The Big Digital's Journey to the Magic Kingdom (but only to the gates) and His Less-than-Magical Return Trip

This week I went to Orlando for the very first time, but somehow managed to avoid ending up in any theme and/or amusement parks.  I was actually there for work to present my work with death certificates at a public health informatics meeting that was held in the Walt Disney World Swan hotel.

I got into Orlando late Tuesday after a relatively painless one-stop flight on US Airways. (Brief layover in Phoenix).  Talk about bare-bones, though.  Not even a peanut on a 4 hour flight from Phoenix to Orlando.  And they've even sold the tops of their trays to advertisers (Verizon).  Oddly enough, at the Orlando airport, they've sold advertising space on the inside of the security bins where you put all your belonging to go through the x-ray machine. (zappos.com).

Anyway, US Airways got me there before too late at night, and I shared a van from the airport over to the massive Disney complex with about 9 other people, some of whom were British 20-somethings coming to work summer jobs at Disney World. That might be fun, right?  Probably the highlight of the trip was one of the Brits, getting excited over what she thought was the big ball thing at Epcot, but actually turned out to be a water tower many miles away from Epcot. :)

That night, as I met with the other person I was presenting with, I discovered that staying at a Disney hotel means that there's no such thing as a Wendy's anywhere nearby.  I was pretty much stuck, food-wise, with the restaurants in my hotel, the restaurants in the neighboring Dolphin hotel, or the restaurants on Disney's "Boardwalk" area.  And the one that my co-presenter suggested was probably the cheapest actually charged me $14 for a burger with fries. Ouch. Thank goodness for travel reimbursement, amirite? :) Thankfully, once the conference started Wednesday morning, a lot of food was provided by the conference and a couple of the sponsors.

Looking across at the Dolphin hotel from my room

I could also see the Tower of Terror or whatever they call it at Disney World.


I gave my presentation Wednesday afternoon, and it went well, I think. Not a huge crowd by any means, maybe 12 to 15 people in attendance, but the last time I presented something at a conference, it was as part of an 8 person panel where there were a total of 9 people in the room (including the panel members).  After we presented our slides, we got a good number of valid and interesting questions, so that made me feel like the people who were there at least had paid attention and were interested in the topic.  Oh, and originally we were supposed to present Thursday, but at the last minute were switched to Wednesday (which actually was really nice given my tight travel schedule the next day) with the promise that the switch would be well advertised in the opening session. Then in the opening session they mentioned the switch, but got it backwards. :) I at least spoke up to say that it was the opposite of what the lady announcing it was, but that may have confused a few people who might have otherwise been in attendance.

The rest of Wednesday, with my presentation out of the way, I had a little time to relax and enjoy our surroundings. I went for a quick and sweaty jog (more in this weeks Y5K post), that included sights like the entrance to "Disney Hollywood Studios" (whatever that is) and then nearly all the way over to Epcot from there. I, sadly, did not realize how close I was, and didn't get to see it's trademark ball-thingy.  But I DID see a turtle by the side of the waterway, so that was cool. :)   After my jog and a quick shower, I hit the pool and hot tub with some fellow Utah informaticists, and finally a few of us took a Disney shuttle to "Downtown Disney", an outdoor mall of sorts with shops and restaurants and a smidge of entertainment here and there. They have a hot air balloon ride there, that I thought might be worth checking out, but it was running by the time we made it over there.  So we wandered around and eventually got some dinner at the House of Blues.


The balloon ride

Thursday, I woke up bright and early (waking up on Eastern time always kills me) and headed down to the keynote/continental breakfast.  As I was waiting for things to get going, I checked my email and found, to my delight , that my direct flight home from Orlando to Salt Lake had been canceled for undisclosed reasons. I assume it was underbooked or something.  Anyway, I'd been booked, instead on to a one-stop flight that left Orlando about an hour later and arrived in Salt Lake 3.5 hours later than my original flight would have landed. Bit of a bummer there.  Instead of getting in at 8:18, I was now scheduled to get in at 11:51.  The friend who was going to give me a ride I know goes to bed early because she gets up early to teach school, so I told her the bad news and said I'd try to find someone else.  One facebook wallpost later and I was able to find a friend who didn't work on Friday who was willing to stay up and come get me. Little did she know what she'd be in for. More on that later....

