Compliments
There is no greater compliment then the one that comes from a patient. The patient who you just caused trauma too by inserting a 14 gauge needle into their fistula. The needle that scared the shit out of me the first time that I ever saw it. The needle that rips through skin like butter and has a steady pulse of blood through it even before you unclamp it. The needle that makes grown men cry, the needle that is the life support for thousands of dialysis patient across the world.
After I was done she said “you are so gentle, thank you. And so nice, and so neat.” I have never felt better. This poor woman has enough on her plate to deal with. The least I could do is a good job sticking here. The least I could do is attempt to cause her the least amount of pain. This patient has been friends with this needle for years, and they get together three times a week like clockwork.
But, I am sure that the pain is still there, even after all of these years. I am glad that I could do my part on this one day, for this one patient, and alleviate some of the pain.
A lot of things are changing in the unit, some for the better and some for the worse. There is going to be a dramatic shift in power in the upcoming weeks and it will be interesting to see what happens with that power, and who will hold that power. What does this mean for me? More responsibility, more collateral duties, and more bullshit from more nurses. Gotta love it!
I am almost through with this semester, and I am pretty sure I am going to squeeze by again with a 4.0. Someone asked me today at work if I was taking the summer off. HELL NO! I am talking 12 credits. :D
It will be busy, but worth it in the long run.
Thank goodness its the weekend. Even though I have a million things to do, it will be nice to just sit back and relax and take my time doing them.
I need to make sure that I stay in the house as much as possible, because I am flat broke and every time I step outside, I spend more money.
Next week I am taking a petty officer leadership course, in anticipation of actually getting frocked once the results come out in may. I hope that I make it. I am so ready to be a second class that I am burning at the heels and am this close to just saying fuck it and buying all the uniform items ahead of time.
I better make it, that test was easy. Too easy :/ Don’t wanna get my hopes up, but it sure would be nice. On top of the gained respect, more opportunities for leadership, etc. I will get MORE MONEY :) (House buying anyone? ) DC/MD/VA here I come.
I hope that whoever reads this blog (if anyone) has an awesome weekend. I am going to try to have one myself.
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Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Edge Detection with Inkscape
- Lev Lazinskiy
- Spring Security, Webjars, and MIME type error
- Using cgit
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Joining Cursor from Fatih Arslan
- Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
- The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
- Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to wildly overthinking things
Friday's big release was Qwen 3.8 27B, an Apache 2 licensed 27B parameter vision-capable LLM from Alibaba's Qwen research lab. I've been looking forward to this one: 27B is an excellent size for running a model on a reasonably specced laptop, and its prede...
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 16, 2026“I think there’s a lot of value in these.”
Speaking of user interface guidelines, developer Matt Sephton and others compiled many of Apple’s human interface guidelines, starting from 1980, all the way to 2014, including some goodies like early drafts, NeXT, Newton, and so on. Elsewhere, designer Ge...
via Unsung August 16, 2026Birding photos from Dutch Gap on Aug 15, 2026
Birding photos from Dutch Gap on Aug 15, 2026 My best bird photo from this morning is a dragonfly (Eastern Pondhawk, I think). Least Sandpiper Green Heron Red-headed Woodpecker. It's a juvenile, so its head is not actually red yet.
via O'DonnellWeb August 16, 2026Generated by openring