Kyle Smith

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A few months ago I had a follow-up appointment with my (still relatively new to me) doctor to get some test results as well as to get a new prescription for my allergy medications. Afterwards I left St. Francis feeling rather annoyed at the lack of bedside manner and common curtesy she displayed, to the point I considered canceling all my future appointments and switching to a new healthcare provider. My aggravation was renewed last week when I received a bill with a number of “overdue” charges, except I was never billed in the 8 months since my initial visit.

Yesterday NBC’s Today Show had a segment about firing your doctor if you’re unhappy with the care you’re receiving. While I have certainly considered that numerous times in the last few months, the only thing keeping me with my current provider is the fact that they have my medical records and the last time I requested complete records from a hospital, DHMC sent me the logs from when I was briefly receiving allergy shots and nothing else (very unhelpful).

Last night I was thinking about that problem and wondering if there was an open standard for electronic health records, so that I could easily find a new doctor and have them immediately know my completely medical history. This morning I came across a press release from IBM (my employer) from last month announcing that they had contributed a chunk of technology to the Eclipse Foundation for their Open Healthcare Framework project, which sounds like it will resolve this problem.

While I am still concerned about the privacy and security issues surrounding medical records and how they’re used, I’m also looking forward to the day when I might have the ability to change doctors on a whim when service is poor. Imagine how much healthcare service would have to improve if there was actually competition for customers like there are in other industries.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that my 10 minute visit with the doctor for her to glance at a sheet of test results she had never seen before and tell me “your numbers have improved” cost $160.

Over the course of the last few months I’ve been trying to get better organized. I’ve been using a simple steno pad from Staples with a page for each week or so to keep track of my action items, with all of my “next action” items for the day/week at the top of the page and any calls or emails I need to make growing upwards from the bottom. For the most part the system works works. Hard things go on my calendars, soft things on my list.

The one area I haven’t really tamed is project ideas and future items (basically my tickler file to use David Allen’s terminology). The only solution I’ve come up with that might work would be a binder that I could add pages to on an as-needed basis. The downside of such a solution is that it’s yet another thing I’ll forget to bring with me (along with my iPod, digital camera, and digital recorder), so I would really like to have something on my laptop to keep track of this. An electronic solution would also make it easier to search and add rich content to.
My requirements are as follows:

• Must be secure (accessible only by me, data would ideally be encrypted)
• Must not be publicly-accessible (may contain IBM confidential information)
• Must be lightweight (doesn’t require Notes or a continually-running service on my laptop)
• Easily searchable (I <3 live search) or have a flexible tagging system
• Would ideally allow attachments or embedded objects (images primarily)
• Must support rich text formatting
• Dependency tracking would be cool
• Related to dependency tracking — a reminder or “can’t start until X” feature would also be nice

Anybody know of a piece of software that meets some or all of those requirements?

Stacy and I went to a tasting at The Villa Borghese Sunday night and it looks like that’s where we’ll be having our wedding ceremony and reception next year.  In the last few weeks we’ve put together a preliminary guest list put togther, and think we have a photographer lined up.  Now we just need to find a DJ or band.

On a different note, I’m pleasantly surprised by how many people I know from high school are now married, engaged, or going on for graduate degrees.  I’m also surprised at how many people are now in the NY metro area.  For the longest time it seemed like I was the only person from HHS in New York.

Posted a few photos I scanned the other day as well.

Stacy and I started visiting caterers and reception sites late last week in preparation for our wedding next August.  We’ve come across some pretty nice places, and also some pretty expensive ones.  The idea of a wedding reception never really seemed all that expensive to me until recently when I started running numbers and factoring in all the little expenses (and the 18 – 19% service charges most places have).  Add it all up and you get a $10,000 – $14,000 event.  Thankfully we’ve found a few places that might allow us to do something for half that and there are still a number of unexplored possibilities.

