Waiting for the race to begin

I went with wave E which was a middle-of-the-pack group (not the fastest people but not walkers either)

Several hours later...crossing the finish line!

Pnina and I after the race

Was it tough?

Yeah, it was tough.  I hear that Portland’s marathon is popular because it’s actually one of the easier ones.  People go there to record a fast time in order to then qualify for other races (e.g. Boston).  But for me it was plenty.

Still, I have to admit that the marathon itself was almost easier than some of my practice runs, for a number of reasons:

• There were aid stations every 2 miles, so I didn’t have to carry much water with me (unlike my practice runs where I carried 22 ounces on a belt)
• There was lots of live music, especially near the beginning and the end.  I carried 2 MP3 players plus my iPhone, to be extra sure that I’d have enough battery life to last the race, but I only ended up listening one episode of This American Life (which, sadly, is enough to drain my poor old Nano).
• There were about 7400 marathon runners, plus plenty of others doing the half marathon or cheering on the sideline.  The energy from all these people was contagious.
• I kept finding little challenges to make me run faster, e.g. “if I just speed up for a bit I can get past this clump of people” or “there’s the next pace setter, I can catch up to her!”

I had a rough time at mile 17 where we climbed a tall bridge.  Then I had a really hard time around mile 20 when my right foot cramped up; I had to pause a few times to stretch it and luckily the cramp went away.  The last few miles were also difficult; I very little left in the tank.

So how did I do?

I ran the race in 4 hours 2 minutes and 28 seconds, which makes for an average of 9:15 per mile.  I’m pretty stoked.  My main goal was to finish.  My bigger goal was to do 10 minutes per mile (4 hours 20 minutes).  My stretch goal was to get under 4 hours.

The race had a website where Pnina and my parents could track my progress.  It’s probably a standard thing for marathons these days, but I still thought it was awesome.  You can see pretty clearly how my right-foot cramp slowed me down:

Quotables

One of the best t-shirts I saw on the race:

• If you see me collapsed, pause my Garmin

Also, some of the people cheering from the sideline held up some amusing signs such as:

• That looks hard (followed by…) That’s what she said
• Run Bitches!
• Run fast, I just farted
• Bloody Marys for Bloody Nipples
• You’re all Kenyans
• (held up by a 4-year old girl) Momma is a comet
• Go, complete stranger, go!

Speaking of strangers…we all had bibs that had our names written in large font.  Some of the folks cheering on the sideline picked out random people to cheer for.  It was pretty confusing the first time I heard “Go Shahaf!”  It was even more confusing in another case where (coincidentally) I actually knew the person

Would I do it again?

No.  I’m effin excited that I did it but I’m also pretty glad that it’s done.  Training for the marathon (using Hal Higdon’s program) consumed so much time; for a while it seemed like there was little in my life besides work, running, and sleep. I’m looking forward to having my life back.

Shout out to Justin

I’d like to thank my friend Justin for helping me train until a stress fracture forced him to bail.  Justin: sorry for making you finish that 16-mile run, I didn’t know you were injured!

Amazing, isn’t it? And the colors are really like that. I didn’t touch it up at all. The one “modification” I made at recording time was to hold my sunglasses in front of the camera as a kind of poor man’s polarizing lens (which helps a lot).

The price?  $200 per person for 15 minutes in the air. I know, super-expensive. But we think it’s totally worth it.  The lagoon in Bora Bora is fantastic, but you can only see the true colors if the sun is shining and you’re looking straight down.

By the way, this was on our 5th and final day in Bora Bora. The weather was crummy for the first three days — windy, gray, and rainy. The fourth day was beautiful and we were scheduled to parasail, but that plan was curtailed when a huge earthquake hit Samoa and we ran for the hills fearing a tsunami (that never came). Luckily the weather held up one more day.

The video for the song This Too Shall Pass by OK Go has the mother of all Rube Goldberg machines:

Wow, just wow.

More about the video on wikipedia.

And not quite as difficult but still fun: the alternate marching-band video

There’s an interesting post on TechFlash that includes “the email that spawned picnik” — the email exchange back in December 2005 between Darrin Massena and Mike Harrington, co-founders of Picnic, where they discussed the idea for this new startup. The email lays out their business plan so concisely and effectively that I have to wonder if it was written after-the-fact (though I have no reason to doubt their credibility).  Anyhow, it’s a very interesting read.

Now, I’d like to dive into just one aspect of the email.  Here’s the problem-statement for the business, as written by Darrin: “There is no ability to manipulate photos once they are online. People have to download them, bring them into a photo editor (which they must buy/maintain/upgrade), and somehow upload them again. That sucks.”

I think this statement anticipated a truly web 2.0 world where people are comfortable not just storing data in the cloud, but making the cloud “the golden store” for their data — the primary copy.  In a world like that people follow this process: 1. Take photo, 2. Upload it, 3. Edit and Organize, 4. Share.  Any other copies of their photos sitting around, for example on a desktop, are secondary and disposable.  In a world like this it definitely helps to have the photo editing tools closer to do the data, e.g. also in the cloud.

But I’m not sure we’re there, at least not yet.  Personally, my own “golden store” is the NAS sitting next to my iMac at home.  Here’s the process I follow: 1. Take photos, 2. Copy them to the NAS (now they’re safe), 3. Edit and Organize, and 4. Upload to Flickr to share.  So for me it’s easier if my photo editing tools are closer to my data, e.g. on the desktop.  In fact, it’s a bit of a pain to use Picnik because I end up having to do exactly the opposite of what Darrin described: 1. Upload photo to Picnic, 2. Edit, and 3. Download back to store the photo on the NAS.  It’s a testament to Picnik that I still endure this hassle for the benefit of using their awesome service.  However, the fact remains that I’ve found value in shelling out $70 for Photoshop Elements so I can skip this round-trip (and also for the better features and performance that you get with a full desktop app).

Am I alone in this desktop-centric approach?  I don’t think so.  In another TechFlash post, Picnik’s CEO Jonathan Sposato says this: “We built Picnik to bridge out to other sites to places where your photos are — where Facebook is, where your Flickr account is, where your Webshots account is…. We thought that was just so cool. ‘Wow, this is cloud computing and Web 2.0′ and all of that stuff. As it turns out, people don’t really care about that stuff. They sort of have their Flickr account, but maybe they really just want to use Picnik on a photo that is just on their hard-drive.”

Why do I insist on keeping my “golden store” close to me?  Why do I insist on being desktop-centric when it comes to my data?  Maybe it’s a need for control.  Maybe I worry that if I just scatter-shoot my data all over teh interwebs I won’t keep track of where it all went.  But the thing is, if I really search my soul, I have to admit to myself that even though my NAS is configured with RAID 1, I can’t with a straight face claim that the photos on my NAS are any safer than the photos I upload to Flickr.  Probably the opposite.  Shit, the photos on Flickr have a pretty decent chance of outliving me, let alone my NAS   So maybe we all just need some time to accept this sea change and to adapt.  Maybe the cloud will eventually become the primary store for people’s stuff, including photos.  If that happens, then Picnik will be sitting pretty.

It makes me wonder how inheritance will be affected by our digital age.  Today, a passing parent leaves to their children/relatives a bunch of stuff, some of it useful, some of it junk (and, in fact, some of the stuff the parent cherished most may be considered junk by his children).  So the children take the time to go through all this stuff, but it’s a real chore, kind of like moving.  Eventually they take shortcuts, spend less time thinking about what to keep and what to toss, and so on.  Will that happen to all these photos that I spend so much time taking, organizing, and editing?  Will my children say “meh” and toss them?  Or will cheap digital storage make it easy for them to just keep everything?  If they do, will they ever look at it?  If I end up drinking the Kool Aid and letting the cloud be my digital store, will my children know where to find all my stuff?

Oh, but I’ve digressed…

Anyhow, congrats to Picnik! 

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/in-depth-look-at-federal-budget.html

It shows pretty clearly why that “mandatory” spending (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) has grown to account for 60% of federal spending, and that Medicare is the fastest climber of the three.  That’s why folks in government think it’s so urgent to do something about health care.

As far as I know, there’s no magic cure for sleep apnea.  There is a surgery you can undergo, but from what I hear the chances that it will help are low.  The best solution is something called CPAP, which is a machine that sits next to your bed and pumps air through a tube into your nose:

It’s not sexy, but it definitely works.

I started using my CPAP several years ago.  I actually had to undergo a complete “sleep study”, which is where you stay in the clinic overnight and they hook up all kinds of wires to your body to check your vitals while you sleep – first without a cpap, then with a cpap, then with a different mask, then with another mask, etc.   It’s not actually a very restful night.

I was really looking forward to getting the CPAP because I figured that for the first time in my life I would get to experience “real sleep”.  I had this idea that one hour of my new cpap-powered super-sleep would be equivalent to two hours of old-sleep, or maybe even more.  I imagined myself sleeping just 4 hours a night and feeling just as refreshed, and getting so much more done, or else sleeping a full 8 hours and feeling more refreshed than I ever had in my life.  Maybe my expectations were a little too high because sleep with the cpap felt…pretty much the same.  The machines tell me that I’m sleeping better with the cpap, but I don’t feel much of a difference.  Anyhow, at least I don’t snore which means that Pnina sleeps better, so it’s a net gain regardless.

