28thavenue.net

I’m very disappointed about the amount of influence a few senators have had in gutting major portions of this bill, and it would be much easier, in my view, to simply open Medicare to cover everyone, and increase the Medicare tax appropriately (a Canadian style system would be the result). However I’d still like to see the current bill pass. Krugman has laid it out for me:

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

I need #1 and #2, so this isn’t about trying to do good for others who are less fortunate. This is about me. This is about wanting change so that I can be on a level playing field, and not second guess where I work, where I live, etc… because of health insurance.

Mitchell / Krueger Baby

Jenny and I are very excited to announce that we’re expecting our first child. We’re at 13 weeks, due June 4, 2010. We don’t know yet whether it’s a boy or a girl.

I’ve been trying to incorporate meditation into my daily routine since seeing a video of a Google Talk on mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I’ve enjoyed the experience so far, even if my time investment has been fairly minimal. I was encouraged today to see an article extolling the benefits of “transcendental meditation” for heart health (based on actual clinical research!)

Here is the video of Kabat-Zinn:

I just moved this site over to Wordpress MU, which is the “multi-user” version of Wordpress. At least that what I’m guessing the MU stands for. Of course it uses the lowercase “mew” letter from the Greek alphabet, which is commonly stands for “micro.” Anyway, what’s in a name, right?

Speaking of names, I’m also now hosting my other site, ekmitchell.com, on this Wordpress install. Feel free to wander over there. It’s more work related than this site, so you’ll see stuff there about web development, IT, project management, etc… I’ll reserve this site for personal and family stuff, as well as thoughts on current events, etc…

My partner in crime managed to lock up his Linux box just now, so we looked up the secret trick for safely rebooting a frozen system.

You can reboot a frozen Linux box by holding down Alt+SysRq, and then typing ‘reisub’. This will safely stop all processes, unmount the disks, and reboot the system.

Found this tip here.

I’ve worked for small business owners who don’t understand how this works.

I’d be interested to see a survey try to determine what percentage of the population doesn’t understand the concept.

Because when we bail out AIG, the money doesn’t actually end up with them, it goes to the firms AIG owes money to. Which firms are those? It’s a backdoor bailout.

A photo of a Bombardier mass transit car being loaded onto a transport plane for a flight from Germany to India.

Picture of a Train in a Plane

I heard part of this episode from This American Life just now in the car. They were doing a good job of explaining the current banking crisis.

I don’t know why, but I just love how banks work. It’s scary to think about the situation we’re in now, but when you step back and consider the role a bank plays in an economy, I think they’re pretty cool.