Haven’t posted in awhile….life’s been pretty standard though. Some quick snatches:

Thanksgiving was cool. Always nice to see friends again and spend time with family. I really suck with directions.

On the med school front I finished my secondaries and went to some interviews. UPenn and UCLA were especially fun as I got to stay and hang out with friends. I just have one interview left (in January) so the process is finally coming to an end.

As far as classes…so much writing this semester. I’ll be writing final papers constantly for the next week and a half.

If anyone hasn’t heard the new Soulostar album yet they should definitely check it out. I think it’s awesome. Every time I have to write an essay or do a problem set I put it on and it helps me focus so much better. http://soulostar.bandcamp.com/ 

My 5 favorite tracks (no order): Imagine, Rainy Day Reminiscence (Remix), Promise, Violet, Aurora (The Calm II)

so good

thedailywhat:

Read ALL The Words of the Day: After nearly six months of silence, Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half fame returns with a brand new blog post detailing her recent bout of depression, and how she ultimately overcame her sadness by turning its unintended consequence into a superpower.

[h&a1/2.]

Sometimes I see someone random walking down the street that I’ve met once in my life but somehow I remember their name, and I think “hahaha I totally know who you are but you probably have no clue who I am.” Then I feel like a creep.

I wonder how many people do the same for me?

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In other news, new Bruno Mars song. Not his best work but still pretty listenable. Off the soundtrack of that heavily anticipated Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

“UC Berkeley scientists have developed a system to capture visual activity in human brains and reconstruct it as digital video clips. Eventually, this process will allow you to record and reconstruct your own dreams on a computer screen.”

Holy wtf

http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

My new favorite version of this song. A lot of the covers by this guy (ortopilot) are pretty amazing. He plays every instrument, is especially crazy good at guitar, and has arrangements that are both creative and work well.

I also really liked his cover of Set Fire to the Rain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzWepOFcRr8&feature=related

long ass recap of my days here

Wednesday: Got here and met up with my PI to go over presentations. Afterwards, I met up for a drink with an e-friend I had only known online up til now (and no, not that kind of friend). That was cool. Went to sleep early.

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Thursday: Woke up late and pissed my PI off. Walked around the conference and saw a bunch of vendor exhibits. It’s really crazy how much money and effort medical device companies put into reaching out to surgeons. All the booths are beautifully designed, some have rotating signs hanging from the ceiling, one of the companies had a guy with a frozen hot chocolate maker handing out drinks.

Listened to a bunch of talks, learned some stuff. Went to dinner at Pampas (Brazilian Steakhouse) with my PI, his wife, and a few former-medical-students-now-residents. The stories they swapped about residency/internship scare the crap out of me. Afterwards, hung out with a couple of the residents who I’d known from their time at med school. One of them epitomizes straight edge: he’s newly married, Air Force, parents were in the military, etc. He vetoed tittay barz and  blackjack and clubs, so we ended up going on a roller coaster (at New York New York, surprisingly good) then just sitting in a bar and drinking.

Friday: Woke up late and pissed my PI off. Listened to a bunch of talks today, including one really awesome one that had nothing to do with medicine. There was a special guest talk by David Pogue, tech editor for the NYT. His talk was on “Disruptive Tech” and was absolutely hilarious. He went through the evolution of smartphones and cool apps, the quest for the ultimate camera (DSLR that fits in your pocket — it’s almost out), e-readers, web2.0 etc. I can’t really do his talk justice but suffice to say it was super cool.

For the other talks, what I most took away was just how much uncertainty remains in hand surgery. For something like fracture fixation, all surgeons have access to the same relatively limited set of tools (wires, screws, plates, casts) and work off the same relatively limited set of principles (stabilize the fracture, reduce it to a normal anatomic configuration)—but they often have widely disparate views on how to approach a specific case. And the research literature is incomplete in many respects, so that’s not much help either.

For dinner we ate at a Mexican restaurant where I drank many sangrias, provided for by Beth Israel Medical Center. Dinner was an event for all the alumni of the fellowship that my PI runs, so I ran into Dr M, this indian dude who was a fellow back when i was a freshman. He’s probably the most hilarious doctor I’ve met, and definitely the least PC—so it was fun to talk to him again. He used to constantly tell me horror stories about medicine and why to do something else with my life, along with dropping bits of wisdom (ie how to fend off the many nurses looking for a young doctor to get with). We had a couple of drinks after dinner and it was good times catching up. He’s in private practice now so it was also interesting getting an alternative perspective on medicine.

Originally I’d planned to play poker fri night too, but I missed the registration for the $60 tournament and felt too tipsy to play in a higher game. I had another chance to play in a different tournament after I sobered up, but the structure/format was terrible and I would just be randomly gambling without any real edge.

Overall:

tittay barz - nope
blackjack - nope
poker - nope
drugs and hookers - nope
random boobs - not really (everyone was too old, I saw barely any college students the entire time even Fri night, wrong time of year I guess?)
vegas trip = fail

Vegas soon for my first research conference. Busy busy trying to get presentations together, make some semblance of progress on secondaries, and still have my requisite time to laze around.

In other more exciting news…

Today, a girl tripped hard on the top step of the stairs leading out of Sever. Nearer to the bottom, I somehow reflexively turned around at her scream and snatched her out of the air with a hug.

Pretty much the coolest I’ve ever felt in my life.

If I had a pet…

(click the picture for the link)

I stumbled upon some posts by this guy Jared Tendler recently: http://jaredtendlerpoker.com/blog/. He works as a mental game coach for golf / poker, and I think he has some pretty intriguing ideas.

One of the biggest concepts he pushes is the idea of “mental muscle.” Basically he says that your discipline/resolve/motivation/analytic capabilities all function similarly to physical muscle.

Take an example from poker. Some people can play 10 hours straight and maintain decision-making near their theoretically best level. Other people (ie me) play for 2 hours, get tired, and lose motivation. How can someone get themselves to play more and play better?

Tendler uses the analogy of weightlifting. If your max on the bench press is 100 pounds, there’s no possible way to man up and just bench 160. You’ll hurt yourself. Instead, you would work your way up incrementally—benching 105, then 110, then 120, until you reached your goal. In the same way, you can’t just ‘suck it up’ and do something mentally demanding like poker for 10 hours straight if you’re not used to it. You won’t be physically hurt, but your results will suck. Your mental muscle needs to get in the reps first, being pushed bit by bit.

I’m thinking, if true, same thing would apply to a ton of other things outside of poker.

For example, if you normally spend 80% of your study time on gchat and tetris and facebook, suddenly banning yourself and cramming 8 hours for a final is just going to fail. A better idea would be to increment up your study/play ratio over the course of 1-2 weeks. If you have trouble paying attention during lectures, you don’t want to abruptly start taking notes on every word for every class. Just the most important ones first, then work your way up. It’s not just academics, either. Maybe you can’t stop thinking about your ex; you can’t just block them, burn all their photos, and forget about them completely. And so on.

Seems intuitive enough, but who knows. I’m not sure what the neuroscientists would say, but it’d be interesting to find out.