New Addition to my Mobile Productivity Arsenal – the Apple iPad

I told myself I’d show constraint and not pre-order an iPad before the official launch date—they might be buggy, there might be hardware or battery issues, the price might come down.  I kept repeating that to myself.  

One April afternoon, a week after the official release, I thought I’d take a drive to the local Apple store to see and touch one in-person.  First impression – “Wow, this is cool”!   When I heard the salesman tell me he thought they might still have one single 16GB model left in stock, my self-restraint fell by the wayside as I quickly pulled out my credit card!

I left it “naked” for the first few weeks trying to figure out what kind of case and accessories I really wanted.  I finally decided on an hp Netbook neoprene case (it’s small enough to slide in along side my laptop in my laptop bag, and flexible enough to fold in half and use as a prop-up pad to rest the iPad on my lap at a good reading angle.  It also fits the iPad absolutely perfectly!).

I also decided on this minimal, but very effective, silicone cover that provides more “grip” when holding it (the aluminum back is just too slippery itself)—the iFrogz Soft Gloss Clear Case 

My absolute favorite accessory so far, though, is the Camera Connection Kit – a set of 2 small 30-pin connectors, one that has a USB slot, and the other that has an SD Card slot. 

This is absolutely the best $29 I’ve ever spent!  As a photographer, I always lugged my laptop around and downloaded CF and SD cards at night to see the photos I had taken that day and keep a backup copy of the files.  Now that I have a heavy 16” laptop, it was becoming quite a pain.  But no more!  Now, I can plug my CF card reader (or SLR itself) into the USB connector and the iPad will import my Canon RAW files directly.  It also imports both JPG and Video files off my Point-and-Shoot camera’s SD card and gives me a great, immediate way to view images and videos.   As a bonus, the USB connector also accepts any USB computer keyboard or headset—great for typing long email messages, novels, long Skype conference calls, etc!

Only downside, is now I wish I would have bought the larger capacity iPad!  I originally thought 16GB would be plenty as I keep my music on my iPhone and most everything else online in the cloud.  But now that I see this can be used as a photo/video backup storage/viewing device, I wish I had more than the current 5 GBs of remaining space I have available…oh well, it’ll be a reason to upgrade next year when the video camera-version comes out :-)

Week in Wisconsin

After being home for a month, with no business travel on the immediate horizon, I was getting antsy to get out and go somewhere anyway.  So, when weather looked promising up in Wisconsin, I loaded up the View for a week to work from the road.

I wanted to explore Vernon County in west-central Wisconsin, as I thought I might try to paddle the Kickapoo River on my day off.   So, I began checking online for potential RV parks with cell phone/data coverage to ensure that I could work from the area as well.

Of course AT&T’s coverage map looked like crap :-)
But, in this occasion, Verizon’s didn’t look a whole lot better.  It did look like coverage for both was pretty strong around the town of Viroqua, and there was a county park just outside of town that appeared to have coverage as well, so that was my target destination.

I arrived in Viroqua around 9:00pm on Sunday night and after confirming good cell reception along main street, I headed to the county park to be sure I’d have it there as well from my Monday work day.  After bumbling around dark country roads looking for the park, I finally found it, only to discover….the darn cell coverage maps lied!!!  No AT&T, No Verizon, nappa, zip, zilch!  Fortunately, there was a Wal-Mart back in town, so I ended up there for the night and it was actually quite peaceful.

The next morning, as I began to haul out my laptop and cell phone, the nice healthy 4 bars of AT&T coverage on the iPhone that were there last night from this spot, were now non-existent (curse that damn AT&T, curse them!!!).  Thankfully, I use Verizon for my cellular data service for this very reason.  I fired up my MiFi card (that provides Wifi to both my laptop and iPhone) and launched my Skype iPhone app to do my morning conference calls.  Once Monday work was done, it was now off to find an RV park with cell coverage.

Turns out, Vernon county has lots of steep, taller hills than most of the rest of Wisconsin, and it also has a large Amish population.  So that explains why cell coverage in this part of the state is not very abundant!  So, I decided to drive over to Goose Island County Park just south of La Crosse on the Mississippi river.  I knew I’d have good coverage there, and I did.

