See One, Do One, Teach One

The journey starts off innocently enough…

To: “David Kirk”
Subject: Lap Top
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:41:18 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0

I am going to get a laptop. I need your help on what and where to get .

Dad

My father wants to get a laptop. I have that feeling that a parent gets when a child asks for a car or a bike or whatever. What appears to be a simple task is really a challenge to find the perfect fit.

photo credit: Andrew*

Easy answers exist. If I were a zealot one way or another, then I would tell him to get whatever is my favorite device of the moment. I could be lazy and just send him a bunch of links and then hope he figures it out all on his own. Easy answers would lead to confusion and frustration for both of us — especially with parents living 13 hours away.

Dad is currently running an XP box with broadband, printer, scanner, and a couple of digital cameras. He learns well through step-by-step directions but can stumble if new obstacles are thrown his way. He transitioned away from AOL easily enough. However, storing, editing, and retrieving photos in an efficient way still seems challenging.

Just when I think Dad’s system is running well, he wants a laptop. Of course, he does. Everybody wants a laptop. My desktop is used less and less since I started with my laptop. My wife is the same way. A laptop, however, introduces a whole bunch of new challenges.

To work well, a laptop needs a wifi network. To exchange files between a laptop and desktop is not painless or intuitive. Using a scanner and a printer with a laptop has unique challenges too. To top it all off, I have to decide if now would be a good time to introduce Dad to the world of Apple and OS X.

I wanted Dad and me to sit down over some adult beverages and discuss this; however, he is excited to get started. Anxiously, I have been pondering my plan, and I hope I have found the correct path. I am going to tackle each potential decision as a separate blog post. I will try to weigh the strengths and weakness at each step to help Dad make his choice. Hopefully, my blog readers will chime in with additional information as well.

Here are a few examples of planned posts:

• Laptop versus desktop
• Apple versus Microsoft
• Save or ditch the desktop

I will start each post from a beginner level and expand into our normal geek territory. If interesting comments appear, I will amend and edit my posts to reflect new ideas as well.

My father was key into getting me into computers. I get my technology-loving side honestly. Help us find him the best system.

I will blog these entries as computer4dad if you want to keep up with the series.

Technorati Tags: computer4dad, laptop vs desktop, os x vs vista

Imagine creating an unique, living organism as easily as writing software.

Craig Venter’s techniques build DNA from scratch. The DNA software package can be placed into an organism as a chromosome. The host organism boots the DNA software from the chromosome and virtually creates a entirely new organism.

If you want a program to do X, you most likely can pick your langauge and code it. Now if you want an organism to do X, one day you will likely be able to code that as well.

He plans to create organisms to convert CO2 back to fuel. However, this research will not stop there.

The creation of synthetic life will be more revolutionary than the invention of the computer.

Please watch the video. As a biology/medical type, I’ll be glad to try to explain any of the confusing issues…

Having “open” electronic medical records (EMR) is absolutely ridiculous.

ReadWriteWeb believes that we should be able to control and transfer medical records personally. However, this is felt impossible because health care is “controlled by big business and government.” Furthermore, they state that “decentralizing this network and giving the power for each American to control their own medical record could ensure higher reliability, less poor diagnoses, and can handle scale.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Yes, our current medical record system needs to change. As a practicing physician, I frequently see test duplication and delays in diagnosis due to our current closed system. Doctors at one hospital will likely not get results from other hospitals in a reasonable amount of time. Even if a physician knows to request the records, often the physician may not know specifically what to request. Worse yet, these records are usually faxes from one hospital to another.

With these problems, the brainstem reflex is to let each person control his or her own medical history. Let me, the patient, control who and what accesses my medical records. It is romantic. It is crazy and flawed.

Actually, if the patient was always YOU, then an open EMR might work. You are probably not crazy. You probably do not abuse the system, drugs, or your body. But you are the same person who actually accurately keeps up with medical history now. Any medical record system works well for you.

Let me a take common ICU admission for you. Young lady found down unresponsive and barely breathing. Maybe by searching her house or testing her urine we can estimate that she has overdosed. Maybe she has been in the hospital before and we know that she has been depressed or has a history of overdose. Maybe she also has a rare disease like adrenal insufficiency that can be fatal if not also concurrently treated.

Assume that we fix this lady up and forward her medical records to her EMR carrier of choice. If it is truly open, she can forward it to anyone. Perhaps she forwards it to a “lockbox” carrier who promises to keep it hidden from other systems. Her physicians will never know about her suicide attempt or her potentially life threating illness. Perhaps she forwards it to a “edit” carrier who promises to sanitize or grossly edit the medical record for her. She pays a little extra so her medical record will now show that she has a crippling pain syndrome and requires narcotic pain medications.

Open is open. An open medical record system is an untrustworthy medical record system. Now, I agree that people should have the ability to view and make comments about their personal medical records. Doctors and tests are not perfect, and a patient should have the right to make his/her opinions known.

Luckily, this is not complicated. Just get the EMR companies to come together a establish a universal document standard and communication API. The government would host and secure the common database that would store all the information. Patients could log in and make comments to clarify the record, but information could not be removed or edited.

Medical records are as essential as legal records. Should legal records be open too? Frequently life and death decisions are based upon these documents. A truly open EMR system allows for manipulation and abuse. A universal medical records system will save money and lives. It is vital and essential to insure that the record is inclusive and precise. In this circumstance, being “open” is not the solution.

