I was reminiscing earlier, and my mind wandered across two memories I have of work. One was absolutely fantastic, and one I thought was just downright 'odd'. The greatest experience I've had at work, is standing on a 100ft tower, next to one of the runways, airside at Heathrow. Every day, just before midday, Concord would take off from the runway right next to us. What a sound! What a machine! It's kid of sad to think that I (or anyone else, for that matter) won't experience that again. The experience that struck me as most odd, was hoisting a quarter-ton block of metal through a nuclear submarine, with only two blocks & tackle to aid us. I mean, how many people get to do that? So come on, what are your Greatest and Oddest moments from work?
Ive had customers threaten to call the police on me, cause I wouldn't sell copyrighted photos to them. More of the odder things that has happened.
in 2006 me and my family went on a trip and stopped in at a race track and i got a ride in a race car around the track at 170mph. that is an incredible experience!
I got asked (when I still worked in a PC shop) "If you put the printer cartridges in upside down, would the picture come out in negative colours?" that's one of the oddest things that's ever happened Greatest experience ever was probably my first long distance cycle trail, the Yorkshire Moors near Whitby look beautiful in the spring
[emo] my life sucks compared to you guys [/emo] A few weeks ago I avoided a car crash that would most likely have killed me. Long story short, I wanted to pass someone on a one lane road ,which means I had to use the opposite direction's lane. Because of a mix of bad vision (my eyes are terrible) and my car having trouble that day, it took longer to overtake the car AND much less time than i expected for the incoming car to arrive. Luckily , I managed to overtake the guy at the last second.I was then near 130mk/h and I think the other guy was at that speed as well. I didn't like it one bit but never panicked .My friend, my brother and his girlfriend saw everything and their heart stopped as my car and the incoming Mazda 3 were about 6feet for colliding. Needless to say I am not going to try this anytime soon There might be one thing that I saw that no one else here has ever seen (besides maybe Goodbytes). In january 1998 there was an icestorm here in Montreal (mostly on the south shore where I live). It was amazing to see the chaos. There was no power, people had to wait for hours to get gasoline and/or food and water. Those who did have power had family and friends over because powerless houses were just too cold and dangerous. Speaking of danger, the whole downtown of Montreal was closed because of huge blocks of ice falling from rooftops. At night there were no lights to be seen beside car lights. The most impressive thing however was to see the massive pylons now either on the ground or bending under the weight of the ice on them and mostly on their cables. Here is a few photos to resume everything The first photo gives you an idea of how thick the ice was. And this was the same on EVERYTHING, not just trees ! forward to 3mins
Ghys, thats amazing stuff there. I am in central WI and have seen this only a handful of times (nothing as severe as you shown here, but still freaking amazing!) I am actually starting to detest the perpetual winter that this state seems to be in at all times. Right now we are actually at our peak for summer, and its barely hitting the 80's. Like tonight its getting down to the 60's. I visited Florida in March, and I really really liked that, its perpetual summer!
Your Wisconsin and only getting 80's!!???? How can that be? Im farther north than you and we get temperatures of up to 100. I wish it would barely get to 80 here. How is it in winter tho? It gets to -50 here. I dont recall any ice storms here when i've been alive. But there was one in April in 1984. Not as bad as in those pictures I dont think.
Cool ice storm photos! We get those every so often in Seattle, but not that amount of damage. I went to New Orleans ~9 months after the flooding. If you've never been in a major disaster area, there's really no way of imagining it. Pictures are one thing, but walking among all the damage that remains even that much later... it's totally different. It really drives home how fragile civilization really is. The worst part was finding photos in the wreckage. As for work stories... I work for Puget Systems, which is a botique custom computer builder. I run inventory, so I recieve and unbox the morning shipments. When new technology hits the market, I'm usually the first person to handle it after the manufacturer. It's pretty cool at the time, though six months later it seems kind of silly - I was so excited about yet another video card launch, why? Ah well, I still get the new toys before anyone else.
I worked in community mental health covering two sink estates in Hull, in brain injury rehabilitation and currently in the cancer services. I have had many, many strange experiences.
