Forum posts

I solved the crashing problem by launching the game through the Steam menu instead of using the desktop shortcut.

I don't agree that doctors have to be blunt to get the message across. This is an extremely sensitive matter, needless to say. So I approach the subject with the utmost sensitivity.

However, even with that approach, some people get turned off by it. The following is my typical talk to a patient who I want to eat healthier:

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"I am concerned about his weight. He is a bit too heavy for his height, according to the growth chart."

"And I am worried about him because I know that kids who weigh too much have a much higher chance of getting diabetes in the future, and I don't want him to get diabetes ever."

"Now, I don't want him to lose weight rapidly. It's very dangerous for a growing child to lose weight in a short amount of time."

"Instead, I want him to maintain his weight and just keep on growing taller. This way, he can grow into his height."

"I want him to have three meals a day, with a snack in between meals. It's very important for him not to skip breakfast. And I don't want him eating any less. In fact, skipping meals and eating less is the worst way to have a healthful diet. Instead, I want him to eat until he's full, regardless of how much he eats. However, he has to consume healthful foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and lean meats."

"And instead of drinking soft drinks and juice, I want him to drink only water and milk. I am not limiting the amount of food or drinks, but only asking him to change the type of food that he takes in."

"I am worried about him getting diabetes because I spend many occasions giving parents the bad news when their sons get diagnosed with diabetes for the first time. I always feel terrible, because it's an incurable condition. Once you have diabetes, you're going to have it for the rest of your life."

And I turn to the child:

"Do you know what diabetes is?"

Usually the kid shakes his head.

"Well, it's when your blood sugar becomes too high. And you need to get shots everyday when you have diabetes. Do you like to get shots everyday?"

Usually, unless the kid is extremely disturbed, the answer is nay.

"That's why I don't want you to get diabetes, ever. Because I hate seeing kids getting shots."

From a news post on the internet:

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Hefty complaint leveled against doc
BY MAKI BECKER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

No one likes to be told they're fat.
But a New Hampshire woman who was sternly lectured by her doctor about being obese has taken her hurt feelings to a new level - filing an official complaint against him with state health authorities.

The New Hampshire case, while rare, highlights an increasing problem in the fight against obesity - how does a doctor sensitively tell a patient that he or she is overweight?

The patient - whose name was not released - was upset after Dr. Terry Bennett, a Harvard-educated family practitioner in Rochester, N.H., told her she was obese and her weight was contributing to her diabetes and other health problems.

Bennett also told the 5-foot-7, 250-pound woman that she was statistically likely to outlive her also-obese husband and that she would have a hard time finding a new man as a fat woman. "I talked to an obese patient, told her the truth, she was offended," Bennett told NBC's "Today" show yesterday.

Sandy Schaffer, the New York chapter chairwoman of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, said Bennett's tactics appear to have been unnecessarily hurtful and possibly counterproductive.

"What psychology textbook says that humiliation can be motivating?" she asked.

Dr. Richard Sardovsky, associate professor of family practice at SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, said doctors "are under increasing pressure to do more to encourage patients to lose weight." Obesity, he said, "is a serious problem among Americans. But some [doctors] can go a little too far about it."

Dr. Darwin Deen, professor of family and social medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, teaches his medical students that it's a doctor's duty to address obesity. "You can't let them think it's okay and we won't talk about it," he tells his students. "It's just like smoking."

Deen, who co-authored "Nutrition for Life," suggested that doctors avoid discussing weight loss and focus instead on getting patients to eat better and exercise.

The following is a discussion triggered by the complaint filed by a woman against her doctor because he was asking her to lose weight.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/youngmd/32934.html

And if this doesn't bring a smile to your face, you must have been attacked by a poison headcrab already.

Check your neurotoxin level!

P.S. It's a dance video for the characters from WoW. It has the power to cure any headaches.

Wouldn't you pay to have your face digitized as a character for Half-Life 3? I would love that. It would be so 1337.

Perhaps my friend who will be working for Valve can grant me that wish? We'll see. He has to get hired first.

I had lunch with a friend who's a game designer yesterday, and he just recently quit his job. He's moving to Seattle, looking for a new job with either the XBox division at Microsoft or with Valve.

I kinda wish that he join Valve.

That's one of the major stages in anyone's life--moving to college.

The other ones being marriage, birth of a child, and death.

I just got HL1 through Steam recently, and I have noticed that when I tried loading the last saved game, nothing happens. If I click on "Load" again and try loading it, the game would crash to Desktop.

When I start the game again, the saved game would load properly. Usually it loads after a few tries.

Does anyone else have the same problem? I can't find a solution on Google. Everything on the search result are regarding Half-Life 2.

What's the meaning of your avatar, Unbreakable? "Unbreakable Biohazard"--is that referring to some really tough shit?

We Americans have a name for that--"Lincoln Logs".

Scabies and head lice certainly defecate. I've seen it myself. It's one of the major reason why the itching lasts for months after the scabies parasites are dead--because the human skin is allergic to the scabies fecal matters.

Mosquitoes shit too, but it's probably too small to be detected without a magnifying glass.

Everything shits!

But what about fecal matter? When was the last time you saw a headcrab shit? There are some places where they're all over, but do they ever shit?

I don't think they're potty-trained.

Phone them? But how? I don't have my local animal control telephone number memorized.

I would need the internet to look up their telephone number.

How would you do it in the car? I don't have internet access in my car.

If you're driving on the road and saw a stray dog wandering about in the middle of the street, what would you do?

I mean, you have no idea who the owner is, and you have no idea where the dog came from. Where would you take the dog if you took him off the street?

You're already late for work. But there were several cars whizzing by, nearly missing the dog on several occasions.

I drove away...

I played Riven before and man, I found it dull as a muthafooker.

