Author: Jon

Mom as a role model for kids? Say it aint so.

Mom’s dieting can be unhealthy for kids – Yahoo! News

Shocker.  Mothers who live unhealthy lifestyles then diet when they can’t fit into their pants are likely to have daughters who do the same.  Thank you, Yahoo!, for that unexpected fact.  Note – the study cited in the article focused on mothers and daughters, since a higher percentage of women have body image problems.  Perhaps because all the studies focus on them.

The gist of the article is that mothers who obsess about weight and diet all the time tend to have daughters who do the same.  Mothers who make lifestyle changes towards better health also tend to have daughters who do the same.  Imagine that.  The way you live your life often has a strong influence on the way your kids live theirs.

As someone who has, in the last six months to a year, made a real conscious effort towards a healthier lifestyle, I can tell you that it’s hard.  It’s especially hard at work when we go to lunch.  It’s hard not to get the bacon cheeseburger and fries with six Cokes.  And even the “healthy” choices are usually only healthy in comparison to the 1200+ calorie meals that are typical of most restaurants.  And I even have the advantage of a fiancee who’s a great cook.  If all you out there don’t have that, you’re kind of screwed.  And you can’t have mine.  I found her first.

British Police Thwart Major Terror Plot

British Police Thwart Major Terror Plot

U.S. officials raised the “threat level” for air transport to red , the highest alert. The terrorists had targeted flights operated by American Airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines, a U.S. official said.

Emphasis above is mine. I can certainly understand why someone would want to blow up an American Airlines flight. They probably missed out on 16 hours of bachelor party, too.

I ‘m just kidding. I understand that this is serious. But sometimes you have to joke about it or you go crazy. And since the plot was foiled by British authorities, this seems like a good time to joke.

The TSA said passengers who need to bring medicine and baby formula on board planes would need to present those items for inspection at checkpoints. In Britain, passengers were being asked to taste these liquids in the presence of security guards.

I hope that’s not the case when I fly to Australia in less than two weeks. I’ll have my nasal spray to prevent clogged eustachian tubes, and I don’t relish the thought of tasting it.  I mean, I imagine it’s safe, since they can’t very well expect you to spray the stuff up your nose if you can’t swallow a little bit.  But I doubt it’s terribly pleasant to taste.  I’m going to stop now before this gets really unpleasant.

Anyway, the article is short on detail.  It doesn’t say if this was a known terrorist group, or just a bunch of pissed off but well-organized people.  I suppose more details should be forthcoming.

Perhaps the sexiest piece of stereo equipment Ive seen

Yamaha RX-V2700 and RX-V1700 HDMI Receivers – Gizmodo

The higher-end member of this pair is the RX-V2700 . . ., bringing Ethernet connectivity to the feature list, where it’s able to hook up with PCs on your network and stream their music files, or it can let you listen to Internet radio stations right in your home theater.

This is what I want.  Interconnectivity.  Just because my music’s on my computer doesn’t mean I’ll never want to listen to it anywhere else.  Plus, this thing is HDMI-capable, in case I ever get around to getting HD from the cable company, or buy a new DVD player.

I wonder what the ethernet streaming interface is like.  They don’t say it’s PC-only, and the thing works with iPods, so that could be cool, especially if it will work with Ubuntu.

This is actually great for the country

CNN.com – Lieberman concedes to Lamont, vows to run in November – Aug 9, 2006

Lamont wins, and now Lieberman is going to run as an independant.  Screw you, two party system!  First, Lamont shows that you don’t have to be the candidate that the national party likes.  You can use the internet to get your name out and bypass the big party machine.  And now, Lieberman shows us that the two party system is not enough, that sometimes you have to go outside the system.  Let’s abolish Democrats and Republicans.  They’ve had their time in the sun.

The danger for Connecticut Democrats, I suppose, is that Lamont and Lieberman split the liberal vote and hand the election to a Republican challenger.  But since Connecticut voters have already made it quite clear that supporting President Bush and his war on civil rights and separation of power is not going to fly, perhaps they’ll get a nice, intelligent Republican who goes against the President because the President has, as a Republican, lost his way.

Is this what it takes to get people to vote?

CNN.com – High turnout in Lieberman-Lamont showdown – Aug 8, 2006

Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz predicted Tuesday that turnout for the primary could reach 45 to 50 percent.

