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November 30th, 2009
11:12 am - Crazy Talk Blog
Crazy talk of the day:
11/30/2009
Borrowed with permission from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) draggonlaady she is a veterinarian with an obvious vent towards looking at clinical data, rather than abandoning rationality in favor of ideology or various conspiracy theories that are abounding about the updating of clinical recommendations for the general population.
The reason that this fits into the Crazy Talk Blog is fairly simple, Jes has observed much of the same hysterical freak-outing over the recommendations about fewer mammograms and other female health screening, where the basic recommendation is this, due to more harm being done that more than offsets the limited benefits given by more frequent testing it is better for low risk people to get tested less often. Read what she says:
Breathe, people.
So. Since, once again, the people in the media seem to be having back-flipping shit-fits about something relatively innocuous, I thought I'd post a bit here.
Some suggestions for interpreting the news:
1: nothing is as scary as the media wants you to think.
2: source material is your friend. Look it up, ignore the screaming, read it, think about it, make up your own opinion.
3: all politicians are batshit. All of them, from every party. Only crazy people want to be politicians.
Now, that said. You can listen to the woman on whatever news channel you prefer, who is wailing "Oh my GOD, the government hates women and wants us all to die and is forbidding insurance companies from paying for mammograms, OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!"
Or, you can go to the US Preventative Services Task Force website and actually read the recommendations they made and the statistics they based that recommendation on.
http://www.ahrq.gov/CLINIC/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm
The recommendations are ONLY recommendations-not policy, and certainly not anybody telling the insurance companies that they can not cover something. And really, how often has THAT happened, anyway? The government forbidding insurance to cover something, I mean. Seems to me that it's always been the other way 'round, and if the gub'ment gets called in, it's to kick the insurance co in the butt and say "cover some of this, you bastiches."
The recommendations are made on the basis of general population statistics, evidence on the rates of cancer development, detection, and change in rate of death associated with preventative measures, as well as analysis of costs of those preventative measures (No! shut up and breathe! not just to the insurance company-costs include the stress and trauma and unnecessary testing, painful biopsies, and worry associated with false positives. The more testing you do, and especially the more testing of younger women you do, the more false positives and therefore the more cost/actual positive you accrue.)
The recommendations are specifically stated to be based on a general population model, and known high-risk individuals (family history, etc) should discuss more frequent testing with their doctor.
And really, people. Don't you want your doctors making decisions based on comprehensive analysis of the most recent data available, then applied on an individual basis to individual cases? Because that's what I want my doctor doing, and recommending every test available for every possible thing that I probably don't have is not going to make me happy.
Now. Please repeat the above, only substitute "cervical cancer" for "breast cancer" and "pap smear" for "mammogram". Thanks.
Now See:
( More Insanity Below )
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August 6th, 2009
11:16 am - Weighing in on Healthcare Reform
Weighing in on Healthcare Reform
I’m just going to quickly (well quickly for me) weigh in on the healthcare debate that is going on in this country right now.
Here comes my heavy handed statement for the day: I am profoundly annoyed, especially at this time, by the intentional, knowing, over wrought, overt lies and misstatements being put forth by the Republicans/conservatives. There are perfectly valid concerns about the various plans that are being put forward, there is no need lie. More importantly, in my opinion, if you have to lie about a topic in order to generate support for your position, then it’s not a position worth having.
Bottom line, we already live in a society that has socialized medicine. Hospitals are required to provide aid and care to anyone who shows up, whether they can pay for it or not. Those costs are being redistributed to the rest of society by increasing prices and passing the losses on to the consumers. So unless we decide to go back to Dickins era social Darwinism and deny any care to those who can not afford it, we need to change this system because it is the most inefficient system around and creates a drain on our society, and it is a problem that is growing exponentially as the Baby Boomers get older.
My basic argument in favor of various forms of universal health care is basically economic. Even though the costs of universal coverage are huge, truly, mind bendingly huge, it is increasingly clear that doing nothing will cost more in raw dollars to both individuals and society as a whole. From a macro-level prospective, the current costs are prohibitive for individuals, and society and they are getting much worse, and all reliable predictive models show that the system is going to break, and costs to individuals are going to become so high that an ever increasing spiral of increasing costs will make more people uninsured, which will increase costs, which will make more people uninsured and so on. I will note that while superficially that looks like a slippery-slope argument, but the evidence in cost and availability/affordability of health care support that assertion.
( Long Lecture Under the Cut )
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June 23rd, 2009
11:20 am - Functional Utility?