Goose Island had some great sunset views of the river:

 
Cell coverage was stronger on the north end of the island (in the picnic area) rather than at my campsite on the south end, so I decided to just park up there during the daytime….that’s a nice thing about working from an RV rather than a trailer—you can easily move it to where cell coverage is best during the daytime, and then head to a site best for camping during the evening!

On my day off, I drove back over to Vernon County to explore.  A storm was moving in, so I didn’t have time to canoe the Kickapoo, but it’s now certainly on my list to get back to (the Kickapoo valley was incredibly beautiful and should be spectacular this fall).  The area is mostly Amish, and respecting their “no photograph” desires, I refrained from taking pictures, but won’t soon forget the images of Amish school kids out playing on a hillside next to their one-room schoolhouse, or the group of 10 black horse buggies parked at one farm where a group of families had assembled for a volleyball game in the front yard (in Amish dresses and suit coats no less!), or the many Amish farmers out plowing their fields with horse-drawn plows.  No iPhones or high-tech needed in this little area of the world!

“Take Your Dog To Work” Week

I had a project going live in northwest Arkansas that I had to be onsite for a full week.  Normally, I’d just board Millie at her favorite kennel and fly there, but after finding out the kennel was booked solid due to spring break, and seeing that temps in Arkansas would be in the 60’s and 70’s all week with mainly clear skies, I decided to just take Millie and the View with me!

Each day, rather than driving a rental car from the hotel to the clinic, I drove a motorhome!  Millie did fine each day comfortably sleeping on the sofa, but by evening, she really wanted to exercise.  By the time I was getting done with work obligations and getting us back to the RV park, it was nearly 9:00 at night…but no worries!  The park had a large 5 acre mowed lawn, and it was a full moon while we were there, so plenty of nighttime lighting for Millie to play “Moonlight Frisbee”!!!  The other RVers must have thought we were absolutely nuts (“Herb, what’s that lady doing out in the middle of the field with a headlamp on? Is she.. throwing a frisbee?”).  Well nevermind, Millie had a great time!

On our way home, we drove through Branson, MO where the dogwood trees were in full bloom:

It was a great change-of-pace from a typical business travel week!

Spring Break Trip to Florida

After spending the whole winter at home in the snow, and Mom spending it in and out of the hospital, as March rolled around, Mom and I were both eager to get away for a couple weeks.  We decided to aim our targets for Naples (Vanderbilt Beach) as my stepsister and her mom would also be vacationing there around the same time.

So, I got the View pulled out of it’s winter storage, Millie put on a festive green bandana, mom brought some lovely spring daffodils, and off we went!

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the first night at the RV dealership where I’d bought the View in Indianapolis as it was right on the Interstate and had free electric hookups in their parking lot.  

After emerging from winter storage, everything seemed to still work fine on the View except the hot water.  So, as soon as the dealership opened, I went in to see about getting it looked at. Amazingly, for such a large dealership, they had no service technicians working on Saturday.  But fortunately, they directed me to another Winnebago dealer about 20 miles down the interstate, and that dealer was much more helpful.  Fearing some complex repair job ruining our vacation, it turned out to be simple “newbie error”!  When I initially had prepped for the trip, I had turned the Hot Water bypass valve a few times to get the “pink stuff” antifreeze out of the water lines.  Well, I thought I had reset it correctly, but I didn’t.  The RV Tech simply flipped the valve, and bingo…hot water started flowing.  Duh, I felt like an idiot!  Edinburgh RV was great though—they refused to take any payment for their time, so I made sure to go buy a few small accessories from their store to thank them.

After that delay, we were back on the road again, but it wasn’t long before another issue cropped up—this time, my iPhone charger stopped working.  No worries though—a stop at a Best Buy right off the interstate in Nashville, and I was back in business.

The rest of the trip was uneventful—we stayed at 2 nice Flying J truckstops in northern Georgia and near Tampa on the way down, and we stopped at favorite familiar interstate restaurants—Perkins and Cracker Barrel.

