Healthcare in the 21st century

After having two days of watching the American healthcare system in action, I'd have to say that I'm very disappointed.  The people who were responsible for Alexis' care were outstanding, some of them even amazing.  Everyone did everything they could to make a scared little girl, and her scared parents, as comfortable as they could.  The problem was that the hospital was horribly understaffed.  The first time she needed pain meds, they didn't have any of them on the floor, so they had to order them from the pharmacy.  That took about an hour and a half...which for pain, especially pain in a small child, is completely unacceptable.  The other problem was that there weren't enough nurses in her section of the hospital.  They were friendly and seemed skilled, but there were too many patients for them, so we had to remind them often of what she needed.  In fact, when it was time for us to be discharged, there was actually only one nurse working.  The desk was being run by a nurse who was supposed to be on her lunch break, so she was eating and working at the same time.
So, kudos to everyone for taking care of my little girl, but something needs to be done about staffing in hospitals.  I realize that a lot of this has to do with the insurance companies, and whether someone thinks Obamacare is the best thing to ever happen, or the worst, I think most people would agree that there is a desperate need for an overhaul of the insurance companies in this country.

Surgery tomorrow

Tomorrow will be Alexis' surgery.  The surgeon, of course, tells us how it's just a very routine and simple surgery, but there's nothing routine or simple about having your three year old operated on.  The surgery is expected to take 45-75 minutes, but I can already imagine that that will be the longest 45-75 minutes of our life.
She's expected to stay overnight, but we will hopefully be bringing her home on Thursday.  Obviously we will both be staying at the hospital tomorrow night, while the older girls stay with grandma and grandpa.
Even though she's young, she's expressed some fear about the surgery, so we're doing everything we can to keep her mind off of it.  Rebecca will be taking five days off, so we can both be here to help her recover.  We'll obviously be watching a lot of movies, especially a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...her current favorites.

Why there are no black holes in the EEG

I've had a few people ask me why the volumes of the Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica don't include things like black holes, pulsars, quasars, nebulae, etc.  The answer is pretty simple.  When we designed the game we wanted it to be as close to hard SF as we could make it.  Yes, we did include hyperspace and yes, all of the species are basically at the same technological level, but those were necessary for the game.  All of the stars listed in each of the volumes are all actual stars, and we've done our best to use what modern science knows about those systems to create planets that might be realistic.  Granted, when we get to the systems that are more than 200 light years away, we're going to have to create some stars because it's a lot harder to see some of those stars (like G and M stars.)
Having said this, as far as science knows, there are no black holes, pulsars, quasars, or nebulae with a couple light years of us...so we didn't include them.  We want the game to be as realistic as possible.