Vehicles are generally made with a purpose, whether used for that purpose is another matter. For example, my Corolla is a relatively comfortable vehicle that very economically handles my commute. My Jeep on the other hand has high clearance and a relatively strong engine and can get me just about anywhere. So I ask you this, what the hell is the intended purpose of a camouflaged golf cart being towed by Jaguar?
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May 28th, 2009
11:04 am - The Difference Between Affect and Effect
Sean would like to remind the world: The Difference Between Affect and Effect
Affect and effect are two English words with very similar meanings, and very similar pronunciations. Though not actually homophones, the sound of the words is similar enough to cause most people confusion. Even some people who use them quite often will find themselves stumped, and have to pause to think about which word is appropriate to use.
The word affect is primarily used as a verb in English. It has two main meanings, which are closely related. Affect may mean to alter the feelings of, or to change the mental state of someone or something. It may also mean, in a broader sense, to change or affect someone or something in any way.
The word effect, in contrast, is used primarily as a noun in English. It has a number of related meanings, but generally speaking refers to the result of something, the power something might have to get that result, or a phenomenon in the world.
Affect may rarely be used as a noun, but this usage is esoteric and somewhat archaic. In psychology one may speak of a person's affect, which refers to their mood or mental state.
Edited from original source:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-affect-and-effect.htm
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May 1st, 2009
01:22 pm - REI
My observation from 10 years ago still stands. If you want to see a lot of really, really hot, healthy women, REI is the place to go. REI has the prettiest customers anywhere. I think I fell in love about 8 times in the span of an hour ;)
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April 21st, 2009
08:43 am - No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
You know what else no one expects? Being swarmed by hornets at 2am when you stagger into the bathroom to pee. Apparently they started a nest in the vent…
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April 20th, 2009
11:24 am - Local Politician Owned by Local Public Radio :)
I really appreciate National Public Radio, I listen to it frequently, and it is my primary source for news. I really appreciate that all of the places that I have lived in recent years have had their own news and reporting teams, that cover local news and events. I’ll even admit to a little innocent crush on a certain NPR reporter here in town because of her reporting.
In related news, what I have found a lot of the conservative politicians, conservative “news” outlets, and religious nut jobs (aka creation scientists) have adopted basically the same argument techniques when dealing with mild mannered academics, which goes as follows:
Assert X
Support X with Evidence A, B, and C (aka “baffle them with bullshit”).
Demand that the other party disprove A, B, and C (aka prove a negative) on the spot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_proof#Burden_of_proof
Ignore all counter evidence, and demand other party disprove A, B, and C on the spot.
Declare victory publicly (if you can’t prove me wrong I must be right…)
We see this a lot in the public discourse, which from a rhetorical stand point is very effective way to win support from an uneducated public, but from a factual stand point it leaves a lot to be desired. It is often shocking how often overt logical fallacy is used with that subsection, most commonly arguing from (false) authority, Cherry picking, argumentum ad hominem, Bare assertion fallacy, and others.
This morning, Spokane Public Radio took the time to do a little expose on a local state senator who does not believe in global warming. This came to light due to some state measures that are being argued to curb green house gas emissions. This particular senator made arguments that basically said there is no such thing as global warming, NOAA has evidence of global cooling, solar activity is unusually high and that’s responsible for global warming rather than greenhouse gas, and Spokane’s local weather is cooler, and sited a few Ph.D.s as being experts. Then basically said; if you can’t prove me wrong I must be right.
So the local news went and researched all the claims made by this politician, and individually disproved every assertion made. They showed that the evidence sited was just plain wrong, misleading, or fictitious.
Listen to the story:
http://newscast.kpbx.org/current/20090415_1117_-sj_both_sides_question_warming_facts.mp3
I truly appreciate the story on multiple levels, and want to send a big thumbs up to the Spokane Public Radio for running the piece. In recent times, refuting any politician on their false data brings a swarm of criticism of journalist or news source as being biased. I will point out that that kind of attack has been shockingly effective in silencing well reasoned criticism and has led to what I consider a crisis of truth in the media. Politicians and ideologues are able to throw out “fictional facts” as truth, and refutation of those “facts” are not allowed in the public arena. Worse yet, the fear of retribution by certain special interest groups have allowed the opinions of tiny minorities to overrun the public debate as being accepted by the main stream.
Look to what the tobacco industry did for decades and now what the anti-global warming and anti-evolution groups are doing currently. I have to support reporting of minority views, but posting the views of groups like the Discovery Institute next to the views of main stream scientists has caused a seriously perverse outcome of misrepresenting scientific evidence.
