Jo' Daddy

While I'm on a roll posting a blog-a-day, we took some photos after our video session testing the new Quantum jib, so I'll put some up here.  These are absolutely huge files (RAW files) and the originals are roughly 24 mb each!  There's a cruise liner in the background of one of them-- note the water recreation park on the back of this thing.  Other photos are with Zack and Christa, crew from a 130 ft motor yacht, Magic, who took a break from the chores on that boat to sail with us on Memorial Day.

J24 sailing in Charleston Harbor

Quick video- well, maybe not so quick... at 1.4 gb and 13+ minutes... it's boring, but it's just my sweetie and I goofing around in the harbor.  You can hear music in the background- it sounds way better on the boat, and the video quality isn't the greatest, but for a $200 camera-- not bad!  Besides drinking a beer, we're actually testing a new jib to see how well tuned it is with respect to the jib leads.  It turns out, that in the usual positions, it's perfect.  All telltales break evenly in the conditions typical of the harbor, and at the position the lead car was at... Hopefully, we won't have a repeat of our Raceweek fiasco (the old jib was a bit blown out of shape), and will be able to point better when the wind pipes up and we're forced to use the "blade" to keep the boat flat.

Raymundo

What we are doing today...

Quite a bit has happened since the last blog entry a little over a year ago.  I can't remember how many times I've sat down following a day at work in utter frustration, tempted to write about the differences between here and there, only to delete it before hitting the "publish post" button below.  I've heard too many stories of folks losing their jobs because they open up in a blog or on Facebook, not realizing the public nature of those venues for venting similar frustrations.  I don't like to intentionally hurt peoples' feelings, although I'm well aware that I do it all the time unknowingly.  That's one thing I know well about myself-- I don't know myself very well, and tend to vocalize my opionions without thinking first... you know, open mouth, insert foot... do it all the time.  At some point, however, I think I must have something to give back to my community.  This thought haunts me here more than ever, and I think that's because I have no outlet for that.  I go to work as a staff pharmacist (although I was hired as a clinical pharmacist) in a VA hospital that barely knows what a pharmacist is supposed to do.  The vast majority of calls I take are either from nurses (where is it, or why won't this drug scan in my barcode scanner) or physicians asking how to enter an order into the computer, because they can't find it.  In all 16 years of my career, I've never been asked so many of the mundane questions and not being asked, is this the right drug for this patient (answer that one however you'd like, but it still doesn't get asked frequently enough).  Back in Tucson, I had attending physicians who'd readily admit when they didn't know something, and they'd come find me or one of the other pharmacists and ask if we'd ever seen this or that, or how do you dose this and monitor it.  The shift in thinking (and patient, house-staff, nurse and pharmacist) relationship is a completely different ball of wax over here, but I'm beginning to realize that the Tucson VA is one of those one-in-a-million hospitals that began that way, and all of the staff (physicians, nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists...) all have higher expectations from the pharmacists there- they depend on them to make their jobs easier and ultimately the patient safer from harm due to drug misuse from a variety of angles.  One thing is for sure- the culture here is pervasive in the workplace, and there are a lot of people in the deep south who spend a lot of time socializing and taking opportunities away from work, in a manner that just doesn't agree with my own work ethic.  I'm always shocked when a pharmacist calls in sick to work, but they looked fine the day before and the day after they return.  There haven't been many pharmacists whom I've worked with in the past who needed to take a "mental health" day off from work, because they knew that as part of a team, patient outcomes were better when they showed up each day, and on time.  That also comes under the heading of being a professional and taking your work seriously.

Heavy stuff.  I don't want to belabor it further, we're here to sail!  This week, however, I've found out that for the next 6 weeks, I'm going to be scheduled to work late enough on all but one Wednesday night, so that I won't be able to make the Wednesday night CORA (http://www.charlestonoceanracing.org/) beer can races.  They begin at 6 pm, and we have to be at the boat no later than 4:30 to get her ready to sail in time to make the first warning horn for our race sequence.  So much for racing-- crap!  At least we get to sail on weekends.  If there's a race, we'll be there, if not, we'll just cruise around the harbor or head out into the ocean a little ways.  My upcoming vacation to the BVI's in Tortola almost got wiped out, because there weren't enough staff around to fill in the last two days of our trip... I posted enough about that on Facebook, so I won't repeat it here, but JEEZ, it's not like I didn't talk about it with the boss and make plans!

Here's a nice photo that we didn't see too much of in Tucson, fo' sho'.  This is Brad Van Liew storming into Charleston Harbor following stage 4 of the Velux 5 Oceans singlehanded race.  This guy stomped everybody in all five legs of the race-- might have something to do with that million-dollar tungsten keel!