Astronaut Arrested

It doesn’t matter if you’re an Academy grad with advanced degrees in aeronautical engineering; or that you’ve logged 1,500 hours of flight time, including some in an F/A-18; or that you’ve passed the battery of physical, mental, and psychological tests to become an astronaut; or that you’re a veteran of 13 days in space. You can still wig out and try to kill your romantic rival.

Allegedly, anyway.

Read what the Washington Post had to say about Lisa Nowak last summer. I wonder how all her friends and family feel now, now that her star has fallen. What a shame.

Raleigh To NC DOT: Where’s The Love?

Two years ago saw the grand opening of an unusual addition to our highways: a pedestrian bridge which crosses the Beltline. My family and I ventured out that day to take a stroll over this new bridge; a bridge which provides a nice, safe connection from the city’s greenways to the parks outside of the Beltline.

The view from the bridge could be improved, however. From that vantage point you can not only see six lanes of traffic zooming under you, you can view the trashiest spot in Raleigh. From the pedestrian bridge south to the Hillsborough street overpass is the messiest, trashiest stretch of road you’ll find in the entire city. A bridge overlooking trash is probably not what the N.C. Museum of Art had in mind when it offered its land for the project. I would venture to guess the trash from two years ago is not only still there, it has grown ever since.

That small stretch isn’t the only trashy spot on the Beltline. Keep an eye out and you’ll begin to notice spare tires here, busted drywall there. Plastic bottles are everywhere. This morning I narrowly missed a pair of steel chairs standing in the median just outside of the travel lanes. Judging by their mangled state I was not the first to encounter them. This doesn’t even consider all the trash too small to see from 65 MPH, like the thousands of cigarette butts that litter the roads.

What can Raleigh do about this trash? Not much: it’s a state-maintained road.

Raleigh is home to our state government. Our governor, legislators, and department heads all work here. Raleigh’s Beltline is its de facto Main Street (the new Fayetteville Road revitalization notwithstanding), and yet its constantly trashed. How can we let this happen? On top of the recent study showing that the Triangle contributes in transportation taxes far more than it receives from the DOT, it can make one wonder if our state government really cares about us.

Granted, the DOT is sponsoring a Litter Sweep in April where concerned citizens can “pitch in,” but should that really be necessary? Why can’t the state keep Raleigh’s Beltline clean?

Cheap Thoughts: Global Warming

I think I may have found the solution today for the problem of global warming.

It’s cats. Yep, cats.

You see, cats are all too happy to soak up solar radiation. In fact, they seem built for the purpose. If you’ve got a sunbeam anywhere around, a cat is likely to be headed for it, if one’s not in it already. By deploying one snoozing cat per sunbeam, solar radiation reaching the earth would plummet, resulting in cooler temperatures. One could say purrfect weather, even.

The bottom line is that we need more cats if we’re ever going to save the earth. Is it any wonder that temperatures have risen in step with efforts to control the cat population?

The Year of Greatness

I’ve decided that this year I’m going to do something great. I’ve decided to do at least one of the following things:

  • Become Cisco certified, either in IOS or security (IDS)
  • Become a certified DBA, probably in PostgreSQL, but maybe MySQL too.
  • Write a book on Asterisk

I should be able to accomplish at least one by the end of the year. Right now I’m leaning towards the DBA training as I have the most experience with databases. Also DBA skills are in high demand, both from employers as well as for my own personal, web-based projects I occasionally come up with. And working with SQL is just plain fun!

I’ll let you know how this progresses.

UnitedHealthcare Drops WakeMed

Apparently UnitedHealthcare thinks WakeMed‘s costs are too high. WakeMed refused to buckle, so now UnitedHealthcare is ending coverage for WakeMed hospitals.

I think this is quite unfortunate, so I decided to let UHC know. After navigating through the worst voicemail gauntlet I’ve ever encountered, I got a live representative on the phone. After telling her I wanted to register a complaint about this decision, she began to correct me to say that UHC didn’t drop Wakemed, they’re just ending their contract.

