ODAR Trivia

Every job description has that famous final line - Other Duties As Required. It's become quite the joke around here that most of us spend more time work on our ODAR's than we do the rest of our responsibilities. That has been exceptionally true for me today. I have a new project that involves combing through hundreds of computer generated search terms and determining/monitoring which would be most useful to generate productive (read: money-making) hits on our department's web site. What does this have to do with administering the fellowship training program? Nothing. That's why it's an ODAR.

While at first this sounds like a project that would make my eyes bleed, it has in fact been quite educational. You see, I know very little technical terminology when it comes to the procedures and diagnostics that we do, so quite a few of the search terms on the list are totally foriegn to me. Every time I come across one of these suspicious terms I end up Googling it to see if it is in any way related to cardiology. Some of them are indeed relevant terms that I would learn if diagnosed with a particular cardiac ailment. Others are not.

Did you know that "pacemaker" can refer to:

A brand of boat
A model of hot water heater
A type of portable DJ system
A race track in Ohio
A Brittish rock band from the 1960's

Heart Transplant is also the name of a band, although they only appear to have had one popular song, and "bleeding heart" is a type of flower (which I already knew because I tried to grow one when I was in high school. They do not like our hot summers).

There is much interest in both Regis Philbin and Bill Clinton's heart surgeries. I didn't know either of them had gone through heart surgery. Meanwhile, online virtual heart surgery has become quite the popular game.

I've made my own game out of the list. Every now and then I'll email Greg a term and he has to guess if it's cardicac or not. The best was "heart transplant lyrics" for which he started guesing songs such as Achy Breaky Heart.