Hospitals are Expensive

I have always been a firm believer in the fact that government programs don't work. When we were living in Tulsa, it seemed like anytime I was in a grocery store or corner store there was somebody buying something with food stamps.

I have always been a firm believer in the fact that government programs don’t work. When we were living in Tulsa, it seemed like anytime I was in a grocery store or corner store there was somebody buying something with food stamps. Then I would watch them get into their brand new car and stop into a Starbucks for a 5 dollar cup of coffee before heading home. I know that everybody has their own situations but when I would see that kind of thing it would bother me.

Since Isabel’s birth by opinion has changed slightly. When we were in the hospital we were told that she will rack up over a million dollars in medical bills before she is a year old. It was a blessing that we have very good insurance however, we quickly learned that insurance isn’t going to cover everything. Once she had been in the hospital for over 30 days we learned that she was eligible for Medicaid. My first reaction was that we don’t need government help, those programs are for people that don’t have jobs and can’t work. Then I saw the first bill and realized that if we didn’t have medicaid for her we would be filling for bankruptcy before the end of the year. I still think that there are too many people take advantage of government programs but I thank god that the program is there for us and others in the same situation to use.

One of the things that helped prepare us financially for everything that has been going on with Isabel was doing a monthly family budget. Right after Addison was born I read “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey and we started following his plan. In the last 3 years have been able to get a lot of our student loads and other debt under control. If we hadn’t started working the plan as we did we would still be having a very difficult time paying for everything even with Medicaid.

My Jobs…

First of all I have to give photo credit to my wife and daughter! Pretty fitting for today.

I have 2 jobs right now. My day job is as a software developer at a software company that makes point of sale software. I also run my own web consulting business called Kindred Web Consulting. I love both my jobs because they both allow me to show people what technology can do to help them.

My Day Job

My day job has its ups and downs. I have always loved the fact that I have a ton of freedom and that we have been able to put together a fix for a customer in a matter of a few hours. One of the joys of working for a small company is that there is not near the amount of hoops to jump through when something needs to be fixed.

My Night Job

I love running my own business. I am able to make some of the decisions that I have suggested in my day job and not been able to do. My real passion is helping people use the Internet to better there lives and business and this is exactly what I do. I design and develop websites, audit social media and help educate my customers on how to create a consistent brand experience across all the different platforms they may be using. I am also going to start offering online classes that will teach people how to do different things with technology. These are going to range from how to schedule a post in Facebook to setting up your email on your mobile device. If you would be interested in something like that let me know about it. Fill out this form and let me know about the topic you would be interested in learning about.

I have been lucky to have a few friends and family give me the opportunity to have them be some of my first customers. It has been great how things have started to grow and I love that I am starting to get referral customers. Thank you to everybody that has suggested my services to people and if you know of anybody looking for a website feel free to give them my info.

Post a Day in May

Last month I read about a few people doing a post a day challenge and decided that would be a great way for me to get used to writing again. I decided that May is my month to see if I can dedicate myself to posting something each day to the blog.

Last month I read about a few people doing a post a day challenge and decided that would be a great way for me to get used to writing again. I decided that May is my month to see if I can dedicate myself to posting something each day to the blog.

Why Am I Doing This?

I have always wanted to level up my writing skills. I think I do a good job of expressing myself through writing but it takes me a very long time to write and way too much editing. I can write and article now and it will take me 2 or even 3 hours just to get to 200 words. I am hoping this will not only help my personal writing but also help me when it comes to lowing the amount of time it takes to produce content for some of my customers websites.

How I’m Doing It

I have 7 different index cards that I have written the 7 topics I want to write about each week. The seven topics are Career, Financial, Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Family and Social. For those of you keeping track those are the 7 topics that Zig Ziglar calls the “Wheel of Life.” In his opinion must be balanced equally in order to be successful in life. I figured it was a good place to start since it touches on every aspect of my life. Some of the topics will be very easy for me to write about. Others will be much more difficult. Keeping that in mind, each week I will have 1 day where I can decide to not write about the topic and just write about whatever might be going on. It will be interesting to find out if the topic changes each week or not.

Rules!

I have a hard time doing this list this without a few guidelines in order to keep myself on track. Below are a few of the rules that I am going to follow for the month.

  1. The posts must be at least 250 words.
  2. I cannot spend more than 45 minutes on the total article. No more than 30 minutes writing. No more than 10 minutes editing. No more than 5 minutes finding an image.
  3. All the posts must be written in MarkDown.

Final Thoughts

I spend too much time editing myself. I am going to write about what I am thinking and help myself work through some things. If I say something that you disagree with please let me know about it in the comments. Everybody has their own opinions and I enjoy hearing different sides to situations. Please keep things civil or I will delete the comments.

What to Expect

You should expect posts about everything from the different experiences being a father, to the different hobbies I tend to move through rapidly.

I am going to be using this platform to post all the different ideas I have that don’t have anything to do with technology. All the tech stuff is going to be posted over at Kindred Web Consulting.

You should expect posts about everything from the different experiences being a father, to the different hobbies I tend to move through rapidly.