Some of my most recent strange experiences were trying to read some of your posts with a couple Vicodin in me. You have a very literate way with posts. John
Care to share any of them? Or even general industry stories, if you're worried about confidentiality? I'm not entirely sure what you do - how is a psychologist needed in regards to brain injuries and cancer, outside of emotional support? I understand that cancer is damn scary, but I've never heard of a psychologist being attached to the medical team before. </eternally curious>
Brain injury can be approached in two ways: in terms of the anatomical damage/abnormality, which will give you a reasonable idea of how function may be impaired, and also (in terms of aneurisms, for instance) what can be done about it surgically or medically; and in terms of brain function, which will not only give you a decent idea where the brain is damaged, but also a much more exact idea of how that translates into a person's ability to function. In TV shows like House and 3 Lbs. you see doctors making all these brilliant inferences about how this bizarre behaviour must be due to that part of the brain being damaged, but in real life it is often the neuropsychologist who tends to do that. Doctors do MRIs and CT scans, and then obsess about what medical condition caused that damage, and how they can medically cure, repair or contain that condition. Neuropsychologists do neuropsychological tests of cognitive functions and then obsess about how impaiments in these affect a person's daily life functioning and what can be done about that in terms of rehabilitation. So neuropsychology is about determining how physical damage/impairment to the brain affects brain function and behaviour (because the same apparent damage to the same part of the brain can result in very different and complex dysfunctions in different individuals). Neuropsychology is also about how these lost functions can be recovered, remediated or compensated for so that the person can resume a normal as possible daily life functioning. Because of the wide spectrum of behaviours and abilities this encompasses, this necessarily involves other professions such as Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists, Physiotherapists and the like. Then there is the psychologically disrupting and distressing impact of brain injury and disability, the emotional and behavioural adjustment to its consequences, and motivation and engagement in what is often an arduous, hard and long-term complex rehabilitation regime. Neuropsychologists are involved in all that too. In terms of cancer, our job is to help people cope with cancer. Not just the emotional trauma of diagnosis, but also uncertainty about the future, facing the real possibility (and sometimes, inevitability) of death, understanding and processing complex medical information to make complex treatment decisions, engaging in and coping with very uncomfortable treatments with lots of unpleasant side-effects, coping with severe weight loss, loss of fitness/stamina, disfigurement and/or disability, rehabilitation and return to work, restoring a normal sort of life, coping with worry about it coming back... It is again a wide field that goes well beyond just emotional support.
The psychology of the person diagnosed with a terminal illness and facing the bleak future of pain and debility often show the same psychological impact as found in a cancer patient. I believe that it is how we cope with the psychological issues that will define who we are and how we go forth from day to day. From the patient to the Dr. John
The greatest and strangest experience was waking up next your mum in the morning after a night of tequlia slammers and $5 whores! lol!
Probably one of the greater experiences of my life so far has been flying on Concorde. It really is/was an amazing machine. I can't think of many truly strange experiences right now. The best I can think of right now was when we were in China. I was on the Great Wall with my family, and we were walking along and came to a steep bit. My sister and mum stayed at the bottom, but my dad and I climbed further up. At a kind of lookout point, we were stood taking pictures, when a pair of Chinese girls came up to us and asked to take a picture with me (being blonde is a novelty). We posed for a few pictures, and they left to go back down again, while we stayed for a bit longer. When we finally came down to meet up with my sister and mum, they were also having pictures taken by the same girls! Ended up talking to them for a while, but it was strange how they picked the same family. That whole trip was strange really, being followed by groups of people seemingly trying to get pictures of themselves with me.
Probably the strangest thing was being told by my boss on a phonecall that I should try to help the company more rather than trying to sabotage it... Needless to say, I slammed the phone and my boss was signed off with a nervous breakdown a couple of days later. In all fairness, I did get a phone call back after a couple of hours to apologise.
So if I read that right: your job goes way beyond being a shrink, you're more a doctor who deals with cognitive issues (as opposed to physical ones). I'm also reading between the lines and guessing you tend to be the patient's liaison, advocate, and coordinator with the host of medical professionals that are involved in their treatment? (Since you're the person who sits down and asks how they're doing, explains medical stuff in plain english, and are concerned with their day-to-day life.) That is an impressive amount of skills and knowledge piled on top of each other. What kind of training is required for that job? I'm guessing experience as a psychologist, plus some sort of medical degree?
I work for a private ambulance company and so we get them after people like Nexxo are done with them. I've had all sorts of strange patients doing all sorts of strange things in the back of my bus. Some of my greatest expieriences were with the fire department on major calls. One that sticks in my head in particular was transporting two critical patients from an RV wreck to town in rush hour traffic. At some poimnt i finally quit looking ahead because I knew if we hit anything it wasn't going to be good.
