Today was a surprise as I did not expect the employees to get back till tomorrow. I said my hellos and went to work on a new project called “Lincoln”. The difference between Lincoln and the other ones I’ve done is that I dealt with the demolition on this project. This was a fun and tedious task as the site work blueprints were very poorly drawn. Most of the pages were disconnected and the scale was not on the sheets I used. Ultimately, I found my way and began deconstructing the landscape mentally to determine if any concrete, asphalt, or curb/gutters would need to be destroyed in order to access a pipe or dig underneath an existing building or what not.
After I completed the estimations for the demolition, I calculated the length of the Silt Fence to determine the final calculations of the day.
Today was a special day, because Mrs. Rai took me down to the Sanford office. This location is where everything is manufactured and where all the engineers work. So, the dynamic of the area is very different. In Sanford, everything and everyone is constantly moving and talking and working. It was a very cool experience to see what a real engineer does on a daily basis. This is where Mrs. Rai used to work before she got promoted, and she knew everyone! Everyone was glad to see her, and they seemed to miss her too. We tagged along with one of Mrs. Rai’s friends named David. David showed us around the entire facility and explained what he was working on. It was a lot of fun because I was learning a lot and drawing a lot connections from my chemistry class too. David was currently working on heating pumps, so he broke down how every piece was made and the entire assembly process for me. I could explain it, but it would take super long and I probably would get some things wrong, so enjoy these pictures I took.
After following David around for a couple hours, I headed into the engineer’s office with Mrs. Rai and we met with all her old engineering buddies. They were glad to hear that I was interested in their field and said it was a lot of fun. They also loved to make fun of Mrs. Rai for leaving. After that, Mrs. Rai and I headed to another part of the factory where we saw some plastic injection machines. This is something I had learned about yesterday, (remember the complex diagrams I talked about?) and it was really neat to see the process in person. Then, just like that, it was time for lunch and time to leave Sanford ;( We ate sandwich place in Sanford and then headed back to the Cary office.
We arrived in Cary at about 1:45, only to see Mrs. Rai’s computer was off limits because it was updating a new software. The update was supposed to take up to an hour, so we had some free time on our hands. The free time went by quickly, and it was time for two back to back meetings to end out the day, for me. For the first meeting, Mrs. Rai was just monitoring and listening in, so there wasn’t much contribution from our side of the call. The second meeting didn’t happen because one of the other members was unable to make it! And, just like that, it was 4 and my day was done!
Besides routine cleanings today, all the other patients were there for fillings. I got to witness fillings in various places on teeth, and see how older fillings made of certain material eventually chip or cause other problems.
Some patients have older fillings that are made of silver. Silver fillings, especially in the back teeth can cause cracks in the tooth because the repetitive movement of chewing and biting causes the silver to move down and out within the tooth. This movement causes horizontal cracks in the tooth, which can then indirectly reach one of the four corners of a tooth and cause an entire corner to chip off (see diagram below that illustrates this cracking process). When this happens the entire silver filling must be replaced, and then the part of the tooth that chipped away must also be filled. Dr. Sims replaces and fixes these fillings with composite fillings rather than silver because this material will generally last longer and not chip and it also has a more aesthetically pleasing appearance.
The orange area represents the original silver filling, and the two black lines represent cracks created from the silver expanding. The dotted purple line is the crack that sequentially occurs to the corner point of the tooth, which causes that entire quadrant (marked in green) to break off. The parts in both orange and green are where the tooth must be refilled.
Today I also got to see a patient who has a filling in the same spot in all but about 8 teeth. After numbing the patient Dr. Sims took me to review the patient’s x-rays. These x-rays along with the patient’s chart obviously showed that there was a reoccurring pattern the patient was following to cause these cavities to happen. Dr. Sims informed me that this problem was in fact a constant usage of drugs. Dr. Sims explained to me that this continued use of drugs caused. The small cavities at the base of almost all of his teeth were caused by continued drug use, and the majority of these fillings have been reopened and refilled numerous times. This problem will persist and without the stopping of drug usage and without proper hygiene care these cavities will continue to happen. Out of all the cavity fillings I have seen, these were the first where an extra step was required in filling them. Because these cavities are located directly next to the gum line, a coated piece of string is temporarily placed between the tooth and the gum line. This string is coated in a layer of chemical that attempt to prevent the gums from bleeding (out of irritation) during the filling. The string’s main use however is to push back the gum to provide more space to fill the cavity and to ensure that the entirety of the cavity is filled as well. This tiny string was removed from the patient’s gums as soon as the filling was complete, but I was intrigued by the level of ease with which the gums swallowed the string and then put them right back out when the procedure was finished. This patient only had three cavities filled today and still has several that need to be filled, and will need to be treated in the near future.
