Being Punctual

Before I get into the reason behind this post I should mention that I hate being late.  Subsequently I do whatever I can not to be late.  I prepare, look directions up ahead of time, etc.  So whenever people are late it irritates me.  It's a sign of immaturity, not caring, and being self centered.  Now I understand circumstances happen, but overall being late isn't something I tolerate well. 

I had two new patients show up 20 minutes late to their appointment yesterday and we asked both to reschedule.  One did reschedule, the other stormed out of the office mad.  I realize you may be thinking that 20 minutes isn't too late and asking what's the big deal?  I can tell you.

In medicine, especially primary care, we are increasingly asked to accomplish more in smaller time frames.  With that being said, it is imperative for people to arrive to their appointments on time for everything to work well.  My new patient appointments are 40 minutes long.  It takes approximately 10 minutes to go through the EPIC (our office's electronic medical system) check-in process for the first time.  Because of this we ask all new patients to arrive 10-15 minutes prior to their appointment.  I'd say one out of twenty new patients actually do this.  The overwhelming majority arrive right when their appointment is supposed to start.  We don't say anything in this circumstance and just accept that the appointment is going to start late.  But when you arrive 20 minutes past when your appointment is supposed to start (making them technically 30-35 minutes beyond when they were asked to arrive), add10 minutes to get through the EPIC check-in process, and another 3-5 minutes to get vitals and visit info, that gives me 5 minutes to get through an annual physical.  Not to mention that a lot of visits come with a "oh by the way" moment which tacks an additional 5 or more minutes onto the visit.  (I had a great example of this yesterday.  Guy comes in for a follow-up visit.  At the end of the appointment he decides to inform me that he has been having periodic chest pain that last several minutes.)

Showing up 20 minutes late to an appointment affects all parties involved negatively.  It's unfair to the patient for someone to have to rush through their preventative care in 5 minutes (not to mention impossible).  It's unfair to me to be forced to rush through the rest of the day just because someone decided not to show up on time.  It's unfair to my office staff who undoubtedly will have to stay late as the rest of the day we will be behind schedule.  It's unfair to the rest of the patients who actually show up on time to have to wait 40 minutes because now I'm behind. 

If something happens and you're going to be late all you have to do is call and reschedule.  It's as simple as that and this simple action will benefit everyone.  One thing I've learned in my job is that the average person is irresponsible and self-centered.  I can tell you one thing: I'm not going to drop what I'm doing and ruin the whole day just because someone decides to randomly show up.  If that makes me the bad guy then so be it.

Internet 101

If you were teaching an introductory course to the internet, say for senior citizens, and you were discussing internet safety, probably one of the first things you'd mention is to never click on emails from unknown people or on suspicious ads that look like games.  I'm embarrassed to say that I broke that rule today.  Fortunately it wasn't on my home computer but instead on my work computer. 

We get minimal spam through our work email and I work for a large company and frequently get emails from people who are unknown to me.  So today when I sat down at my computer and saw an email from an unknown person labeled "accounts summary" I didn't really think much of it when I downloaded the file and opened it.  That changed when I immediately received three more emails labeled "accounts summary" but from different people.  By that point it was too late and the damage was done.  I wasn't the only person in my office to open this email and I'd say likely 100s of people across the network did the same.  We called IT and were instructed to unplug the computer for them to pick up tomorrow, presumably before it explodes.

A friend once told me you could easily tell someone's knowledge of basic computer skills by noticing if they inappropriately single or double click items.  It could probably be argued the same skill set could be noticed by people who inappropriately download email attachments from unknown people.  Quite silly, really.

Weather Fearmongering

Somewhat embarrassingly, I admit that I watch 48 Hours on CBS on a fairly regular basis.  I say that it is embarrassing because it is on TV on Saturday nights.  You might think that I would have something better to do or more interesting to do but the overwhelming majority of the time I don't.  My kids are asleep but they're still home and need supervision so we're tied to the house and quite honestly there typically isn't much to do on a Saturday evening, especially if there isn't any good sporting events on TV.  This past Saturday we were watching TV and when the time came I switched to CBS. 