So, it takes a Republican pretending to be a Democrat and supporting an unpopular President to get an almost reasonable voter turnout. Congratulations, Connecticut – you’re way ahead of most of the rest of us, although you should still be embarrassed about your turnout.

The rest of the country is watching this race very closely, I know. Many think this is a good indication of what’s going to happen in other states. I hope it is. I would love to see record voter turnouts. Of course, I would always love to see that.

I don’t know that I really have a point here. I don’t really like Lieberman. Lamont obviously has a lot of support in the blog community, which could be good or bad. I think there’s some great stuff coming out of the blog community (Much of it from right here), and I think it’s great to fill in some gaps in the mainstream news coverage and help get people involved and paying attention to the news. But it’s dangerous to put too much stock in a random blogger. Me, for example. I don’t know jack. But sometimes I might sound like I do.

Whether that’s a reason to support Lamont or not, I don’t know. I like to see people using alternative means to promote a candidate, taking power away from the centralized party and the special interest groups and maybe actually responding to the people. But I can’t tell you whether or not their faith in Lamont is misguided.

Okay, I’m done rambling. I don’t know whether Connecticut should have voted for Lamont or Lieberman. I’m just happy that a bunch of them voted.

Dont you love the DMV?

How can the customer service line for the Department of Motor Vehicles be busy? I just got a bill for my property tax on the truck I sold last year. I called the county, and they said that the DMV has no record of the sale. So I guess someone forgot to write it down when I turned in my tags. And now I can’t get through to the DMV. I do not want to have to go there in person. Although it might turn out to be easier.

And honestly, how does Virginia get away with a yearly tax on a depreciating asset? They like to talk about how wonderful the car tax relief they offer is, but they fail to mention how stupid the car tax is in the first place. If they want to tax the USE of the car to help pay for roads and such, I wouldn’t be totally opposed. That would place the tax burden firmly where it belongs – on those who drive the most. But a tax on the car itself, above and beyond sales tax, is ridiculous.

Update: I’m currently on hold with the DMV. After a half hour of redial, I finally got past the busy signal and got their automated system. How the heck do I get a busy signal when I’m calling a computer? That’s just a bad system.

Not only that, but when I finally got through, they launched into the recorded spiel about how much you can do on their website. How do they think I got the stupid phone number? So, as I was verbally expressing my disgust at their awful phone system, that very same phone system interpreted my words as me having trouble with their menu system. This is actually impossible, because they never gave me any menu options. At least my supposed difficulties got me straight into the customer service queue, which is where I wanted to be anyway.

Update II:  So it looks like I got it taken care of.  The CSR was completely incapable of answering any questions as to why they failed to take the vehicle out of my name, but at least she took it out.

By the way, if you ever find a Virgina driver’s license, you can do all sorts of things.  They don’t ask any identifying information beyond what’s on the license.  That makes me feel safe.

Competition before I even get off the ground

Sutori: Digg for Consumerists – Consumerist

This site is more or less what I had in mind for Complaint Hub, except I would have skipped the meaningless Web 2.0 name.  Sutori?  WTF is that?  I guess if I want to compete, I’ll have to hook up with the Better Business Bureau and allow people to complain to someone who really listens rather than just their fellow internet nerds.

IE sucks. Why are you still using it?

IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch

Paul Thurrott at WindowsITPro.com says (Link via Slashdot):

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It’s a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn’t secure and isn’t standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

I’ve been using Firefox for a while now, and the only reason I still have IE is that it’s too much trouble (If not impossible) to get rid of it on my Windows box. Firefox includes, and has included, many of the features that are new for IE7, Microsoft’s new version of Internet Explorer that’s still in Beta. Microsoft likes to crow about their new tabbed browsing feature, which has been available in Firefox and whatever Apple’s browser is for a while.

Another major flaw with IE is the release cycle. Firefox updates all the time. When someone finds a security flaw, they fix it. If it’s serious, they force you to upgrade. And they respond quickly. Microsoft has never been quick to fix security flaws. By the time they get around to patching something, your computer has been open to who knows what for an unacceptable amount of time.

And then there’s the point of the article I linked – Microsoft isn’t standards-compliant. They use their dominant (though shrinking) market share to do whatever they want. There are standards for building web pages that are independant of whatever it is that the browser manufacturers want, and Microsoft, more than other browsers, ignores these standards.

