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Emergency medical care for children and adults

The walk-in clinic I go to has good business hours: 8AM-8PM seven days a week. $109 for a visit minimum. I took Leyna there for ear pain Monday of last week and they prescribed her amoxicillin. She saw a nurse practitioner, but I’ve also seen a doctor when I’ve gone.. I don’t know the criteria for whether you see a doc or an NP — might be the time of day you go.

So on weekends or on weeknights before 8PM, I go there — for my kids or myself. I’d rather pay $109 than exorbitant Emergency Room fees. Also, my ER experience is that wait times are usually hours. A long wait time at this place is 40 minutes, in my experience. Fastest I’ve been seen is perhaps 20 minuets.

MedExpress Urgent Care
26812 U.S. Hwy. 19N
Clearwater, FL 33761
727‐799‐2727

There’s also a pediatric urgent care facility in Palm Harbor:

After Hours Pediatrics Urgent Care
3450 East Lake Rd. 
Palm Harbor, FL 34685
727-789-8887

After Hours Pediatrics has awesome hours:
Open Evenings: 5 p.m. – 11 p.m. 
Weekends & Holidays: 1 p.m. – 11 p.m.

I haven’t tried After Hours Pediatrics Urgent Care yet, but I would if I needed to bring one of my girls to the doc after 8PM and before 11PM. I believe they once told me a visit started at $180 but definitely do your own research.

Leyna once cut her head on the weekend and Auri brought her to the ER. It cost $1200 or so when all was said and done. And the procedure was the application of skin glue to the cut. Perhaps some Neosporin too. Nothing more. I didn’t feel like I got good value for my money in that instance.

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Fujifilm X100 Do-over

In November of 2011, I auditioned, loved and was simultaneously very disappointed by the Fujifilm X100 camera. I returned it and wrote about my experience.

I miss its incredible flash sync. Now that I realize that its 1/2000/s maximum flash sync is what allows the flash to fire in moderately lit restaurants without distracting other diners (just as one example), I’m getting back on the Fuji wagon. Mostly, I didn’t want them to release an X200 and regret keeping the very flawed X100.

But I miss it and I’m back. If I could only have one camera, this would be it. (Well, something else for video probably, if possible.) I’d give up my D90 and all its lenses for an X100 if I had to stick to one. I plan to buy it as early as next month (May).

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What do we do when the questions are all answered?

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow, SuperUser and the Stack Exchange network.

There’s a lovely synergy where folks using those systems build a reputation based on the quality and quantity of the answers they contribute. That score can be used as one element by which to evaluate those contributors, most interestingly to me for the purposes of deciding whether to hire them and what to pay them. There are other factors, but that score can get people in the door and that can be quite valuable.

The thing is, what do we do when the majority of important technical questions — the ones that people search for answers to the most — are answered? This is not doom and gloom. I think the sites will remain important and find a way to thrive one way or another. But I do think things there will change. Certainly people will find new areas of existing topics to address and new technologies will open entirely new areas for new Q & A contribution, which can continue indefinitely.

But today I believe there’s a Q & A Gold Rush occurring. People are searching the internet for answers to questions more than ever; presumably internet use is still growing apace. People are answering those questions on the internet. But once the major questions that are going to be answered are answered, what is the next area that is going to grow? Where will people’s attentions be directed?

First there was something to find, then there was Google to search it. Now people are sharing more directly with each other via walled internet gardens like Facebook. Where does this go next? Hell, where is it now? Has this happened before? One thing that comes to mind is the development of the telephone.