Author: cdwan

I’m going to be in Santa Cruz next week.

Where should I eat?

I found this quote (from a NY Times article on a proposed Mortgage bailout) … pithy:

“If the lunch truly is free, the demand for free lunches will be large,”

As I thought about it, I have had a bunch of interesting experiences lately … mostly related to talking to real live people. I sat next to a woman on the plane back from Chicago who turned out to be both an end-of-life nurse and an Episcopal priest. She noticed me reading Ethics for a New Millennium by the Dalai Lama and wanted to talk. She wound up asking for references on “the sort of Buddhism I was describing.” I felt like I had done good.

Last night, sat at the bar having dinner next to a man who had run restaurants for 25 years, and then was a firefighter. He wound up going to Louisiana after hurricane Katrina, and hiring on full time with FEMA. Neat guy.

Finally, I had an ego boost today: After a few of us wrestled most of the afternoon with a thorny technical problem, I finally just said “oh,” and resolved it with a single command. The others sat quiet for a moment, and then one of them said “Okay, that doesn’t count. You can’t just guess and have it work like that.”

Apparently I can.

I notice that I haven’t been posting much. It’s not a lack of thoughts – nor really of time in which to write them down. It’s mostly that I really want to push on through and finish watching season 1 of Heroes.

I’m in Hampton, VA again.

I play games with numbers, to keep things interesting. One of the things I do is to make up little stories about my hotel room numbers. It helps me to remember them.

This one was dead simple – so a single point to anyone who can guess the story for this week’s room: “329”.

Hey, here’s a fun and interesting facet of the massive statewide budget cuts: Funding for hospitals! Specifically, Boston Medical Center.

Looks like BMC will have to make do with $97 billion million less than they were expecting for the year. The majority of that ($64BM) is a rescinded supplemental payment from the state. The rest is – essentially – rolling back Medicaid reimbursement rates to 2002 levels.

That great big hospital in the South End already has a hiring freeze, and is looking at staff cuts.

Gee, that seems like a good idea. Let’s make savage cuts in social services and medical care for the pool, concurrent with a recession / depression.

Gah.

So, I’m on the road again.

This week I’m in Bethesda. Going home tomorrow – to go to a wedding in Chicago over the weekend. On Monday, I fly down to VA to hang with NASA. Home Friday, a couple of quick halloween parties, and then off to Santa Cruz for a week. Return, chill with the spouse for a week, and then down to Austin for Supercomputing.

For those of us who keep count of such things, that’s something like 6 weeks of travel out of a 7 week period.

Plus, I have a cold. Less than optimal.

Here’s change that I can get my brain around: I’m wearing my Obama shirt as we travel back to the US. I’m absolutely innuncated with people wanting to shake my hand, and even to trade shirts with me. Not that foreign opinion should be any sort of dominant factor in our presidential choices, but damn it’s nice to have people like me for being an american after the last 8 years.

In other news, we just landed in Philly. Eta 9pm in Boston, at which point I really hope our bags make it because I committed the total n00b mistake of checking the car keys with the luggage. You’d think I didn’t do this very often.

Detailed post on getting the boat up to 7.2 knots under wind power when I have a real keyboard.

slept mostly through the night. Apparently hurricanes are okay as long as they miss you.

Went to the willy t in ‘the bight’ tonight. Bar on a boat. Boobs, and butt nakedness (none of our party for either). Apparently anything goes on a boat party.