UGH! Bummed out right now...

I lost my backup flash drive for CareerStep (medical transcription school) stuff.  I kept old forum posts, reports, notes, Shorthand backups, word lists, and miscellaneous school stuff on that thing.  It fell off the desk drawer where it was hanging and into the trash bin that was dumped into the main trash. Guess what today was?  Yep, trash day, and we even had it out to the curb on time.  UGH!!!!  For once I wished we missed trash day, but I won't tell my son that or he might accidentally forget on purpose next week.  *lol*

That was my first flash drive that I bought when I went back to college in '02.  It's tiny (128 mb), but it was attached to my favorite lanyard from my college.  It was a pretty purple while the lanyard was red with white lettering.  So what if they clashed, they were both easy to see for my weak middle aged eyes.  *lol*

I can and have recreated the backup information on another flash drive that is an ugly black and holds more data (2 gb), but I want my old one back!  Waa waa!!!!

Okay, back to your regular more important programming. I think I am done whining.  :D

Feeling better.....

Well the vertigo has passed, but I seem to have a battle with sinusitis on my hands now.  BLECH!  When I have been up, I've been studying or visiting a couple of message boards.  Mostly I'm just reading and making small comments.

I have not spared much any time for blogs or blogging.  Yesterday's post was scheduled a while back.  I plan on doing some catch up later today and tomorrow.  Unfortunately I missed most of jientje's door project and all of Robert's Show Me project.  I wish I had been up to participating.  Those sounded fun!  Just checked my feeds and I think may be skipping some posts as I have nearly 600 unread items.  Y'all have been some busy bees!

Life here on the prairie has been pretty calm.  We have had lots of cool weather with more wind that we need thrown in.  We even had a slight frost a couple weeks back.  I told mom recently that we went from spring to fall with a few summer days thrown in for good measure.  We really did not have a warm summer.  We have had lots of cool days and the leaves are all ready falling.  They aren't turning colors, just falling.  It may be the wind which has been pretty fierce lately.  The garden is almost finished producing and I feel like it barely started.  I have to work on getting it in quicker next year.  I just hope we have an earlier spring.  This year we had frost around Memorial Day.  Maybe I will be industrious and start things inside next year.  Probably not.

Miss Smokie is starting to molt, but it's not really coming off like in previous years.  I don't think she really got warm enough this summer for her undercoat to loosen up good.  Here is a picture of her last year in October when she was nearly done shedding molting.

 

 Recently in my schooling to become a medical transcriptionist, I have been working on editing and proofreading.  I have found that I do not remember as many grammar rules as I thought.  For instance, capitalizing seasons, I had to go look it up.  *lol*  I suddenly feel old at only 39 and all it took was having to remember all those punctuation rules.  I'll just say right now that I hate commas!  If you need a fun site to double check something try out The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation.  Now don’t go looking for mistakes in this post.  I am sure there are plenty.  

Hope y'all have a great week!  

Friday morning distractions.

I have a nice quiet morning here and just can't seem to focus on what I need to do. I should be studying, but prefer visiting Teaching Mom, my school forums, blogs, playing with my camera and fiddling with my blogs.

Seriously the kid is asleep and so is Mom so it's a perfect time to study. I'm typing up some Pathology reports at the moment to get used to the terminology and format. It's actually much simpler than some of the other specialties like Cardiovascular and Ophthalmology. I just can't seem to get into a rhythm with this unit.

One of the joys of a self-paced course versus a brick & mortar school is the distractions and lack of firm deadlines. It's also a joy of home schooling. *lol*

Maybe I am in shock that I'm up early and not crabby. I don't do mornings. I've actually been doing a few lately and enjoying them. Shhhh.... don't tell as I don't want to jinx it.

Since I linked my morning post, I should mention the van. It's still broke. It turns out it was the serpentine belt which was knocked off by a bent pulley on the power steering pump. Evidently, we hit something. That is a sore subject! Supposedly, we should have noticed hitting something hard enough to bend this pulley. No, we didn't. I think it may have been an ice chunk in the drive way. I know we didn't hit any critters or anything in the road. I do know that 2 days before I had trouble turning to the right and mentioned it a few times during our trip to Grand Forks. I thought it was an ice build-up near that tire which has happened in the past.

I'm glad that my sister's boyfriend is willing to fix the van and has the knowledge about such things. It was kind of my sister to offer his services :) We've been waiting on funds and warmer weather. No sense in the poor guy laying on the cold ground when we do have a vehicle to drive. We have the parts now so it's the weather that needs to cooperate which it hasn't. We had a snow storm on April 26! My car is running and has 2 new rear tires (another sore subject). It still needs some work, but has been a lifesaver at the moment.

Oh well, back to the grindstone.

You Can Eat An Elephant

On my medical transcription school's forum we have a thread called Mini-Goalers; this is where we set small goals to help us study in this self-paced course. It's our way of keeping ourselves on track, encouraging each other and let's us see our progress.

I joined the moderators team at the end of 2007. It's a team of students who come up with an encouraging quote, quote or story. Afterwards we make comments to the various members of the Mini-Goaler threads based on their responses from the previous week. It's a great way to connect with other students and help one another.

I thought I would share what I wrote for this week. It's my second post to the MG thread. I'll only post the initial part of my writing here and leave off my personal comments to individuals as to protect the privacy of the other forum.

>start paste<

Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time.

~~~~

YOU CAN EAT AN ELEPHANT

You can eat an elephant.
Oh,yes you can it's true.
They may be huge but not to worry,
they aren't to big for you.

"Just how can I eat such a thing
that's so immense in size?"
"Just look at it in pieces
and make them all bite size."

You see to look from head to tail
can be a daunting task.
Many would just give up now
and let the elephant pass.

Look at it as if you can
eat it piece by piece,
It may take you a while,
but your goal you will reach.

So, next time you have a task
that is difficult to do,
Remember, you can eat an elephant
so take a piece and chew.

