Still Working

I am still working on the hand hygiene paper. I have reviewed and edited most of the paper. There is still work to do reviewing the remaining sections. 

I was out yesterday taking care of business (related to my vehicle). The repair of my vehicle is finally moving forward. Hopefully, all repairs will be completed in a few weeks and the accident will be a distant memory!

Flowers

I love spring mostly because of the flowers that appear everywhere. The trees with flowers (especially the cherry blossom trees with the pretty pink flowers) look spectacular. It is a beautiful sight!

I love flowers. I grew up around beautiful tropical plants/flowers such as the hibiscus and croton. Some had interesting names like 'jump up and kiss.' There were flowers outdoors and there were flowers indoors too. A lot of the flowers indoors were artificial flowers that were as colorful as real flowers. I recall that my mother had beautiful artificial flowers in vases in several places in our house. Just about everyone did that.

Nervous Reactions

Today I decided to respond to a writing prompt. The prompt is: What makes you nervous?

My response:

My first thought about nervous reactions was that a person generally cannot control what makes them nervous or what triggers a nervous reaction. It is similar to a reflex action - it just happens. But, as I thought about it some more, I thought of people who experience some things so much that they no longer react with nervousness. An example is public speaking. Some people are no longer nervous when speaking in public because they have addressed a crowd countless times and have learned to control their nervousness. Another example is driving a vehicle especially driving to faraway places. People are no longer nervous about driving after they have been driving for a long time. This has been my experience.

Some things still make me nervous though. I get nervous just before I write an exam. I think it is because of the fear or failing. I force myself to calm down and get to providing answers to the questions. Sometimes, I get nervous when a doctor is about to tell me about issues he discovered. In general, I get nervous when I get scared or when I am dealing with the unknown.

Progress With Paper

I am still working on my paper on electronic hand hygiene compliance monitoring for publishing. I am finding a lot of recent research on the topic, i.e. research published since I completed my signature assignment (the assignment is available here: https://w.taskstream.com/ts/moore783/SignatureAssignmentProposalMonitoring.html/acf5e6eq00akfcfkf7e8edfefl). I decided to add some of the recent research to the paper. I also sent a draft to the professor who graded the signature assignment for review.

I am trying not to exert myself too much. Just recently, I was dealing with some serious health issues. A few days ago, my mother sent me this photo to remind me of my journey:

Update 4/21

I am enjoying a cup of green tea while I work. I am steadily getting the work on my hand hygiene paper done.

 

 

I decided to have a second pair of eyes review my latest version so I sent the paper to my father for review. Hopefully, he has some time to do a thorough review.

I had an appointment at Enterprise Rent-a-Car scheduled for today (Allstate decided to assist me with the rental of a vehicle to get around while my vehicle is being repaired). The appointment was canceled because Enterprise is out of vehicles for rent.

It is surprising that so many people are renting cars. Months ago, I tried to rent a vehicle and got the same result. People are probably renting cars for travel/vacation. When I was on vacation about six months ago, I was amazed that so many people were traveling. The highways were full. The hotels were fully booked. There seems to be a mad rush to catch up on vacation now that COVID is less of an issue. 

I am still waiting for Allstate to make a decision on the amount I will receive for inconvenience (I assume the matter is not closed). I am hoping I will receive more than they are currently offering.

Bread Day?

I am working on my paper revisions.

During a break, I logged into Tumblr to review my profile and make a few minor changes. When I was finished, I logged out. I left the "logoff landing page" open after I logged out. Sometime later, I looked through the logoff landing page and was surprised to see many posts on bread. The posts had nice pictures of bread. I immediately thought it must be International Bread Day. I didn't know for sure so I searched for "Bread Day" on Google.com. To my surprise, the results showed that World Bread Day will be on October 16th and National Homemade Bread Day on November 17th. So, it is not a Bread Day but a lot of people in the world want to talk/post about bread.

