I often hear or read people who argue that the reason we shouldn’t move to a universal healthcare system, like every other developed country has, is that we would lose our status as having The Best Medical Care in the World. The self-evident truth of this status is often thrown about as though it were part of the patriotic article of faith that we are The Greatest Nation on Earth. Anyone who questions it is in danger of being labeled “un-American.”

And yet, is it really true? Consider this story from CNN: Being a bad patient can save your life. Of course, it is certainly possible that the patient in this story merely had an extraordinary run of bad luck, and it is also possible that he would have fared worse in any other country. But stories like this should make us at least wonder if we really are benefitting as much as some people think we are from our collective decision to keep our medical system private.

Personally, I feel much safer knowing that once something is designated as “suspicious” by our security professionals, it cannot become “unsuspicious” until it has been blown up.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution. Full story.

Apparently, duct tape and tin foil on anything is considered suspicious. I’m glad that my college days are behind me; there was always the risk, in college, of waking up wrapped in tin foil and duct taped to a pole. “I’m sorry Mrs. Smith, but your son was clearly suspicious. We had to detonate him as a precaution.”

Christianity has done some bad things in its time. The Crusades. The Inquisition.

Now this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wpAJMFpJQ
http://www.theway.org/Current/Mar07/Mar07Hi.htm

(Sigh. First they got it removed from YouTube. Then they removed it from their own site. Maybe the world is a better place without it.)

… and this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8

I think God is crying right now.

I’m spinning off a new blog. For the past month, I’ve been trying to build a working Sun Cluster using VirtualBox on my laptop. If I just lost you, don’t worry about it. However, I know there are other people out there who might be interested in doing the same thing, or something similar, and so I’ve decided to start blogging about this and other technical endeavors at http://spoonfightergeeksout.blogspot.com/. Most of the progress I’ve made has been facilitated by the blog entries of other geeks, and I figure that what I’m learning might be helpful to someone else.

As an added bonus, you won’t have to read about it here.

Politicians running for office always promise things they’ll never be able to make good on. My favorite is the promise to “get rid of special interests” and “wasteful spending”. John McCain made that promise just last night. I’m sure Obama has made the same promise at some point. They all do.

What a stupid promise. The President doesn’t legislate. Congress does. So to get anything done, the President has to coax a majority of the 400-odd Representatives and 60 out of 100 Senators to act. Every one of those legislators has at least a handful, if not more, of “special interests” to look after. Maybe it’s an industry or spending project that’s important to his/her state. Maybe it’s a corporation that has been especially generous to his/her campaign. Regardless, the President isn’t getting that legislator’s cooperation on legislation if his/her particular “special interest” gets cut.

Even if a President turns out to be a political mastermind and creates massive public pressure on the legislators to abandon some of the ridiculous expenditures in the budget, a lot of what seems special and wasteful to one group of voters is really important to another group. Ie., tax breaks for big oil aren’t “special interests” for all the ordinary folks who depend on Texaco for a paycheck.

In other words, most of what’s in the budget is “important” to some portion of the voting public, regardless of whether or not it’s wasteful. Promising to get rid of it is a waste of air.

I just noticed that I haven’t written anything in a month. Pretty much my normal behavior. Naughty Spoonfighter.

If you’re curious, and you’re probably not, I’ve been very focused on a technical project lately. I have been trying to create a working Solaris Cluster* at home, in order to do some personal training in the technology, and to prepare for a cluster build I have to do at work. Initially, I was going to purchase a bunch of old Sun equipment (I did actually buy a SunBlade 1000), but I realized that this was going to be too expensive, and all I’d end up with would be a bunch of old computers that don’t do anything fun and break a lot. (Kind of like me.)

Still with me? If not, skip down to the part where I mention that I’m not going back to law school.

So, instead, I set about trying to create a cluster using virtual machines.** At this point, I have my laptop installed with Ubuntu Linux. It uses Sun’s VirtualBox product to simulate three Solaris systems: one will serve up iSCSI storage for the shared disk, and the other two will be the cluster nodes. Is this interesting to you? If so, you probably have a lousy social life. (Kind of like me.)

In case you haven’t already guessed, I’m not going back to law school. There’s a lot more to it, but basically, one year in law school helped me clarify my goals, and showed me that those goals are better served by building on the IT career I have already developed, rather than starting from scratch in a completely new field.

That said, I am trying to embrace my inner geek. I spend as much time indoors as possible, in order to develop an unhealthy pallor. I am reading fantasy and science fiction. I am playing with cluster, iSCSI, and virtualization technologies in my spare time. And, I have an account on World of Warcraft. It’s probably a good thing that I’m already married.

Anyway, that’s the news from Spoonfighter’s corner of meatspace. Have a good day.

