iThink Because iApple

The passing of Steve Jobs this past week has brought people together reflecting and talking and communicating.  Things humans have in common is we're all born and we all die, and those of us privileged to have I.T. in our lives are directly or indirectly impacted by the revolution Mr Jobs 'Was'!

This week, Petie the OTR, who writes regularly on Lumigrate turns 75 (see Forums, Occupational/Functional Therapy in Integrative section).  Her husband is 80 now and lives in front of a computer during the weekdays while the stock market is open, doing some sort of hobby related to that -- it's like fantasy football of the stock market from what I can figure.  He encouraged her to spend some time writing on Lumigrate because he thought it would be good for her to keep up on the computer after retirement; the LOL of that was it allowed him an excuse to get a new computer and hand his down to her; she did need an upgrade.  I have many times had the hand me downs on computers and I regularly donate to nonprofits or others in need when I have something no longer meeting my needs.  Mr Jobs set an example of being generous with our impressionable young minds in public schools, which had long-term payouts in developing loyal users today. He was a genius.   

I had a genius Steve in my life for many years who was the designer of one of the chips that went into one of those first Macintosh computers.  We met just before I made application to occupational therapy school and he was the first person I told when I found out I had been one of lucky ones accepted; at that time only one in six applicants to the program got in.  I will forever be grateful for the timing, as he bought a house and paid for everything except groceries and my personal expenses for insurance and health care or vacations we took.  I didn't buy a drink or a dinner out nor did any of my friends who were with me, for several years, which was good as the OT program didn't allow time for having jobs.  I remember going to an outdoor play and at another table was one of my classmates who was living with one of his coworker, who was helping her study; I was on my own with my flashcards as we waited for the play.  He was not understanding or helpful related to the changes that went on for and with me when I had the onset of fibromyalgia and our relationship ended as soon as I graduated.  I was shocked and upset but there was no time for dealing with it, I had to move to Denver and start internships in a month!  It took me years to see that all these things that keep happening to me to move me along are really coming from a higher source and can be accepted as such rather than the way others look at it as a 'failure'. I hope that hits some nerves for people reading this. That's why I write from my experiences as I do. 

I also have come to realize that when people die, even at young ages, it's as it's intended to be as well.  I'd really 'turned my life around' in my 20s, divorcing a computer science student who had a growing problem with priorities, I'll suffice it to say, then going from the frying pan to the fryer and marrying a man with a teenaged daughter who pushed her way into living with us before we were even married or had bought a house.  She was escaping something she didn't divulge to us until much later when it had festered into a critical problem that thankfully we pooled our resources and got solved.  I attributed all the warning signs of problems to her father's long-standing chronic pain and seizure disorder/ health problems. That was the underlying problem that lead to other things.  In the weeks and months after her crisis, which occurred when I was about to turn 28 and a year after my first friend died due to homocide, my mother died due to 50 years of excessive alcohol and cigarette smoking, and a young coworker with a family dependent upon his income died of a heart attack while traveling for work, I began making the changes to unravel MY past and put myself back together again in a way that I would be able to be more successful as a citizen contributor.  Lumigrate would never have happened had it not been for all that occurring and making me think about MY life and what I wanted to accomplish and how.  

In my late 20s, after buying a house and remodeling it and having an amazing job at Colorado State University for someone who had not done so well studying business there, 'taking time off' to figure out what was going on with my not being able to be successful at college, it felt like my whole life unraveled.  Essentially all the stressors on my body, mind, spirit added up and brought my life-long percolating health crisis to a head; in the summer of my 29th year I was unable to walk a block without resting, walk up a flight of stairs without resting, and cut back from 12 to 7 hour days.  The personal computer in our home was a job-saver for me then, as it had been three years prior when my 'fiance' spent the summer in and out of the hospital.  He'd picked up something little-known then, MRSA, in a surgery on his brain about the time we met.  i didn't bail on him because of having health problems, that just wasn't how I was raised.  My father had, it turns out, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue as part of his entire adulthood.  

I'd gotten my first 'personal computer' at work in about 1984, which allowed me to later get the incredible job with the air quality research project for the National Park Service that was housed at Colorado State University.  There, I'd get the hand-me-downs of the researchers as things were going from 286 to 386 then 486 processors.  I did all the purchasing and would have to research specifications and figure out how to order what was going to be the best thing for us to spend our money on.  That was not always what the purchasing contracts dictated and I was learning lessons along the way that were invaluable to me as I went into full adulthood and on to graduate in occupational therapy and work in the medical field at such a complex time.  I also had top knotch computer skills for the 1980s and 1990s when many people hadn't gotten into computers so much. 

