Giving birth in the US

I'm a 2.5 months old father. Our daughter was born last year in October. And we are very happy! I thought I share some information about such affairs.

Our health insurance is with Kaiser Permanente, which is an HMO provider. I wrote briefly about HMO and PPO plans in my earlier post. Our hospital is the one in Santa Clara:


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It started with the checkups. Everything was organized. There is a well established protocol what to do in each phase, when the checkups should be and so on. Well there's no ultrasound exam every time you go see a doctor like in the movies. They do ultrasound only 2-3 times during the pregnancy. And strictly for medical reasons.

If you want a 4D ultrasound you have to go to a private company. There are tons of those! They have multiple packages available, like recoding the baby's heartbeat into a plush teddy bear and I'm sure they can fulfill your wildest expectations. It's a business :)

The hospital offered various classes and you were advised to take them. Most of them were free. By the time Baby is about to come to this world you feel prepared. Well they don't emphasize how painful and exhausting it is for both of the parents, but I guess they just don't want to discourage you...

We stayed in the hospital for 3 days. During that time we felt everything was revolving around us. We felt safe. The staff was excellent, always kind, friendly and very helpful. The coffee in the break room is extra strong. You'll need it! Everybody is professional! You don't feel the urge like at home to bribe the doctor and the nurses to get the right attention and care...

At the end you get the bill, which is called 'Financial responsibility'. Nice name for a bill isn't it :) Luckily our insurance is great so it only cost $250 but it can go up to a 5 digit number if you're uninsured or have a crappy plan.

Dad can stay with mom. There's a fold out bed. Extremely uncomfortable... But you'll sleep, trust me!

You hear the critics how awful it is that health care is a business. Well it is, and I think it better be. The competition is high, and if you're not satisfied you go somewhere else, so everybody is seriously trying to satisfy you and they go beyond your expectations. Doctors and nurses take the time to explain everything. You'll get all the help you need, medical or not.

Once you're about to leave you name your baby and the hospital applies for SSN for your newborn. That comes in the mail in about 4 to 6 weeks. You also have to obtain a birth certificate. It's possible 4 weeks after birth. You have the possibility to go to your local office, but if you don't feel like standing in line you can obtain it by mail, but it takes an additional 6 weeks to get. If you're not in a hurry get your sworn statement notarized in any UPS store for $10, write a check and mail the signed form.

Another administrative obligation is to get your newborn health insurance. In the first 30 days it is covered under mom's health insurance automatically, but make sure to notify your employer on time so she'll be covered. If you are not insured by your employer you need to shop for insurance for her.

Another thing you might want to do is start saving for college. It's expensive, and every dollar counts. The sooner you start the better is your position. I decided to go with a 529 plan by the State of California. Many a little makes a mickle...

What's left for me to do is a US passport for her and get Hungarian dual citizenship...

Recruiters are liars

They send you a message about a really interesting job and they flatter you that how they read through your profile and what an amazing background you have and how much they're impressed and what a great fit you were.

Than you read the job description. It says:

• Location in Philadelphia, Colorado whatever, but not Northern California for sure
• No sponsorship available. Ergo you need to have a green card already or you must be a citizen.

Now, my profile clearly says I'm on H1B in the US and I'm not willing to relocate.

Who read my profile through then?!

How software is made

I observed a big difference how small and big companies are making software. Until recently I've only seen how small companies are doing it.

If you're delivering a customized software solution, you prepare it for one customer. That customer - in a lucky situation - has a concrete vision why the need the software and how it should work, based on their existing business processes. The software creation process starts with business analysis. The software company tries to understand what the desired business processes should be and where their software would play any role. The outcome of the analysis than formalized in a document. Based on that document software architect(s) come up with the solution architecture and detailed functional and non functional specifications. The client signs off these documents in an agreement that the software they are going to receive will behave exactly as these documents state. And in most of the cases they want to know the details because their life literally is depending on it. As a result these documents are fine graded and serve a good basis to the development team to start the work. With agile methodology becoming widespread the document development is sliced up to match up the sprints (or however you call them), but the big vision of things is laid down upfront.

As a matter of fact an Agile project require you to define it's scope just like any project...

