Dominus vobistcum

When I got ready to start my own blog site I looked up how many blogs there were worldwide. I smiled when I saw numbers that varied about as often as the KLAS PACS rankings where someone somewhere is always number one at some point in time. One site said 50 million, another 60M, but who really knows? Several studies also indicated that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation- 60% to 80% are abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe. So that basically means I have about as good a chance of someone reading this blog as I do in winning the big prize in the Florida Lottery- about 14M to one. But do I care? Nah….

I was the better (or worse) half of the PACS-aholic blog site that ran on an Imaging Technology News-sponsored site for a few years with my good friend Crissie Bolan at my side. While it was a blast doing it with Chrissie most of the time, the reality of always having to watch our backs in what we said frankly got old. More than once we had to “modify” a post or “set the record straight” when an advertiser or special interest group took exception to what we put up even though what we said was both accurate and how we felt. Thankfully I won’t have to do that here.

So what is this blog all about? It’s a given there will be some discussion about PACS since PACS plays such a large role in my life. Every single day there is always something or some one I can comment on. I also plan on spending a fair amount of time sharing my “world” with you as well. Many of my friends and admirers have been goading me on for years to do this so…why not?

So what’s in the blog name? The PACSMan is a given reflecting my involvement in PACS technology. PACSMan is my “nom de plume” I adopted back in the early 80’s when I first wrote for Diagnostic Imaging. This was back in the days when DI’s RSNA edition looked more like a Gideon’s bible than the latest copy of Watchtower handed out door to door by Jehovah’s Witnesses (a group that while I don’t necessarily agree with their religious philosophies I greatly admire for their tenacity). Unfortunately since then everyone and their brother has been stealing my nickname or using variants thereof like some sick version of Mini-Me and getting me in trouble in the process, Believe me, I don’t need help getting in trouble by any means.

The pontifications part is a tribute to my Roman Catholic upbringing. I was altar boy from age 6 through age 13 and could say the Mass in English, Latin and Italian. That’s a real babe magnet if there ever was one- if you are into overweight Italian grandmothers with moustaches that is. Eight years post divorce and dealing with the vast dating wasteland that exists out there, the Italian momma’s are starting to look good any more…and at my age the way to this man’s heart is through his stomach, not points further south. Priorities ya know…

According to Merriam Webster the word to pontificate means “to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way”. Pompous? Moi? Banish the thought! None of the synonyms for pompous come even close to me- “self-important, arrogant, haughty, affected, ostentatious, portentous, pretentious, snobbish, exaggerated, grandiose, vain…”. Well maybe a few….OK most depending on the day, but still. And dogmatic!! Let’s see.” opinionated, arrogant, assertive, arbitrary, emphatic, downright, dictatorial, imperious, overbearing, categorical, magisterial, doctrinaire, obdurate, peremptory” Again, moi?! So maybe my wordsmithing came up with the perfect word for this blog so pontifications it is.

This marks the start of The PACSMan Pontificates. I hope you find it informative, humorous, reverent and above all politically correct, And if you do know you probably have the wrong blog because on here the bear is Catholic and the Pope does indeed shit in the woods.

So now it’s time to bless you all as we embark on this journey into blogging together:

“Dominus vobistcum.” (and you reply) “Et cum spiritu tuo”.