Real milestone yesterday, as my company had its first employee start. It's a big investment for me, but one I think will pay off. I feel good about it. She was already giving suggestions on improving the assays I'm running. New experience for me navigating all of the legal and administrative side of things...which agencies to register with, how to do payroll, where the hell to buy health insurance. If I can raise more money, I'm definitely making an administrative assistant my next hire!
We've been dealing with a bunch of bullshit related to this lately. The pandemic literally bumped us from 3 employees to like nine (not including contractors) and we used this thing called ClockTree that was mostly "zoom for psychologists" but it also had a marvelous HR module built in for free. Unfortunately Clocktree shut down yesterday so every payroll form, tax form, health department form etc needs a new home. After much digging the smart money seems to be "use Asana" but I hated Asana in beta, used Asana while hating it for like two years, and bought the whole company Ora because it's basically Asana you can use (that bills you from Bulgaria which always puckers my bank's asshole). If you can find a broker you like they can hook you up with insurance. They're likely not going to be able to do much with... two. Costco has pretty good prices for employer health plans but not a lot of versatility but at your stage in the game I don't think you'll beat them.
You will get a bored person who will send you boring spreadsheets. So here's the thing about the exchange. 1) there are probably pretty rippin' subsidies available. 2) If you offer any kind of insurance plan, those subsidies are right out. For the entire company. 3) "covering the cost via higher pay" had best not be written down anywhere or it is cut-and-dried insurance fraud. I've been trying to make health insurance make sense for my employees for going on three years now. Their income levels, their hours worked and their available subsidies have meant that my cost for not boning my poorest employees is $50k a year to me... and chances have been excellent that my richest employees would turn down my insurance anyway because they're getting it for free through their spouses. So here I am, over a million dollars in revenue a year, buying insurance for a family of 3 off the exchange and waiting 4 months for an appointment to get my blood pressure meds re-upped. It's a deeply fucked up system. There's effectively no incentive for providing employer health insurance for any company under a bajillion people. We had dinner with friends on Saturday; she's the head of benefits for a cruise line and she can do things like "hey Primera our plan now covers this" and they go "yes'm". It neither helps nor hurts that her counterpart at Primera used to be her direct report when she was at Primera because when you have 50,000 employees across 24 time zones you have leverage. But if you've got nine employees? Having one of them opt out changes rates for the entire company. And uhhh when every.single.one.of.them is a woman of childbearing age... ...hold onto your butts.
Man, this month’s expensive. Now that I have a bunch of free time to fix things in the house and pick up slash revive hobbies, I’m on a spending spree. The big one is that I bought my first car today. The intersection between “EV with a decent range & fastcharging”, “small and relatively affordable car”, and “actually a good car” turns out to be very small, but we found it in the Peugeot e-208 / Opel Corsa-e. They’re both the same Stellantis car under the hood, the difference is purely in the design. We liked both to drive but the French make some weird ass interior choices. After a year of weird ass interior choices from Volkswagen we opted for the car where the buttons are actually where you expect them to be. Last week I ordered a new aquarium! After picking up the hobby as a bit of escapism towards nature during lockdowns, I’ve been maintaining a nano tank for a while now. I always wanted a bigger one, especially since we now live in a bigger house, but didn’t get around to it. Now I’m redoing the home office I have the perfect spot for it. I went with a 48 gallon tank from Oase. I haven’t decided yet on what to fill it with - except one thing. It occurred to me that a tank this big means I have a lot of room for dope, unnecessary follies, so I set myself the challenge to get a 3D printed rollercoaster part for the fishes and plants to weave through as part of the aquascape. My first idea was to make a 3D file and send it off to a print shop, but kleinbl00 convinced me that it’s a better (and much more fun) path to learn some 3D modeling and printing. I always have a hard time denying myself the opportunity to learn a new skill, so the printer came in the mail today. Can’t wait to tinker with that tomorrow!
LOL I call this piece "there must be a better way, this is stupid, surely you haven't backed yourself into that deep of a corner, you need to order connectors and drive to Portland anyway why don't you think on it over the weekend and see if the situation has gotten that desperate"
Right now? No. Could I have 'em poke out the other way? Prolly. Can I make it smaller? Not really. see I don't really have room for screws because I have the master valves back there and they'll penetrate. And frankly the thing is too big to print flat because my bed isn't that big. Print it at a 45 degree angle so the labels don't look like ass? Well you just gained 41% more length lol. And this is why I design, then think about it, then go "that's not going to work" and reconsider. Somewhere I have my wire carriers as gothic arches... those didn't print worth a shit. Prolly took 4 iterations to end up with what I did. The ECM schema is on Version 3.
Questioning many things. I think my values got a little outta whack the past two years. I need to focus on the things that matter: family, friends, health and creativity. I’m interested in deepening old friendships more than I am in creating new ones. But so many of those friends are in Michigan. Makes it hard. My family is there too. Wish we still lived there. But then, that’s easy to say in the summertime :) I hope you are all doing well. I forever remain grateful for Hubski. Onward!
This planet is lousy with life. So many invasive plants in my garden I'm trying to hold at bay. The native ones I planted got mowed down by bunnies and kept growing back until I fenced them, and now those are over a foot high. One is milkweed that's important for butterflies. I see bluejays and cardinals in my garden. I've seen lightning bugs and what I think are soldier beetles. There's a maple sapling at my fence I'm going to try to dig up this fall and put in my yard.