Is that a thing that happens? I know there are drug reps that go to the conferences put on by drug companies. I just figured that it was the job of the reps to educate/bribe the doctors. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of regulations about the contact that the doctors and drug companies are allowed to have, and I know there are a lot of things that the drug reps are not allowed to say, do with, or give to the doctors. I also know that a lot of the reps treat these more as suggestions, and just do whatever the fuck they want or feel like they have to do to get the sales.

I've been to several of these conferences, and met a lot of the drug reps that attend them. The conferences range from very technical talks on the drugs, to the mind-numbing sales pitch shit. I think doctors could possibly benefit from attending the technical portions of the conferences to get a better understanding of how the drugs (are believed to) work, side-effects, efficacy, etc. However, the sales pitch stuff is not fit for real human beings.

A lot of the reps are retired doctors, but there are just as many that have no real idea what they're talking about. They'll range from intelligent and genuinely interested in the patients' health, to the sleazy assholes who are just in it for the dolla dolla bill, y'all. Some drug companies do try to maintain a high level of quality in the reps, but there are always going to be the terrible people that slip through. The reps that are good and actually care do a good job of educating the doctors and getting to know the types of patients the doctors see. The really good reps don't just know when to recommend drugs for certain patients, but they also know when to and will recommend AGAINST certain drugs for patients even if it means losing a sale.

So, I kinda started to ramble a little bit. I think my answer is that it could be pretty beneficial for the doctors to be able to talk to the scientists and researchers that create and study the drugs, but ain't nobody got time for that, so we have drug reps throwing all kinds of things (nice meals, golf trips, other random shit) at doctors, and then maybe trying to educate them. It's not great, and probably not even good, but it kinda works some of the time.

If you can get him to eat literally anything at all, I'll be impressed.

I told one of my best friends that I didn't like his fiancé and that I thought she was bad for him after he asked me to be in his wedding. I did end up serving in the wedding. Fortunately, it seems I was wrong about her and them.

I was somewhere in this mess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obvzbH2t_uc

Gets a little more interesting after about 5:30.

Play

Once.

I haven't verified it yet, but I'm pretty sure @st3ck3l has the right idea with the cookie/cookie dough sandwich. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to test it out this week.

Gotta be poop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL_SL73iNFE

Play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=wQy0MpaLwHE

Probably not. Also, why that giant slope? Seems completely unnecessary and eats into a lot of otherwise livable (ha!) space.

No, I'm way hairier than that.

lol nope

yep

I'm currently rocking the short boxed beard, so probably that.

A better me.

I wasn't on pager at the time, but one of the worst (best?) experiences I've had is when we got hit by "skynet" on April 21, 2011, right as I was leaving work some time around midnight. Due to a bug in some control software at AWS, a bunch of their services lost their minds, and we, along with everyone else on the planet, were down for a couple of days. Every one of our systems was impacted in some way by the outage.

While it was pretty terrible that we got hit so hard by this thing, there were a few upsides for me. At the time I was starting to come into the operations role at Formspring that, among other things, involves keeping the site up and performing well. During skynet, I got a pretty intense course on how we do things, as well as what we should and shouldn't be doing. This is one of the three biggest contributors to where I am professionally*.

All that said, I think one of the best things to come out of skynet is the sleep deprivation-induced hilarity in the chat logs. That is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read, and just strengthened a lot of the friendships I've made here.

Reading back over this, I realize I didn't really answer your question. I'm totally alright with that.


* The other two things are curiosity (I have to figure out how everything works), and the amazing people I get/got to work with every day.

** You might have noticed some excessive comma usage in this response. This is mostly because I'm tired and rambly, but also because I <3 commas.

It's not something that can be easily taught. This is the result of years of training, a completely insane family, and severe brain damage.

I put on my robe and wizard hat

I might have played one of the gameboy games (red cartridge?) a billion years ago, but I know practically nothing about pokeymans and don't have a favorite.