I got back from Springfield yesterday, and its definitely good to be back again. Contrary to what I thought earlier, even with working in an ER, nothing very interesting went on. Which is mostly a good thing in my mind. I actually spent most of my time in a back room writing code, as exciting as that is. In the time that I spent out on the ER floor, I didn’t see any major trauma. The only odd thing was doing troubleshooting with an occasional scream or moan in the background. I found that somewhat unnerving. This ER was pretty tricked out as far as the tech goes, which was interesting to a gadget nerd like me. They had huge plasma screens to use as tracking boards, and there were tablet PC’s that the doctors could carry around in addition to having computers next to every bed. It might sound a little cheesy, but I thought it was pretty great to see doctors and nurses actually using software I had worked on.
Monthly Archive for November, 2004
If you should ever find yourself in Springfield, IL I’d highly recommend trying out their local sandwich of choice, the Horseshoe. It’s a gloriously lard-packed open-faced sandwich that consists of a base of texas toast topped by a choice of just about any kind of meat (for instance, buffalo chicken) and then covered by so many french fries you can barely see the meat. On top of all that, a generous layer of beer-cheese sauce is applied. (And by applied I mean flooded torrentially from the very floodgates of heaven.) Wonderful. In general though, I’d recommend that you not find yourself in Springfield just because, well, its Springfield, IL. Not exactly a booming, vibrant metropolis. So how did I end up in Springfield? Well, I’m out here for the rest of the week on a trip to a client site for work, the first such trip I’ve taken. Generally I try to avoid blogging anything related to work, because it’s been shown again and again that mixing blogging and work is often a bad idea regardless of how benign the intentions might be. Also, I think it would generally be pretty boring. However, for the rest of the week I’m going to be working in an emergency room at a hospital (on computers, not people) and I’m thinking that might result in a few interesting experiences. Actually, I’m a kind of nervous that it will be a little too interesting. There are good reasons I decided to work with computers and not in medicine after all. My first shift starts in a couple hours here, so we’ll see how it goes.
In the weeks and months prior to the election, I had thought that there would be two important factors that could help tip the close race out of President Bush’s favor. One was first time voters that were registering mainly because they disliked how the current administration handled Iraq. The other was the fact that there are likely a large number of mostly young voters that have only cell phones and no landlines and thus would have been left out of traditional polling. I had assumed those voters would largely break for Kerry (which was purely an opinion and not based on any kind of evidence) As it turns out, I’m a member of both of those hypothetical groups of voters. I’m a young cell-phone only first-time voter who registered to vote primarily because I thought the president had made numerous mistakes and deceptions relating to Iraq. Based on sample size of, well, me I foolishly thought that I was part of a statistically significant unheard group that would play an important part in the outcome of the election. As it turns out, that was not the case and that’s what I find most disappointing. Or maybe there is a large demographic like me but everyone else just couldn’t tear themselves away from their Xboxen to go vote. That could well be, as I had to briefly debate myself about the importance of voting vs. the merits of heading straight home to play in the World of Warcraft final stress test.
Today, for the first time in my life, I voted. How about that. In retrospect, I don’t know why I waited so long. It was easy, and yeah it even felt a little good to feel like I was doing something important. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but at least for a little while I’m deciding to feel like it does. I had expected maybe there would be long lines, but that wasn’t the case. I was in and out in about 10 minutes. Mission accomplished. Nothing to do now but watch the results trickle in on CNN. Regardless of who wins, I’m faced with the depressing prospect that I’ll be 30 by the next presidential election. However, I think I find it much more depressing to think that George Bush could still be president until I’m 30 though. I’m hoping that’s not the case.
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