I happened to be going through my news feeds and I saw a funny little post on Clinical Cases and Images about a 1949 TV commercial More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette (YouTube video). I went directly to the blog to read more about the video but the post was just a video clip and two sentences. While on the site I happened to notice a post far more interesting and inspiring that hadn't made it to my feed reader yet, "Professor with pancreatic cancer gives his last lesson on life."

Randy Pausch is a 46 year old father of three and a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has incurable pancreatic cancer and only has months to live. Carnegie Mellon's "Last Lecture Series" invites top professors to think of something that matters deeply to them and to a give talk as if it is their final lecture. Unlike other healthy professors, Dr. Pausch's lecture will be his last lecture.
In his lecture, "How to achieve your childhood dreams," he shares what his childhood dreams were.

• Being in zero gravity
• Playing in the NFL
• Authoring an article in the World Book encyclopedia
• Being Captain Kirk
• Winning stuffed animals
• Being a Disney Imagineer
  

He achieved most of them and he spoke on how he did it and about living life. So while this post isn't exactly on medical librarianship it is a reminder that in work as in life there will be obstacles. Your library's budget was cut. Your IT department merged all your IP ranges. You didn't get that "perfect" job that you applied for. You bought a house in this real estate market and now you can't sell your old one. There are brick walls in front of the goals in our lives. But you can overcome them. "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." -Randy Pausch Ph.D.

Just something to think about on a Friday afternoon.

If you are interested in seeing Randy Pausch's truly inspiring and humorous lecture go here on Google Video.
Video snippets can be seen from Good Morning, America, Wall Street Journal online video coverage and followup video.
Articles are available from The Wall Street Journal article their follow-up article and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
A transcript of the lecture will be available shortly and posted on Randy Pausch's home page, at his request Carnegie Mellon will not copyright the lecture and will be available through public domain.