I renamed my blog again. For the fourth time if I remember right. And I guess this time it is an honest title (title #1 “Motorcycle diary of Joy Dutta” – too specific, title #2 “Joy Dutta’s blog” – too boring, title #3 “Joy Dutta on work|play|life” — too cheesy).

I hate boredom since eternity. To stay productive, I had to make a safety net of hobbies that I can enjoy in a round robin fashion. In other words I simply rotate my activities in convenient intervals. Photography consumes the most of my free time and it is something very hard to be bored with. Despite that sometimes I am full of ideas to build physical objects rather than two dimensional ones. That is when I find the most pleasure using my woodworking tools to convert my 3D visualizations into a product. Those are the good times.

Even outside hobbies, there are many productivity tasks to be done. Too much progress is happening in the internet technology arena and it would be a career suicide if we software engineer folks don’t keep up with the latest ideas and workflows. There is non-stop learning and self-improvement opportunities which we must avail. We are living in exponential times and must deal with the ever shortening times to do even more interesting stuff.

My blog is really an attempt to jot down my productive explorations and life experiences. Tech tips, tutorials, ideas, homemade contraptions. You name it, you can see it here.

In other words, there is simply no time to watch the stupid TV !

Less than a year. A few regular doctor visits and regular checkup tests. That is what it takes for the healthcare system to unveil its bloody fangs and other dirty secrets.

As the system works, we go to our family physician, pay $10 copay and the rest is taken care of. $20 for a specialist, which is still fine. A few weeks back Priti had to see a specialist for some consulation on a procedure. Desk receptionist checked my insurance card, I paid my copay and we talked to the doctor. After 15 minutes of consultation the doc mentioned some procedures but said she would first verify if my insurance would cover it.

Next day we got a call from her and as we feared, she was not covered under my insurance. So we thought, fine, we would find another specialist who can do the procedure while being covered.

The next bill from the Aetna caught us off guard. $350 charges for that 15 min consultation is NOT APPROVED ! Patients are not told if insurance covers the consultation but fees are anyway charged. Brilliant scheme, I must say. Sounds like the regime of Shylock, huh ?

It will be interesting to see how it unfolds from here. I have sent an email to my Aetna asking an explanation. Maybe I should also ask if they cover injuries caused by severe rectal trauma as well, assuming that is already a “pre-existing” case of most insured people in this country.

Update:
It gets even more interesting. In the words of a friend of mine:

I experienced a slight variation of this. My doctor called up the insurance and asked if the suggested treatment was covered to which they answered in the affirmative. I get a bill from the doctor’s office a year later with the charges. I inquire and they tell me the insurance declined to cover it later. I said that it was absurd to tell the patient that it was covered before the treatment and then shifting the cost to the patient later to which she applied ‘Yes unfortunately that happens all the time and there isn’t anything we can do about it.’

Update:
The doctor’s office called us and said not to worry about the $350 bill, it was taken care of. Cool. This is what I don’t get here. First, there will be bills of obscene amounts. Then the claim history will show that insurance paid a fraction of it or denied it. And the patient will remain confused about the real out-of-pocket cost for anything. So much for a first world health care system.

I am writing this in regard to the recent completion of my wife’s PhD, the turn of events surrounding it and the general reflection of how our perceptions of reality played out. This is going to be solely an uncensored brain dump and not guaranteed to be pleasing for some academic folks. You are warned.

I have a 4 year engineering bachelors, 2 year masters and a collective 5 years of IT industry experience. My wife has a 3 year science bachelors, 2 year masters and a 7 year PhD (6 of those years apart). I believe I have learnt enough to put down some informed thoughts about how educational degrees work and how one should take career decisions that would affect the whole life.

So, what exactly is the value of a PhD ? Who should do it ?

As far as I can understand, a PhD is a mandatory “certification” for any academic career, regardless of how much bullshit is involved to get it done. Bullshit is unfortunately everywhere in our lives, especially in industry, and academia is not spared either. Now the question is how to know if it is worth to you. What do you really want to do with your life ? Be a dedicated academic with triple post doctoral degrees and keep producing a gazillion grant-money-inducing papers which no one will read except peers looking to fill the “related work” column ? Be a scientist and work at a research lab ? Or just be a college professor ? If either of the above appeals to you, by all means enjoy 6-10 years of grad school, and not to forget, phdcomics. If you think there are better or different things to do with life which I think is the case most of the time, then get some real degrees needed to get into industry and grow there! I can’t even stop emphasizing how important real life experience is, and how money talks and bullshit walks. A well-planned and well-executed project in the smallest of the companies can really mean a lot than just another paper published in IEEE talking about a vague idea laden with unrealistic assumptions, no matter how “crisp and articulate” the writing is. We should not forget that academia depends on grant money coming mostly from government and using it produce 99% bloated publications is by no means fair. If you are not discovery-channel-crazy about pursuing science, please do your country a favor and get a real job which will contribute to the GDP at the least. I know it sounds like a hate-article, but trust me I have facts. I have a few friends from grad school doing excellent work in their fields and I am genuinely proud to know them. But consider my own batch, a bunch of 20-25 students who came to the US with dreams of a PhD. Except for a few, nearly everyone figured out what PhD actually meant for them (and ran in the opposite direction as fast as they could, including me) – a mechanism to read 10 papers and produce the 11th by just a small tweak in the collective idea. Just an epsilon, cause you can’t just have an invention or an earth shattering idea every week or month or even a year ! It is more an exercise of articulate writing, which is actually a great thing, but it defeats the purpose. And then the most well written papers get accepted in international conferences, where you get to meet more researchers aka future “citations”. I wish I had been to such conference at least once. Free trip, free food, and touristy pictures in front of the vatican or the Eiffel tower to post on facebook or flickr; what is not to like ?

