I'm 42 and my wife is 43. We've been married 20 yrs and decided before we got married that we didn't want children unless we could come up with compelling reasons to do so. We never did.
We got crap from family, a few friends (good friends were fine about it) and, lots of strangers for whom it should have been none of their business.
Basically, when most people ask why, there's no answer other than infertility that results in anything other than them telling us we're wrong. So many people who have or want to have kids see voluntarily choosing not to have them as not just a personal choice, but as an affront to everything they believe in.
That's not even to mention those who want and can't have kids who have gotten really bitter when the topic comes up. I just avoid it whenever I can.
On the plus side, as we passed 40, I think people assume that we couldn't rather than we chose not to have kids and very few people ask anymore.
If you have or want kids and that makes you happy, wonderful. But, far too many people take what's a pretty longstanding decision as a challenge to convince us to change our minds.
CPAP treatment (and no other substantial changes in my life) brought my blood pressure down from 160/110 down to 118/78. Previous doctors had tried, without success, to lower it with massive beta blockers and other medication. I just needed some damned sleep.
Most of the machines sold now are continuous, but not at constant pressure. Mine's set to detect apnea events and adjust between 5-15 for pressure and to adjust that further based on exhalation.
I believe my neurologist was one of those who helped develop that device (Cornelius). Can't log in to see, but sounds like the same thing. But, he keeps me on an adjustable CPAP machine instead because of how my sleep apnea works.
My ResMed S9 machine detects exhalation (configurable levels) and backs off of the pressure. The mask that I wear (covers mouth and nose) has small holes that vent both exhalation and the pressurized air. The air flow out of those holes is relatively stable during both inhale and exhale, with the machine adjusting pressure to keep fresh air flowing through the mask and maintaining the pressure.
I bill an average of 1816 hours a year. 10 holidays, 3 weeks of vacation, 3 sick days and a week a year finding new gigs. That's been the case for the last 12 years.
I used to not drink, partially on the basis that my understanding was that it is healthier. Then someone showed me the mountain of evidence for the positive health benefits of moderate drinking: http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html#.UlasF...
Now, I drink moderately, an option that seems left out of most conversations about this topic. That means I never drink more than 3 "standard" drinks a day, rarely fewer than 1. I never drink those 3 any faster than an hour (because I'd never drink 3 glasses of anything else that fast either). At that rate, I'm never drunk. I'm never unable to drive a vehicle. I'm never foggy-headed or otherwise impaired. Likewise, I never have a hangover.
I just finished a project with ASP.NET MVC over PostgreSQL via NHibernate. Worked great. Just out of curiosity, I actually even set it up so I could change it over to SQL Server with a config change. While it was a small and relatively uncomplicated data model (20 tables or so), it encouraged me to consider doing this combo more often. This project is hosted on AWS with AWS RDS for pgsql. Made it easy to use the basic Windows servers on AWS and not have to manage the data servers for pgsql.
"It already exists" at first looks like a reason not to build something. But, is the version that already exists really the same as your implementation would be?
Outside of software, it's obvious that "it already exists" doesn't stop anyone. Does the long list of Italian restaurants, gastropubs or microbreweries stop anyone from starting another one, with their unique twist?
Even in software, did existing social networks stop Facebook from starting another one and taking over the top spot?
Does the existence of "a web application framework" stop anyone from building a better one that matches their opinions/approach?
The only real sin would be to make an exact copy of something that already exists without making your version better in some way. Make it more user-friendly, more powerful, more configurable, cheaper, more business-friendly, etc.
The best way to get paid $55,000 is to prove to them that you make or save them $110,000 a year.
Asking for a raise makes it all about you. If you can make it all about THEM, and what THEY get from your continuing to work there, it's amazing how many "rules" can be made to disappear.
I was deemed "smart" in high school (I was regularly teased and mockingly called "Professor"), but lazy enough about things like homework that I stayed on the "B" honor roll all of the way through.
I went on to do very similar in college, getting a "B" average and graduating with a "useless" BA in English.
I had always enjoyed playing with computers and, in a desperate attempt to find a "real job" after I graduated, I took a job as a tech writer for $32K a year. I hated it.
Thinking it was the job, I switched to another tech writing job, which I hated more than the first. Turns out, I hated the profession.
At that point, I decided that what I saw the software developers doing around me was really what I wanted to do, so I spent the next couple of years working my ass off to become qualified to get hired as a software dev. I took writing gigs that were largely web-related and started building stuff in my evenings and weekends to have something to show people when applying for jobs.
A year later, I was working as a web developer at a consulting company, building database-driven web apps for 3M and Wells Fargo.
A year later, I quit full-time employment and became an independent software developer.
I have done so for 9 years. For the last 2 years running, I made $170K (in Minneapolis, MN, equiv to $235K in San Francisco).
I'm working on a product/platform to branch out from consulting revenue.
Am I retiring because I built a startup that went from 0 to $50 million in a year? No. However, I do have a comfortable life, love what I do and not a single soul has asked me about my college or high school transcript in 15 years.
What they HAVE asked me about is what I've built, what I've accomplished, etc. That's all stuff entirely within my control. I work hard to build stuff and, in doing so, get opportunities to build more interesting stuff.
I tend to debug on paper fairly often. I print out a pile of code and go off to a quiet room and digging through it seems to make more sense to me sometimes than staring at the monitor does.
I believe that founders should start taking a salary of some sort immediately. However, I think that the salary can be deferred if the money isn't actually there. However, not having it on the books at all is pretending that one of the very real costs of the business isn't really there.
I do, using PasswordMaker. Plugs into browsers, runs standalone from a keychain drive, multi platform, etc. You use one main password that it combines with the site name to get a site-specific password.
I/E isn't as much about whether you are "outgoing" or "gregarious", etc. It's really more about whether you:
* Process things internally/externally
* Get energy from being with people or find being with people "draining"
I'm also an I who has learned socially acceptable things like public speaking, participating in group discussions, etc. but a couple of hours in such a group and I'm exhausted while my E wife is energized.
If you're more just trying to make really nice forms for web applications, there's a nice set of CSS themes from Wufoo. I've been using them for lots of my prototypes before we hire someone to do the final design. In the mean time, all of our demos look nice.
We got crap from family, a few friends (good friends were fine about it) and, lots of strangers for whom it should have been none of their business.
Basically, when most people ask why, there's no answer other than infertility that results in anything other than them telling us we're wrong. So many people who have or want to have kids see voluntarily choosing not to have them as not just a personal choice, but as an affront to everything they believe in.
That's not even to mention those who want and can't have kids who have gotten really bitter when the topic comes up. I just avoid it whenever I can.
On the plus side, as we passed 40, I think people assume that we couldn't rather than we chose not to have kids and very few people ask anymore.
If you have or want kids and that makes you happy, wonderful. But, far too many people take what's a pretty longstanding decision as a challenge to convince us to change our minds.