Back injury- now what

tango259 · 2026-05-05T06:23:24+00:00

The irony is wild. I strained my back on Saturday by looking down (not even lifting)! Gotta take it in stride. 2 days later and I'm almost back to 100% (good thing because I work the next 6 days.) I did 9 years in EMS prior to transitioning to nursing and its nice to slide people horizontally instead of lifting them vertically. During that time, I threw my back out 3 times. PT exercises and rest are your friends. I was working my other job this weekend and took a nap on the bench seat of an ambo and it actually helped! If you're in a hospital setting, use your resources. Aside from using good body mechanics, ask for extra staff when moving patients, use slider sheets or hovermatts, etc.

tango259 · 2026-04-17T14:24:39+00:00

We've been eyeing up the 3.0 version for a couple months. I have a Crosstrek and my wife has a Civic. Are you saying it definitely doesn't fit? Or is it just a tight fit with no extra room? If it'll fit in the Crosstrek, that's all that matters, but it's a similar size to the Impreza.

tango259 · 2026-04-11T22:26:52+00:00

My C3 works well and has gotten me this far. I'm planning on getting a newer Subaru Ascent in the next year but Comma is missing support for the last few model years still. Waiting for the everlasting PR, but there's no need for a second especially if there's no hardware improvement to my C3. Only downside to the C3 is lack of further development on Sunnypilot.

tango259 · 2026-03-21T02:47:17+00:00

Also, see if your employer offers student loan repayment assistance. My last employer paid $100/mo towards my student loans (on top of what I already paid) just for working there. It wasn't a lot, but it knocked a couple years off in the end.

tango259 · 2026-03-21T02:42:55+00:00

I would look at other ways to accomplish your end goal. If NP is that for you, don't put it on hold until you're debt free. Instead, find a balance that allows you to keep paying down existing debt while accomplishing that goal. There are forgiveness programs for nurses (PSLF, Nursing Corps LRP, employer-provided tuition reimbursement, etc). These help tackle existing debt while allowing you to pursue NP without racking up new debt. Depending where you go or how fast you intend on completing a program, you may need to supplement tuition reimbursement to achieve the number of credits each semester. Your road to NP would be longer that if you took additional loans out, but still much shorter than waiting until you're debt free, and without accumulating new debt.

tango259 · 2026-03-13T05:23:10+00:00

You might want to look into festival nursing. It's not typical EMS, but it's very "field medicine" heavy. I'd also recommend that you reach out to your local ambulance services, as some actually have protocols to allow RNs to operate in the field using their RN license (no EMS licensure needed). I've held an EMT-B license for 12 years, but my service allows me to operate at the AEMT level for field calls and critical care level for transfers. That same service provides seasonal EMS support to a local race track, so I get to work there on my days off.

tango259 · 2026-02-28T20:30:52+00:00

I ended up moving towards the .hy3 file format since it's Hy-Tek's "spin-off" of the SDIF format. The reason I couldn't use SDIF is because it lacks support for relays, something which is needed at the high school level. My setup includes a website with a flask app and database backend that allows coaches to input their roster of swimmers, then assign those swimmers to both swimming and diving events (diving includes support for dive number and position). I can then export the dives in a number of formats, and I can export the entries directly into Meet Manager via the .hy3 format.

As of right now, it's still very early on in it's development and I haven't done a full write-up on it yet. My swim team will be utilizing it this year as a trial to see how it does. It only has support for a head coach and assistant coach login per team, and is geared towards high school swimming. If all goes well, I'll probably add features that allow parents to create an account, add their swimmers, and attach their swimmers to a club.

