I finally went to see an optometrist this week. Catching up to normal life tasks after you move takes awhile.
It was a reasonably pleasant experience (except for the machine that puffs air in your eye). I filled out a form about myself. I sat in front of some machines, where my vision capabilities were measured and photographed. My very nice optometrist asked me a series of questions about my vision, clearly trying to ferret out if I required specific resources or care.
That’s when it hit me. This format is exactly how we (myself and my co-worker) first engage with researchers at UW Madison. Our initial meeting with researchers who want to use CHTC computing resources is meant to assess research computing abilities and needs, and provide proper “treatment”, so to speak. We ask a standard set of questions to do this and, while we don’t take photos of optical nerves, are trying to snapshot what researchers have, need, and will want in the future.
I would never have thought of myself as a “doctor”, but after my eye appointment on Friday, I realize that there are probably a lot of professions that require the practice of “diagnosis” (really just domain specific problem-solving) and I now have a new appreciation for what doctors do every day!