I felt the same. It was my one and only venture out of the FPS genre. Riven almost made me lose my sanity. It's so profoundly slow and boring.

I'd rather watch "Teletubbies" than play Riven.

Gong Li is going to be in the Spielberg film "Memoir of a Geisha".

She's such a babe.

The new version of the video isn't out yet. It's under revision.

I can't imagine how Paul can improve on the last version, but then again I am not an artist.

I noticed that gamers in general have a thing for Asian girls (myself included, of course).

I thought you were gay Satchmo

I can only wish I have that good of a taste in fashion.

Yeah, I really miss the rolling skull gibs in HL1.

I just love to lob a grenade in a small room full of enemies and watch the carnage afterwards. In one of my maps, I frequently find a skull in the bathroom sink after a grenade attack.

Why didn't valve put that in the settings?

Because, I imagine, that setting would slow down some machines quite a bit. Just imagine the amount of calculation it requires to figure out collision with more than one phys objects.

I am impressed that someone came up with the idea of the ragdoll in the first place. It's a great idea, and it's fairly well implemented.

I could hit a dead corpse with my crowbar all day!

Look at GMan drool!

I've never played HL, but I did make a few maps for it. Maybe eventually I'll get around to play it, when I am not so busy working anymore (and before the honeymoon).

August looks promising...

Thanks all. I just uploaded more photos into the album, in case you're interested.

Here is the photo album.

Have you ever wondered about the other things in HL2? Like where does Father Grigori eat? Does he actually feast on zombie meat? I didn't run into any supermarket in Ravenholm. In fact, nothing looked very fresh in Ravenholm, except perhaps fresh headcrab blood.

I believe 430W is plenty for most builders. I have an Antec 430W myself, and it serves me well (including the Radeon 9800 Pro).

If you want more building advice, you can also head over to www.techspot.com

Good luck.

Half way through a date, I realized that I've forgotten the name of my date. So I had to refer to her using pronouns only. It's quite awkward.

Thanks guys. The honeymoon will be in Northern Italy, but it won't happen until September, when the peak tourist season has ended.

If you're curious, you can visit my blog to find out what sorts of mishaps occurred at the wedding.

I got married this weekend. In case you're curious, here is a photo from the wedding.

I am busy writing thank-you cards today.

I envy the LAN party. I've never been to one.

does he happen to turn in to a hideous mutant monster

No, he's just a psychiatrist who abuses his physician-patient confidentiality.

jaardsi, you look like Dr. Crane from the new Batman movie.

That resemblance is a bit uncanny and unsettling.

Man Rabid, why do you have electrician's tape and a big-ass flashlight on your desk? I didn't think Colorado resembles the world of Doom 3.

Thanks. We're pretty busy right now getting things ready. We're mostly done though.

I can't wait until after the wedding. I can then put some time in deathmatches without feeling guilty that i am not spending more time with the wedding planning.

Called the florist to confirm their deilvery for my wedding on Saturday.

The most recent picture of my desk in California.

I am a clean freak, so it's always tidy.

The fog is nice too. But the light beam doesn't correlate with the light intensity from the outside. In the train station, the light beam were generated by this bright morning sunlight. There is no such light here, with the exception of moonlight.

Kudos to you

Thanks. Things like that do ruin my day though. Maybe that's why I try to escape reality by playing Half-Life 2 and other games when I get home.

Gordon has a false sense of free will, just like the player in the game. The single player level is really designed so that there is an anticipated route of progress, but the large space with 3D skybox gives us the sense that anything is possible.

Perhaps this reflects some truth in real life. We're given the sense that in a free country (Europe, Australia, and the U.S.), we can do whatever we feel like doing. But most of us fall into the predictable track to go to school, get a diploma, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, get old, and die.

Not much variations there, unless we're willing to live in a commune and committ mass suicide at the end.

People just like to post outrageous avatars to incite bad reactions from others. Don't fall into this trap.

Sometimes I say ridiculous things just to set people off.

Homeless people should be fed into a giant oven to provide useful fuels for the rest of us.

I just had the most crazy morning. The plaster ceiling in my apartment is falling down, one huge chunk at a time.

When I got to work, I had to call a father to tell him that his daughter has a brain tumor. An hour later, a little boy had a seizure right in front of me in the office. I sent him to the hospital.

No, I never mention any names. And in fact, no one online knows my real name either. So I take my patients' prviacy very seriously. I know the law--my brother is an attorney.

This is my current desktop: http://www.snarkpit.net/pits/satchmo/Misc/Desktop.jpg

It's squeaky clean, because I hate desktops littered with icons.

I just saw a kid whose screams sound exactly like the burning zombies in HL2 (you know, they howl with a crescendo pitch as they stumble around with their bodies aflame before dying).

I never mention this to the parents, of course. No parents wish their kid growing up to be zombies.

I sit on public toilets all the time. I don't like it, but I can't really crap any other way. I cover the seat with toilet paper first, of course.

Standing carries the risk of falling in, and that's just too risky for me. I've heard horror stories of people falling into toilets.

...and there is a button/handle somewhere on the wall to flush. I grew up in Taiwan, and I used that type of toilet when I was little.

In my opnion, it's a better design for public bathrooms. In private homes, the toilets are same as in the Western world. This way, you don't have to worry about getting other people's germs when you sit on public toilet seats.

And how could I forget to mention Rabid. He's always around to test my beta maps and give helpful suggestions. He even hosts one of my maps for me.

...not to mention that he's such a great mapper.

No, it wasn't black. But it's more flesh-colored with redness all around it. It protrudes from the foreskin and it's about 7 mm in diameter.

I finally got a hold of the urologist and he'll be seen this afternoon. It's probably a pyogenic granuloma--a relatively benign condition.