Citrix Receiver (XenApp) and multiple monitors

Last year I took a job within the Valley Health System  (VHS, Shenandoah Valley, VA) and VHS uses Citrix XenApp very  heavily for their clinical applications .  I really like the feature set provided by XenApp, but I could never get the remote desktop protocol (aka. mstsc or rdp) to work over XenApp when I was using more than one monitor.  Each time I would try to connect to a remote machine I would get a dialog box/window stating that 0% of my remote session had been downloaded.  I searched every internet forum I could find for a solution, but no solution could be had.  I even created a support ticket with citrix.  No solution with this route either.  Then I got lucky.  For some reason I noticed that if I changed my primary monitor to be the left-most monitor, everything just worked.  Not sure what the underlying problem was, but this has worked for a number of my dual/triple monitor setups .

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Straight Talk MMS and Cyanogenmod Android

Over the past few years I’ve been trying to rid myself of cell phone contracts and excessive overage fees.  After my wife went over our shared minutes and it cost us $250 (which we didn’t have), I began a search for a alternative carrier.   Shortly thereafter I discovered straight talk, and I haven’t been more pleased with the results.  There are some drawbacks to using a multi vendor network operator (e.g. straight talk).  The biggest are customer service (it’s always worth trying to solve your own problems), and setting up media messaging service (MMS, i.e. sending media in your text messages).  The later problem can be easily solved with some patience and knowledge.

First things first.  This post is directly related to getting Cyanogenmod Android, with a straight talk AT&T locked sim card, working with MMS.  If you have an iphone 4-4S there are decent instruction posted here (link).  I’ve tried these iphone instruction on my wife’s 4s and it worked perfectly.

To set things up on your android phone.  You’ll need to enter the straight talk APN settings (i.e. settings–>wireless and networks–>mobile networks–>Access Point Names).  I got my settings from unlock.co.nz.  You’ll find lots of variations online, but this site tends to be updated and concise.  Below I posted the settings as of 7/2012.

 Press Main
- Select Settings
- Select Wireless and Networks
- Select Mobile Networks
- Select Access point Names
- Delete all APN's in this section.
- Press Menu
- Press New APN
- Enter the follow settings one for General Data . The other for MMS

Name: US - Straight Talk Web
APN: att.mvno
Proxy:
Port:
Username:
Password:
Server:
MMSC:
MMS Proxy:
MMS Port:
MMS Protocol: WAP 2.0
MCC: 310
MNC: 410
Authentication Type: PAP
APN Type: default, supl

PXT Messaging MMS:
Name: US - Straight Talk MMS
APN: att.mvno
Proxy:
Port:
Username:
Password:
Server:
MMSC: http://mmsc.cingular.com
MMS Proxy: 66.209.11.33
MMS Port: 80
MMS Protocol: WAP 2.0
MCC: 310
MNC: 410
Authentication Type: PAP
APN Type: mms

It is important to note, that these settings call for two separate APNs.  I had tried combining these APN settings (i.e. the data and mms settings) into one APN, but I never got both mms and data to work at the same time.  Once I created two separate APNs (one for MMS and one for data/phone) everything worked fine.

Below is my APN home screen, the individual straight talk MMS APN settings, and the straight talk Data/Phone APN settings.  Keep in mind that even though the data/phone APN is selected (has a radio selection next to it), the MMS APN settings are still used by your phone.  Also note that I don’t have any additional APNs loaded (e.g. no standard AT&T or T-Mobile APNs).

Hopefully, this post saves you some time.  MMS is a nice feature when it works.

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NotesWiki

I think it’s time I started writing about one of my true passions: WIKIs. For you gen-xers, it’s hard to image life before Wikipedia, but I remember it. I went through undergrad college and most of medical school before the days of Wikipedia. I did an information science degree when Wikipedia was still thought of as a toy. Well, times have changed, and so has the reach of wiki platforms. Let me explain from personal experience.

When I was doing my engineering undergraduate degree I took meticulous notes on paper. I filled volumes of binders with everything I was learning, and occasionally, I even added a table of contents and index for a notes binder. I had these dreams of using the notes in these binders as future indispensable resources that would be utilized once I became a professional engineer. Once I finally got a job as an engineer I never looked at the notes again. It was too cumbersome to try and mine the binders for a small tid-bit of information that I could find in minutes from a well indexed book or online search.  What’s more, the binders took up so much space, and it was a pain to transport them.  In essence, the notes were only useful while I was in school (an academic exercise).

When I started medical school Wikipedia was just becoming a mainstream site. It was amazing how many of my classmates had Wikipedia open during lectures. As med students, we found that we could spend hours mining medical textbooks for the basics of a disease, or we could do a quick Wikipedia search and find general answers to our questions. Wikipedia was quickly becoming a useful resource for basic medical knowledge. The only problem with Wikipedia was it’s intention. Wikipedia was not made to be a authoritative medical repository, but rather an encyclopedia of general knowledge. Thus diseases were often not described in medical terminology, and treatments were often unsubstantiated. I began to wonder what it would be like to have a personal wiki where all my medical notes would be indexed, online, and evolve with my own understanding (not to mention the medical profession’s understanding) of medicine.  I also wanted to have all my medical knowledge traceable to its source (i.e. I wanted an easy way to cite).  I was tired of being questioned (aka. pimped) on medical facts, and getting different answers depending on who questioned me.

I began building what I called the Duke Medipedia. When I first created the wiki I envisioned that it would evolve into a sort of Duke Student Textbook, however, after I presented the idea to the med student governing body, I received a resounding rejection.   The student leaders didn’t  see the utility in yet another wiki, and they were concerned about who would police the site.  After the rejection, I decided to keep the site as a personal NotesWiki.  I had already populated the site with knowledge gained over my 4th year of medical school, and I was quickly realizing that the site would serve as a fantastic alternative to my undergraduate note binders.   Sure enough, I’m now a resident and use the site dozens of times each day to aid in patient diagnoses and to record medical knowledge learned during residency activities.  Best of all, packages like Wikimedia keep all my knowledge linked, indexed, and available on any web enabled device (phone, pc, workstations throughout hospital, etc).   Oddly enough, I attended the American Medical Informatics Symposium this fall, and the med student’s of the university of Wisconsin just published on their med student wiki textbook (Oh well).

When I pick this topic back up, I’ll spend some more time writing about:

1.Medpedia

2. The evolution of Wiki and V. Bush’s insight.

3. What makes a medical wiki even more useful: Semantic wikis, and Eugene Stead’s vision.

Posted in Medicine, Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment