But I can’t say this about our general experience with “Health Care” — and I don’t think it has anything at all to do with our insurance and has a heck of a lot more to do with their fear of being sued. There is almost no point in calling the pediatric nurses after your first child unless you want to be told that you need to bring the child in to be looked at. When you have your first child, there are many occasions when talking to the nurse keeps you from bringing the child in because it is a common problem. Then you learn what to look for and you call for “bigger” problems. Instead of working on the phone to try some things and give you clues about what to look for, you get told to come in.

And when you get in, the doctor says “she looks fine. Not much we can do. Come back tomorrow if she’s still bad off.”

Thanks.
For.
Nothing.
You.
Prick.

Now, many of you will say “at least you have peace of mind.” But where I’m annoyed is the lack of enabling patients to help do work themselves that CAN be done themselves. The nurse could have easily given us specific things to look for in the situation yesterday with Rachel vomiting. She could have told us dangerous signs of dehydration. She could have told us LOTS OF OTHER THINGS. But she didn’t. Their practice is so afraid of missing the little things that they ask for $100 for a doctor visit where the doctor doesn’t listen to my wife’s concerns and says “bring her in if she continues to vomit and is lethargic.”  You mean like she’s doing RIGHT NOW?

All this gives me a GENERAL distrust of doctors and Health Care and makes me want to avoid them as long as possible which is NOT A GOOD THING! Doctors need to be the person you’re ready to turn to, not the person you avoid.  Affordable healthcare is the healthcare I can pay for (during office hours, for a 30 minute visit) WITHOUT insurance.   It’s a $20 well check–no insurance required.   It’s a helpful nurse.   It’s doctors that aren’t afraid of being sued when they give you all the information you need and give their recommendation.  It is keeping people out of the hospitals and doctors’ offices when they don’t need to be there.

We don’t need “Obamacare”–but I don’t care about the ’socialist’ propaganda that’s all over the media.  We need reform of a deeper and more rudimentary nature–providing health care the RIGHT way, not just figuring out a way to pay for what’s broken.

We had a figure skating event where we twirled to music in the living room, races back and forth to the fence, a bouncing contest of endurance, speed “skating”, hockey and the kids favorite : flip flop races (doing flips across the living room).

All in all, a great evening. We all had fun and I can see having lots of fun like that in years to come. But the best part was the bonus that they slept very well

Note the excellent choice of apparel.   Also, this is how cute she is when she has been running a fever and coughing all day.  Imagine a NORMAL day.

Well, today several of my coworkers wore Hawaiian shirts and brought me donuts that included a note: “Thank you, Mark, for all your work! You’ve made Red Zone¹ Awesome!” I can’t tell you how much that meant. It’s not often that you get thanked in any job, but that is especially true when you are a knowledge worker of any kind. When something is broken you hear about it, but usually the best compliment you get is not hearing anything for a while.

I don’t think I’ll see any more Hawaiian Shirts for a while now, but it is good to know that a few people appreciated work I was paid to do enough to thank me personally and participate in my little quirks.

Here’s to more oversized, ugly shirts

¹Red Zone is our internal tool used to help automate business processes.

You have to admit that is just so precious.   And so neat to see how we learn.

Anyway… Pizza + Oreos + Dr. Pepper + guys + football = a good friggin time.   Don’t underestimate the value of that.

As a side note… the commercials suck, but are better than last year’s from what I remember.

Read it again.   Two people can do more than three times the amount of work that one person can do in the same amount of time. It doesn’t make sense, but it does.

At the beginning of January, I pair programmed at a professional level for the first time in my life.   We got done in a week what would have taken me the whole month.  The code had a full test suite, was solid, had a great API, was relatively clean, and we had complete confidence behind it.

Why were we able to do with two people in a week what would have taken one person 4? I think it is ultimately a biblical principle, applied to business: We spurred one another on.

• Instead of getting distracted by the latest Google search, Facebook update or Blog entry (like I am at the moment), we kept programming.
• Instead of allowing ourselves to make bad coding choices and hope nobody was looking, we called each other on the carpet and said “that feels gross… let’s do it right.”
• Instead of skipping the tests, we took it upon ourselves to write hard tests that would be difficult to make pass, but ultimately got us closer to our goal.  As a result, we had better tests *and* better code.

All that to say, pair programming isn’t something you can do 40 hours a week.   I think it makes whatever hours you’re able to do it MUCH more productive, but it is draining and intense.  You certainly have to limit how much you pair program if you’re an introvert.   Do it 4 days a week in the mornings… getting things rolling… then move on and keep the momentum going on your own in the afternoons.   You’ll see your personal productivity go up then too, and you won’t feel like you’re ready to climb into a hole when you get home because you need some “alone” time.

That’s not a slam against my programming parter (the ever awesome Chris Johnson)–just a quality I noticed in myself.   Having quiet, code-free downtime is important for me to stay sane in the rest of my life, but going without pair-programming would reduce my productivity to levels that are way too low.   There simply has to be a balance.

The power of two is not to be underestimated.  Used properly, it will make a world of difference.

The other day, I had a guy stop by to buy our old Green Letter’s PA system and we trouble-shot a problem where the tweeter was blown. We looked up the replacement part and knocked it off the price of the system. I took home a little less, but it just made me resolve to be more diligent about TRYING to fix things–if you screw it up, you can always call in a professional. If you get it right, you’ve saved yourself a lot of money AND you learned something valuable in the process. If you “win” 3 times out of 4, it is probably worth it, even if on that 4th time you end up screwing the pooch so much that it ends up costing a little more. Better than never trying at all.

All in all, it feels good to fix something… to determine the problem and to deliver the solution. I’m sure when my programming knowledge is far out of date and I can’t get a job anywhere, being a fix-it guy would be a great job to have later in life. Maybe I’m wrong, but hey… right now I’m just excited that broken things aren’t so broken anymore.

We’ve got some great expectations in every area of our life this year.   For our church, we’re leading a new small group from February through April and we’re excited for what God will do through it.   I’ve also got some great expectations for our church as a whole–I think there is great potential for a lot of lives to be changed as a result of what people are doing.

At work, I’ve got some awesome expectations for the product I’ve been working on and the team that is coming together.   I think the product I’ve been working on for the last year will begin to really make a difference in the company and in the sustainability of the people involved.  It is a neat opportunity to be able to improve people’s ability to work.   I’m also excited about working with Chris again–he is my favorite programmer to work with and now we’re officially employees of the same company    He’s the first programmer guy that I’ve worked with that is really on my level–we push each other and encourage each other and work together well.   It is definitely going to be a fun year at work.

And we’ve got some big expectations for our family.  Timothy will officially begin kindergarten in the fall, though Andrea began homeschooling both Timothy and Bethany this year already.  They’re doing great and I expect will continue to do so.   Rachel will go from being a baby, barely able to crawl and pull up to being a walking, talking machine in the next 12 months.   But our biggest expectation is the one due August 11th.  Our next (and final!) baby will be joining us in 2010 and we’re very excited about it.

What a crazy, amazing, fun year it will be.

She is talking up a storm and very clearly says “Mama” and “Num Num” (for food). Super smiley too. Oh, my goodness, what a cutie.

And now I get to have a whole week with her! Off all week… And Bethany will turn 4 this week! I *cannot* believe that. It is harder to believe she’s turning 4 than to believe Timothy is already 5. What a crazy few years it has been.