In Naples, many of the RV parks were filled or else on the way other side of town.  Fortunately, I was able to get a site at Lake San Marino RV Resort which was the closest to the condo where my stepsister was staying at.  This was a “55+ active adult” resort, and they weren’t kidding!  There were more planned activities per day for those seniors than I had ever seen!  When I went to pay our rent in the morning, I noticed about 50 bikes parked at the clubhouse at 9am.  There was a shuffleboard match going on, and the 50 folks were sitting in bleachers watching it!  They literally had about 8 different events planned each day from craft classes, bike tours, and swimming to bingo and ice cream socials.

 

Our site was right next to their laundry/exercise/game room, which was fine during the day, but that night, a group of seniors came in to play poker and were woopin’ it up quite loud.  Initially, we feared they’d be in there until the wee hours and interrupt our sleep, but then I remembered “wait, we’re in a SENIORS park!”  Sure enough—at 9:00pm sharp each night, the group disbanded and went back to their RVs!

The highlight of the trip for Millie was two visits to the Dog Beach in Bonita (the only dog beach on the entire west coast of Florida).  My stepsister Carol and I took her and she had a great time in the warm gulf waters.

The humans had fun at the condo and it’s beach at Vanderbilt

One of my goals for this Florida trip was to go kayaking on one of the spring-fed rivers with hopes of seeing a manatee.  A river just north of Tampa looked promising, so we made a stop there on our way home.

Weeki Wachee Springs is a old tourist attraction that is now a Florida State Park.  While you can still see “mermaids” and other such stuff at the amusement park, they also have kayak rentals for the beautiful river itself.  Mom and Millie dropped me off and then drove the View down to the take-out point.   What an amazingly beautiful river the Weeki Wachee is!

 

and near the end of the trip, I finally got to watch a manatee swim around our kayaks for about a half hour…wow!

After the boat trip, we drove up to Gainesville to spend the night with cousins that live there.  It was a nice, but short, visit.  Finally, we were back on the road again to cold, blustery, rainy Chicago.  I’ve really got to snowbird next year!

Traveling with your medical records

When you're packing up for a fun RV adventure, likely the last thing you're thinking about is getting sick and needing medical attention while on the road. But it can certainly happen, especially if you're traveling for a number of months, or are a full-time RVer. Worse yet, it could happen to a friend or family member who's traveling with you (and whom you might not know all the specific details of their medical history).

Up until recently, medical records were purely paper-based. So if you wanted to travel with them, you had to ask each of your doctors to print you out copies of the various chart documents they each had, and then you had to carry this pile around with you-- not very fun, and certainly not very secure. Got a leak in your tent? Or a gust of wind through your RV? There go your documents! Going on a cruise or airline trip? Good luck fitting that into your carry-on bag!

Well fortunately, medical records in the U.S. are finally on a fast-track to electronic conversion. I've earned my living for the past 10 years implementing electronic medical records (EMR) systems to physician offices. The early years were slow and painful to get doctors on-board. That all began changing 2 years ago when Medicare began "carrot and stick" reimbursements to providers-- those who sent prescriptions electronically would get paid a little more than those who did not. Momentum really exploded last year, though, when Congress provided billions of new incentive dollars in the Stimulus Bill for physicians to implement and fully use EMR systems within the next few years. Physicians will also be incentivized to provide patients electronic-access to their medical records. So, within the next decade or so, we should finally see all participants in healthcare (patients, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, labs) be able to share health data electronically.

As an internet-aged information-savvy patient, you don't have to wait until your doctor goes electronic-- you can take control over your own records now! There are a couple of good, safe, and free options for maintaining your own electronic personal health record (PHR). Not only do these systems allow you to track your own health, but they also allow you to track other family members on the same account (i.e. your kids immunizations, your parent/grandparent's complicated list of medications and med histories, etc). PHRs are particularly valuable if you need to track a chronic condition such as diabetes or high blood pressure, or have a complex medical or family history.

The key to any good PHR is to ensure that it can import and export health information via the standardized data formats (such as CCR, CCD, or CED xml-based formats). This allows you to receive med list information from a pharmacy, results from a lab, or send your PHR information to a new doctor. It also allows a hospital emergency room to quickly view or download your chart info as well.