Once again good work Spokane Public Radio for actually refuting false and fictitious data in the public debate on global warming.
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March 19th, 2009
March 18th, 2009
09:20 am - Lectures on Finance, Insurance, and the Economy.
I had a client of mine call me yesterday. She called just to ask if I could explain to her what happened with AIG. Not the “bonuses” that has everyone in an uproar, but why was AIG in trouble, why it is too big to fail, and the effects it had on the economy. I found that I gave a 30 minute summary of the situation, that included the mortgage crisis, the liquidity/credit crisis, and how that affected the commodity risk swaps that AIG was involved with. I was surprised at how much I knew, at least superficially.
My question to you all is this? If I wrote a longish explanation/lecture about the state of the economy would anyone really care enough to read it?
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February 19th, 2009
09:17 am - Live Journal Stalker or New Friend?
Saturday morning I checked my LJ in the first time in a long time. I found that a new person had friended me. As always I checked to see who this new person was. I saw that they had written prolifically since the journal was created Jan 29th. There is little on their blog about who they are, but I was very surprised to see that not only had they added me, but they added every person on my friends list too, including my friend in Turkey and others that I have never spoken to in person. If you are reading this, they added you as a friend.
I just sent a quick and polite “who are you” email. I am intensely courious who this person is. I think I have a new friend :)
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February 15th, 2009
09:14 am - Good Mood on a Monday Morning
Good Mood on a Monday Morning
It is Monday morning. I went over to Susana’s place last night after having a get together at my place. I slept surprisingly well, and after having morning sex we had coffee and hung out and talked about small meaningless crap.
After that I drove home and totally rocked out the whole way home. I had some particularly enjoyable and self gratifying daydreams. When I got home, I turned my Itunes on too loud and continued to rock out while doing my morning routine.
Because the library was closed on a President’s day Monday, I went to a Starbucks near work where I finished up a chapter on my CPCU. I got a lot done relative to the short amount of time I had to do it, and being in a public place. Their quishe was really good too.
I’m about to head into work for my long day, and for the first time in months, I’m not dreading it. For the first time in months, I’m feeling happy and bright and cheerful.
I am having a good Monday morning.
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January 5th, 2009
09:47 am - Sean’s Condescending Superiority
Metallica. When ever I hear them, especially their new stuff, all I can think about is failure to evolve, failure to grow up, failure to mature, and failure in general. When I was a teenager, Metallica was by far my favorite band. But now, 20 years later, when I see people wearing a Metallica shirt, or hear them on the radio, I just think of them as Mullet Heroes.
I have such a strong association with Metallica and “that guy” that never grew up since the late 80s/early 90s that it just fills me with disgust. Really, I’m disgusted by them. Not the music so much, but the people that listen to it now. It’s the same as those guys 10 yrs ago that never stopped listening to Led Zeppelin or people 20 years ago that never stopped listening to the Rolling Stones. In each case, they are listening to music 20 year out of date, and in many ways never grew out of an era.
I’m going to differentiate those guys from people who are listening to the hits from a musical era as “retro” music. I still like the Stones, Zeppelin, (very limited) Metallica, 80s new wave, 90s Alt-rock, and a bunch of other music. But I’m not trying to relive an era. Or worse yet, didn’t realize that an era had passed you by.
Fucking get grow up already. Cut the mullet. Better yet; cut the mental mullet.
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09:25 am - The Snow Flake That Broke the City’s Back
It’s snowing again. We only got about 4-6 inches but on top of the nearly 7 feet that we have gotten already this season, it has just brought Spokane to a stop. Nearly every school in the county is closed. The local sheriff decided that they could not safely get the kids to and from school, and as a result everything is down. Looking out my window, I can see Market/Greene is bumper to bumper and inching along.
So far this season, we have gotten more than 7 feet of snow in Spokane and CdA has gotten even more. There is so much snow that the city has basically run out of places to put it. In many of the back neighborhoods, snow plowing is no longer useful because it just moving a pile of snow from one place to another. The city has done all it could, but at this point, there’s just not that much they can do. What makes this so dangerous now is that there are ice slicks intermittently all over town, now with 4-6 more inches over top of that, it’s making driving very difficult. 2-layers of slick makes it very difficult to control your car, and you never know when you are going to slam into a section of ice. There were patches of bare and dry road, then you hit a 4 inch high sheet of ice, usually at about 25-30mph. Bam-clunk! When you can see them coming, you can control the car, but with a new layer of snow over top, you just don’t know when you are going to hit something.
