Larry's
version
Jay's version
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Larry's version: The long and winding
path that led to this article
I knew Jay from when we went to Junior High school together in Southern
California over 40 years ago. Like many of Jays posts there
is a little bit of serendipity behind the writing of this article
(actually quite a bit of serendipity). I first found Jay on the
web through Classmates.com, a classic Web 2.0 social networking
site created before the term Web 2.0 existed. The information on
the website is organized by school, dates of attendance, and then
alphabetically by name. This structure encourages browsing names
of people who graduated at the same time (or nearly the same time)
as you did.
I saw Jays name and started some correspondence. I remembered
him but he didnt remember me. Among other things, Jay added
me to the Boidem mailing list. We both use Gmail which allows you
to see the online status of friends
that you have corresponded with previously. We almost
connected via IM during a trip that Jay took to the US a few
years ago, but finally exchanged IM messages just as I was about
to run out the door to a conference on computer applications in
medicine. This conversation (and thus Classmates, Gmail, a well
timed IM from halfway around the world and a shared background 40
years ago) led to an offer to write about the aspects of the conference
that relate to this columns goals. |
Jay's
version: Not all that long, only somewhat winding, but most certainly
different
When I invited Larry to write a guest column, if I wasn't saying
to myself what am I thinking?! I should have been. It
was clear to me from the beginning that I was putting myself into
a bind. If what he wrote was in Boidem style, then there
would be nothing distinctive about what I do here. And if he didn't
write in "Boidem style", what was I going to do with what
he sent me? Luckily, what he sent offered me the opportunity to
play around, which is what I've tried to do. It also presented me
with an opportunity to examine a topic that definitely falls
under the mandate of the Boidem, but that's only very rarely
been touched on here. The outcome isn't classic Boidem, but on the
other hand, it raises some interesting possibilities for new directions.
I won't argue with Larry's version of how this writing came about, but
I should perhaps say a few words in my defense. I don't think it's fair
to say that I didn't remember him from junior high school (as it was called
back then). His name definitely rang a bell, and when, after our mother
died, I found my junior high school yearbooks in my brother's attic, I
was able to search for his photo and say "sure, I remember him".
I have, more than just occasionally, mused on "whatever became of
..." though I don't think that Larry was one of those people upon
whom I mused. I can't write that I'd never have believed he'd become a
doctor, but not because it's out of character as to how I remember him,
but simply because I never really thought about this.
I wasn't aware that the impetus for our renewed friendship originates
with Classmates.com. I registered on Classmates.com pretty much from its
inception, but saw no reason to become a paying member - all it really
offered me was the possibility of getting the email addresses of old classmates,
and if I really wanted these (and I usually didn't), finding them on my
own couldn't have been too difficult. As Larry later acknowledged, he
also realized this and dropped his paying membership after a short while.
I do admit that I'm flattered that among the many names that might ring
a bell on the Classmates.com list Larry saw fit to contact me.
I'm not sure that our joint use of gmail (is there anybody out there
who doesn't use it?) contributed much to this column. For quite
a while the gmail address Larry had for me wasn't my primary gmail
address, and I checked it only intermittently and was logged in
for short periods of time. This meant that rather than being available
for chat almost always with my primary account, I only very rarely
appeared as available on this account. Most of our correspondence
was via my academic account that still (primarily) goes into Outlook.
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