Cindy's Page

i m Inaco's no$@wnr ow*er nowner. no, no, mi am aIno's iowner.

Forget it, I'll let him type it for me. I am Cindy. I own a Chihuahua named Ignacio Valdes. He spends a lot of time in front of the computer instead of petting me.

Ignacio and I go back a long time. We first met after I adopted his Grandmother. She went on vacation once and I stayed at Ignacio's house. He was busy then, working on a Masters degree in Computer Science from University of Houston. I helped him write his Masters thesis. He thought I was just begging for food, but I was actually telling him to use a logarithm on a graph. He's not too smart sometimes.

My dog Ignacio and me. FYI: Close but he did not get me on the mouth!

Before that he had a bachelors in Computer Science from Texas A&M and worked for IBM doing a little of the NASA stuff I see on TV. He says that he also worked on a bunch of other things that you've never heard of, and never will, except maybe OS/2.

I didn't see him for a long time after that. He tells me that after the Masters degree in 1990, he did lots of dumb human stuff: applied for medical school, left IBM and went to work for Compaq as a software tester and quality control engineer. He also helped his father's surgery practice with their computer. He should just relax, like me.

Medical school accepted him, but he deferred entry for one year to start a software company called Lifetime Software that was modestly successful with a program called Exercise Break. It was taken over by Hopkins Technology http://www.hoptechno.com and remains a steady seller to this day, but he should have visited me more.

He says Medical school was very difficult for him until I showed up because he felt very alone. It was also painful for him to go to school everyday and see how primitive the information technology was in medicine and the disorganized state of medical education and practice. They were using nothing but paper charts and awful best of the 60's mainframe software to get labs. Terrible. He almost quit.

His Grandmother died during this time, and I thought we got along well during his Masters thesis so I agreed to be his owner again. He met a big female Chihuahua named Cory in Medical School.

Chihuahua Cory in Guatemala

I like her because she gives me treats a lot more than Ignacio does. They got married and Ignacio began a Psychiatry residency program in 1998.

Through his internship year, all of those clinical and education problems and years of studying clinical computing kept nagging at him. He says that it was the rediscovery of open-source by the general public that seemed to be the answer for such a large computing problem like medicine. He resolved to become a part of it and start this website and facilitate the process of a rational software infrastructure for medicine. Me? While my vocabulary is increasingly broad, I'd rather have a warm blanket and a nice walk anytime.

He seems a lot happier now and I'm glad that I agreed to be his owner. Please e-mail him reminders to give me more treats and take me outside more often.

-- Cindy

In memorium: Cindy died today on 5/13/04. She was 16 years old which is 112 dog years. She had been chronically ill for many months. What can I say? She was my friend and companion for 8 years and I hope had a wonderful little life with me. She was this papers best reporter, helping me through the best and worst of times. She will be missed.

News flash: Cindy's long-lost cousin, Shirley has joined the staff of Linux Medical News! Complete story.