Let's see, is this Thursday?

[mellicious]

I am in the middle of printing a 73-page PDF, which is the reading assignment for module 4 of my class. I finished module 2 yesterday and got started on  module 3. I am mostly finished with it, except that I haven't actually taken the test yet - I've already taken an Ambien, just now, so I think it would be best to wait until later for that. I hope the 73 pages are interesting, at least. They are about diagnosis codes, which interests me in theory, at least. Did you know that diagnosis codes (the official name is ICD-9, for International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition) were developed by the World Health Organization to track mortality statistics? They are used these days for morbidity (disease) as well, but cause of death was where they started.

Anyway, my class has no pre-printed textbook, it is all PDFs. Luckily I have figured out how to do front-and-back printing on my printer and it's not too terribly time-consuming. I'm just eating up ink like crazy, that's all.

So one of our assignments is to make up multiple-choice test questions for the other students to answer. (Some people canNOT write a decent test question to save their lives but that is another topic.) Here's one of the two I made up. I was rather proud of myself for coming up with several perfectly reasonable alternate answers for this.

The abbreviation "US" in a medical record is most likely to mean:
A. United States
B. Urine sample
C. Ultrasound
D. Under sedation

The correct answer, per the textbook, is C. I phrased the question rather carefully since really the answers would all be perfectly legit as far as I'm concerned.


In other news, I have decided I need to record what catalogs come in the mail. It's that time of year.
Today's haul:
Levenger (a dangerous one, that - I have a thing for leather goods)
Woman Within (which is what used to be Lane Bryant)
Land's End Men
another Land's End which is unspecified but which seems to mostly be women's clothes
Connecting Threads (quilt fabric)
The Land of Nod

That last one annoys me somewhat - I ordered some gifts from them ONCE, a couple of years ago, and they won't go away. I occasionally want to scream, "I don't have children! I don't have grandchildren!" at them until they give up on me. On the other hand, I do end up perusing the things from time to time; they have some cute stuff.

Yesterday I got a Crate and Barrel Best Buys catalog, always one of my favorites. It made me contemplate a trip into Houston to go to the big C&B "uptown". But that's probably best saved until closer to Christmas.



Alright, my printing is finished, I am going to bed.

Comments

[seweccentric.livejournal.com]

Soo... then what is the abbreviation for a Urine Sample?? :)

[anjea.livejournal.com]

UA - urinalysis :D

ebook readers?

[dinda.livejournal.com]

You're like me, even when given a PDf - I want a print copy to read, hold and markup. Yet, I'm searching for good eBook readers to distribute our training materials on/with. Do you think a Kindle or the new Samsung papyrus might be good alternatives to PDFs you download & print? I hear good things about the Kindle as you can make notes, mark things up, etc.. Or are we just too 'old school' to transition to an eBook textbook model?

Re: ebook readers?

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

If I'm just reading a book in a normal way, I'm perfectly happy to read it on a screen - I've read novels on the computer, from time to time. But for studying, I have to be able to play with it and highlight things and scribble in the margins. I thought of trying to do without printing them and I just couldn't see that it would work for me.

(I would love to have a Kindle, though. Hmm, maybe I could use this as an excuse!)

[platypus]

I get a million catalogs because I've ordered clothes from a few places, and now I get duplicates of some of them in both my names :/.

[mellificent.livejournal.com]

I have ordered a lot of stuff online in the last ten years, somebody somewhere thinks I'm a good customer. I've lived three places in the last two years, but my god, the catalogs are all still finding me. They must have some amazing mailing list systems. Even dying doesn't entirely stop them - my mother's old address forwards to mine, and occasionally I still get a catalog with her name on it.

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I love writing multiple choice questions. I used to give a grammar/cite form test to my 1L's, and I'd make them devilish, e.g.:

The chair, which is in the corner, is red.

1. The sentence is correct because the italicized portion is a restrictive clause.
2. The sentence is correct because the italicized portion is a non-restrictive clause.
3. The sentence is incorrect because the italicized portion is a restrictive clause.
4. The sentence is incorrect because the italicized portion is a non-restrictive clause.