Category: Personal (Page 24 of 47)

So, what seems weird about the amount of fans Skittles has on Facebook, according to http://pagedata.insidefacebook.com/page/view/267629/

CNN has a good recap of the battle between rival Wikipedians in their quest to paint Joe Wilson as either an Obama hating traitor, or Brave Truth Teller.  An interesting side effect of the Social Media world, in that now not only is the news cycle 24 hours long, but the “Comment cycle” begins 24 seconds after impact. 

I can’t take credit for this, since I head it on the radio.  But I think it’s the easiest and quickest way to make a dent in health care, so I’m forwarding along.

Every doctor, clinic and provider simply should have to provide a price list for the most common types of treatments.  That price list should show what they charge for the procedure / visit, what amount is covered by each of the major insurance companies, and what the end cost would be to the customers of those insurance companies.

It won’t cover everything of course, but the point is that if we see the price lists and what insurance is covering, consumers would have a way to look at the market of health care and make informed decisions based on quality, location AND price.   And I know this doesn’t solve everything, but if we start by developing a more competitive market where information is more widely available, we have a better chance to figure out the hard problems, such as how to cover people with low or no income.  

Making Trillion dollar upheavals to an entire system full of long established companies employing hundreds of thousands of people, is going to be hard if Joe American doesn’t even know how a slight change would affect how much he has to pay to fix his broken hand.  “Trust me, we’re the government, We’ll get it right” is not a very compelling argument… 

I’m not all that techy, so there may be an easy answer here.  Techcrunch and all other tech publications have widely and accurately reported that Gmail is down.  Apparently it’s been down since 1:00pm.  But I didn’t notice for a long time, because it still works on my iPhone.  Can anyone explain to me why Gmail is still accessible from the iPhone, but not the good ol’ interweb?

30 minutes after being sad about sorry email I read from that nearly illiterate teacher in the post below, I rebounded and was reminded how much fun the English language can actually be.  For the last few days, I’ve been following the real or fake exploits of “Steve” at http://twitter.com/shhdontellsteve 

It’s either the bored ramblings of a kind of messed up dude writing about another messed up dude.  Or it’s a brilliantly crafted soap opera playing itself out in 15 second intervals at no particular rhythm or cadence.  I lean to thinking it’s the latter, which makes it all the more better as far as I’m concerned.  I just hope one day the the writer doesn’t completely disappear, making us all wonder what happens at the end.

Check it out, an give me your thoughts on it.

I subscribe to a lot of random email lists. Democrat, Republican, City Council, etc… I won’t embarass the group or the person who wrote this email, but it made me sad that this person is a teacher. I mean, can we really expect much from the kids, when this is the kind of response that comes up from a teacher during a debate on health care? Or maybe I am just expecting too much.  I think if you are a teacher and going to write an email to an entire listserv, your thoughts should be a little more coherent than this.  Am I just being overly critical here?  Thoughts?

Tomorrow is <name redacted>’s and my 25th anniv. If this lady I’ve been working for pays me tomorrow (she was supposed to last Friday), we can go out. I work right by the Montlake Bridge. I know there is another rally later in the week. I signed up to attend the dem. meet up on the 14th. Originally it was the 15th and I couldn’t attend because that’s Ethan’s BD. But the 14th I can attend. Seems those holding out against the public option are receiving a lot of “bribe” $ from the insurance industry. I don’t know what they’re going to do about Sen. Kennedy. They’ll have to appoint an interim senator, but whom?

I just got home from a union mtg. We voted to accept a one-year contract, but a lot more work needs to be done on it over this next year. Here’s hoping the union works hard for us. I start classes (GCU) on Wed. Am supposed to start back at Ingraham same day but Joe and I want to spend the night at the 4 Seasons Olympic and I’m not rushing off to work first thing in the morning, so I guess I’m taking a personal day. They only gave us the phone call this morning to tell us we were to return to work on Wed. morning at 7:30. That’s kinda late notice, if you ask me. Just another example of Seattle Schools and their fine organizational skills NOT!

So, here’s a debate that has been waging in certain segments of my professional circles.  Your thoughts are welcome.

There’s a school of thought that people are more obsessed by celebrities than ever before.  Twitter, Facebook, etc… all give us access to everyone’s thoughts and weaknesses (see: Beasley, Michael.)

Another school of thought says that with 432 channels, the Internet and DVR’s, we have tons more people that qualify as “celebrities.”  Back in the day, PR flaks and studios could control their “celebrities.”  If one of them got out of line, you just cut them off and went into your unused supply of theatrical talent who were stuck waiting tables at Denny’s.  But nowadays, the need for content means the guy who played stand-in Teen Angel in his high school version of Grease still has a chance to catch a gig on a game show or Temptation Island.  And now the PR flak has to hope Johnny Screwup will be on a date with a Real Houswife from Topeka and punch 3 Hell’s Angels so US Magazine has a photo for page 34.  

So what do you think?  Are we putting too many people in the limelight, which leads to ridiculous stories about no-names?  Or are we really seeking out the type of titialting content about people we admire as “celebrities.”

Ripped directly from TechFlash, so you probably already saw this.

“A new study released today, which uses data from Seattle’s Walk Score Web site, finds that homes in walkable urban neighborhoods sold for as much as $34,000 more than homes in car-dependent neighborhoods.”

I wonder what the definition of a “Walkable” neighborhood is.  I hope Wallingford is one…

Ok, I know this isn’t exactly Apples to Apples. But, just for grins and giggles, here are the attendance figures for week 1 of the English Premier League, arguably the greatest, most well attended Football/Soccer League in the World, with the most passionate fans.

Now, for fun, throw in the Sounders:

All things being equal (which they’re not) the Sounders would currently be 6th in Attendance in the EPL, with 5 teams above, and 5 teams below. Just a fun stat for anyone who tells you that all European clubs draw insane amounts of fans.

I’ve done a lot of Mariners bashing here over the last 2 years.  But they honestly deserved it.

So congratulations for making 2009 way more interesting than I expected, and giving me hope, faith and optimism to 2010 and beyond.

For the first time in years, I’ve found myself tuning in sporadically to games on the radio.  Well, maybe not whole games, but innings at least.  And all of the recent trades, minor league call-ups and debates are exactly what baseball is supposed to be like.

Baseball shouldn’t be like it is for the Red Sox and Yankees who (until the Rays got good) were almost allowed to write their own personal ticket to the playoffs every year thanks to 57 games against the most inept division-mates in baseball.

Baseball is cooler than basketball because you can’t go to the 7th, 8th and 9th innings and let Kobe Bryant go to bat every time.  And it’s cooler than football because Peyton Manning can’t pitch every game.  The fabric of it’s coolness comes in a combination of players battling for more innings of that enormous 162 game, 1500 inning season, but also needing a superstar to come up huge in the ninth inning of game 76 with 2 men on and 2 outs.  

So instead of dreading the off season, this year we’ll argue about the starting 5, what we should do with Felix, if Griffey should come back, whether 8 million is too much for a defensive shortstop, and if there’s any chance to salvage Morrow’s career.  These are the kind of arguments we should be having in a baseball off season. 

Sure, I know technically they are still in it this year.  But that’s more of a quirk in the way the schedule is presented, not actual reality.  And I don’t really care.  Because next year, 2011 and 2012 look like a lot of fun.  At least, a lot more fun than 2003-2008.  Thanks M’s, for finally pulling your heads out of your you-know-whats.