Saturday, May 3, 2008

The end of Crazy Week

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't have another week like the last one! Work was nuts, as you know if you read my previous post. Finally rebuilt the server on Wednesday, after I drove up to the hospital and ran my legs off running around the hospital picking up and dropping off hand-held records and/or tapes. I was never so glad to see that place in my rear view mirror as I was on Wednesday. Of course management is still on the pot about what to do about our dictation system. I guess they figure nothing is going to happen now, it's already happened. I heard through the grapevine that the bid from Dictaphone will probably be more than Cobalt, so they probably won't to that either. I understand why they want to go with VR, I really do, but when money is such an issue, sometimes you have to do with less. I mean, I'd love to live in a huge house (with a housekeeper and various staff), but really... What's that old saying about champagne taste on a beer budget? ha ha... I've got champagne taste on a soda budget! Oh, and I'm happy with my house, don't anybody think that was a complaint about my home. I'm just sayin'... You can't always get what you want. (Thanks, Mick - don't be expecting a royalty check any time soon, either.)

Today I went up to the hospital again to meet with the financial planner from the Lincoln National. I just became eligible to open an account through the hospital - same as a 401k, but it's called something different when you're employed by a nonprofit organization (not for profit, whatever...) Anyway, I doubt I'll be a millionaire by the time I retire, but I should have a few bucks stashed away. I also found out we have a pension plan if we were hired before January 2007. I was hired in October 2006, so I'm enrolled, but I didn't even know about it. BUT, because of the pension plan, the company doesn't match our contributions to the pseudo 401k. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Whatever it is, it's a thing...

Matt came over last night, he was looking for a birthday present for Mirisa. Her birthday is the 7th. He had a couple of ideas, but wasn't sure what he wanted. Unfortunately for him he decided to go to Nebraska Furniture Mart today to look around at some of the things he had in mind. Unfortunately because Berkshire Hathaway is having their annual stockholder's meeting this week and the place was packed with BH stockholders, since Warren Buffet owns NFM. He couldn't get anybody to help him with what he wanted, so he left more than a little ticked off. He even asked for help from a salesperson who ignored him. I don't like NFM - usually the sales people are all over you from the minute you walk in the door. I hate to be followed around and hounded when I'm buying furniture or appliances. When I find what I want I'll find a sales person, until then just leave me alone!

Anyway - in case I forget, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MIRISA!

Meg sent me a pretty cool picture the other day, a robin built it's nest right outside it's window and there are some eggs in it. I remember one year at our house on Miami Circle when some birds built a nest that we could watch from the front window. It was really neat to watch the eggs hatch and the baby birds grow up and take off. Not so much fun to have bird poo all over my front windows for weeks on end, but fun to see the birds grow up so close.

Meg had her hearing evaluation at Boys Town this week. It was a followup appointment from one several months ago. They did go ahead and give her the CAPD test, even through her hearing wasn't as good as it should have been. She didn't do very well, which is what we expected, but she's still angry about the whole thing. I don't blame her. I guess she should be angry at me, I feel really bad that we didn't recognize what was going on when she was younger and struggling in school, but really, Meg is such a social person that loves to daydream that we really thought that's what was going on. I think the only time we even came close to the real truth was when she was in fourth grade in a large classroom divided into fourths (a "pod"), and she had such trouble staying on track. In retrospect, we know it was because there was so much overall noise in such a large room that she just couldn't pick out what her teacher was saying, let alone understand it. She's been doing some research since this whole diagnosis came about last year and apparently there aren't even any resources available though the school district for a student with CAPD. Of course it's hard to diagnose, but even if it is, there's nothing the school district has in place to help those students affected. That has to be frustrating for the student, I know how mad Meg used to get... Maybe that's why she chose working the with deaf community as a career. I think it's kind of interesting that I also chose that when I was younger, but got discouraged with the program I was involved in and quit. Sometimes fate leads you in the right direction if you have enough brains to see it for what it is. I regret that I didn't stick with it. (Especially after a week like this one... Pounding the keyboard for 8 hours a day isn't what I envisioned for my life, but it's a little late for change now!)

The weather almost got nice the other day - it was so wonderful to open up the windows and let the fresh air in. The cottonwood trees are losing those stupid sticky pods again and the dogs are covered with them. Within a week poor Butercup and Jojo are going to look like they've been run over by a lawnmower by the time I'm done cutting all the pods out of their long hair. The others are all busy constantly licking their feet and trying to chew the pods out from between their toes. I probably spend an hour every day trying to help them, but with 6 dogs going in and out every couple of hours, it's hard to keep them all pod-free all day. I should probably just get Jojo and Buttercup cut short, but even the short hair dogs are getting them stuck. Ben has a couple bald spots where I had to cut the pods off. Poor things. I hate cottonwood trees. I wish the blight would kill them and not our Ponderosa pines, which are looking worse all the time.

Well, it's about 3 a.m. and I have some errands to run before noon tomorrow, so I better hit the sack.

Later

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

We're in trouble now, Captain

I was working along tonight when all of a sudden I got a message that I had a connection failure to my work platform. I checked the time since they're supposed to reboot every Tuesday at midnight eastern time. Nope, it was 1 a.m. eastern time. I waited a few minutes and tried again. Nothing. I called the help desk, "Well, I rebooted and I haven't seen the document server since." What the heck does that mean? Can you fix it. "Nope, it's at the hospital." Uh oh.

Long story short, our dictation server works, but our document server doesn't. And we have NO backup! Can you believe that? No backup for a hospital server. Apparently our MIS department has tried to include it in a budget, but it has always been turned down in the past. We had over 360 jobs that are now gone, vanished, bye-bye. I can hardly wait for morning. The doctor's can't dictate either for some reason, so we have no dictation system, 5 hand held recorders for over 50 doctors on a given day, and, get this, no transcribers. AND, only 1 workstation in house - even if they do manage to find 6 transcribers. Oh, and with gas approaching 4 bucks a gallon, I'm not driving 50 miles a day to pick up tapes. (insert maniacal laughter here)