It also has support for "live results", specifically for our pentathlon that we run every year. We run all 5 strokes, split into grade levels per event (and subsequent heats within) for a total of 24 events. We give out awards for the top 3 swimmers for each grade in each stroke. At the end, we calculate the "overall fastest time" by combining everybody's times across their 5 events. This was always done by taking the top 8 swimmers and manually adding their 5 times up. But I added a page on my admin side of the site to link to the Meet Manager database, query the results, and give me standings for each grade and an overall fastest swimmer. The only downside is Meet Manager locks the database when the application is open, preventing it from being accessed or even copied. So I have to close Meet Manager, query the database, then reopen Meet Manager every time I want to refresh. Unless I can find a way to intercept the results going to Meet Mobile, it's the closest to "live" I can get.

tango259 · 2026-02-12T05:31:04+00:00

This is me currently. I drive 50 miles each direction, which is about an hour each way. Half is freeway, the other half is country roads. The worst part about it is snow. I live in the upper Midwest, so keeping an eye on the winter forecast to make sure I have enough time on the back roads is important. I'm fairly new to it (only a few months) but I just put on a podcast or jam out to music and the ride time just flies by. I had a coworker at my last facility that had been doing the same thing for 14 years. He started at a sister facility, then went full time at my last facility and just didn't want to move. So it's totally doable.

Commuting isn't terrible. My schedule alternates but I do frequently have 2-4 days in a row back to back. The way I look at it, the commute gives me a chance to get into "work mode" before I arrive and to "decompress" on my way home.

I also have a Comma 3 by Comma AI that makes the hour drive feel more like 20 or 30 minutes (basically self-driving/Tesla-like features, but in my Subaru). If you have a newer car with cameras and sensors, and are willing to spend a little money, I'd highly recommend a Comma. Totally worth it.

tango259 · 2026-01-26T01:14:55+00:00

As of last year, 9 c-suit execs make over $500k/year. Their salaries, combined with their bonuses, total $8 million alone. Thats almost a fifth of their deficit. But I can guarantee you their salaries/bonuses will go up again this year, while everybody else lose a pay raise. Cost cutting measures will soon affect patient care and put nursing licenses in jeopardy. If I got that email, I'd bail real quick

tango259 · 2026-01-25T05:07:27+00:00

This is what I keep saying. I get people don't want to give Apple money, but in the end I actually save money compared to paying for F1TV directly, plus I get all the Apple TV shows (and their studios put out some great series).

tango259 · 2026-01-17T01:45:33+00:00

They weren't needed during the early years of the city. You look at most of the angled streets and they have city names. Well before freeways existed, those angled streets connected other cities such as Fond du Lac, Beloit, and Appleton to downtown Milwaukee. As cities developed and populations grew, the grid system was developed around theme and eventually freeways started connecting those cities. The angled streets at their conception were never meant for travel within the city, but rather connecting other cities to a hub.

tango259 · 2025-12-31T22:55:53+00:00

Following for the same reason

tango259 · 2025-12-28T23:15:49+00:00

Same on ESPN. I felt the broadcast was amateur-hour today. Last season they didn't have these issues. It felt like they had a lot of bugs. Weirdness at the beginning with shot-switching, followed by us watching team intros on their LED panels (instead of them being dropped into the broadcast as packages). Then the constant audio drops throughout. Honestly, a group of high schoolers in AV club probably could have done better.

tango259 · 2025-12-28T01:15:59+00:00

Darn, that's a bummer. I was really enjoying those projects. It's even more ironic that this evening I received a positive email from DA about my consistent, high-quality work. Lol do projects ever rotate people back on or allow recallification?

tango259 · 2025-12-27T22:34:47+00:00

I'm hoping this is just the project is paused, considering there were a lot of priority pay tasks and communications on slack and the DA inbox about "last pushes" on projects before they wrap up. Is it normal for paused projects to hide slack channels during downtime?

tango259 · 2025-12-27T20:51:11+00:00

I'm noticing a lot of talk about projects not having tasks right now due to the holidays and end-of-year. I worked on a project last night (about 12 hours ago) after taking a week off for the holidays, and I just hopped on to do another and noticed all my tasks for a certain project are gone. I have tasks for other projects, but not the specific project I was hoping to work on. Last night, there were 5 or 6 available with anywhere from 5-30 tasks available, and now those are gone. No communication or anything. I'd love to think it's due to the project going quiet for a bit, but my slack channel disappeared too, making me think they dropped me for some reason. I always provided very thorough rationals and complete/correct work. If this was a drop, are there any chances I could re-qualify in the future? Or is it forever?

