The Greatest Thing I Ever Did And The Reminders I Get About It Every Day

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, even though we were trying to have a child, I was still in shock. She wanted to surprise me with the information and told me the morning we were leaving on our way to go to the doctors office. I was so out of it that I'm not sure I remember much more about the doctors visit than that. It's kind of funny to look back on, but I was afraid, and I'm not even sure why.

We waited for a reasonable period of time to let everyone else know so that we were sure our unborn child was going to be on the way and healthy. It was an awesome feeling, and everyone was quick to throw in their congratulations and advice.

One of the comments to me from a friend stuck out among all of the others and really caused me to think about my situation. He told me that, having a child was the greatest thing he had ever done. I'll repeat that in capitals now. HAVING A CHILD WAS THE GREATEST THING HE HAD EVER DONE. Here, a fairly successful person tells me that my entire life was going to change, but it was going to change for the better. I'm here to tell you today that he was correct.

I had kids a little later in life than some despite always wanting to be a father. I loved being an uncle 4 times over and loved playing with my nieces and nephews. I had always wanted to be married, and I had dated people for long periods of time but until I met my wife, I was never quite there. You can't fully prepare for everything that is going to happen when you have kids. You can get hit with so many variables that no matter how hard you try, you're going to have to learn some of it along the way. Walking into a hospital in the middle of the night knowing that your family is going to increase the next time all of you leave was pretty wild. We had a baby room, baby stuff, toys, clothes, formula, and lots of other things that we had read, been told, or were just given because other people assumed that we would need. The whole thing is pretty overwhelming.

So my beautiful baby girl is born. Something that has happened to every single one of the 7.5 billion people on the planet, but I am still in amazement, because I made this happen. My wife and I produced this beautiful little being and she shared the good and the bad of both of us.

There was one medical issue we had to overcome which came as a surprise on day 1. She had a hereditary problem that we had passed down to her, and although it was fairly mild she would need to have surgery again in a year to correct it. My heart sank.

I was in love with someone I had never even met before, and now I wasn't sure if she was going to be okay or not. We did our homework, lots of it. Found a doctor that we were very happy with and our baby girl was fine. She went through a surgery that looked like she had been hit by a truck, but she was going to be okay. After a few days she started acting normal, I felt like I could breathe again, and I did, with a few sighs of relief.

A year goes by and our baby had now turned one. We decided to try to have another child. It didn't take long, but we were quickly blessed. Nine months and a few weeks go by and we head to the hospital again. More than a little anxiety hits me because I'm concerned we are going to have the same problems after our first birth and that we'd have to put another beautiful child through what our first one went through. Even though our first was okay, there is nothing worse than seeing your child hurting, and having a feeling that you can't do anything about it.. It turned out our second did not have the same problems, and we were going to be moving forward a little easier than the first time.  I was still incomplete awe, after the 2nd birth occurred. It truly felt amazing.

One wrench in the works was that I was sick at the time with a chicken-pox like disease called hand, foot and mouth. I was dreadfully worried about giving to our baby or any of the other babies in the delivery room. So for the first few weeks I had to wear gloves, or at least I thought I did, because I didn't want to take one chance of harming munchkin number 2 or someone else's child. I had it bad too, sores all over my body (and I do mean all over) and a sore throat, which when it was at its worse made me unable to even eat ice cream. After a few weeks I was on the mend and decided that it would be okay to touch my new baby girl. This second baby was again so personal to me and my wife, as personal as it gets. Despite having happened billions of times before I really felt like I was the luckiest person on the planet to be so in love again with someone who I had just met.

On Mother's day this year I started thinking about how proud my parents were when I was born, and how proud, excited and scared their parents were before them. The population has more than doubled on the planet since I was born, but these numbers do not lessen the experience at all.

We have seen new born deer (fawns) in our back yard the past three years in a row. The first year the mother had been injured (probably hit by a car a few months earlier) and we were worried she wasn't going to make it through winter, then low and behold she gives birth, with only three functional legs. Watching the new fawn nursing from its mother reminded me of two of the most exciting days of my life, the days that made me a father.

What happens in life sometimes will go in an unexpected direction. All you can do, is try to do your best when things don't go as planned. From time to time, we may get reminders as to what is really important to us and we should always be thankful for it and focus on that.

Why The Internet Of Things Is Such A Booming Industry

 

When the movie "Minority Report" came out they did a terrific thing with predicting the way that our surroundings will be reacting to our presence, although they may have taken it a few steps too far to explain how it happens when the solutions are actually much simpler.

The industry behind the Internet Of Things or the IoT is something everyone is buzzing about. Science fiction has people getting eye replacements, or being "chipped" like we do with pets now when all we need is a smartphone or a watch. With as often as phones break down and need to be replaced the idea of having a device inserted isn't into my neck or forearm isn't very appealing. Can you imagine having to wait at the Apple store so their surgical team can replace your chip ? Maybe I'm old fashioned but if we have more processing power in our phone than all of the mission to the moon computers I think they can probably handle turning on our lights or shopping at the grocery store.

Dick Tracy cartoons came out in 1931, talk about ahead of their time. Eat your heart out Stanley Kubrick ! Many friends have adopted "watch tech" to do everything from read emails to start their cars. It's certainly cleaner and less burdensome than the smartphone but the interface doesn't appeal to everyone. That being said "early adapters" are always willing to try out the latest tech, even if it goes the way of the Betamax.

So what's the benefit to the masses? Any products that come out or industries that are disruptive satisfy a need. Steve Jobs liked to try and satisfy needs that we didn't even know we had. So what needs aren't being met ? Perhaps efficiency in how we lead our everyday lives. If we are really using our smartphones to make sure that our house isn't running too much energy while we're gone, or our refrigerator is making our grocery list for us, or even ordering it, it certainly takes some of the "thinking" out of the equation. Where does the level of need start and or stop ? Do we need a razor that lets us know when it needs to be changed and orders other razors for us ?

Do we need an eyeball hanging from our ceiling like HAL or Justine (voiced by Kaley Cuoco in the movie Why Him) or has Alexa already fulfilled that need ? The life alert button was popular 30 years ago, can Alexa, or an Alexa-like product someday see that your heartbeat has stopped and call an ambulance for you ? That would be a practical application, as long as she didn't do it when you take off your watch in the shower.

Appliances are the rage in the IoT at the moment, as are cars that are self driving and connected to your refrigerator, but are we ready to have Watson as our best friend ? Maybe not for everyone but in a generation or two it may be the norm.

Do you have an IoT product that you're developing? Go to Gimelson.com to contact me.

Are You Using Your Time Effectively ? Here Are 5 Recommendations To Help You Prioritize.

If you are the impatient type, I will let you know that my 5 recommendations are at the end of this post . I couldn't in good conscience write a piece on the effective use of time and force you to read a bunch of fluff now could I ? I would suggest reading the recommendations first, and when you have the time to do so, go back and read the rest of my post. Unless you have time now, in which case, please proceed.

When you're a child the last thing that you have on your mind is time. You do what you want, until your parents tell you otherwise. Being in the role of a parent, I've come to realize that sometimes that doesn't work smoothly if the child in question, decides to put their mind into not wanting to comply.

As you grow older, your routines develop with you. Your first experiences in school often show that there are certain times for class, times scheduled to eat and probably most importantly times scheduled for play. This theme for time use follows us through college and afterwards into the workplace. Even though it's never really taught, it is something people intuitively pick up. 

I hadn't really thought about time until I was a teenager. Science fiction had me asking a lot of questions about it but I still wasn't sure about how important it was. In Phillip K Dick's novel that became the movie Blade Runner, there are artificially created robots, called replicants, who as a safety protocol, have specific dates when their functioning ends. In essence, they die. Being very sophisticated to act like people they become very attached (as we do) to the idea of being alive, and they don't want it to end. When you realize that all of our end games eventually will result with the same outcome, you start to realize how important time is to you.

Then there are the real scientists. In eighth grade I was told in a class that time travel was possible. I heard these words very skeptically, but it was true, even if no one was able to do it, we knew how. As you approach the speed of light, time speeds up. So if there was a person on earth and they gave a person boarding a space ship, a watch that was synchronized to theirs, if that space ship could go very fast and return, the persons watch on the space ship would be different than the one on earth. I was amazed. Time travel could only go in one direction, but we knew it was possible, and someday if we get space ships that can near the speed of light it may happen on a regular basis. Try not to let this ruin all of the episodes of Star Wars for you. For that purpose, just pretend light speed doesn't do anything so Luke, Han and Leah can all be on the same clock.

So far scientists haven't been able to figure out a formula or a process to go backwards in time, except in the movies like Back To The Future, and unfortunately Doc Brown never got around to publishing any papers on the matter, but I digress. There are theories that by using black hole time may be able to be altered, but again these are just theories.

Stephen Hawking had a more practical experiment regarding time travel, he threw a party,  for time travelers. He had champagne and hors d'oeuvres, and didn't send out the invitations until after the fact. Wait, what ? The idea being that this event would be widely published after the fact, that if any time travelers had read about it they would have made an effort to show up. Sadly, none did, that we know of.

So if you've made it this far in the reading I applaud you and I'll give you my thoughts on what you need to make use of your time effectively:

1 ~ Remember it's not how much time you spend on a task that's important it's how much time you need to complete it. If you need X amount of time but are given 3X, then don't sit on your thumbs for the extra time, work on something else. I always preferred teachers who gave a test and excused you after you were done. The ones who made you sit at your desk until the bell rang weren't allowing you to effectively use your time and in essence that was a bad habit they were creating.

2 ~ Some people don't relax well, they always want to be busy, and that's okay, but it is important to schedule some time for yourself. Whether that means reading a book, working out or meditating you need to make sure you and your body are getting what it needs. This was a good lesson most of us intuitively learned in our early years. We always knew when recess was, and lunchtime and bed. 

3 ~ Is what you are doing as a career actually worth your time ? This is a question that people too frequently do not ask, but may actually be the most important. Many people would like a pay raise, or supplemental income, but after the basics are covered and we have most of our needs met, we don't think about it again. If you are unhappy with your job or your career, don't quit on the spot, but start working on what you can do to change it.

4 ~ Time seems to be a more precious commodity the older you are. The saying "time is wasted on the youth" is an interesting one because it causes you to think, "have I been using my time in life effectively ?" When you're older or retired you would like to do all of the things you haven't done yet, but if you've gotten too old to do them., you may have already missed out. This goes back to the question you should be asking yourself, "am I making enough time for me?" If nothing else, it may make you think, should I be playing Candy Crush or working on my resume.

5 ~ My last thought is that you should spend time with people you care about, and don't waste your time on people or things that aren't rewarding to you or worse have a negative effect. There are exceptions here but if it's something you can't eliminate, try to minimize. I had a colleague who told me that I would love being a father, because it was the greatest thing he ever did. He is a fairly successful individual and to rationalize that made me think consciously to make the decision, I will focus on how important spending time with my children is. He was right, and it's my favorite part of the day. My wife and I try to enjoy every moment we can with them and personally I think that we should all be striving for this step in evaluating how we use time. It is certainly the most rewarding.