Chris.S

Only open to Americans

I like how Athol Kay puts it in his blog "Married Man Sex Life". A guy needs to balance alpha/beta male characteristics. Some guys go too far both ways, but the right balance has to be found, depending on the couple. Can be something between 60/40 to 80/20 or more, but the man has to take the lead and that doesn't include being overly emotional in the early part of a relationship. His blog helped me put words to the way I already was acting in my own marriage, and we're fantastic.

Being in the construction industry myself and having to learn the building code here in Ontario, I've often had the same conflict in my thoughts and with others. For the most part, the building code here is what I think it would be if written by a private organization, in that construction professionals ranging from designers to builders to safety specialists (among others) are consulted to craft the Code. Still, the fact that government is involved and assumes every builder will construct a tinder box that locks from the outside during a fire is pretty ludicrous. Owners, insurers, bonders, banks, lawyers, subcontractors and every other project participant would be involved in taking an unsafe builder to the cleaners at court. And in my company, health and safety comes above everything, which is one of the bigger reasons it's doing so well. People and other companies don't want to do business with unsafe builders, and news of any major accident resulting in serious harm or death gets around quick and can really damage a clean reputation. And actually, even one major safety incident, or a few minor ones on record, can mean the difference between getting a job or not, even if you have the better bid (same goes for pre-qualification on big projects). I do think that government involvement in building codes (or any safety codes) is immoral, but it's kind of like the argument with roads: government shouldn't be involved, but as long as it is, it may as well set the safety standards to a reasonable level. If I get a chance I'd like to try to reverse that, but I'd be one drop of water going against the current.

Update: Finally finished school! 4 years of torture, but it paid off yesterday when I got a really good employment offer from a great company that I've been trying to get into since Oct. 2011. Feels fantastic! I'll be doing construction management for a construction services company. They work in mining, metals, energy and infrastructure, which is a big change from my ideas of 3 years ago, but I think that's the best area to be in for a long while. And I've taken a lot of inspiration from Alex Epstein and the CIP, so eventually I'll try and do some writing work in that area as well. So pumped for this. I don't think I would be here either without having picked up Atlas Shrugged one fateful day in March 2008. Amazing what a rational philosophy can do for a person. Also want to throw a shout out to all the really great folks who regularly post and moderate this forum who provided a nice venue for working out thoughts and ideas, and coming at issues from different angles. Y'all are great. Thank you. Oh yeah and my lady went full on capitalist a long time ago!