Doctor Appointments and waiting

We've all experienced it. You show up on time for your Doctor's appointment, then you sit and wait to be called. 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour. Somehow we give a pass to the healthcare industry. They schedule the appointment, isn't it reasonable to expect them to be close to the time?

Individualism

I'm conservative. Notice I didn't say that I'm "pretty" conservative, or "very" conservative, or a "little" conservative. You either are or you aren't. I believe in the individual. In my opinion, individualism is the foundation that built America. When governments begin to make individualism a bad thing, bad things happen. Unions don't like individuals. Harsh statement? What's solidarity? Putting the group ahead of the individual. What's communism? Putting the group ahead of the individual.

Don't get me wrong. There's a time for putting the group ahead of the individual. A football team has to be a TEAM, not 11 individuals. There's nothing wrong with recognizing the sum of the parts. The problem comes when an overreaching authority takes away the choice. A player chooses to be on a team. A union member typically has no choice but to join the union.

I sincerely hope that we're not losing our choice.

Marathons, lack of training, lack of time

It's Summer in Michigan. Just as soon as it starts it seems to slip away. I'm trying to make the most of it. I ran the 5/3...with an ok time. The 25K actually ended up being my long run for the Bayshore. I ran the Bayshore with very little preparation. I ended up cutting about 25 minutes off my Disney time. My next big run will probably be the GR marathon in October. Now I have to commit myself to running in the heat.

No injuries...and I'm getting faster!

Reverse Taper

I'm in recovery mode. Not that I'm injured...I'm recovering from successfully completing my first marathon. I ran the Disney Marathon and met my primary goals of "finishing and not getting hurt". I sort of wanted to beat the 5 hour mark, but I opted to be conservative and keep the "not getting hurt" thing as a priority.

I'll write more about this later, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed it. I'm now looking forward to running the 5/3 Riverbank Run and then the Bayshore Marathon.

- Scott

Mac vs PC

The title might have thrown you. This isn't gonna be one of those entries that tries to pit one platform against another and ends up showcasing the author's hidden bias. Nope, this is going to be a post about solutions.

I don't like to think of my company as being a "Mac Company" or a "PC Company" or even a "Linux Company". We like to think we are a company that utilizes computers. That's pretty generic. Actually, I would like to think that we're a company that matches up business needs with the appropriate technology to get the job done. Most of our employees use a Mac, but it's not because we're fervent followers of all things Apple. We use Macs because we can take advantage of virtualization technologies to run Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. We do like the Mac hardware, but let's face it, they're pretty much all Intel driven devices and the hardware edge goes to Mac simply because we can't legally run OS X on a Windows-based platform.

My personal machine is a MacBook Pro, it has 3GB of memory and a 2.16 Core 2 Duo. I swapped the hard drive to give myself a full 180 GB of space and the speed improvement of a 7200 rpm drive. This machine has never left me wanting for more. Seriously. It keeps up with what I'm doing. I usually push machines pretty hard. I'm running Parallels with a Windows XP image that was a Physical-to-Virtual migration from my old IBM Thinkpad. I use Windows everyday. I don't use Bootcamp because I'd rather operate Windows in a Mac Window and leave myself the ability to switch back and forth. I rarely reboot either my Mac (the host) or my Windows image.

I run VMWare purely to take advantage of the many freely available VMWare Appliances available. I usually have a copy of the xTuple Linux image which has a full development environment pre-built. This saves a ton of time and effort.

Anyway, you get my point. I'm a fan of technology. The hardware and software providers are all just part of the cast.

- Scott

Retraction...drop the "Social Entrepreneurship" title

OK...time for a correction. I jumped right on the term, "Social Entrepreneurship" before getting a complete picture. The "Social Entrepreneurship" moniker has a bit to much up-front focus on the "social change" aspect. It's also a very diluted term, here are a few of the many definitions listed here. I see the social changes as being a result of people acting as individuals. I'd like to keep the focus on embracing the entrepreneurial spirit.

I'm not sure what the correct description should be, but here is an attempt at a one sentence description of what I'm talking about.

