Life with a hopeless software geek

Ok, so I took my wife to the doctor's office. Thankfully they didn't find anything broken and just gave her a prescription for some pain relievers. Thats the good part. Here's where the regular Joe deep down inside me recedes and makes way for the hardcore geek. You remember how in the Bourne Identity book and (slightly less than faithfull) movies, Bourne steps into a room and immediately analyzes it for potential threats, figures out all the exits, all the entrances, all the potential weapons, and the relative skill of everyone in the room? I think I have that particular problem ... but I do it with computers and software.

We get to the reception area. The lady behind the counter uses carbon paper to make an impression of my debit card to take care of the copay. Not only that, but she made no computer record of the event. I was beside myself. I simply could not believe the stone-age technology they're using at the triage desk. I approach my wife with, "Honey, I can you believe they don't even use a frame relay to authorize cards? They made a carbon impression and actually made a PHONE CALL to verify funds!!" My wife, gritting her teeth in pain and holding her possibly broken arm tenderly ... really could not have cared less about the stupid card impression, or about the triage technology.

So, we finally make it into the doctor's office and we're waiting patiently...well, ok, my wife is waiting patiently. I'm tapping my foot thinking about all the code I could be writing, thinking about the RSS feeds I could be consuming. If it weren't for the no-cell-phone restriction in the office, I would've whipped out my EVDO cell and hit the 'net right there.

Like Bourne analyzing potential threats, I scan the office for potential suck technology against which I can hurl insults and derisive comments to make myself feel better about being on the bleeding edge of technology using .NET 3.0. I notice that the doctors and nurses have a terminal in each room they use to record diagnoses, take notes, and look up histories and do other things such as interface with local pharmacy networks.

Again, keep in mind that my wife is in pain here. I am attempting to be comforting and consoling, but all I can think is: Holy crap, they need to replace that behemoth with some UMPCs .. they could walk around the office with a tiny computer and use a stylus to mark up diagnoses and just set the thing on the counter when they're interacting with the patient. And oh my God did you see that logon screen??? Talk about poor UX ... they really should re-design that thing.

While I've made this out to be a joke, it actually bothers me at times... The fact that I don't often have enough control to blot out the geek-thoughts that dominate my mind all day long, sometimes it gets to the point where I feel like I'm going insane. As we all know, learning triggers the release of endorphins - so the longer I go without learning, the more twitchy I get... I'd been away from the office for maybe 3 hours before I started compu-analyzing my environment to produce a sedative-like effect.

Am I the only geek that works like this, or are more geeks like this and they just don't want t come forward and admit it? :)

Anyway - the point of this blog post was really just to give voice to the concept that the geek mind never stops churning. Sometimes that's a good thing, and can often produce some of the most astounding code, designs, architectures, lectures, or even books - but on the other hand, it can cause some very real side effects as a result of being detached from the surrounding environment.

Days like yesterday make me wish I wasn't a geek - that I could turn it all off and be satisfied doing something else... but that thought only lasts a few minutes, and I have to learn to take the bad with the good, because the feeling I get when I wake up in the morning and know that I'm going to spend the rest of the day tinkering with software ... that feeling is too good to reject.

tags: geek  life  

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