The other day, after the last storm that came through, I was driving home from Susana’s place and was just slipping and sliding all over the place. I felt like a kid playing a video game, I had next to no control over my car. I’ve been resisting getting new tires on my car, because it has a timing problem and may be more expensive to fix than the car is worth. Why spend money on the car, when you are likely to loose the car in the next few months. But, then when I slid into an intersection, I realized that I was certainly going to loose my car if I don’t do something, so I bellied up and got a new set of studded snow tires. I can not tell you how nice it is to have a car stop, turn, and believe it or not, start moving when you tell it to.
Normally I am opposed to snow tires, in this area, in a “normal” year you only need them for about a week out of the year. Even then, most people can get along with out them. But this year (and last year) there was just so much snow that there was no way the city could keep up with it, and it just forms the nastiest ice slicks all over the town.
In related news, the snow has caused another problem: collapsing roofs. I’m not just talking about old houses and apartments that were neglected by the owners, though there has been plenty of that. No, I’m talking about major industrial and commercial buildings are starting to collapse under the weight of the ice. There was a grocery store (Rosaurs) that had the roof collapse. JC Pennies at the Valley Mall has a hole in the ceiling. An entire apartment building on the hill fell over the other day. Ice dams are everywhere, and 1000s of homes have been damaged by ice dams ripping apart the roof.
Its just been a nasty winter so far, and we are looking at even more snow this week, followed by a pineapple express coming through later in the week that is expected to bring heavy rain. Coupled with the snow melt, that means there is going to be a goodly amount of “urban flooding” because many of the sewers and drainage pipes in town are frozen, frozen over, or have too much ice in them to function. Fun stuff.
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December 8th, 2008
10:46 am - Well now what?
I just took my LSAT this weekend. After being horribly distracted the week before, I didn’t do nearly as well as I would have hoped. Instead I spent the week that I took off for test prep doing some serious introspection and healing. The bottom line is that I didn’t do as well as I should have and have a dilemma that I need to solve by tomorrow. I will not get the test results back for several weeks.
On my practice exams, I was scored 148 and 149. On my original LSAT I scored a 150, but had been getting 155s on the dozens of practice tests that I did for that one. So I’m worried that my score is going be 145 or so. If that turns out to be the case I will have some significant difficulties getting into law school. More so than I already am going to have.
On the exam, I feel like I did well on 2 of the 3 logical reasoning sections (1 was the un-graded experimental section), did fair on the reading comprehension section, and botched the logic games section. My original plan was to do half of the games, and guess on the other half of the section. But I only reliably got through one of the games, and may have botched the second game.
So here I am with a choice. I can cancel this exam and try to take it again on the next window. But that means that I will almost certainly not get into school for the 09-10 school year. But it increases significantly the odds of getting in for the 10-11 school year.
Or take my chances that my score is not as bad as I expect, and either way throw the hail-Mary for this year and try to show that I deserve to get into school anyway. This is an extreme long shot, but any shot is better than no chance at all. But if I don’t get in, it could significantly hinder my chances for the 10-11 school year.
What do you think?
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December 5th, 2008
10:44 am - The Happy Story of Vaca and Gordo
I might get into trouble at work for mentioning this story, but I’m going to do it anyway. The real meaning of this story may not come through, but once again, I’m going to write about it anyway.
For those of you that don’t know, I sell insurance for a living. I work for a company that I can best describe as being a premium company. That means that my company is specialized at providing the best possible “service” to the customers. I describe my company as being the Mercedes-Benz of insurance companies, and it’s not intended to be the cheapest company out there. Instead, we are often a little bit more expensive than most of the competitors, but what you get for your money is demonstrable the best “value” in the industry. I often grumble about the “office space-ness” of working in the office, but I really do stand by the product that I sell, which is why I’m the best sales person west of Texas, and am in the top 2% in sales number for the company. It’s helpful that I don’t really have to sell the stuff, and most of the customers come to me looking for what we provide, so I’m in frequent shock that other agents don’t do as well as I do, but that’s not important to this story.
