last day.

My last day at Epic was this week – Wednesday to be specific.

The last day was hectic, but mostly anti-climactic. Note to self: do not volunteer to do a demo the same day you’re leaving. It adds unnecessary stress. Leaving on a Wednesday though – most people I worked with weren’t even in the office. So no awkward good-byes.

But I’m really sad about leaving. I’m going to miss the people, and the travel, and the campus. I’m sad that I don’t get to see the full impact of the projects I worked on. I don’t get to see my last customer once they’ve adjusted to their new system. I don’t get to see the impact of all the work I did with Meaningful Use. And I realize, there’s never the perfect time to leave a job you like. In fact, right now is probably the best time I could leave. It’s hard to give up something you’ve done (and liked doing) for three years.

obsolete.

I’m tech savvy enough. I might not stay on the cutting edge – it did take years for me to get a smartphone – but I’m part of a generation that grew up with technology. Granted, I remember having a computer that booted up to an MS-DOS menu rather than Windows. And I remember making mix cassette tapes, and using Betamax video tapes. The point is, I can usually muddle my way around something new.

Therefore, it’s always surprising and extremely humiliating to run into technology I simply can’t use. Case in point – I tried to fax yesterday. Key word being “tried” because I completely failed at it and finally just scanned and emailed the document. This was after several attempts with various numbers, a lot of standing around, some walking back and forth and even googling directions. I am still baffled.

I have the same issue with pagers – though work has made me slightly more comfortable. The first time I was given a pager – no idea how it worked. The first time it went off, I didn’t realize it and I didn’t know how to stop it from beeping, but at least I did know how to call the number back.

Faxing and pagers aren’t even that old! Obviously, as they are still in existence and still being used.  It’s just mind-blowing how quickly technology is comes in and then becomes obsolete. It makes me finally understand those kiddos that don’t know what the A and B drives on a computer are.

UPDATE: On a weirdly related note, my dad just sent an email about cleaning out some of our family’s old technology. He just got rid of our oldest computer. It had 40 mb RAM, 500 mb hard drive – later supplemented with 7 gb. Along with it, he got rid of 1000+ 5.25 inch floppy disks. It’s kinda too bad you can’t save everything.