Port Townsend Crab Fishermen

Got a chance to sleep in this morning... won't be living on coffee today (Hey, I just said I wouldn't be "living on it", pass the mug please).

Breakfast at the Otter Crossing. Delicious fried egg sandwich with biscuits and gravy. The cafe is right on the Point Hudson marina. All kinds of boats pulling in and out. Gorgeous hand-built wooden kayaks as well.

Then it was over to Swain's general store for some walking and shopping.

Dan and his buddies have some sort of rotating schedule for fetching their crab traps. It was his day to collect, so over to the Boat Haven marina to take the boat out and pick up the crab pots. Some problem w/ the engine (didn't seem to be battery related, perhaps the solenoid?), so his buddy Lane drove down and we took his boat out.

Pulled out the four pots and 10+ male crabs. Dropped off the pots on the dock near their neighborhood and picked up Lane's wife Patti. Took the boat back to the marina and hauled the catch back to the house... There is, officially, no need for me to consider a career as a crab fisherman. Pretty disgusting stuff... and given the chance they'd attempt to kill you w/ their pinchers (not that I blame them). Hol, Guinness and I watched from a distance as Dan and Lane cleaned up the catch. Ugh. ;-P

Off to dinner at the "Old Alcohol Plant", now called the Inn at Port Hadlock. The inn is a refurbished alcohol plant that's changed hands a few times, and been upgraded over time. Good dinner and view of the water. Looked like locals could dock their boats in front and come up to the restaurant for dinner.

Pictures from today.

Seattle

Up at a ridiculously early hour to catch a 7am flight to Seattle. I can't stand these "ultra convenient" e-ticket kiosk things. They never work right and require assistance from an airline staffer. And of course, there are less staffers available since they've installed this "ultra convenient" e-ticket kiosks! Apparently the airlines equate "ultra convenient" with "nearly missing your flight". Where's my coffee?

Spent the day in Seattle w/ Dan and Hol. Ate some lunch at Pike Brewery and Pub (yummy Pike Street XXXXX Stout) and then walked around Pike Market and the surrounding area. It was encouraging to see the Seattle stereotype holds true. A coffee shop or two on every corner, plus espresso at every gas station/convenience store.

Drove up to the Space Needle (arguably this nation's finest needle! ). Tried to convince Hol and Dan that we didn't need to go to the top -- it's just a big building (not even the tallest one in Seattle) and there'd be tickets to purchase and a line to wait in, etc. As you well know, I'm a party poop. They both said we *had* to do it. The tour guide in the elevator summed up my feelings nicely, sarcastically noting that the space needle is now *the* 7th tallest building in Seattle, giving the little "rock on" gesture. Exactly!

OK, ok... the wait was worthwhile. Because the Needle is set apart from downtown and the surrounding bays, neighborhoods, etc., the view is pretty damn sweet. We took tons of pictures of the view. For whatever reason, thanks to the staff docents at the Needle, we also learned that the plural of octopus is not octopi, but octopuses (he'd received a personal memo from the president of the Seattle aquarium for using octopi). Weird, eh? Education *plus* a great view (http://www.spaceneedle.com/webcam/), what was I complaining about?

We then headed for the ferry landing in Seattle to head across Puget Sound towards Port Townsend. Unfortunately it was 4:30pm on a Friday and every other commuter was attempting the same maneuver. We headed north to catch Edmonds/Kingston ferry. Waited in line through the 5:10 and 5:50 departures and finally got onto the 6:30 boat. Excellent, another chance to have some coffee! During this whole affair, we were trying to figure out how people who actually have to be somewhere handle commuting on the ferries. Washington has kindly provided Ferry Cams so you can see what the wait time and traffic is like around your area.

Had a very nice late supper at the Fountain Cafe (scroll down). One of the waitresses was also dairy and glutton sensitive so Hol was able to get something that was perfect for her. The place is slightly larger than Side Street in Newport, but just as cozy and friendly. Food was delicious. Bonus points for Thievery Corporation playing in the background.