“Okay,” I responded, cutting her off. “I don’t care what caused it, I want you to know I don’t like it.”

This we agreed to do. She even helpfully wrote it up in the dramatic way I presented it to her and sent it off to their complaint department.

Yeah, it takes two to tango. I don’t know what either side’s position was, but I don’t care. WakeMed took care of our family when we needed it most. No hospital in the Triangle can match WakeMed’s neonatal intensive care facility. I believe our daughter Hallie would not be with us if it wasn’t for WakeMed’s outstanding care. In my eyes WakeMed can do no wrong.

Now that I can’t go to the hospital just two miles away from my home I’ve got to consider other options. This royally sucks.

Hang Ups

Nothing says “loser” quite like having a piece of telephone gear hanging from your ear when you’re not on the phone! I see these people everywhere with their Bluetooth headsets and/or wired earphones (“tanglephones” as my son calls them) stuck in their ears for no reason whatsoever! The only thing worse than finding one of these poor souls seemingly talking to themselves is seeing them all Borg-like and not talking to anyone! I just want to tell them, “Uh, excuse me. You’ve got something hanging from your ear.”

Here’s a tip for all of you losers: when you’re done with your call, hang up the phone! That means remove the earpiece from your ear and put it away. It just makes you look like a dork. Honestly, its the techie equivalent of walking around with your fly open.

Take My Down To Chinatown

I found out yesterday that I’m going to China next month for a week to train our partners and staff there. I’ll spend two days in Beijing and perhaps two in Shanghai.

It will be my first trip to China proper. I’ve visited Hong Kong two times when the USS Elliot visited there. That was before Hong Kong’s return to China. During the last visit I had signed up to tour China but had overslept that morning and missed the bus, to my regret. Now I’ll get another chance to see this amazing culture, or at least catch a glimpse of it between training sessions!

New Jersey Fun

I’ve been here doing an install for the company headquarters. Things are going well in that regard. What I find interesting is the celebrity status I seem to have here in the head office. Everyone is so nice to me! I’m kind of bewildered and a bit embarassed by the attention I get, frankly. Still, its nice to know I’m appreciated.

Towards the end of the day I was asked when I was leaving. I said tomorrow (today) and the next thing I know I’m holding a ticket for a dinner cruise. The company was rewarding my coworkers who were involved in a major project and had a few extra tickets. In less than an hour I would be heading towards the ship.

This was one time that getting assigned a minivan by the rental car agency came in handy. I took three coworkers downtown to the edge of the Hudson river, where we boarded the cruise ship: a three-deck dinner ship. With the twenty-five of us were two other companies. Passengers totatled about 120, in my estimate. We sat down at our three tables and partook in heavy h’or d’oerves and an open bar.

Soon after we were underway the ship’s entertainment cranked up. Three nightclub-ish performers sang and danced to vintage rock and soul music. I laughed at the cheesiness of it all, though later I changed my mind.

Dinner and a drink later, the performers had given way to dance music. The floor was crowded and I was having fun, so I ventured out there to dance. My friends soon joined me and I spent most of the rest of the night out there, pausing only to take in the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge and see the Statue of Liberty up close. It was an emotional moment for me to see the statue from that vantage point. Seems that symbols of liberty are an endangered species in America of late.

After dancing, the DJ read a list of passengers celebrating things. First on the list was a guy named Mark who was celebrating a birthday. I was totally clueless until I saw the rest of the company smiling in my direction. Someone had remembered my birthday and had had it mentioned! I was totally surprised and very grateful.

We returned to the pier a little after 10, having gone around Manhattan and back. As we left the parking lot at Lincoln Harbor it started to snow: a beautiful sight. I dropped of my passengers and got back to my hotel around 11:30.

It was a spontaneous event, and far more enjoyable than staying holed up in the hotel with my book, which was my previous plan for the evening.

I’ll return to Raleigh this afternoon. It’s obvious it would be good for me to make more frequent visits!