I will be glad to detail and debate further issues in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: emr, open emr, electronic medical records

The tech-recipes authors are blogging like crazy. As I am not always the tutorial zealot, please allow me to brag on the crew a little this morning.

BFF and code monkey Q is becoming the photographer and photoshoppper extraordinaire. In his blog exposure post he highlights some of his favorite photography related blog posts.

New tech-recipes author Incursor reminds us all to take an ubuntu typing break. Our other ubuntu guru ShamansTears is on the cusp of getting Google Calendar working offline. He is destined to get us a big scoop before somebody leaks it to the a-listers.

Gadget boy and hardware hacker Seamonkey420 is beating the tobacco addiction but will never be able to give up the gear habit. Check out the videos for his Asus Eee PC 4G and his PS3 versus HTPC.

My wife and I are celebrating a little family time in the wine country. You guys be careful and not mess up the place, okay?

Technorati Tags: tech-recipes, gear, hardware, photoshop, links, PS3

Here are nine, simple, common-sense steps for financial planning. I am blogging about them to keep them in my peripheral brain…

1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

This is quoted from this Farrell’s blog post .

Technorati Tags: money, finance, list, financial planning

I promise no gross details here, but my whole family has had a GI bug.  My son got it first who passed it off to my wife.

Yesterday around lunch, my daughter started having abdominal pains… about one hour later I started the same.  Otherwise, we felt well.  A couple of hours later, she started feeling tired and achy.  Once again, one hour later I felt the same way.

Early in the evening my daughter runs into the bathroom.  The nausea had finally won.  For next hour, I *knew* that it was coming.  The chills, the fever, the many hours of bathroom time — I was watching my poor daughter suffer through it and knew that a few minutes later it would happen to me.

I am not sure what was worse, the sickness or the anticipation.

The mind is a funny thing when it comes to nausea.  People receiving chemotherapy will often develop nausea even *before* their next treatment.  The mind knows that the chemo is coming… so the nausea comes early.

Many people have gotten sick while eating a particular food only to develop nausea when seeing, smelling, or tasting something similar.

Anyway, this morning everybody is better.  We are still a little achy and febrile, but most of the symptoms are resolving.  My daughter is feeling better than I.  Finally anticipation is working in my favor.

Technorati Tags: GI bug, sickness, anticipation, gastroenteritis

A couple of weekends ago, my family hit the Buckquarter Creek trail of the Western Eno. I forgot my digital camera, but the iPhone did a good enough job to capture the moment.

I have never been to this area of the country before. Maybe it’s just the resort, but everything seems so laid back here. Simple structures, simple music. My buddy Stevo would love it. If LA has this vibe, I now understand why he is so happy there.

Less is more. Quinn and I have been saying it a lot lately. T has been doing an amazing job trying to simplify the things in our life. I really get the “less is more” vibe here. Cactus surrounded by barren ground is common. Grass is found on only in isolated, manicured patches.

Maybe the 12 hrs of getting medical education slammed into my brain each day makes me appreciate the less complicated. Maybe its that Quinn and I are trying to design a zillion amazing projects all at once. Maybe it’s a buddy of mine getting out of the medical field to do only computer stuff. Maybe it’s everything and maybe it’s nothing.

So here I sit outside drinking a Blue Moon and eating sushi. I’m listening to a couple guitar players playing gentle guitar rock. I’m blogging. I’m missing my family.

The calmness is therapy. Less is more.

I’m going to close my notebook and watch the children dance for a while.

Phoenix pictures.

ShamansTears today posted his 500th tutorial to tech-recipes — how to backup skype contacts.  Wow, five-hundred!  Currently, he is our number one author and has easily surpassed the tech-recipes founding fathers.

In addition to the hardware that we have purchased for him in the past, soon we will be mailing him his choice of an Nokia internet tablet or a year’s worth of cellular wi-fi.

Shaman’s tutorials frequently writes about Microsoft related topics such as XP, Vista, Office, Outlook, or Zune.  His tutorials have helped hundreds of thousands of people so far.  His content has been featured on lifehacker, digg, stumbleupon, and multiple other high quality sites across the internet.  Articles that you have probably seen of his include the following:

• Outlook: How to Recall a Sent Message
• How to Put a YouTube Video on Your Zune
• IE7: How to Remove Branding
• How To Put a YouTube Video on Your MySpace Page
• How To Delay Sending A Message In Outlook
• Haystack: How to Download Music

As wonderful and valuable as his tutorials have been, Shaman is just a cool guy as well and we are so happy that he is part of the tech-recipes family.  When he is not writing tutorials, he is either blogging or playing on twitter.

If you think you could be more of a tutorial god than shaman, please drop us a line.  We pay well and love to reward our authors with free swag and toys.

Recently my daughter and I have started hiking rather frequently. I wanted to collect our thought and research so I quickly built a blog about our adventures…

TriangleHike.com

I am slowly adding technologies to the blog as I get more familiar with what is out there. Google Earth and Google Maps allow for a lot of GPS-related information to be expressed easily in a blog.

Likewise, flickr is being used to express pictures quickly and efficiently.

Please check it out. Suggestions and hints would be appreciated.