Vacation in San Diego

We spent a few days in San Diego last week for Lucas' birthday. We visited Legoland and Sea-Life(the aquarium next door) and the San Diego zoo. Overall, Legoland was enjoyable for 3-6 year olds, the rides were innocuous and unexciting. There weren't quite as many actual Legos as I thought there would be. The time of year and the previous week of hard rain had scared away all the crowds, so we had to wait just once more than 15 minutes for a ride. SeaLife was mediocre, it was clearly just an afterthought added on to Legoland. It was probably only worth 2 hours of entertainment. The world famous San Diego Zoo was impressive, but not quite as impressive as I had imagined. It's bigger and better than the SF zoo, but not amazingly better. Though we didn't go out on the Safari adventure, just the main Zoo. We stayed at the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort and had very nice rooms for a very good price, probably a combination of the time of year and the economy. They have nice rooms, a big pool and mini-waterpark for kids. We also had a good experience with food. We enjoyed Gregorios, Karl Strauss, and Bistro West. Overall it was all very nice. I'd definitely go back.

What kids learn

Lucas has shown some interesting things lately. For one, he's learned to lie. 6 months or a year ago, he didn't know what it was. You could ask him if he did something bad, and he'd tell you. Now when he does something bad, and we call him out on it, he is able to lie to try and get out of it. He doesn't do it all the time, but I am pretty sure he understands that he's lying.

Also there's been a change in how he solves problems. We are doing the same simple jigsaw puzzle we did a year ago, it's got about 50 big pieces or so. We've done the puzzle dozens of times. When we did it a year ago, he'd memorize the picture on a piece and be able to put it exactly where it went. It was impressive, he'd do a better job than I would much of the time. Now he solves the puzzle algorithmically the way I do. He analyzes a piece and searches for neighbors, unfortunately it's quite a bit slower than his old methodology, but at least it doesn't require repetition to get better.

Lucas is starting to learn to read, but hasn't gotten too far yet. He's probably average or a bit ahead for his age, but I would like him to overachieve a little more.

Bethany Beach

Been a while since I posted. The family spent last week in Bethany Beach, DE. It's a nice, oceanside, suburban town with a lot of nice houses that you can rent out during the summer. We got 2 big houses for the extended family and spent a week there mostly just hanging out. We spent a couple days at the beach and some time driving to the nearby boardwalk at Rehoboth. We played a round of mini-golf and I saw a whale from the boardwalk. We didn't eat out more than a couple of meals. Because the houses had full kitchens, we cooked most of the time. We celebrated my dad's 75th birthday. Overall it was a great time, mostly because I got to see my family and Lucas and Lauren got to hang out with their cousins.

Health Care

I'm a liberal, but in my old age I'm a bit more conservative and I'm swayed by using proper economic incentives to achieve societal goals. I am generally a fan of using free markets and pricing to guide people because it's the simplest, most predictable method of encouraging change. But health care is a massive, complex problem which clearly is not working and there doesn't seem to be a way to fix it without massive government intervention. I start with the premise that we want at least basic health care with universal coverage. A couple of things I've heard recently make me think that free markets are not the way to go. The various components of the health care industry have perverse a set of incentives that are sort of contradictory to overall public health.

First, doctors are paid by the procedures they do and not the overall quality of life that they provide to the public they serve.

Second, health insurance agencies can achieve financial success by avoiding paying out claims. Insurance companies spend a large amount of effort to avoid covering expensive patients and procedures.

Third, consumers have no way of ever understanding, valuing or navigating through the health care system without professional help.

I think we need a publicly funded health care option. It's critical for someone you trust to step in between the consumer and health care provider to give you the best value for care, set cost limits, and negotiate with providers. Government may not be the most efficient way of doing this, but at least you don't have to second guess the intentions of the government like you do with an insurance company.

New car stereo

This weekend we went strawberry picking and I also got a new car stereo for my Prius. Mainly I was looking for better iPhone integration. My 2005 Prius had pretty limited options for that. Mostly I wanted something that would charge my iPhone and play music, other features would be nice to have, but not a requirement. Another factor is that the navigation on my Prius sucks badly, it has a number of annoying traits, bad UI, and bad directions. A friend recommended All Pro Audio in Santa Clara, and the owner Jim Lee is a nice, knowledgeable guy. He recommended two options. If I was just looking for iPhone integration, the Parrot MKi9200 which had all the basics, bluetooth phone, ipod music, small display mounted separately wherever I wanted. If I wanted to add in a navigation system, then he had the Pioneer AVIC-7010 which was a full replacement for the existing car stereo and navigation system but would leave some of the features on the existing display(climate control, trip computer, engine/battery monitors).

I opted for the Pioneer and got it installed overnight. I'm pretty happy with the system so far, but it has a few issues. I have to go back for a second install because they didn't have the parts do the dashboard finishing and they disconnected the old display features like the climate control system. The unit itself is pretty good, but a couple of the controls I had to look at the manual for. The nav system is pretty good. The ipod controls are good. The Bluetooth phone seems fine but I've only used it minimally and I don't really expect to use it much. Among the less expected features, a USB jack, an auxiliary RCA jack, a mini SD card jack, voice recognition for playing albums, software upgradeability, HD Radio ready. It cost about $1k installed(the Parrot would've cost about half that), but I now have the audio flexibility I wanted.