I recently recounted my issues with a torn meniscus in my right knee. I first saw my family doctor about this in late May. Two days ago, I saw the orthopedic specialist.
After discussing with me the biology of cartilage, he said that doing surgery to remove my meniscus would only accelerate arthritis and that in 10 or 15 years, I would likely need knee replacement.
Or, he could give me a cortisone shot to reduce the inflammation, which, he explained, was the primary source of my daily discomfort. Obviously, I took the shot. It's cheaper and not invasive. Depending on several factors, the shot may become a bi-monthly routine.
The result: I can walk normal again without a limp. I'd say that my knee is now about 85% of what it was before the injuries to it.
All within a month, and for relatively little expense.
Estelle from Canada had written in with her similar story, except she has to rely on the Canadian health care system, which is nationalized. She has to wait until next year to see an orthopedist and have surgery. Here in the US, I was treated in less than a month.
Obama sucks. His intentions suck, his spending sucks, stealing from our kids' future incomes sucks. He sucks.
Estelle, if you read this, try to get a cortisone shot and see what that does for you. Your family doctor might be able to give it to you. That might at least alleviate your discomfort until you can have surgery.
Someday I'll write a book. It will be about the lessons learned in my entrepreneurial pursuits. Lots of lessons there...
Two years ago, I embarked on writing the 247 technology, which is a search engine of sorts that facilitates conversation. It was a good idea, but my selection of channel for it wasn't right. Then I tried another channel, and that didn't work either.
As I write code, I often put myself in the seat of the end-user. I'm good with database design, and other than a sound data schema and a rough sketch in my head of the user interface, I don't have a lot planned. I feel it out as I go, from the perspective of the end-user.
Then with what I hope is a workable design and good implementation, I go hunting for a market. And my first attempts are usually misses, on either market or product or both. I used to think I just had to scrap the whole thing. Now I know that I just have to listen a bit closer and tweak what I have.
It's why business plans are generally bullshit. Whoever it was who said it, that meeting the enemy always changes your battle plans, was exactly right. My first implementation of the 247 technology wasn't right, but that doesn't mean that it's pointless. Just as my implementation with the EverywhereCalendar technology - written about four years ago - didn't deserve the scrap heap either. I just wasn't knowledgeable enough back then to know what to do with it.
I once read a book (don't remember what it was) that suggested roles that we play in life. I altered the list a bit. I came up with these:
Laborer
Explorer
Artisan
Conductor
All are important. Success requires real effort, traversing new ground, mastery, and working and growing your network to attract others to what you're doing. But the one I think most neglected by people is the role of Explorer. It scares people. It requires confronting the new, adapting to change, and it carries risk.
By saying "Yes" to the role of exploration, as Patricia Ryan Madson suggests in her book Improve Wisdom, you open up worlds and opportunities.
This is going to sound crazy. Say yes to everything. Accept all offers. Go along with the plan. Support someone else's dream. Say "yes" "right" "sure" "I will" "okay" "of course" "YES!" Cultivate all the ways you can imagine to express affirmation. When the answer to all questions is yes, you enter a new world, a world of action, possibility, and adventure. Humans long to connect. Yes glues us together. Yes starts the juices rolling. Yes gets us into heaven and also into trouble.
It was by saying "yes" that the 247 technology is gaining the steam I've hoped for. Had a great meeting today about that, and I have more in the future, it seems. For one example of what I'm doing with it, check out forward247. I still have some work to do, but I believe in the idea. In fact, I'm quite passionate about it. And others are too, which was obvious in today's meeting. With each tweak, I get closer to a workable and sustainable and profitable model. I'm honing, not paring.
So, here it is late again, with me working on it. Today's demo only had a couple of bugs, and those who have used the technology in its prototype mode (in another interation of it), glowed about it. Yayy!!
With each exploration, I learn more about how this needs to take shape for my audience who craves it. Next Friday, I have another meeting and that meeting will be crucial. More importantly, it will be informative. I'll learn from it what their needs are. Each time this happens, I learn more the ways in which this can be applied.
Exploring...no more critical to success than being a laborer, an artisan, or a conductor - but also not worthy of neglect. It's just as critical as the others.
Now for my role as a laborer - one foot in front of the other...
If you read beatcanvas, you know how I feel. Here's Rush giving the facts and the numbers.
Do you love your children enough to stand and prevent the ruination of their future that our immoral president promotes with his astronomical increase of US debt? You either take a stand and make your voice heard or you are part of the problem with your silence.
1: You decide to go to a show downtown that will cost $40. One of two things happens...
You pay $40 for an advance ticket online. You get to the show and realize that you've lost the ticket on the way to the show.
You decide to buy your ticket at the ticket window. When you arrive, you realize that you've lost two $20 bills somewhere along the way to the show.
Question: Do you pay $40 for a ticket at the window?
In both outcomes, you're out $80. No difference there...
In the first circumstance, by a 2 to 1 margin, people will not buy the ticket at the window.
In the second circumstance, by a 2 to 1 margin, people will buy the ticket at the window.
2: You have no money. But you get money in one of the following ways...
I give you $30, and then tell you that if you let me flip a coin, heads will give you another $9 and tails will cost you $9.
I tell you that if you let me flip a coin, heads will get you $39, tails will get you $21, or I can just give you $30 with no coin flip at all.
In both outcomes, you stand to make the same money. No difference there...
In the first circumstance, 70% of people will opt for the coin flip.
In the second circumstance, 57% of people will not opt for the coin flip.