Finally made it back to Dan and Elise's place around 10:30. We were greeted by both Nit Noi (Dan's cat) and Guinness (Elise's Lab/Newfoundland mutt). Finally got to bed around 12:30am. ZZZZzzzzz.

Pictures from today.

Notable URLs on 2005-07-28

• King Tut exhibition. Tutankhamun & the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. Treasures from the Valley of the Kings: an extensive exhibition of more than 130 treasures from the tomb of the celebrated pharaoh Tutankhamun (King Tut), other Valley of the Kings tombs and additional ancient sites
  ( *ToDo EG Museum people_KingTut )
• NPR : Paul Anka Spins Pop His Way with 'Rock Swings': The teen-idol turned Vegas lounge singer puts a crooner's spin on some latter-day rock classics, including Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and Van Halen's Jump.
  ( Music radio_NPR )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-27

• 12 Volt-1 Amp Charger and Maintainer: automatically dissolves harmful power-robbing sulphation using safe, patented high-frequency pulse technology**. Guaranteed to increase your battery's life and performance, or you get 100% of your money back within 1-year.
  ( Autos Batteries Tools )
• Blinksale: Blinksale is perfect for anyone who needs to invoice customers and clients for services or products sold. As a design company, we created Blinksale with professional service industries in mind.
  ( Design Invoices Rails WebApp )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-24

• Shock Doctor Inc: Sports Technology -- Shoe/Cleat inserts
  ( Feet Healthcare sport_Football )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-21

• U.S. Will Offer Doctors Free Electronic Records System: There is no one in medicine who does not consider it both crucial and long overdue to have electronic records in doctor's offices and hospitals.
  ( *MSC EHR VistA dept_CMS )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-19

• 3ware Battery Backup Unit For 9500S
  ( *MSC Hardware Storage co_3ware )
• Leatherique: Leather Cleaning, Restoration and Preservation Products since 1968
  ( *ToBuy Autos M5 )

Real Madrid v. Galaxy

Real Madrid played a friendly match against the LA Galaxy at the Home Depot Center in Carson. About half our team coughed up the dough for sideline seating (Thanks to Larry for arrangements and Brent for driving!). I admit, I was a bit dubious when I saw the ad a few weeks ago:

I kinda figured they'd trot out one or two stars, probably Beckham, and field their under eighteen reserves. Thankfully, I was completely wrong. The starting line-up included Raul, Owen, Guti, Beckham, Gravesen, Roberto Carlos, Casillas and Zidane. This was no reserve team with Figo and Ronaldo sitting on the bench.

Galaxy played respectably, but were clearly out classed. Zidane is absolute magic on the pitch. His touch is incredible, but his positional awareness allows him so much time on the ball. Beckham and Owen played pretty well with some good runs. Gravesen is clearly there to replace Makalele in the midfield and played that role very well.

Hartman fumbled a couple of outside shots from Roberto Carlos -- probably never been hit so hard in MLS. He made up for it in second half with an amazing save as Figo broke free behind the back line, opened to his right and faked left. Hartman took it off his foot, then proceeded to save it from two other attempts while being fouled.

Sitting down in front of our section was the entire women's national team -- kinda cool! Great to see Real Madrid in the absolutely sold out stadium. Hopefully the success of this tour will bring more big name European clubs through here for friendlies. Flickr's RealMadrid tag has some additional photos.

Introductions & Congratulations

Introducing Ms. Mia, Mr. Liam and Ms. Paloma. Many congratulations to Amy & Toshi, Clare & Josh and Alicia & Scott! One of the finest crops of babies we've ever seen:

Notable URLs on 2005-07-15

• VistA Office EHR -- Thought Process Forum: presentations by Dr. John Mattison, CIO of Kaiser Permanente; Kenneth Strier, national practice leader at Deloitte Consulting; CR Burke, CEO of St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare; and Ken Kaiser, CEO of the National Quality Forum.
  ( *MSC Healthcare VistA people_Kizer )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-14