I don't mind the chatter on bread. I like bread and the many options (types of bread) available. In addition to types of bread such as whole wheat bread, pumpernickel and so on, there are different shapes and sizes such as rolls, loaves, and croissants. I usually get the wheat and Italian herb and cheese bread at the sub shops (such as Subway and Firehouse Subs).

Now, back to work!

Lots Of Work

Yesterday, I received emails from two journals. One of the journals asked for more revisions to the manuscript. The other told me that my paper is "not sufficiently developed to proceed to the next step" and I should "continue to refine my work." Both of the journals provided really good feedback/information. I actually received ideas on analysis/details I should include in the paper. I appreciate the comments on how to make the papers better. Now, I have a lot of work to do.

Affected papers:

• Paper on technology solutions for hand hygiene compliance
• Literature review paper on online reviews

Contracting Opportunities

I spent some time looking through contracting opportunities with the federal government. I am interested in learning more about their solicitations for survey services, writing services, and usability/design (I am available for work in these areas. For additional information on my background in survey services and usability, see Post on background in statistics and Post on design/usability experience). I found two interesting opportunities/solicitations - one for preparing patient satisfaction surveys and the other for Data Repository and User Interface Design. I wish I had information on the companies planning to submit proposals.

 Patient satisfaction surveys:

Data Repository and User Interface Design:

Interesting Projects

In LinkedIn, I stumbled upon a request for old essays for an AI-project. The researcher - Dr. Stephens - is working on creating an AI-powered teaching assistant. It is very interesting. I am thinking of providing some of my old essays.

The AI project by Dr. Stephens reminds me of another project I contributed to. I was an evaluator of a master's thesis prototype (system) to automatically extract UML class models from natural language requirements text. That research was interesting too. I was happy to review the extracted class models, prepare "Analyst-created" models for comparison (an example is included below), and complete a questionnaire. I hope the guy publishes the paper/research in a journal.

My comment in LinkedIn (on the project to create an AI-powered teaching assistant):

The project to extract UML class models from NL requirements text:

Still Catching Up

Over the last few days, I was working on revising my paper on technology solutions for hand hygiene compliance. The journal requested the changes. I finally finished the updates a short while ago and resubmitted the paper for publishing.

I would really like the paper to be published. It is in a "different" format (much like a proposal) but it is the first to test the habit-forming theory for explaining the effect of a hand hygiene compliance solution on performance and employee satisfaction. Luckily, I found a journal that accepts different papers.

One thing I have learned from submitting papers for publishing in journals is that the journals prefer "tried and true" formats.

Car Accident Update

My insurance claim was "on hold" because Allstate could not reach me. Of course, I was away for a while dealing with health issues. Allstate Insurance left me several messages (mostly email messages). 

I contacted Allstate about my claim a few days ago to restart the processing.  The Claim Handler was ready and got things moving! We selected a repair shop to prepare an estimate and make repairs to the vehicle. We talked about health expenses related to the accident. We talked about payment for inconvenience. I am happy with the progress.

The Claim Handler sent me a letter for signature. I am a little disappointed with the limit she placed on health expenses (When asked, I did not provide an actual dollar amount for medical expenses that were related to the accident, but told her I needed to find my paperwork, including bills). The amount for inconvenience is also low. If she got her way, I would receive a little over $1,000 for medical expenses plus inconvenience. I sent her an email with questions and concerns.

Catching Up

I returned to my publishing work today. I am still catching up ("getting caught up") on my projects/work. 

I needed to make a small change to a paper I submitted so it would be forwarded to the editor/reviewers. I made the change today. I received the email about the change in late February.

Feeling Better

I am feeling much better today.  Rehab was a success. I am now able to move around more. Before I started rehab, I didn't know much about it. I am now a fan of Rehabilitation/Physical Therapy centers! Rehab is not only for athletes.

Familiar Names

I see familiar names around me. Hill-Rom is familiar because of my research into technology solutions for hand hygiene compliance during my Research Methods course. 

(Link to paper:

https://w.taskstream.com/ts/moore783/SignatureAssignmentProposalMonitoring.html/acf5e6eq00akfcfkf7e8edfefl)