What I found when I switched to the local affiliate on the TV was not one, but two banners advertising a winter storm that was coming to the region.  The first banner was at the top of the screen and was scrolling through various counties that were predicted to be affected by the storm.  The second banner was at the bottom of the screen and was displaying various information regarding the upcoming snow storm in font size large enough to be read across the yard.

A winter storm warning has been issued by the...

to give you an example of the size.  As if this wasn't enough, there was a map displayed in the lower left corner of the screen with the various counties that make up central Indiana.  Each county was shaded a certain color, I guess in an attempt to show us how bad this storm was going to get depending on where you live.  Adding insult is the fact that they started displaying these graphics in some form on Friday evening, a full 24 hours before the storm even started.  All of this for a storm that produced so much snow I could still see blades of grass in my yard poking through and I don't think any schools in our area were closed or delayed.  TV stations do this kind of stuff all of the time and it is ridiculously absurd.  I can maybe understand one banner at the bottom of the screen, but three?  That's way overboard, especially for a snow storm that produced mostly rain.

Ghostbusters 3...Why?

Ghostbusters is among my favorite memories as a child.  I loved the movies.  I loved the theme song.  I had all of the action figures and toys and would play with them while jamming to the theme song on cassette tape.  In fact, my parents still have most of the toys stored in the attic at their house.  I know they've been trying to resurrect the movie franchise for some time now, but with its stars growing older and Harold Ramis' unfortunate passing last year, I figured that project was finished.  I was wrong, apparently, as news surfaced this week of the Ghostbusters 3 movie with an all female cast.  Why would they do that?  It was risky business to begin with making a sequel (to a sequel), but now making one with a completely different cast, and one that is all female and thus nothing like the original, just sounds awful.  Why smash my childhood memories like that?  I'm honestly just going to pretend that this movie doesn't exist, which is basically what I do with 99% of other movies anyway.

On a side note, I no longer have broadband internet available at my house per definition.  Not because I don't pay for it, but because it isn't an option.  Nice to know that a suburb of a major American city is keeping up with the times.  Maybe this new definition will result in an upgrade soon.

The Four Year Router

We've had intermittent internet connectivity issues at home for the past month or so.  What's frustrating is that each episode is different from the previous and there will be a week or so in-between an episode where things are acting fine, making diagnosing the problem difficult.  Looking for a solution on the internet is about like diagnosing a medical problem on the internet - all solutions are possible but none are likely.  As a side note, I feel like anytime I try to look up a solution to a computer problem on the internet invariably it is mentioned that drivers or firmware should be updated.  I can tell you that doing such an update has never solved any computer problem that I've ever had.

It started a month ago when my new laptop randomly quit connecting to the internet.  My wireless strength was full but it was like our ISP or modem was having problems.  All of our other devices connected, however.  I moved my computer from my office and that seemed to help so I thought maybe I was having interference issues.  I gradually moved the computer back into my office and things seemed to work again.

Then a few weeks later all of our devices experienced signal loss from the router for about a week.  We had the people from our ISP come out and check our signal and modem and switches and everything and they said things looked good from their end and that likely our router was to blame.  Odd thing is shortly after things started working again like nothing had happened.

That lasted about a week until I began experiencing frequent connectivity issues again, just like I did originally where it said I had full signal but no service.  All other devices worked.  At this point I got tired of dealing with it and bought a new router.  This is the third router I've ever owned and my first two seemed to last about 4 years before they pooped out, really for unexplainable reasons.  I can tell you router technology has advanced a lot since I last bought one, and so have the prices.  I did some research and decided to get a pretty decent one versus going cheap.  Researching routers is both boring and confusing.  It's difficult to tell the difference in a $100 router versus a $200 router without getting into some technical details.

Looking back, I think we've probably had some connectivity issues since moving into our house.  It would frequently boot people off the network if more than 3-4 people were connected simultaneously, which from what I've read the average home router should easily be able to handle (I think the Apple Airport Extreme said it could support 150 simultaneous users.).  Sarah bought a Windows 7 laptop in 2012 that always had connectivity issues to the point that she now uses an old and heavy 2010 Macbook that we have.  The newness of the computer is the only constant I've been able to find in this whole mess.  While I think the router was in the process of failing, the computers that seemed to be affected the most were our two newest computers for some reason.  At any rate my new router is up and running so I am hoping this will fix the problem for good, or at least until 2019.

