ds_ssdiscussion | Member Posts

Saw this on the local PBS news tonight:

The Trump administration plans to move graduate-level nursing degrees out of their professional classification, changing how much money students in those programs can borrow.

Under the changes, graduate nursing students would be limited to $20,500 in federal loans each year...

$20,500/year is NOTHING for pursuing NP, CRNA, CNM degrees. This is not merely pure IDIOCY. It's INSANITY.

wtf is WRONG with these idiots? With an aging Boomer and Gen X populace, and with the existing doctor shortages - without NPs (Nurse Practitioners), CNMs (Certified Nurse Midwives), and CRNAs (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists), how will people be seen in Urgent Care? In clinics? Deliver babies? Get anesthesia and nerve blocks for surgeries?

The last three times I had to go to Urgent Care, I was seen by NPs, not MDs... Doctors paying back hundreds of thousands of $ in medical school loans DON'T GO into low paying specialties like family practice, general medical clinics, etc - because those don't pay well enough to pay back their school loans! Graduate level nurses fill those gaps!

So are we great again yet?? HA!

We get farther and farther from greatness in this unrelenting RACE TO THE BOTTOM led by Trump and ALL of his administration - they're a bunch of short sighted idiots making all of us less healthy and safe.

I'm so enraged I COULD SPIT. I only wish that I could direct my spit onto Trump and his administration!

verushka70

So I was doing some dS research and though I haven't seen it recently, the question of "how many seasons of due South were there?" often comes up (or its variation, "were there 3 or 4 seasons of due South" - to which the answer is, "Yes" because both are true, depending which country you're talking about).

Explaining requires the Wayback Machine, but here you go for the definitive answer: it was 3 in the US and 4 in Canada (and other countries), as evidenced by this old page from William and Elyse's due South Page.

Specifically, this section here answers that question: 3 in the US, and 4 elsewhere (like the UK and Australia, in addition to Canada).

That is why the dS episode transcripts that were cribbed from the (very) old (and long defunct) Victoria's (Not So) Secret Site has the collection of transcripts bundled into one big file per season (with only three seasons). Scroll all the way to the bottom of the dS transcripts site, and you'll see the three big S1, S2, and S3 transcripts of all episode of the three individual seasons).

verushka70

Regina Keim created and posted a new due South advent calendar over in the private Fraser/Kowalski Facebook group. Enjoy!

verushka70

Regina Keim posted a new 2025 due South advent calendar on the private F/K slash Facebook community. Enjoy!

ride_4ever

Thank you kindly to

small_hobbit for the postal mail!

small_hobbit is the first one to send me a card for my "milestone" birthday!

Current Mood: posty
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

mekare

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

ride_4ever

My first post of combining hockey fandom and dog fandom was so well received that I've decided to do another one:

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: sporty
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

mific

It's that time of year again! Mine are more like New Year cards as I'm slow to start making them.

If you're on my card list but your mailing address has changed, let me know - replies to this post are screened.

And if you're not on my seasonal cards list and would like to be, also drop me a reply below, with your preferred postal name and address. I send them all over the world, so no worries about that.

mific

I was up early yesterday and it was lovely, so I decided to take some pics. It's all very lush as we've had a fair bit of rain, mixed with sunny days as hot as midsummer. I think it's going to be a hot one, this year. I tried to include slightly more panoramic shots this time to give you some idea of my small garden which is almost all in pots and wheelibeds, as my rented unit has largely concrete and asphalt around it. Click on each pic for full size.

( pics under here )

ride_4ever

My local AHL team -- the Chicago Wolves -- has again this year as previously provided and served a Thanksgiving meal of turkey and other treats to the shelter dogs of Border Tails Rescue in Northbrook, Illinois, a no-kill shelter with a spay-and-neuter program that specializes in rescuing and rehoming stray dogs from Mexico (they also take in owner surrenders from Chicagoland).

Harleigh Garcia, founder of Border Tails Rescue, said “We are so excited to have the Wolves again this year to help us celebrate the holidays and bring something special to the dogs. It’s not ideal for these dogs to be spending their holidays in the shelter. We’d love for them to all find homes, but that’s just not possible right now, so it’s nice to bring them a little something special, and we love partnering with the Wolves.”

To learn more about Border Tails Rescue, click here. They have many volunteer opportunities and especially are looking for tourists returning from Mexico who are willing to be "flight volunteers" at no cost to themselves for escorting Mexican stray dogs to the U.S.

The picture below is Chicago Wolves Hockey players Nikita Pavlychev, Braden Doyle, Blake Biondi, Skyler Brind’Amour, Bryce Montgomery and Yanick Turcotte with some of the dogs they treated to this special Thanksgiving meal.

