Sunday, February 24, 2008

Pox of the Out-of-Towners

It's been raining in San Diego ever since all those visitors trundled off. They seem to have blessed us with their normal winter weather, just like a visiting pet leaves your home infested with its fleas and vermin. I never even saw some of them and i still get to slosh my way to my car each morning. Not sure who is to blame. Doubt it was Eor, since if it was from him, it would just be cold and foggy. Likewise, JLafitte is probably in the clear. New Orleans can be insufferable, but i don't think that it's due to cold winter rains. So, that leaves those New Yorkers and Carl. Carl from Seattle. Where it rains every day. It's the precipitatory antithesis of San Diego. But, it could be the women. I hear it's snowing in NYC, so maybe they did drop this winter crap on us. Share the pain kind of thing. Give us back our sun you interlopers!!

My plans for the future were rudely disrupted by a couple of Georgia rednecks. I was all set to turn in those early retirement papers and, bam, they end up being the sole winners of that big 270 million dollar lotta paycheck. I could have lived with a split payout. Greedy crackers. So now, I have to keep delivering babies and taking out uteruses. I don't mind work, I like what I do. But our work setting has become a pretty unpleasant place the last few weeks. We're doing a major change in how we document what we do, going from the time honored paper charting approach to a completely electronic record. The change over is on a national scale, not just getting a few workstations into a mom and pop sized practice. Given the scale of the project, even the simplest of tasks are ridiculously complex and arcane. The possibility of effecting any changes to make the system more user friendly are essentially non-existant. So, until the next lotto run up, I have to deal with it.

I'm going to do one of those shameless idea stealing things once i get a new all-in-one printer for our house. I want to put up some blast from the past photos like i had seen on someone's blog. That would allow me to post something potentially interesting or entertaining without having to think and type in coherent sentences, something that has always been a challenge for me. Our current scanner has been on the fritz for about a year and a half, so i can't do it now. Next week's project perhaps.

Back to L&D. None of the other docs on call is a "normal" doc, just me. I'm on with a resident and a per diem md, so theoretically, I'm the one who best knows how to solve charting issues. That sux butt.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's Carl's fault! It cannot be my fault since I am in Los Angeles and Linda and I mostly share a brain.

It's so nice that you like what you do. I look forward to being able to say that again! Actually I suspect that your job (mostly) brings you a lot of joy and your patients probably love you!

okrgr said...

it's one of the few fields in medicine where you often get to cure your patients. most medicine revolves around amelioration

jlafitte said...

haha, lottery is a sucker's bet. Or as my economist college roommate called it, "a tax on the poor." You'd do better to put that dollar in an interest bearing account.

Sorry to hear about this charting system being inflicted on the world. Techology is overrated. Except when used to put up amusing photos.

okrgr said...

except when the payouts get that large, the odds are acceptable.

okrgr said...

anytime it goes above 176M, then the payout equals or exceeds the odds, so it's is a fair bet. that's not to say it's a smart bet, just that it's not a complete ripoff, like the average casino bet or the typical lower payout lottery bet.

Carl said...

Actually, the east coasters flew the furthest to get to San Diego so they generated more global warming emissions than I did. Blame it on them.

jlafitte said...

Wow, that document is rather technical. Fair odds, apparently.

There's a mini mart across the street from my office where day laborers go to cash their paychecks. A lot of them buy a couple quarts of malt liquor and put the rest into lottery tix. Obviously not something you or I would do, but it's a grim scenario nonetheless.

Anonymous said...

acorn, i'd like to invite you to my blog, but i have no email for you. email me at laksmivimalananda at yahoo dot com. what's a squirrel without nuts?

okrgr said...

malt liquor? what a bunch of dodo heads.

Unknown said...

there's nothing worse than trying to buy a bag of pretzels at the kwik-e-mart during lunch and getting stuck behind people buying scratch tickets. aaargghh!

eeyore said...

the weather has taken revenge on us northeners now, too. but today it's back to normal, just the cool gray city of love.