And this is - I personally think - the main purpose behind while customized software solutions tend to deliver higher quality.

On the other hand big software companies are creating software solutions used by many people and they serve to solve common problems. Big software companies have more resources, and they don't have a client that can hold them responsible really. As a result people honestly think things like agile methodologies mean that there's no process in your development, and there should be no documentation created. And such nonsense. As a result to achieve the same or at least similar quality more cycles are needed and the software creation is more expensive and you can only hope that the quality matches the quality of a custom solution.

And when you point out things like the definition of software means the software code _and_ the documentation, and creating specifications does not necessary mean that you want to do traditional waterfall model based software development, people call you process oriented.

And you end up with the strong belief that you could do anybody's job way better.

Well, it's just the brand new quality engineer growing in me speaking maybe, but there must be a reason while all the quality management standards like ISO, CMM etc. are defining, focusing and auditing processes creating products and not products themselves.

But call me whatever you want to...

The wickedest allergy nasal spray ever

I was struggling with my allergy symptoms. It's ragweed and mold season... I spent every evening after work in my gym's steam room just to open up my sinuses enough so I don't have to live on Advil because of the headache they caused. I've seen a doctor, got new pills and they helped me a lot.

But from time to time my nose got congested, and I finished up my nasal decongestant spray so I went to shop for a new one. For a reason these are on the bottom shelf in the pharmacy and there're plenty of them. So I squat down and was browsing through the selection when I found one that had all the answers:

• Helps with runny nose (I'm using allergy nasal sprays so this is not a problem)
• Sneezing (Same, no symptomps)
• Nasal congestion (That's my problem right there!)
• Headache and sinus pressure (Yepp)
• All natural (Whatever, even cocaine is natural and it definitely fixes your clogged nostrils! Along with the headaches! But I can't afford them o_O Hm, that gives me an idea. Maybe I can get it prescribed. I wonder if my HMO would cover it! $10 for a monthly dose sounds like a deal!)
• No addiction formula (Wow! That's cool! It's always a problem for me to get off these after my allergies calmed down. It takes weeks juggling between nostrils to finally be able to stop using these and still be able to sleep through the night!)

Great, I've found the perfect fit. Ups, it's double the price as all the others! Well, whatever, maybe it's so good, and that's the reason.

Things I didn't see (small print on the box) however were deadly. Let's see if you can spot them!

The box I found had the picture of chili in smaller size. And the word 'homeopathic' even smaller!

No addiction formula my a**! Who's so stupid to develop a habit of spraying chili in the nostrils?! I'm certainly not, and probably if I asked 100 random people they would agree! And homeopathic to me means two things: it ain't gonna work but it's expensive.

$15 thrown out the window. And it doesn't even unclog my nose either. My headache however is certainly gone in a second as the burning nostrils from chili provide a much stronger sensation for sure...

DIY car window tint is impossible

Tinting car windows for a living? All my respect!

* this is not my car

I have a Dodge Charger. That car cries for pimping :) Many people pimp it up nicely. So far I only replaced the exhaust pipes, but always wanted to have my windows tinted, too. I was too cheap to spend $300-350 on window tint. So I ordered a pre-cut kit from Amazon for $35 and thought I'm going to do it myself. I watched I think enough tutorial videos on YouTube and I was positive I'm able to do it myself. It seemed so easy.

It ain't!

Side windows are not too complicated. Note: There's a huge difference between a heat gun and a blow dryer... Rear window, impossible. First you are supposed to heat-shrink the tint from the outside so it takes the curves of the window, than you should put it up from the inside. The Charge has a huge and relatively  horizontal rear window. I just couldn't do it.

I think if I had a minivan or SUV with relatively vertical windows I could have succeed if I started with the heat gun from the beginning. But this car is gonna be tinted in a shop by a guy who does this for a living!

Even darker than the Internet

The Internet is a dark place. It's full with underground stuff. Whatever cyber-punk sci-fi movies can imagine is there. But there's something more evil, darker and deeper than that... The scariest thing one's mind can ever imagine. And I found it on my journey on cable entertainment. A show on TLC that is the deepest pit of television.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together for Honey Boo Boo Child!