• FCPA : Products : Scanners : fi4120c2: Fast, 25-ppm/50-ipm scanning in color, monochrome and grayscale.
  ( *MSC-MIDL Hardware Scanner co_Fujitsu )
• Sorry, Ford, I have to ask for my money back - Jeremy Clarkson: Thirty-five years ago I promised myself that one day I’d own a Ford GT40, the blue-collar supercar that took an axle grinder to Ferrari’s aristocratic halo at Le Mans.
  ( Autos Reviews co_Ford )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-13

• Styled Checkboxes: As you may or may not know there have always been two common form controls that have completely evaded styling.
  ( CSS Forms WebDev javascript )
• USNews.com: Today's VA hospitals are a model of top-notch care; small steps that made a difference (7/18/05): To cultivate a "culture of safety" at the VA, Kizer created a National Center for Patient Safety, and to head it up he brought in James Bagian, a former astronaut who had investigated the space shuttle Challenger accident for NASA.
  ( *MSC Healthcare VistA mag_USNews people_Kizer )

Work, work, work.

My second tour of duty at MSC continues to provide plenty of work. It's a good thing, really. I still feel like the team here can make things happen. Good things for the company and great things for our customers.

When I told friends and family that I was leaving my (safe and comfortable) job for a (risky and challenging) job at a startup, you could detect a momentary lapse -- an instant between them hearing the news and putting on their congratulatory smile -- where you could see the question in their eyes; What the hell are you thinking?

Beyond the personal need to move on from a job that was stagnant and conflicting with my own goals, I believe in what Medsphere is attempting to do. While we may not yet be firing on all cylinders, I believe we are doing good and important work.

Now, for the folks that have no idea what it is we do: We develop and enhance an existing, highly acclaimed, Hospital Information System called VistA. This system was developed over the last 25+ years at the US Department of Veteran Affairs. It powers the largest healthcare network in the US. We also assist smaller hospitals with deployments and training of this sytem -- hospitals that could not easily afford the commercially offered HIS systems. There have been a lot of articles praising this system and the VA itself, here are a couple recent stories that help explain what this system can do for healthcare providers and why I feel strongly about what we are trying to do:

• The Best Care Anywhere (Washington Monthly, Jan/Feb 2005)


• Miltary Might (US News and World Report, July 2005

Notable URLs on 2005-07-12

• GTD Outlook Plugin: Now you can put David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, used by over a half million people to keep themselves organized, to work for you in Microsoft Outlook to manage your Inbox and get things done.
  ( GTD Software Win32 ms_Outlook )
• OneNote PowerToys: The following PowerToys are available for free download.
  ( Plugins Software Win32 ms_OneNote )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-11

• Pimp My Safari: started as a reaction to the sites cataloguing Firefox extensions. Many excellent plugins for Safari have been developed, but because Safari doesn’t have an official ‘extension architecture’, many don’t know of these extensions.
  ( MaxOSX Plugins Software sw_Safari )
• YouTube: Your Digital Video Repository
  ( Videos WebApps )
• IconBuffet : Royalty-Free Stock Icons: (Custom design available too)
  ( Design Icons WebDev )
• YourEmblem: Make Your Car Unique with your unique set of initials. Better than custom license plate.
  ( Autos )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-10

• "The Myth of Open-Source": there are 20 people who write the kernel, and guess what? These guys are all professionals. If you get free, you want a lot of it. If you give free, you're going to give until you're tired of giving
  ( Business Opensource co_JBoss mag_BusinessWeek )
• Mental Hygiene - post-it mosaic howto [updated]: together we came up with the idea of filling the wall with post-it notes in a multicolored mosaic of (and i’m not sure whose idea this was) Elvis.
  ( Amusing Art PostIts co_3M )
• Airtreks.com: Affordable International Airline Tickets: Create Your Own Unique Multi-Stop International Trip
  ( Flash Travel )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-09

• ChronoSync: ChronoSync is an easy to use data management tool that allows you to efficiently synchronize files and folders from one disk location to another.
  ( Backups MacOSX Software )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-07

• Sample HL7 Immunization Messages: This is a collection of sample HL7 Immunization Messages that you can cut and paste for testing purposes:
  ( *MSC Examples HL7 )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-06

