To be treated by a nerd, you must think like a nerd

Yesterday The New York Times published an article how patients are treated in hospitals and other medical settings. When I met with my doctor yesterday afternoon, he said that the article had been forwarded to everyone in the clinic at least three times and was causing a lot of discussion among the staff. In brief, the article says that we're treated pretty much as meat with an insurance card.

Later in the day, I had another appointment with another doctor. I had to ask him three times to write down the name of a medication that we were considering so that I could do some research. Finally, when I provided an index card from the pack that I carry in my shirt pocket, he seemed pleased that he was dealing with a nerd like him and wrote both the brand and generic names of the medication.

The other day I mentioned that Joe and his friend, Seth, caught fish with buckets. They weren't just being resourceful. In the boathouse, we have some very old fishing poles, but no working tackle. The next time we go to Wal-Mart, we'll pick up a cheap rod, reel, line, and hook, nothing stylish like this. We might even get licenses. A friend used to promote fishing as a way to serenity, only occasionally interrupted by the actual catching of fish.

During the overnight, the BBC had a story about the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. Earlier in the year Venezuela gave away thousands of free copies of the book to mark the event. One of the points that I learned in college, and which was discussed in this radio piece, was the pronunciation of the title. Most often, we pronounce it Don Ki-ho-ti. Even the Spanish speakers pronounced it this way. There is, however, some evidence that Cervantes pronounced Kwix-oat. We use the word quixotic, for example. Some citations even have it as Don Quijote. Y'see, if you give academicians something like this to fuss about, they'll leave you alone for quite a while.

You can now write blogs from Microsoft Word and post them to Blogger with a new Word plug-in. I'll stick to the web interface for now. Word is too slow and bloated for quick notes such as these, IMO. Also, I can't imagine that all of that Word-generated HTML can be healthy for Blogger's diet.

I have a second interview this morning. This one will be by telephone with the manager in White Plains. The challenge will be finding a place where I can talk freely. Conference rooms are hard to find on short notice. I may have to hide in plain sight and take the call on my cell phone while I'm in the cafeteria or outside at one of the picnic tables.

My current job is good and, if there was an opportunity to stay with it as a permanent employee, I would stay. I'm not chasing a lot of job leads at this point and so don't need a subterfuge like this to make it look like I'm doing real work.

The start of the season of wood

The air is cool this morning. Someone in the neighborhood has a wood fire going. Which reminds me that I need to order some wood for next year. The prices on seasoned wood are jumping up along with the prices for home heating oil. I'm hoping that the prices for green wood won't be climbing as much, but our wood guy is having to pay a lot more for fuel when he cuts and delivers. Mike delivered a half-truck load to the camp - oak and maple that will be good for sauna.

This installment of "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" comes from NPR's Talk of the Nation. Last week, they had a segment about great car chases. (Bullitt and Blues Brothers naturally were among the favorites.) Several minutes were devoted to playing clips from the movies. On the radio.

Elvis left the building on this date in 1977. As I mentioned on his birthday, my favorite material is the kind of backstage mix of rockabilly and gospel that formed the foundation of his music. When he was in that element, he was never better. So, if you see him pumping gas someplace, don't ask for Vegas show tunes. Ask for 'Brown-Eyed Handsome Man' or 'Peace in the Valley.' You'll get an earful that'll last a long time.

If cats want to travel, they get to stay in luxury. For dogs, it's the same old story: pack in, pack out.

Ye shall be fishers of fish

The party on Saturday was a fine one indeed. It was hot, so everyone stayed near or in the water as much as they could.

All of us like our toys, be it Xbox, iPod, power boats, or whatever, but it's good to be reminded that we can be delighted by nature as well. We have wild blueberries growing on our shore. During the party Sandra and I swam the shore with Tess and Krista and ate blueberries until we were blue in the teeth. Joe and his friend, Seth, stayed overnight on Saturday. The next morning, we had blueberry pancakes made with the wild blueberries. After breakfast, they went down to the water with the leftover hot dog and hamburger rolls to feed the fish. Using just a couple of buckets, they caught seven fish, kivvers and one small bass. The fishermen in the boat out in the cove, with their fancy lures and depth finders, laughed in disbelief.

Job leads seem to come in bunches. Over the weekend, a friend sent me a referral regarding prospects at a large computer company. In addition, my automated searches turned up a couple of interesting prospects, each at companies where I know at least one person.

The weekend mail brought news that a former manager, who moved to Seattle last year to work at Amazon, has retired. He's seeing the sights of the Northwest and enjoying the leisurely life.

The big European mobile phone company, Vodafone, is onto something with their new product called Vodafone Simply. They have designed a simpler interface for their mobile phones, using text instead of cryptic icons to indicate when a text message has arrived, when the battery is low, or if you have a good signal. Although they don't really say so in their promotional materials, they're targeting the older market. This service is not available in the U.S. yet. Vodafone owns about 45% of Verizon Wireless, so we might see something before too long.

If you have to check the spelling on this word, you're either not comfortable using it or you're way too comfortable.

Big thunderstorms rolled through the state yesterday afternoon and evening. We were spared the worst, but many towns lost trees and limbs and were flooded. This morning, cool fresh air is filling the house.