Beauty pageant reality shows themselves are scary but this tops of all of them. I saw my first episode yesterday. It's about a family. A real Southern-Georgia redneck family. Nobody will be able to make me move there....

Mam the mother is 32, will be a grandmother in a month, over 300lbs. She likes burping, farting and grunt on TV. She had her first child when she was 15. She's 17 now and 8 months pregnant.

Her husband has no teeth, and looks retarded. The kids are hyperactive, constantly drinking sugary soda and eating junk food. All of them are overweight... The smallest daughter, Alana (see above) is a frequent beauty pageant contestant.

They live in South-Georgia. The train literally goes behind their house through the backyard. Dad drives a pickup truck. A Dodge Ram, to be precise. And they own a four wheeler they like to take out for a spin every now and then.

In yesterday's episode I saw how they enjoy themselves playing in the mud (literally) and at the redneck festival. Like pigs. And we get it on basic cable. Yeyy!

I suggest everyone who can to watch a couple of episodes. It's purely entertaining even though it hurts badly to watch.

11/18

That's the day I'm eligible for a device upgrade at Verizon. On that day, I'm going to buy my new phone. I hope I chose right, and if I have any problems in the first couple of days/weeks I'm sending it back.

Just a couple of problems I have with my Droid 2 Global, the worst phone I ever had:

• Connect to PC only works in USB Mass Storage mode. Otherwise windows can't install the drivers even though I have the Motorola applications installed on my PC. Other connections only worked once. I'm not gonna reinstall my PC just for this.
• Because of this I can only sync music to it via Winamp. The other software only work in media sync mode, which doesn't work on the phone.
• And because I want to reset it, but want to back it up, I need to copy the SD card over WiFi. My corporate mail requires me to encrypt the SD card, and guess what, in USB Mass Storage mode if you copy things over they will be copied in decrypted state... Just as you were putting the card in a card reader... Finally found a program that doesn't close the connection while copying files to a NAS over WiFi as the built in file manager does during transfer. I think it gets tired around 40MB for a reason. A software that can get tired that could be a Nobel Prize worthy invention!
• UI freezes up on a regular basis.
• The screen switch button about 50% of the time doesn't work. The phone is too busy being idle to respond to your request that you want to do something with it. Imagine if you need to call 911 for a really good reason!
• Reaction to user interaction is pathetic. A couple of days ago I waited about 30secs between clicking the dial button next a contact and the phone actually start dialing.
• During navigation it usually reboots every now and then, and we know how safe and legal it is to juggle with your phone while driving.
• In general freakishly slow reactions.
• Poor battery life even with the extended batteries. I was moved to another cube to get away from the ping pong noise, and there I only have 2 bars. By 2pm I have to hook it up to give it some juice.
• Screen keyboard is almost impossible to use without auto-correct. The buttons are too close or/and the logic is terrible that tries to figure out which key you wanted to press.
• My slide to unlock screen disappeared this week. When I press the button on the top it shows up for a one second or less, and than the screen is unlocked automatically without me doing anything. Me sliding to unlock can only happen if my security timeout has passed and have to key in my PIN code. After googling it solution seems to be a factory reset.
• The phone I have is a replacement phone already. After 5 months the original one I had to send back as it was rebooting on its own 2-3 times a day! Just lying on my desk doing nothing, probably bored, so it restarted itself... On a regular basis.

Sometimes I would really just like to throw this phone and stomp on it. Maybe I'll do it after I got my new phone and it proved itself. Like the guys in Office Space with the HP Printer :) Or maybe I'll go to a shooting range, rent a colt and buy ammo enough for 4-5 rounds and I hang it on the target clip and shoot at it until there's nothing left. If I need to I'll buy another round of ammo. And another.

I don't think I can be so mean to sell this phone to anybody on eBay. Humanity must be saved from this disaster!

And the one to blame for all this is myself! After my v50 and v600 I swore never to buy a Motorola phone again, and yet I did it. I'll go with the Samsung Nexus. Please if someone has it and hates it let me know immediately! If that's shitty, too, than it must be a general Android problem, and I might choose a Windows phone in the end.

iPhone? No way. My solid conviction is that Apple is the meanest company in the world.