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Opinari - Latin term for Opinion. Opinari.net is just what it seems: a cornucopia of rants, raves and poignant soliloquy. |
Saturday, December 31, 2005
This will be my final blog post of 2005. I am somewhat disappointed that I could not blog as prolifically this year as I did in previous years. Since I started blogging in 2002, I have found that it is an enjoyable hobby. It allows me to vent, to opine, and to share certain things about my life that I just think are worth sharing. Perhaps 2006 will be more accommodating to my desire to blog than 2005 was. If I were to speculate though, I would guess that my wife will probably blog more than I will.
So what to think of 2005... I would say that it was fatiguing if you are a political junkie. Really, the biting and snipping ad nauseum just gets old. I find myself avoiding blogs that engage in the rancorous namecalling and such. To wit:
"Bush is a bastard."
"FSCK BUSHCO!"
"Cheney is the Devil!"
These things are not worthy of being read, nor are their many derivatives. I think political blogs will begin to evolve in the marketplace of ideas. They will survive only if they can provide some real insight. That is my hope anyway.
But 2005, in the "real world", was simply amazing. On January 1st, I was watching TV, rooting for the Vols in the Cotton Bowl alongside my beautiful wife and our infant son. We were firmly rooted in Connecticut, with no plans to go elsewhere. Basically, we were doing the best we could with what we had. I had very few complaints.
Turn the clock to December 31st. We've moved to Texas. I have made a major career move. We have a brand new house, car, and a baby boy due any minute now (literally). Just when I thought life couldn't get any better, it did.
I usually reserve Thanksgiving for... er, giving thanks, but I think as this year comes to a close, I'm going to thank the Lord for several things:
My wife, without whom I would be lost.
My son, without whom I would take life far too seriously.
My new son, who isn't yet here, but whose arrival is highly anticipated.
The health of all of my loved ones and friends.
My church families in Texas, Connecticut, and Tennessee.
The position God has placed me in to be able to provide for my family without requiring my wife to work outside of the home. That stability for my children means more to me than I can ever express.
Perspective. Kids and family give you plenty of that.
Freedom, and the efforts of our armed forces to guarantee it to millions around the world who know very little about it.
God, and His infinite love.
It all may sound trite, or corny, but I don't care tonight. I'm damned lucky to be where I am. The least I can do is blog about it.
Happy New Year to everyone!Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
9:15 PM
Friday, December 23, 2005
Tipping Your Delivery Driver:
A pet peeve of mine is when people, especially friends of mine, don't tip the delivery driver who delivers food to their home. Another pet peeve of mine is when respected newspapers devalue the job that delivery drivers do.
To wit, here is an article from the Wall Street Journal dated December 22:
Q: How much should I tip when my food is delivered?
A: The rule of thumb is generally around 10%, says Peter Post of the Emily Post Institute. While the delivery person is performing a service for you by bringing you your food, it isn't as much service as you get from a waiter in a restaurant so a 15% tip isn't warranted. If the delivery person is late and your food is cold, call the restaurant to complain instead of holding your tip. The restaurant could be at fault, Mr. Post says. If it is a horrible snowstorm or you live at the top of a five-floor walk-up, you might want to tip a little bit more if you know the delivery person went out of his or her way to get to you. Also, if you are a regular and see the same delivery person every week, Mr. Post recommends a holiday tip equal to the amount of your usual order.
To which I responded:
Editor,
I am compelled to respond to the answer in the December 22nd "Ask Personal Journal" section of the Wall Street Journal entitled "Tipping for Food Delivery". The article attributes the following quote to Peter Post of the Emily Post Institute: "The rule of thumb is generally around 10%, says Peter Post of the Emily Post Institute. While the delivery person is performing a service for you by bringing you your food, it isn't as much service as you get from a waiter in a restaurant so a 15% tip isn't warranted." That assertion is utter hogwash.
Although I do not work in the food delivery business any longer, I did so for many years while putting myself through undergraduate and graduate schools. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the business, and I can assure you that a delivery to your door is as much, if not more of a service than a waiter or waitress provides. Each time a delivery driver leaves on a run, he or she risks their life, especially if the weather is uncooperative.
Furthermore, while drivers are compensated for their gasoline expenses, they are not similarly reimbursed for oil changes and other maintenance, and most have to carry more expensive insurance on their personal vehicles due to the nature of their jobs. Try telling your insurance agent that you are a pizza delivery driver. They will likely laugh as they calculate your rate.