When I returned to becoming a student at Colorado State in 1994-6, computers were not used at all in our classes; this provided a challenge for me, as I literally had not written with pen and paper for 12 years at that time, composing thousands of pages of documents and typing up from researcher's notes, hundreds of professional papers over the eight years I worked 'in research'.  I would have to write out my essay tests twice; there is no 'cut and paste' function with pen and paper!  

I then went to internships at the VA and they used computers for documentation; there was no need for billing since there was not a third party payor.  It was wonderful!  Then I was hired by Novacare, which at the time was the largest therapy contract provider in the US at the time.  They'd already purchased a laptop and portable printer for the tens of thousands of therapists and abandoned the program and went back to pen and paper for documentation because the ability of the worker/therapist for computers was too difficult a learning curve.  Year after year, work environment after work environment, I'd go and be frustrated by their antiquated ways of doing things.  In 2001/2, I was actually having to dictate into a telephone my evaluations, which was just not the way my brain worked -- it works with computer and cut and paste, click on boxes, tah dah, you're done FAST and accurately.  The PT next to me had such a loud voice if she was on the phone while I was dictating the transcriptionist could not make out what I was saying.  It was a mess.  And I was dinged on my productivity, ironically.  Finally, in 2005, after being in Grand Junction at yet another antiquated nursing home writing over and over daily progress on essentially different versions of the same 20 goals I'd set up for people, I was liberated and went to work in two places that BOTH used computers!  SHAZAM! Fully 20 years later.  But Windows had come out and I was just very lost after having been only doing email and simple word processing every now and then in my personal life.  However, both places were using PC laptops, not Apple.  

THEN I saw the opportunity to created what you now see as Lumigrate! Since I'd had the experiences with computer purchasing in my 20s with my job and mid 30s with 'my Steve', I went back to my 'roots' and researched what we'd need to edit video and do graphics.  That was clearly Apple, and I ordered a "BTO" (build to order) which included two monitors that were bigger than my television back in the days when I was ordering computers routinely!  They arrived, ironically, on April Fools Day, which is the day before my birthday; I was turning 48.  I called it the "BigMac" for fun, and went about finding people experienced in the hardware and software for an Apple and applications at 'our level', which was a little 'cutting edge' for Grand Junction. Some of the things we needed simply didn't have the expertise here and we outsourced, but overall the gems that had the ability to learn or teach surfaced as needed in a really magnificent way that made me increasingly confident that some great power is behind this.  

Simply put, Apple has made me look good! People at a distance think I'm some kind of computer wizard but in reality the type of learning disabilities (brain-based) I have make it a challenge for me and anyone around me.  Those who are good teachers and people understand it and can tolerate and compensate; those who are not don't.  I have a feeling that if I'd had the pleasure of working around Steve Jobs he would have been one of those who understood and maybe would even create a solution to the problem.  It has been mind blowing to me working on therapy teams and medical teams how few in the medical world had that ability, particularly in management. 

Not only was Apple 'behind' all the graphics and video that you see on Lumigrate, in March Lumigrate was accepted at iTunes for our podcasts.  They are discerning about who is at iTunes.  The link for me announcing that and Adam Cochran of TalkingDigital giving the details about how podcasts work is here for your convenience if you're interested.  One of the people who helped along the way was working in Cali in high tech in the 1980s and has reported on his facebook that he got to be front and center seeing Steve Jobs in person back then and how inspirational it was.  His commencement speech he made that has been played a lot this week was absolutely one of the most motivating speeches I've heard, as an entrepreneur and person in the 'new millenium' that felt a sense of moral obligation to put forth a generous and unexpected gift of money to creating change in education related to the medical system.  

Initially, it is sad, as the graphic I've put above indicates, but I'm so happy for all the Steves out there who have contributed to the technologies we have today, allowing such advancement in information exchange.  It has accelerated things drastically and I personally think the many stresses involved in that are contributing to the increased deaths we're hearing of related to cancer and many other disorders.  People remark about how long Steve Jobs lived after diagnosis and it's important to note he first went the route of alternative medicine and continued to do that, which is basically what Lumigrate is about with 'integrative medicine' - using CAM and ConMed together.  Do you see how this all comes together? I only wish Mr Jobs would have known about Lumigrate but I do hope every person who reads this will do SOMETHING or a LOT OF THINGS to promote Lumigrate so that others will find out about it.  That's what it's here for; benefitting people.  I hope when the day comes that I pass, the people who know of Lumigrate have as much respect for me as everyone has for him.  It's an inspiration that has made me think much this week.  

Again, please follow out and look at Lumigrate's information about being on iTunes -- it's a wonderful way for people to learn and we went to great lengths (and some expense) to have them available.  Thanks for reading and in advance for helping those YOU know find out about Lumigrate's progressive health information. ~~ Mardy

www.lumigrate.com/forum/itunes-accepted-lumigrates-podcasts-march-comes-itune-and-goes-out