So, there’s been a lot of discussion lately about health care reform and all the different ways it might happen, as well as all different bad things it might do to your grandma, but I’m not going to talk about those things. Not directly, anyway.

What I am going to talk about, specifically, is my understanding of what a “public option” is (or should be) and why I support it. But I’m not going to just say that I support it and leave it at that. I’m going to provide you with some information as to why you should support it, too. There may be some data that is not quite right, because I’m not an expert, but the general point I’m trying to make should be the take-away message. (If I make a mistake, by all means correct me, but don’t go ranting about death panels and Nazis, please.)

First, let me start by describing the current health care situation, overall, in the United States. Basically, whoever has health insurance (either because they bought it outright, or because their employer provides it for them) has access to medical attention. That means they have access to specialists in whatever area their problem may be: if you have a brain tumor, you go to a brain surgeon; if you have a bunion, you go to a podiatrist; if you have bipolar disorder, you go to a psychiatrist. Based on what insurance you have, you may be limited to a specific list of doctors that your insurance covers. That’s fine. That’s part of the market. But, the bottom line is, you have that list.

People without health insurance, and without a high income or savings, do not have a list. They can’t go to a specialist in the area they need help with. So they have two choices: go to the emergency room or a clinic, where they mostly only have doctors who practice general or emergency medicine, and where you are served on a first-come, first-served basis (i.e. you wait for a really long time on really long lines); or, do nothing and live with whatever pain there may be.

This is not a good way to live. In fact, it is quite counterproductive and detrimental to society. If you have people with chronic pain that they can’t pay to get rid of, their workload will be lower. If their workload is lower, they can’t contribute as much to economy, because they don’t get paid enough to afford expensive things like houses or new cars. So they live at poverty or near-poverty levels, where other, more well-off taxpayers have to pay for many of the services that support them; besides the emergency room care, there’s welfare and increased crime rates, too.

The idea behind the public option for health care reform is to correct this problem, to fill the gap between those who can afford health care—and, thus, get it—and those can’t—and, thus, don’t. That is what the public option is all about. It provides free or competitively subsidized health care for those who would not otherwise be able to afford it. Here’s the thing, though: There’s no promise it’s gonna be great health care. In all likelihood, it won’t be that good at all. But not good a whole lot better than none. But it doesn’t just help the people that need health care and can’t afford it.

Oh, no. It helps the more-well-off taxpayers, too. Sure, your taxes may go up a bit to pay for the new health care system, depending on how they decide to pay for it. But you’ll get other benefits that will out-weigh that tax increase in the long run. More people will be healthier, because they won’t wait and suffer until the pain just gets so unbearable that they have no choice but to seek expensive health care that they can’t afford. Healthier people means healthier workers, which means more workers, which means better economy, which means better country. It also means that you, as the privileged person with health insurance, will get all the perks of having that upper status. You may get an air-conditioned room in a hospital, versus one without air conditioning for the person with the public option; you may get a private bathroom, versus the communal one in the hallway where you have to walk with your butt hanging out for all to see; you may get a better expert in the area of what ails you, versus one who’s less of an expert (but an expert nonetheless).

And don’t think that I’m just making this up off the top of my head, because I’m not. This is what actually happens in countries that have socialized medicine, including two great friends of the United States: Canada and the United Kingdom. How do I know this? By reading first-hand accounts from Mike Hoye and Sarah Lyall, respectively.

Which is why I think a public option is a good idea. The United States needs to get with the times and provide health care to all of its citizens. Else, what does that say about the heart of the country? That it doesn’t care about the health of the people that call it home, that help it survive? Come on, now. I know you’re not saying that. Get with it and support the public option, even if you already have health insurance. I promise, the perks for you will only get better.

So, to clarify:

• Stream of Controversy (the old blog) is now at http://streamofcontroversy.wordpress.com/.
• My new blog is at the main address of http://gphemsley.wordpress.com/.

Have a nice day!

Let me start off by saying that it is Vermont State Law that you must stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk. This is particularly important because there are specifically marked crosswalks without any traffic signals or stop signs. They are merely marked by the generic “pedestrian in crosswalk” sign. I suppose that this is to indicate to drivers that there is a crosswalk present, where you are supposed to stop if there is anyone in the street. Essentially, it’s a conditional stop sign. (At least, that’s how I interpret it.)

And we can begin with those signs. First off, you would assume that Vermont drivers (that is, drivers with Vermont license plates—and, presumably, Vermont licenses) would know their own state’s driving laws, right? Well, apparently not, because most Vermont drivers do not stop at those crosswalks to let pedestrians cross. In fact, most out-of-state drivers (including Massachusetts and New York, which are common around here) do not. However, one notable out-of-state driver that stopped for me was from Connecticut. From my single trip to Connecticut, I know that they also have a similar law for stopping for pedestrians. (I think it might even be stricter—as in, you must always stop for pedestrians in the street, no exceptions. But I’m not familiar with the letter of the law, so I don’t know.) If this were the only problem drivers around here have, it wouldn’t be too bad. All you’d have to do is wait for the vehicles to go by, and then you can cross, since these signs are generally only in lower-traffic areas. Alas, though, it gets worse.