I have waited tables and done deliveries, and both jobs are worthy of respect, but for Mr. Post to devalue the delivery service shows his lack of understanding of the delivery business. For one, I am glad that I never was tasked to make a delivery to his house.
To be frank, a driver should be tipped when and only when they deserve to be tipped. It is the attitude of Mr. Post toward delivery drivers that really rubs me wrong.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
11:17 AM
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
An Ode to a "Stranger"
A man who I hardly knew passed away this week. He was the head deacon in our church, a church I have attended for only a few months. Although I knew little about the man, I also found myself knowing a lot more than I realized.
You see, this man was the face of our little church, the friendliest, most welcoming man I have ever known. His death has affected me profoundly, and I realized neither the extent of that affect nor the reasons for it until tonight.
As I went to the funeral home for the viewing, I witnessed literally hundreds of people who had come to pay their last respects to the gentleman. I watched the smiles on the faces of people young and old to whom this man had been a grandfather figure, a cohort, and a friend. As I walked by his coffin, I couldn't bring myself to gaze at him, because I chose to remember his life.
This man, an angel really, was the first to greet my family when we visited the church during a hot Sabbath in June. When we finally moved here, there he was, smiling, shaking our hands, as if we were a long lost member of his own family. From that day forward, and even now, I firmly believe that we were, and we are, and we always will be a member of his family. That's how he saw everyone. And that's how Christian elders, deacons, and church members are supposed to be.
When we finally decided to start attending Sabbath afternoon potlucks, he wasn't there anymore. There was one week when a man passed away in our church, and my heart sank. I thought it was this beautiful man who had been so warm and friendly to us. To my pleasant surprise, it wasn't. Yet I found out that he himself was sick, and not doing so well.
My wife and I saw him come to church that Sabbath, walking down the center aisle, oxygen bag in tow, still smiling, still loving his church family as only he could. He greeted dozens of well-wishers outside the vestibule, just as he always had.
Weeks later, his wonderful wife and several other ladies in the church gave my wife a baby shower. Now, we've only been here a few months. The last thing we expected was to be lavished with gifts by our new church. I chose not to go to the event, since it was on a Sunday, and football was on, and what man wants to sit through a baby shower anyway?
My wife told me afterward that the man about whom I speak now was the only man there, as it was, of course, his home. He sat in the living room most of the time, sipping a Diet Mountain Dew, and watching football. A man of my own heart, he was.
It wasn't too long afterward that we got a call from the church, telling us that the man had died that day. My heart sank. My heart really hasn't returned to its normal stature.
How is it that a man, a "stranger" really, affects someone so profoundly? I realized tonight that I cannot point to a particular instance in my life when I felt so welcomed in a house of worship, so accepted, so made to feel as if I had been there my entire life. It wouldn't have mattered if I was a prince, or a pauper, he would have been equally thrilled to have me in his presence. You see, it is our mission as Christians to welcome everyone, to treat everyone as if they are our lifelong friends, and to witness to others through our actions, to exhibit kindness, love, and respect to each individual without prejudice and without exception.
Only a man like Lynn Ray has ever made me feel that way. And I will miss him, as I would if I had lost my own grandfather. In fact, I already do.
So Lynn, the next time I am drinking a Diet Mountain Dew, and watching a football game on TV, I'll be thinking of you. And the next time a stranger comes to our lovely little church, I'll look up to the sky, and pray, and ask God to help me to be just half of the Christian that you were.
You will be missed.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
9:43 PM
Friday, December 09, 2005
Tax Cuts - It's All In the Presentation:
I hate it when I read something in the news like this.
The measure was approved a day after the House passed three other tax bills that altogether would cost the government $94 billion over five years.
This statement is obviously intended to garner sympathy for the government's "underfunded" Treasury, and to depict tax cuts as something negative.
What if the same statement was expressed differently?
The measure was approved a day after the House passed three other tax bills that altogether would cost taxpayers $94 billion less over five years.
Or.
The measure was approved a day after the House passed three other tax bills that altogether would reduce the burden on America's taxpayers by $94 billion over five years.
Do those statements strike the same chord as the first one? No, even though the facts are essentially the same. The above sentence conveys a positive, not a negative. Most people view themselves as taxpayers, and would appreciate any savings to them.
