Hazmat suit and just goofin

I have a class in emergency preparedness. Now, I know what you are thinking, why would a nurse need to have a class in emergency preparedness. (unless you are the weird person out there that thinks that we have a single course to cover just how to work in the ER) And... I will tell you what our emergency preparedness class involves. Basically it is a review of how to find information on several different types of neurological, chemical, and biological agents that could be used in a terrorism attack and have a great potential to infect or kill lots of people if they were to come to a hospital or something like that.

However, that is just the nursing focus of the course, it also covers things like the incident command system (ICS for short) and tells us how to properly handle hazardous situations or other such problems.

Either way, the class had a quasi-field trip where we showed how to identify substances that could be potentially harmful and we were shown the hazmat truck and a lot of other fun stuff like HAZMAT SUITS!!! And yes, I have pictures :)

And for whatever reason, I could not upload the other one, but this one is a pretty good picture of what the suit looks like although you miss the fact that I am carrying a 70 pound tank of oxygen while inside that suit.

This last picture is just for shits and giggles. It was taken by me the night that we had tequila bacon and costume night. PATRON!!!

Aight, well, that is all for now. I will post again when I have some interesting ways to cook faster and better.

Because I'm a nerd

I know what you are thinking, "David you can't be a nerd, you are such a cool male nurse!"

Okay, so you weren't thinking that, but I was.

Anyways, I find myself to be quite nerdy and I am very happy with myself. I learned that through my application of my knowledge of physics, chemistry, and psychology, I have been very successful with my endeavors and I achieve my goals very easily. I will be blogging more about why and how you too can be successful with the small things in life through the simple application of college level chemistry, physics, and psychology. (However, I must make the disclaimer that these will not be the only subjects that will be covered in these little diatribes)

But, the reason that I bring this all up was my twitter feed, which seems to be most of my inspiration for writing a new blog entry. I had tweeted to a friend that I intended to convert Mac users to PC users by convincing them that there is a flight simulator in Excel. Now I know what you are thinking, there can't be a flight simulator in an "Office" suite, that would be riduculous and who would pay for there to be gaming programs in a program designed for work. However, funny enough there is a flight simulator in the '97 version of Microsoft Excel. A picture of just how crappy the game was is displayed below:

Oddly enough, this wasn't the only "Easter Egg" in the '97 office suite. There was also a pinball game in the Microsoft word which looks like this:

I have probably now successfully proven to you that I am a nerd. And now with that street cred, I will be more than willing to impart some of my crazy knowledge that will do nothing but drive my friends away in horror because the just think I am a dumb jock. So, just an idea of what to expect, I will impart knowledge of how cook things faster, better, and tastier. I will also impart knowledge or how to move heavy objects without breaking bones, ligament, tendons, or tearing muscles (but I will also share how to deal with those too) And lastly, I will tell you random facts about my world as I have come to be familiar with it.

I'm an idiot

Now, I have never said that I was the most intelligent person, but I do know a couple things about computers and really enjoy the amount of wealth that the internet has brought to my fingertips. However, I am still living like our social sites have not evolved to match the average users knowledge of technology. For example, a few years ago, when you wanted a picture off a website, you could not just simply click on the picture and select "Save picture as," and then you would have the picture on your hard drive. Similarly, not but a couple years ago, you could not just simply click the "download" button, you had to actually view the source code and then find the actual picture's URL and then open that URL and then download the picture from that source.

So, here's the part were I became an idiot. I am on my laptop at the moment, which means that I do not have the vast amount of storage and pictures that I have on my desktop at home and I wanted to update my blog and put a profile picture on this blog. So, I went to Facebook to take my profile picture from one that I have uploaded before. However, I forgot that they have placed a convenient download button on every picture on the new Facebook layout, so I went into my hacker mode and started to look through the page source (which btw, they have really beefed up the entire Facebook site, so those of you who complain about how they keep changing Facebook, you have no idea how much it has changed) to find my picture from the source and download it from there.

All in all, I felt really accomplished until I went back to Facebook and realized that I am a complete idiot for working way too hard for a picture when I just needed to click on one convenient button...

One good reason you should date a nurse

They listen to you...

And not to just what you have to say, they listen to your heart rate, your lung sounds, the sounds your stomach makes, and every single small complaint that you make about your health. True story: I was listening to my girlfriends heart while we were just relaxing and picked up on the fact that she had an irregular heartbeat. She went to the doctor's office and sure enough, she had sinus arrhythmias.

Just so you know what that is, here is a picture of a regular heartbeat that was taken on a EKG:


















And here is a picture of a sinus arrhythmia:

So, the medical part of this blog is about to become apparent. It is not easy to spot these things because they are not something that most people without a sense of rhythm can notice unless the patient is plugged up to a monitor (which is me just pointing out that I'm awesome...lol). But the irregular heartbeat is problematic and can lead to a multitude of problems such as clots, atrial flutters, or even atrial fibrillation if they go unnoticed or undiagnosed.

