1. Installing a NetApp FAS2020 filer with an active-active controller configuration.
2. Migrating recently acquired EDI accounts to Trimaco’s site ID and qualifier.
3. Procuring a new Dell Latitude for more extensive Windows 7 testing.
4. Spinning up LUNs on the new SAN to move SQL data on to for testing.
5. A Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains 10 upgrade.
6. Upgrading vSync too…
7. Procuring a new PIX firewall to replace our legacy unit (the sh running config is extensive).
8. Deploying two laptops to the field (hopefully the last XP units).
9. Upgrading Label Matrix / Label View.
10. Remodeling our bathrooms at home.
11. Kitchen counters maybe?
12. Nothing else because I can’t handle it in February or March.  I’m booked.

“This year’s winners included Donald Unger, a doctor who received the Medicine Prize for cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but not his right — for sixty years to see if the habit contributes to arthritis (it didn’t).”

via Knuckle-Cracking Gets (Ig) Nobel Prize | LiveScience.

I have a new goal in life:  To win the (Ig) Nobel prize in chemistry.

“Republicans oppose a public option, saying it would drive private insurers out of the market and eventually lead to a government takeover of the health care system.”

OK.  So where’s the problem?  I trust the government to handle health care benefits far more efficiently and morally than a private business with a profit motive.

via Public option would lead him to filibuster, key senator says – CNN.com.

The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement

via Commentary: Joe, Kanye, Serena — aren’t they special? – CNN.com.

“Narcissism is absolutely toxic to society,” Twenge told me when I interviewed her about her book a few months ago. “When faced with common resources, narcissists take more for themselves and they leave less for others.”

Did Republicans forget that they lost an election in part because John McCain came across as an angry old man?  And remember the rowdy old people who stood up screaming about socialism at the McCain campaign rallies?  It seems the only thing that whines harder than my two year old is a Republican that isn’t getting it’s way.

Last night on ABC News 11 I listened to a  man, who didn’t get to scream and chant at representative Brad Miller about the health reform bills, tell an interviewer “I don’t want to have my family treated by the V.A.”.  What?

Are these people serious?  Are they really that dumb or are they trying to be sarcastic?  Based on this guys enunciation and dress code I was left with no alternative but to think he’s serious.  What’s going to happen when the very Latino’s these rednecks are trying to run out of the country start looking more intellectual than the very best the hard right can put forward?  Your “other brother Daryl” doesn’t count.

If you watch these town hall rants on health care you will see an clear demographic in attendance: middle aged and old white people who are clearly angry by their own admission.  They seem to be getting madder.  On a Democratic radar that sign means it’s working and this must be the right thing to do.  Nothing says success to a Democratic legislator like a madder than hell conservative.  Against their own best interests conservatives have cornered the market on disgruntled lately.

Instead of getting mad why don’t they come up with some valid counter points and arguments.  They only thing they have is “government sucks” and “lower taxes”.  Care to add any meaningful content to the conversation aside from “don’t change anything”?  One thing they have stated is that the cost of health care services are too high.  Very true.  And here’s why their only valid point is counter productive:

The very minute any legislator, Democrat or Republican, tries to regulate the prices of drugs and health care services through cost controls, the same conservatives using price as their argument will call for the government to stay out of the free market. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t so just be damned they say.

Even the VP of Economics for the conservative Heritage Foundation has noted that health reform must be enacted.  He’s “not sure” about a public option.  Paul Krugman tried to explain it to him:  Without a public option, including a mandate for all Americans to have coverage, a bill would only serve as a windfall for insurance companies.  The idea that a mandate will reduce indigent costs, thereby reducing provider costs resulting in health care savings is simply a dumb-ass pipe dream. The insurance companies will simply add the new revenue to their record profit reports for many years to come. Once again for the slow readers: The mandate is the reason the public option is absolutely necessary.

If you want to take the public option out you’ve got to take the mandate out.  I endorse taking the mandate out no matter what happens to the public option.  No one should be forced into an untested system.  Especially one that’s built on an already broken system.  Massachusetts did it under the guidance of Sir Ass Hat, Mitt Romney, and I wrote about it here on July 4th two years ago.  Now it’s contributing to their states bankruptcy.  Did costs go down?  Hell no.  I have no choice but to think that  the Mass. legislators were led by insurance companies into the law they passed.  The federal legislators should not make the same mistake.

Health insurance companies will lobby for the mandate without a public competitive option.  If they get their way America’s ultimate destitution will be forthcoming at a highly accelerated rate.

This morning I learned from a few readers, who are Executive Staffing Group employees, that the Clifton and Savage operation have issued some payroll checks that bounced.  Apparently they also issued a notice to all employees that all direct deposits would cease immediately.  So does this mean that ESG employees should only expect to receive bad checks?