I attended most of the conference for that day, leaving around 2:30 so I could go catch my van to the airport. The return trip was supposed to be scheduled at least 24 hours in advance and I'd made my plans before learning my flight was canceled/pushed back another hour, so I was kind of stuck with my time.  We made it to the airport around 3:30, quite early (even for Tripp standards) given my 6:30 departure time, and as I was checking in, the kiosk informed me that there might be earlier flight available.  All the ones it showed me were standby only, so I was hesitant to make a switch there at kiosk, wondering if it might somehow lose my reserved seat on the later flight.

After getting through security, I called Delta from a Delta "self-help" area and they added me to the standby list for an earlier set of flights that might get me to Salt Lake an hour earlier than expected.    Sadly...that was far from the ultimate outcome.  I hung around the gate for the earlier flight to see what my chances of making it standby were, and it soon became apparent that not only were there not going to be extra seats available, but also that this flight was going to be leaving around the same time as the flight I was already confirmed on. Atlanta was experiencing some rough weather and they pretty much shut down all incoming flights for a couple hours.  So we were all stuck there in Orlando waiting for the all clear.  At one point there were at least 3 planes sitting at the gates all scheduled to go to Atlanta. I started to get nervous that I'd have trouble making my connecting flight from Atlanta home to Salt Lake, but I (rightly, it turned out) suspected that everything at Atlanta would be delayed a bit by the weather trouble.

Eventually (about 90 minutes later than originally scheduled) we got to leave Orlando and head to Atlanta. Our scheduled arrival time was pretty much exactly the same time as the departure time for the Salt Lake flight, so I figured if it wasn't delayed I was pretty much stuck.  I'd been informed that my Salt Lake flight was the last one of the day, so if I didn't make that one, I'd be spending a night in Georgia.  Upon landing, and getting cell phone clearance, I texted Google for flight info and found that my flight had, thankfully, been pushed back about 40 minutes which would give me enough time to get to my gate without having to rush like a mad man through the terminal. Which was nice because, seriously, some people are slow. Just meandering around through the terminal with their bags and children and who knows what else.  As I hustled to my gate, I happened to notice Josh Smith of the Atlanta Hawks also headed somewhere. Cool. Moving on... got to my gate, and waited in the line to make sure I was booked on the flight. I was. Yes! Oh, but then the gate agent got on the intercom to inform us that the plane we were supposed to fly home on was "broke" and that she'd give us more info once she knew more.

I took advantage of the waiting time to take a potty break, get some dinner (at this point it was about 10:30 eastern time and I hadn't eaten in Orlando since everything was so up in the air the whole time), and keep my ride home up to date on the situation.  I even caught the last minute of the Bulls-Heat playoff game. I was clued in that it was going to be an exciting finish by a cheering crowd of spectators sitting at another gate. I was surprised that they seemed to be such fans of the Heat (since they're kind of the bad guys this year), until I found out they were all waiting for a flight to Miami. :)

Anyway, they eventually found us a plane to fly home on, and I settled into my seat, slept a few hours and before I knew was back in the friendly confines of Salt Lake International. Only 6 hours later than originally scheduled. :)  My friend Melissa gets mad props for coming to fetch me at 2:30 in the morning and being so kind and chipper about the whole thing.  It's nice to be back home.

Oh, and I'm leaving in 15 minutes to head up to eastern Washington for a wedding.  Yeah. It's been that kind of week. :)

The Big Digital Flies 1st Class (if only for 45 minutes)

Last week, I traveled to our nation's capitol for 3 and a half days of Informatics presentations. Well, actually only 2 and a half days since I spent nearly all of Sunday in an airplane. The conference itself was pretty good. I got to catch up with some friends from school who are now scattered around the country, and had a chance to think about what kinds of things I'd like to work on in the upcoming months. Also notable was the redesign of the AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) logo. On the whole I think it was an upgrade, though my boss reportedly had some emotional attachment to the old logo. For your comparison:


Old (this was the biggest I could find at short notice)


New

But enough about the actual conference, let's talk about the series of serendipitous events that transpired in my travel plans.

Because I only found out a couple weeks ago that I was going to this conference, I ended up not being able to take the direct flight from Salt Lake to DC and back, but was connecting through JFK both ways. I was a little nervous when I noticed that on the way there, I only had 40 minutes between flights, and also that I didn't have a seat assignment for the 2nd leg.

