I have several loves in my life besides my wonderful wife Marianna. I love flying pretty much above all else after her. I love photography and I love messing around with computers. I have spent the last 15 years (up to November 2009) working at Rubbermaid mostly as a tech. I was able to work with many different types of computers and even computerized robots. I was able to do some programming on our Fanuc robots. That was really interesting, but I always wanted to make my living working on and with computers all the time. I got my IT degree in 2007 and after I was laid off from that company. I tried hard to break into the IT field.

Well, it is tough to find a job in this economy and with so many unemployed. Even though I had a degree I had no real “experience” in the industry. I decided to go to work as a volunteer at a local hospital in the IS department to gain experience. I didn’t even know if that was possible but the Director of IS was ecstatic to have me. They were very good to me and I learned a lot from the other Analysts as well as my “boss”. I finally gave up and took another job in plastics, at Plastipak, thinking I was not going to be able to break into the IT industry. I had already been unemployed for over a year. Man, that was a tough year.

I had worked for the hospital 2 days a week for about a year and was familiar with the hospital and the clinics on the premises. We had even added a clinic to the hospital domain, 43 computers, and there was a lot to do to those computers to get them in shape and joined. I had been working at Plastipak for a couple of months. They were a really good company and I enjoyed my job but I still wanted a real job in computers. I got an email from the Director of IS at the hospital about that time. The clinics, 5 of them, had consolidated into one entity and had been acquired by the hospital. They were looking for a systems analyst to take these 5 clinics as his own. They were also going to migrate to electronic medical records from paper records and planned to buy servers and house them at the hospital. The Director was recommending me!!! I got the JOB!!!

I firmly believe this is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was there the week the new NextGen servers were installed and they are my babies now. I have a Medinotes server and an Allscripts server as well as the new NextGen servers. I have all 5 clinics and their computers to play with. I am doing serious training on NextGen as we will expand that software to include all 5 clinics as well as utilizing more and more of the features of the software in all clinics. I am already amazingly independent although I have the Analysts at the hospital to fall back on if I need help. I am happy beyond words. I think I have finally arrived! Thanks for Listening.

Gary R Turner