09.30.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:34 am by livefood
Just about as wierd a day as you can have…so far.
Yesterday was a Manic Monday…everything seemed to be needing attention, everyone also being needy. We got back to the house at 10:00 pm after a great 3 hours of bell practice with both groups…Dad got home from Boise…Sarah had a good second day on the new job…Katy was following up with a bit of side business…everything and everybody wanted a piece of time. They got it. I was exhausted when we got home and we watched a bit of TV while we ate MickyD’s finest. I have no idea what the show was about…it was a dud but I was too tired to even turn up the volume to hear it.
Today is the opposite…it’s even colder than yesterday…the wind is ripping. The house is a tad on the frigid side and the computer is talking at me…”I need more disc space”…I’m throwing out paper about as fast as anyone can…the stacks are diminishing and the phone could stand to ring a bit more frequently to cut through the boredom. Facebook postings are slow…email is less active…blogs are reaching for content…news feeds are fed up.
So if days could be bi-polar…yesterday was the manic and today is the depressed. The dog seems to “get it” and is sleeping through the day.
Hey Montana…think about shooting email to your Senators…ask them if they can redirect the 30+ million from the scheduled remodel of the border crossing at Scoby and Whitefish. Probably could use the money in the area for something that is really needed. It smacks of the “Bridge to Nowhere” and Montana is just too good to go down that path…email them…remind them that practicality is a good thing.
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09.29.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:23 am by livefood
Sure…
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Houses
Browse a huge selection now. Find
exactly what you want today.
(www.ebay.com)
…it was one of those all too frequent Yahoo ads. What is really runny…even if you found a FLW home for sale…there never were a “huge selection” by anyones stretch of imagination.
I had just ran a search for Fallingwater…so the ad was pushed in my direction…customized just for me. I can think of several items or things that I would not want to run a search on…
Body Organ of Choice
Browse a huge selection now. Find
exactly what you want today.
(www.ebay.com)
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09.28.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:01 pm by livefood
So Joe Q and Jane Doe-Q wake up on Saturday morning and the kid has a runny nose…what to do. Take the kid to the ER at the local hospital.
The government is proposing some variation or universal healthcare insurance, some have a goal of having everyone in the USA having healtcare insurance. Makes some sense, but what will that cost? When little Johnny Q is taken to the ER for runny nose, everyone pays. That’s stupid.
Having insurance does not address the root of healthcare. We are a fat and lazy society (by-and-LARGE). We don’t take care of ourselves and no amount of insurance will make us healthier. The system that encourages healthcare provider to do more procedures, see more patients, write more prescriptions as a function of billing more dollars will not be fixed by having insurance for everyone.
What started out as a healthcare for all movement has been pared down to selling more insurance…either through the government or private companies…but it doesn’t necessarily make the USA healthier.
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09.25.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:33 am by livefood
I get a lot of junk mail. If it were being sent thtough the Post Office I could say that I got a TON of mail…but we’re talking junk in the form of email. It’s not uncommon for my inbox to start the day with between 30 and 40 piece of junk and about the same in “good stuff.”
I have been able to curb some of the junk by politely answering the email with “REMOVE” in both the subject line and the body of the return…that works for some. I have set up “rules” in my outlook to take care of some persky and persistant folks. I have turned in one person to the FCC and they stopped that day (I did warn them that I was going to take the next step). Today I had to block an entire IP…so if you want to send me email, don’t do it from a Danish Yahoo account…not going to be seen.
I consider blocking an entire extension to be pretty drastic.
The willy nilly congressional folks come up with bogus laws from time to time…and they rattle their sabers in a political stunt so that we think they are taking care of our computers…but nearly all of the junk is coming from off shore OR from Xpats from off shore. I could say all, but a couple times a week there’s an piece of junk that is an exception. If the congressmen really think they can solve the issue, they should talk to the “Father of the Internet”…Mr. Gore…Congress can’t solve the issue…it’s somewhat cultural and definitely out of US control (that is if we want to keep our personal freedoms).
