The countdown clock app on my phone reads 73.6 days. That is the number of days until January 1, 2014. My retirement day. It has been a good run. I graduated from Dartmouth Medical School in 1976, got married, and have practiced medicine ever since. I went through internship and residency in Rhode Island, thought… Continue reading Winding Down
Author: mannd
I am a retired cardiac electrophysiologist who has worked both in private practice in Louisville, Kentucky and as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver. I am interested not only in medicine, but also in computer programming, music, science fiction, fantasy, 30s pulp literature, and a whole lot more.
The Rocky Road to iOS 7
The release of Apple iOS 7 sneaked up on me. For some reason I thought it would be in the middle of October. Then last week the new iPhones were released and iOS 7 was here. As an Apple developer I had been getting emails warning me that it was coming, and telling me to… Continue reading The Rocky Road to iOS 7
The Evils of CPT®
Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) codes are 5 digit codes for billing procedures performed by physicians in the United States. The use of these codes is mandated by all insurers and the whole CPT® coding system forms Level I of the CMS (i.e. Medicare and Medicaid) Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) code set. The system is… Continue reading The Evils of CPT®
The Death of SuperSluggo
SuperSluggo, my main computing machine (a self-built ATX monster tower with a Asus Striker 2 Formula motherboard running Ubuntu 12.04) died yesterday. As is often the way with computers, it was fine the night before, but when I tried to switch it on yesterday there was no response. No beeps, no lights, nothing. SCD —… Continue reading The Death of SuperSluggo
The Music of James Bond
One of the perks of blogging is that it gives one a license to write about topics that one really is not an expert on (a trait that my readers have doubtless discovered on their own). And speaking of licenses to do things… there is the double zero license to kill, granted by the British… Continue reading The Music of James Bond
The MOC Program’s Story (With Apologies to Lewis Carroll)
… They had not gone far before they saw the MOC Program in the distance, sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and as they came nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She pitied him deeply. What is his sorrow? she asked the Gryphon, and the… Continue reading The MOC Program’s Story (With Apologies to Lewis Carroll)
The Old Man and The Doctor — A Fable
Once Upon A Time, there lived an old man and an old doctor, in a far away village. The old man was sick, and so he called for the doctor. The old doctor came to visit, and found the old man had a diseased heart. The doctor knew he was going to die soon. The… Continue reading The Old Man and The Doctor — A Fable
Ask Your Doctor if TV Drug Ads Are Right For You
The only thing more annoying than TV commercials is TV drug commercials. Nowadays the two have become virtually synonymous Whatever happened to commercials for Tide or the Ginzu knife? Now it’s one mind-numbing Cialis, Pristiq, or Lyrica commercial after another. There’s the commercial with the doctor standing in his white coat out in public next to a giant mirror,… Continue reading Ask Your Doctor if TV Drug Ads Are Right For You
Cyber Cold War Update
Just a brief update on the security issues at my website mentioned in the last post. As those of you smarter than I am on the mechanisms of these php-injection attacks probably recognized, the measures I took in the last post were not the end of the story. Sure enough, despite thinking that I had… Continue reading Cyber Cold War Update
More Attacks On EP Studios!
The battle is still on. My website went offline unexpectedly this week. Thanks to the backup guys at Vaultpress who notified me about it. The site was giving error code 500: “Internal Server Error.” Oops. Checking the WordPress files, I found that nearly every php file had this as its first line (enclosed in php… Continue reading More Attacks On EP Studios!