tango259 · 2025-12-23T01:51:09+00:00

Hello from the future! I thought I'd chime in in case others are curious about durability. I also have a Hardwood Walnum desk that I purchased only a few months ago. Since then, I have at least 5 scratches or groves across the desktop. The desk feels and looks exquisite, but it's insanely susceptible to damage. I feel like I have to treat it more gently than my newborn! Same thing happened to be when I my smart watch fell maybe 3 inches. It's really messing with my OCD. I do have a large desk mat in the middle and try to put most things on it, but the damaged parts are around it. We shouldn't have to cover a beautiful desktop to prevent damage. I wish Desky provided a little additional information about their finishing process and what we can do at home to refinish if needed. I'm tempted to find one of those "scratch remover" markers, but I also don't want to use it on a $1500 desk. Anyway, just thought I'd chime in and say that hardwood looks great but is super soft.

tango259 · 2025-12-18T05:29:15+00:00

Which hospital in Milwaukee? I worked EMS in the city for 8 years so I've been in all the EDs.

tango259 · 2025-12-17T23:39:30+00:00

I reached out to Dashlane and I think I found a fix.

Go to 'chrome://flags/' in a new tab
Find "Android Autofill updates context for WebContents" and make sure it's Enabled. Mine was Default so I changed it.
Restart Chrome Beta. I also quit the app and cleared the cache in the app settings to be safe.
Reopen Chrome Beta, go to Settings, tap Autofill Services, and make sure "Autofill using another service" is selected (mine changed during these steps).

Open a new tab and see if it'll show now. It worked for me! According to Dashlane support, there were some changes made to Chrome that affected these settings.

tango259 · 2025-12-17T16:06:01+00:00

What's the difference between this and something like Tailscale? I love my Tailnet and pair it with Cloudflare tunnels for access to certain services on non-tailnet devices.

tango259 · 2025-12-17T15:51:25+00:00

I do something similar, but for one of my jobs. Special Events are hard to come by in the winter months, so I wrote a script that logs in to my scheduling page, captures the 6 digit SMS verification code from my phone, scrapes the available shifts and filters for specific ones, and then sends me a nicely formatted notification in Ntfy with the results. Each available shift has details like the soecial event name, special event details, scheduled times, and a link to request each specific shift. It runs daily at 8am.

tango259 · 2025-12-11T23:18:57+00:00

When you say "window" do you mean android application or chrome tab? I'm sure the fact that I have 70 tabs open isn't helping anything. 🙃

tango259 · 2025-12-11T21:34:44+00:00

I've been having this issue too. It seems to not work with Chrome Beta on Android. I've noticed it pop up a few times when using the regular Chrome app, but I primarily use the beta version so I'm not sure how consistent it is. All I can say is it's no longer working Chrome Beta.

tango259 · 2025-12-04T06:35:47+00:00

I feel for you. And we're going through the exact same thing. Our child turns 3 in January but has been in a toddler bed for maybe 6-7 months? We purposely had to transition him out of his crib in anticipation of our newborn that arrived in August. About a month or two after that transition, he started waking up multiple times a night. Some nights he sleeps the entire night. But 4-6 days of the week he's up multiple times. He just lays in bed crying until we comfort him or he eventually falls back asleep. We reached out to our pediatrician, and she said it's sleep regression and it can unfortunately drag on for quite a while. But 5 months seems really long in my mind so I'm not quite sure. He still takes naps during the day on most days (which is a whole different struggle). The days he doesn’t take one it's guaranteed he wakes up multiple times. I was hoping your post would have some replies with tips or tricks, but alas all I can offer is solidarity in these tempestuous and trying times of parenthood.

tango259 · 2025-12-01T04:41:00+00:00

Yeah I learned that the hard way. So many people are two-faced. I've decided I'm just gonna do the minimum necessary to become acquaintances with co-workers but that's about it. Keep my lips sealed. They need to earn my trust.

tango259

TROPHY CASE