• Healthcare Technologies, Inc. - Medical Documentation and Transcription Service: Transcribe/Mediscribe Interface (from Robert)?
  ( *MSC-MIDL Software )
• Rico - Rico is a Spanish word meaning rich. The goal of Rico is to provide a rich experience for web sites using Ajax technology.: The library is a fully object-oriented JavaScript library. Recently we refactored the library to extend the excellent prototype.js effort from the Ruby on Rails folks.
  ( AJAX Ruby Scripts javascript )
• The Front-Runners on Roe - What Bush's shortlist thinks about abortion.: What's at stake: Not Roe v. Wade, or at least not directly. In a 6-3 decision in 1992, in a centrist opinion written with justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, O'Connor voted in Planned Parenthood v. Casey to uphold the basic constitutional right to
  ( Abortion SCOTUS people_Bush people_O'Connor )
• Your Health This Month - Mercury in vaccines and dental fillings, avian flu, episiotomies, and more. By Sydney Spiesel: Even though there is strong evidence to refute the thimerosal-autism connection and even though—let me hasten to reassure you—the mercury is now gone, families in my pediatric practice continue to be afraid to immunize their children.
  ( Healthcare Vaccines )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-05

• Real deal: "This is 20 years in development, very functionally rich and it is available through the Freedom of Information Act. It is public domain, anyone can download it," Whiles says. Medsphere is providing the consulting support, including installing and configu
  ( *MSC Opensource VistA )
• PacsOne Server - PACS Server In One Box, is a DICOM 3.0 compliant PACS (Picture Archive and Communication System) application: combines the following components in one server or one box: DICOM server, a PACS server (MySQL) and a web server (Apache)
  ( *MSC Linux PACS Software Win32 )
• Powells Books - Review-a-Day - Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard: the church needs a sufficiently dramatic payoff after stringing members along through years of courses and trainings, all costing upward of a quarter of a million dollars. The other reason is fear that revealing this fantasia of kooky stories might turn o
  ( Amusing Books Reviews Scientology people_RonHubbard )
• KCRW Nights
  ( Events Music radio_KCRW )
• Laguna Playhouse: Laguna Beach, California - Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road
  ( Events Theatre )
• Interior doors replaced at affordable prices, Interior Door Replacement Company
  ( House )
• Synthetic Grass today at Orange County Home Turf
  ( House )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-03

• Welcome to La Fonda: Just 45 minutes south of the Tijuana border on the spectacular Baja coast, perched above a sandy white beach and overlooking the blue Pacific is our long time favorite spot for locals and visitors alike, La Fonda Hotel/Bar/Restaurant.
  ( MX Travel )
• Was Built To Last, Built To Last?: Yet if the business-book world is filled with slippery frogs, BTL ends up looking like a relative prince, providing more hard evidence, in the form of historical research and good storytelling, than 99% of the books out there.
  ( Books Business Management people_JimCollins )
• Good to Great: the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.
  ( Books Business Interviews Management people_JimCollins )
• Orange County Museum of Art
  ( Art Ca. Museum )

Notable URLs on 2005-07-02

• IRS Publication 502: Publication 502 (2004), Medical and Dental Expenses (Including the Health Coverage Tax Credit)
  ( Healthcare Insurance Reference )
• U.S. Treasury - Health Savings Accounts (HSAs): Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) were created by the Medicare bill signed by President Bush on December 8, 2003 and are designed to help individuals save for future qualified medical and retiree health expenses on a tax-free basis.
  ( Healthcare Insurance Reference )

Yep, MSC is hiring

Todd's right. We are now looking for people to fill a couple different positions at Medsphere. If you're interested or know of someone with the skills we are looking for, send me an email at work: ben.mehling[AT]medsphere.com.

Thank you Justice O'Connor

Justice O'Connor's retirement from the SCOTUS is a huge loss for this country. Here's a few interesting articles on Justice O'Connor.

MOVEON.org is sponsoring a petition to remind the Senate of what the American people think is required here. Please let them know just how important this decision is for our country. Below are my own comments to the senate: