Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Well Duh

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Sometimes you just have to be slapped upside the head to have some sense driven into you. I was catching up on some reading and came across this piece from Sasha Dichter and these words struck a chord with me:

In today’s world we all are continually experimenting with the lines between connection / productivity / responsiveness and distraction / rudeness.  Two colleagues of mine suggested the following four rules for managing incoming email and handheld devices, which I liked:

  1. Turn off desktop alerts of new emails coming in (the little box that pops up)  (in Outlook: File > Options > Mail > Message Arrival > Uncheck “Display a Desktop Alert”)
  2. No reading email before breakfast
  3. No reading email while in transit
  4. No phone or email in the bedroom

My own scorecard is as follows:

  1. I turned of desktop alerts for new emails about a month ago and I love it.
  2. I almost never read email before breakfast and when I do it’s a sign that I’m under a crazy deadline or stressed for some other reason.
  3. Hmmm.  I made a rule a couple of years ago not to look at my phone while in elevators, and I’ve stuck to that (it had become a reflex), but I spend enough time in transit that I don’t know that I can commit to this one.
  4. I do have my phone in the bedroom but I can honestly say it’s 95% as a time-piece and alarm

In reality these four rules are a really low bar.  Increasingly I think we will all be playing with the limits and rules that work for us, and everyone’s line will be different.  What makes me nervous is when I get reflexive about checking.  That sort of unconscious behavior feels unproductive. (Emphasis mine)

My wife has flat out told me it annoys her how much I check my phone. At the table, when we go to bed, etc. and today when I was checking out at a store I realized I was checking my phone even before the clerk was saying thank you. In other words I'm being exceptionally rude to the people around me, and what bothers me most is I'm certain I'm missing signifcant chunks of conversation with my family. My kids are only a few years from flying the coop permanently – two of them are already in college – so this is just crazy behavior. Do I seriously want to waste the limited days they're still under my roof with my nose stuck in my phone? Obviously not.

For some reason it took reading a stranger's blog to bring me to that "Well, duh" conclusion. I plan on using some of his rules augmented with some of my own to do better.

 

NC DHHS’ Software Armageddon

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North Carolina's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is responsible for the launch of two new software systems this year that have experienced significant problems, and things likely will get worse before they get better.

The first problem you've probably heard about: DHHS' rollout of the NC FAST system to handle food benefits, aka food stamps, has been problematic around the state and has led to local agencies working with local food banks to make sure people have access to food until their benefit situation can be straightened out. The problem is that NC FAST is supposed to also handle Medicaid claims as of October 1 and it seems highly unlikely it will be able to do so particularly in light of DHHS' other, less well known software snafu.

Earlier this year DHHS rolled out NCTracks which is a new system to process professional Medicaid claims otherwise known as claims from doctors, medical groups, hospitals and other health care providers. That system is so screwed up that some independent practices have already gone out of business. From an article at charlotteobserver.com:

Karimi, 28, had worked for his parents for the past five years. Their company, Right at Home, had provided home health and personal care to the elderly and people with disabilities in Granite Falls. Karimi handled the billing.

But now Karimi is out of a job and his parents are out of business after a decade. The reason? They weren’t being paid for the Medicaid-reimbursed services they delivered in July and August after the state rolled out its new Medicaid payment system, known as NCTracks…

And it’s not just small providers who are having trouble.

In an interview last week, WakeMed CEO Bill Atkinson said his institution was down $1.5 million since July 1 because of NCTracks. He worried that his billers would have to re-submit all of those claims by hand.

It would be easy to blame the current administration for all this  but the reality is that these systems were contracted long before Gov. McCrory was elected and his folks now have the unenviable task of implementing very complex systems that affect a lot of people. If the response to client issues has been as slow or nonexistent as is being claimed by folks interviewed for these stories then the new administration, and by administration I mean Gov. McCrory's appointees at DHHS, needs to take responsibility and do whatever is necessary to get people the help they need. If they don't we'll be looking at a lot of lost jobs in the health care industry, and in particular we could see some small medical practices under severe stress or maybe even folding.
Glitches happen and anyone who's been through a systems upgrade knows they rarely if ever go as planned, but how an organization responds to those glitches is where the "men are separated from the boys" and right now the DHHS folks look like a bunch of little boys at recess the day after Halloween trying to burn off all the sugar they had the night before.

Amendment One Advocate Taking on Tillis for Republican Senatorial Nomination

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There's an interesting article at Atlantic.com about the Rev. Mark Harris' run for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat currently held by Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.  Rev. Harris was instrumental in getting Amendment One passed and is looking to use the same grassroots organization he used in that fight to boost his Senate run:

Now Harris is attempting to unseat Hagan in the Senate, vying to win the Republican nomination with assistance from his band of grassroots allies. He announced his Senate candidacy this month, and has the potential to give state Senate House Speaker Thom Tillis a serious challenge in the Republican primary.

Harris has sent early signals that he'll build his Senate campaign infrastructure out of that same grassroots organization that fought against gay marriage. He has already brought on Republican activist Mary Frances Forrester, who spearheaded the Amendment One campaign, and Rachel Lee Brady, who worked for the pro-Amendment One group Vote Marriage NC. That could be helpful in injecting cash into the relatively unknown first-time candidate's campaign and could help propel Harris to the Republican nomination…

The article goes to point out why the state-wide fight for Hagan's seat might not be as easy as the Amendment One results would seem to indicate:

Amendment One was on the ballot during last year's May primary, when there were no competitive statewide contests, not the general election when the presidential campaign and a heated gubernatorial race boosted turnout. As is typical of primary elections, the electorate was much older and much more conservative than in a typical general election, but the excitement around Amendment One exacerbated those differences. Over three-quarters of voters in the primary election were over the age of 50, according to Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling organization that worked with same-sex marriage proponents during the primary. That electorate was "enormously" helpful in getting Amendment One passed, pollster Celinda Lake said, and could be a boon to Harris in getting through the Republican primary.

