Blood Pressure Monitor?

I was killing some time at our local CVS pharmacy yesterday, waiting for the pharmacist to refill a prescription when my gaze fell to the display of blood pressure monitors. Small circumstance that, as the prescription happened to be for a blood pressure medication. Now why am I babbling about that in Lockergnome? Well ... the blood pressure monitor that caught my eye comes with software and a USB connection ...

I've had high blood pressure for a while. I honestly can't remember how many years it's been, but I can say that I've mostly been lax about using a blood pressure monitor. The unit we have is more than ten years old and it's been a few years since it's had a fresh set of batteries.

Problem is, our old blood pressure monitor lacks geek-appeal.

The USB-equipped monitor I saw tonight, on the other hand, fits the bill. Heck, I could almost get excited (Whoa, Nellie!) about keeping track of my blood pressure.

As it turns out, the blood pressure monitor apple of my eye is manufactured by Microlife Products and is sold at CVS as the CVS Microlife Blood Pressure Monitor Digital Advanced Wrist With PC Link Software. (Now that's a mouthful.) The box was locked in a glass case, so I didn't get the chance to get a closer look.

The store was fairly busy and I didn't want to bother the pharmacist to unlock the case. I figured that I'd do my homework, and if it seemed interesting, I'd pick up the blood pressure monitor on a return visit.

When I returned home, I went poking around on Microlife website to see what I could find out about the software. Unfortunately, the website was light on details about the PC-Link. The operational manual merely covered how to plug the unit into a PC, summing up with an unsatisfying "Please refer to the «help» file for software instructions."

I was so intrigued that I went back and bought one. I'll do a full write-up once I've had the chance to put it to work ...