My Blood
The Neville Brothers
Ja, please come to the crossroads
You can save the children, I know
Ja, please come to the crossroads
Tell them to let the people go now
Ja, go to Mother Africa
Answer this prayer for me
Ja, come to Mother Africa
Set all the people free
That’s my blood down there
Over Mother Africa
My blood down there
That’s my blood down there
Oh yes it is now
That’s my blood down there
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Can someone explain to me why anyone gives a flip about the Oscars? With all the things going on in the area and the world, why is the Oscars at the top of the front page? Why is all the ink wasted discussing what so-and-so wore? Where are the people who care about this?
In my mind the Academy Awards is nothing but a Hollywood circle-jerk: a bunch of overpaid bimbos and bozos patting themselves on the back, sneering “we’re more perfect than you are” at America. Its the biggest, clique-ish private club around. We peons are invited to gawk.
Sorry but I don’t get it. If Hollywood wants to congratulate itself by passing out awards among its members, that’s fine with me. I just don’t see why anyone outside of Hollywood should care. I can’t name a single person whose life will be directly affected by this show. Maybe my movie-biz friends can enlighten me.
Then again, if there’s one thing good that might come out of it, perhaps it will knock Anna Nicole Smith out of the news. Last I heard she was still dead.
I’ve got four days before I leave for China. Thursday would ordinarily seem far away and yet I’m already suffering from travel anxiety.
The funny thing is that I’m not at all afraid of flying. I trust when I leave the ground that I’ll return to it safely. Even a long stretch in a plane doesn’t faze me.
I don’t anticipate any trouble in China, either. I can find my way around just about any city. In fact I had to laugh at my New Jersey coworkers when they were befuddled by the PATH train process that I can practically sleepwalk through by now. I’ve gotten used to being put into unfamiliar territory and learning how to quickly fit in.
What really worries me is not the things I’ll see and do when I travel. What worries me is the things I’ll miss while I’m gone. Eleven days is a long time to be away from the wife and kids. Eleven days is a lifetime to a kid, especially. Its hard to hug a family with arms half a world away.
Just in case you thought I’d cooled down from my rant about UnitedHealthcare, don’t think for a second I’m letting them off the hook. After reading some N&O letters to the editor on the topic, I discovered that WIlliam McGuire, United Healthcare’s recently-departed CEO, pocketed $124,000,000 in compensation last year. Now that McGuire lost his job he is broke and penniless. He was last seen rummaging through garbage cans.
Ha ha! Just kidding! Actually, he left with one of the largest ‘golden parachutes’ in corporate history: $5 million a year for life and an eye-popping $1 billion plus in stock.
This is the kind of shit I’m talking about when I talk about the healthcare industry. It is an industry, and you and I are being taken for a ride. There is an ungodly amount of greed involved. Sickening, actually (no pun intended). America could do so much better if it made affordable health care the right of every citizen. Even our screwed-up government would have a hard time squandering this kind of money.
I’m back from my whirlwind trip to New York and Washington. Yes, I had originally planned to just go to NYC but I realized I had to take a detour to DC for my China visa. I will be leaving a week from Friday and there is no way I could get a visa that soon without doing it myself.
The NYC trip was highly successful, though. We arrived onsite around 6 PM (since my Continental flight did 90 minutes worth of doughnuts waiting to land at Newark) and got to work. By 9:30, the customer was pleased with the product and had agreed to buy. Yes!
We went to a local diner for dinner around 10 PM. I was in bed by 11:30, begging off going to a bar with the guys. At 4:11 my alarm woke me, whereas I packed up and took various trains to the airport. At 7 AM I was airborne for DC, arriving with enough time to get breakfast at the airport.
Then I hailed a cab for the trip to the China visa office. The office was tucked into a commercial office building. I was fourth in line 30 minutes before it opened. When twenty minutes later the line was in the dozens I was happy to have gotten there so early.
It took all of two minutes to drop my documentation off. I then camped out at the neighborhood Starbucks for a couple of hours.
Lunch was at a local Italian diner. Then it was back over to the visa office where I picked up my documentation early before hailing another cab back to the airport. It was National Airport, so I booked my return trip on US Airways.
I was soon reminded why I don’t fly US Airways anymore. Because they suck! The self-checkin ticket agents whined about having to change flights when they could’ve directed people to the right line in the first place. The gate area was overflowing with unhappy passengers waiting for their delayed flights. The gate agent was practically yelling for late passengers on the PA system, raising more than one eyebrow in the seating area. Oh, and to top it off my flight was over an hour late. The classic, catch-all “maintenance problem” was to blame.
It just seems that practically everyone at US Airways hates their job. Its such the opposite of my Southwest experience. Even Continental is leagues ahead of US Airways. Thank goodness Continental fended off US Airways’ recent takeover attempt.
In spite of all this, the plane crew was competent and seemed to enjoy their jobs. The flight was smooth, too. I made it back in time for dinner. Now to catch up with Kelly and do some reading before collapsing. Its been a pretty intense two days.
I’m off on an overnight trip to New York City to close out a long-running eval with a customer. Sleep may not be in the cards for me tonight in the worst-case scenario. I don’t expect any issues, though.
Wednesday morning I jet to DC to get my visa at the Chinese Embassy. In the days of the Internets, one would think one could do this without going in person. One would, of course, be wrong. To top it off, tomorrow is the first day after the Chinese New Year, so I should have plenty of company at the embassy. Yay.
Ah well, that’s the cost of doing business, isn’t it?
Rumor has it that a norovirus outbreak has afflicted Duke Hospital in Durham. The neighboring VA Hospital first reported a problem last week. At the time Duke claimed to be norovirus-free.
Hmm. Maybe I’ll postpone that doctor’s visit I’ve been contemplating.
Cory Doctorow, science-fiction author, technology activist, and creator of BoingBoing, will be speaking at UNC Thursday at 2PM. His presentation is entitled “Pwned: How Copyright Turns Us Into IP Serfs.”
I’ve read BoingBoing since its inception. I’ve been quite impressed with Cory’s fight against DRM, overly-restrictive copyright laws, and other attempts to eat our brains and turn us all into Consumer Zombies. I’d like to have a job like Cory’s, to be honest. Few geeks on the planet are any cooler than Cory.
Ironically, Cory is a huge fan of Disney, one of the most copyright-addicted companies on the planet. Disney was instrumental in the passing of the dreaded Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, passed right about the time a certain Mouse was to enter public domain. Can you like a company’s products without liking the company?
Anyway, Cory’s speech should be insightful and not to be missed.
Oh, and whatshisname will be in town Thursday, too. Yawn.
I spent yesterday afternoon adding a shelf to our utility closet. It was a wire Closetmaid shelf, the kind I used to sell as a hardware salesman after high school.
You’d think it would be a snap to install a wire shelf, but you’d be wrong. Because these shelves are designed to be mounted without using wall studs, they require multiple screws in the drywall. I had to carefully remove 10 or so drywall fasteners to get the old shelf out, then add another twenty to put the new shelf and the old shelf in their new locations. I did this all the while Travis was sleeping in his room ten feet away.
By the time he awoke from his nap I was done hanging shelves. Now to paste over the old holes and everything will be finished. The new shelf doubles our storage space in the utility closet.
During winter its a challenge to keep indoor air from getting too dry, yet when heaters defrost their coils they regularly expend a large amount of water vapor in a cloud of steam. I wonder if that steam could be safely captured and somehow used to add moisture to the indoor air? Probably not, I suppose, since it might not be clean enough, but it does make me wonder.
