Apologies to those whose comments have been awaiting approval and/or responses for a couple of weeks now.
Mrs Fitz and I have been travelling in rural France (where the GPS has saved our marriage at least 6 times a day.) She wouldn’t let me bring “the other woman” (my PC) so internet access has been rare and restricted further by this crazy French keyboard layout.
Normal transmission will resume on or about Melbourne Cup Day (if indeed, there is one this year.)
… and with the mess he has made of the health system, he’s probably killing some of your relatives too.
Mrs Fitz (I should call her Dr Fitz) is a GP, a very dedicated GP. She does home visits for her elderly and infirm patients; she does palliative care when they are dying; she has practiced in the same area for nearly 30 years and is now treating the grandchildren of the people who were her first patients; she is invited to weddings where she can say “I’ve known the bride since she was … a positive pregnancy test.”
Every consultation begins with the patient asking “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this appointment?” And the answer is always “Two weeks,” That’s right; Dr Fitz is booked two … weeks … ahead. Needless to say, she doesn’t see too many simple coughs and colds. Problems are always complex and walk-in emergencies always mean that the working day never ends on time. A decade of this takes its toll.
Two decades ago, Dr Fitz’s practice was one of the largest in Queensland with 9 full-time doctors. Since then, some doctors have retired, some have moved away to follow a spouse’s job, others have moved interstate to care for elderly parents. There are now the equivalent of 4 and a half full-time doctors treating the same number (or even more) of patient families.
Unfortunately there are no doctors available to replace those who retire. No doctors anywhere. This is an Australia-wide problem.
This is why our hospitals are staffed by overseas-trained doctors with poor English*. This is why Queensland Health had no choice but to employ Dr Jayant Patel (aka Dr Death) at Bundaberg Hospital. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is also why, two months ago, a female GP in the next suburb to ours developed a sudden heart problem and passed away on the operating table.
In the first term of his current government, former treasurer and economic “Dry”, John Howard gave Michael Wooldridge his job as Health Minister on the condition that there was no blow-out in health care costs. There wasn’t much they could do about the demand side (people do get sick, you know) so, being clever little economists, they decided to cut back on the supply side. The number of training places at Australian Medical Schools was halved.
The impact of this short-sighted decision became acute a few years ago. In response, the number of training places was increased but unfortunately this was done with the introduction of full-fee-paying places. I’ve learned from medical school staff that the majority of these are now occupied by rich foreign students. Very few local students have been able to take on the debt.
Because of the lead time to train more GPs, it will take another decade before we can crawl out of this mess. In the meantime, we will pay with our health for this mean, penny-pinching Howard decision. Some of us will pay for it with our lives.
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* Dr Fitz knows some of the doctors at the nearby Gold Coast hospital who worked with Dr Mohamed Haneef. Losing him was a double tragedy. Not only was he a competent doctor, but he was one of the very few public hospital doctors with good English.
OK, so after ignoring many “Friend Requests” over the past few months, I’ve finally caved in and joined Crackbook Facebook. It appears some people use that other name for it because it’s possible to waste a lot of time in there.
What tipped me over the edge was the fact that the upcoming Australian Blogging Conference has a Facebook page. This, I had to see.
As it turns out, I’m glad I had a look. What caught my eye was the “Developer” link at the bottom of each page. Here I discovered excellent documentation on the Facebook Platform, the API used to develop Facebook Applications. As one who is always interested in new ways of delivering data to the masses, I paid attention.
Now imagine that I had access to some data that a large number of people were interested to see (eg, the World Championship Marbles League, the Southern Oscillation Index, the countdown to Mrs Fitz’s next birthday). I’d be keen to publish this as widely as possible.
First, I would publish a web service to supply this data. Then I would distribute
Here’s a link to my Facebook Profile.
This month’s QMSDNUG meeting looks at Workflow Foundation.
One impression of the .NET 3 uptake is that Windows Workflow puzzles a lot of people. They are not quite sure about how it can apply to them. Microsoft has focused on the “sexy” features of workflow such as “driving ASP.NET web site navigation” or the “Designer Rehosting capablities”. Developers are asking “How does it apply to me?”
First-up, Michal Postula from Citect will explain how Workflow can help developers in their day to day application development. He will show how this powerful architectural tool can reduce code coupling and increase development agility. Specifically he will show how WF can apply to small and day-to-day projects.
