Its the first race of the year…the Shamrock Run, an 8k race through the streets of Buffalo’s Old First Ward. About 5,000 runners and “runner-wannabes” will be there. The hallmark is really the parties that go on throughout the neighborhood along the route of the race. The weather will be absolutely stunning and perfect – 30s, sunny and no wind. I am going to use this race to determine where I stand in my training and develop my base for the rest of the year. See ya all later!!
My left ear was activated thereby completing my life journey of having both ears implanted and becoming a bilateral implantee. ABSO(Bleeping)lutely awesome! describes that moment two years ago..
Many of you know that I wear cochlear implants and I am also a mentor for the Bionic Ear Association (BEA). My role and responsibilities are to help others navigate the world of cochlear implants from choosing them to living with them. We are currently in the process of forming social gatherings around the country. Below is the one for my geographical area…
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I am now off the market. I accepted a six month contract as a report developer/programmer with the PMO of Central Technology at M&T Bank. here is a possibility of it being extended and hopefully, made permanent. For now, one step at a time…one day at a time! I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who have helped me, provided support and good word of wisdom. I’ve learned a lot in the process but most importantly, the need for 3Ps (see The 3Ps) – Persistence, Perseverance, and Patience.
And two years ago today, I underwent the knife on my left year and became completely bilateral. Boy, it has been some ride! (I am home!)
Three years ago today, I underwent the knife for the first time on my right year. Boy, has time flown ! (T -0…4 hours to go)
Following is a small sample of the more comprehensive report development efforts. These would be in addition to the standard bricks and mortar reports that I have developed. All told, I probably developed over 1000 reports in my lifetime.
| Report/Solution Description | Problem being Solved | Company Type |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Financial Report – a compilation of over 20 reports in one, completed with a hyperlinked table of contents. Reports included financial statements (Bal. Sht., P&L, Cash flow, Budget vs. Actual), graphs/charts, operational statistics. | Facilitated management review – all required reports in one file. Efficiency – all reports created as PDFs, merged, and emailed to selected individuals with one process. | Internet/ecommerce retailer and wholesale distributor |
| Monthly Operations Report – a compilation of approximately 15 operations reports, graphs/charts. | Facilitated management review – all required reports in one file. Efficiency – each report represented a tabbed worksheet in one Excel file emailed to selected individuals in one process. | Home Health Agency |
| Daily NOC/Helpdesk Metrics Report – a series of performance measurements. | Information was being stored on a hosted SharePoint platform. The information had to be validated/corrected. This was achieved by populating and MS Access database and reporting off of that. The reports were emailed to selected individuals daily. The entire process was managed within MS Access and triggered by a VB script. | Network Operations Center/Helpdesk Service Organization |
| HHA Supervisory Visit Due Report – an exception report which identified patients that receive Home Health Aide services and, who have not yet had a visit from the HHA Supervisor. | Compliance – patients receiving HHA visits are required to be seen by an HHA Supervisor every 14 days. The application did not have functionality to perform this requirement. Efficiency – eliminated the need to manually review every patient’s schedule to see if there is an HHA Supervisory visit. | Home Health Agency |
| Accounts Receivable Reconciliation Process – the sales records and the receivables were on two different systems. Both systems were manually reconciled and the appropriate entries made by journal entry. | Efficiency – eliminated the need to manually match transactions and prepare daily journal entries. Journal entries were prepared as part of the matching process, below. System overhead – because the transactions were never reconciled, they were considered “open”. This prevented the records from being archived and caused the database to grow. Eventually, performance suffered. Using a MS Access database along with VB, matching using common information between the two systems was performed. Those records that matched were marked as closed and the archive process moved them from the production database to storage. | Internet/ecommerce retailer and wholesale distributor |
| Eight Day Appointment Calendar – each clinician’s schedule for the next eight days. | Efficiency – eliminated the need to log onto the application, run the scheduler and print. This was an automated process that ran overnight, created the calendar in PDF format and emailed to each clinician. | Home Health Agency |
| Sales by Category by Brand – for a user defined date range, the primary level is the product category. Drilldown on that gives the next level which is the brand. Drilldown on the brand gives a listing of all of the transactions for that brand. Those brands that had a profit margin less than a user defined (prompt) number were color coded. | Facilitated management review – because there were over 700 brands within five categories, management was not only interested in the “big picture” but also wanted to see those that did not meet a certain profit margin level. We were able to achieve two objectives with one report. Efficiency – the color coding allowed for a quicker identifying of sub-par performing brands. | Internet/ecommerce retailer and wholesale distributor |
