Slow Day

It’s been a slow day. First, it’s a slow news day. I’ve hardly found anything of interest today, which is out of the ordinary but not unheard of. Second, I took a sick day from work because I woke up with a brutal sore throat and congestion. I slept late, and really didn’t do much but drink fluids and watch 007 films all day. Thankfully I’m feeling a bit better now. Vitamin C, water, and Mucinex are my friends.

Despite being sick, which is no fun, it was nice to have a slow day. I’m sure it won’t last though. I’ll probably be up to work tomorrow—working from home, at least, but probably even going into the office. Tons of stuff to do this week, and then yet another busy weekend ahead. I’d love to have a nice, slow, do-nothing weekend.

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Common Sense: How I Missed Thee

One of my favorite columnists, Peggy Noonan, writes in the Wall Street Journal about how simple common sense might be sinking President Barack Obama’s (D) grandiose health care initiatives.

As dumb as the American voter can seem sometimes, we almost always come to our senses sooner or later. When Obama says he doesn’t believe in big government, his re-creation of the American health care system won’t increase the federal deficit, and government won’t make medical care worse . . . well, we see this for what it is. We’ve seen enough of these impressive-sounding federal initiatives designed to ‘make things better.’ We know they go horribly awry much more often than they work as-advertised. We know they always come with strings—not to mention taxes—attached.

The fact is that, despite all the blather to the contrary, most of us have seen government botch schools, retirement plans (‘social security’), financial bailouts, and more. Many of us don’t want to see what they would do to our health care, and don’t want to pay the inevitable tax increases to support such a boondoggle. The president and his cheerleaders in Congressional leadership (like Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA 8th]) can’t even get the more conservative wing of the Democratic Party on board, let alone more than one or two Republicans. Without major revisions to the proposed plans, there probably aren’t enough votes—even with a Democratic supermajority in Congress—to push this thing through.

Then again, it looked like the first 700 billion dollar bailout under President George W. Bush (R) would fail in the House . . . it ended up passing narrowly. I’ve learned never to assume Congress will stick to a common sense position.

Metro’s Bad Week Continues Apace

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) still can’t catch a break, though they won’t get much sympathy from me since their mess is of their own making.

After The Washington Post released a damning report earlier this week revealing that MetroRail’s track circuit problems are more widespread than Metro had previously admitted, Metro quickly went into damage control mode. Metro General Manager John Catoe declared that the system was safe, and that the report in The Post report was a “gross misrepresentation of the facts.” According to Catoe, Metro had made minor adjustments to only three track circuits since last month’s crash and had not found any serious problems anywhere in the system except with the circuit where the crash occurred. Metro also announced it had identified a vendor to implement a train detection backup system so that their ‘fail-safe’ ATP system will be . . . um . . . fail-safe.

But the facts still aren’t in Metro’s favor. The Post is reporting today that, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the track circuit at the center of last month’s crash has been intermittently malfunctioning since December 2007 and, despite claims that Metro performs monthly reviews of all circuit data for anomalies (this is now done daily), the problem had not been repaired. If this isn’t negligence, what is?

The NTSB also verified at least part of The Post’s earlier report that Catoe and Metro had denied . . . ’anomalies’ have been found on other track circuits, and are being investigated.

House: Building Has Started!

house-framingI swung by the house we are buying yesterday and, surprise, they’ve started building it! There’s wood framing for the lower two floors already in-place. Presumably the third floor will follow later ;-).

Pretty much all of the [annoying, repetitious] paperwork [of questionable value] is done, except for a couple stragglers related to the financing which we hope to [finally] tie up very soon. Then it’s clear-sailing until closing in October or November, where I am told that they will present us with more paperwork than any single human being could possibly process and understand in a lifetime.

Go figure.

Anyway, it’s got its annoying aspects, but the whole process is still very exciting. I’ll be glad when it’s done though ;-).

Parking Garage Zambonis

parking-zambonisThe Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, is a great venue for plays, concerts, and so on. It also has a nice parking garage right underneath, which is very convenient (considering that the Center is not really close to any Metro station, and Metro isn’t exactly worth the gamble right now anyway) . . . although, like most parking in Washington, it’s exorbitantly over-priced.

Regardless, in the Kennedy Center garage last week we spied these Parking Garage Zambonis. Of course, they aren’t really Zambonis—they’re some sort of garage cleaning rig—but for an ice hockey fan like myself the resemblance was obvious.

I find these kinds of things very funny. Maybe I’m weird.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.