Saturday morning coffee [July 27 2013]

So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

It’s been a while. I feel a bit rusty.

The coffee mug below is from the ASHP Summer Meeting Twitter contest in Minneapolis, MN in June. I took third place, which is a bit of a disappointing as I was the reigning champ for a couple of years back in the day. I’ve had the mug for a few weeks, but haven’t felt like posting so it’s just been sitting in my cupboard. Thanks to ASHP, I’m certainly happy to add it to my ever growing collection.

I lost my job this week. First time that’s ever happened in my entire career. It’s a bit scary. Quite honestly I’m not sure what to do.

The Conjuring was #1 at the box office last weekend pulling in just over $41 million. That’s a high number for a horror flick. Don’t expect The Conjuring to keep the #1 spot for very long because The Wolverine opened Thursday night and it’s likely to dominate the box office this weekend. It probably won’t do $100 Million, but it’ll come out on top. I found myself with some free time on Thursday so my wife and I went to see Red 2. Not bad, but not as good as the first.

I haven’t touched my website much lately, but it’s still here. The top post at jerryfahrni.com over the past 7 days was Why pharmacy continues to fail, again.

PharmaFactz is an interesting website. It has a little bit of everything. I haven’t dug too deep, but plan to spend a little more time rummaging around in there this weekend. Thanks to Jason Poquette (@jasonpoquette) for pointing it out.

An interesting thing happened to me this week. I went down to a nearby Walgreens store to pick up a few things. One of the items was liquid dish detergent. You know, the stuff that sits on everyone’s sink in the kitchen. When I tried to pay for it the cashier said “sir, I can’t sell this to you, it’s been recalled”. Amazing that a retail store can track a lot of liquid dish detergent, but we still can’t do that in pharmacy. Lot number and expiration dates are not commonly embedded in medication barcodes, and as such there’s no way to know.

I received my Leap Motion controller this week. I haven’t had a a lot of time to play with it, but my initial impressions are that it’s more of a toy than a tool. In terms of power and potential I think something like Microsoft Kinect is probably a better option. We’ll see. It could just be that I’m bitter about the fact that I pre-ordered the thing nearly a year ago and it was supposed to ship in December 2012. By the time it arrived I’d pretty much lost interest in the concept, and quite honestly I’d forgotten about it.

Ever heard of Clinical Key? Clinical Key is an interesting take on clinical search engines. It reminds me of Pubmed, but it includes results from several databases, including those with images, video, etc. I’ve only played with it a little bit, but I’ve found it interesting.

The new Nexus 7 was announced this week. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from an updated product. It has a faster processor, more advanced internal guts, it’s thinner, new software, and so on. The most talked about feature to date has been the screen, which is full HD. I like the idea that it will soon be available with a 4G LTE antenna. It’s on my short list of must have products.

Business Insider has a list of 13 Apps That Will Make You Wish You Had An Android Phone. It’s a pretty good list. Ingress seems to be a popular topic on Google+ now and then and Tasker is one of those apps that I hear a lot about. I’ve been meaning to try Tasker, but just haven’t gotten around to.

I think I’ve given up on finding a Google Reader replacement. I’m still using Feedly as my RSS reader of choice. It does an adequate job of feeding me information, but it’s just not the same. Google Reader was truly a unique product. I’ve been told that Google Reader went beyond the functionality of a traditional RSS reader, and while that may be the case, it doesn’t change the fact that it was really good at providing me with the things I wanted.

I’m still on the lookout for a new smartphone, although that will have to get put on the back burner until I find a new gig. My Samsung Galaxy Nexus is great, but there are just too many awesome phones out there. I wandered into a Verizon store this week and looked at several devices. Ended up having a really interesting conversation with one of the sales associates. He’s a guy I’ve known for a while. I mentioned that I was considering a BlackBerry or Windows 8 phone. He scoffed at me. He truly believes that BlackBerry is dead. He said that he “never sells a BlackBerry anymore” and only rarely sales a Windows 8 phone. He said that the Galaxy S4 and iPhone were about neck in neck for over 90% of their business. This made me second guess my desire to move away from Android. Investing in a new phone can be costly so choosing wisely seems important.

If you’ve ever considered buying a Surface RT tablet, then now’s the time to pull the trigger. They’re a bargain at $349. I’m serious. It’s a decent tablet for what you can do with it, and it comes with Office Home & Student 2013 for free. I was going to pick one up the next time I found myself in a Microsoft Store, but circumstances have made me decide to hold off on that purchase for now.

I love The Incredibles. It’s just one of those movies that they got right. Every once in a while my kids and I will sit down and re-watch it. We love this part. Makes us laugh every time….

Only 40 days until the NFL season kicks off. It can’t happen soon enough. Here’s a countdown clock just in case you were wondering.

That’s it folks, an abbreviated version of SMC. I’ve been neglecting my weblog lately, but I think it’s time to get back at it. The practice of pharmacy is clearly in a state of change, but what that means is up in the air. The winds are changing direction and I believe there will be a significant difference in the focus of pharmacy practice in the not too distant future. I have some new thoughts and ideas that I think are worth discussion, and since I don’t really discuss things with anyone in person it makes sense to throw them up here. I’m thinking about using technologies like Google+ Handouts to try and engage people and find out what the pharmacy world is thinking. It will likely be difficult as the world of pharmacy has been historically quite, and most pharmacists don’t gravitate toward the social media space, but it’s worth a shot.

Until then I bid you good day.