digitalBush

I was laying in bed last night and this thought came into my head. What happens to your online persona after you've kicked the bucket? I'll be dead some day and my body will be disposed of.  But instead of only memories, people will have access to my data. Before the Internet you might have had some 4x6 photos of me stashed away in a shoe box. But now I have a blog, twitter, facebook, and God only knows what else by the time I've died. It will still be there, it will be public, and people can still interact with it after I'm gone.

courtesy of victoriapeckham

Yes, these are weird thoughts. I'm sure my friends will turn their heads away quicker when I walk into a room if the thought of this post comes into their heads.  But for people like me who work, live and breathe the web, this can be a real issue. What happens to your profiles after you die?What do the major online service providers (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) do in these situations? Do they sit and rot? Will my wife have the passwords to get in and shut it down?  What will be my last words?

It will be my luck that they will sit and rot because my wife can't figure out my passwords and twitter's "remember me" check box still won't be working. My last tweet will be "I just farted and cleared a room full of doctors and nurses." My blog will have a post about sticking it to the man. And my facebook will have pictures of me being bald and looking goofy as usual. I will forever be remembered as a nasty government hating bald weirdo. Everyone will laugh on the outside and say "Hah! Good ol' Josh", but on the inside they'll all be uncomfortable because of the legacy I just left.

Stop and mull on that for a little bit. Do you want your last "words" to be a status update of you taking a dump? A picture of you drunk off your ass with your head in a toilet? A hate rant about how you got screwed out of a taco at 3am at the drive-thru?

I think I'll make sure Ashley knows enough to be able to get in and shut my stuff down. Obviously the blog will go away because Ashley won't have any need to pay for it. The rest?  Well, I just hope that I will not have just posted something stupid right before. Here's to online immortality!

I've held off on this topic for a while now.  I had originally written a smug article titled "Fixing Healthcare in the US" which I may or may not post at some point in time in the future.  Before we even talk about "fixing" healthcare, we first need to figure out what is "wrong" with healthcare.  Listen up congressmen, you need to read that last sentence again.  You can't fix something until you know what the problem is.

What are the problems, you ask?  Well, as I understand it, we have two issues at play:

1. Healthcare is too expensive.
2. Health insurance is too expensive.

As a result of the above two problems, not enough people can afford to take care of themselves and their families healthcare needs. But, this only addresses the consumers vantage point of the issue.  There are two other parties involved here and their needs must be met as well.  We have healthcare providers and we have health insurance companies all with skin in this game.  These other parties have their own problems which are feeding the above two issues.

Healthcare providers are the doctors you visit and the hospitals in which you stay.  The people who choose this profession spend 8 years in school and then another 3 to 8 years of internship and residency. When they are done with this, they have to work long hours and are expected to make no mistakes.  In case they do make a mistake, they need to carry huge amounts of insurance to cover themselves should a lawsuit find their name listed as the defendant.  Bottom line, it costs a lot to become a physician and it costs a lot to stay a physician.

Insurance companies are the entities that we have become too dependent on in the US to take care of us when we break.  We pay exorbitant monthly fees so that we can have $10 drug co-pays and $20 doctor visits when we get sick. When things really go wrong, they step in and cover the brunt of the expenses that come from the physicians and hospitals I mentioned above.  This kind of coverage is expensive because it's expensive for the insurance company to pay out $60 every time your little brat gets a snotty nose.  It's really expensive for them when your fat ass develops diabetes and coronary artery disease as a result of your poor lifestyle decisions.

So, let's recap for a minute.  Being a health care provider is expensive.  In order to pay off their insane student loans that they accumulated over 8 years of school and to cover their E&O insurance for lawsuits, they charge quite a bit for their services.  That leads to issue #1 above.  Since we do not use health insurance for only catastrophic coverage (like we do for say, home and auto insurance) then health insurance has to be high to cover their increasing payouts.  Enter issue #2 from above. Providers and insurance companies are businesses after all, and businesses have to make money in order to keep providing products and services.

Because of the high price tags, a high number of people can't afford to get health insurance.  This has been the focus of national debate.  There are some flaws in our system, but I'm not so sure our lawmakers have actually sat down and identified the real problems at hand.  Before we start up an expensive national healthcare experiment, we need to think this through. I hope to feel my way through this issue with a series of blog posts over the next few weeks.

Me and Hudson

I just realized that I hadn't even posted about our new baby. Hudson was born on August 12th and life has been a blur ever since. I've been at home taking care of my recovering wife, the house, and of course this new baby. Life is starting to get back to "normal" again, and I'm feeling like less of a walking zombie.  

So, as time allows, I'm going to fix a few bugs in my masked input plugin and start posting more blog entires.  I've already started working on a couple about healthcare.  As always, I'm never sure what the topic of this blog is, so enjoy the mixed bag.  While you are doing that, I'm going to enjoy my new son.

Son:
Any day now, you will bless us with your presence. I've spent a lot of time working to get everything ready for you lately. All the while, I've been wondering what I can do to help you become the best man that you can be. This world is full of challenges. As you grow you will encounter people who have no interests other than their own. I hope that you will be able to see through the nonsense and be able to contribute positively to society.

I hope to impart much knowledge upon you. You can't read this now and you won't be able to do so for a while. When you can read and understand this, I hope that you will take these tips to heart:

1. Have strong opinions, but hold them loosely. You should be confident in what you believe, but not too stubborn to recognize when you are wrong.
2. Never make excuses when you do something wrong. Own up to your mistakes and move on.
3. Be humble. No one likes a show off and a braggart. Let your hard work speak for itself.
4. Never be ashamed of who you are. Confidence is strength, shame is weakness.
5. Nothing in life is free. There is always a catch.
6. Never work for free. There has to be some value in everything that you do. This reward won't always be monetary.
7. Anything in excess in sinful. Addiction will ruin even the greatest of men.
8. Power is an illusion. Power is not a goal. Power can be a burden.
9. Find your passion in life. Figure out what you do well which other people can't or won't do. Do that for a career. You'll be happy doing something that you excel at.
10. There are no gray areas. There is only right and wrong. If something doesn't feel right, then it probably isn't.
11. Use the right tool for the job. Without the right tools, your work will either take too long or be of poor quality.
12. Learn to analyze situations before you react. Impulse decisions are rarely the best ones. Truths will point you in the right direction.
13. The most important tool is a big hammer. Sometimes you just have to persuede an object to move.
14. Anything worth doing is worth doing to the best of your ability. If you want to be proud of what you do, you have to know that you gave it your all.
15. Everything you do reflects on your character. Your actions today are your legacy tomorrow.

Life is full of good and bad. Ultimately it will be up to you to make it what you want.  Just know that I will do everything I can to help you along the way.   I'm looking forward to meeting you!