NYC Trip with the Maddie's

A few years back, my daughter started talking with her best friend Maddie about traveling to New York together with their Dads. I work with Mark and we travel to the NY/NJ area pretty frequently. This year, the trip came together for the girls.  The girls did it in style, starting with spending some time in the Delta Sky Club, followed by first class seats on the ride out.  They were in heaven.

We took the girls to a meeting with us in New Jersey.  My Maddie has never been to an office like this, since I've worked out of my house since before she was born.  I think she learned that she's not missing much.

Needless to say, NYC and Times Square to eleven year girls is fantastic.  We stayed right off of Times Square over on 8th Avenue and 49th Street.  We had dinner at John's Pizza over around 43rd and Broadway and then headed over to American Eagle

At American Eagle, they have a deal where if you buy anything, you can get your picture up on their 200 ft billboard. They take your picture in a small studio and then put it in Times Square five minutes later.

The video of the girls watching themselves is fantastic:

Madeline loves the NY City.  Everything about it: the energy, the smells, the sounds.  I could see her living there some day.  She would sit by the window in the morning and evening with it open just a crack and say, "Dad!  Can you smell that!  It smells like the City!"  She would watch the world go by and just take it in.

I'm not ashamed to say that we did just about every touristy thing you can do when you go to NYC.  We started our mornings off with Metro Day Passes and a list of what the girls wanted to do.  We took the subway from stop to stop (using my iPhone app, of course) and saw the sites.  We started off Thursday morning trying to go see the Today show, but they were filming at the Olympics, so there was only a small crew on-site.

We went up the Empire State building, which was much cooler than I thought it would be:


We went to Central Park

Dylan's Candy Bar, as seen on all sorts of TV shows:

The Hersheys and M&M Stores, where Mark fell in love with this NASCAR outfit:

We went to see the Broadway show Memphis:

We hit Madam Tusseau's Wax Museum and posed with the statues:

The statues were more realistic than you thought, but I'm not sure the place was worth the $100 we spent for the four of us (that was with the AAA discount...)

Madonna and Brittney:

And of course me saving the Maddie from the Hulk, and her being able to judge on American Idol:

FAO Schwartz and the Times Square Toys R Us are always a blast.  We even went up on the giant Ferris Wheel.  These are giant Lego statues:


These are creepy dolls that Maddie tried to convince me to buy for her:


One of the cool parts of trip was going to see the Regis and Kelly show.  After talking to one of Nate's teacher's right before the trip, she shared with me how they got to see the show tape live.  On a whim, the day before we left I called to see if we could get tickets.  They called me back the next morning and said they'd put us on the list.  We got there about 7:30am Friday morning and were the first ones in line.  We had front row seats and the girls got to meet and take a picture with Kelly afterwards.  They were only filming part of the show that morning, so they let us hang out and meet the staff and then leave.  Well worth the time, and the tickets were free.

This adds Maddie's total of TV anchor meetings to three, with Anne Curry in there as well

The trip was a blast, but exhausting for all of us.  Mark and I are clearly not made to show with eleven year old girls, but we kept our yappers shut and let them do their thing.  Maddie was so appreciative of the whole thing and was constantly thanking me for this and telling me how perfect it was.  It doesn't get any better than that for me.

Even this week as I was back in the city for work, Maddie texted me to make sure I didn't go to any of our special places (like the Toys R Us Ferris Wheel) without her.  I told hold her I didn't think that would be an issue.  When I went running on Wednesday, I ran by a lot of the things we'd done as I headed out towards Central Park.  There were a lot of great memories that we'll have for a long time.  The Maddie's made this video diary of after the first day of the trip, which I love and capture their excitement about the trip:

Spending the night in our Snow Fort

My favorite Emily Picture

Quick nap before going out

Emily's Double Decker Rat Cage

We took Emily's old guinea pig cage and combined it with her rat's cage to make a double decker cage. The problem is that the guinea pig cage bars may be wide enough to let the rats slip out.

Father/Son Day Recap

With all of my travel, today was about hanging with Nate.  We built a snow fort tonight that we're going to sleep in tonight:



We went to BW3's for wings and Best Buy to shop for technology:

 
We hung and played video games...

My take on Healthcare in America

I cover the Healthcare Industry in my job.  Every day, I'm either talking to people in healthcare, reading about the subject in newspapers or trade rags, deal with projects and offerings in the healthcare space and reading the latest e-mail or analyst report that someone has sent me about it.

