April 25th, 2007 by matt
As both of my readers have no doubt noticed, I haven’t been very active online lately. Life ebbs and flows and it’s been ebbing more than flowing for some things of late.
Tonight my wonderful wife gave me a gift - an hour and a half to be all by myself at home (while it was still light outside!). I can stay up late - which I’ve been doing too much of lately - and be by myself, but my focus and energy are usually diminished.
Tonight my wife took the kids to our usual Wednesday night activities at the nursing home and I stayed home. I sat down at my desk and did one thing. It did involve my computer but just as a note-taking / info organization tool as I thought through and planned for a group discussion I’m going to lead on Saturday.
Refreshing doesn’t begin to describe the way I felt after being able to focus in a quiet, well-lit area without any other distractions.
One hour. One thing. No distractions.
It was like rain on a parched ground. I finished my thoughtful preparations. I got a sense of accomplishment. I relaxed.
We fill up our spare time and space thought cycles with so many extras that continually keep us distracted (see Twitter, RSS, tv, etc.) Multitasking can be valuable, but I’ve realized that you need to be able to have a time to do just one thing.
If you haven’t spent an hour doing one thing lately, give it a try.
February 24th, 2006 by Matt
I haven’t posted at all this week – I’ve had several things going on. Lots at work, lots at home, been very tired. Now I am able to start writing again – yay!
I want to take the opportunity now to give a shout out to my sister, Allison, a very prolific blogger and purveyor of unique insights on the world of pet hospitals, California, and all things twenty–something. Check out her blog, and notice the picture of our dad, who gave us the wonderful gift of abnormalcy. We love you, dad!
February 15th, 2006 by Matt
This past Sunday morning I woke up and couldn’t open my eyes. I also couldn’t go back to sleep, so this was a problem I had to deal with. I knew, after finally prying my eyelids open and feeling the burning in my left eye, that I had pink eye.
I went to a local emergent care place (I will trust them to treat anything that I already know I have, but not to diagnose anything new) and was rewarded with some nice eye drops. When the nurse was taking my vitals, she ran this tube-like device over my forehead and then wrote something down on her chart. I asked her what she did, and she told me she just took my temperature with that device, which measures heat emitted from the temporal artery in your forehead. I was amazed, especially since the device only contacted my forehead for about 1 second.
This is the first I had ever experienced or heard of such a device, but it turns out you can get one on Amazon
for fifty bucks!
I wondered how accurate this is, but thought that this could be revolutionary for taking a child’s temperature – no more sitting on the couch for 5+ minutes with a glass tube shoved under your tongue, or even the 30 seconds or so for the digital version of the glass tube under the tongue. It turns out that it is considered at least more accurate than ear thermometers.
A recent BusinessWeek article highlights the design efforts that are currently focused on this narrow but obviously near-ubiquitous vertical product market. The article does not mention the device that I experienced, but shows that thermometer design can be a serious and lucrative business.
Technorati Tags: design, thermometer, medicine