June 2006 – Home of the Bridgers

Putting The Squeeze On The Tooth Fairy

I always wondered what happened to my teeth once the tooth fairy took them away in the dark of the night. Eventually I just figured that the most obvious and practical option was the most likely – the fairy takes the teeth down underground somewhere and melts them all down into molten teeth. The fairy then purifies the molten teeth, whitening them and removing all that nasty discolouration. Once the liquid is pipping hot it is poured into silver metal moulds in the shape of unicorns. Once cooled the new tooth unicorn statue is added to the “Unicorn Garden” – a growing pile of pristinely white statues spreading wildly over a simple green lawn.

At this point things get fuzzy, because I’m not sure if the unicorn statues come to life every Hallowe’en, sadly watching costumed children (in who’s mouth the unicorns once dwelt) traipse about collecting tooth-rotting candy from strangers, or if the fairy uses them in demonic rituals, animating them as grotesque creatures who’s sole desire in life is to bring the world to a thundering, shattering, enamel drenched end.

But I digress.

Scientists in Edmonton have miniaturized a device that will allow a tooth to be regrown from a root – how cool is that? Forget false teeth! I’ll just regrow my missing/broken/chipped tooth! It only takes a few months. Combine this new device with an interest in using stem cells to create new teeth and we have a brand new way of growing teeth. What used to be something we experienced only as children can soon be relived by all of us – well, all of us with the cash to pay for it.

So now the Unicorn Garden may start to grow a little faster – people will be jettisoning teeth throughout their lives not just as children but repeatedly as adults as their teeth grow old and fall out or get bashed about by flying pucks. So either the garden will have to be expanded beyond the underground lair (how cool would that be?) or the fairy will be doing more demonic rituals. Could this mean a return of the unicorn to modern day zoological references? If so, does it mean we should see them only on Hallowe’en, or is this simple Edmontonian discovery a harbinger of the end of the world?

Want To Speak With Someone At The CRIA?

Defective By Design, a rallying site for people opposed to DRM, is having a one-day “call the big wig” event they’re calling “Freedom Rings” today. When you sign up they give you the contact information for some of the big names in the recording industry associations in various countries.

The idea is that you can then call this person and speak to them directly to let them know that DRM is simply not a good idea. It’s an interesting approach to ‘protesting’. Many people think you should just stop buying CDs labelled “Copy Protected” as a means of protesting, but it has been shown that the recording executives are perceiving any drop in record sales as attributable to piracy. This is an opportunity for those of us who really oppose DRM to simply tell someone that should be interested in hearing from us.

If you sign up there is a number for a fellow at the CRIA – Canada’s version of the RIAA, so we can all call Graham Henderson, apparently the president of the CRIA.

Hybrids Are So 2005 – Or Are They?

We’ve all heard about how the hybrid engine is going to change the world as we know it in terms of automobile fuel efficiency. Those of us who are rooting for Mother Nature naturally look favourably upon any improvement on fossil fuel consumption rates and pollution reduction. But for anyone looking at buying a hybrid today it is important to look at all the factors, not just the LC-factors (Leonardo DiCaprio factors: many people seem to think movie stars are smarter than the rest of us and when one of them starts advocating new technology we follow like sheep).

Here’s an interesting article on purchasing a hybrid in late 2005 versus an economy car. The conclusion points out that, in terms of money, you pay more for the hybrid even with the increased fuel economy (assuming you even get what the car manufacturers advertise).

While no “green” person would ever advocate buying a hybrid for purely economic reasons, it is painfully obvious that existing hybrids lack the ability to make up for their steep prices with gas savings. While a hybrid would present significant savings over something like a new Ford Super Duty, you would always save more with any of a number of economy cars.

Hybrid technology is just entering the mainstream, however. As gas prices rise and hybrid technology improves and cheapens, don’t be surprised to find hybrid owners in the green.

Of course as gas prices go up these calculations will change, but it certainly points out that the picture is not as clear as many people think it is. The article also mentions replacing the car’s battery every 8-10 years – I’m not really sure if there has been an analysis of the environmental impact of making and destroying all those batteries yet.

The optimists in us look forward to the days of cars powered by hydrogen. The realists (hello engineers!) look forward to refining the existing technology. Just look at what the UBC engineers can do with existing gasoline-powered engines: a trip from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon gas!

So hybrid technology is slowly becoming mainstream and is improving because of it. As it matures we’ll see costs drop and parts/repairs start to cost the same as combustion engines. It’s nice to see an alternative in the market – I just hope the LC-factors don’t lead us down the wrong path. Thanks to the engineers in the world who refuse to give up so quickly on something we’ve taken for granted for so long. Did I just call engineers stubborn?

McKesson? Who’s McKesson?

Many people who hear that I work for McKesson say they don’t know the name. Fair enough – I didn’t know it when I applied for my position here either. So here are a few tidbits to give you an idea what McKesson is if you’re curious.

June 19th there is a free webcast of a conversation with the CEO and CIO of McKesson. You can sign up here. I doubt anyone will (should) sign up, but the preview (silly Flash format!) gives you a very brief glimpse at what this company is trying to do, or what they claim they’re trying to do (other than make money – naturally). Yes, Randy Spratt said over $80 billion in revenue – that’s a lot of money.

I work in a business unit called “Medical Imaging Group”, or MIG. You can find their website here. Originally MIG was an independent software vendor (ALI Technologies) who was purchased by McKesson some years ago to add to their portfolio of products – specifically medical imaging products. The office is located in Richmond, a 30 minute drive from home (traffic permitting).

My position is officially called “Functional Analyst”, though some refer to us as Business Analysts in other companies. You can see a general description of what an FA does in a current job posting here. I work in the infrastructure side of the team, rather than the clinical. So I look at how our products work behind the scenes, or for user who aren’t clinical such as hospital site administrators. This quote is pretty much the job description:

The Functional Analyst (FA) reviews customer business problems and develops high level use cases and requirements that drive the development teams efforts to meet customer and business needs. The FA authors, publishes and facilitates review of requirements and establishes and maintains requirements traceability. The role of Functional Analyst (FA) is to be the product clinical or technical expert that ensures that customer’s (and other stakeholders) needs are met via product requirement documents. The FA is typically an expert at understanding the details of customer workflows and is able to translate these needs into high level use cases and requirements which drive the development process.

Just a little blurb about my work, as I seem to spend a significant amount of time doing it. As you can see I have moved on from technical support (finally) and am now working in Product Management – sounds auspicious, but see my previous post about demotivational sayings to get an idea of some of the new challenges I’m seeing in my new role.

The Manager in Me

I know many of you may have seen some of these demotivational sayings before, but this is a great collection of them all in one place. Some of these hit the spot so perfectly …

These ones made me laugh out loud:
Bitterness
Cluelessness
Conformity
Dare To Slack
Demotivation
Dysfunction
Goals
Laziness
Losing
Meetings
Mistakes
Motivation
Stupidity
Worth

You can click on the horizontal listing of all the words to view them one by one. Click the little >>’s to move to the next group of words.

Enjoy!