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3-D printed PPE

3-D printed mask partsWhile I was searching the net for ways to get testing for my patients with upper respiratory infections who might have COVID-19, I stumbled on a local effort to fill the shameful gap in the availability of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers by getting volunteers to 3-D print face shield parts. I am transitioning my practice to telemedicine, which means I’m home a lot more. I can babysit my 3-D printer while I’m working on the telemedicine gear and helping my home-from-school children with their educational enrichment activities. I’ve fired up the printer and my first mask is printing as I type.

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unringing the new year

I installed a Ring doorbell camera a couple of years ago, when the product and company were relatively new. I thought it was a fine idea: a way to see who was at your door and even “answer” the door  (through a two-way audio chat) from anywhere.

I was mildly disappointed in the product.

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a car worth washing

I took delivery on my second Tesla Model S back in February. I bought it used from Tesla so it didn’t break the bank, though it is still the most expensive car (to purchase) that I have owned.

The Tesla has completely changed my driving experience.

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great migration

Back in 2014, most of my servers were using Ubuntu. In April of that year, a long-term support (LTS) version was released and I migrated the servers to it. LTS releases are supported for five years—it seemed an eternity at the time.

In April 2016, the next LTS release came out. By then, I probably had close to 50 servers running a handful of distributions. All the Ubuntu-based servers migrated successfully except for two (four, actually, as each of those servers had a hot backup). One of those handled the office phones (asterisk, hylafax, IAXmodem), the other mostly handled email (postfix, dovecot, spamassassin). Those machines died horribly when I attempted to upgrade to 16.04 (saved by backups!) and, since they handled critical services, I decided to leave them on 14.04. After all, I had until 2019 to upgrade.

Plenty of time.

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halfblind

Over the past many months, I have been having a harder and harder time seeing to read (and I spend 80+% of my waking hours reading). I wasn’t really consciously aware that anything was wrong, but I did find that I’d take out my contact lens far more often, I had all my devices set to dark backgrounds, and I was spending more time in my darkened room. I would also get terribly fatigued when I read for more than a few minutes (which, generally, meant all the time). I was getting increasingly behind in reading and responding to email. After months of things getting gradually worse, I realized suddenly that I couldn’t read at all without a lot of squinting and straining.

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tesla charger radius enhancer

I wired my garage to charge my Tesla (coming soon—solar charging!), but I didn’t like the charger cable dangling on the floor. I installed a tool balancer to manage the cable, and it worked great but puts a bit of strain on the cable by bending it where it leaves the plug. It’s not much, but I worry about damaging the cable over a period of years.

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More Junk Science

Well, it happened again. I was attending a group on management of adolescent behavior. I was there to observe and participate. Nobody knew I was a behavioral neuroscientist. I stayed quiet, until the group facilitator said “Science has proven that video games and social media contribute to behavior problems in adolescents.” I couldn’t keep quiet for that: I spend a great deal of time following the literature in this field, and there is no quality science that backs up that claim. In fact, believe it or not, the bulk of good scientific evidence (not observational reports or anecdotes) show a favorable effect of video games.

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