Encephalosponge » Soaking Up Life

So I went to check out the replay of last night’s phenomenal 4×100 Men’s relay only to find an annoyingly disturbing message: the NBC Olympics vidoes don’t “support” Linux. First of all, what kind of ludicrous claim is that? They’re freakin’ videos. If I’ve got the correct codecs installed, then I’ll [...]

According to Cory Doctorow’s latest article in the Guardian, copyright holders (like the RIAA, MPAA, etc.) are lobbying in governments here and abroad to force ISPs to pull the plug on customers who are “caught” transmitting or receiving illegal copyrighted material. That much isn’t necessarily a bad idea. After all, frequent violators may [...]

This is so incredibly frustrating. On one hand, I want to rub people’s faces in it. But on the other, I see a ton of people every day buying songs from iTunes, and they’re in the same boat. They just don’t think it could happen to them, or they don’t care because [...]

I received word today that my Stafford loan lender for school (Northstar’s Total Higher Education Loans, T.H.E.) is temporarily suspending new loans for next year. As I went to look at the benefits available through another popular med student lender, MEDLOANS (a Sallie Mae subsidiary), I quickly read about how Sallie Mae is likewise [...]

I just saw a commercial on TV for a movie featuring Ben Stein called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It appeared to be a documentary about religion and science. I had always assumed that Ben Stein was a fairly intelligent individual, but it appears that even if that is the case he made a [...]

My friend Kiyoshi made a site called AngryJournalist as a place for journalists to rant anonymously where others could read it. Someone has apparently ported this for physicians in training: AngryResident. It wasn’t by me, but no doubt only because I’ve got another 3 years before I get to worry about ranting

I need to renew my FAFSA for next year so that I am eligible for federal loans for school. I attempted to log in to the FAFSA website to do this, and I was greeted with the following message: “We have detected that you are using a non-certified browser.”
They proceeded to give me [...]

Hi. I know most people think that doctors make a lot of money and therefore don’t need to worry about the cost of their education. However, in reality I (like most med students) am likely going to graduate over $200,000 in debt. Your reaction may be “yeah but you’ll be making the [...]

As I check my Rush email this afternoon, I see I’ve gotten yet another reminder to sign up for the Integrate Chicago Conference. This is really irritating, so I decided to do a little search in Gmail to see how many times they’ve emailed me about this. So far I’ve received 10 email [...]

Dr: Hello and welcome to the University Urgent Care. We’ve recently been reorganized by Help Desk staff in order to serve you more effectively. What can we do for you today?
Bob: Well ever since I started taking my new cholesterol medication, I’ve been having a lot of muscle fatigue and tenderness [...]