Here I attempted to draw the front upper teeth in the mouth. The red circles mark the location of the cavities which were on almost every tooth in this patient’s mouth. Their proximity to the gums can be understood through this sketch.
In other news today besides all of the fillings I witnessed, I was able to watch Dr. Sims provide a patient with a new crown for one of his front teeth. This patient has crowns all across his upper mouth, and also has a partial on either side of his lower mouth. Last week I saw this same patient receive a crown that was not the right color match. So, to see the lab change the color of the crown was quite interesting to me as I got to see the difference it can make in a patient’s mouth when the crown has a color or shape change.
The final patient that I saw today had the most beautiful set of teeth that I have witnessed up to this point in the office. This patient was just in the office for a routine check-up and cleaning, and I was astonished at how perfect her teeth were. This patient is a 21 year old female and on her chart she had not a single cavity anywhere throughout her mouth or anything that would be considered bad. I was able to look at her x-rays and I thought it was amazing that she was able to not have a cavity all of this time.
Today I saw both the very best, and the very worst set of teeth that I have seen so far at the office. Dr. Sims placed fillings in several teeth in several locations throughout the mouth, and it was interesting to me that although all the treatments were for fillings, different materials and tools were needed for each respective filling, depending on where the tooth was throughout the mouth. Besides my learning about dentistry today, I witnessed something slightly tragic at the office. The trusty radio that has been continuously providing background music throughout the office ever since the office opened has been only receiving some signal and the sound has been going in and out since I have been in the office. And today, I believe we might have seen the end of the old trusty radio. I am sad that tomorrow is my last day working at the office, and I am sad that there will be no music to go along with it, but I hope that tomorrow is the best day yet!
Once again, my morning at Walk West kicked off at 10AM. Today was going to be a pretty exciting day — I was going to attend an event today! Today I attended an event for one of their clients: Conservatives for Clean Energy. Although CCE is one of Walk West’s clients, they stay neutral on these political and governmental accounts. During the event, the people at Walk West would be taking pictures, writing, tweeting, and live streaming the event for CCE. I was tasked with Livestream QA. Although, when I was first assigned this task I had to slyly Google what QA stands for. QA is quality assurance. Basically, I would get to watch the livestream and make sure that everything ran smoothly for the people watching on the other end. So at around 11AM after looking
through a schedule of how things were supposed to run today, we all piled in a car and headed down to a club downtown. Although it took some time to find parking in Downtown Raleigh (per usual), we eventually made it inside the building and to the top floor. The venue was beautiful and through the glass walls you could see all around Raleigh. While someone was setting up all the video and camera equipment for the livestream, others were preparing to send out tweets during the presentation, take pictures for those, etc. Once everyone moved inside for the program and the livestream started, my job started. I watched the stream through Facebook with my headphones to check everything, while others listened for good quotes to tweet. The presentation and livestream went smoothly, although there were a few wonky comments on the stream (politics is quite bipolar these days, as you know). It was interesting to watch everyone else do their job and see how an event actually worked out. Walk West is not so much focused on the content of what is happening within the event, they are more about publicizing it. They do not plan the actual event, but help advertise and get the client’s message out. After the event finished, we were actually able to sneak some of the delicious food and sit down and talk about a plethora of topics. After
cramming our faces (not ashamed), we got back into the car and came back to the office. I spent some time looking back on the client’s Twitter and Facebook to see what was posted during the event. If you go look at the Twitter account @cce_nc, you can see some of the things that we put out.
Today was my last day at Field2Base and it started off with stand-up as usual. There was also grooming that occurred after this for about 45 minutes since there were a few bugs that needed to be addressed in the software code.
Afterwards, Mary gave us some more forms that customers had reported errors on and she asked us to try and recreate the errors and then find a solution. We were able to find a solution to one of the errors, but some of the other ones were out of our scope of capacities. Mary then gave us a form that a customer attempted to digitize on their own, but that had many issues. We went through and created a list of suggestions for the customer to fix on his own.
