Saving Electricity with LED Lights from Costco – Modesto

How many surgeons does it take to…

It might take 6 years to recoup my costs of LED lights

But I think it will be worth it – just for the chance to live greener.

$19.99 for 3 pack. Modesto tax rate 7.625%
This comes out to $21.51 for each pack of 3 LED light bulbs.

I previous had lights that were 45 watts. The new LED ones that I got are now 7.5 watts

Details on the LED light bulbs:

Feit Electric / Conserv Energy LED Dimmable, Mercury Free, 3000K light appearance, lasts 22.8 years. 3 years warrantee. Order No BPCEAG/500/3. 3000K light appearance (on the warm side).

The way I use it, I did some quick math on it. I think it will take me about 3-6 years before I get my return on investment on the purchase from Costco in Modesto, CA.

The package did say that they are anticipating 0.90 cents cost of yearly energy cost per LED light bulb based on 3hrs/day at 11 cents per KWh.

But there are so many other factors when it comes to savings, such as will the light bulb live out 22 years? Will we move. Will the next owners use them. Will they be broken – ie some one breaking them. Do they use up a lot more resources to make than a regular light bulb? I’m not sure of these things.

The Design of the LED Light Bulbs here might not be exactly the most efficient for canned lighting.

I think it’s an opportunity me to be kinder to mother earth. I don’t know for sure if it takes more resources to make an LED bulb. But if anyone knows. I’d love to hear. I’m just thinking about the design of the LED bulbs that I got. They’re probably just trying to make the light more diffuse, but unfortunately I don’t need diffuse light – they are up in a can – canned lights, but it’s still more efficient than the regular incandescent bulbs though. I know LED lights are directional – that would be good in a canned light, but there’s probably some sort of diffuser inside these bulbs. I’m just thinking just from the way it’s shaped. Oh well. I bet I could get some sort of flood light shaped with LED technology in it and get the same about of light in the room below with fewer wattage. Costco sold those too, but I didn’t get those. Now I’m started to understand the difference. Some lighting situations need diffuse light and others, directional light is king when using a recessed can light application – and LED is made for directional lighting, except when a diffuser of sorts is stuck in there – absorbing some of the light. But not all lost, because otherwise, I’d have a spot light on the floor.

Well, it would be great if we could retrofit a lot of the bulbs at our Plastic Surgery office with these bulbs. The rest of the office could benefit from a greener adjustment as well.

Here’s a little digression:

Q: How many surgeons does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: “Why don’t you just let us remove the entire socket – you don’t need it, and it’ll just give you trouble later.”

Sherman Clay and Steinway fans in Modesto

Performing Masterpieces in the Operating Room

We are proud to have acquired a fine Steinway Piano from Sherman Clay Pianos in Walnut Creek, CA, almost 10 years ago when we moved to Modesto, CA. It was a symbol to us that we had “made it.” Tammy had become a full fledged Plastic Surgeon and for me, a General Surgeon. On Friday, 5/31/13 Sherman Clay, is closing its doors after 142 years of being America’s Finest Piano Dealer. The owners are retiring, and they deserve a standing ovation for all they have done for the piano arts. We wish Justin Levitt the manager of the Sherman Clay store in Walnut Creek a wonderful future with Steinway & Sons. He is a pianist, composer, Carnegie Hall performer, and an ambassador for all things piano.

Both Dr. Wu and I play the piano.

Dr. Lee and Dr. Wu’s Steinway Piano

Our Steinway Piano (Model B, 6’11”, 760 lbs) acquired in 2004 from Sherman Clay Pianos in Walnut Creek. Tammy wanted to purchase the piano to go along with my violin playing. But I couldn’t resist the urge to play the piano as well, and I’m glad she decided upon this high caliber instrument. I had learned some piano as a child but had been “fired” by my piano teacher. In college, I came up with this idea that in order to become a better violinist, I needed to learn piano. So, I sneaked in piano lessons with great piano teacher Arlene Cole at Brown University. I wasn’t nearly anywhere good enough to be one of her regular students, but she allowed me to take lessons with her on the side for one summer. Then of course, medical school took over and I had forgotten about the piano until Tammy brought it up in 2004 as one of her interests and insisted on the best piano we could obtain and fit into our first house. We have moved 3 times since 2003 and I’ve nearly had heart attacks each time the piano was moved, but it has fared well.