We Could Be Cleveland

Discussing the Colts being beat once again by the Patriots kind of makes me feel like a Cubs fan but in all reality it isn't quite that bad.  We got killed yesterday.  Just killed.  At no point was that game close.  The loss itself is frustrating but when you look at the fact that we were one of four remaining teams this season and we were really more like a top 10 team things suddenly don't look too bad.  We have a young superstar quarterback in Luck who more or less carried this team along with TY Hilton and a few key defensive players but otherwise we have an over-matched defensive line and no run game.  We're decent and were beat by a better team.  The stinger is that we were beat by the Patriots.  While both teams have changed a lot of players over the years and we've changed coaches, the two remaining constants are Belichick and Brady, still there to beat us.  Our only hope is that Luck will outlast Brady.  The whole ball-deflating scandal is amusing because it in no way impacted that game.  Why would they even think they would need to do that to beat us?  And yet I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out to be true.  I don't put anything past the Spygate Patriots.  If it is true they should face a fine of epic proportions as they are perpetual cheaters.  I agree with Wilbon who said if it proves to be true they should have to forfeit their Super Bowl bid but the NFL doesn't have to balls to do such a thing.  The bottom line is we've had 10-15 years of pretty good football here in Indy (save for the season Peyton was injured and Willie Wonka played) and we had a decent team this year and made it to the AFC Championship and were beat by a better team.  The Seattle vs New England game will make for a better Super Bowl though it is hard to figure out who to root for (Of course the answer is Seattle but I'm not excited about that.)  Hey, it could be worse.  We could be Cleveland.

I Can't Believe I Cheered For Ohio State

Since this isn't technically a sports blog I don't typically write about sports, but here goes.  I can't believe I'm posting a picture of Ohio State's mascot on my blog.  Truthfully I am only doing it to amuse Sarah as she's a fan.  Obviously their win in the national championship game last night is fueling this post and here is why.

College football is my least favorite sport when ranking the nation's most popular sports.  I think it represents a lot of what is wrong with athletics, especially college athletics, and therefore I choose not to participate.  I did watch the college football playoffs, however, with rooting interest in Ohio State.  Being from the Midwest and Big 10 country (or is it the Big 14 now? I can't keep track anymore.  This is one of many reasons why I don't like college football.), I tend to root for Big 10 schools in national tournaments.  I must say, I have found most OSU fans that I have met to be loathsome and generally unlikeable because of their obnoxious rooting habits (The Ohio State University?  Give me a break.).  They may be a-holes, but they're our a-holes, and in situations like this I will support them. 

With that being said, I would rank SEC-worshiping as even more obnoxious.  I'm not even sure it is the SEC's fault.  I blame ESPN (I could write an entire seperate blog about things that ESPN does that annoy me.  I think I've said that before.)  So I was quite happy when one team after another from the SEC lost in their bowl games while the "mediocre" Big 10 schools continued to win.  Then came OSU's first playoff game against mighty Alabama (Nick Saban = generally unlikeable), where OSU won with their third string quarterback.  Third string!  It is unthinkable that a school from the mediocre Big 10 could beat mighty SEC Alabama with not their backup quarterback, but their backup's backup.

Which set the stage for the title game against Oregon, a team from the Pac 12 that I know nothing about and thus have nothing against.  Presumably they're good - they have the Heisman trophy winner and are in the title game.  And OSU steam-rolled them.  The Buckeyes absolutely trampled them.  The only reason the game was even as close as it was is because Ohio State coughed up the ball four times.  The only thing that looked good about Oregon was their uniforms (Which interestingly enough did not contain green or yellow, which I believe to be the school's colors.  Regardless they were sharp.) and their cheerleaders.  Otherwise this game wasn't even close.

And to think that this new playoff format conjured this much emotion and interest from me for a sport that I don't even care about.  Hopefully this will quite the SEC talk and we can hear about some other teams and conferences for a change.  Then again what do I care?  I won't be paying attention anyway.