Thanksgiving 2007: be glad you're not in the hospital

I've got several things to blog about, after a long hiatus. First things first, though.

If you're one of the people who check in here hoping to see new stuff, or wondering wth is up, look forward to stuff in the near future; I am budgeting time every week to work on posts starting tomorrow.

As far as wth is up... I'm alive and feeling fine, though I had a moderately severe fall recently and am right now going through "max Q"... The pain after a spill seems to peak at around 48 hours post trauma and it appears to be right on schedule.

Random observation: celebrity proggies Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid apparently recently fell subject to a classic hospital goof: somebody figured a dosage wrong and gave them milli (1o^-3) instead of micro (10^-6) amounts -- of Heparin. Not good, as it's a potent anticoagulant.

Wild-*ssed thought: This just might actually be one of the few sensible reasons to use an English-style system for doses rather than metric. Slipped decimal points, and in particular milli vs micro errors, aka three orders of magnitude, happen in hospitals a lot more often than they should, often when there is time pressure, such as in neonatal units and emergency departments.

Problem with that is that there is no extant system of quirky drams and gills and fathoms for quantities that small. Bummer.