A Year Long Departure...

Follow the Medicine Man's latest adventures as he travels and works over-seas in Japan!

I'm sad to be leaving Seattle after living in the Greenlake and Pinehurst areas for the past 3 1/2 years, but a great contract position for pediatrics opened up working at NAF Atsugi that Heidi and I couldn't pass up.

 
Let's hope it's a great year long adventure!

News from my Local Paper

The Herald, while not actually my local paper, is a the news paper that covers the Everett and Snohomish County area (one of my primary work locations.)  Thursday's Feb 7th, 2013 had a collection of some very best and interesting articles that I've seen in a single day's collection in quite some time:

1. Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery in August - NO!!!!!  As we all know how much I love the mail system! (#2)
    a. Along with it's first corollary that Ending Saturday mail affects ballot returns in state.
    b. At least someone stands to benefit, as Saturday mail cut is good news for Netflix

2. Changes to one of Atlantic City's most beloved game pieces: with the recent FB poll for the game of Monopoly.  Here's a hint =>   >^..^<

3. Big Win for those who love the outdoors and work towards local and national land conservation efforts! Welcome Sally Jewell to the Department of the Interior.

Note: I'm still, and most likely will always, be confused over how the National Parks (DOI), National Forests (DOAg), Fish and Wildlife Services (DOI), National Wilderness (DOI), and Bureau of Land Management (DOI) all work and play together.


4. A quick recap in the Herald from a piece in The Bellingham Herald that supports 1st amendment rights as Gun sign alarms some.  

5. Practice your coin tossing skills, as it could make the difference in a City Council selection.

6. Home plan designs from the AP for a "Net-Zero Energy Consumption" home.

7. Even Ziggy has a commentary on the American healthcare system:

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex

Never Shall the TWAIN Meet

Having found the wonders and joys of the Neat Receipt portable scanner, I decided to explore the options of it's full capabilities and stretch my ideas to the digital limit.

Heidi was able to use Image Capture after just a click of the button and scan in COLOR and at 600 dpi!!!!  Her documents looked great!  I, on the other hand, was first limited to B&W and at 300 dpi by using the Neat software package (so far really the best way to keep receipts organized for tax and accounting/business purposes.)

I was NOT to be defeated by a Mac and so tried to use Nitro Pro 8 to scan in color and boost up my dots per inch!

Attempt 1: I received a "Failed to load TWAIN data sources" message and was instructed to re-install the program.  Stupid "technology without an important name" sitting between me and my impressive, but not imperative, dream of being able to scan in old high school awards and news paper clippings:

But which program should I tackle first to correct this fatal error?

Surly my Nitro Pro 8 was not the cause as with all it's wonders, I am able to: 1. open pdf files, 2. combine different pdf documents into one lager pdf, and 3. even save just the pages I wanted within a larger pdf file.

So it must have been my Neat scanner/software.... however everything else with scanning and detecting receipts, documents  and contacts from business cards worked perfectly (but only in B&W and at lower then optimal scan quality.)

Through tireless searching I found the solution!  Don't uninstall or re-install anything. Instead, delete the folders that had "Neat" from "C:\WINDOWS\TWAIN_32" and leave your "C:\WINDOWS\TWAIN_64" files alone.

Attempt 2: SOLVED!  Take that Mr. Samuel L Clemens!

Scans in color and at 600 dpi look great with Nitro Pro 8 and I'm able to save files as I choose, with OCR for better searching.


Thanks for reading,

Dr. Alex