What is Google Wave? SOLVED!

Sometimes I am kinda slow and it takes me a while to catch on, and sometimes others don't make it any easier in their effort to help me understand. Google Wave is one of those things that was the moral equivalent of a flash-bang grenade when it comes to grokking its very essence. Given the grandiose pronouncements by its proponents, like "its gonna replace email", I thought it important to cut through the fog and figure out just what it was and why it was allegedly important. As I researched it, I found pretty much nothing but regurgitated text from the initial info that caused the fog in the first place. I kind of nibbled around the edge of understanding until I stumbled upon a great use case for Wave. Suddenly the mental tetris game of understanding accelerated until I was able to synthesize a simple explanation that others might understand. Here goes...

"Google Wave is IRC, with server side logs, as if it was invented now by Web 2.0 people with modern technology."

Server side logs are important, versus old school IRC, in that you can catch up on threads, even if you don't have the client running.

Hopefully this explains Google Wave a bit for people as bewildered as I was.

Please develop my idea!

While in a hurry to get some place today, I was struck with what I think to be a fabulous idea. The saying "necessity is the mother of invention" is just not a trite phrase, as it turns out. Apart from telling you that I was driving, I will spare you the whole back story about how my idea came about, as I suspect you will figure it out yourself. If you can't figure it out by yourself, you probably don't have the brain pan to develop the idea anyways.

My great idea is to develop a dash-mounted device that would activate an inert femto-cell cellular station every time the left turn signal is engaged. The one problem with this device is that the biggest tools of the driving world don't use turn signals, so it would be ineffective where it is needed the most. In any case, let me say that I would be perfectly happy if it was standard equipment on cars.

Death Panels? Already Here!

I watch the political fencing contest that is happening between the Democrats and the Republicans on health care and one of the dominant attack methods of the Republicans is to bring up the looming spectre of "Death Panels". As I understand it, those alleged "death panels" would convene to determine quite literally who would live and die based upon the treatments they allow. It seems to be getting some traction as an attack method, as its making the Democrats respond to it, however haphazardly.

The truly humorous thing is that the Democrats are letting the attacks work and not pointing out the simple fact that death panels already exist. After all, who determines who gets organ transplants. Who figures out which candidates are unworthy of a transplant due to factors that would affect the outcome of the transplant. For instance, chronic alcoholics will often find themselves on the bad side of a death panel when it comes to getting a new liver. I am fairly certain that its a group of health care workers that evaluate the issues against a relatively objective set of criteria, but ultimately there are subjective aspects for each of the participants.

Furthermore, the so-called death panels are entirely appropriate whether its for private or public insurance programs. Let's say, for instance, that a cancer patient faces certain death in the short term if they don't get a bone marrow transplant that optimistically gives them a 1/10% chance of survival. There are always more experimental treatments that give the faint glimmer of hope for tragically sick people, but often at extreme costs. For that 0.1% chance of survival the cost to the insurance company (public or private) is >$100,000 and that cost is borne by either taxpayers or other insurance policy holders, thus increasing the cost for all health care, all for a long shot at survival. Ironically, if that same person had the assets to pay cash for the transplant, they likely wouldn't do so to avoid bankrupting their family's future. The natural human inclination is usually to "go for it", if it's on someone else's tab. Perhaps it should be stated in a fashion more like "if you get the bone marrow transplant, $100k gets taken out of your grandson's school budget".

I seriously wish that the people making these decisions would use a little common sense and critical thinking skills. They are too busy thrusting and parrying to actually pay attention to what they are doing.

Red Herring Market

In watching the annoying hand-wringing of the current health care debate, I've noticed one thing. While watching
Senator Al Franken talk down an angry crowd, I noticed a strange uptick in the Red Herring market. I had seen it happen with other opponents and proponents speaking on the same topic, but it really didn't register. Each of the speakers brings up quite logical and intuitive things that are an utter load of crap. In Franken's case, he said that he had people come up to him and say that they would create start a small business, if not for some aspect of their health care setup that would not allow them to get insured, such as a pre-existing condition. Sounds sensible right? The problem is that most people dream of starting a small business but very few do a single damn thing towards that end. Not so much as setting aside a dollar for start, not read a brochure, and haven't even considered doing a business plan. So why is this red herring even introduced into the theoretically logical discourse. I can say that I am fully covered for lightening strikes, but lets not quibble over whether I am more likely to get hit, versus someone actually making a tangible move towards starting a small business.

I also noticed his mentioning of the old "I can't leave my job because of insurance" thing. Oh what a pity! It's just so horrible that they have to remain employed in perhaps a dead end job to stay nominally responsible for their families health care. In years past, men (and women) gladly stayed employed in jobs that were dangerous, and often deadly, (think miners and fishermen) to feed their families. I'm sure they would have loved to have more cushy jobs than the ones they have. Perhaps the whiners should take their pleas to the tons of unemployed people that would love to be employed. People need to do what they need to do to take care of their families. If it isn't what you want to be doing, figure out a way to do something that is more palatable. And stop whining!