In my heart, I carry the this tension of what followers of Jesus (and I'd argue people in general) are called to do to take care of the poor.  I have friends who struggle to make ends meet because of medical bills, even though they have insurance, and I hate it.  We've got Medicaid already to cover the poor.  It's a huge cost, I'm willing to use some of my income to help others, but I don't know that just throwing more money at this is the answer.  I actually think that there are ways to approach this with new taxes than could actually by neutral by helping drive down overall healthcare costs and fund the poor in some of their coverage.

I've been fascinated to watch the Healthcare debate going on in our country, and I read everything I can get my hands on.  I've started writing this blog post five or six times over the course of the past year, each time stopping as it got so big, had so few answers and so many logical gaps.  I'm writing this more to capture some of what I'm thinking, but even that's tough to distill down.  It seems pretty egotistical to claim that I've really got the answers to any of this, so I'll just claim these as random thoughts that just so happen to be right.

1. We need to move incrementally into this, not with gigantic upending reform
Democrats want a comprehensive approach that overhauls insurance practices, expands coverage, changes medicare and attacks costs.  The Democrats believe you can only change insurance rules to guarantee coverage for people with pre-existing coverage for people with pre-existing coverage if healthier citizens are in the insurance pool to spread costs.  They believe you can only get everybody in the insurance pool if the government requires all to have insurance of some kind, and you can only require everybody to have insurance if you provide subsidies to help with those.   Republicans want incremental change because they believe those things are too risk and expensive to do at once.  They want to start by allowing insurance policies to be sold across state lines, allowing small businesses to band together into pools and look at how big big policies are taxed.

2. People have to be accountable for their healthcare spending
One of the biggest problems with healthcare right now is that we're not accountable for what is spent.  Regardless of whether you're talking about government programs like Medicare or Medicaid, or my own insurance plan, it's difficult to know where your money goes.  I remember the first time I had an insurance plan with a high deductible and put the balance of the money in my Healthcare FSA.  The onus was now on me to manage my costs and make decisions about my care.  At first I was amazed at the kind of bills I received from my doctors that I didn't normally pay attention to.  I started asking my doctor what procedures cost and whether they were required.  I did research into the prescriptions I took to look at generics.  I started managing my costs because it was coming out of my pocket.

There are people, particularly in Michigan with our huge union benefits that pay no co-pays for drugs or visits, and have no ownership to manage their own healthcare costs.  They're not taxed on this money and the costs keep going up, because the doctors and hospitals charge the insurance companies huge amounts of money and the individual could care less, because they don't see a penny of it, or even a bill.  The hospitals charge a fortune and burden these plans with the costs of the individuals who can't afford to pay. 


I think the only time I've been in favor of new taxes has been around taxing people's healthcare plans, like John McCain originally proposed and Obama considered for a while . I was very disappointed in the way Obama gave in to the union lobbyists because of how this would impact them and the rich plans they have.  If I'm all of the sudden taxed on my healthcare plans, I'll be making much better choices about how that money is spent - whether I go and take the cash and manage my insurance myself or buy a more custom insurance plan. I current pay over $1,000/month out of pocket for my family's insurance costs.  Union plans exist that are worth over $30,000/year without a penny paid out of pocket.  I'm guessing those union employees would much rather manage those dollars themselves and keep the costs overall down.


3. I don't think that the public sector can do this as well as the private sector:
I've done consulting work in both the private and public sector.  I've seen governments run at levels of efficiency that are embarrassing.  I've seen $50 billion dollar companies run at 2% margin taking every penny of cost out of things that they can and being successful by delighting their members.  Are there exceptions in between the two?  Absolutely, but from what I've seen, lean, efficient government is the exception, not the norm.

4. The Insurance companies are not evil
I work with the payers out there.  They're not evil, they're not looking to screw over the little guy.  They're real people just like you and I.  They're not in it to lose money (although many of them are non-profit), they have to manage when people lie to them about their conditions, and comply with expensive government regulation.  They run extremely tight ships, and are constantly looking to improve in a way that Medicare/Medicaid are not.

Like I said, there are two sides to all of these, exceptions and lots of anecdotes that have come out about real people.  The bottom line is that this is broke, and I don't believe a giant government plan and spend will fix it.

Ursula vs. Anne

I've been accused in the past of swooning over Xerox's previous CEO Anne Mulcahy. People have asked what I think about our new President & CEO Ursula Burns. I've spent a half day with her when she was in the role as President of Xerox.  She's a tough, very direct woman who leads from who she is with her own style. Anne Mulcahy came up through Sales and HR and had the kind of polish that came from those worlds.  Ursula came up through the company through the engineering and operations side of things and leads with a different kind of toughness.  Anne led our company through very difficult times, out of two near bankruptcies.  Ursula is leading our company through what I would argue is one of the ballsiest moves Xerox has ever made: the Acquisition of ACS.