We took a break from the search on Sunday and went to West Point to see the U.S. Military Academy’s concert band perform a tribute to Broadway, which was pretty cool.  The view up the Hudson and over towards Storm King and Crow’s Nest.  We’ll probably go back next week when their jazz band does a lot of big band pieces.  And for those of you in the Poughkeepsie area that are too lazy to drive to West Point, the concert band will be performing at the Vanderbilt Mansion on August 16th at 6:30 PM.  I’m planning on going and I highly recommend it to anyone else that can attend.

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Rouslan, I don’t really post anymore because most everyone that reads planet that I actually give a damn about I already talk to or see on a weekly basis. Also, many of us either can’t or don’t like to talk about work, and since work and sleeping account for 75% of my (and most peoples’) day, that doesn’t leave a whole lot to discuss in a public forum.

I have all sorts of projects and ideas, if you really want to hear them, Sametime me or come by my office and I’ll talk your ear off.

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A couple of months ago I was complaining to people that I hadn’t see any good movies playing at Upstate Films this year. Last year it seemed like I was in Rhinebeck for a movie at Upstate every week. Well, that drought has ended. Last month Doug, Rahul, Stacy and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth, which I think we all agreed was pretty good, although some bits of it seemed a little unnecessary.

Last night Stacy and I went there to see Who Killed the Electric Car?, which we both thought was excellent and I would highly recommend that you all go see it if you have the opportunity. For those of you in the Poughkeepsie area, it’s playing at Upstate through Thursday (7/20).
Over the next two months I’m going to have to go back there to see Army of Shadows, Little Miss Sunshine, and A Scanner Darkly.

Oh… Been a while so, photos from Georgia and Florida in early May, updated apartment photos (although already outdated!), and black and white photos I took and scanned a few months ago. Also, good books I’ve read so far this year: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Sync by Steven Strogatz, The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and Emotional Design / The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

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Does anyone else out there get annoyed that Nautilus makes a distinction between files and folders when sorting items in a window and won’t intersperse the two, instead sorting folders and then sorting files separately? Why the distinction?

If I say “sort these items by name”, where in there do I express any desire to sort by type, then by name?

Update: Just as I was thinking of writing a patch to fix this behavior, I went and looked through the Nautilus preferences one last time.  Lo and behold, there on Views tab is a “Sort folders before files” option.  Uncheck and voila.

COSI Reunion

Bad news, folks. I checked with the various parks in the area and it looks like all of them are already booked solid every Saturday this summer. Not sure how to proceed. Would people still be interested in getting together sans-BBQ and just doing other things?

Vacation
Stacy and I are flying to Georgia on Saturday and then to Florida on Monday and will be gone until the following weekend. I probably won’t check email in that time. If you really need to reach me call my cell phone.
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COSI Alumni Reunion 2006

I’ve been talking to various alumni over the course of the last week about having a reunion in the Poughkeepsie area this summer since there will be so many COSI people here. I’ve already been looking into parks in the area where we could have food, drinks, and games and come up with a list to investigate in the next couple of weeks. Your mission, valued reader, is to send me an email if you’re interested in attending this event along with any weekends between mid-May and mid-August that you are not available. From that I’ll try and identify the weekends that work for most everyone and also fit with park availability.

Wanted

A portable, near-instant-on device with the following capabilities:

• Wi-Fi and possibly BlueTooth
• 802.1x support a huge plus
• Ability to sync with Lotus Notes a huge plus
• Decent, easy to use calendaring
• Task management (more than just a simple list)
• Full-featured address book
• Multimedia playback (primarily audio, but video would also be cool)
• A decent web browser (something more than just text would be nice)
• Needs to be able to sync from Linux
• Can be used without a stylus if necessary

So far I’ve looked at the various offerings from Palm, including the Treo 650, TX, and LifeDrive as well as the Nokia 770. I don’t particularly like the connectivity or phone app on the Treo, the TX is tempting (802.1x support for a $6 update), but I’ve always found Palm OS a little clunky, and the 770 sounds neat but I’ve heard it’s slow and don’t like the fact that you deal with software images instead of packages. Anyone know of any products that match those requirements?

And yes, for those that have not heard, I’m engaged.

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