Eventually I’ll set up a redirect for this site to that one, but you might want to update your shortcuts and/or feedreaders. That is, assuming that you want to keep following my misadventures.

Thank you, Mark Wedge, for showing me such a good time tonight. Thanks also to Stubby, Fritz, Keith, and Karl for letting me hang out and throw darts with you.

Post a comment with what you think the new blog should be named, and if yours is chosen, I’ll give you a prize! (Prize may or may not be tangible. Offer not valid in the United States, Canada, or any other country, principality, kingdom, or duchy on or off Earth. Must be present to win.)

I have been feeling a need to write again, maybe because I’ve been rationing my ADD meds. Whatever the reason, I hope to be posting more stuff here. I’ve missed the outlet.

Watch for photos from our trip to AK on here, as well.

Hat tip to Daring Fireball and Cabel Sasser

I would hate to think that I’m wasting your time, dear reader, so I’m open to suggestions — what do you think the general theme of my blog should be?

I won’t assume that you’re interested in reading about the inanities of my everyday life, and I can’t promise that I’ll have the energy to do the legwork involved in making this a great blog about Fort Worth in general. I’ve considered getting all nerdy here, but that market is kind of beaten to death. My voice would be lost in the echo chamber that is today’s tech blog world.

What do you think?

He said that he opposes massive overhauls to the health care system because he likes the idea of companies and entrepreneurs being motivated by profit to conduct research and take risks, thereby advancing the quality of care in the US.

I didn’t think of it at the time (we had been drinking, of course), but this argument is kind of a false choice. I don’t think there’s any evidence that the amount or quality of health-related research would decline under any of the proposed reforms. As far as I can tell, none of the reforms would turn healthcare into a not-for-profit business.

Forgetting the profit motivation for a moment, I have to wonder about WHY people go into heath-related fields. I’m sure there’s a not insignificant number of folks who do it because they see an opportunity to make a lot of money.

I don’t think that’s the whole story, though. If people were only motivated by money, we wouldn’t have firefighters, a professional military, police officers, elementary or high-school teachers, and a whole bunch of other public-service folks who don’t make squat relative to the education required or risks they face. Humans are hard-wired to look out for each other. Some people manifest this urge more than others. I call it the “hyperactive public service gland.”

I think that if there was still a chance to make a decent living, we wouldn’t see any decline at all in the amount or quality of medical research in this country.

Let’s also look at the focus of this research and WHY the research needs to be done.

An excessive amount of research dollars are spent on diseases that are either preventable (diet-related things like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.) or could be greatly reduced through a healthier lifestyle and environmental fixes, like various cancers. Focus on preventing those problems (which would be REALLY, REALLY cheap to prevent compared to the ongoing costs of trying to fight the problems after they’ve developed), and you’ve freed up all kinds of money that could be spent on research to solve the really hard things like HIV/AIDS and the like.

Once again, if you’re only focusing on the current outcomes when looking for places to reform, you’re missing the big picture and the easiest and cheapest reforms which would make a world of difference.

Anyway, why am I, an avowed Liberal, thanking a back-bencher Congresscritter from South Carolina?

Wilson (unwittingly, I’m sure) opened the door to an honest assessment of just how unhinged from FACTS the ultra-right is in all of their dealings.

President Obama stated that the proposed reforms to Sick Care would not cover illegal immigrants, and that statement is a FACT.

Joe Wilson called the President (of the United States, in one of the most hallowed halls of representative government) a liar because the President has stated that he doesn’t support the onerous, nearly useless, and VERY expensive citizenship verification requirements that Republicans have tried to write into the bill. (Language that is very similar to the disenfranchising voter ID BS they’ve tried repeatedly to ram down our throats, despite NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of actual voter fraud happening as a result of a lack of legislation.)

So, who’s the liar?

Not the President. The current House bill states clearly that illegal immigrants are not entitled to the coverages provided by the reforms. Because Joe Wilson doesn’t like that the President disfavors Joe’s pet anti-immigrant and anti-poor-person provision doesn’t make the President a liar or his statement a lie.

What ultimately comes out of this is clear evidence that ultra-cons really don’t care about TRUTH or FACTS or actually TALKING about sickcare in real terms. Instead, they’d rather demonize Democrats for actually trying to DO SOMETHING about our completely failed and unfair system. (A system from which a very few people get VERY rich, which — in case you haven’t guessed by now — is the only thing that ultra-cons give a shit about.)

So, thanks Joe, for exposing the truth of your party’s complete and utter rejection of reality and honest debate.

I’ve been flipping through the handouts that came in my SWAG bag, and I don’t know if I’ve seen so many buzzwords collected in one place, ever. The enterprise tech market seems to be a roiling sea of companies all trying to simultaneously cannibalize each other’s sales while forming groups to work together for interoperability. My impression so far is that they’re all run by marketers looking for the “next big thing.”

How about this for a “next big thing”? Make products that make my life TRULY easier. I don’t know for sure what exactly I mean by that, I’m still new to the space, but I can’t imagine that every mid-sized company needs yet another “dashboard” to help manage their “private cloud.” I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that there might be fewer than 500 companies (most regularly listed in a particular edition of Fortune magazine, I’d guess) that truly need something like that. Is that tiny market worth all the trouble you go to trying to reach it?

Anyway, I’m here to absorb all of it that I can, which means that I’ll have to figure out a way to translate buzzwords into something that is actually useful in my environment. I’ll also need to sift through all the cruft on the show floor for the truly informative and helpful info. Even for a guy who’s pretty good at BS detection like myself, this is a daunting task.

Nevertheless, I’m excited to be here, and I’m looking forward to learning more about this technology. I think it’ll be really useful to me in the future, and I hope that I can put the knowledge I gain to good use for TCU.