0dds & Ends for National Medical Transcriptionist Week

(Bet you didn't know this is National Medical Transcriptionist Week  . God bless 'em.)

1
My favorite coffees, in descending order, are Citavo (which I had in Florida near Daytona), Douwe Egberts (which used to be served by Burger King and was the only reason I went there, but no longer do), and MJB (ground coffee in a can that I just found out is carried by Big Lots, but not near me, and MAY be carried by Walmart, but I guess I'll never get to know that for sure. Anyone shop at Walmart or know where else to buy MJB?.)[1]

I just tried Marathon gas station coffee for the first time; it comes in a cup branded "Sunrise Convenience Stores." It's good. May just be a replacement for Burger King, but there are no Marathon stations on my normal routes. I've emailed Marathon, no reply yet; I guess they're busy cleaning up a spill or something.

(Sunrise Convenience Stores has a Facebook page , but no way to email them or write on their wall; I presume they simply wanted to secure the spot. )

2
I was raised a Baptist. There were only three general categories of art representing Jesus - the ministering Jesus prior to his death, the crucified Christ and the risen Lord. (We often refer to Jesus differently in these contexts; I didn't realize that until I typed this sentence, it just naturally came out that way.)

They look like this:



Fundamentalist Baptists like myself are primarily exposed to the first and last images of Jesus and see only the the crucified Christ around Easter. We’re told that crucifixes are bad because we believe in a risen Jesus; a Baptist minister's wife went so far as to tell me Catholics believe Jesus is dead.

Today [05-20-2012] I discovered something new, the "Fontanini cross," a combination of the two...

I think this is Marco Fontanini ; it's a very nice integration of two sensibilities, each somewhat inadequate by itself, but together something different and more satisfying. (Not that iconography needs to satisfy me, of course, but it does help and there's no harm that it does.)

This is no small issue even among Catholics. I heard a caller on a Catholic talk show say her priest had removed the crucifix from the alter, for the same reason I'd been told as a boy. I'd wager that caller's priest was struggling with his Catholicism and was more comfortable with a Protestant perspective on that point.

More on how I found this cross later.

3
The most easily misunderstood profession is writing, because sometimes you are judged without being read or fully understood. Reading is work. It's one thing to listen to a song, look at a painting, a sculpture, a TV show or a movie. It's something different to read.

Shelley once wrote "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." I'm not so sure we aren't just journaling in the asylum.

4
Hey Microsoft, stop moving %&#@ around!

Seriously. Design 101: Don't move %&#@ around when the user resizes a window, and don't change menu settings without a %&#@ good reason.

I've been using the Microsoft Office ribbon interface since it was introduced and STILL can't remember where %&#@ stuff is that I only use once a week or month or so, like how to apply a color to a sender in Outlook. Right click? Nope. Organize? Not there anymore. Help. Oh, that's right, it's under Conditional Formatting, like in Excel. Sure, THAT's where I'd put an email filter.

That's like putting brain surgeons and proctologists in the same hospital wing because both ends are attached to the same patient.

[1]
Coffee I don’t like: Seattle's Best, Starbuck's, and McDonald's. I'll drink it, but I don't enjoy it. I'd rather brew my own store-brand at home.

Started: 2012-05-18