Basically...

Bailey, you owe me one...

People like this drive me crazy!

Okay, first things first. I am a nursing student (which equates to being very clean cut and well groomed) and one of the girls in my clinical group is covered in tattoos, many of which are in poor taste, and has gigantic ear gauging's that can be seen from across and auditorium. Secondly, I would like to say that I don't really want to ever get a tattoo, my brother got one the summer he turned 18 (it was just the word, "sublime" tattooed across his spine) and not but a year later, he was regretting his decision.
With those ideas in mind, it would be no surprise how the following conversation would go...

S: "Did you see my new tattoo on facebook?"
Me: "No, I haven't been facebook in a while."
S: "Oh well, here it is (showing me a tattoo of a spider on her shoulder)"
"My tattoo artist did a great job of covering up my last tattoo which I hate."
Me: "I don't think I will ever get a tattoo."
S: "Oh, I love every single tattoo I have ever gotten."
Me: "..."

Okay, this girl really annoys me and believes that she is better than everyone else in the program, so it really irked me when she told me that she loved every tattoo that she had ever gotten and then had one covered up because she hated it...

Well, that is the end of that rant. Now back to business as usual.

Boogity Boogity Boo! I'm back you guys!

So, I have already begun the search for the next box, the next project, and the next thing to pour my time into. I was able to find three boxes that I really really like. All of them are hard wood and absolutely beautiful boxes just by themselves. I figure that if I do not use the spare boxes for guitars, I'm sure that they would double as jewelry boxes and could be given out to relatives and friends and whatnot.

This first box has an absolutely wonderful color and is a very good size, considering that is a a bit longer than the previous one and is a little wider as well. It could be well suited to be a cigar box guitar that has six strings considering its size. However, it would still have to be reinforced because the wood is cheap, and it would still have a higher pitched twang because it cannot resonate the lower strings really well. Even still, I will consider it to be a very good choice for a guitar box

The only issue that I have with the Oliva is this little crack that is seen on the lower right corner on the front of the box. It would be a very easy fix, just take a tooth pick, lather it in wood glue, dip it in the cracks, and then clamp the sucker for a day. That would easily solve the problem, so it is not that big of a deal actually.

The next choice would be a Rocky Patel box that also has a pretty good color. But, I have a couple big issues with this box. First off, I don't like the fact that the top interior is lined with felt. (It makes it very difficult to glue the neck to the box and get a good seal) Secondly, I don't like how square the box is, it is a large box, but too square for my liking. So, it is my last choice actually, but placed secondly in this blog.

It really is quite a plain box, but I still love the emblem on the inside. (I guess that is why I picked it up?)

And lastly, I found another Rocky Patel. This one is titled the 1961 and has a wonderful pendant on the side that I really love. But, once again, it is a square box, has a felt lining on the inside, and has a horrible tilt from the top of the box to the sides. It would make an excellent jewelry box because it has absolutely wonderful hinges even if the wood was split on one of them (shown later) and the felt lining is really well done. Given the choice, I would pick the first one, but I may choose another just to give myself a challenge. And on a more musical tone the last two would have a much better bass sound to them just because they are a deeper and wider box.

I would probably have to scrape away that nice felt lining to get everything to fit nicely and like I want it to. I must take this into consideration the next time I go spend two dollars on a box.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.

A new month, a new post

So, I have been busy. I have not updated the blog in a while. And I may update this sucker a lot more now that I have a little more time, a hobby, and a very good reason to update it. The reason you ask? My desire to create more cigar box guitars. I have successfully created two of them. The second one being a whole lot better than the first and also the one that I am going to post pictures of. It took a total of 25 man hours to complete this project and I have learned a ton from the experience.

First off, I learn that without the proper tools, any project is nearly impossible. A couple things that I would recommend and will be purchasing to complete my next project: A FRET SAW!!! (I had to cut every fret hole by hand with a kitchen knife on three different fretboards because I messed up too much and wound up actually making a mini miter block to help), a fret hammer, dremel tool (mine broke during the project), planing tool, and a hole saw. But most importantly, get a carpenter's square (preferably one that you can clamp to the neck or body, etc..)

Second, I learned that filing off the burs on metal makes the metal really freaking hot (kinda self explanatory really, but even after several years of college experience the concept eludes me) And that you have to be really careful with the filing cause you don't want to accidentally file the fretboard or neck of the guitar. Just be careful in general with filing unless you want torn up hands and fingers. (I do have rather large hands, so maybe it was just me.)

And lastly, stain, staining took up most of my time. Mostly because I have not performed a whole lot of staining procedures before this project. I had to teach myself a lot of the procedures like not using paper towels because they leave lint, don't use new rags (oxymoron, but you know what I mean), and let the layers of stain set in between soaks. Although, it makes the whole procedure go a lot faster if you plan to perform some other acts of building (i.e. sanding, cutting other boards, etc...)

But that is it. On the next posts I will put pictures of the process and other fun stuff like that for Mark III.