Oh hi there, blog. It's been a little while.
Most nights this week I crashed as soon as I put the girls to bed or had so much to clean I didn't even get a chance to turn the computer on. No matter how much laundry I do or dishes I wash, a few hours later there are more. I hate those chores that you can't ever be finished with. And even more I hate not being able to find a way to construct a sentence so that I don't have to end it in a preposition. Ugh. Oh, and yesterday we drove 2 hours each way to Mike's Grandfather's interment at West Point. That part of New York is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. But I digress...
A few of you have asked what I actually do at my job. So here, it is...with a warning. It's probably pretty boring to the majority of you, unless you get turned on at the thought of electronic medical records. And yeah...said no one ever.
My days are spent in a cubicle, making my way through a queue of outstanding issues from the most recent Go-Live in the health system for which I work. I read through the problems and then tweak the build of the software system as appropriate. Sometimes changes are quick and easy, like adding a button so that a physician can order a 10 mg dose of a certain medication or specifying that a medication can be dispensed at a particular pharmacy. Other times, the problems run deeper and I have to spend hours investigating what went wrong. In truth, I love these issues. The ones that require me to run queries and search through line after line in an attempt to identify the problem get me all hot and bothered. Okay, not really, but you get the idea. When I finally find that pesky root cause I mentally high-five myself {yeah, I'm that cool} and triumphantly respond to the user who reported the issue, letting them know it will be fixed shortly.
One afternoon a week I go to the hospital and meet directly with the Pharmacists and help solve their issues and explain aspects of the system to them. I'm hoping to do this on a more regular basis since it is so productive, and the hospital is less than 10 minutes from home (versus a 20+ minute drive to my office).
In many ways, it's very similar to my old job. I'm working with the same software and investigating issues much like I did before. Except now, I'm trying to fix the problems rather than cause them! In Quality Assurance, we basically did everything we could to make the software not work as intended. Now, I do the complete opposite.
It's been easier than I thought it would be to jump back in after 20 months away. My boss has been really impressed with my efficiency and told me today he wishes he could hire me directly. I'm feeling confident and happy that I can help them whittle away at their list of 400+ issues. And I'm making more money than I ever thought I would.
Carina is still having a hard time when I leave in the morning, and they have both regressed a little bit in their sleep schedules. More on that when I'm not about to fall asleep myself ;)