Chicago Wolves Hockey Team serves Thanksgiving Dinner to the dogs at Border Tails Rescue

Chicago Wolves Hockey Team serves Thanksgiving Dinner to the dogs at Border Tails Rescue

Current Mood: festive
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

mific

Ok, so, I have a few basic games/apps I use on my iPad while listening to audiobooks or podfics, if I'm not doing art. This is partly as usually I seem to need another activity while listening, and partly as a way to keep my aging brain ticking over in various ways. Note that most have annoying ads which I either manage to avoid eg. by leaving the app smartly when I've solved the puzzle, or I get rid of by them paying the annual fee. These are:

Row of iPad icons, same as the apps described below.

Real Jigsaw - for spatial skills, pattern recognition, and as I upload art and photos I like (with a suitable level of intricacy) as the jigsaws.
Happy Colour - just basic colouring-in but there's a certain degree of attention and concentration needed to find all the damn little pale green bits numbered 115, etc. I like the mandalas and use a few as icons, also the silhouettes which are complex and have no lines marking colour patches, so are more of a surprise to complete.
Mah Jong - which bears no reaction to actual Mah Jong (I used to play that with friends and have a nice old set in a wooden box). Again, for pattern recognition.
Solitaire and FreeCell - I don't play them competitively or to beat prior scores, just to relax. I guess they use a number of cognitive skills.
Crosswords - I do one a day, for fun and to maintain and sometimes extend my vocabulary and word-finding. I make this manageable (hello, nominal dysphasia!) by using another app Wordplays that suggests answers to clues, plus internet searches for definitions, Rhymezone.com for synonyms, and gMaps for place names.

One thing with the crossword app (these are basic crosswords, not cryptics which I've never been able to do) is that you get used to the crossword maker's habits and favourite words. They like short 3-letter ones to fill in gaps, and one I've had to learn is "ani", for the clue "cuckoo".

And today, on tumblr, there she is! Ani from my crosswords!

Stocky black bird with a heavy bill, perched in a leafy tree.

What are your favourite things like this, to relax and pass the time? I should mention that I don't play any of the major games out there. I got into a Civilisation-like worldbuilding one for a while back in my thirties and became obsessed with it until it consumed a lot of my time. I've been kind of nervous about trying any since, even though I'm sure I'd love a lot of the visuals. Plus I have no interest in adding more layers of tech complexity to my life, like a high-powered gaming computer.

mific

The latest xkcd made me cry (in a good way). For some reason it was the Northern lights pic that did it.

verushka70

Per The Verge, The original Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III games are now available under the MIT CC license.

I have such fond memories of the interactive fiction game Zork - or rather its predecessor, Adventure. And now you can see exactly how you got "eaten by a grue!" or stuck in "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike..." if you took a wrong turn somewhere in the game, heh!
( Playing Zork's predecessor, Adventure, with my sister on my brother's mainframe terminal decades ago )
We LOVED that game! I didn't know what Interactive Fiction or Text-based Adventure games were, at the time - I was just a kid. I just knew Adventure was super fun to play, even though it was also difficult for us. I remember us eventually drawing maps as we explored the underground cave system that you got to by going through the locked grate in the streambed, using the keys you got from the small brick building in the forest, where you begin the game.
( what I learned from Adventure/Zork, and the downside of vivid visual imagination )

Anyway - I'm so glad other people can legally see it now. (Zork I/II/III and many of their predecessors and imitators been available for years, though unofficially and in that gray area of "it's not really legal but no one is pursuing anyone who ports it to whatever OS"; more than 25 years ago, I installed an emulator on my Linux computer just so I could play Zork/Adventure again.) Now people can study the code... or just download the game and play it.

(I am not a programmer but I just might study the code myself - I took some basic programming classes as a high schooler - good lord, the punch cards! - and as a kid, taught myself BASIC so I could write stupid little programs on my Commodore 128 computer that my brother bought me and my little sister for Christmas one year. Why, Yes: I am geeky - and kinda proud of it, lol!)

ETA: You can also play Adventure/Colossal Cave Adventure online in a browser here! Yay!

ride_4ever

Ever since Marjorie Taylor Greene "informed" us that California wildfires were being caused by "Jewish Space Lasers" I have been obsessed with making a mockery of her. (Hey, I'm Jewish, and if I had control of some space lasers I would NOT be using them to set California on fire.)

Now I see that she is resigning from Congress after The Orange One called her "wacky"...which is the first time I've ever agreed with something he said.

At this juncture I would like to show what I have created with my Refrigerator Magnet "What Will Marjorie Taylor Green Say Next" Conspiracy Kit.

Marjorie Taylor Greene refrigerator magnet

Bonus Image:

Current Mood: mocking
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

ride_4ever

Note: if you don't get sound with this video, check for doing "unmute" in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.

This link goes to Facebook: What Would the Founding Fathers Say about Trump

Current Mood: facepalm
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan