Monday, January 11, 2010

Push 1 for customer support, Push 2 for English

"The digital image software was not able to initialize, please contact High Tech support at . . ."

Yep, that's how I want to start my week. Good one God; didn't even have a chance to get some coffee.

Have I mentioned before that we are entirely paperless. Not a single chart. I couldn't process and mount a full-mouth series on F-speed film if you paid me. Well, that might be hyperbole, if you paid me I could do it, but it would need to be cash up front - and no insurance writeoffs, either - full fee.

That said, not having access to radiographs is a bit of a problem. Paper chart offices never have that problem. "Sorry doctor, but all of our radiographs are stuck inside the charts and we can't remove them...better call support." Now instead they get, "Doctor, the radiographs fell out of the chart and I can't find them, they weren't fixed long enough and are too dark to read, they are out being copied. . ." In 3 1/2 years, we have not had a single issue so this was a bit of a wake-up call this morning.

The fix, it seems, is nearly as nerve-racking as the problem. See to fix it, I have to call support (1-800-Seinfeld) and talk to some random person and then give this person access to my server. Now, I'm a dentist - not a tech guy - but I'm pretty sure the server is an integral part of my computer network and random people whizzing around, opening files, initializing processes, and typing DOS gibberish scares the daylights out of me. I have a friend who lost all of his material (I mean, 15 years + worth of records - everything financial and appointment related) to some phone service, let me in the server and I'll fix it easy guy. So I'm a little tense and my first patient has just arrived.

Thank you God, the problem is solved. Don't ask me what it was or how it was fixed. I don't know, it involved opening files that I never open and typing nonsensical letter strings onto a blank computer screen with a blinking "$". I'm just glad it is fixed and hope to not see any errors again for a long time.

OK, enough dental stuff. I had a great weekend. The kids had snowdays Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so we got to spend lots of quality time together. My son discovered that I am better at the Wii than he thought an old guy would be (my Wii fit age is 26, thank you very much). My youngest daughter is going through a "I just want to hang out with dad" phase and it's awesome. She crawled up on my lap and wrapped both of us up in a blanket yesterday while watching the Cardinals Packers game and promptly fell asleep. I was "trapped" for 2 hours - Lassie, where are you?? Go get help boy, get mom. . .

This weekend also marked the start of Upward Basketball for my older 2 kids. If you are not familiar with it, Upward is a church-based basketball program that emphasizes fundamentals and fun. It has a few quirky rules, but it is designed to let the kids have a great time playing basketball. One of the best parts of the program is that each game begins with player introductions. Our church does it up - big time. Lights out, sirens going, music blaring, spotlights and all. I get to be the announcer at a lot of those games and, other than the dry throat; it is so much fun to see the kids get to be superstars for an hour.

It is amazing how much more fun life is when the bills for the week are paid.

Only 3 weeks till the "Polar Bear Plunge", you'll find out more about it next week but if you can't wait go here.

have a great week.

ric

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