* A cluster consists of two or more computer systems which work together to keep an application running at all times, even if one of the two computers fails.
** A virtual machine is a simulation of a computer system which runs on a real computer system.

Men will appreciate this. Women will appreciate that men are mentally ill.

Link

Spoonfighter junior is two. I would like to say that he is growing like a weed, but he’s really short and is barely growing at all. So, really, he’s growing more like our lawn. Which is weird because we didn’t put nearly as much fertilizer on our lawn.

He’s not into food, so much. We’re so desperate to get him to eat that we’ll literally let him eat anything he decides to put in his mouth, short of black tar heroin. (It’s a pain in the a** to get out of his clothes.) Pretty much all he likes are donuts and hot dogs. And even to get him to eat hot dogs we have to lie to him and tell him that it’s the meat of some exotic animal. One time we cut the hot dog into long, curved slivers and told him that it was elephant trunk.

His favorites so far are silver back gorilla and baby seal. I don’t know what we’re going to do when we run out of endangered species. We’ll have to get creative, I suppose. “Look! It’s Kanga from your Winnie the Pooh book, remember? Nummy nummy!” (Wait, I’ve already used that one. Yes, I’m a horrible parent.) We recently took him to the zoo for the first time, and I wonder if he was thinking, “Oh, a giraffe. I love giraffe.”

You know, I like the zoo, but it would be a lot better if it was more like Costco or Sam’s Club. You’d go up to an animal enclosure and there’d be this little old lady wearing a hair net and holding a plate full of samples. “Here - try some of this snow leopard. It’s very lean, and it’s on sale today for $5.99 a pound.” Awesome!

The other thing that sucks is that the animals are all pretty lazy. Poke ‘em with sticks or something. Make ‘em do tricks! It’s hard to keep a little kid interested in a lion that sits around like it’s on welfare.

ME: “Hey, loooook! What is that? Is that a lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel, Daddy! Squiwwel! LOOK DA SQUIWWEL!”
ME: “Yes, that is a squirrel. But don’t you want to see the lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel squiwwel squiwwel sqiwwel! Yay!”
ME: “HEY - I DIDN’T JUST SHELL OUT 80 FREAKIN BUCKS SO YOU CAN LOOK AT THE LITTLE BEASTS THAT GO THROUGH OUR FREAKIN GARBAGE. LOOK AT THE !@#%!^% LION!!”
BOY: “Bird, Daddy! LOOK DA BIRD!”

I didn’t actually yell at him. I’m really a good parent. When the lions didn’t work out, I bought us tickets for the little train that goes around the zoo. He was totally hooked and threw a fit when the ride ended. This presented a parenting dilemma. I didn’t want to reward bad behavior, but I couldn’t bear to see his sad little face, so I chose a creative “third way.” I slipped the driver of the train fifty bucks and told him not to stop. Then I went home and took a nap.

(Ha ha, I am so just kidding, Ms. Child Welfare Officer.)

“I am rich and I want to spend it on you tonight”

So my wife is going to see the Sex And The City movie tonight with a bunch of her girlfriends. Apparently women all across America are doing the same thing, and men all across America are breathing a collective sigh of relief that they aren’t being dragged down to the movie theater for Date Night, like they were for Pride and Prejudice.*

I’ve actually heard that there are some men out there who are planning on seeing it. Let me just say this: if you are (1) a dude, and (2) going to see Sex And The City, and (3) this decision is actually voluntary (ie., terrorists are not holding a gun to your head and/or you will not be getting sex from your spouse in exchange for your attendance) your manhood is hereby revoked. Please drop it off at the nearest ladies bathroom or scrapbook store. (You should also do this if you voted for David Archuletta at any point during the past season of American Idol.)

Ok, ok - I’ve never actually watched an episode of Sex And The City, but I don’t need to in order to know that it’s not exactly oriented towards the male mind. First of all, if guys had made a show for guys called Sex And The City, it would have been on much later at night and it would have been about strippers. And I would have gotten in trouble for knowing anything about it.

Some very basic research reveals that the show is, in fact, largely about shoes. And someone named Carrie, and her three friends, and all their dysfunctional relationships. They’re all really messed up, but they’re rich, glamorous, and sexy, too. So they’re just like normal middle-aged women, except for the rich, glamorous, and sexy part. Oh, and there’s this dude named Mr. Big. I think maybe he’s her pimp. I’m not sure. Not a single one of these characters has superpowers, carries a really big gun, or is a ninja, so why the hell anyone would want to watch the TV show, let alone the movie, is beyond me. Anyway, I just saved you ten bucks. You can thank me later.

* Ok, seriously, why couldn’t Pride and Prejudice have been a Girls Night Out instead of Chick Flick Date Night? I had to employ my trusty “beer belly” to get through it.