Last year when Pnina and I went off to travel the world, I actually took the cpap with me in my backpack (it wouldn’t surprise me if I was the first person ever to do a round-the-world trip with a cpap).  Was it a pain to lug around?  Absolutely.  These cpap machines have been getting smaller over the years, but still the machine (plus mask, tube, power supply, etc.) took about 1/4 or 1/3 of my backpack.  Also, it was complicated to figure out which transformer and/or converter I need to use from one country to another, and we were always a little nervous that a flaky electrical grid in some random 3rd world country would fry the machine.  So, after about 4 months of traveling, when we met my parents in Israel, I gave up the cpap for the remainder of the trip (with Pnina’s blessing).

In October 2009 we returned from the trip, and I started using the cpap again.  But then, only a couple of weeks after our return — disaster!  My mask broke!  The break was actually really tiny and stupid.  There are these little plastic latches used to secure the straps to the mask, and one of them broke:

We tried to glue it together.  We tried to tape it together.  Nothing worked.  And it’s silly but without this little plastic clasp the entire cpap apparatus is useless — the mask doesn’t stay flush against my face, so the air doesn’t blow into my nose.

I figured it should be relatively simple to replace my mask, but I was dead wrong.  This was the beginning of my 2-month quest to get a new cpap mask, a quest that made me realize more than before how our American health care system is totally screwed up.

Start with this — Pnina found a website where we could order the same CPAP mask for $59: http://www.cpapfirst.com/reconamawihe3.html.  The catch is that, by law, you cannot just order a cpap mask.  First, you need to get a prescription.  That’s right, cpap masks are in the same category as vicodin.  How exactly a person can hurt themselves with a cpap mask is beyond me.  You can’t exactly suffocate because it’s designed to let air through.  Meanwhile, 50,000 people each year go to the emergency room with a Tylenol overdose.  But what do I know?  I’m just a software engineer.

OK, so I can’t just buy the mask on Amazon.  Fine.  I called my old cpap supply provider, Quest Healthcare of Redmond, WA (which is now owned by a parent company called Rotech).  I explained the situation and asked if I could order a new mask.  The said that I now need to call the national provider, a company called Sleep Central.  OK.  I called Sleep Central and tried to order the mask.  They asked for my insurance information, and at this point it became clear that the insurance they had on record for me is no longer accurate — I used to work for Microsoft and now I work for Redfin, so my insurance has changed.  Seems like a simple thing to fix, but Sleep Central explained that I must first call Quest Healthcare and have them update my insurance information.  Why couldn’t the Sleep Central people just take my insurance info?  That’s just how it’s done.  Okaaaay.

I called Quest Healthcare again and gave them my insurance.  They said that they’ll need to send it off to the Rotech billing department.  How long will that take?  Unknown.  I didn’t hear from them for a week so I decided to call back.  I discovered that my insurance info hasn’t reached the billing department yet, and more than that, they lost my new insurance info (!!!).  I gave it to them again.

A week later I called again and learned that my insurance information has reached the billing department.  Why didn’t they call to let me know?  Unknown.  I then called Sleep Central and learned that there’s a new problem.  It turns out that these companies (Quest Healthcare / Sleep Central / Rotech) are not a “part of my network” as far as my insurance is concerned.  What does that mean?  How much would I need to pay?  They couldn’t tell me (!!!).

I decided to take a different approach.  I called my insurance company (Great West) and spoke with a very nice lady who told my which CPAP supplier to contact in a straight-to-the-point, no-bullshit manner.  She’s pretty much the only hero in this sorry tale, and I wish I knew her name so I could give her credit.

I called this new supplier, Care Centrix.  As I suspected, they said that they can’t send me a cpap mask without first getting a prescription.

I made an appointment with my primary care physician, Dr. James Taki of the downtown Swedish Clinic.  He was nice enough, except for the fact that he would not write the prescription himself.  He said I must see a sleep specialist.  Seriously??  Yeah, seriously.  Incidentally, my doctor friend, Neville, says that primary care physicians actually make more money when they bill a referral-appointment than they do with a regular (no-referral) appointment.  That makes absolutely no sense to me.  It’s like giving someone extra credit for sending you elsewhere instead of just getting the job done.

