Skip to main content

Only in Cambridge....

I had a checkup this week. I'm pushing 50 and have developed type II diabetes, so I see my doctor fairly often (every 2-3 months usually). Now, I went out of my way to avoid doctors for years....I hate being touched, prodded and probed, and have always viewed the medical establishment with equal measures of fear and loathing.

Anyway, I had a little problem a few years ago and in treating it, my doctor (who I had just engaged for this particular problem, which means I had just met him) informed me that my blood pressure was rivaling the rate of inflation in Moscow and that we should probably do something about it. From there it was a physical, diagnosis of diabetes, and now I'm a 'patient'.

So, I'm at my checkup the other day, and as he's checking my heart, my Dr. (who I like a lot by the way) says "Aren't you a code slinger?" I told him that I write some PERL at my job as a QA Engineer, but I'm not a heavy duty programmer or anything. I then inquired as to why he had asked.

I'll skip the gory details, but what ensued was a discussion and some tutelage on my part about the boot process and dual-booting windows and linux on a laptop.

Only in Cambridge would I run into a doctor who wants to install Linux "just to goof around with...."

As I was leaving, I told him to call me if he needed more help...something I'm sure he doesn't hear from his patients very often!

Comments

Dot Dwyer said…
Make sure you hammer out a quid pro quo when it comes to house calls. . . .

Popular posts from this blog

Tips for Happy Living

I am, at 50, what's called a 'confirmed bachelor'. That's a nice way of saying that I've spent so much of my life alone, I'm no longer fit to live in close society. My dear mother, before shedding the mortal coil, used to call me a bohemian because I also happen to be a musician and, well a bit of a lazy slob. I tend to live an artistic and intellectual life as much as possible and don't place a lot of importance in the trappings and activities that most people do. Okay, I'm weird. I was noticing that there are a plethora of materials out there; magazines, tv shows, etc. that help people to live what I call a 'normal' (notice the quotes) life. You know, magazines like Good Housekeeping, Home and Garden, New Bride, TV Guide, Health and Guns and Ammo. These things often feature articles on how to effectively do the things that 'normals' like (or feel they need) to do. I thought it would be nice to have a list of things that might hel...

A Rose By Any Other Name...

I was walking home from the grocery store yesterday and a flight of urban pigeons caught my eye as they flew toward me. As usual, a couple of them were flying precariously low, so that as they came closer I instinctively ducked. When this happens I'm not near as concerned that a pigeon is going to collide with me as I am that one is going to shit on me. It's happened. Anyway, all of this got me to thinking about...err...shit! I know this isn't an attractive topic for the old blog, but think about it -- for something as useless as shit, the human race has come up with a lot of words for it. They say Inuits have 100 different words to describe snow. I decided to see how many words came to mind to mean shit. Here goes: shit crap caca dung cowpie (specialized) manure spoor droppings guano excrement turd feces scat ordure That's about all that I can some up with. 14. That's 14 words to describe something that's useful for two things, fertilizer and medical dia...

The Invasion (repost)

The ships arrived at dawn and by 8:00 AM it was clear that wherever the aliens were from, they were far, far ahead of us technologically. They demanded not a world or national leader or statesman, not a poet laureate, but a common person to whom they would explain their demands. I had spent the night passed out at the laundromat after a party at Sullivan's. It was there that the UN Security Force found me and hustled me onto the alien shuttle. There were hordes of politicos, strategists, academics, etc. all babbling incessantly about what I should say and try to learn. I was just thinking of a cold Heineken and some sardines and crackers. On the ship I was led to a smallish room with a huge dais sized couch thing and a smaller, humanform chair. I took the chair. Shortly our alien invader appeared. It was big. REALLY big, like elephant big. It's body would be best described as fish like. Its head was a sunken cavity in the large end of the fish body that had two eyestalk like ap...