There are a number of PHR solutions on the market right now (a great independent website, myPHR.com gives a great list of all of these vendors as well as general tips for creating your own PHR). The 2 "big fish" in PHR-land are Google and Microsoft. Millions of us have online accounts with these 2 vendors already for our email and other online storage needs, so it's super easy to just add your health record to that mix.

Both vendors see their systems as "hubs" where the patient can control what health data can come into and go out of their PHR. Unfortunately, neither of these vendors have designed their front-end application to be a "one-stop-shop" for a typical patient to enter their information (although Google comes much closer to this than Microsoft). So, I've found the best approach is to use one of the smaller vendor PHRs to do most of your data entry/editing (since these vendors are much more healthcare-focused), and then link that record to your Google or Microsoft "hub" record for greater accessibility, integration, and backup.



The only PHR solution that supports both Google and Microsoft hubs is NoMoreClipboard.com. It offers a very robust, free, online PHR application that you can access via a laptop/PC or via your mobile phone's web browser. If also you're interested in storing scanned documents or photos to your PHR, you can purchase a premium subscription for just $10/year for an individual chart, or $30/year for a family of up to 10 people.

NoMoreClipboard allows you to enter just about every bit of information that you typically need to fill out via paper on a clipboard whenever you go to a doctor's office-- your med list, allergies, current and past medical history, past surgeries, family history, pregnancies, immunizations, and so on. You also can enter your basic demographics (address, phone, date of birth, etc), insurance policy info, other physicians you see (along with their address/phone), your preferred pharmacy and hospital, and your emergency contacts/persons you allow providers to discuss your health information with.

Another area NMC excels at is tracking common health metrics such as blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol, height/weight/BMI. You can easily enter this data via the web or your mobile phone and print a chart of all entries to bring along to your next doctor's office visit.

NMC provides a nice overall Patient Summary document to bring with you to the doctor's office (so you don't need to fill out their paper forms!), or you can even transmit it to them electronically or grant them access to view your online record. You can also print an even smaller summary card for your wallet.

While NoMoreClipboard can exchange PHR info with both Microsoft and Google, I find the Google Health integration better to use because you can inividually select/delete what data elements you wish to send/receive. With Microsoft, it's an all or nothing affair.


Once your NMC information is imported, Google Health can do some pretty nifty things with it. For instance, it will analyze your medication list and alert you to any drug interactions or duplicate therapies. Next, it provides great internet reference links for each of your active or past health conditions to allow you to further research and manage that disease. Google also integrates with a number of pharmacy and lab systems so that you can download information from those systems into your Google record, and then sync your Google record back to NoMoreClipboard to keep your medication lists and test results updated.

Google also offers (for free) some of the features that NoMoreClipboard makes you pay extra for --such as storing documents/photos, or graphing your common result data such as daily blood pressure readings.

While NMC and Google offer good data entry, printing, sharing, and online research of your PHR information, and also use the industry-standard CCD/CCR xml format to exchange information between each system, neither let you save or import that CCD/CCR file yourself (for instance, if you want to carry one of these files on a USB stick so that your electronic doctor's office can easily import it into their EHR, or the office wants to give you a download of their EHR's electronic file). For this situation, Microsoft HealthVault shines.

Microsoft HealthVault is clearly a "back-end" hub. It's design premise assumes patients are not at all interested in manually entering all their health information, and that they'd rather just have a centralized storage location for all their health information to be "exchanged" by the patient's desired electronic providers. HealthVault provides no way to share this information with non-electronic providers (such as a printed patient summary document or wallet card). However, if all of your doctors are using EMRs and would prefer to give or receive your data as a standardized electronic CCD/CCR file, then HealthVault is the ideal solution.

HealthVault is also the only PHR solution that integrates directly with a number of new-aged medical devices-- there's a growing list of web-enabled devices that capture blood pressure readings, glucose levels, peak flows, etc and transmit these readings directly into your HealthVault record. No manual data entry required! Telemedicine is an exciting future that hopefully will allow us to live independently of nursing homes much longer, and have better chronic care management from our healthcare providers.

So, there you have it! Another way to keep your important data with you wherever you might be-- whether it's sitting at home or camping in the middle of Yellowstone!