If you’re using IE right now, I want you to go get a real browser. Firefox, Safari, Opera, all of these are much better options. IE is bad for your computer, and bad for the internet.

Up yours, says American Airlines

Got a reply from American, finally. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address any of my concerns.

August 7, 2006

Dear [Me]:

I am so sorry for your unhappy experience when you traveled with us to Las Vegas. There’s probably nothing more frustrating than having to travel when bad weather conditions play havoc with airline schedules. From your description it certainly sounds as if the delay was aggravating and uncomfortable, and it’s unfortunate we didn’t do a better job of overcoming the many challenges we faced. I am especially concerned that we missed opportunities to mitigate the effects of the weather disruption.

Unfortunately, many times we don’t have too many options to help make such situations less trying. Still, your comments enable us to understand things from our customers’ perspective, which is crucial as we strive for better performance next time.

Although we do whatever we can to minimize weather related problems, our schedules are not guaranteed; there are simply too many uncontrollable factors for us to make such a commitment. For this reason, we cannot assume financial responsibility for our customers’ personal time lost or for out-of-pocket expenses incurred as a result of operational difficulties. Instead, you have my assurance that we will always work hard to get you to your destination on time. I hope you will give us another opportunity to do so.

This is an “outgoing only” email address. If you reply to this message by simply selecting the ‘reply’ button, we will not receive your additional comments. Please assist us in providing you with a timely response to any feedback you have for us by always sending us your email messages via AA.com at http://www.aa.com/customerrelations.

Sincerely,

[Some CSR] Customer Relations American Airlines

So I replied to them via their crappy web form. They tell you not to reply to the email they send you, but then they don’t give you any way to reply via the web form that makes it clear you’re replying to an email they sent you. Here is my reply:

I sent you a letter complaining about terrible service, and you sent me a reply blaming it all on the weather. I should have been more clear in my first letter – the first delay was mechanical. Subsequent delays may have been weather related, but the first delay, the one that pushed my flight from Thursday evening to Friday morning, was a mechanical problem with our plane.

Please contact me as soon as possible. I do not consider this matter closed, although I do appreciate your apology in the email I received this morning.

I suppose my reply might have been a little snippy.  But I was hoping for something a little more substantial from them than “Sorry, we don’t control the weather”.

This is not over, American Airlines.

Hillary, Health Care, and the Morbidly Obese

As you may know, I’m in favor of universal health care, although it would need to be watched carefully to prevent inefficiency and abuse. If every American is guaranteed public schooling, it’s ridiculous not to offer health care as well.

I’ve always wondered, though – how do you stop abuse? I don’t want my tax dollars to go to pay for repeated bypass surgery for someone who refuses to even try to be healthy. Should everyone have to pay for the 400 pound man who smokes two packs a day and never gets off the couch?

I was talking to a friend of a friend of my fiancee, a guy who happens to be a Canadian citizen (Through a rather confusing set of circumstances). The conversation came up just as we were leaving, so it didn’t go as far as I might have liked, but he made the point that there will always be people like that, no matter what is being paid for, and we can’t choose yes or no on universal health care based on that.

It got me thinking. What about the kid in the public school system who cuts class when he can, and sleeps or misbehaves when he can’t? I don’t want to pay for his schooling, either. Or perhaps the couple who fight constantly – I don’t want to pay for the police to come break it up once a week. For any service the government provides, there will be people who abuse it.

So we have to figure out how to prevent abuse. We don’t want people rushing to the emergency room every time they sneeze in search of expensive prescription drugs. We don’t want people to abuse their bodies, knowing that corrective surgery will be available when they need it. We also need to protect the system from abuse by politicians. It would be a matter of minuntes after a universal health care system was put in place before someone tried to pass a law saying that the government would never pay for anything to do with birth control.

So, how can we make this work? I think a co-pay system might help. If people have to pay some amount, it would make them think twice about going to the doctor for something trivial. Of course, there’s virtually no way to keep a co-pay system from being like a regressive tax, and putting more burden on those with lower incomes.

A non-partisan council to determine what is necessary and what is elective might help, as well. Of course, I have no idea how such a council might be created.

So, Hillary, I’ll make you a deal. If you present a realistic and feasible plan for universal health care, I’ll vote for you, despite my misgivings. And I’ll even consent to paying for a bypass surger for the fat smoker on the couch. However, I reserve the right to throw rotten tomatoes at his house while he’s in the hospital.