I have a friend who has built several 40 to 50 foot wooden shrimpers with a farm tractor diesel supplying the power. That is a good boat for the Gulf.

During hurricanes we get a lot of people moving their larger boats into the bayous, and then demonstrating that they don’t know how to anchor a boat. We lose a lot of docks to those idiots. My Dad would pull the engine and sink the 14-footer for hurricanes.

Turtle grass? There’s no turtle grass in bayous, which is where he’s sucking up the sand and trying to fish. If there were more boat launches, he could get away with a jon boat.

probably, joining a group practice would mean having to “clean up his act” somewhat, which would be a real shame, especially when sacrificed on the altar of more profits for insurance executives. i’ve had some really good doctors who were lousy at making human connections, and i worship the ground they walk on just because they’ve taken such good care of me, but that’s not necessarily an ideal way to take care of sick people.

he’d better not be uprooting the turtle grass with that sucky engine.

His wife has to be the last person on the planet not to know that he hates the boat. He spends a lot of time on it, mostly taking it in for repairs. My Mother likes going to him because the office is like a sit com. She rags on the doctor about how ratty his office looks, and he says his wife decorated it. Except my Mother knows that the stuff in the office are things the wife didn’t want after she bought them at garage sales.

The nurse knows the truth about everything but swears you silence, because she enjoys the “show”.

The possibility of a divorce is from zero to minus 1000, but the problem is real.

thanks for the link.

Andante, one of my Mother’s best doctors is having to consider joining a group practice to deal with billing because it is currently being done by his wife, and she has threatened divorce [and taking his boat in the divorce] if he doesn’t do something. He admits his wife spends more time billing, then he spends on medicine, and they can’t find a competent clerk who doesn’t get hired away as soon as they are trained.

Steve, it amounts to a huge cross-referenced database combined with a series of forms templates. The program is expensive enough, but you have to subscribe for the updates. I fixed a couple of things for them, but refused a job on ethical grounds. I didn’t like the people or their business practices, and didn’t want to get involved. After I said no I tracked down a couple of the guys who had quit and found out they ripped off their programmers, as well as their clients.

When a small company sells a piece of software that none of the managers understands, I get a feeling that they ripped off the original programmer and cheated him/her of their copyrights.