The bad thing…folks respond positively to the email…no fool would waste their time sending the spam if they were getting what they wanted…”sales.”
So in effect WE are OUR problem…don’t buy and they will stop trying to sell…of course someone else will come up with another project with a new product or service…and someone will buy that and start it all over again…was it P.T. Barnum who said something about a “fool born every minute.”
So here I go round and round with spammy email…and more people are being born to feed the machine.
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09.24.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:37 am by livefood
Oh please. Can the bottom of the barrel be upon us? Do we really have to hire idiots? I’m confidant that the vast majority of police folks are good people making good decisions and I have no problem with that. But some bad apples really make the whole profession look bad.
Lawsuit: Nurse Arrested For Not Giving Blood Test
Suit Claims No One Was In Charge Of ER After Nurse Was Arrested
“Could it be another black eye for the Chicago Police Department? A nurse claims an officer stormed into her hospital, slapped her in handcuffs and then locked her in the back of his squad car for 45 minutes. And she says it was for no good reason. CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports with details of the lawsuit she has now filed.”
Full Story
It really doesn’t help the police that there are so many crazy folks out there either. I mean really, do you think that police can become cynical from time to time? Would you want to run around say, Compton, and try to keep a finger on the pulse of “normal”…would you after the tour and finding a new job in Wyoming think that everyone is out twising and turning legality…and then tazer the first 76 year old on an antique tractor you run into for not obeying your basic traffic cop?
Like any box of apples, when you find a bad one you throw it out. Makes sense to me.
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09.23.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:51 pm by livefood
Can’t say that I miss her but what’s up with OCTOMOM? Does she realize that the Duggins got bun #19 in the oven? How will Octomom be able to keep up with “The Jones?”
Remember back in the beginning of the Summer when the 76 year old farmer got tazered for disobeying a couple of cops…outside investigation followes…cops got fired. Bad form on the cops part…they took the Grandson off the tractor befor they tazered the guy…so they couldn’t have taken him off the rig too? Please…now the cops will go someplace else to make dumb decisions on a new group of folks. The decision was dumb enough to disqualify them from security cops at the mall.
Healthcare debates seem to be going on and on…but the congress is working bills to the floor. So how do we feel about the cost of affordable? I’m at a loss to try to find out what they think affordable is. The only (and mean ONLY) way that affordable gives the flexibility of pricing is when the level of service is flexed…that is the limits that will have to be placed on coverage…the way it is…it just ain’t going to cover everything. The naysayers want to use the term “rationing” to scare us…but realistically, there will be need to be different levels of services someplace in the system. I’m sure it will be better than some folks being given a tissue to cry in and some the new liver…but levels will exist (as in all insurances).
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09.22.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:31 pm by livefood
“Two months after a plainclothes Minnesota sheriff’s deputy fatally shot an unarmed man wearing only swim trunks, family members of the dead man say they’re still waiting for an explanation.”…I picked this story up from the SF Chronicle…but the event took place in Le Center, Minn…aparently not all the weird stuff happens in California.
I mean really…
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09.21.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:01 pm by livefood
What a busy weekend. Once upon a time in a fairy tale life weekends were to relax a bit and fill the gas tank to be able to face the new week. Now it’s more of a week packed into two days and the other week is packed into five. Weekends can busier than the “work” week.
Yesterday, our Church day, was wicked-crazy. We are starting a new youth bell choir at the Church and yesterday was the kick-off. Of course that means I was finding new and exciting material up until we walk out to the car. The program went well. The kids are beaming. But when it was over so was I.
What we didn’t really think about too much was the moving the bells and tables into the first floor room…a temporary fix to the third floor room we will be using next week…it’s about 400 pounds of gear. On Thursday I pulled it all out of a basement and packed it into my truck…on Saturday some went upstairs and some went down (the entrances to the Church are on the second floor)…Sunday the downstairs went up.
