional way for the President to just order people around
  2. The President can’t violate the Constitutional rights of Americans with an EO
  3. Even if she COULD do so, where will the money to enforce this unfunded mandate come from?
  4. There are 600 million guns in this country. There aren’t enough cops to enforce such an order
  5. Especially when cops stop volunteering after a few thousand get shot
  6. We aren’t turning in shit
By Divemedic, ago

Drone

This prepping topic is on security. Being able to keep an eye on your surroundings is a great way to assist in the security of your area. Not only can you quickly determine if a threat to your physical security is approaching, you need to be able to scout in advance of any movement that you are making, look at areas that may be hazardous (like flooded areas) and other things you may want to see at a distance.

One of the keys to security is not letting opponents surprise you. A person who is prepared needs to be familiar with the area where they live, and be able to monitor that area for the appearance of those who would endanger their safety. You never want an opponent to surprise you. Watching events, it is becoming obvious that a drone is a huge multiplier by allowing you to keep an eye on large areas of the territory surrounding your shelter, so I decided to get one.

Apparently, a 20 year old was able to thwart the Secret Service by using a drone, while the SS drone was not able to fly because of “connectivity issues.”

The drone I selected is a DJI Mini 4k. There are more capable drones out there, but the large advantage with this drone is that , at less than 249g, the drone is light enough that it doesn’t need to be registered with the government in order to be legal, and we all know that I am not registering shit. I got it as a Prime day deal for less than $400. That deal included the drone, three batteries, and the charger.

It was easy to fly, and I took it up for its first flight after watching the below video. I am posting it here, cued up to some elevated footage, so you can see how clear the video is.

The only thing different with mine is that I have it set for Imperial instead of metric units, and the lower left corner is a Google maps kind of display that shows you where the drone is on a map. I have found the drone to be intuitive and easy to fly. I have been taking it easy because I don’t want to lose it, but on the two days I have flown it, it has gone as high as 250 feet and flown as far away as 1,000 yards. The drone reaches a top speed of 20 mph, and the battery gives about 30 minutes of flight time. Following the rule of thirds (one third to go out, one third to return, and a third for contingency) that means the drone has the endurance to go out about 3 miles. I’m not yet comfortable flying it that far.

It’s capable of operating in winds of up to 15 miles per hour, but I won’t fly it in winds that high.

I recommend that you find your own drone to keep an eye on the area.

The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.

By Divemedic, ago

Response

The US expects a diplomatic response to a Hezbollah rocket attack in a children’s playground that killed 12 children.

If some muzzie asshole killed my kid in a rocket attack, my response would be remembered for generations. There is no fucking way I would try to respond by talking them to death. As far as I am concerned, Israel is being restrained by not nuking the country that is behind all of these attacks. Iran is going to find out, if they keep it up.

By Divemedic, ago