Most of my readers (on my regular blog) know that I am recently out of a 2-year relationship, and have a bit of a broken heart right now. For the last little while I’ve been a little morose and sad. Kept feeling like I would never find a real life partner, and had a depressed world view. As a side note, all of this happening right before my LSAT was less than ideal as well. For some reason though, I woke up and was feeling pretty okay this morning. I went to McDonalds for breakfast before heading to the library one last day before the exam. While there, I started eating by myself, and this fat Mexican woman came in and I remembered Vaca and Gordo. I’ve been kind of smiling ever since. Here is the story:
Like I said, my company is not for everyone. Most of my customers are over the phone, but on this occasion I got a walk in. Normally walk-ins are good for me, so I jumped at the opportunity. Most insurance agents have the “50’s-men’s hair cut” medium length combed over. Think a bad version of the traditional game show host hair cut. I don’t have that hair cut. I have short and medium hard spiky hair. I think I look like a 80s-punk reject, but most people say it’s very metro…whatever…I don’t fit the bill. Some of the old guys that want that “typical image” have a hard time trusting a “spiky-headed kid” and when I saw this fat Mexican couple standing in the lobby, I thought I would have to over come that image issue.
I invited them into the closed office and started talking with them about their insurance needs. They are emigrants, he is a mid-level industrial farm worker, she is a house wife with empty nest syndrome. They were in their mid to late 40s. They were fat. They live in Tri-cities, but make the trip to Spokane to do some serious shopping, and get access goods and services not really available down in Tri-Cities.
For the record, I don’t claim to speak Spanish. But after two years of Spanish in college, I can usually get the gist of what a conversation is about. I am also a staunch liberal, and have a strong belief in women’s rights and women’s equality.
I am sitting here talking with this walking stereo-type about his insurance. I go through the basic process of getting their personal information. I then start the process of talking to them about what it is that they are looking for their insurance to do (I already know, they want cheap as possible with minimum coverage). At this point he has done all the talking with me, and he looks over at his wife and says in Spanish “Cow, hand me the papers.” Now, my Spanish is not that great, so I’m not sure if I heard correctly that he just called his wife a ‘cow’. I let it go, and continue with the process of matching up his coverages to what he has with his current insurance provider.
I get to the end of the process and give him a quote. Not surprisingly, our rate for this couple is about 30% higher than what they are currently paying. I try to explain, value vs. price, but it’s falling on deaf ears. They are not educated; they really don’t understand insurance, so they think its fungible, so why pay more. And there is a little bit of a language barrier. To this point, she has said next to nothing, and he has done all the talking. He says “do you mind if my wife and I discuss this for a few moments?” to which I reply “Oh by all means, please take as long as you want.”
They start talking in Spanish. I’m getting some of it, missing some of it, but after a few moments, I realized every time he addresses her he calls her “Vaca”. Vaca means cow in Spanish. I’m actually offended. Yes she’s fat, but there is no reason to call her a cow and demean her. I rarely get mad, but I’m sitting there watching this guy repeatedly insulting his wife. I know I’m going to regret this, but my conscience dictates that I intervene.
“Excuse me! Why do you keep calling your wife a cow!?!” I say loudly and angrily and with a surprising amount of force.
They both look up and me with that deer-in-the-headlights-look as they see that I have stood clinched both of my fists and pounded them on the desk and was standing over them in a surprisingly (to me) physically threatening manner. The look of shock on both of their faces quickly melted into the biggest smiles they could actually fit on their faces as they realized what I was angry about. They started laughing, which was absolutely not the response that I expected.
She then laughingly explains “ohhhh!!!! It’s not like that at all! He has always called me Vaca, and I have always called him Gordo (fat).” She goes on to tell me that they have always been bigger people, and back in Mexico when they met each other as teenagers it was the running joke that he was going to “marry that cow”. In their wedding vows, in their non-traditional (church) wedding, they said “I Vaca” and “I Gordo do take…”
She was genuinely warm and affectionate about it, but he stood up gave me a friendly hand on the shoulder and I could instantly tell that this guy now LOVED me. This stuffy insurance guy just stood up for a stranger’s wife.
I sat down and got to talking with them about them. As I sat, I realized that their deliberations about the insurance quote was truly collaborative where they were actually discussing the ins and outs together, which is rare even among upper-middle-class white customers. As we talked, their behave-in-front-of-the-stuffy-white-guy mode melted away and they started acting much more natural. They joked, they teased, and they discussed every single thing as a team.
At one point I looked at them and realized that this couple that has been married since they were 18 and 20, at this point for close to 25-30 years were still very much in love with each other. They played like teens experiencing love for the first time. I was a little jealous, because I remembered when Nicole (My first ex) and I used to jump in puddles and splash each other when we were 20 and in love. Their entire lives have been filled with the joy that I had for a short time, before I was forced to “grow up” and be more responsible. In my life I have seen so few people that retain that puppy-love quality for more than a few weeks, and here was a couple that still had it after decades. It made me happy just to watch them.