Then, Joseph Plant will go into more detail focusing on the Pitfalls of Windows Workflow. Joe will use demonstrations and code samples to hilight the things to watch out for in the current release of WF.
About the Presenters
| Date: | Tuesday 18 September |
| Time: | 17:30 for 18:00 - 19:30 |
| Location: | Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane |
These details are also available on our QMSDNUG website at www.qmsdnug.org.
RSVP
All invited; attendance is free; pizzas, drinks supplied. An immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.
I am re-creating the blog of a good blogging friend, Huniii, who, as far as we can tell, passed away in May 2007 after a long battle with cancer. Via her blog (huniii.wordpress.com), Huniii’s words touched the hearts of many as she expressed her hopes, fears, desires and aspirations.
As Huniii’s readers, we laughed at her antics; we cried with her on the dark days; we soared when her son did well on the football field and we feigned shock at some of her language. Read some of her comments; Huniii could banter with the best.
Sadly, in recent weeks someone has cracked her password, broken into her blog and even boasted about it, writing some immature posts in Huniii’s name. Some commenters politely queried the wisdom of this action and met even more immature responses. Two days ago, I noted that Huniii’s blog has been taken down.
I immediately tried to recover whatever I could from Google’s cache before it fades. Then, as best I could, I have recreated Huniii’s blog at a similar but different address (hunii.wordpress.com). The only exception is that I am trying not to post any information that might identify her family.
It has been painstaking work, recreating not only Huniii’s posts, but her readers’ comments as well, taking care to get even the dates and times right. In many places, I have only fragments from syndicated blogs to work with. As I write this, the job is probably about 50% done.
Note that I am not pretending to be Huniii and this new blog is not Huniii’s original blog. It is my recreation of her blog as a trubute to a dear friend.
I have placed only one post on Huniii’s new blog. While my name appears on that one post, the rest of the words are Huniii’s. I wouldn’t censor a syllable.
———————
Update 6 Sep 07
Lori has just come back with a sensible suggestion: we should publish Huniii’s blog as a book with proceeds to either cancer research or a trust fund for Bugalugs. Any thoughts?
———————
Update 11 Sep 07
Aurelius, a good friend of Huniii’s in real life has documented what he knows of the last weeks of Huniii’s original blog. It’s an interesting read.
But more importantly, Aurelius has put his finger on what we learned from Huniii; that it is possible to truly love our friends despite their flaws; even “Big Gaping Flaws”.
I am /looking for an excuse/wondering if I can afford the time off/keen/ to attend the upcoming 1-day Australian Blogging Conference.
The schedule features an interesting range of blogging topics, including:
Location: Creative Industries Precinct at QUT’s Kelvin Grove Campus.
Date: Friday, 28 September 2007
Time: 9:00 - 17:00
The conference is hosted by
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation and
- QUT Faculty of Law
and is sponsored by
- our good friends at Microsoft and
- GetUp! (getup.org.au).
It’s early Sunday morning. I wonder whether Rupert’s Rags are going to throw another non-story onto the nation’s front yards in a couple of hours time.*
Last weeks non-story, Rudd admits to US strip club visit by Glen Milne dredged up some 4-year old non-news. This part raised alarm bells …
Reports of Mr Rudd’s behaviour reached senior Australian diplomats serving in the US at the time.
One of those diplomats, who insisted on anonymity, confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph a version of events involving “inappropriate behaviour”.
To me, this smells (no, stinks) of the involvement of our foreign minister Alexander Downer. Sadly for Mr Downer and John Howard, none of the mud stuck — except to their own hands.
On Monday, our local ABC radio station was interviewing the man in the street and the majority of responses were favourable to Kevin Rudd: “It shows he’s human after all.” “He’s just like one of us.” etc.
Mrs Fitz & I were watching Lateline on Monday night when we saw Australian Greens Leader, Senator Bob Brown deliver this…
“Four years ago Kevin Rudd got drunk and took himself into a strip club. Four years ago John Howard, sober, took Australia into the Iraq war. I think the electorate can judge which one did the more harm.”
Mrs Fitz howled with laughter when she heard it. Take that, Johnny.
