Damn. I think that the last time that I went a week without updating was when I went to Alaska… and that was a vacation. This time, it was work, pure and simple. I’ve been so tired when I roll in that I spend no more than an hour or two awake; if I’m on call, I come home the next day, eat, and fall asleep until the next morning (usually around 14 hours of sleep). One more call until the end of this block, though, and then it’s on to a much easier rotation.

Lost in Translation is an excellent service. The first paragraph of my last post is translated thusly:

Odierno the day is day of the agreement. The spaces of the United States, doctors of the participants of the category of the code of the 4, anniversaries had been given you exceed them, those to the name of a program of the mechanism contained and to row on the rock their destiny during lucks of the years. Some were elated and scared others, but, beginning in the solved months, cross everything in the hospitals the country like the new doctors of whom the category. Congratulations with all of them.

There are two good Microsoft security patches out this week. The first is an Internet Explorer update that fixes a malicious code-running bug related to MIME headers. The second update warns users if they try to execute code signed by the two bogus VeriSign-issued digital certificates purporting to be from Microsoft. (I love how VeriSign attempts to downplay how completely their fault those two certificates are, by the way.)

(Interesting thing I noticed: the certificate revocation list that’s part of that second Microsoft update has three certificates in it. The first two are obvious — the two forged Microsoft ones. What’s the third, though? It has a serial number of 77E6 5A43 5993 5D5F 7A75 801A CDAD C222, with a revocation date of August 30, 2000. I’ve tried using VeriSign’s search page to no avail. If anyone can figure out how to find out who it belongs to, lemme know… I’m interested now!)

I caught part of an episode of Sesame Street in a patient’s room this week, and noticed that there was a hurricane theme running through it. Apparently, this was a big thing — the writers started this week with a hurricane destroying Big Bird’s nest and then weaved a highly-educational week out of the topic. Justine Henning, a teacher and writer for Slate, liked what she saw, and from the ten or so minutes that I caught with my patient, so did I.

Interesting new tool released by Userland… and even more interesting that there’s no corresponding tool that allows you to restore a Manila site from the XML files.

In the wake of all the recent school shootings (another one today!), a California school asked its students to come forward if any of their peers make threats against people. Kristina Tapia did just that — and got sued for slander and defamation of character. Her family has spent over $40,000 defending her, and the school district is claiming that it doesn’t owe her one bit of help. Pathetic.

The 2000-2001 influenza season appears to be over, and the CDC is reporting that it was a very mild one. As part of its surveilance, the CDC also subtyped all of the flu strains isolated from cultures, and it appears that the clear majority were represented in this year’s vaccine. This is a pretty big indication that, if you got vaccinated this year, you did yourself a lot of good.

Wired has a good story on Rock, the satellite that was launched by Sea Launch two weeks ago. Once its counterpart, Roll, is in orbit, subscribers will be able to tune into over 100 channels of digital satellite radio. I wonder if this will catch on; nobody’s ever subscribed to their radio before (well, except for public radio), and I’m not so sure people are ready to start.