Currently I’ve been teaching myself some piano and here’s some Cosmetic Surgery finger dexterity practicing on Chopin’s Minute Waltz.

We believe in performing great masterpieces on stage and in the operating room

180% increase in 1 year in the number of patients enrolled in Brilliant Distinctions in our Modesto Office: Surgical Artistry

New statistics! Compared to last year, we have a 180% increase in the number of patients taking advantage of rebates & coupons from Brilliant Distinctions. In dollar amounts, we have more than a 235% increase. As of 5/30/13 $47,085 has been redeemed by Surgical Artistry patients through this program. I’d like to congratulate our staff, the Botox staff, and most of all thank our patients. Actual numbers:

5/30/13 data reveals:

Total number of patients 573
They have redeemed a total of $47,085 with Allergan’s Brilliant Distinction (BD) program

5/20/12 data reveals:

Total number of patients 317
They have acquired a total of $19,960 via Allergan’s Brilliant Distinction (BD) program

PrognoCIS EMR scheduling time mismatch solved

PrognoCis EMR shows that patients are one hour behind in the scheduler!

In the past, all I had to do for a problem like this was to make sure the zoom was at 100% setting rather than anything else. The zoom feature is in the lower right corner of Internet Explorer. But now it was different.

Windows Updated and Killed PrognoCis

Today, I came to work and found that my EMR had all the wrong times. Patients on the schedule were shown to come in 1 hour earlier than they were supposed to. So I always felt that patients were one hour late.

What happened was that my Windows 7 operating system had installed an automatic update that turned my IE9 (Internet Explorer) to IE10.

I’ll present my solution and the more elegant PrognoCIS solution

I reverted IE10 back to IE9, and told windows not to do any more updates.

Note: this might be a bit drastic and unsafe for security reasons – there are options to choose for manually installing and choosing which updates you’d want – that’s more of a practical solution – I just picked the NO UPDATES choice as a dramatic chance to AUTOMATICALLY INSTALL UPDATES.

This indeed fixed the scheduler mis-match of times. And I think this will prevent new installations until I want them.

We work hard to keep PrognoCis the way we want to with all the custom settings typed in and also we also surf the internet with Chrome to avoid messing up Internet Explorer – it’s a shame for Windows to just come in and destroy all that for our PrognoCis settings. So this method works for me.

How to Revert IE10 back to IE9

Start -> type in the box: “view installed updates” -> enter ->, find Internet Microsoft Explorer 10 -> right click on it and select uninstall
Reboot computer

How to remove automatic updates

Start -> type in the box: “windows update” -> enter -> click “change settings” -> select “Never check for updates (not recommended) or whatever level you want.

If you want something more elegant, for example – to use IE10, try the below instructions which I haven’t tried:

I wrote to PrognoCIS and they suggested a BETTER SOLUTION rather than my workaround:

By the way, PrognoCIS EMR wrote me back within 1.5 hours – this is very impressive! And they sent me a PDF file with detailed instructions on how to do the following.

Hello Calvin,

Thank you for contacting tech support.

Please pull up the PrognoCIS site then go to Tools > Compatibility view settings >click on “Add” or add “prognocis.com” > Check the check mark of “Display all website in compatibility view” > click on “ok” button. After that please login to PrognoCIS and check it.

Also please zoom size of internet explorer, it should be 100%.

Hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any query.

Here’s a screenshot of what they sent me as directions for Compatibility View in IE10

click to get a bigger picture

Additional Commentary from Calvin Lee regarding the tech support message

I wanted to add to others that you might have to press “ALT” to get the “tool” menu item to come up in the Internet Explorer.

Date for Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon 2014

Tentative Date set for the Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon

This will be the 5th annual Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon
The date is tentative.
March 23, 2014 – this is a Sunday
Check the official date with the official webpage for the Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon: www.modestomarathon.com
The first three years the marathon was one Sunday earlier. In 2013, it was moved to one Sunday later in the year.

Good luck and we hope to see you at the Surgical Artistry Modesto Marathon.

Tammy Wu, MD Plastic Surgeon
Calvin Lee, MD General Surgeon

Continuing Medical Education for Calvin Lee, MD, Modesto Surgeon

Lifelong student of Surgery, Medicine, and Health. Surgical Artistry (209) 551-1888