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I just prefer old fashioned ponzi schemes like Agway and Herbalife


Having a 7 yo and 4 yo, this completely tracks.

Nice work.


i don't think we'll go through 6th grade ($$$$), but we have our youngest in Montessori pre-K and love it. Since our local school doesn't have full day kindergarten, we'll likely keep him there through that as well.


You're not alone. I like the occasional soda, but the sales are always "buy 2 get 2 free".

I don't need 4 cases of soda, but I'd take a BOGO if I could split the deal with someone.


I completely sympathize with this. I had to kick the ipad off the network an hour ago so I could get the 6 yo to stop playing roblox and go somewhere with me. This was after asking numerous times over the course of 5 minutes and while trying to get results without yelling as often.

Anyone judging and trying to lecture on how doing actions like this is actually counter productive - well, chances are you don't have kids or you yell a lot.


People want a more comprehensive solution to be discussed, a wider universe of possibilities, instead of false dilemmas and gatekeeping arbitrary choices with children or not.


-> most EMR software is a billing system with record keeping attached

not really. Maybe that's how they started, but that's not what they have evolved into.

-> the software is always purchased by administrators, typically with little input from doctors.

again, maybe that's how it used to happen but anywhere that I've worked or consulted on has a myriad of doctors, nurses, etc that have input. The last hospital I worked for wouldn't even let us change a single field in the EMR without it being approved by a committee of nurses.

-> In most implementations, neither Cerner not Epic encourage structured data recording except for billing codes.

This is not true at all. In fact, it is the clinicians' preference to write or dictate notes that is the reason for this. Both Epic and Cerner provide digital forms that allow for selections from lists or checkboxes which are then stored as discrete data elements in their respective databases. I'm not going to say either are perfect and - surprise! - clinicians hate change so they always hate their EMR, but it's not for the reasons you state.

I'm curious which division of Google you work for and how much experience you have working for an EMR vendor or healthcare system.


Glad I just bought this a few months ago...


Instead of having thousands of families eking out a modest but sustainable life, you have a handful of corporate entities and their shareholders making millions. Simple unfettered capitalism at work again (and I believe in the power of capitalism, but not without some boundaries).

For perspective, my dad and uncle were forced to sell my grandfather's farm and equipment when my grandfather got sick and he needed 24 hr care. My grandfather had sold the cows years before, but I have lots of good memories of visiting them and helping out during the summers.


Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of when I read that everyone has 8 hours a day of "me" time. Nope, no we don't.

630a - 8a: get myself ready, get kids ready

8a - 630p: commute and work (yes, the author does say she eliminated her commute, but this isn't feasible for everyone)

630p - 8p: dinner, get kids to bed

8p - ~9p: dishes, general cleanup, pay bills, etc...things most adults have to do to live

9p - 1030p: 1.5 hours of "me" time if we're going for 8 hours of sleep...no, more like...

9p - 12a: really the only window I have to live. often spent doing more work and really, usually too brain dead to start a side project. again, adulting and parenting are hard and energy intensive. Netflix sounds really good at this point.

1030p - 630a: 8 hours of sleep (haha - i'm really trying to live somewhat of a life so 1130/12 is a more regular bedtime)

I've been considering the 10p bedtime/5a wake up so I can do side projects in the morning, but this still only adds 1.5 hours of time for a total of 3 hours a day.


>I've been considering the 10p bedtime/5a wake up so I can do side projects in the morning, but this still only adds 1.5 hours of time for a total of 3 hours a day.

Do it.

3 hours per day, 5 days a week for an entire year is 720 hours. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And it's not like you need to always do it. Try it out, see if it is for you, worst case you cross the idea off your list.


My only important personal goal this year is to spend 500 hours working on personal goals. Pretty conservative pace (1 hour on 4 weekdays and 6 hours on the weekend), but sticking to anything consistently for an entire year would be a huge personal achievement.


This is awesome. A lot can be accomplished with 500 hours and yes, perhaps the best achievement is sticking to that goal consistently.


Irony of ironies, I'm actually coming to understand the importance of having "tickets", a backlog, and revisiting progress on a bi-weekly basis (sprints)


On the flipside, the single best thing you can do for your mental health and quality of life is to get more sleep.


Yes, exactly. Life is a marathon and if you put in consistent effort you'll make it to the "finish line". Perhaps slower than some others who had more time to move more quickly or with significant breaks, but you’ll get there.

Maybe a polarizing opinion, but if you put yourself in a box that “doesn’t have enough time” just because you have a commute, are a parent, [insert other excuse here], then it’s the equivalent of sitting at the start line and watching everyone, even the walkers, tread ahead. It's okay if that's what you want, but it is a choice.


Well said, live is a marathon not a sprint.


That's pretty much how my schedule works out too. The only thing is, by the time I get my kids to bed around 9 or so, I'm so exhausted, mentally and physically, that investing time in my side business is just not gonna happen.

