A few years ago when I was at a weekend course at MD Anderson, I discovered that not all medical physicists have had the luxury of seeing the innards of the equipment we’re supposed to be experts on. This was something of a surprise to me. I’d been seeing the insides of equipment since my undergrad days and always made it a point to be around whenever I heard the service guys were working on a piece of equipment. I had assumed that most of the people at the course with me also had the same opportunities at some point in their career, most of them being much older than I was. Apparently I was wrong.
Since a big part of my job is keeping tabs on all the imaging equipment, I get to see most of it in various stages of undress at some point or another. This usually happens when the equipment is being installed or being serviced. Every now and then I also have my camera with me to take pictures, so I decided to make a Flickr stream of some of the naked imaging equipment I’ve taken pictures of.
My first plumbing problem
There’s something strange going on with the tub in one of the bathrooms.
No hot water. Cold water comes out nice and strong like it’s supposed to, but when I turn on the hot water, there’s only a small dribble.
Hot water to the bathroom sink is fine. Hot water to every else in the house is fine. Just no hot water to the bath.
Not sure what’s going on, but I guess I’ll be learning a little bit about plumbing.
Soggy Park Day
Spent yesterday afternoon out on Daniel Island for Daniel Island Park Day at the WHLR booth. Despite the intermittent rain and general sogginess of the day, there were quite a few people out there (although I’m sure there would have been more if it was a nice day).
I only made it out for the afternoon so I managed to miss the fun of setting up, dealing with the rain, moving everything out of the rain and fire ants. The rest of the afternoon was ok though with a lot of people stopping by to meet the pups and dogs. Had a few ask about fostering which was good. WHLR needs all the fosters they can get.
This awesome dog house (or kid’s play house, I suppose, if you don’t have dogs) was being raffled off. Because of the low turnout due to rain, the raffle date for the dog house was pushed back to Oct 23. If you purchase your raffle tickets from Lucia’s Premium Pet next to the Daniel Island Publix, proceeds will go to WHLR.
Yes, that’s grass on the roof.
Barkley waiting in the crate while we packed stuff up at the end of the day.
October reading list
Some of the papers on this month’s reading list
- Risk of Cataract after Exposure to Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation: A 20-Year Prospective Cohort Study among US Radiologic Technologists, Am. J. Epidemiol. 2008 168: 620-631
- Automatic exposure control in pediatric and adult multidetector CT examinations: A phantom study on dose reduction and image quality, Med. Phys. Volume 35, Issue 10, pp. 4567-4576
- Singular value description of a digital radiographic detector: Theory and measurements, Med. Phys. Volume 35, Issue 10, pp. 4744-4756
- Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dosimetry in medicine, Phys. Med. Biol. 53 R351-R379
- Evaluation of quantitative 90Y SPECT based on experimental phantom studies, Phys. Med. Biol. 53 5689-5703
- An easy-to-use phantom and protocol for weekly PET quality assessment: A multicenter study, Med. Phys. Volume 35, Issue 9, pp. 3922-3934
A couple of them would make good journal club entries.
Weekend happenings
Wild Heir Lab Rescue will be at Daniel Island Park Day on Saturday Oct 11. Come on out and enjoy the afternoon with us and meet some of our adoptable dogs!
Sunday join other Lowcountry bloggers at Blognic ’08 at Wannamaker County Park. It’s a pot-luck affair for the whole family so bring everybody along for a great afternoon outing.