The New York Times Article had an interesting article about Ursula Burns.
 There were two things that I loved about it:


When she was asked what surprised her about her job, I love the humility in her response::

“The accolades that I get for doing absolutely nothing are amazing — I’ve been named to every list, literally, since I became the C.E.O.,” Ms. Burns says. Apart from working on the Affiliated Computer acquisition, she asks, “What have I done? In the first 30 days, I was named to a list of the most impressive XYZ. The accolades are good for five minutes, but then it takes kind of a shine off the real story. The real story is not Ursula Burns. I just happen to be the person standing up at this point representing Xerox.”

The other message was for the employees of Xerox to stop pretending to be a family, and act like a real family:

She wants its 130,000 employees to get over the past, take more initiative, become more fearless and be more frank and impatient with one another to ratchet up performance.
“Terminal niceness,” is how she describes an aspect of Xerox’s culture, during her all-hands speech. “We are really, really, really nice.”
Maybe the “Xerox family,” she says, should act a bit more like a real family.
“When we’re in the family, you don’t have to be as nice as when you’re outside of the family,” she says. “I want us to stay civil and kind, but we have to be frank — and the reason we can be frank is because we are all in the same family.”

Out of necessity, Anne came in and had the job to save us.  That's her legacy.  Ursula on the other hand, is her change us.  She's going all-in with the ACS acquisition, and I think it's genius.

Huey Lews is the World.. And he wasn't invited...

Remember the original "We are the World" music video? Apparently they forgot to call Huey Lewis to participate:

Thanks to Jon for this.

Redemption Song from Haiti Hospital Bed

Came across this video of one of my favorite songs on Marko's blog:


Something about the contrast of a song of hope and freedom from a place like Haiti has made me watch this over and over.

A Self Centered Marriage

I started reading this book a few weeks back called Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas.  It's different than any marriage book I've ever read.  Most of them have been formulaic or prescriptive and dealt more with the "5 Ways to be a good husband" or "Here are the 3 things that every good couple should do".

I have an amazing wife, who teaches me constantly about serving others and unconditional love and patience.  She's the kind of wife who makes me want to be a better husband, to love her more and serve her more every day.  My selfishness tends to get in the way.

This book looks at marriage very differently than the other books I've read, and for some reason, it's connecting with me at a much deeper level. .  When I'm honest with myself, there are a lot of times that I look at marriage in terms of my happiness.  I can be a pretty self-centered person, focusing a lot on my happiness and what I deserve. There are times where I try and serve my wife out of just pure love, but there are at least as many times that it's about me, and a balance of trade.  I'm sure this is a real surprise to those who know me.

This book looks at the concept of marriage as God has laid it out in the bible.  It goes from the 'What if marriage is less about my happiness, and more about my redemption and transformation?"  It looks at marriage as a spiritual discipline, designed to help you know God and love God and others more.  I gotta admit, reading those words, this doesn't sound that compelling.  Frankly, it sounds pretty counter-intuitive.  It makes marriage seem like a drab institution, almost like a work-out that we should resign to being difficult and painful, but something you have to suck it up for if you want to get in shape.  The author does a good job making the discipline seem inviting instead of dry, dull and painful.

I'm surprised that this book is connecting with me.  There's something refreshing and challenging in this book, I sense the potential for a real core, paradigm shift for me instead of just applying a new formula, or 3 new tips and techniques.  I see the fundamental potential to shift how my world out of a self-centered orbit and into one that looks at my marriage differently, in a way that I look at other spiritual disciplines and even look at my running.  I'm still fleshing these ideas out in my own head, so this probably seems like a lot of rambling. 

Random Technology Reflections

• Kindle - I'm still using my Kindle, even more than ever, really.  Ever since I figured out how to check out books from the library and read them on my kindle, the barrier of paying $9.99 for the convenience of reading a book only once is gone.  Apple's negotiations with the book distributors to actually increase this by 50% seems counter-intuitive from what they'd done with MP3's in the iTunes store, and I think will create a huge backlash and increase piracy unless they can provide a better, differentiated book experience.
• Calibre - This is a great app to manage Kindle books, formatting and delivery onto my Kindle.  I can re-format the library books into something my Kindle can digest.  It also lets me subscribe to content and deliver it to my Kindle on a periodic basis.
• Stanza - One of the things I lose by not buying the books through Amazon is the overall portability and syncronization between my iPhone and Kindle.  I'm getting more and more used to reading on my iPhone on the go, and this app lets me sync books from my laptop to my iPhone.  It doesn't sync with my Kindle, but it makes it very easy to share books out to my phone for reading on the go.
  