Anyway, they decided to pass on my insurance, but they thanked me and left. I think of them from time to time. When ever I do, it makes my day a little bit better. That’s why I decided to write about them, to make my day better and happier, and maybe just maybe make you smile too.
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November 20th, 2008
09:35 am - Overt Racism
Just a quick note before I get back to my studies. One of my favorite web sites is this one:
http://media.admirald.net/ljimages/?n=50&r=Off
It is frequently NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
Basically what it does, is list the 50-250 most recent pictures posted on www.LiveJournal.com. Or in more laymen’s terms, it shows what people are posting about. Now, it’s an international site, and about ½ of the people on there are Russian, and other half American, but it gives a good idea about what people are thinking. Many of the pics on there are not intended for the public, and even on private pics it still shows up on this website.
In the last few weeks, I have frequently seen a lot more overt racism. Not the usual, hidden-some-of-my-best-friends-are-not-white-males-racism that has been prevalent for the last decade, but a return to overt, crude, and direct racism. The kind that I have not seen since living in the projects in Vegas (or attending public school in Las Vegas).
Makes me wonder if Obama becoming president is spurring overt comments from the usual suspects, or are people who were latently racist finding that it’s time to speak up, or is it just a temporary spike as a result of the recent election?
What are your thoughts?
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November 10th, 2008
09:43 am - New Schedule and a New Plan – a Basic Update
Well they finally did it. The bastards at work put me on a 5 day schedule. It sucks. Now, I start at noon and get off between 8:15 and 7:00 Monday through Thursday, and 8-4 on Sunday. I now get Friday and Saturday off. The 5 day schedule would not suck quite so bad if it weren’t swing shift too. But my mornings are more open, so I’ll have time to study a bit more everyday.
I’ve had so much open time though, that my productivity has been down. I have talked about this a lot before, but my house was never so clean as when I was working 16 hours a day. I hope it will return to that soon.
In other going’s on. I’ve had what Susana has called a “chronic low grade depression” lately. I think that’s an accurate descriptor. I’ve just not been happy lately, and the switch over to the dark grey rain has not helped. There is nothing on my mind per se, just been out of sorts for the last month or two. Not really excited about anything, and had a lingering sense of dread really. It’s not even the economic stuff. At least for the time being, I am insulated from that. My job is secure…mostly.
Speaking of work, a lot of heads rolled at work lately, and we had a “Black Friday” few weeks ago where a bunch of people were fired. If what I hear is true, the ones that are gone deserved it. For all the micromanagement that I get, some other people get next to none. Without any meaningful oversight, some people do things that they ought not to…like not answering the phones. I have had differences with the bosses over many things, and my stubbornness has contributed to a lot of my issues at work, but ultimately I go to work and work. I work hard, which is why I am one of the top producers in the country for this company. If “Thumper” is right, all the extra criticism that I get that others don’t is because I’m not “living up to my potential”. Maybe that’s right, but I’m still doing better than almost anyone else. In September, and October I was the best producer on the west coast again. Ultimately the big boss seems to be satisfied with the changes I made to look like I am working harder. I’ve discussed before the difference between looking like I’m doing well, and actually doing well. For the time being, the powers that be are more interested in me “looking good” rather than “doing good” and it has already shown up in lost potential and upset customers because I can’t take the time with them that I did before.
Stepping away from work, the low grade depression is bugging me. I’m just not doing as well with the study and personal life as I should be. I’ve just lacked motivation. I have not been as supportive to the people that matter to me lately, and that is upsetting to me. Susana is in the final throws of the legal battle and I’ve just not been able to give the encouragement and optimism that she needs. I know that ultimately everything with her will be fine as far as the custody stuff goes. I feel like the judge ultimately just gave her ex a rope to hang himself with, and well… he did. But she has been a tensed up ball of angst about it. Like any good mother should be. In related news, I have two dear friends that are going through a very rough time right now, and I want to be supportive to them too, but feel like I have failed them. I’m annoyed because what they have told me is in confidence, and I can’t even discuss it with my confidants to get a better perspective on how best to help them. Real secrets I keep tight for my friends, even though I have no problems discussing all of my personal crap.
