Author: Kirk

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!

Electronic Media and Our Children

I’m in the middle of reading a great book titled Consuming Kids by Susan Linn that addresses the issue of advertising and marketing to children. I can’t say enough about how good a read this is, but here is a quote to give you an idea:

The problem is that while parents are trying to set limits, marketing executives are working day and night to undermine their authority. For parents raising children who are innately more impulsive, or more likely to take risks, the stakes are even higher. These are the children who are eager to explore the world and who are more likely to test limits – which means that adhering to the advice of “pick your battles” is difficult even under normal circumstances.

She examines how psychologists today are employed by marketers to make sure the advertising is as effective as possible – trying to create a loyal consumer from the cradle to the grave, as they say. She adds this sad fact to the discussion:

The 1992 Ethical Principles of the American Psychological Association include one titled “Social Responsibility,” which stated, among other things, that psychologists should “apply and make public their knowledge of psychology in order to contribute to human welfare.” I was dismayed, however, to discover that in the new version of the principles, effective June 2003, the APA eliminated that sentence – and the entire Social Responsibility Principle – from the document.

Continue reading Electronic Media and Our Children

A Hypothetical Thought and Question

Let me paint you a picture – I want your input on this one.

Let’s say I was able to offer my knowledge to others for a price – I know, not hard to imagine for anyone who I’ve already helped. For completeness let’s just say I had my own business that helped people fix their computers when they broke down. I was able to remove virus infections, diagnose hardware problems, install and upgrade components – that kind of thing. To me these things are fairly easy, but to others they may seem daunting. That’s the great thing about knowing people – I don’t need to be able to do everything. Not everyone needs to know how to install a CPU, or to flash a new BIOS version to their video card. I can do those things. That’s the service I offer – my knowledge of how these things work and how to make a bad situation better. One could call me a professional I suppose.
Continue reading A Hypothetical Thought and Question

Pictures of Marley’s First Few Days

We’ve finally been able to find a few minutes to put up some pictures of the first few minutes, hours, and days of Marley’s life. Check it out here.

An apology to all of you who have been so patient waiting for these pictures. Who knew that we’d be so awfully busy once Marley got home?!? There are a few more pictures already waiting in the wings (first Mother’s Day, for example) but I figured the salivating masses needed something more than just one little picture, no matter how cute it is.

Feel free to leave comments on the pictures, or here if you’re not too shy.

Welcome to the World, Marley!

Wow … I usually like to take some time to think about what I want to type, but right now the mind races before I finish a sentence. See, that one took almost 3 tries to get it complete.

We’re ecstatic to announce that we have a daughter: Marley James Bridger!

This isn’t the official announcement – I’d expect something in an email format soonish. But for those curious I wanted to throw up a quick picture. Plenty more to come, but here we go…. our new daughter:

Marley James Bridger - click for larger version
Born: Friday, May 5, 2006 at 9:17pm
Measurements: 9lbs, 7.5 ounces and 22 inches long at birth.

I’ll post more images and whatnot once we settle back in at home. This is our first day back from the hospital and we’re just figuring out how things are going to work around here.

Wherefore Art Thou, Luigi?

We all have fond memories of those embarrassing skits, plays, talent shows and related spectacles that we were forced to participate in during our high school years – don’t we? Surely I’m not the only one? This video however shows some real chutzpah, with some great content. Certainly impresses me and I’m considered a senior of the gaming community nowadays.

Behold – a live interpretation of Super Mario Bros!

Google video starts with a Flash video (sorry about that), but allows you to download a non-Flash version if you try. If you’re running Linux it automatically offers a nice .avi file for downloading. Thanks Google – almost makes up for using Flash in the first place. Almost.

Images of Chernobyl

As a young person when this ‘accident’ happened, I only remember how it affected me. I don’t remember the details of the event, how it came to pass, how it affected others, none of that. Part of being young is you get to be selfish and self-centered. I know we’ve all seen memorials this past week as the 20th anniversary of the disaster has come to pass, but I wanted to share one with you that I found profoundly affecting.

A photo journalist has shared a few of the images he took right after the disaster and how it affected some of the local children. The page he has created also allows you to see a timeline of the event, and to possibly understand how the disaster came about. I think people spit on the lead-encased coffins of the people involved for a reason.

Sadly he has used Flash to make the page up, so please don’t take this as me supporting his technological choices. But his voice is an interesting one that exposes the human side of the disaster. It is worth listening to, and most importantly watching.

Less personally-touching was this series of images from the disaster – again using Flash. Certainly interesting to look through.

The Final Frontier – 39 Weeks Pregnant

Well, it’s hard to believe it but we are now 7 days away from our official due date. I’m not going to state all the cliches like ‘where did the time go‘, and ‘it feels like yesterday that …‘. No, I’ll spare you it all – though it is all true. Don’t you hate it when cliches turn out to be just plain right?

Anyhow, I’ve posted the last picture of Alisa and the baby, taken in April. You can see it at the bottom of the original post of pictures.

We have pretty much finished the nursery and I’ll be getting some before and after pictures up soonish.