How many ways can you prepare lobster? Bubba wasn’t there to help us with this cousin of the shrimp, so we decided to take charge. With the help of a generous wedding gift certificate to a cozy bed & breakfast in Provincetown, we spent 2 nights in the infamous town to sample the many styles of lobster preparation – with 2 types of lobster rolls, lobster Newberg, a lobster clambake, lobster arrabiata, lobster spring roll and even a lobster pot pie. The rest of the time was spent digesting, perusing the shops and boutiques, and people watching – pondering whether the drag queens were “he’s” or “she’s”. We also attempted a leisurely stroll to Race Point Beach, which turned out to be a 1.5 hour hike through the sizzling summer heat. Fortunately, that was pretty much the only “activity” on this trip, as the rest of our time was spent soaking in the sunshine, sipping lemonade, slurping creamy gelato, and basking in the hot tub. What else can you possibly ask for?

It was the last week of my intensive care rotation, and I’ve come to realize that most ICU patients just tend to deteriorate slowly over time. They start with a little hypertension and heart failure, then get some community-acquired pneumonia, goes into respiratory failure, gets mechanically ventilated, gets ventilator-associated pneumonia, becomes septic, goes into shock, then develop acute renal failure (or as we would write, a pt w/ HTN, CHF p/w CAP + resp failure, now on AC, c/b VAP, SIRS, and ARF). In ways, my aging desktop has become like my very own ICU patient. First, my data was corrupted, so I thought there were just some bad sectors. But soon, my motherboard started misbehaving, then my power supply was blown. I ultimately had to order new parts, including a new processor, motherboard, memory, video card, case, and power supply. Last week, it felt like a multi-transplant surgery as I reconnected the vital components. Finally, with a new Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 4600+ CPU, XFX nForce 590 SLI mobo, 2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000 DDR2 RAM, PNY GeForce 7900GS PCI-E video, and a pair of WD 250GB SATA HDs in RAID 0, powered by a CoolMax 500W PSU, and encased in a jet black Antec tower, my computer is about to be brought back to life. Say hello to Vader. 🙂

One of the big advantages of going to a big-name school is having big-name speakers at Commencement. This year, our Class Day speaker was Bill Clinton and Commencement speaker was Bill Gates! It didn’t matter much for me though since the first speech was mainly for undergrads and the latter for alumni. We ultimately attended only the diploma awarding ceremony in the morning, and the PhD hooding ceremony in the afternoon. In retrospect, it was all kind of anti-climactic as I had already gotten my actual diploma in the mail back in November when I got my degree. Nevertheless, the Commencement exercises gave me a day off from work, and a chance to don my crimson gown and stylish black tam (poofy hat). After 4-years of blood, sweat, and tears, I guess we could at least have the satisfaction of standing out among all the other graduates with their dreary black gowns. Anyway, pics from our wedding are finally here! Go to our wedding site for links and a slideshow!

Have you ever had one of those days when things are going bad and you’re like, “At least my computer didn’t crash”? Well, it just so happened that when I turned on my computer last Friday, it said “system not found”. For those of you not familiar with the lingo, it essentially translates to “you’re screwed”. And that was pretty much how my past week has been as I struggled to recover any data I can tease from my corrupted partition. It didn’t help that the partition was on a RAID stripe, so the actual data was spread over two physical drives. It also didn’t help that I’m rotating through the MICU, where our team census of nearly 20 patients takes on average 6-7 hours to round on each morning. Nevertheless, stuff needs to get done, so I’m about to format the drive and re-install everything from scratch – destroy and reincarnate, Shiva-style. Let’s keep our fingers crossed…