So why the difference in verbage? The answer is simple. There's an agenda in place that dictates that any news regarding tax cuts must be viewed as a negative. Admit it. The bias is there. Show me the last time an article that was not a conservative op-ed piece that depicted tax cuts as a positive step in Washington (or Austin, Nashville, or Hartford, for that matter). Go ahead. Show me. I'll bet you can't.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
11:56 AM
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Is the "Crack"berry going to die a quick death? That depends on how Judge James Spencer rules, according to the Wall Street Journal:
The fate of the popular email device is in the hands of an impatient and stern decision maker who doesn't tip his hand before making key rulings. His court operates in the hurry-up tradition of Virginia's Eastern District.
(Judge Spencer's) demonstrated irritation with RIM's attempts to thwart a patent infringement suit filed by NTP Inc., a Virginia patent holder, has some observers fearing a service-halt when he next takes up the case in the coming weeks. Of course, RIM could yet agree to a settlement with NTP. The two had a preliminary agreement fall apart earlier this year.
A RIM executive said yesterday that the companies have held talks in recent days. "RIM and NTP had been communicating with each other through the court-appointed mediator," said Mark Guibert, RIM's vice president of corporate marketing, who declined to provide details. "RIM expects to continue communications," he said.
This week, technology consulting firm Gartner Inc. recommended customers hold off BlackBerry investments. A promised technology "workaround" that RIM says will bypass NTP's patents is "problematical" and RIM's "history in the courts does not inspire confidence," Mr. Gartner said.
{...}
Judge Spencer has expressed annoyance with RIM's efforts to postpone a ruling on halting sales of the service. "I have spent enough of my time and life involved with NTP and RIM," he said last month, promising to ''move swiftly" on the case. He has also let the companies know that he won't be swayed by factors outside the law.
{...}
The stakes are high. RIM has more than four million BlackBerry subscribers, mostly in the U.S. Investors have bid up RIM's market capitalization to about $11.7 billion, on the expectation that many millions more subscribers will sign up in the coming years.
NTP says case law calls for a BlackBerry ban, and it wants RIM to pay NTP likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars to settle the case to avoid a BlackBerry shutdown. RIM says a ban isn't appropriate, given the preliminary patent office decision and the public consequences of shutting down its service.
Even with a ban, RIM says it will keep BlackBerries running with newly developed "workaround" technology that bypasses NTP's patents. "We expect our customers will be taking advantage of that" if necessary, says a spokesman for Cingular Wireless, one of the biggest BlackBerry service providers in the U.S. He declined to say if Cingular has tested RIM's workaround technology.
RIM officials decline to discuss details of the workaround or the company's legal strategy. NTP says it will challenge in court any workaround RIM proposes to use.
Judge Spencer also has said he's not going to hold up court proceedings for further patent-office rulings. What's more, NTP recently sought to add more than 32,000 claims to its patents, but backed off most.
If the judge calls for a service halt, RIM could immediately appeal any ban to the appeals court, which may be more inclined to postpone the ban. But the appeals court would have to side with RIM instantly, since observers say RIM can't afford even a brief BlackBerry shutdown.
Now, this case has quite a bit of relevance to me since I have to support several Blackberry users, and if the service is forced to shut down, I'll be hearing directly from some irate users. I don't profess to know the interworkings of this lawsuit, and since I don't, a couple of questions keep occurring to me.
What right does NTP have to force Blackberry to shut down if they discontinue their use of the alleged patented technology? Wasn't that their complaint to begin with?
I understand the judge's impatience with both this case, and with RIM, but shouldn't he consider the "external factors" like the fact that the USPTO has already thrown out one of NTP's main patent claims? Shouldn't factors such as these render NTPs claims moot? How can NTP claim a violation against a patent that doesn't exist?
Perhaps my questions are naive, but I haven't seen anyone address them articulately.
Either way, I am no Blackberry apologist. I think the handhelds are poorly designed, and they lack the ubiquitous choices of third-party software that Palm handhelds have.
Besides, I have a better solution than Blackberry anyway. Presently, I use a Treo 650. On my Treo, I have a superb mail client called Chatter that is mapped to an IMAP server. Anytime I get email on the IMAP account, the client detects the receipt of the item, and my Treo is notified within seconds. At $39 per client license, this solution makes more sense than the overhead of maintaining and implementing a dedicated Blackberry server. And besides, if NTP has anything to say about it, the Treo and Chatter will the best push email solution left standing.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
12:40 PM
More Bizarro Connecticut:
Oh, my former home, the "Nut" meg State...
To the exhibits:
First, we have Lowell Weicker (allegedly a member of the Republican Party) rumored to be considering a run against Democrat Joe Lieberman because of his support of the Iraq War.
Then we have Ann Coulter having to end a speech midway through because of loud music. (So much for free speech on college campuses, and all that.)