My nervousness was confirmed when we arrived 10 minutes late to JFK and then ended up parking out away from the airport while a magic hydraulic shuttle bus came and picked us up. Which meant that pretty much we couldn't get back to the terminal until everyone was off the plane. Anyway, I was just getting into the terminal when I heard the last call for my flight over the loudspeaker. I hustled to my gate, expecting that there'd be no way I'd make it, but I was happy to see the gate agent still dealing with some passengers when I arrived. I still was nervous about not having a seat assignment, but after about 5 minutes they gave me one and I was off down the jetway to the plane.

It was a little Canadair puddle jumper with just two seats on each side of the aisle. The stewardess informed me that the lady with the seat next to me was wondering if I'd be willing to switch with her daughter so they could sit together. I was just pleased to be on the plane and really either seat was window or aisle, so not too bad. I said sure, and moved up a couple rows to where the daughter had been sitting. A few moments later a couple showed up and the husband had the seat next to mine. I asked if his wife wanted my seat to sit next to him and she said yes, so she switched me. Only it turned out that her seat was a couple more rows up, in the first class section! Granted it was such a short flight (about 45 minutes of actual flight time) that it really was a limited experience that amounted to some extra legroom, drinking my water from an actual glass, and a free bag of Sun Chips and 1 Twix (Is 1 Twix the two sticks? If so, then half a Twix). But it was still a fun experience and it definitely struck me a little odd the way that just by moving up two rows, suddenly I was treated differently by the flight crew and was given special treatment. I mean, I know I'm sitting up there, but I paid for a economy class ticket. Weird.

On Wednesday when I was returning home, my connecting flight from DC to JFK was run by some airline I'd never heard of (Mesaba? Mesada? something like that) and the time to start boarding came and went without anyone appearing at the gate. Then a bit later, someone came out of the jetway and announced that there was some kind of paperwork-related delay. Another 30 minute passed. I had about an hour and half layover scheduled in New York, but now I was starting to get a little nervous. We were past our departure time and still hadn't starting boarding. I remembered that on my recent trip home from Hawaii, my dad had called some number and talked to someone at Delta who was able to assist us when we were delayed getting to LAX. So I called home and got that number and was able to talk to a Delta representative who got me switched from my 1 stop flight plan to one of the few remaining seats on the nonstop flight that the rest of my Utah/Intermountain colleagues were taking home. It left an hour later than my flight but arrived in Salt Lake 2 hours earlier than I would have been home had I stuck to my original itinerary. Oh, and I had a window seat with no one next to me in the middle seat. On a very full flight. Sometimes you just get lucky, I guess.

Sign Language

I know I don't blog much about my work, and that probably won't change much in the future either, but today I'm going to share with you something that, while unrelated to the actual work that I do, did take place at my place of employment.

My office is in the basement of the hospital, and every day I go up 2 flights of stairs to the 2nd floor to get breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria and then come back down. In the stairwell there are handy signs to mark which floor you've arrived at. Like these:





But at some point, the sign marking the 1st floor disappeared. Don't know if it was broken, or taken down or what. In any case, every day when I'd be going up, I'd get to the 1st floor where there was no sign, and somedays I'd wonder "Is this the 1st or 2nd floor?" Sometimes I get distracted while I'm going up the stairs, ok? There was just a blank spot on the wall. For a long time. A few months at least.

Finally, one day, I decided that the 1st floor needed a sign, too. So I made one. On a post-it note. And put tape on the sides so that it wouldn't just fall down when the post-it's stickyness wore out. And put it up in the blank space where the sign used to be. And several months later, it's still there. :)

Informatics: The San Francisco Treat

Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco for the Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), pretty much the largest conference of the year for academic & research informatics. I didn't go last year because I didn't really have any funding to go, and had just finished defending my dissertation and had been preoccupied with that. One of the nice things about going was catching up with good friends from school who either have moved away for work, or who I just don't see much any more.

The conference itself was enjoyable and informative as well. I feel like I'm starting to know enough that when the presentation is something interesting to me, I can pay attention and understand a lot of what is said. And I also know enough to know when something is being presented that I don't really want/need to pay attention to. Probably not the best attitude, but with 4 solid days of presentations, you have to pick your battles. In the past, I've struggled with staying awake the last couple days, but this year I only remember dozing off once. I'm sure part of that is due to the fact that the conference was on the west coast instead of the east. Getting up at 7 am Pacific Time (8 am Mountain) is much easier than getting up at 7 am Eastern Time (5 am Mountain).