• iPad - I know people hate the name and think it's just a big iPhone.  Not me.  I think it's fantastic.  I like where Apple is going with the device, except for the fact that they won't unlock it.  It would be unacceptable to buy a mac and have it locked, so why is it acceptable for a tablet to be locked?  The fact that Apple won't install Flash on it seems to be purely driven by the revenue they would lose from the App Store applications and the increased bandwidth that it would drive from the cellular network.
• Nate's iPhone - When I upgraded to the iPhone 3GS, I sold my son my old 3G iPhone which he used as a camera, GPS and MP3/Video player.  He lost his cell phone and rather than renewing with Verizon, I activated the iPhone on a cheap plan through AT&T's GoPhone program.  There's no contract, I pay $20/month for unlimited texting and minutes are charged as they're used.  It's costing me about $25/month right now.  I disabled the cellular data portion of the iPhone and it's a pretty cheap way to go.  It required me jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone, which took about 30 seconds.  It works great.
• YouVersion - I'm still using this iPhone app/Web site for my Bible reading plan.  I'm getting more and more used to reading on my Phone, and the Bible is no exception. It lets me pull over different version offline for reading and check off my reading each day as I complete it.  It has a variety of plans, and I like the Blended plan I'm reading right now, which currently has me reading the gospels in parallel with the book of Isaiah.  It's made me even more aware of how the two sync up, and just how much Jesus referenced it in his teachings
• TripIt - I've been using TripIt for a while to manage my travel.  I e-mail it my travel itineraries, it puts them online, notifies me of flight changes and tells me when I'm near someone I know.  Pretty simple.  They've got a BlackBerry app for TripIt as well.  Nothing that new, but something I'm still using and like.
• WD My Book - My Buffalo LinkStation NAS Drive died, and I wasn't smart enough to put it in a RAID 1 mirrored mode.  Luckily, it was all backup stuff, and I didn't lose much of anything.  I upgraded to Western Digital's My Book 2 TB NAS Drive (Yes, I mirrored the drives for redundancy this time) and I like it so far.  It works with Apple's Time Machine and Microsoft's built in Windows 7 Backup.  It has a built in iTunes server, media streaming, off-site file access and a torrent/download server as well.  I'm very impressed with it so far.  Western Digital seems to have come a long way with this.
• King Size Bed - While this may not fit in the bucket of true "technology", I figure that anything that I spend this much money on better have some pretty wicked innovation built in.  Our mattress was 15 years old and was pretty painful to sleep on.  I've been sleeping horribly lately, not helped by my dog coming into bed at 4AM every morning and trying to squeeze between my wife and I.  We upgraded to a King Size mattress (thank you Costco), bedding and soon to be bed frame.  The space is nice, the mattress is excellent.  When we were looking at the mattresses, Emily thought we should get the memory foam because it would allow her to "draw a smiley face in the bed that we would see every night before we fell asleep."
• TV - I haven't bought it yet, but I'm getting close.  I'm looking to get an LCD screen to hang on the wall of my family room and move my current DLP into the basement.  My brother Jon has been coaching me along the way to make sure I don't do something foolish.  He said he'll disown me if I don't get something at least 120Hz or better.

Dinner with my Sushi Buddy

Is that th symbol for Anarchy on her forehead?

A healthy snack

Cathie told Emily to have a healthy snack. She made herself a tripple
decker butter sandwich. How can that NOT be healthy?

Em's souvenier from the Jiffy factory field trip

Not sure this is exactly how you wear a hair net...

There's a deeper message here

My 2009 Award

This actually means much more to me than you'd think from the picture.
There's a story behind this.

Switching to Mint.com

I've been using quicken for more than 10 years to do a so-so job of managing our finances.  I've moved over to Quicken.com a couple of years ago, but thought it was a bit weak for what I needed, since I couldn't break out transactions or do much with budgets.  On either the thick client or quicken.com, I never really used their investment capabilities.  I'd tried mint.com, but just wasn't that trusting at the time of mint as a startup, giving it all of this personal data.

A few months a go, Quicken (Intuit) bought mint.com.  It's basically quicken.com, but done well.   It will connect to all of your accounts (mortgages, car loans, bank accounts, credit cards) and pull all of the information together in one place.  It categorizes your transactions based on how you want them categorized, but also looks at how others categorize the data.  It will look at your spending and track it against a budget and offer savings areas, for instance a cheaper movie rental deal for blockbuster if you're a netflix customer. 