A regular job on the other hand may not be a total dreamland. Most of the time it will probably suck. Corporate bullshit is abundant in large companies since not everyone has their hands full with real work. But it pays the bills and leaves extra. With just the right amount of education you can land a job that you like, with very good prospects of growth, both in terms of position and income, and all that matters in industry is competence. Making functional (positive ROI) products and services under time constraints is in my book more accomplishment than producing an almost-functional cool prototype for sake of doing cool work which can’t even be productized due to negative ROI.

Now, If you wanted to have activities on the side, a well paying job makes it all the more feasible. If you have wild dreams, make them come true using the money you can earn from the right job for you, and the earlier you realize it the better.

A friend of mine makes a legendary example of how life can be made exciting minus the bullshit. Repeated failures in college on subjects outside his interest did not deter him a bit. He chose to work on side jobs of odd hours and low pay alongside getting his necessary minimum degree. He dreamt big, but kept his steps simple and realistic. Today he flies airplanes and manages IT infrastructure of a small firm all by himself. His wife, coming from an equally simple background and education, is doing really well in another small firm. Being an efficiency-zealot myself, I am really really happy about the equation of output vs effort that is reflected in their lives.

In the end, I think life revolves around Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. You can’t measure something if you can’t experience it. And once you experience it, the measurement gets severely altered. But I am also hoping that this should not be the case for everyone, if someone wise enough cares to share some enlightenment.

Having a PhD is awesome, but only for 1% of the those aspiring for it. Ok, I made up that 1% thing, I know I overestimated. So decide whether you belong to that gifted slice, or just get out and thank me later for saving your life.

This is by no means a generalization, but just a copy-paste from my tired brain in one of those rare moments when I “see” a glimpse of the big picture, complete with humor, satire and the works. If you feel like pelting a tomato or a rotten egg, please do so, I will be glad, ’cause this cost me a freaking Friday morning to write !

And no, I don’t hate that my own beloved wife got a PhD. Only we know what we went through and I am dead sure we can make up that 6 years of lost time, even if that means making some hard sacrifices in the future. I would be really, really, really happy to be proved wrong that we let all those years of our prime age wither away for nothing.

My gut feel always wins.

When Priti had to visit India for her thesis submission and defense in January, she was certain that everything would be over by end of April. The logic went like this – thesis submission deadline in January end, and in best cases the report comes back in 2 months, add one extra week for defense and 3 weeks to visit family and she would be free. But come on, a PhD in India which takes around 7 slow-motion years, we can’t expect deadlines and best cases to work back to back, can we ?

So in the back of my mind I thought if I had booked the ticket from January to September, it would be MUCH easier to prepone when she would be packed up to fly immediately. Rather we hoped everything would be over by April end, maybe a little later which could be adjusted once free of penalties. But postponing is always an uncertain thing to do than preponing, as our luck turned out. Thanks to her irresponsible advisor who decided to take a summer trip out of country in May, being fully aware of our plight and timing hell. The defense can’t happen without her, she comes back in August, and the validity of the already postponed ticket is till July first week.

Lesson learnt: For a trip out of country with uncertain return dates, book longer than you will possibly need with provision of one free adjustment.

The fault is mine to not follow my instincts.

I just got the bill from the hospital for the ER visit of Priti a month back. I took her for a quick thumb x-ray and glad I did because it was indeed a fracture which Priti refused to believe.

So now the bill says I have to pay $50 in all, which is reasonable. But then I looked at the actual bill amount and nearly choked. $2000 for one x-ray ! Ok, it is probably a bloated amount and the insurance pays less than that. But to think of someone without adequate insurance going to a hospital or ER – I just can’t imagine.

The new year indeed started with a bang for us. Our first ski trip ended up with a thumb fracture of Priti, 4 days before her India trip. In general I never try to do activities posing some risk of injury before a major trip or event. Even having a bunch of xmas holidays, I decided to not do any bike trips. What happened was actually a loud reminder to me as to what happens when I ignore my sixth sense.

A couple of friends asked us for a ski trip to bear valley. I never did that in my 2.5 year long stay in the east coast. Priti also had never been to such place. I agreed thinking we would have some fun, but deep inside I was uncomfortable about the impending journey date for her India trip – a major one for her, to finish the PhD. I jeopardized it and Murphy’s law also came true.

We started enjoying the ski lessons at bear valley, despite the frequent falls. I practised falling on the sides safely and asked her to do the same. After a while I saw her getting up from a minor fall but complaining about some pain on the left thumb. She was not grimacing so I figured maybe just a muscle sprain. Not to take any more chances we immediately visited the first aid room and they bandaged the finger with a stick and crepes. The ski day was over for the two of us and we let the others finish up while we just walked around. She kept saying it could not be a fracture else the pain would be much more. How could we know for sure ?

Drove back home around 10pm and to be 100% sure we went to the Camino hospital Emergency Room. She was still sure it was just a twisted muscle. After the x-ray my nightmare became reality. A hairline fracture showed up on the base of the second bone from top. It was a sick-to-stomach feeling at the moment. The finger got partially casted (splint) and have to see an orthopedic surgeon for a proper cast.

3 days left before she leaves for India. Managing things with 1.5 hands is gonna be hard for her. I just hope it heals in time and there are no other complications.

Update (5-Jan-09): Went to see an orthopedic doctor today at Camino Medical Center (Mountain View) and got a fiberglass cast done on her hand. An Indian American doctor treated her and assured it was just a small fracture and would heal in a few weeks, but full recovery should take 3 months.