As the conference goes from around 8:30 until 4 or 5 each day, there wasn't a lot of time for sight-seeing, especially since it was already dark outside by the time things were winding up in the late afternoon. I did manage to get out and do a few things. Some highlights:

• Saturday night after getting settled in, I ordered take out from the Cheesecake Factory a few blocks away and then brought it back to my hotel room and ate while I watched the Utah-TCU game through the magic of the internet.
  
  
• Sunday at lunch time, I made my way over to a farmer's market where I'd heard that I could find some good Argentine empanadas. I got one with chicken and one with jamon y queso (ham & cheese). Good times.
  
  
  
• Tuesday morning, I identified a couple hours of the conference that seemed the most likely to be not that interesting and headed out to do a little touring. I caught a cable car a block from the hotel and went up over the hill and down to the wharf. It was still early (around 9) so most things weren't open, and I just walked around and took some photos.
  
  
  My ride
  
  
  Taken at the top of Lombard Street
  
  
  I really like the way this shot was framed by the front window of the cable car.
  
  
  Fortuitous shot of a pelican with the Golden Gate bridge in the background.
  
  I enjoyed watching the sea lions at Pier 39 for quite a while. Then I hiked up to Telegraph Hill, where the Coit Tower is located, and where I'd heard there were good views of the city. Then I walked down the hill, past Washington Square, and caught a cable car back over the hill to the hotel.
  
  
  A sea of sea lions
  
  
  This sea lion was busily defending her spot on the floating dock.
  
  
  The Bay Bridge from the bottom of Telegraph Hill
  
  
  Coit Tower
  
  
  I like the way the city seems to rise to a (dull) point at the top of this photo
  
  
  Washington Square was full of Asians (Chinese?) doing various things. Tai Chi, aerobics, martial arts, etc.
  
  
  This guy seemed to be teaching the world's easiest line dance. To the "Macarena" of all songs.
  
  
• Tuesday night after the conference was over, I went to see Wicked with my good friend Scott. He, having seen the show several times before, was happy to settle for balcony seats, but given my experience on Broadway seeing Phantom of the Opera from what felt like a football field away from the stage, I opted to spend a little more and get good seats. Which, by the way, it was nice to be able to get tickets at face value just a few days beforehand. Apparently San Francisco is not as obsessed with Wicked as Salt Lake.
  
  Anyway, I ended up on the 3rd row and thoroughly enjoyed the show, which had a cast including Patty Duke and Deedee from the Mickey Mouse Club of my childhood.
  
  
  Hey! It's me!
  
  
  View from my seat
  

In the end, the conference was very enjoyable and I really enjoyed catching up with some good friends, and seeing a little bit of the city as well.

More photos here.

Just arrived in my inbox...

Congratulations on your graduation from the University of Utah. The following degree has been posted to your academic record:


Doctor of Philosophy

Biomedical Informatics


Your diploma has been mailed.

I guess that makes it official.

I done gradyeeated!

Saturday morning, up at the University, I put on my fancy PhD robes and walked across the stage at Kingsbury Hall, got hooded, picked up my diploma and then had to sit there for another hour while other people did the same. It was a good day. Definitely brings some closure to the whole experience. Much more so than had I just gotten a diploma in the mail. Also, now I have some fancy robes in case I ever need those. Like for Halloween, or graduation-themed parties.

Special thanks to my family for coming to support me and for taking me to lunch after at Cheesecake.





More photos here.

Career Path reflections

A few times in the last couple weeks I've had a chance to reflect on how blessed I feel that things have worked out with my career to this point. The other day I was thinking back to high school when everyone would ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?" or then in college, "What's your major?", and even when I had a major (Computer Science), people would ask "What do you want to do with that?", and I'm not sure that for any of these questions I always had good answers. A lot of times I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, or how it was going to connect to the next step of getting me into a career that I would enjoy that would also be sufficient for providing for a family. I always felt bad when I didn't have a good, solid answer for those questions, but I guess I still managed to come out alright, so far, especially considering the job I have in these lean economic times.

Given that I am finally finished with my PhD and started a job that I am (so far) very pleased with, I have no choice but to be grateful for the way that things have worked out. Of course, I didn't even know what Medical Informatics was until a few months before I finished my undergraduate program, so it would have been hard for me to have this as my goal back then. I feel like at each step along the way, when the time came to decide what the next step would be, I was able to figure that out, even if I didn't always see all the way down the road to where it would take me in the end. I'm happy I was able to have faith to take those steps along the way, trusting that in the end I'd be somewhere good.