| Insurance Enrollment file – before there were formal EDI standards, insurance companies were requesting benefit information in a file format they defined. In some cases, the information had to be manipulated. | Efficiency – using an MS Access database, mapping tables were created to convert the data. This kept us from having to constantly revise the program code every time something changed. Innovation – the client was the pilot for what eventually became the insurance company’s EDI system. | Technology company |
| Financial Flash Report – a cross-tab report (spreadsheet) with dynamic rows and monthly columns based on a revolving twelve month period. | Efficiency – the user never had to run this report. It was triggered monthly using the task scheduler. The row information was updated automatically as new financial codes were added and the columnar information was based on the last twelve months. The report was rendered into a spreadsheet. Innovation –the organization had multiple locations, some on an older legacy system and others on the new system. The challenge was to extract the information from both systems directly. This was achieve through the use of sub-reports. | Home Health Agency |
| Cash flow Report – a highly complex report which not only reported actual cash flow but based on “what-if” scenarios and rules which were maintained in a table, projected future cash flow. | Facilitated management review – the rules were established by management and reported. The “what-if” scenarios were also controlled by management. All of this was controlled by prompts that management could update and save under their own user name. Efficiency – time saved by not having to maintain spreadsheets. Accuracy – this report was based on a single set of data that was verifiable and auditable. | Consumer products manufacturer |
| Report cards – a local school district did not like the canned report cards. | Consistency – the existing report cards not only had to be formatted accordingly but graphics and other information not available in the system had to be included. Different graphics had to be shown for the various school buildings. In addition, there was certain non-mandated information which had to be reported that was part of a separate system. Efficiency – due to the large volume of students (7,000), the report cards were mass produced from a central location and forwarded to printers at the appropriate school building. | School district |
| HIPAA 270 – in order to determine if a particular patient is eligible for Medicare, information must be transmitted using a 3rd party clearing house. This was a temporary solution pending the long term solution which would be built into the new system. The file was created in the appropriate format for uploading through the 3rd party system. | Efficiency – eliminated the need to manually input information into the 3rd party’s system via web browser. Cost savings – eliminated the need for customizations. The application vendor was scheduled to release this as an enhancement in a future upgrade. | Home Health Agency |
| HIPAA 271 – this would be the response from the HIPAA 270 transmission. If denied, the file contains various codes and explanations. | Compliance – full compliance with Jenkins Act. The appropriate information was reported in a format that looked similar to an invoice (in PDF format). As part of the process for creating the report, the scripts read a user maintained table that indicated whether the documents should be printed on paper or transferred to a CD. | Internet/ecommerce retailer and wholesale distributor |
| Invoices – The “out of the box” manual process was very inefficient. Invoices were generated daily but batched and mailed weekly. In many cases, they were misplaced. And the monthly batch that went to the sales reps. was also incomplete due to missing invoices. | Efficiency – eliminated the need to print the standard 4 part invoice and manually separate each part. Created a cover sheet (statement) that supported the batch of invoices. A new process of allowing the customer to choose hard copy by postal mail or PDF by email was implemented. 90% of the customers chose the PDF by email option. In addition, the sales rep copies were sent to them this way on a monthly basis. Cost savings – eliminated the need for four part invoice paper; reduction in postage; estimated 50 man-hours per month. | Consumer products manufacturer |
Last night, someone reminded me that today we should see a blue moon. Much to my ignorance, I actually thought it was that the moon would be blue. That was until I was reminded that this is one of those rare months where the full moon appears twice hence the term “once in a blue moon”. I like to think that this year was also one of those rare years in my lifetime. As I look back, yea…it was.
I am not going to repeat everything that happened during the year. You can always browse through the categories or the months to see what my life was like. And if you know me well enough, I am sure you have vivid memories of what it was like for me. There is a lot of great, good, bad and ugly.
I can tell you that gone are the reasons for the bad and the ugly. Today is the last day I am going to think about them. In their place, among the great and the good, is a renewed sense of desire and commitment to be the best person I can possible be; to God, my family, friends, and myself.
To everyone, I wish you all a Happy New Year and may 2010 be the best year you possible could have.
This holiday season happens to be a very special one. In some respects, I don’t want to nor do I deserve to celebrate it. It is because of those fateful days, June 29th, 30th and July 1st that makes me think the way I am. After all, isn’t it suppose to be a time where friends and family get together to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Festival of Lights or Kwanzaa and, share in the celebration?