"Recognizing the natural human instinct to excel, then fostering this entrepreneurial spirit by bringing together the forces needed to drive success."

...in other words (and I recognize this is a harsh interpretation), I'm talking about bringing together the "haves" and the "have nots" and making them business partners and equals.

Conservatives can "out social" the Socialists, er, Democrats

I'm playing with some more ideas, can't help myself.

I've been thinking about getting a little deeper in our conservative convictions. I was thinking about "how do you help people"? I don't think government is the answer. Entitlements simply create a class of people who are beholden to a larger entity. I think you could argue that this is just another form of indentured servitude. Using the "teach a man to fish" virtue, help people grow their ideas into businesses. If you create more businesses, you create more jobs and eventually you create more fiscal conservatives.

Bill Gates has brought a lot of attention to boosting micro businesses in Africa and other 3rd World countries. What I'm pushing for is to boost more of this activity here in the United States. Why can't you loan money to an entrepreneur in South Chicago vs. South Africa. I think helping people around the World is great, but we can do the same for folks here. There's also no reason this needs to be confined to the inner cities. I think this should be an endeavor that happens locally. The unemployed in small towns in Michigan need just as much help as the unemployed in New York City.

Another important key to this is that these are LOANS. Think of a friend asking you for some help. Most people are quick to insist they'll pay you back. If you insist on giving the money it becomes charity and it can be insulting to some people. This is what an entitlement does. It's a natural instinct, based on pride, to want to make amends. Loaning someone money makes you a business partner, an equal.

In the early days of the US, people didn't look to government to prop them up and support them. You were expected to learn a trade. You might have trained to work a printing press, such as Ben Franklin, or been a lawyer like Jefferson. Not many people worked for large corporations. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't have social programs, we should. I just feel that more personal responsibility needs to be taught. Most people who are successful make sure they have something to fall back on.

It turns out that there's a term for what I've been thinking of. Social Entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship is defined on Wikipedia as follows:
"A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change."

I liken this to a sort of "micro venture capital" effort.

Before anyone thinks I'm going soft, understand that I'm talking about a further dive into fiscal conservatism. The difference is, instead of simply talking the game, I'm challenging conservatives to get in the game. Besides, the entrepreneur you help just might create the next iPod.

This is something that I feel deeply about.


Further reading...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship
https://us.zopa.com/
http://www.smsmallbiz.com/bestpractices/Doing_Well_by_Doing_Good.html
http://www.mikitchenessukitchen.com/
http://kiva.org/ This one is to invest in entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries.

SLOW!!!

So...I've been teaching myself to run slower. Yes, you heard that right. I have reset my goals to focus on being injury free. If I can stay injury free for 6 months or so, I'll start pushing speed more. The trick is sticking with this commitment. It's so easy to want to go fast.

Wow...today hurts. It should hurt because I've gotten my running back on track...but that's not what I'm talking about. Physical hurt doesn't compare to the thought of the next four years of Obama. I have to spend some time with my business partners to determine how we're going to deal with this. Think about that. We have to shift our business vision due to a President. Something seems wrong with that. The fact is, we were already dealing with the Michigan recession and an overbearing Michigan Business Tax. We now will also have to deal with an overbearing Federal Government and the new President's plans to "share the wealth". Here's a little secret...

We are already taxed heavily on our individual thirds of our Sub-chapter S Corporation. Some S-Corps are "drained" yearly as the owners pull their share of the business income. We don't do that. Sure, we like to take a bonus when times are good, but the majority of the company's income stays in the company. This is why we've been successful and why we've been able to weather downturns and hire new employees. Now...since a considerably larger chunk of this income will be taxed at a confiscatory rate...we'll have less to weather the bad times and even less to hire new employees. We'll likely decide to hunker down and just try to "endure" the next four years.

The American Dream now has a limit. Of course...it's hard to say whether that limit is $250K, $200K, $150K....or even $42K. I guess it depends on which campaign promise you decide to believe.

Keep your head down...