Then, to top it off, we have Stamford designating "Day Laborer No Hassle Zones" for illegal immigrants there.
Sigh.
Well, other than the politics, the climate, the cost of living, the exorbitant income and property taxes, the gridlocked traffic, and the lack of a Chick-Fil-A, and a good place to eat biscuits and gravy, Connecticut is a terrific place!Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
12:11 PM
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
I recall several weeks ago a thread on Michael Silence's blog expressing dismay about capital punishment. I want the same naysayers who apologize for the death penalty there to tell me this poor excuse for a mother doesn't deserve that fate for what she did. Disgusting.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
3:34 PM
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Online banking certainly has a place in a wired world. It most definitely has a place in my life. I rarely bank at a "branch" unless it is unavoidable. Some people prefer to automate their lives and their banking by setting up automatic debits for their expenses. At the risk of forgetting an occasional payment, I never do auto-debits (for substantial expenditures anyway), nor do I plan to. Why? Read this horror story.
My horror story in the virtual world of finance occurred when a double technology error nearly bankrupted me in a week. My desktop personal-finance software program and my online bill-payment service had a slight misunderstanding due to software bugs at each end. As a result, instead of paying one mortgage payment in advance before I headed overseas on a business trip, my online bill-payment service presented my bank with an electronic voucher for a mortgage payment – once every business day.
If it wasn't for a human being at my local bank branch, who figured out something was very wrong and gave me a call, I would have been financially dead and buried and completely oblivious while overseas. The toughest part of the whole fiasco was getting the two software companies to understand it was their mistake, not my incompetence. No one on the Help Desk would believe that I was being dunned thousands of dollars a day.
I think I am far more comfortable with the risk of an oversight than I am with the risk of such a catastrophic glitch. Sometimes, the Luddite in me wins out, although not completely.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
2:52 PM
Headline from today's New York Times: "Weicker May Return To Politics Over Lieberman's Support of War"
Only in New England could a "Republican" candidate (who was instrumental in bringing into existence the Connecticut income tax, by the way) challenge a Democrat for supporting a war. This is illustrative of the Bizarro world that is Northeast politics. Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
9:28 AM
Friday, December 02, 2005
Historical Revisionism:
Almost daily, I read something about someone, whether they be a famous performer, an athlete, a politician, a pundit, or even a layman, who refutes the premise (sometimes eloquently, sometimes not) that the US and its allies were justified in going to war with the Hussein regime in Iraq. The anti-war echo chamber loves to toss about various conspiracy theories about Bush, Cheney, Rove, et. al., almost as if it is a sport for them. Of course, free thinking people are entitled to those opinions, just as I am entitled to mine... and here's mine.
Stop the revisionism.
When uninformed people talk about the President's motives for making the case for war, misstatement of facts is to be expected. When more responsible individuals, such as Congressional leaders, stake positions inconsistent with the generally accepted intelligence and information that was available at the time, that is irresponsible political opportunism. When Senate Democrats maintain that they would have never endorsed a resolution for war had they known the "facts", they are conveniently forgetting that the global intelligence community had long maintained that Iraq was developing WMDs, and intended to use them. Every reputable intelligence agency held this position. Every. Single. One. Even the benevolent UN itself believed it to be so, but lacked the backbone to enforce its own resolutions.
The American public, by and large, is sophisticated enough not to embrace such indiscriminant editing of historical facts. Saddam Hussein's wanton destruction of the Kurds with chemical weapons is well-documented. Those images can never be rescinded, no matter how loud the cacophony of revisionism gets. Given what the intelligence community knew, or thought it knew, and given Hussein's precedent of destroying his countrymen, and given the existing
resolutions by the international community regarding Iraq, the action of war against an aggressive regime was not only justified, but necessary. That is the opinion of a plurality of Americans.
However, there is a faction of dissenters who disagree. That is their right. I applaud them for doing so. Disagreement and debate are essential parts of any successful representative government. That being said, if those who disagree with the war effort are to be taken seriously, they need to at least get their facts right. They must, at a minimum, conform their argument to the facts, and not the reverse.
The statements being made lately are not being made out of dissent, but out of a desire to smear and tarnish a presidency, and to gain political advantage in the runup to the 2006 Congressional elections. I believe though that most Americans will see past the rhetoric, and continue to see what the facts show - that the President never misled the public, that every responsible party in the free world believed what the President believed, and based those beliefs on the intelligence available to them, and that the revisionism happening today is nothing more than that -
revisionism.Labels: Archives_2005
.: posted by
Dave
9:28 AM
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