As I look back at thirty some odd years, however long I have known Steph, I come to realize that this holiday season is very different from the others.
The pile of presents under the tree is like we haven’t finished wrapping all of the presents. That is partially due to the fact that I am among the masses of unemployed, a victim of the current recession and downturn of the economy. I remember years ago, perhaps as far back as the 80s how I used to compete with my brother-in-law (Steph’s twin sister’s husband) for the mostest, biggest, bestest presents in the entire family. I mean, it would take days and days to shop and, hours and hours to wrap.
I think back in those days we spent over $500 dollars just to heap bribery after bribery onto the kids with hopes they would behave their best for the coming year. Ha! We would be lucky if we got 36 hours of haloed behavior out of them. Or, I would be tickled thrilled that Steph “loved” her gifts. Or better yet, I would pretend the “OH WOW…these are the best presents I could ever get!” attitude.
Then came that fateful moment on the floor of the bathroom and the ensuring moments. Nothing could have prepared me for that…NOTHING! In the midst of it all, the EMTs thought I had a stroke. It wasn’t till an hour later in the ER when the diagnosis of “mild heart attack” came back. I looked at Steph and was all like “Did you hear that? I had a (bleeping) heart attack!? You gotta be kidding me!”. (see Dead Rabbits and Pixie Dust)
In the following months, as I was recovering I had a new found faith in that there was some external workings behind all this. And like many of us, became a believer. Gone was the stress of worrying, the arrogancy, the rough and raw, the me-me. In place, a more gentle, kinder, and softer person.
It really took fifty some odd years to realize that life shouldn’t be taken for granted. That we live for today. That we should be grateful for what we have. That whatever happens, happens…we’ll just be prepared and deal with it when it happens.
During the course of this year, I met and saw scores of beautiful people. From my fellow CI mentors and all of the wonderful folks at Advanced Bionics and the Bionic Ear Association. To all of those who I have IMed, emailed and finally got to meet in person in Nashville. To the countless number of CI candidates by email and in person. Two very special angels. To one very precious 11 year older. To all of my dead rabbits (who were suddenly revived) and fellow runners at Checkers AC. The 50-54ers and 55-59ers. The dinner crowd. My extended family. “Zero to 200 in nothing” and his beautiful wife. Mom, Ellen, Tom, Julie/Russ and their kids, Josh/Giosi and their kids, cousins Neal, Jeffrey, Evelyn, Leon. And of course, Steph, Mike and Dan.
I have come to realize that above all of this, the greatest gift we can give is LOVE. It doesn’t cost anything. Anyone can give it. There is no limit to how much you can give. And you can give it in any which way you want. So to each and every one of you, in speaking from my repaired heart please accept my gratitude and thanks for your tremendous outpour of support. And in return, accept my LOVE and wishes for a very wonderful Happy Holidays!
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1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
-1 Corinthians 13
Click on photo to enlarge
Many of you know me as the all consuming BEA (Bionic Ear Association) mentor. The above is what appears in the BEA calendar for November 2010. And not only am I getting myself some national exposure but so is Checkers AC, the running club I belong to.
My CIs continue to gradually improve my hearing. I do have to admit that I had been slacking off in practicing and I think I am paying for that mistake as I still have not yet mastered the phone.
On the CI mentoring front, a lot happened this year. I met 30 some odd other CIers from all around the country at the corporate headquarters for Advanced Bionics where we spent five most memorable days getting to know each other, learning how we can help others and see our where our CIs are built.
In addition to mentoring countless number of candidates plus a few who were struggling post-op, I helped start up a BEA chapter in Western NY. We had our first social in August. With the help of a mom of an 11 y/o CIer, we will have another one in February 2010 at the Batavia Public Library. More details to follow.
Below is a booklet the 11 y/o wrote based on her first CI experience. It is written by Mary who went deaf at three and a half, received her first implant at six and just had surgery to receive her second implant. She also won the Girl Scouts Bronze Award. I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful gal last week.
click on photo to enlarge
For 2010, I think there is going to be a lot of good things happening. As much as I am looking forward to continuous improvement, I want to continue to help others. This would not only be in help choosing and naivgating the CI world but also those who are newly activated. And, if you would like me to help you please head over to the Bionic Ear Connect to a Mentor website. And by the way, I am the guy in the middle of the back row in the yellow shirt.
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