BAY Hiking

The Bay Area is one of those places that has incredibly effortless access to awesome hikes, great views, and city life. It's a great place for people who like to stay active... which is why I sort of envision the prototypical Bay Area Yuppie to reek of the following characteristics:

• yoga enthusiast
• membership to a climbing/crossfit/aerial yoga gym
• some kind of animal person (most likely dog so you can take it on your outdoor adventures with you)
• foodie with [typically self-imposed] dietary restrictions
• has tried online dating

It's incredibly easy to get into all these things with how well tech jobs pay in San Francisco. And understandably, if you have the means to care for your health, why not? Yoga builds flexibility and strength; climbing/crossfit gives you a total body exercise; et cetera, et cetera.

Maybe, like me, you are averse to the conventional and don't want to succumb to yuppie-hood. I like to think I maintain some semblance of my roots through basketball and frugality. In many ways, however, I am on my way to assimilating BAY characteristics for what they are worth. Health, independence, being career-oriented... they're pretty decent qualities for people my age...

Hiking here is especially rewarding (especially with a great partner to motivate these explorations). Outdoor running in the Bay Area never gets boring. It burns my legs but it's never boring. Here are some examples:

San Bruno Mountain State Park, Daly City/Brisbane

The Dish Trail at the Stanford Foothills, Stanford

Westborough, South San Francisco

The Big C, Berkeley

Beaches along PCH (Pacifica -> Pescadero)

Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley

Hills... mountains... beaches... the Bay Area has it all. It is reason enough to move out here for at least some portion of your life. 

Cupiditas

A common saying, and an apt generalization, is "money is the root of all evil." or Radix malorum est cupiditas, a Latin translation of Paul's first epistle to Timothy. Greed (love of money) is the source of all sorts of evil.

Money is a great enabler of freedom. With freedom comes the ability to play give and take with the world. Great responsibility.

As a result, "evil" is enabled.

Still, great "good" is also possible.

In the natural search for freedom, our desires run free, either untamed or disciplined. "Evil" and "good" are both enabled here as well.

Hmm.

Paved Paradise

On Sunday, I checked off the "Filed my own taxes for the first time" box on the "All Grown Up" list! That means... money for my travel to Europe this summer! Yay!

Just gonna post pictures from Google images and a few activities/sites of interest that will help excite me. :D

Paris, France (4 days, ISOO Conference): The Louvre, Eiffel Tower, 

London, U.K. (2.5 days): British Museum, Big Ben, Abbey Road, Taste of London
Outside London: Stonehenge, Oxford?

Berlin, Gemany (3 days): biking, Berlin Wall, nightlife, Reichstag, photoautomaten, Holocaust Memorial, fleamarkets: Flohmarkt am Arkonaplatz 

The Alpen, Switzerland (5.5 days): Inn to inn hiking! :D

Barcelona, Spain: Guell Park, Climbing, Beach/sailing?, nightlife
Outside Barcelona: Montserrat

Currently Listening: Big Yellow Taxi (Counting Crows)

Playing Telephone

Work's been pretty busy. Progress since last blog entry? Have I become a machiiine? Have I become angry? Not quite yet but I have been getting more productive. That or there's just so much work that I have no choice to be....

Still getting mindsplit between the two jobs but it's very engaging and I'm never bored, so yay! Next to my original workload, helping with two grants, clinical data collection, document validation, and patient recruitment, I've been learning how to use SQL Server Integration Services, used for data integration and workflow applications and dabbing in MATLAB for data analysis.

From a high level, dealing with data at UCSF and Epic isn't easy. It's kind of like a game of telephone:

• Hospital staff collect and input the data into Epic as they observe them. If the data is not structured, they will enter free text.
• The data is cached in Epic. The software and data model is designed by software engineers.
• Cached data is sent to a relational database (SQL). Which can then be copied into separate databases. The SQL database and data structure is adapted to cached data by software engineers and data scientists.
• Clinicians request data reported in a way they can interpret and analyze.
• Analysts (programmers, computer scientists, data scientists etc) extract data from SQL or other database sources.
• Research assistants analyze the data extractions.
• Clinicians improve or change their practice based on data analysis.

For this to work smoothly, a good understanding of what happens at every part of this pathway is necessary. It is important for everyone to understand data flow and how things get captured clinically and electronically. But providers in a busy large research hospital do not always have the bandwidth to be mindful of data methods. In the moment of service, patients should always come first.

How do we put everybody on the same page?

The easiest way is to change the way hospital staff interfaces with data input and output methods in the first step. Increasing the intuitiveness of graphical user interfaces (GUI) and the data feedback loop will:

• Increase staff awareness on the importance of meaningful data input
• Increase staff appreciation for data output
• Increase the need for standardizing methods of other types of data. (For example, images need to be stored and interpreted.)

What other solutions are there?