Thursday, May 20, 2010
Dept. of Annivesary Cards
We received this note from my mother. It was a note, not a card, even though it was in a card. The card would come later.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
More on health care
Every time I call my doctor's office, I believe that it's for something reasonable. Something's red that shouldn't be. Something hurts and it shouldn't (this much or for so long).
My doctor, whom I like a great deal, will deal with my question reasonably. "Here's some stuff for that thing that's red." "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that." Once in a while, he calls for some tests. Much of the time, the tests are inconclusive. There's something not right, but we don't know what it is. Maybe more tests are in order. Maybe we'll be in a state of watchful waiting.
And then there was the time that the test, a biopsy, confirmed that I had malignant melanoma.
The surgeon removed the malignancy and the biannual check-up with the dermatologist hasn't shown anything new. (One time, she said "Hmm," with a concerned tone. There was a spot on my foot. On closer inspection, we learned that it was dirt.)
I mention all this because Charles Goheen, CFO of Fallon Community Health Plan remarked that root causes for FCHP's troubles, "include higher medical costs, overutilization of services and 'the market power of certain providers.'" (FCHP Loses $8.5M In Q1 | Worcester Business Journal)
As a patient, I make my best guesses regarding superfluous use of the health care system. Most often, that means not calling the doctor if I'm sure I know what's wrong. On occasion, it means deciding against an expensive and more aggressive treatment plan when doing little or nothing works pretty well.
In the early 60s, when local TV news was getting serious about providing timely coverage of local sports, Boston stations sent film crews to the Garden to cover the Celtics. Film was expensive. A station manager was complaining to the sports director about the costs of having a crew cover each home game. "Can't you just shoot the highlights?" he asked.
Wouldn't it save money if we had just the tests and received just the treatments that we needed?
My doctor, whom I like a great deal, will deal with my question reasonably. "Here's some stuff for that thing that's red." "If it hurts when you do that, don't do that." Once in a while, he calls for some tests. Much of the time, the tests are inconclusive. There's something not right, but we don't know what it is. Maybe more tests are in order. Maybe we'll be in a state of watchful waiting.
And then there was the time that the test, a biopsy, confirmed that I had malignant melanoma.
The surgeon removed the malignancy and the biannual check-up with the dermatologist hasn't shown anything new. (One time, she said "Hmm," with a concerned tone. There was a spot on my foot. On closer inspection, we learned that it was dirt.)
I mention all this because Charles Goheen, CFO of Fallon Community Health Plan remarked that root causes for FCHP's troubles, "include higher medical costs, overutilization of services and 'the market power of certain providers.'" (FCHP Loses $8.5M In Q1 | Worcester Business Journal)
As a patient, I make my best guesses regarding superfluous use of the health care system. Most often, that means not calling the doctor if I'm sure I know what's wrong. On occasion, it means deciding against an expensive and more aggressive treatment plan when doing little or nothing works pretty well.
In the early 60s, when local TV news was getting serious about providing timely coverage of local sports, Boston stations sent film crews to the Garden to cover the Celtics. Film was expensive. A station manager was complaining to the sports director about the costs of having a crew cover each home game. "Can't you just shoot the highlights?" he asked.
Wouldn't it save money if we had just the tests and received just the treatments that we needed?
They stole our idea
A bunch of years ago, I worked for a startup that was making a network file server. In order to get the attention of investors, we had promote our product as a server for the Internet. This was 1996 and the Internet was cool.
Our real market, though, was the Mac-based pre-press market. Among our very few customers was an outfit in California that produced, um, adult magazines. I didn't get to the customer site, but the reports from our field team indicated that, after the initial shock, you could get used to working in a shop that had banner-sized, um, adult photography on the walls.
Early in the development process of the server, we had made a commitment to demonstrate our new server at a trade show. Things weren't going well. The server wasn't ready and morale was low. We started to talk about the idea of skipping of the trade show.
The VP of engineering sent a masterful letter to the troops that concluded, "We will be at the show and we will be awesome."
We found renewed energy and did indeed deliver a system to the show. Sort of.
The engineers were able to get software that could write data to the server. The software to read the data, however, wasn't working. We had a high-speed, high-capacity write-only file server.
Through the brilliance of high-tech obfuscatory marketing, we were able to line up a few beta customers at the show. Eventually, the software was able to read what it wrote. That added feature, however, wasn't enough to save the company.