Seeing some people who are back at the start of that road, wondering what they want to do with their lives, I'm happy to be much further down the road and feel like it's worked out for the most part. But also I would say to them to seek the guidance of the spirit, and have faith in that, and in themselves, and then move forward with faith.

I moved (and other assorted ramblings)

For those of you who only follow my life via my blog (does that statement categorize anyone?), you should know that I moved last week to a pretty sweet abode that affords me a spot in a garage and a spacious living room with a brand new sectional. And no, I didn't buy this home, but I'm only paying a smidge more than what I was paying at my old place, so hopefully I can start saving up for buying important grown up things like a new car, a place of my own, and possibly more medical care (a topic for another day).

However, due to my move, I do not currently have internet access at home, so I'm posting this from work (after my work hours for the day, mind you).

More from the good and exciting news front, last week my supervisory committee gave me the thumbs up on my last draft of my final chapter and I now have the green light to go to the Thesis Editor and receive a thorough pen-lashing about tabs and spacing and page numbers and who knows what else. Hopefully nothing too drastic. So, probably by the time I'm walking this Spring, I will actually have finished doing whatever needs doing to be really graduated.

Good times.

The Big Digital Sells Out

Yes, I'm still alive. My holidays were great. Loved spending time with the fam, and then being lazy for a week afterward (wait...wasn't I supposed to be finishing up my dissertation edits?...hmmm) and now that the holidays have come and gone, I've gone and started a full-time real job for the first time in about 4 and a half years.

Today is just day 2, and already I've run out of things to work on for now (guess I could think about my dissertation for a minute). I mean, I'm sure things will be picking up shortly, as I've been in touch with several people to talk about several projects, but for now it's just been setting up meetings and getting ready to move my stuff from one location to another. Yesterday was corporate orientation and it wasn't too awful, but I certainly wouldn't categorize it as "efficient". This morning I met with the guy who is my advisor and also the head informatics guy at my company, and he let me know about moving, and also that I have a meeting to go to tomorrow morning at 8 (and every Wednesday morning for the foreseeable future. And while the whole getting up early like working people thing isn't my favorite, having some structure in my life again is nice.

The Big Digital finds gainful employment

I made a decision today about my career. For at least the immediate future (and perhaps even beyond), I'll be working as a Medical Informatician at Intermountain Healthcare here in Salt Lake City. Details to come. I have to go eat some lunch so that I can avoid drinking more than 12 ounces of liquid in the 3 hours preceding my drug test this afternoon.

Dissertation....Defended!

This morning I successfully defended my PhD dissertation! It feels really good to have it over and done with. Obviously you expect to pass it, but when your fate is in the hands of other people, you never know for sure how things are going to turn out.

Basically, now all I have left to do is address a final list of revisions to my manuscript that my committee has promised to give me, and then get the final manuscript formatted properly, and then I'll be completely finished!

Quick Update, Pt. 2

Still working on that defense presentation. I've got a set of powerpoint slides put together and have been running through them, giving my presentation to the wall in front of me. I've been through the whole thing 3 full times now (at over 40 minutes per attempt), and tomorrow I'll be heading up to school to run through it at least 2 more times -- once in the conference room where my defense will be, and once more for a professor whose opinion I respect and who won't be able to attend my actual defense due to scheduling conflicts.

Suffice it to say that giving 40 minutes presentations to a wall is a daunting task and it's taking quite a bit out of me to give them. It's good practice, though. I've made several changes to my slides as a result, and have also realized that it's important to breathe sometimes, or else I get light-headed. The hard part is trying to fit 3 years of research into just 40 minutes.

Anyway, aside from defense prep, I got my permanent crown put in today and can only hope that things will be looking up from here dentally. Its been a rough 12 months for 3 of my teeth and I'm hoping that this finally gets the problem solved.

I'm also still looking for a career, hoping to hear back on the position I interviewed a couple weeks ago, but haven't really worried about pushing for an answer from them as I've had other things on my mind (see paragraphs 1 & 2).

