Google

Hey all.
Oh my gosh it seems like so much has gone on since I talked to you last. I missed you.
I was on vacation for 10 days. It was nice.

I spent half of the time at the beach. Wake up, go to the pool. After a couple of hours we would go to the beach. After a couple of hours we would come up and have lunch. Then go back down to the pool and then to the beach. Come up and shower and get ready to go out to dinner. Eat, play cards with the family and crash. Wake up and repeat four more times. It was pretty relaxing.
Daddy, daddy, daddy will you throw me in the pool. Daddy daddy will you dig a hole in the sand so all the kids could play in.
Daddy, daddy I have sand in my crack can you help me.
Daddy daddy can I some more ice cream,? Huh, can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Very relaxing.


I did read like a fiend.
I finished The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose. I really liked this book. It was very fair and it was entertaining and it was written by a 21 year old. Good for him.
I then read a book called Under the Overpass. I liked this book as well. This is the one that two college kids live like homeless people for 5 months. They are hungry, cold, smelly, hot, irritable, scared just like real homeless people are.
They experienced what it was like to be treated like a leper, even from people in a church.

Lastly I read, Running with Scissors. Why didn't any tell me about this book. I HATED it.
I did finish it but it was like driving on the highway and seeing an accident and not looking over to see the carnage. You have to finish reading this book like you have to take a peak at the crashed car.
I kept thinking of one word while I was reading this....Indulgent. He was telling us stuff that was foul in a way that was even more foul.
The back of the book shows what all the critics think. They are like, "Hilarious!!" and "It is as funny as it is messed up." I mean this book is so critically acclaimed.
I didn't laugh one time. In fact I was disgusted most of the time.
For instance, at 13 years old he comes out of the closet. Then his psychiatrist's daughter introduces him to another gay man. She thought they would hit it off.
One problem the other dude is 32 years old. Oh, they hit it off alright and he continues to discuss their intimacy in detail. So unlike GQ and Newsweek I didn't think anything about the book was "HILARIOUS and FUNNY". Unless statutory rape got humorous and I didn't know it.

I wanted to find out if I was alone in my horror. So I went to Amazon and found this critique...
This book is to literature what Jerry Springer is to meaningful social commentary. It's poorly written, pointless, vapid, and gratuitous. Defiantly the worst book I have read in a long time. I was sucked in by the hype. Sure, some will say that I just don't "get it," but there are a lot of people out there too dense to see that just because something is bizarre doesn't mean that its profound. This is drivel. The events described are too bizarre to be believable and, even if they are true, they're not interesting. I suspect that this is a "memoir" in the same sense as "A Million Little Pieces," i.e., a fraud. I recently read an interesting article about how the family in this book is suing the author for defamation. Burroughs is clearly milking the dysfunctional bandwagon for all it's worth. If this is what passes for "genius" these days (as one reviewer described Burroughs), then our civilization needs to be destroyed...
AMEN BROTHER.


Enough of this already.
I finished with the John Adam's series. I now know why I am not a history buff....it is kind of boring.
I know I know I shouldn't say that but it is.



Okay I wanted to get back to a real topic.
GOOGLE.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a story about a woman that wanted advice about a certain dentist.
What is the first thing I did? I Google'd this dentist's name.
If you remember this dentist had some really bad things attached to his name and all I did was recommend her to google his name. (If you are wondering I did get a "thank you" card from this woman saying that she is NOT going to go this dentist and thinks she has found a much more trust worthy dentist).

Google is great. I Google everything. I will Google questions about anything. I
Google movies, plants, actors...the list goes on. I love Google.
But to a dentist....to your practice....Google can be dangerous. The world wide web can be a dangerous place.

Have you ever Googled your name? If you haven't you should.
You don't have to have a website to have a web presence.
Meaning whether you want it or not you have a web presence.

If you Google your name or practice name a couple of things could happen.
First....Nothing.
If nothing shows up then you have just dodged a bullet.
You might have a white pages listing or a find a dentist listing but for the most part not much comes up. If you have seen the things I have seen "nothing" sometimes is a good thing.
The second thing that could happen is stuff comes up about you. Your website.
Your name was listed in a volunteer list on your church's website. You had an article written about you in a local magazine. Things about you come up. This is a good thing.

Now the top two is about where most of us might be.
The next couple of options is where things get a little hairy.

Let me give you some background info.
The internet has become people's lives. It is slowly becoming my life. I think I would be totally lost without the internet in this stage of my life. I get my news from it. Breaking local news. my global news, my sports news, my weather. I get directions to where I am going. EVERYTHING.
I get recommendations on vacation spots. I look for reviews on restaurants, books, movies, doctors. There is not much I do that I don't consult the internet for.
So knowing that the internet is people's lives you have to understand why social networking is getting so HUGE on the internet.
People finally can write what they are thinking. It is a place where shy people can slowly become very bold. Quiet people can become loud. Anonymity is making people feel powerful.
On another point, we are in a profession that we deal with people. We deal with every kind of person. We deal mostly with happy people but we have to deal with some unhappy people.
There are just people that you can't please.
In some offices the percentages of happy people are higher but in every practice there are people that are not pleased.
I kind of do a mental check of my own office all the time. Why would someone leave my office?
Have I been at my best lately? Are prices are too high? Are we caring enough about people?
I find the largest room in the house is the room for improvement (You like that, huh?)
So those two points being said....
1) the internet is becoming people sounding board
2) no practice has a 100% people pleasing rate
is sometimes a deadly combination.

I am going to leave you hanging here.
But I am going to give you some homework.
Google your name
and then go to some dental search places
Such as
angieslist.com
yelp.com
citysearch.com
healthgrades.com

When I do this I get nervous while I am reading it. I want only positive stuff out there about me and in this case there is really nothing I can do about it.
Let me know what you found out about yourself.

I am glad I am back,
I hope you are too.
john