The fine line between proper and annoying

While we were on the aforementioned vacation to Grand Marais, MN, we stayed at our usual hotel in town, but this time we got a fairly newly redone room. A nice thing about this particular hotel is that over the many years that we have stayed there, it has continually improved and upgraded, which isn't something we have seen in other hotels that we frequent. As recurring guests, we have met the owner and its clear that she runs a first class operation. Additionally, they have pretty much the same people working there from year to year, which is probably quite unique in a tourism focused town. Anyways, this new room had a groovy new bathroom with glass shower and double shower head affair, a definite upgrade from previous rooms. As it turns out, something wasn't quite adjust correctly and there was some problems getting it to not spray out the side and over the glass wall and onto the ceiling. But that isn't what this post is about. Of course we called the front desk and they sent the usual maintenance guy up. He's an older guy that is very competent and nice. The problem is that when he knocks on the door, he keeps knocking a bit too long. I reckon that its about twice as long as it should be. To fix the problem, and some other minor issues that we ran into, he had to come up to our room several times and subject us to "the knock". It's such a petty thing and yet so annoying. It's almost insistent and beckoning us to get our asses off the couch and open the door right now. I fear that I am channel Jerry Seinfeld or something, but it was annoying. In reality, it was just a few extra knocks and shouldn't have even registered, but it did. Consequently, I have concluded that sometimes there is a very fine line between proper and annoying.

On Paying Attention...

While on vacation to Grand Marais, MN, my wife is in the habit of visiting the Viking Hus, that specializes in Scandanavian goods, which is consistent with both our ethnic backgrounds. She secretly wishes she was of Norwegian descendency, but has settled quite nicely with being Swedish, although she won't admit it. Norwegians, after all, have lefse. Anyways, getting to the Viking Hus requires that you go through a drug store and enter the store through a side doorway. It's quite hard to absent-mindedly find your way into the Viking Hus. While she made her pilgrimage into the store, she overheard another customer complaining about all the products that were in foreign languages. I often lament about the profound lack of critical thinking skills in most people, and situations like this illustrate exactly why I do that. Wasn't she suspicious when the name of the store was spelled in such a peculiar manner? Plus, after even a coupla seconds of observation, it isn't too difficult to divine the nature of the store. I'm pretty glad that I was sitting out front, playing with my iphone, as I would have found it hard to contain an audible "well duh".

A Matter of Perspective

The other day my wife and I were driving home from a very nice vacation on the north shore of Minnesota. We were most of the way home and had to stop to get gas and I chose a nice little locally owned rural-ish gas station that I often frequent in Coates, MN. Approaching the gas station I saw a Hummer that had just pulled in probably 20 car lengths ahead of us. Hummers are always noticeable and that typically suits the owners just fine. As we approached the doors of the Hummer popped open and people started rapidly piling out. One... two... three... pretty soon like ten people have exited the vehicle and were quickly heading towards the front door of the gas station. Obviously a potty break or something. I was frankly startled a little bit by the number of people that had quickly piled out of the vehicle and I was wondering whether the Hummer was just that spacious, or if it was some kind of clown car. As I pulled into the parking lot my angle on the Hummer changed and it turns out that it was a stretched limo version of a Hummer and was about as long as the gas station was wide. My wife had apparently had equivalent thoughts about the clown car nature of the Hummer and we had a good chuckle. Typically limos are very distinctive and you can tell them, even from directly behind them, for miles. It turned out to truly be a matter of perspective.

Liability WTF?!?!?

Yesterday I stopped in the local outdoors outfitter type store Gander Mountain. I had a few moments while my takeout food was cooking at a nearby restaurant, so I thought I would go over and pick up some carabiners for my son's backpacking trip in a couple of weeks and Gander should have a good selection. After his last backpacking trip, he has expressed an interest in getting a carabiner to attach his water bottle to his belt for convenience sake. So... I go search the camping section, no carabiners. I kind of search around randomly, thinking they may be on an aisle display or something. Eventually I give in and go up to the checkout counter and ask. I did so with trepidation, as its not in my nature to ask such stupid questions and I feared that they would tell me exactly where they should obviously be. The response that I got was quite befuddling. The clerks responded that they don't sell carabiners to "liabilities sake" and that "apparently people had been hurt climbing with them" and that "they would have to keep a qualified climbing instructor on staff to sell carabiners". Apparently attaching his water bottle to his belt was much more dangerous than I thought. When they told me this, my jaw hit the floor, as I was absolutely aghast at how stupid this was. It wasn't until later that I truly was able to behold the full extent of the irony, as Gander Mountain is a huge seller of guns, knives, and fire-starting technology. That is more than just a little messed up. The saddest aspect of this tale is that I will have to go to Walmart to live on the dangerous side and get a, gasp, carabiner.