Even more, it will take all of your investment information real-time and put it into one place.  Between stock options, IRAs and 401ks, I've got investment stuff sitting all over the place and it's tough to track, other than using google finance to give me a rough feel.  Mint gives me the ability to look at one place and see everything real time.

It also has an iPhone app and can do all sorts of SMS notifications based on budget or account thresholds.  So far, I like it.  Anyone else using this?

My ninja child

Maddie and the Rats

Latest Tech Stuff I like at the moment

Plantronics Voyager ProBluetooth Headset  - After way too much searching, between Jawbone's and a few other earpieces, I'm finally content with my headset.  It fits well, it's got great volume and controls, and the noise canceling is second to none.
ClearContext - Clearcontext is an outlook plug-in that allows you to tag conversation threads and automatically archive them into a related folder. It keeps your local mailbox from filling up and helps you deal with and find e-mail much more efficiently. Once you tag a conversation, it will remember the assignment and file all future conversations in the thread in the same way.
YouVersion - YouVersion is an iPhone Bible app and a web site. You can read all sorts of versions of the bible, but they've also integrated in reading plans. I started the one of the Bible-in-a-Year plans, which you can track and read from your iPhone.
Amazon Kindle -I've had my kindle for a while, but after using it for a while, I moved away from it.  I loved reading from it and the ability to sync content with my iPhone, but I wasn't a big fan of paying $9.99/book when I could get them from the library for free.  The Sony eBook Reader and the new Border's reader allowed you to use library eBooks seamlessly.  Will pointed me to some scripts that allow me to use the same eBooks that I can check out from the library, so I'm back to reading on my kindle and loving it.

Stuff that gets in my way for changing in 2010

I was reflecting on my goals for 2010.  As I was thinking about what could get in the way, I came across this from the book The Holy Longing, talking about what gets in the way of the faith that many of us want, but have a tough time achieving in reality.  I don't know about you, but the stuff that gets in the way for me aren't the colossal, immovable road-blocks.  For me it ends up being a combination of a bunch of small stones - little mundane things.  Rolheiser refers to them as the "anti-faith fores"

What are these anti-faith forces? They are not the product of some conscious conspiracy by godlessness. They are, instead, all of those things, good and bad, within us and around us that tempt us away from prayer, from self-sacrifice, from being more communal, from being willing to sweat blood in a garden in order to keep our integrity and commitments, and from mustering up the time and courage to enter deeply into our own souls. Hence they are not abstract, foreign forces. They live in the house with us and are as comfortable to us as a well-worn shoe.

 This part hit me like a ton of bricks:

What blocks faith is that myriad of innocent things within our ordinary, normal lives which precisely make our lives comfortable: our laziness, our self-indulgence, our ambition, our restlessness, our envy, our refusal to live in tension, our consumerism, our greed for things and experience, our need to have a certain lifestyle, our busyness and over-extension, our perpetual tiredness, and our obsession with celebrities, and our perpetual distraction with sports, sit-coms and talk shows. These are the anti-mystical forces of our time.

I've hanged my approach a bit over the past couple of years, in a good way, I think at least. In the past, I would move forward with sheer will-power and try and change every element of my life, while trying to connect with God at a deep level. I was trying to do it all on my own, and failed miserably, beating myself up for not being disciplined enough and tough enough.  Jesus words here made no sense to me:

 ²⁸"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  - Matthew 11:28-30

I've taken the easier route more in the past couple of years, and I'm starting down the path again in 2010. I've spent time doing small things that I can do right now, right where I'm at. Things like spending a few minutes reading my bible, reflecting on god's word and praying in the morning. I start praying that God would meet me where I'm at, fill me and change me. Something strange happens over time. God starts to change me. I don't have the desires to do the things I was doing before. My brain becomes re-wired to respond differently to people and events in my life. My soul feels full, recharged - in a good way. It takes time, and I'm a guy who likes instant results.  We'll see where I'm at in a month.  Seems like a like time to wait....

My 2010 Goals

I was sitting down and thinking through the kind of person I want to become and focus on in 2010.  I know these are all high level and fly in the face of what achievable goals should be, but it's what's been stewing in my mind.

1. To live my life from a place of fullness
2. To not be such a slave to my desires
   
3. To be more connected to God
4. To be more other centered, less self-centered
5. To be available to be used by God
6. To be quiet more often
7. To find times in my world to disconnect from technology and media
   
8. To be a light in my world
9. To offer more grace and less truth to people
10. To be more intentional about my friendships
11. To sing even worse and off-key than I do now