That’s over a half ton…not that much but the temperatures in the Church were pushing mid-90s with no air conditioning…okay…no air movement except that which was created by my walking…up and down the stairs.
Thankfully I remain 39…but today I feel a tad older.
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09.18.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:53 pm by livefood
So at a recent conference the keynote speaker asked for a show of hands on a series of questions; How many of you are US citizens…How many of you are employeed…How many of you are covered by health insurance? The majority of the folks in the room raised their hands to each of the questions. It was not a simple majority nor was it a super majority… it was a VAST majority of the people raising their hands.
The speaker wanted to draw a conclusion that employeed people tend to be covered by health insurance and unemployeed people tend not to be covered. I’m not sure I would want to come to that conclusion with the particular sample in the room, but he did. He did state that while employeed folks may have access they may also think that the cost of care is too high…so a little fairness was thrown in for good measure.
He sits on the board of directors of a huge lobbying group (a major player in the Washington debates). I fear that he, along with folks on the left, are all dug into holes that may not be in the best interest of the country.
What ever the cost, the first step is to assure that everyone who wants health insurance has access to same. Step two would be to find a way to make it affordable. Unfortunately affordable will mean limits in coverage. It’s that way with homeowners insurances and car insurance, it will be the same for healthcare…Sorry if that’s the first time you every heard of that…limits are on their way.
I have limits on my HMO…and pay about $8K a year. Between my wife and I…it’s $16K or so…not including the co-pays and the med costs. Yikes. There are some who think it’s a great plan (I tend to agree)…but is it affordable? Well…if the HMO was to lower the cost that would mean a degradation in services (duh)…and I’m not sure I would like that.
The speaker spends time in Washington as well as working in his high profile position…he is in a position to make observations. One of his observations is that the folks in WA keeping “opening doors” in their debates and when they do, they are so overwhelmed by what they see, hear and find that they “slam the door” and hope that what is behind the door will solve itself. In short, he thinks that they are overwhelmed by the size and the scope of healthcare.
Brenda was in charge of a rather large convention. In the first meetings she told them that the process of planning the convention was like eating an elephant…you do it one bite at a time.
Perhaps the folks in WA could take that metaphore and take healthcare one bite at a time…stop trying to get it all done at one time and take a little bite to taste the thing. They could just nimble…but they really need to start. The longer they wait the bigger the elephant grows.
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09.15.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:04 pm by livefood
A couple of Wednesdays back, I played my drum with some fellow Irish music enthusiastics…a great group of folks who sometimes chat while others are playing…join in when they know the tune…very quietly hack along to learn new ones.
It was a gorgeous evening on the lawn in back of the house looking up the Lucas Valley towards the sunset. Just a wonderful event…
dispite the announcement of terminal lung cancer by our host. John has known about the problem for a number of years. The doctors have told him there is nothing more they can do. He out battled the cancer longer than than expects…he feels at peace with the end.
What a man. No tears in the group. He has done us all a huge favor in helping us keep our groups together for the last six years. We have spun off another in West Marin…and support two new sessions…one in Fairfax and the newest in Petaluma. I wonder if any of those groups could have taken hold if not for John puttng the glue down to hold it together.
But to be able to stand in front of group of 25 or so of your friends and make the formal announcement of your departing and in the same breath thank everyone for their work in support of the Irish music…thinking not of himself and focusing on the others is quite amazing. Truly a special guy.
So it will be with mixed feelings that I was in San Diego this past week at a convention that has been on my calendar for the past 6 years. My wife in the chairman of the event and even John would have wanted me to be here and not at the ceili on his lawn this past Wednesday…but still I’d like to be playing the music and watching John enjoy the group…so I look forward to this coming Wednesday…John’s lawn…good people and a very special host who was titled by our local newspaper as the “Grandfather of Irish Music” in our region.
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