This is called prospect theory. This way in which we frame our decisions for perceived risks is illogical. But we humans have a sense of accounting in our heads that bring about such "failure of invariance," as it's called. Logically, there should be no variance in our answers since the outcomes bring about the same result. But we fail to be steady in our analysis.
I'll give you a scenario of my own, but with only anecdotes and not statistics.
3: A fifty-year-old man and his family are rich. He has a net worth of $50 million and lives in a big mansion and drives nice cars. He got his money by either...
Starting a small business when he was young, working hard and building relationships and sacrificing.
Purchasing a winning Powerball lottery ticket for $1.
In both outcomes, the amount of money is the same. No difference there...
In the first circumstance, some people will vilify the man for his riches.
In the second circumstance, no one will vilify the man for his riches.
Think about that... the people who pour hatred on "the rich" exclude lottery winners from their loathing. Why is that?
Is it because one is earned over years of hard work through capitalism and the other acquired in two minutes of dumb luck through the government?
Which one deserves praise and celebration?
And liberals somehow think they're the enlightened ones...
The congressman in the video speaks to the "electronic run on the bank." I want to know who was withdrawing the money. No one has answered that question, and that there has been no journalist getting answers to that question is curious to me. One of the biggest events in our nation's history - the near-end of our financial system - and no story about who was running on the bank.
I've figured out Barack Obama. I get it. Completely. Read this through thoroughly. I'll let this post stay on top for a while.
In March, before he took over GM and Chrysler, I said in a post entitled The President's President that Barack Obama saw himself as the president of all private companies.
I'm sure I've been dense, but it just occurred to me why Obama thinks he can tell companies how to run their business, whether they took government money or not.
He's thinks that being president of the United States makes him the president of the president of any company. He's the boss' boss, in his mind.
That's key. Your company's org chart is incomplete, as drawn today. If you own the company or if you are CEO, you report to Barack Obama. You have to justify your stewardship of the company to him, from operations to salary.
With every crisis that he encounters, he will grab more power for himself.
So why does he appease and apologize to our enemies? To allow the crisis to happen.
Why doesn't he do anything to stave more expensive oil? To allow the crisis to happen.
Barack Obama is determinedly not pro-active. He's going to allow crises to happen. The more, the merrier.
Because each time a crisis happens, he'll grab more power. Which makes him predictable.
When oil gets above $100 a barrel, he'll use that crisis to nationalize oil and force us to GM vehicles. Why explore more oil? That would alleviate prices.
When North Korea and Iran happen to Israel or the United States, he'll use that crisis to absorb more power for himself. Why act to stop them now?
Modus Operandi: He wants as many crises as possible to happen.
I'm also convinced that he is using the office of the presidency to run for world leader. By kissing everyone's ass worldwide, he's working to set himself up the next rung of his intended ladder. So many countries will credit him with taking the US down several pegs. And he will begin to set us under international rule to control the US - and other nations - when he achieves his goal.
In a short five months, he's accomplished a good step toward this, but no one thinks that he is headed in the direction I describe. His followers certainly don't. But that's what he's doing. And by allowing the crises to happen, he won't have any accountability. He won't be directly culpable.
He wants bad things to happen. As many as possible. It's good for him and his goals.
I'm going to repost a comment I left at the very informative Eye on Business blog at the Sioux City Journal. I grew up in Sioux City, and when I found the excellent writing there at the Sioux City Journal's web site, I started reading daily. Dave Dreeszen tells us, in his post today, of Michael Moore's vapid "GM shouldn't build cars, but should build bullet trains" plan. Dave writes:
Americans, he said, need to give up driving air-polluting cars, and instead zip around the country on "bullet trains." Much like the Japanese. Right.
How about those of us in rural areas not served by the train lines? We can ride on clean-burning buses. Is it practical to take a bus to call on clients, or go shopping or take our children to ball games, piano classes and dance practices? Not sure about that.
Anyway, how would we pay for all of these trains and buses? Moore wants to raise the federal gas tax by $2 per gallon.
What do you think about his so-called plan?
And my response...
While there's really no contesting Michael's ability to make a profitable movie, I might point out that his movies are products that require no union labor, no repairs (well, unless you expect him to fix the myriad factual errors), and don't threaten bodily harm from accidental injury that can spawn lawsuits against Michael.
The transportation industry is complex. To make a profit, all of the above must be navigated and(!) your product must stand out against the competition. That's quite a feat - and obviously something Michael knows little about.
Mass transit has no mass appeal, as you point out. In Japan and New York, mass transit works because the geography is small. Across a vast America? Puh-leez.
The American car has always symbolized freedom of movement and independence. It's a teenager's first escape from the oversight of parents. It's how you get your stuff to college. It's what you use to just blow off steam after an argument, driving streets and highways with the music cranked up. Can any of that happen on a train?
This is why putting the direction of this country into the hands of the far left - like Pelosi, Moore, Obama, Matthews, etc - is a really dumb idea. Companies are taken from their rightful owners, the media ceases to be an advocate for the common man and instead cheerleads and protects the political class of its choosing, and unworkable utopian fantasies - such as Moore's model railroad and Obama's health care plans - are offered up to us and to be paid for by greater and greater taxation on a people who can't afford such a burden.
Movies are two hours of escapism. When they're done, you can leave the theater and return to real life. There is no escape from the barrage of un-American nonsense coming from our politicians in leadership position today. Today, that is real life. The problem is that Moore's idea is no less workable than any other idea being floated from Washington (the VAT on top of income taxes, the refusal to drill for new domestic oil, bailing out companies and individuals who make poor choices with their finances, and on and on).
What happens when the successful choose to walk out of this American theater and "go Galt?"
ETC: My longtime friend, Kelly, sends me this jewel:
