Various Concepts

We've just paid the first installment for my daughter's trip to France, next summer. We're looking forward to it, as it'll be a combination of vacation for her, and learning. She'll stay in several French cities, dip into Monaco and the south of France, and spend at least a week with a French family, during which she'll be required to speak nothing but French. (Do they speak any English? Probably. But they won't go out of their way -- she'll have to learn to do the basics, from 'where's the bathroom' to 'another of those, please'.) We think it'll be a great trip, and we think she'll learn more than she would have with the People to People effort.

I was quite surprised to find that the person for whom I'll be doing some work at the hospital asked for a copy of my resume. I heard unofficially that she's somewhat of a micromanager, which means, if it ever did happen that I got offered a job (and that's extremely unlikely), I'd turn it down, as I despise micromanagers. Still, it was a little surprising to me to read my own resume. Over the years, I've done some interesting things. Nothing that would gain me major league attention, but still: not bad. I was sort of pleased to read it.

I've been going through the recent copy of Technology Review. It arrived a few weeks ago, but events sort of got in the way of reading it. One article is about the concept of electronic medical records, which is something near and dear to my heart. (That fondness was damaged, a little, when, upon scheduling another routine appointment with the local docs, I was informed that since they're converting to EMRs, I'd have to fill out another form. I guess customer friendliness isn't big on their conversion's priority list.) I do get a little antsy, though, reading about politicians talking about EMRs, because they tend to discuss them as if they're the panacea -- implement them and all health system ills will be eliminated. Of course, that's not at all the case. I suspect that most health system ills won't be affected by the adoption of EMRs, and of those that will, some will actually become worse, while the others will only slowly get better. It's an infrastructural improvement -- and as generations of civil engineers know, infrastructure is one of the least sexy things around, when it comes to politicians.

I am still hoping to connect the DVR from Tivo to one of the other TVs, so that we can at least watch recorded non-HD programs in the other room. (Most of our recordings are of non-HD shows, actually. I do like watching Enterprise in high def, though.) Not sure how to do it -- I really don't want to run cables. And I still want to connect the DVD player/VCR to the LCD tv -- not to record (the Tivo unit can handle that) but just to play back DVDs on the big screen. Alas, the people who built this very nice cabinet for the TV put in one two inch hole to pass cables through. Not nearly enough. My wife tells me that she thinks we have a hole bit for the drill here somewhere. I kind of don't want to -- that's nice wood, and it's thick -- but I don't see an alternative.

We were watching the tube tonight and I thought man, how quickly we got used to this big TV! Tivo is nice, too, but, you know, its not as nice as people make it seem. The remote's not that well designed -- yes, it fits better in the hand than most, but it's also easily possible to hold upside down, and it doesn't have a light-up-the-keys function like the TV's remote does. And the service itself -- well, it records well enough, but why isn't there a skip 30 seconds/10 minutes/whatever function? That seems pretty basic to me. The search function, too, seems awfully primitive -- the service talks to the home network, so why isn't there a PC app to set up programming searches? The best single thing has been that it gets me downstairs to do the exercise bike again -- which, granted, is goodness -- but overall, it's not as wonderful as I thought it would be. Just, you know, better than the alternatives. Didn't Franklin say that about the US model of democracy?