I would guess in an average week, I have about 5 quality hours where I do not have an obligation to someone or something else and am able to spend it as I see fit.


That's pretty close to my routine as well, and by the end of the day I was a lot of the time too tired to put much (if any) effort into my side project.

As a New Years Resolution, I've been getting up at 5:30 each morning to get 1.5 hours to do my own thing in the mornings, and so far it's been going well. I would still like more time, but constantly getting small amounts done is a great motivator.

I also start a new job in a few weeks that is 4 days a week so I can spend a full day each week on my project. I'll take a small financial hit, but I'm hoping that will be enough to get something worth shipping out the door. If it all goes up in flames, I can always go back to full time without having risked too much.


Thats a more realistic breakdown. So thinking out loud, this means that maybe one needs to think and figure out the "what to do" ahead of time, while during other mundane activities, to the point of very clear tasks. And then do the tasks during the 1.5 "me" time.

Just a suggestion. It has worked for me before, but I am with you in general. Most days in the 1.5 hr "me" time that I have, Netflix/Hulu on the couch/chair with an IPA sounds pretty great at that point :)


I have a very similar schedule. I use 5am to 630pm to work on my side project. Sure, I only get 1.5 hours a day but it works for me, and over the past 4 years I've made enough progress to keep me happy. My primary motivator is the joy of working on my own idea, but hope to launch this in the next 2 years. (I'm working on an app.)


This is my schedule exactly. Cutting coffee made it so much easier to just crash out at 10, which shifts “me” time to the morning when I’m more in the mood to be productive.


Outsource some of the work you do while you work and commute. Say, outsource 3-4 hours a day, pick up 1-2 hours as you can. Then your project moves 4-6 hrs a day. I do this, using my income for someone else to build by muse.


That's what I do as well. My most productive hours are in the morning, so that's why I give them to my personal-job rather than my professional-job.


I was a huge Ayn Rand devotee until I realized it tried to see the world in black and white...and we don't live in a black and white world. This is my view of her philosophy after reading Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead multiple times as well as all her other essays and smaller fiction books. Like most other philosophies such as communism, it can sound good in theory and works on a small scale if everyone agrees to play by the rules. It would never work in a country of 330 million people.

The idea is that the free market is able to solve every problem. Businessmen will serve their own self interests but that is OK because in the process - others will benefit via the goods they produce and the jobs they provide. So businessmen will always offer fair wages and benefits to their employees because if they don't, those employees will go work for another business owner that does offer them and will get the benefit of more motivated workers. The best workers will always be offered the best wages, again because this benefits the owners bottom line to have the best employees. (collusion between businesses to depress wages, people stuck in locations with few employers and no competition for wages, the reality of businesses paying off politicians - are just a few real world flaws here IMO)

As far as regulation goes - the government does not need to be involved there. The free market will sort it out! Businesses that offer dangerous products will not get any customers so the incentive is there to only provide safe products (of course, what happens to the people that initially buy those products before people find out how dangerous they are or never find out about the dangers at all until it is too late? How do you fight a polluter that ruins the water source in your town, especially if they are also the main employer?).

As far as social programs - again, the government need not be involved there. All the rich (as well as the other people just trying to get by) will help their neighbors out of the kindness of their own hearts. Or not! Being forced to be altruistic ruins the whole point and regardless of the benefit to society, is one of the worst sins to a Randian. There are many references to money being taken from the wealthy via force - at the end of a gun. How a society handles the disabled, the poor, the elderly - if everyone doesn't out of the kindness of their own hearts - was never really addressed and was the final flaw for me. Just let them die I guess?

I'm sure I'll get some flack for this from the true believers and many will say I have it wrong. I guess I'd say that it is a great personal philosophy if you want to use it that way, but to try to apply it to governing or to any large scale modern society is impractical and, in the end, just downright cruel. Just one man's thoughts.


What struck me most in Atlas Shrugged was Rand's focus on rail. By giving the Taggart family a self-built, privately-run transcontinental rail network, very little of the story mentioned roads at all (there was one road trip, as I recall). It seems quite possibly intentional, as the use of a road system implies that taxation and collective action are actually needed, undermining one of her main points.

I can't help but feel that environmental issues also put a nail in the coffin of her philosophy, but to be fair, it wasn't a big deal back in her time. Atlas Shrugged made no mention of the negative externalities of any of the businesses being run, from steel mills to mining and oil. As soon as a business's externalities impact others, moral issues are raised.


I don't think you had a deep understanding of her philosophy.

"The idea is that the free market is able to solve every problem."

Ayn Rand doesn't say this. It sounds more like a stereotypical Republican talking point.

Rand would say that the only thing that can solve problems -- can, not will -- is an active individual mind. (This doesn't rule out people working together in groups, provided the group is made up of active individual minds). Laissez-faire capitalism would not solve all problems, but it would leave individuals free to work on solutions to whatever problems they saw fit.


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