Before going out to lunch, Nathan and I watched Mary create a support ticket about a bug she noticed which was awesome. After lunch, we talked with Howard and Rachel for some time and then it was time for us to go. We said our goodbyes and gave some gifts to the employees. It was awesome to spend nearly two weeks working here and getting to know some of the employees well!
Today was my second day at Southern Dermatology with Dr. Boyse and her two nurses, Shelby and Deanna who i got to know better the second day. Like yesterday i spent the day shadowing Dr. Boyse and going to see all her patients. Like yesterday we saw everything from eczema to acne to rashes, and i saw her take some more skin to biospy like yesterday. Today though her nurses explained to me how the measure out and get the Botox ready for Dr. Boyse, since yesterday she explained to me why she puts certain Botox where. They use a certain amount of units for different places on the skin, so the nurses get different syringes ready and place it on the correct place on the face map (shown below) where she needs to insert it, so it’s easy for her to go and do it quickly. The also explained to me after a while with Botox some people don’t see the same results so they use a different brand called Dysport. I also heard alot of Dr. Boyse talking about suncreen so explained to me that the best sunscreen is that with zinc oxide in it. Also anything above spf 50 is mostly made up of chemicals so its not great for your skin or the environment. Tomorrow is Dr. Boyse’s day off so I will spend the day with Dr. Chalgren and Shelby watching procedures, I cant wait!
Today was the second day of the Alzheimer’s symposium. I got to the Nasher a lot earlier since the Keynote speech for that day was at 9:45 am. The woman speaking today was from MOMA. MOMA pioneered the Alzheimer’s and demensia programs for museums. They even wrote a book! After the speech I continued to do busy work and set up many many many chairs for the different activities. I’m so sad it’s ending tomorrow.
Today was my final day at legislative building, and I finally got to watch one of the bills that we were involved in move to the floor. Yesterday, we spent the day lobbying against a billboards bill on behalf of Scenic America. At first, it looked as if the bill were likely to pass, but the morning of the vote, the bill had lost a lot of popularity and we were unsure how the vote would go. The general assembly started at around 2:00, and there were only three bills that came up before the billboards bill. As they announced the bill, the sponsor stood up and asked to take if off the calendar because they “wanted to move it back to committee to make a few changes.” In reality, he knew that the bill wouldn’t pass and needed amendments if anyone were to support it. It was very interesting to see the different lobbying techniques used, especially when it seemed as if the bill were certain to pass. I am going to miss being at the general assembly, but still have one more day at SAS with the legal branch.
On Wednesday I was sent down to the investigations unit and was on call with an agent for crime scenes in Wake County. While the prospect of a super exciting homicide case was awesome, in reality, 80% plus of their cases are property crimes. This includes mainly larceny from auto and residential burglaries. I was all set to go for many adventures, but, alas, we didn’t receive a call until three hours into my shift. Well actually we did, but it was a dialysis patient who had died after refusing treatment for a few weeks and had apparently pooped all over himself. Yikes. In the meantime, the supervisor of the unit decided to show me some “fun” pictures from prior cases. This was a good experience but I think I could’ve gone this week without seeing multiple people having blown their heads off and zooming in on their brains having been smashed to pieces. :/
Finally, at around 12:00 we received a call for an attempted break-in way out by Johnston County. We rolled up in the agent’s cruiser and drove to the scene. After powdering for a few fingerprints and documenting a solid shoe print we drove back to the Detention Center with a quick stop at Bojangles for fuel.
After we got back, she dropped me off with another agent and we headed over to a legitimate break-in in Cary. It was a little weird since the house was pretty close to both of my parent’s houses so I was a tad freaked out. At this scene, they had broken the back door and essentially ransacked almost every room of the house. Since there was so much to do the agent let me powder some areas they likely touched and she would lift a fingerprint if she found one. The best part was the family’s small dog that kept jumping and rolling around me while I was trying to work. I don’t think I have ever been more tempted to pet a dog but I strove to remain professional and maintain respect of this family’s pain.
The most ironic part of the day was that someone from their squad brought in donuts and everyone went craaaaaazy. I guess something about being in uniform makes donuts that much more tempting. I don’t know.
