Somewhat before I left the job that I no longer mention I was asked how long I planned to work. It seemed an innocent question. "Probably until 65 or so when I'm eligible for Medicare." Health and dental insurance were a good perk and there appeared no reason to abandon that and a paycheck (and the nature of the work challenge itself).
Medicare is a wonderful benefit but a pain to figure out and a sinkhole of options. It appears that one can certainly overspend on supplemental and drug coverage. After attending half a dozen seminars and a few free meals the logical decision was to go cheap on the supplemental plans.
While I used to carry two ID cards for health/dental/drug coverage I think it's double that number. As noted by my better half I now have to carry a Medicare card which clearly displays my SSN which everyone tells you to guard...it's the key to all your assets. FYI I carry mine in a small wallet in my front right pants pocket.
If I'd understood the questions intent I would have said that I planned to work until 66 when I could collect Social Security or perhaps any year after that up to age 70. Social Security goes up 7-8% for each year you delay. That's a good deal: 1) you get a higher benefit 2) the government probably pays out less over your lifetime. Your death is certain.
Dental coverage is expensive when you pay your own. Somehow I think companies encourage their employees to leave not because they can collect Social Security or Medicare but because their teeth start to go.
So today, April Fool's Day, marks the end of any vestige of my former life. The money's gone, benefits ended, logo shirts worn and discarded, co-workers have ceased calling and I don't get invited to others' retirement events, etc. That's all good.
Small Business...
Everyone is on spring break in March. As the weather warms and we role into April it's been getting crazy busy. Unlike my executive job where the day was spent talking and thinking about opportunities and challenge this small business is an active job, preparing product, taking orders, delivering, restocking, etc. There's not much inefficiency with exception of activities you'd like to do were it not for the lack of staff resources, most often your own.
It's quite a contrast with the large organization life (including government where I long ago spent five years) where you spend most of your time attempting to acquire staff, re-allocate them or get any of the time you see wasted in other groups. During my lean process improvement tenure the whole notion of eliminating waste became more clear. Including items that are obvious such as product or time lost due to errors is also time spent waiting for products or services or for others to complete their work. The odd part is that from my experience the bigger the organization and the more waste there is the more you will paid more. Small businesses struggle for resources and are challenged to pay competitively, even when you own it yourself. The sole-practitioner is at an even greater challenge and likely resides at the bottom of the pay scale. I'm at a point where sole-practitioner may have the most appeal.
Political Waste...
This political campaign appears to have set new records in campaign spending and time spent by the media and by us on candidates who have no potential to win an election. It's important to have an ego, perhaps bigger than the average person on the street, but for everyone's sake, keep it in check. We now have narrowed the field but the news is saturated with info on two candidates with no possibility to be effective world leaders.
I'm going to re-visit my lean process improvement work on waste. As I recall standard nomenclature includes seven kinds of waste. It's time to add political blah-blah time to waste (and distraction). We need some sort of elevator background noise, better yet the infamous white noise to block it out.
During my corporate world during one office move we changed from individual offices to an open work space with cubicles. Concerned about privacy and distraction we added some sort of technology to cover the office with 'white noise' which was to block conversation distractions such as overhearing someone in the next cubicle from hearing your phone conversation. People hated it. Often we'd turn it off completely or increase it's volume until people became obviously agitated. April Fool's Day was appropriate for that sort of work.
We need a football coach approach to the Presidential election..
Trump: "We're going to be great. We're going to win all the games I
know the best players. They are my friends, great friends."
Cruz: "We're going to play football like we used to play football.
It's going to be leather helmets or no helmets at all and I assure you
we'll pray as Christians before and after everything and we'll restore
all aspects of the 2nd Amendment. Furthermore, no one will cross any lines that they are not allowed to cross."
Clinton: "We're not going to
win every game. Not every play will be successful. We are going to
get everyone some time in the game."
Kasich: "Listen. I've
coached a lot of teams. None of them were major league teams but I'll
have it figured out in the first 100 days."
Ryan: "I do not want to be a football coach. I may have misspoken when I said I don't want to be a football coach."
Sanders: "We're not going to play football. We're going to play
soccer and Wall Street is going to pay for new uniforms and they won't
get free advertising and they won't get free tickets or perks."
#applefbi
For whatever reason I've never been a big Apple fan. During the early days of personal computing I leaned first to the Commodore/Victor/CPM devices and then went mainstream IBM/MSDOS. Apple was a bit all over the board but certainly with iconic innovations that moved the industry. I've never owned an Apple personal computer. My current phone is an iPhone 5. It's very good. iTunes has been confusing. iCloud is OK.
The recent controversy over personal privacy warrants considerable thought and review. Snowdon's releases of intelligence procedures did bother me. He's not a great patriot. It's a challenging age. Governments need intelligence gathering. Government needs review. Despite many conversations it remains my position that Apple should have stepped up to the plate on cracking the San Bernadino phone. Many people died. More have and will in this evolving senseless terrorism. While I don't want everything I do shared in the public domain...because it's not the public domain's business, I know that most devices, most first tier security can be hacked and for the purpose of saving innocent lives and our freedom to live it should be.
From a professional and ethical position I think both sides are correct. That's the complexity. As the wind blows an Israeli firm successfully cracks the phone that Apple said was uncrackable. Apple will move ahead with an even more secure device and more people will crack more devices. This argument lies at the 99.9th percentile. Most of us, actually 66% if I remember correctly lie +/- one standard deviation of the mean; we're not really affected and we don't really need to care.
April Fools Day...
I have nothing. I have everything.