The Democrats are going to be in a dogfight to retain control of the Senate so you can expect to see lots of national money injected into this campaign since Sen. Hagan's seat is seen as one of the most closely contested in the country. Things are gonna get interesting around here in the very near future.

Playing Small Balls

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According to a piece in The Week there’s a correlation between the amount of time a man spends with his kids and the size of his boys:

“Researchers found that the smaller the men’s family jewels, the more likely their wives were to report that they were involved parents–spending a lot of time feeding, diapering, and playing with their toddlers…

Men with smaller testicles may compensate by taking more care with the fewer children they do have (compared to big balled men)….

But study author James Rilling, an anthropologist at Emory University, tells cbsnews.com, ‘It could also be that when men become more involved as caregivers, their testes shrink.”

I’d argue that marriage contributes significantly to shrinkage as well.

We’re Fortunate

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Love this quote:
“We all know, deep down, that most of what we have is a product of good fortune. No matter how hard we work, we did not earn our functioning brains or the families into which we were born. We live in cities others created for us, organized by a government and protected by a military shaped by our predecessors. Yet we still point to our accomplishments and proudly proclaim, “I did this!” The well-off salve their consciences by assuring themselves that it is hard work and merit that brought them success, which also leads them to conclude that it is a lack of merit that keeps others from succeeding.” – Rabbi David Wolpe in the LA Times

Traffic and the Proposed Country Club Walmart

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As reported in local news outlets a Walmart grocery store that is being proposed for a site near the intersection of Meadowlark Drive and Country Club Road is concerning to folks in that neck of the woods and understandably so. That area already experiences some significant traffic issues in the morning and afternoons due to the presence of Meadowlark Elementary and Middle schools and the fact that Meadowlark serves as a major conduit for people traveling to US-421 from Robinhood Road and points north. 

Yes the concerns about traffic from additional development are valid, but if you look at the city/county planning staff's report and recommendation to the planning board you'll see that the proposed development reduces the traffic impact versus what could happen with current zoning. From the staff report:

Existing Zoning: HB-S
71,650/1,000 x 42.94 (Shopping Center Trip Rate) = 3,077 Trips per day

Proposed Zoning: HB-S for Parcel C:
41,179/1,000 x 42.94 (Shopping Center Trip Rate) = 1,768 Trips per Day. Note: this trip estimate does not include the two out parcels D&E which would require Final Development Plan approval. 

As you can see the trip rate is substantially reduced over what a developer could do without a rezoning if they so desired, and even if the two outparcels are developed they will have to get approval and the additional traffic they might generate could be considered at that time.

If you look at the plan you'll also see that the developers are going to provide a connection to the adjacent Brookberry Park Apartments which should help reduce trips on Country Club made from the apartments to the store.

Finally, there are already plans for improving the roads near the intersection which should help alleviate some of the congestion at the intersection. While volume is certainly an issue the expanded turn lanes will help move traffic through the intersection more quickly and reduce the backups that occur during peak traffic.

Long story short, if this was a rezoning from residential to commercial and the lots along that stretch of road were primarily single family residential then the case would be much more problematic. As it is the land has been zoned for this type of use for a while – in other words the horse is already out of the barn so there's no reason to close the door – and the proposed development is actually an improvement over what could be done as-is.  In fact, if the city council goes against the planning board's recommendation the developer has said he might just reconfigure his plans to fit the current zoning:

A representative for engineering firm Genesis North Carolina and developer Columbia Development of Columbia, S.C., said the proposal is a modification of the plan approved for the site in 1998. He said that if “push came to shove” and the city council didn’t approve the proposal, the developer could move forward with the original plan, which calls for more parking spaces and square footage for the building than the new proposal.

But he said the old plan has some flaws, while the new proposal offers tree protection, stormwater provisions and connectivity.

If the city didn't want to see the area developing as it is then they never should have zoned it for this use. Given that the city did zone it this way then the next step is making sure that projects fit and don't have a negative net impact on the surrounding community. Given their choices here it's hard to see how they can be justified to turn it down wholesale. They can certainly negotiate for changes to the plan, much like it looks like the staff already negotiated to get the connections to the apartment community included, but in the end they will likely need to approve the project or risk a less attractive option being developed in the future.

Last thought: if you changed the name of the petitioner from Walmart to Trader Joe's do you think people would be this hot and bothered?

21?!

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Unbelievably, at least for me, Celeste's and my oldest son turns 21 today. As in 2-1 and able to legally drink in any state in the union. How the heck did we get here this fast?

Normally I'd say he's a great kid, but these days that would be wrong because he's a great young man and not a great kid. He's beginning to make his way in the world by going to school, holding down a job and generally being a productive member of society. He's already encountered some bumps in the road and I'm encouraged by how he's dealt with them without losing what really makes him special: his caring for those around him and his incredible sense of humor even on a bad day.  Honestly I couldn't be prouder of him and I can't wait to see what the next 21 years bring. The future is very bright for this kid, er, young man.

Happy birthday Michael!

Kids_2012

Erin, Michael, Justin