It's now 2010 and the Cloud is cool. So, some clever folks have created a cloud-enabled write-only service:
via S4 - Super Simple Storage Service
It's fast, cheap, secure, and, best of all, in the cloud.
We were ahead of our time and didn't know it.
The specs on our server were stunning. Initially we offered 48GB of storage, later 96GB, RAID-0 at 10MB/sec. In a 300lb. box, along with a separate (required) UPS unit. The 96GB unit went for $100K. The spec sheet is here.
Our real market, though, was the Mac-based pre-press market. Among our very few customers was an outfit in California that produced, um, adult magazines. I didn't get to the customer site, but the reports from our field team indicated that, after the initial shock, you could get used to working in a shop that had banner-sized, um, adult photography on the walls.
Early in the development process of the server, we had made a commitment to demonstrate our new server at a trade show. Things weren't going well. The server wasn't ready and morale was low. We started to talk about the idea of skipping of the trade show.
The VP of engineering sent a masterful letter to the troops that concluded, "We will be at the show and we will be awesome."
We found renewed energy and did indeed deliver a system to the show. Sort of.
The engineers were able to get software that could write data to the server. The software to read the data, however, wasn't working. We had a high-speed, high-capacity write-only file server.
Through the brilliance of high-tech obfuscatory marketing, we were able to line up a few beta customers at the show. Eventually, the software was able to read what it wrote. That added feature, however, wasn't enough to save the company.
It's now 2010 and the Cloud is cool. So, some clever folks have created a cloud-enabled write-only service:
It's fast, cheap, secure, and, best of all, in the cloud.
We were ahead of our time and didn't know it.
The specs on our server were stunning. Initially we offered 48GB of storage, later 96GB, RAID-0 at 10MB/sec. In a 300lb. box, along with a separate (required) UPS unit. The 96GB unit went for $100K. The spec sheet is here.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
More on life as a bachelor
Ruth Gordon said of marriage that there is always someone you can tell it to.
Tomorrow, my wife, Sandra, returns from a five-day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre. It's a silent meditation retreat. ("Can she text?" asked granddaugher Krista.) Sandra's on the retreat with her friend, Janet. They've been friends for nearly 60 years. Janet's husband, Michael, died a few months ago.
It's been a quiet time for Marley and me as well. We've divided our time between the camp and town. There's no television at the camp yet, so I've managed to be at home when the Celtics are on. There were a couple of days of hard work, spring cleanup and stacking wood around the camp, stacking wood 'n other stuff in town.
When you've been married for a long time, you may not realize how often you see or hear something that you want to share with the other person. It can be something important, like a death of one of our extended family on Sunday, or something just curious, like the mention of our investment company in the context of last week's 1000-point drop of the Dow.
One night, I got to stand on the back deck and see Venus with the thumbnail moon:
And, of course, when you see something so cool, you want to say, "Hey, look at this."
There's always something to say. (Remember that aching line from John Prine's Angel from Montgomery? "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.")
And when you can't say it or when you say it and there's no one around to hear it because the other is gone for a while or gone forever, well, you know, ....
Tomorrow, my wife, Sandra, returns from a five-day retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre. It's a silent meditation retreat. ("Can she text?" asked granddaugher Krista.) Sandra's on the retreat with her friend, Janet. They've been friends for nearly 60 years. Janet's husband, Michael, died a few months ago.
It's been a quiet time for Marley and me as well. We've divided our time between the camp and town. There's no television at the camp yet, so I've managed to be at home when the Celtics are on. There were a couple of days of hard work, spring cleanup and stacking wood around the camp, stacking wood 'n other stuff in town.
When you've been married for a long time, you may not realize how often you see or hear something that you want to share with the other person. It can be something important, like a death of one of our extended family on Sunday, or something just curious, like the mention of our investment company in the context of last week's 1000-point drop of the Dow.
One night, I got to stand on the back deck and see Venus with the thumbnail moon:
 |
| Click to enbiggen |
And, of course, when you see something so cool, you want to say, "Hey, look at this."
There's always something to say. (Remember that aching line from John Prine's Angel from Montgomery? "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, And come home in the evening and have nothing to say.")
And when you can't say it or when you say it and there's no one around to hear it because the other is gone for a while or gone forever, well, you know, ....
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