~~~~~~

Graduating and becoming a working MT is our elephant. We can do it by taking one lesson or report at a time. That's the beauty of the MG thread, it allows us to chop our elephant into bite-size pieces. Let's see how your bites are coming along

>end paste<


Anything we do in life can be an elephant whether it be parenting, work, household projects, educating our children, volunteering, Bible study, friendships, etc... If we break things down into manageable bites, it's much easier to tackle and not become overwhelmed.

Any thoughts? Please feel free to share them in the comments section. Thanks for reading

Small Victory

I don't talk much about my medical transcription training, but I am going to dedicate this post to it.

I have been struggling with the course since last May. I'm in the Anatomy and Physiology section (A&P). It's been rough. Add to that the two hard drive crashes, one in May and one in Sept. The second one also had motherboard problems. I have a different computer now. On top of that, I've had health issues which have knocked for a loop. Things seem to be back on track with computer and my health. I'm praying they stay that way.

Now my victory. On my school forum, I join in a thread where we set weekly goals. Last week for the first time since May, I met and even surpassed my goal. That was and is extremely exciting. It feels good to accomplish something again. I am officially half way through the A&P book. I can't believe it. Finally, I seem to be moving forward and actually remembering some of the stuff.

I know I won't make my goal of graduating before my year is up, but I hope it won't take too long after that. Hopefully, I can keep the momentum going.

Blog I just found & Eistein quote

This blog was listed on the MT forums. It's interesting, funny and heartbreaking. Take a moment to read.

Fingers and Tubes in Every Orifice


"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.“
~ Albert Einstein

School

Well, I thought I would post an update on how school is going.

Started out by learning all sorts of suffixes, prefixes and root words. Learned all the meanings and how to combine them to make a real word. Some I already knew while others were completely new to me. Didn't do too bad on that first section. Thank goodness for flashcards as I would be totally lost without mine.

Grammar was next on the agenda. Let me tell you a secret; lean in close to the monitor. Don't try to do grammar when you've been up for 18+ hours. Your mind will not be able to compute the directions or figure out what an adverb is and what it modifies. Man! I felt really, really dumb. I made an A in Composition in College, but couldn't figure out silly those silly little parts of speech. After that came punctuation, again I had forgotten plenty. Where exactly do commas go again?!?! I recall I had trouble with those suckers in my College Business English class. The rest of grammar went pretty well. At the Career Step forums everyone said how horrible the grammar section was. I was a bit worried; however, it wasn't that bad once I had some sleep.

After Grammar came "Using Resources" which was basically how to use a medical dictionary and look up stuff online. Didn't take but a couple hours for that section.

Right now I'm in "Human Anatomy, Physiology & Disease Processes" and it's kicking my butt :( I need a general overview of the body's systems rather than an in-depth knowledge. My mind isn't letting anything sink in right now. I look at it and forget in 2 minutes flat. Ugh! I printed some pictures to help me visualize some stuff. Trying to spell this stuff is my main goal, but even that feels impossible right now.

That's about it for now.

Hodge Podge

Several thoughts today....computers, career, Dixie Chicks, peanut butter, weather and celebrities I'm sick of hearing about and of course a couple of quotes.

Kiddo got a brand new computer. It's his Christmas and birthday present from Gramma. He's not getting a drivers license or a car so this helps ease the It's an HP Pavillion m7750n He is really enjoying it even though it's not the one he wanted. They were out so we had to step up to get what he wanted (2 gig of Ram). We wanted a computer that would run World of Warcraft. Between Vista and the game 1 gig of Ram will be used up. Unfortunately, there have a few bugs. His DVD/CD-RW didn't want to work at first. The computer didn't seem to recognize that it even existed. He seems to like Vista, but Explorer seems to crash a lot. Not sure if we need to take it back. We have 14 days to take it back to Best Buy without having to deal with HP.

Tuesday was pretty good for me as I signed up for a medical transcription course through Career Step. It's an online class. It's 640 hours and self-paced. I am really excited about this new adventure. I will eventually be able to work from home. If things go right, I can be working by the end of the year...maybe by fall.

My favorite band did great at the Grammys. One all five of their nominations. I know, I know... I'm a bad Republican, American, country music fan, and Christian for liking this band. (yeah, I'm being sarcastic). I like the Dixie Chicks! I love their music! I missed the Grammys, but I found a video on YouTube of them winning album of the year. I have been reading several blogs and comments about how unAmerican they are, how awful it is they won, how it's a a Liberal plot, how they have no fan base anymore, etc... Get a grip folks. Liking The Chicks is not a crime nor is it a sin. They are not responsible for any problems our troops are having. They are not responsible for our country's image abroad. Egads! They are just a group of musicians. Get over it folks. They are not evil nor as powerful as some seem to think.

On to something else...peanut butter.

I am so glad I am a choosy mom :) I have never liked Peter Pan and now I have a reason. Salmonella Outbreak

Weather.... We have had 19 nights of subzero temperatures. This is January weather in February. No wonder I'm cold all the time. BRRRRRR.

Two people I am SICK of hearing about: Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears. It is sad that she died and lived such a wanton life. It's sad that her baby lost her mother. The media frenzy is NOT helping anyone especially not the baby. Brittney is just sickening period. What a waste of a life.

I'll end with quotes so it's a bit more positive.

I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.
-Eddie Izzard

Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.
-H. Mumford Jones

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-John F. Kennedy