And finally, I did manage to find 2 new roommates to take the place of the one who already moved out and the one who is going to move out. Big changes taking place here, but it doesn't really feel like it yet. Also the one who moved in today apparently doesn't have a checkbook (sounds a little fishy), and paid me in straight cash (homey) for the end of this month and next month's rent, so let's just say somewhere in my house right now there is a very large stack of bills that I plan to take to the bank tomorrow morning. So hopefully by the time you are reading this I've already deposited them. Either that or I'm pulling a Pac-man Jones and makin' it rain.

The Big Digital goes on the defensive

Sorry for no video yesterday. But I did finally find a date on which to defend my dissertation which works for all five of my committee members, and even my department chair, after some schedule wrangling on the part of her admin. Mark your calendars for October 27, 2008. It could quite possibly be a really big day in my life. (Let's hope so.)

The Big Digital Gets an Article Accepted for Publication

I realize that I'm probably blogging more now that its "on the back seat" (I think I combined "taken a backseat" with "on the back burner"). But I figure this is as a good a way as any to let people know that I just got an email letting me know, finally, after three rounds of revisions, that my first paper has been accepted for publication in one of the top Informatics journals, JAMIA. Its a pretty short article (under 2000 words), but its satisfying to accomplish.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the title is, "Evaluating the Accuracy of Existing EMR Data as Predictors of Follow-up Providers". Not sure if that will give you a better idea of what I do or not.

Spin Cycle

One of the most frustrating parts of my PhD research has also been one of the most rewarding, or vice-versa. A significant portion of my research deals with gathering and analyzing medical data. These data have the property of being initially simple, but generally much more complex as you start digging into them. You might start with a simple query trying to gather all the encounters for which an alert was triggered, which sounds fairly straightforward, but then you have to decide do you want the first overall encounter for each patient or do you want the first encounter of each specific type (inpatient vs. ED). And then you find some encounters where a patient went to the ED but was admitted directly to the hospital as part of the same encounter. And you develop a method (hack?) for classifying things the way you want. But then later you discover that for some reason, there are cases where the ED Report for the encounter was actually filed after the discharge summary, meaning your classification hack (method?) only works for most of the encounters.

Finding these subtle distinctions is not generally something that happens on the first pass through the data. Generally its something I find as I reach what I think should be the end of things. And yes, its rewarding to know that I really am starting to fully understand the data, but at the same time, when a subtle change only affects 1% of the encounters, but I still feel like it would be dishonest to not redo the analysis with that change included, it can be frustrating, because while the numbers change, the results almost always stay the same. I mean, really, I'm the only one who would know the difference, and when the results don't change, its almost not worth re-doing the analysis, just to adjust the numbers slightly to reflect reality. And really, given the limitations of the study these numbers really only approximate reality as it is.

I had one of these moments today. Recycling as we speak.

Slowly but surely...

Last night my department had a graduation dinner to honor people who've recently graduated or who will be graduating soon. I was invited to attend. Thats right, I'm in the "graduating soon" category. How soon that will be depends mainly on how much I can buckle down of the next few months and do the writing that I have left to do for my dissertation, but I guess at this point, the fact that I will someday graduate with my PhD in Informatics is pretty much an inevitability. And that thought is still pretty foreign to me. I've been in school pretty much my whole life (not counting the mission), and the thought of finally leaving school behind and getting a "real" job actually feels quite welcome to me.

Anyway, the dinner last night was nice, despite my not feeling like a graduate at this point. My advisor was out of town, but another member of my committee had some nice things to say about me. That was nice, because its rare that I have much interaction with any of the faculty these days, and I don't get much feedback as far as what people think of me and how I'm doing with my project.

My current goal is to finish writing by July, so I can defend in August. I guess we'll see how that shakes out, but I figure its better to shoot for August and miss than to shoot for September and miss, right?

My 2007 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!



Pretty much along the same lines as last year, I'm slacking off on the physical Christmas card front, and giving you this cheaper, electronic version.

