Pictures from my work PC

Occassionally personal stuff makes it to your work PC in the forms of pictures that people send you or that you download with the intention of copying to a USB drive and taking home. Here are a few that still live at work.

Presentation went well

Well, my presentation didn't suck. And I flew through it, so everyone got to leave the meeting early. I used the presentation as an excuse to buy a remote Powerpoint clicker thing. It doubles as a cat toy with a laser pointer! :)

Today might be mine and Jenn's -1 year anniversary!

Possible Wedding Site #5

Essex Conference Center and Retreat

JennBo and I have high hopes for this place... includes hotel rooms for a two day celebration!!!!

My summer is insane

My workload this summer has been insane. I decided to take three classes instead of two. One of them is a Java class, so I knew that would be easy. One of them is a "directed study" course, though... and that means a 2-4 page paper EVERY WEEK. At work, I have an intern (which has been a great experience, but I'll save that for another post) and that keeps me very busy... along with a bunch of other projects that I am pushing along. On top of that... a wedding to plan!

All of this has made it difficult to see local friends, call distance friends, and keep the apartment clean.

Classes end Wed August 6 and not a moment too soon. I am seriously contemplating taking one class a semester from here on out... I enjoy the program and don't mind extending it a year. It puts off repayment of my student loans. And it gives me more time! Giving up two nights a week to sit in class is wearing on me. It completely dictates my entire week.

Okay, enough whining. I have an intern to attend to!

Heather is Boston-bound!

My college roommate Heather has spent all the time since we graduated college in school... and now the final step, her fellowship, is about to begin. And where was she matched? Beth Israel's Joslin Diabetes Center here in Boston! Woo hoo!

Possible Wedding Site #4

http://www.hammondcastle.org/

We have an appointment at 11am on Saturday to check it out...

What I get to write a paper on

You probably have no idea what I do in school. Here's a sample assignment, due at 6pm tomorrow.

Read up on the plans for healthcare reform that John McCain and Barrack Obama have already brought forward. Compare and contrast those plans to each other and to the systems in Great Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Based on the experience of these other countries and your current understanding of the U.S. healthcare system, please state what aspects of the McCain and Obama proposals you think will work and what aspects you think are misdirected. The entire paper should be 3 to 4 pages.

Yeah. It's about as fun as it sounds.

Mario Kart at the Olympics

A Brief History of Healthcare Standards

A few months ago I made casual conversation with my corporate manager about my masters program. I told her I was really enjoying it and I had just given a presentation on the history of ICD and was writing a paper on SNOMED. She immediately thought that would be an awesome idea for a presentation at her staff meeting. Uh, yeah. Awesome...

So now I'm trying to format my ICD presentation for folks with little to no knowledge of what it is and add in SNOMED information without doing more research. It's a pain. Plus I have about a gazillion other work tasks right now (and you are right, posting to my blog is not one of them).

In case you were wondering, ICD is the International Classification for Diseases. In short, it was developed a really long time ago (way before computers) and is revised by the World Health Organization (WHO) every decade and is used across the world to record the reasons people get sick and the reasons they die. It's used for medical coding and billing.

SNOMED is the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine and is a more recent development. It is seeking to be the standard for electronic medical systems and is wicked flexible and wicked complicated, though organized.

See, I bet you didn't think you'd learn something today, did you?

Why I have job security

Bernanke: Improving health care is a critical challenge

Possible Wedding Site #3

The Fuller Craft Museum.

http://www.fullercraft.org/

My friend Mary is getting married here in October and we've heard nothing but good things from multiple sources. JennBo and I went out to see the place and meet the organizer and overall our impression were quite positive. We still need to chat about it (we rushed back to Boston for Jenn's softball game and I *should* be studying right now) but I'd say it's a serious possibility.

(BTW - Wedding Site #1, the Loring-Greenough House (http://www.lghouse.org/) was too close to the center of JP. Wedding Site #2, the Charles River Museum of Industry (http://www.crmi.org/) was a bit stuffy and no one was even there to talk to us about it.)