Finally, I bought a third gun. This one is a little .22 rifle. It’s a fun little plinking gun, that despite it’s high tech look, I actually bought so I can teach others how to shoot. I’m a little disappointed though. I thought I could get a high capacity magazine for it, but due to the modified design, I can’t load a hi cap mag in it, it hits the pistol grip. So in essence, I have a machine gun that only holds 5 bullets. Heh… On the gun front, at this point, the only other thing that I am thinking about getting is a little .22 pistol, once again to teach people how to shoot. But that is not anywhere on the horizon. If I do get it, it will be this spring or summer. I do have my eye on a locking gun safe though, to secure the guns from the child that I will likely be living with soon. If you have any interest at all, what I got was a Ruger 10/22. It’s a simple little rifle that is good for target shooting and training. But what the previous owner did was he got a “bull pup” designed stock and modified it to look a lot more impressive than it really is. So in essence, the guy turned the rifle from this:
Into this:
As for my new plan. It’s basically the same plan as before. I will now study from 8:00am until I go to work at around 11:30 Mon-Thurs. Once the LSAT is over, I am going to switch back to working on my CPCU. I’m going to have 3.5 hours a day to work on stuff, I may as well make it a useful block of time. If I get into law school in the summer, then great, I’m back in the study mode. If not, well it’ll help me with work. $1200 from the company, a free vacation, and a lot more upper level insurance hireability is a good thing. I’m unhappy right now, but a lot of that has to do with not having done much of anything with myself the last few years. I feel like I’ve become lazy. I have. And that laziness has let the latent depression creep up more often than it should.
Alright. I’ve wasted a lot more time on this blog this morning than I should have, so back to work I go.
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November 3rd, 2008
08:55 am - Political Perspectives
Okay, so as anyone who has read my blog lately knows, I’ve been getting into guns lately. It’s become an expensive hobby, so I am somewhat limited in how much I can play. So with that said I have been trying to cut costs so I can get out and shoot a bit more. The problem is that bullets are expensive. No really they are. So I’ve been trying to buy in bulk to get savings, especially on the AK-47 ammo. Which runs about $0.25-0.35 per bullet. So a day of 100 shots can cost $25 or more just for bullets, so getting a good deal can save a significant amount of money.
Word around the camp fire was that the best place to buy bulk ammo is at the gun shows. Which are just like swap meets where there is no tax and people just trying to make a buck or two. So this weekend I went to the gun show and looked around. Heretofore my experiences with gun people have been fairly limited. Most are Republican, they tend to have more blue-collar jobs, and have less of an education than I do. There are a goodly number of well off guys, that did well for themselves by setting up contracting businesses or other occupations that are better paying than the yokels but they are still country bumpkins at heart. But you put a lot of them together and among like minded folk, you start to get people being freer with their tongues than they normally would be.
This is also the weekend before the general election, so politics is on everyone’s mind. First and foremost with just about everyone understanding that Barak Obama is going to be the winner of the election, the talk was about how people have to get their guns before he takes them away. Or otherwise ban, eliminate, prevent, or amend their ability to have firearms in the home. It is to the point of mania. Everything from the NRA shows that Obama is going to get rid of guns. And everything else sort of follows after that. As far as I have heard, Obama has made no noise on gun control, and to be honest, I think a bit of control on the purchase of guns would be a good thing. In my limited time at gun shops and gun shows I have seen repeated episodes where a man and a woman will come into the shop and he says he wants “that one” and she then buys it and fills out the registration stuff paperwork in her name. “Is that for you or him?” they ask, “oh it’s for me” (wink wink).
Here is where I parrot Michael Moore in “Bowling for Columbine”. The gun control thing is just a proxy for all of the base fears that the conservatives have about society. It is the guns that make them feel safe and continue to retain their base fears and prejudices. So with Obama, a black man, obviously going for the electoral home run, all of those fears are coming out. In many cases, I don’t think these people actually understand that they are as prejudice as they are, or as frightened of the world as they are. But put them in a room together with no breaks on them, and they turn into a swirl of almost comical assertions.
1) Obama is going to take their guns.
2) Obama is going to take their (white) money and give it to the poor (black).
And it gets increasingly insane from there. At one point I heard an older woman who was selling bullets* (nice story here on a later post), start talking about how Obama is going to make it so all the black men would be marrying white women. The way she was talking, it was almost as if they were going to force white women to be handed out as sex slaves to black men through some sort of governmental dispensary. Mike R and I joked about that a fair amount when I was telling about it. But I think he was a little mortified at the same time.