As I look back at the year that was 2007, I guess what probably stands out is all the traveling I did. I don't really consider myself a big travel nut, but this year I traveled to San Antonio, Palo Alto, Germany/Austria, and Chicago. Four places I'd never been, and in the case of Germany/Austria, a place I'd never really considered visiting. The trip to San Antonio was a family vacation to visit my brother and his family who live there, and the rest were all for school. If you want to read more about my trips, and/or see the pictures I took on my new digital camera, which I love, you can check out some of these links:

San Antonio (Pictures only)

Palo Alto (Pictures only)

Germany/Austria
Days 1 & 2 - Exploring Munich
Day 3 - Mass Transit Extravaganza
Day 4 - Stop looking at me, schwan
Day 5 - Austria, eh? Throw another shrimp on the barby!
Day 6- The depths of Hall
Day 7 - I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!
Day 8 - Monday Night Football
Day 9 - In with the Innsbruck Crowd
Days 10 & 11 - The Voyage Home
(Pictures only)

Chicago
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 1
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 2
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 3
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 4
(Pictures only)

Here's a small sample of what you might find:











When I wasn't busy gallivanting around America and Europe, I spent most of my daytime hours working on my dissertation research. Getting my research project off the ground end up taking much longer than I had anticipated, but alerts are finally going out to doctors, although not quite as often as I'd like. Additionally, I passed my qualifying exams back in the spring, and its nice to have that step out of the way. I also presented a poster at our annual NLM training conference that was at Stanford University this summer. I also was on a panel at the AMIA Fall Symposium. (Luckily the number of people who attended doesn't have to go in my CV.)



Its my goal to finish by the end of the coming summer, although given my inability to guess how long things would take me so far, that might or might not happen. At the very least, much of what I'm doing now is entirely up to me, and other than one small fix, hopefully I won't be waiting on other people. I've got a lot of writing to do in the coming months and hopefully that will go well. Certainly I would hope to have graduated by this time next year, which seems doable, but at the same time seems like it would still be quite the achievement.

Aside from school, I was released from being the executive secretary for my student ward in May, and was given what seems like a pretty cushy job as the ward communications co-chair, at least in comparison to the busy jobs I had before. Pretty much, I run the ward website, and make sure that people get their pictures taken, and that we have a sacrament program on Sundays. I've got a small, but efficient committee which makes things pretty nice.

Also this year, I moved to a new apartment in February just a few blocks away from my last one. The guys I live with here are nice and relatively clean, and in the brief moments that we're here at the same time we have good times.

(Picture not taken in February)

And yes, I continue to be single. I've managed to go on 16 dates so far this year, which is a 15% increase over last year, for those of you keeping score at home (mom, dad, I'm looking in your direction). Not as many as I'd like, still, but a lot of times I just don't get excited about dating for dating's sake. If there's someone I'd like to get to know better, or that I'd like to spend time with, then yes, I'm all for that. So, yes, I do look at the numbers, but try not to put too much stock into them.

In the meantime, I still had time for plenty of random fun this past year.


I went snowshoeing for the first time.


Back in the spring I won our ward Guitar Hero tournament, and then retired effective immediately so I could go out on top. (Not really, but I haven't played much since then.)


I did a fair amount of bowling.




I went to a couple Salt Lake Bees baseball games, and tried out the "Fireworks" preset on my camera.


I once again had tickets in the Muss, and only missed one Utah home game. Beating UCLA 44-6 was of course the highlight of the season.


Halloween was fun.

I have to say that looking back it was a pretty great year, and I have no reason to believe that next year won't be just as great. At times I've wondered if I'm on the right path, and then I have to realize that if I weren't where I am now, I would have missed out on a lot of experiences, and especially on meeting so many great people that I'm lucky to know. I hope that this Christmas finds you all doing well.

We have liftoff!

Today was kind of a big day in the grand scheme of my graduate work. Why? Because today my alerts went into production in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system at Intermountain Healthcare. The crazy part is that no one actually told me about it. I was kind of running out of steam on some writing I've been working on this afternoon, and while killing some time, I decided to just send an email and ask when the latest release of the system software was going to happen. Last I'd heard it was schedule for Aug. 29th, and then that didn't happen. All I knew was that things had been pushed back. Anyway, I got a quick response saying that the release had happened early this morning (around 1 am). I was, of course, pleased to hear that my code had made it into production, something that at one point I thought might never happen.

So then I decided I better track down the programmer I'd been working with on this project to find out what I needed to do to turn my alerts on. When I finally did find him, he told me that yes, the release happened last night, and my alerts were working fine. What? I thought I had to "turn them on" once the new release was in place. Not so. In fact, at that point, two alerts had already been sent. Which I guess was a good thing. It was just all a little fast. I had told the providers I'd email them to let them know when we were turning the alerts on, so I had to scramble and put that together and mention that they'd started going out earlier today, so to keep an eye for them.

Anyway, I'm a little nervous about the whole situation, but overall I'm very excited to have the system up and running.