I was waiting for it. The staredown. The showdown. It was me or the machine.

“Lisa … what are you doing, Lisa?” I could hear it saying. I had to trick it into doing what I wanted it to, without it hurtling me into space. (If you little grasshoppers haven’t seen “2001: A Space Odyssey,” for shame! Get thee to Netflix or Vudu, stat!)

You see, we recently went to a new computer system. We’d been using it for tracking for a couple of years, but at the beginning of June, we went to doing everything electronically.

There are some good things about this, and there are bad things.

The good news first, I guess. It’s the shortest – it won’t take long.

Call me crazy, but I actually like putting in my own orders. Now that all my orders are time stamped, I know exactly when I ordered something, so there’s no debate. I also like the fact that my orders and prescriptions are now legible, and I can read what other docs have done. Some handwriting is truly atrocious.

I also like the fact that I know exactly what prescriptions a patient was given in his or her visit to one of our sister hospitals earlier that day.

“Oh, Mr. Smith, you say this is the first time you’ve come to the hospital for your [insert part of the body that hurts here] problem? I see you were at the other hospital, and they gave you 20 Lortab 10s. That was 3 months ago, you say? Hmmm…I don’t know. It says here that it was 3 HOURS ago.” Then I get to tell him in a nice way to get out of my ED so I can take care of people who are actually sick. Oh – and have a nice day. Gotta have that customer satisfaction.

That’s the stuff I like. Now for the meltdowns.

I could see three patients, put in a central line, and reduce a shoulder in the time it takes for this thing to boot up and log me in. This is 2012, people. It was quicker to log into my Apple IIc that I had to work on when I was in high school. The surgeons are really frustrated. They say they could have written pre-op orders and scrubbed by the time they finish logging on. Don’t you just love modern technology?