There was a small glimmer of hope when I called Dr. Taki’s assistant, Cathy, who actually writes all the referrals for him.  I explained my situation to her and asked if there’s a way for me to get the mask without spending (wasting) all the time and money it would take for me to first see a sleep specialist.  It turns out that Cathy is a CPAP user herself, so she was empathetic to my situation and she said she’ll see what she could do.  She said she might be able to give me a prescription if I simply gave her my CPAP “setting”, which is how hard my CPAP machine blows air.  I can’t imagine why that’s necessary to get a prescription for a mask — the mask remains the same regardless of how hard you pump air through it — but whatever.  I called her back with this info, but by this point she’d changed her mind.  I’m not sure what happened.  Maybe the man paid her a visit and set her straight.  Anyhow, she didn’t give me a prescription, but she did give me the referral.

I made an appointment to see the sleep specialist, Dr. David Chang of the Polyclinic.  He was a very fast-talkin’ kind of guy.  He asked me a rapid-fire series of questions about how well I’m sleeping, and I replied that basically everything is OK and, really, I just need a prescription to get a new mask.  He gave me the prescription (wow!), but he also recommended for me to undergo a new sleep study.  Why?  Because he suspects that my original sleep study didn’t focus on how well the CPAP works when I sleep on my side.

Well, I took the prescription and ran.  I ordered my CPAP from Care Centrix who, it turns out, is also a middle man.  My actual mask came from a local company called Apria.  It arrived today and I will use it tonight when I go to sleep.  Pnina will get a good night’s rest for the first time in way too long.

How much did the mask cost?  I have no idea.  Sometime soon I will get a bill in the mail and then I’ll find out.  At one point Care Centrix was planning to send me not just the mask but a whole package (including new tubing, filters, etc.) and they said that this would cost $127.  But I caught this and reduced the order to just the mask, and I couldn’t find anyone to tell me how much this will cost.

Considering all the runaround I experienced, I would have gladly paid the $59 out-of-pocket to just buy the mask from the website mentioned at the top of this article.  But, again, I can’t do that because I’m just a lowly consumer.

Meanwhile, I also asked around to find out how much the sleep study would cost if I went ahead with it.  My health insurance couldn’t tell me because they negotiate different prices with different care givers.  I finally found the price from Dr. Chang’s office directly, and I have to say that I’m a little surprised they (of all people) gave up this information.  Anyhow, here it is: $1843.  And the funny thing is that while I need to pay for the mask myself (it’s under my yearly deductible), the sleep study would be covered in full.  What do I have to lose?

But I’m not going to do this sleep study.  Now that I have the mask, I’m going to call Dr. Chang’s office and cancel.  Why?  Because while this sleep study may feel free, it’s not really free.  The $1843 it costs to pay for this sleep study is covered by the health insurance premiums paid by all the people who, like me, use Great West health insurance.  Similarly, the premiums I pay (or, rather, the premiums my company pays on my behalf), are used, in part, to cover all the random procedures that other people get.  If everyone took the attitude of “it’s free to me, what do I care?” then Great West would have more to pay, and they would deal with that situation by turning around and raising health insurance premiums.  This is exactly why the cost of health care keeps rising in America.  So I’m going to take a stand and skip this sleep study because I really don’t think I need it.  Dr. Chang will just have to make his money from people who truly need care.

Glenn Kelman, the CEO of my company (Redfin), has said on several occasions that real estate is the most screwed up industry in America (and gotten flamed for it).  While I agree that real estate could use a serious overhawl, I have to respectfully disagree.  There is no industry quite so screwed up as health care.  I can’t think of another industry where it’s so difficult to answer the question “how much will it cost?”

If you click to view the details of any home (for example 2320 NW Pinnacle Dr) you will see a link in the top right-hand corner that talks about these charities.  Click it, and you’ll see this:

Notice that we give people a convenient way to contact their local representative and ask him/her to repeal the anti-rebate law.  I’m really curious to see where this goes.  Will there be a grass-roots movement strong enough to get the law changed?  And if it happens in Portland, would it cause similar laws to be repealed more quickly elsewhere?  If so, then Redfin will truly have achieved something tangible in our goal to change the real estate industry.  It would be HUGE.

Now, if the Portland law is repealed, I’m also curious to see what happens next.  Right now we try to save money for consumers, but where we can’t, we give money to charity.  What’s not to like about that?  But if the anti-rebate law is passed, presumably we would start giving consumers the option to keep all of the rebate for themselves (and skip the charities), and my guess is that most people will take that option.  How would we all look then??  I guess we’ll deal with that problem when we get there.

There are a few other videos too: http://www.symphonyofscience.com/#remix

http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEgSoTCgvgA