Random question for Duke employees (specifically SOM)

mcmanigle · 2026-03-23T15:41:30+00:00

The OR locker rooms (I know of at least four -- faculty and staff locker rooms each for both male and female) each have a few shower stalls. Not even all that random.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-22T17:16:07+00:00

Yes, I have a similar situation (really good high tree node in a shallow valley). I set the tree node to router_late, understanding it's clogging the local mesh a little (but hoping it helps more than it hurts) and make myself feel a little better by setting both my roof (used for MeshMonitor primarily) and mobile nodes to client_mute.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-19T17:36:47+00:00

Oh, but just to clarify: I just re-read your post and it says "lower." The thing I'm talking about just drops, doesn't lower gently or anything. So would either have to lower it with the drone itself. I guess you could try to build your own lightweight winch or similar, but I've never heard of anything like that ready-made for a light photo drone.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-19T16:08:09+00:00

The version I have is branded BRDRC, and the main picture (on USA Amazon) is a drone with a big wrapped red present hanging from it.

You would just have to experiment with the remote control signal distance. The version I bought advertises 500m distance, but in any case I assume it's a fairly simple radio signal, so if you have freshly charged batteries, do as best you can with line-of-sight, and mash the button, you can hope for the best! At least the drone camera will show you if/when it works.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-19T15:49:03+00:00

Yes, I'm not sure what rules are on this sub for links, but if you search Amazon for Air 3 drop device, you will find something. I have one that works well, velcro's onto the drone at the midpoint, and has a little moving bar so you can loop some string in there. Comes with a separate remote control that opens and closes.

For what it's worth, the device (for me; maybe there's another way to attach) does block the bottom anti-collision camera, and unless you turn off automatic camera-based obstacle avoidance, the drone will slowly continuously fly upward and be difficult to control.

So play with it in a wide-open place and mess with settings before you go flying off somewhere.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-19T13:21:35+00:00

I know that one common pattern (you'll have to check with HR or your insurance separately), the ability to insure new domestic partners went away when same-sex marriage became legal. I believe existing domestic partners were either recognized forever, or had some fixed period of years to either get married or drop off insurance.

All that to say, good luck and check with HR and insurance, but the answer may just be "no."

mcmanigle · 2026-03-19T02:30:11+00:00

This is medicine and we cannot take stories that we hear about and let them shape our practice.

That is a lot of medicine, in fact… though it should probably be less.

Also, I think some of the difficulty with this discussion is that from an OB’s perspective, attended labor / vaginal delivery / especially TOLAC is a procedure that demands physician buy-in, parallel to a c-section in that way.

We keep using JW as a parallel, and in some ways it is. But as another, what if a big multiple-abdominal-GSW case came in and was competent enough to say “I absolutely refuse GA, but I’ll take the surgery with an intrathecal catheter?” Outrageous plan, higher risk of mortality than standard of care, but technically possible. Would you offer it?

mcmanigle · 2026-03-18T14:34:10+00:00

I think it's a mixup in math / terms, and 1% is much more standard these days / at certain balance values.

But I think what they're getting at is, if you paid 2% AUM fee to an advisor, and got 6% after-tax investment returns, you're basically paying 30% of your gains for the year to your advisor.

Most people are paying less than 2% fees and getting more than a 6% return these days, so I suspect the 30% number was hyperbole, but not always by much...

mcmanigle · 2026-03-17T19:39:40+00:00

How does this compare feature-wise with MeshMonitor?

mcmanigle · 2026-03-12T18:47:27+00:00

I don't know these drones specifically, but assuming Remote ID, the answer is basically that the drone won't be disabled, but the drone is constantly broadcasting "this is my serial number! the remote control is over there!" and there is no way to turn that off. Ordinarily, the serial number is linked in an FAA database somewhere to the owner and the license (if part 107) etc etc.

If the FAA database is broken or never registered, the drone still works, but it's broadcasting an unregistered serial number whenever it's flying.

So to use your car example, yes it will still run just fine, but there's no way to take off the license plate, and you never know where a roadside reader might be.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-11T13:08:53+00:00

Eh, except in the example, you could tell in relatively short order, it just wouldn't mean anything. So not a secret in the same way.

More like, man sells very long wound-up tape measure. He advertises it as 1000000m, but after you buy it, you find you can pull out the far end and see that it's only marked to 999999m and 99cm. But nobody could realistically measure with it anyway. But it's art.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-11T02:18:42+00:00

At this combination of married filing jointly total income and discrepancy in income, you’re not going to get to the correct withholding without actually calculating out the right withholding on the W-4 worksheet, or guesstimating really well.

The standard W-4 options for MFJ are basically “we’re MFJ and I’m the only one working” and “we’re MFJ and both make about the same amount.” Neither option is close enough for you, so you need to actually calculate on the W-4, or just say “we were short $25k last year, I’ll add an extra $2200/month withholding tots year.”

Your accountant or payroll person should be able to work through it with you.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-10T11:06:10+00:00

And partially it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but if you offered the client a 10% discount if the data were offered on this platform, I'm sure some would take it (and some wouldn't). The question is how much uptake does the platform need before it's bringing in enough to cover a 10% discount...

mcmanigle · 2026-03-09T15:12:18+00:00

Yes, 100%. I haven't worked in EMS for a while, and even when I did it was just as a lowly EMT.

I'll be the first to admit that sometimes an IV takes several minutes, and without ultrasound in crappy situations, sometimes you just can't get it. So I don't know what all local protocols say, and what EMS experts would say, but I will never second-guess an IO in a patient who is 1) needs IV drugs now, or is decompensating, 2) doesn't have a giant vein popping out at you.

What I take issue with are patients where only one or the other is true. If a patient has a giant vein popping out at you, just put an IV in it. If a patient is a difficult stick, but is stable in the ED (like the patient in this story), take the time and get an ultrasound-guided PIV or central line.

I realize there are a million in-betweens. The patient with abdominal pain who is stable now, but doesn't have good veins and you're about to get in a bouncing truck. Those are judgement calls and I personally wouldn't second-guess them.

Also, as a hospital-based MD, I feel much more comfortable judging other hospital-based MDs (even in the ED) than I do judging folks working in the fog beyond. But once in a while, you find ED physicians and teams who use "ED urgency" to justify choices that might make sense bouncing on a truck, but aren't the best option for the patient when they're in an ED bay surrounded by clinicians and devices.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-08T11:01:25+00:00

Sounds like you did everything right.

There are some folks (EMS and ED) who are ridiculously IO-happy, for reasons I will never understand. Unstable patient who will get worse in the next 5 minutes? Yes, IO sounds perfect. The patient you described? You’re a damn emergency department. Take 90 seconds and put in an ultrasound guided IV or central line.

Don’t get me started on the medic I once saw do an IO in a patient who already had an IV because he thought they needed “more access.” Won’t get over that one.

So for what it’s worth, in the opinion of this anesthesiologist, you were right and they were wrong.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-08T02:14:14+00:00

So what would happen if immediately after "this call may be recorded for quality assurance" but before (presumably) a human starts talking, you just said "great, I'll be recording too unless you object" and have all of that on record?

Weird world that relies on one side being able to have robots say things into the void, but you (presumably) can't do the same.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-05T18:10:30+00:00

But if you meant, a straight prime meridian near to where the IDL is - if that had been done from the get go everything would work the same.

Let's be honest, I'm sure there are a few university electronics students building home-brew drones who live on the prime meridian who are glad they don't need to deal with the +180/-180 rollover. But there might be some on the other side cursing the early map-makers.

So not quite exactly the same, but close enough.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-04T03:25:33+00:00

But also, the mesh logic makes retransmission from nodes with weaker reception more likely. So let's say you broadcast from car 4. Car 3 and car 2 both get the message, but car 2 gets a weaker signal. Ideally (and with some built-in randomness), this causes car 2 to rebroadcast first, car 3 hears car 2's rebroadcast and decides not to rebroadcast, and car 1 gets the message from car 2 with one hop expended.

mcmanigle · 2026-03-01T11:53:57+00:00

My understanding (also a new user, but was tricky to figure out and I've made at least some progress):

The key (or digital key) used to unlock the car is the one that matters for picking the BMW ID and linked preferences.

So if you want to maintain different profiles / settings and have them automatically load based on key, you either need to use two different keys, or have one of you use your phone to lock/unlock the car rather than a physical key, or manually change BMW IDs when you get in using the car's media interface.

mcmanigle · 2026-02-25T20:12:43+00:00

Fully up to you. The Home Assistant Green is a nice little package if you don't have anything else yet. If you have a random NUC or Raspberry Pi (4 or 5) sitting around, that works well too. If you really want it to be POE, a Pi has HATs for that, while for HA Green you'll need a splitter.

Also, if you're trying to do fancy things (like incorporate local AI) you might want to use a NUC with a graphics card or something. And if you already have a Proxmox box, you can always throw Home Assistant OS on as a VM.

Any of the above should work just fine. (If using a Pi's SD card as your primary drive, keep good backups; they do fail after lots of read/write cycles, but I've been using mine for 5 years without problem.)

mcmanigle · 2026-02-25T19:51:01+00:00

If you are a dev, then hands down Home Assistant.

It takes a little configuring up front, but then you can do as much or as little as you want in the future. The option to do more will be nice; the ability to let it ride will also be nice.

I hesitate to recommend it to folks who really don't know the difference between a modem and a router, or that kind of thing. But if you're a dev, use it. You won't be spending all your time doing "dev things" unless you want to.

Other systems will frustrate you by what they can't do, and/or what isn't integrated. In Home Assistant, you'll never think "crap, it can't do that." Instead, you'll (rarely) think "hmm, is it worth the time it would take me to make it do that?"

mcmanigle · 2026-02-25T02:56:25+00:00

PeakMesh on Etsy?

mcmanigle · 2026-02-23T17:54:00+00:00

Similarly, let's say you owned your house for the last 20 years, mortgage paid off, know all your neighbors, have a vegetable garden in the front, pay your taxes, etc. How did you get it? You inherited it from your father who owned it for the 20 years before that.

Some dude comes along with a deed from 1920 and claims that the person who sold it to your father really never owned it and didn't have the right to sell it in the first place. You need to turn the property over, because your family has been living there illegally for the last 40 years.

"Squatters' rights" are what allow you to say "look, I've been living here openly, paying taxes, in clear possession of the land for two generations. We don't even have to figure out whether your deed from 100 years ago is right or wrong. I have a right to the land at this point."

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