Aurelius blogged about it straight away.
By Thursday, everyone was pretty relaxed about the story. One of my brothers sent me this picture of a billboard outside an establishment across the road from his workplace.
And why did Downer’s flunky in DFAT choose to leak the story to Glen Milne, of all people. Maybe it’s because he has had first-hand experience of drunken behaviour? Who can forget his performance at the 2006 Walkley awards?
I think the Howard government mud-slingers are going to have to try harder than that.
———————
* Actually, I’ve just checked. Today’s top story is…
Flu outbreak hits racing
A DESPERATE race is on to contain a highly contagious horse influenza virus that has the potential to cripple the $8 billion Australia racing industry. …
While not wishing any harm to the horses, some filter in my head translates this story as…
Punters keep their money
FAMILY BUDGETS make ends meet and economy booms. …
A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to accompany #2 Son on my first expedition into our local IKEA store. It’s big… really big. I remember the construction effort disrupting local traffic for nearly all last year.
The Ickier experience starts when you negotiate the Rwanda-sized carpark.* One discovers that the set of stairs closest to where you eventually find a parking space brings you up into a whole ‘nother building**. Not to worry; we had our running shoes on.
We were also aware of Ickier’s devilish floor plans that ensure that every customer has to walk past every item in the whole store. But the nice lady who gave us the map at the front door let us in on the secret, “There are SHORTCUTS” Yay! But you have to keep your wits about you; they’re deceptively signposted.
Have a look at the simplified plan below. Our store is actually about 8 times bigger than this and on TWO levels. And, yes, you must traverse both levels to get to the checkouts.
The merchandising maniacs ensure that if you successfully negotiate one shortcut, you must then swim upstream to find the next one. Fiends! How do little old ladies cope? In fact, we did encounter a group of little old ladies wandering around, dog-tired, convinced that someone had cut the end off the last shortcut they took and almost resigned to dying in the store.
The horror is even worse after viewing the offerings and deciding to purchase elsewhere. There is no quick way out! You are trapped! You might as well buy something. Aaargh!
———————
* I stole this term from GBE. She and her beau went to Ickier between Christmas & New Year. It must have been horrible; their relationship hasn’t worked out. If only they had seen this warning from Jon at PantsOfDeath.com…
Did you see GBE’s map of Noosa Beach? Hilarious.
** Actually, this turned out to be a good thing. In that other building was a real furniture store where #2 Son successfully purchased the item he needed.
This month’s QMSDNUG meeting looks at an interesting range of technologies; first Vista Gadgets and then PowerShell.
First-up, the official prize presentation and mini-showcase of the winning entry in the Microsoft Innovation Centre Queensland Vista Sidebar Gadget Competition.
Then, our main speaker this month is Mitch Denny, speaking on “PowerShell for Developers.”
About Mitch:
Mitch has lived in both System Administrator and Developer worlds, embracing both to the max. He was an early adopter of PowerShell and, as you can see from his blog, has now built up some considerable experience. Need to automate system administration functions? Mitch can show you how a developer would do it.
| Date: | Tuesday 21 August |
| Time: | 17:30 for 18:00 - 19:30 |
| Location: | Microsoft Brisbane office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane |
These details are also available on our QMSDNUG website at www.qmsdnug.org.
RSVP
All invited; attendance is free; pizzas, drinks supplied. An immediate rsvp by email to mike@fitzsimon.com.au will help with planning.
———————
Afterthought: Yeah, I know. I thought it would be a long time before this blog post gets a hit from a search engine looking for “Vista Gadgets and PowerShell”. One is a desktop technology and the other is a server technology. But follow the PowerShell link above and see that it has been done already.
Off to Tech.Ed 2007 this week. For the first time ever, it sold out - weeks ago. This is now the only way to get in…
This will be my last LOLCat! Frank Arrigo started this Tech.Ed LOLCat! meme and now he “can has leave the country”. This week will be the last chance to catch up with him Good Luck, Frank!
Tech.Ed is being held at the Gold Coast Convention Centre from Tue 7 to Fri 10 August with deep-dive workshops starting today.
Husband, Father,
Software Architect
Convenor
“MikeFitz with overflow bit set…” is the personal blog of
Mike Fitzsimon.
Fitzsimon IT Consulting
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