If this is true it’s a bad situation.  The Department of Labor or Insurance could step in a shut down ESG but where does that leave ESG’s contracted employees or the ESG clients they’re working for.   At the time any possible connections between ESG and the Castleton Group were made by investigators all efforts should have been made to shut down ESG before anyone else got hurt.  I personally believe the only reason this was not done was pure greed and arrogance on the part of the Savages and Clifton.   It gives the appearance they wanted to try to maintain some level of prominence and lifestyle in the face of personal bankruptcies and investigations.  They will argue they were trying to keep people employed in a down economy.  But what service are you doing to keep people employed when you can’t pay them?

Health care reform is in the spotlight again.  No matter what  compromised bill comes out of Congress one thing is certain: As long as health care remains a for profit venture in America it will remain a broken system.  No corporation should measure profits or shareholder returns by wagering on, or attending to, peoples health and well being.  Anyone who disagrees is most certainly too barbaric and immoral at their core to recognize the heartlessness of their position.

Today Gavin Hawk was sentenced to 19 to 23 months in jail for (in all probability) driving home drunk from a Carolina Hurricanes game and hitting and killing Spyk Quick on I-440.  Most people think the sentence is light.  Legally Gavin did the smart thing even though what he did was morally reprehensible.

You see if Gavin had stayed at the scene drunk after hitting Spyk he would have been charged with murder or manslaughter.  Because he ran and hid for a few days while Raleigh detectives searched for him, Gavin will serve less than two years.   Prosecutors could not prove he was driving drunk even though he admits being on his way home from a Hurricanes game he conveniently attended with only his father.  And what do you know, from what I understand Dad says Gavin wasn’t drinking.  Ain’t that a shock.

All of the golf carts at the Wendell Country Club (my weekend stomping ground) burned to ashes early this morning.  I am grief strucken beyond my ability to put into words and may need to seek professional help.  These carts were young, only a couple of years old.  Lightening is to blame so perhaps God is trying to tell me something about how I should spend the weekend (I will be working).  Why oh why was there no mercy for these poor, innocent golf carts?

The last 72 hours have been a particularly hard, emotional roller coaster on my very dear friend Desiree Wynder and her family.  As reported in the local news this week Desiree’s brother, Ian Quick, known to everyone locally as Spyk, was killed by a hit and run driver while riding his street legal scooter (not a moped) on I-40 near Gorman Street.  I first met Spyk when he first moved to Raleigh which was about two years ago despite media reports that he was in the area “about a year”.

When the story was initially reported in the news on Monday the driver of the Yellow Xterra that hit Spyk had not been identified.  The police told Desiree and her mother, Heidi, that there was a 72 hour window before most of the leads could dry up and the trail could go cold.  The detectives were up against the clock.  Desiree worked diligently with law enforcement and the media to keep Spyk’s story in the headlines so people would be on the lookout for the Xterra.

Spyk was a cook at The Raleigh Times Bar where he was adored by his co-workers and the patrons.  The management at the Times agreed to pay for all of the funeral expenses and then organized a memorial, which was held last night, not only to honor Spyk but also to provide more media coverage to find the hit and run driver.  It may have worked faster than anyone expected.

As the memorial got underway I was talking with Desiree at the bar.  She went to talk to her grandfather and returned just moments later and told me “they found him”.  Just as she was telling me this her phone rang.  It was the lead detective on the case letting her know the information she had was correct.  I asked her twice “what’s his name”?  “Gavin Hawk” she repeated as the officer told her.  The timing was uncanny. The 48 hour mark, the window of time in which most cases are solved, was quickly approaching.

Twenty eight year-old Gavin Clifford Hawk was previously convicted on January 28, 2008 of a Class H Felony for “speeding to elude arrest” according to the NC Dept. of Corrections Offenders web site.  Gavin obviously has a history of driving irresponsibly and then racing away from the scene.  So it’s time for the book to be thrown.  The cowardly son of a bitch also tried to slit his wrists before his arrest.  I wish he’d succeeded and save the courts time and money.

Watching Heidi’s tears turn from anger and sorrow to joy, if only for a moment, was a life event I will never forget.  We drank to Spyk and we drank to Gavin Hawks arrest.  Spyk can rest knowing that his killer has been apprehended.  My faith in our local judicial system is weak but I hope that for once, in this instance, Gavin Hawk grows old in prison.  His life should be over for the selfish crime he committed against a man who is one thousand times the person he is.  You shouldn’t have run Gavin.  You will pay a heavy price for your continuous, cowardly acts.  Although I considered including Gavin’s picture in this post, I will not do him the honor.  The goal moving forward is to remember Spyk and forget the coward who killed him as he rots in the NC prison system.