- It snowed, as some might have heard. All told, Columbia got an average of almost 34 inches, which is some sort of a new record. It’s really too bad I chose a career that doesn’t allow me snow days, for the most part…
a few flakes... (photo by John Cmar)
- Otherwise, this week was about the prep for and giving Obstetrics and Gynecology Grand Rounds at Sinai on “HIV in Pregnancy.” The software aspect of putting the talk together was far more of a fail than it really should have been, mainly because I was consolidating slides from several Powerpoint presentations on my Mac, and chose to use OpenOffice to do it instead of Keynote. For unclear reasons, OpenOffice spit out a corrupt file that could not be opened by Keynote, Google Docs, or Powerpoint on a PC, costing me many hours of work. Lesson: when wading into OpenOffice’s presentation software, proceed with caution. Otherwise, the presentation (given with my sable-haired HIV viral suppressor partner at Sinai, Joanne Hayes) went quite well. We reviewed the philosophy on HIV in 2010 (treat earlier and test everyone), the latest guidelines for managing adults and pregnant women (found here), and the need to focus on education and outreach so that women of childbearing age have the best chance of making intelligent choices regarding sex, pregnancy, and STD prevention, and the resources to support them if they don’t.
- I was able to brave the leading edge of the blizzard to hit the Friday session of the Maryland chapter of the American College of Physicians’ Scientific Meeting. In addition to reconnecting with old friends and making some new contacts, there were some excellent talks given (link is to a pdf). The annual February scientific meeting is a local gem, and something I hope more physicians can attend next year, weather willing.
- Over at the GLF, I noted that due to the snow, Clipper City Brewery moved their Heavy Seas Oyster Fest from yesterday to next Saturday.
I feel your pain. There was this one presentation I gave in my junior year in college that was a heck of a lot of fun to put together and I still think of as one of my crowning achievements (creatively if not academically), but I had quite a few problems getting it to work right because, while I was creating it, I moved back and forth between Keynote, MS PowerPoint, and OpenOffice Impress several times. It looked fine in the end, but I never did get the embedded .mp3 to work.
@Amy – Oh, the PAIN. GAH. Sigh. We both clearly know how this goes… 🙂