I have a few observations. First, put “like minded” people together in a “safe” environment, and you will hear what is really on their minds. Second, we have no meaningful public discourse about the base beliefs and thoughts that people have. And for the record, it is just as bad with the liberals as with the conservatives, just on different issues. Third, Conservatives are really frightened of the world. No really, they are afraid of everything. I’m really going to have to write more about this later, because I have heard some literature about political preference being strongly correlated to how people process risk and threat.
My final observation about the conservatives at gun shows, they are short. Or at least shorter than I am. I am serious, and wonder if there have been any statistical studies done, but I am seriously thinking that size correlates with fear and fear correlates with being conservative. I stand about 6’ tall, and I was wearing my Doc Martins so I was standing about 6’2” over all. I was easily 4-6” taller than most of the men there, but weighed about the same or less. The bulk of those guys were shorter than average 5”9 ½” tall, and stockier. There were only 3 or 4 people as tall as or taller than me that I noticed, and most of them were sellers or politicians. I also noticed that even though I was dressed down, a lot of them gave deference to me.
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October 31st, 2008
04:45 pm - AK-47: Not As Advertised :)
I had a moment of insanity. I bought an AK-47. For awhile I was worried that I was becoming a psycho gun nut, but I’m a bit more restrained now.
I love this rifle! It’s going to be an expensive hobby, but I had a blast with it today. No pun intended. I bought the AK from a guy I found on Craig’s list. He sold it to me for $300. They sell new for about $600-$900 so I think I got a good deal on it. Ammunition for this is going to be expensive, but I just bit the bullet and bought a bulk pack (pun intended). I bought a Siaga, an actual Russian built rifle. I like this rifle a lot, I just wish it had pistol grips on it…
The traditional wisdom about AK-47s is that it is the gun you want when civilization fails. It is rugged, simple, cheep, strong, reliable, reliable, and reliable. This is a semi-automatic, which means it fires a bullet every time you pull the trigger, no matter how fast you can pull the trigger. The thinking is that AK-47s are great for short range combat, where you throw a lot of lead at a target, and usually the winner is the guy that can throw the most lead. Almost everyone agrees that AKs are great, because you can shoot a lot, and they hit very hard (relative to an AR-15/M-16 with it’s 5.56mm bullets). But it is routinely described as be “less accurate” than just about any other rifle, especially more than 25-50 yrds. Meaning it shoots a lot of lead at short range, but is largely useless beyond 50 yrds. Well, that’s the “traditional wisdom” about this kind of rifle. I’m not a great shot, but I did relatively well.
Some of the guys at the range made fun of me with my “little rifle”. Most of the guys there had huge, expensive, and very awesome hunting rifles. I was the only one there shooting free sight (without a scope), and standing (rather than sitting, with the rifle prone in a supporting stand). The range manager stood there watching me shoot standing for my first magazine (20 shots) at 50m/yrds, and joked “did you even hit the paper?” “Lets see…”
He was really impressed. I was really really impressed. I never thought I would hit anything meaningful standing and quick firing. The guy in the lane next to me, with a huge scope and a gun that probably cost $2000, almost spit. He called my gun “nothing more than a killing machine” but when I used the range finder to see his targets, I saw that I shot a lot better than he did.
Then I sat down and used sand bags support my rifle, and my targeting got even better.
After that, I ran through a magazine prone at 100 yards:
I just hit this target, with a cheep AK at a football field’s length. I’m feeling really bad ass actually.
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October 28th, 2008
08:53 am - 15 People
I’m loved. People tell me that all the time. We love you, you mean a lot to us. For some reason, it just never resonates. I just don’t believe it. I recognize that I have abandonment issues, and as such it is really hard for me to accept that people love and care for me.
With that said, some times people do things that demonstrate that they care. Take for instance: moving. The last time you moved, how many people showed up to help? I put a call out to help me move Susana last weekend. Guess how many people showed up to help? 15 people! That’s right 15 people showed up to help me move my girlfriend last weekend. I was relieved at the time, because she was totally unprepared to move because it was so last minute, but with 15 people showing up, the work time was only about 4 hours. If it weren’t the cold and flu season, then 18 people would have come, but Heidi, Mike Reid, and Dan Meyers were all sick and couldn’t make it. Even without them, it was a relatively quick and easy move.
I was talking about this with my boss, and was commenting on how easy the move was on a relative scale, and he was shocked. He recently moved and he had to jaw-bone a bunch of his employees to get just 3 guys to help. It puts things in perspective. I am loved and liked, and really do live within my own little community here in Spokane!
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