Month: May 2008

In which I tell you everything

Latina mortua lingua est,
Ut mortua potest esse:
Necavit omnes Romanos,
Atque necat me!		 (Latin is a dead language,
Dead as it can be:
It killed off all the Romans,
And now it’s killing me!)

The rumors of my death, unfortunately, have not been so greatly exaggerated as one could have wished. As you may recall, I was offered a job about a year ago to teach Latin at a classical school in Concord, North Carolina. This was very odd because, well, several reasons:

  • Though I love teaching, I had never taught in a classroom setting, nor had I been trained in any way to do so.
  • Though I had decided I wanted to try teaching, Latin was the furthest thing from my mind. I had applied to teach English.
  • Of all the positions to offer me, Latin was the least likely. I like languages, but I had never studied any with the diligence that produces proficiency. In other words, I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Nevertheless, the school and I endeavored upon a noble experiment, based in necessity: I needed a job, and I was interested in teaching. They needed a Latin teacher, and they were willing to try me, apparently because I sounded pretty good on paper.

About a month ago, I learned with the finality that the experiment was to be considered a failure. Contracts at our school are offered on an annual basis with no guarantee as to future years. I was not to be offered a new one. Continue reading “In which I tell you everything”

Google Health

This afternoon I was reading an article about yet another expasion of the google universe: Google Health. According to the terms of service, google states that they are not under obligation to follow HIPPA regulations like other healthcare facilities since they are not considered a ‘covered entity.’ In plain English this means that whatever you share can be accessed by third parties because it’s up to you what info you put up. Currently, the service does not have advertising, but I see this as shaky at best as more and more people use the app. and companies want to target specific groups of illnesses. This bit from the terms of service is of particular note:

Google may make third-party services available through Google Health. In order to use a specific service, you may choose to allow the third-party service provider to retrieve, provide, and/or modify health and other information in your account or otherwise share your information with the service provider. Once you enable a specific third-party service provider to access your account, the service provider may continue to access your account until you affirmatively disable access. Third-party service providers include both health care providers and other entities. It is your sole responsibility to review and approve each such third-party service before sharing your information through or otherwise accessing it.

I’m going to sign up and see what it’s like, but I do caution everyone that if they do choose to use this service to be careful what you share.

Cell phones bad for babies?

What in the world? I’d like to read the report and see what other confounding factors they thought of for the study. But this paragraph in particular is rather telling in my mind:

They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.

I think there are other underlying factors such as lack of discipline that might be skewing the data….

Home Health Aide

So, it’s been a while since I’ve done anything remotely resembling an update. So sorry (well mostly sorry); it’s been a bit busy on my end getting used to being a mama.

For those of you who haven’t heard, I took and passed my state test to become a CNA I. The first place I applied to for work was Bayada Nurses which provides care for people in thier homes. Within ten minutes or so of my online application, I received a phone call for an interview. Within a week I was hired and doing orientation, then the fun began of trying to set up days where I could work and have a sitter for David.

This past Wednesday was supposed to be my first day on the job (which I had set up a sitter for); and Moday I found out that my client canceled services for the day. I was also supposed to have another client today (Saturday and have Kyle watch the Bug), but I found out on Thursday that my client is in the hospital.

Friday, was not supposed to be a day of work, since I didn’t have a sitter and Kyle was at school. Apparently, however, God had different plans. Continue reading “Home Health Aide”