Not only do they not understand stopping for pedestrians and crosswalks; they also don’t understand the relationship between pedestrians and red lights.

But first let me digress a bit to note that there are no three-lane highways in Vermont. (I didn’t realize that at first, because my mind’s eye just extrapolates home streets, which have 3 lanes.) That means that Main Street, which also has a highway number of some sort, has only two lanes in either direction. Which means one must cross only four lanes of traffic to get from one side to the other, and there is a big enough divider where you can safely stand between the directions if you get stuck in the middle while crossing. In addition, at many of the intersections, there are those buttons you push to let the lights know that you want to cross the street. In return, the “walk” sign will chirp to let you (and, more importantly, blind pedestrians) that it is safe to cross the street.

So back to my story…. Vermont drivers do not understand the relationship between pedestrians and red lights. Obviously, if you’re stopped at a red light that just turned green, and there are people in the street in front of you, then they’re the leftovers from that red light you are stopped at. That means you continue to remain stopped until they have successfully crossed the street and gotten out of your way. This seems like common sense to me. People are crossing the street in front of you. Maybe they’re slow, maybe they decided to cross after they were told to stop. But it doesn’t matter. It takes less effort on your part (and is the much kinder thing to do) to just remain stopped while they finish crossing. But apparently people here can’t handle that concept.

And here’s my anecdote: I was walking to the corner to cross the street when I heard the chirping. I didn’t bother to look up, because I knew that that meant that the light was in my favor for crossing the street. So I continued across, not looking up. Apparently, in the process of my crossing the street, the light had turned green for the drivers who were waiting. However, none of them had yet begun to go (or, at least, were nowhere near where I was) and had plenty of time to let me finish crossing before there was any sort of issue. Instead, some idiot decided to honk at me from 100 feet away, bring me deer-in-the-headlights out of my reverie, and force me to run across the street. Sure, maybe I should have been paying attention to the lights (although I still cannot understand how the lights had changed so quickly; I didn’t think I’d taken that long to get across the street). But these drivers also had two options that they could’ve use: (1) wait at their stop line until I got across—you know that grace period between when the light turns green and the driver hits the gas; or, (2) they could have accelerated slowly as I finished crossing—it wouldn’t have taken me that long at all. But no, people in Vermont always have somewhere really important to go, here in this state where its biggest city has around the same amount of people as my meager hometown in New York.

But that is still not the most of it. When there is a traffic jam at that same intersection, people will run the red light just so that they can block the intersection. I mean, they don’t understand that a traffic jam means that cars are not moving. So you really do not gain anything by hurrying to get behind the car in front of you. In fact, doing so prevents the people who want to avoid the traffic jam by going in the opposite direction from doing so. Or those cars will make the turn into the traffic jam and block the crosswalk for pedestrians—who should be inherently unaffected by traffic jams caused by motor vehicles. But this is a minor story in the road leading up to what I experienced today.

And it’s important for you know before this story that those chirping crosswalk signs only chirp when they know someone is there—that is, only when the button is pushed. The crossing lights will still cycle, I believe, but they will not chirp. It is with that same knowledge, that I decided to cross the street at a crosswalk today that was down the road from the one I’ve been previously discussing, one that has considerably less traffic—it generally only changes when it knows there is a vehicle waiting in the side street. (It’s a T-shaped intersection, so that vehicle can only turn left or right to continue.) Now, I like to save time, if I can, by crossing at a nearby crosswalk if the light is in my favor, rather than waiting for it up at the main corner. So, when I got to this intersection, I noticed the lights for Main Street traffic were red, so, being a New Yorker who knows how to cross streets against the light, I decided to cross the street even when that red hand was solidly telling me not to. And, being alert this time, I clearly noted that the light had changed while I was crossing, and sighed as I resigned myself to waiting in the middle. I even let out a disappointed “oh, man” to myself as I did so. Well, apparently, the car in the left lane on the side of the street that I had yet to cross wasn’t happy with my decision. Despite the fact that I was safely stopped in the median, this car proceeded to honk at me and stop in the middle of the crosswalk. But that wasn’t all. Oh, no. Then, the passenger decided to do the whole arms-and-face “what do you think you’re doing?” gesture. That’s right: not the driver, the passenger. So I returned the gesture—this time with the meaning “you’re the one stopping traffic for no reason”.

So, yeah. That’s my experience with Vermont drivers. They may be all nice and polite when you see them in person, but when they get behind the wheel, they are the most inconsiderate and impatient people you will ever meet. At least in New York we’re mean all the time and know how to handle jaywalking pedestrians….

Alright, it all started on Friday, about 12 hours after my last entry. As you may recall, that was also the same time period I referred to when I said that I had to catch a bus to the airport. Maybe you can see where this story is going already?

First off, have you noticed the weather across the country recently? If not, let me inform you: it’s quite cold. Even in Florida. Except this story starts in Vermont, where it’s always cold. So imagine what happens when the rest of the country gets cold, too. That’s right, it gets really cold in Vermont. I mean single digits Fahrenheit, plus wind chill. And there was certainly wind! Not to mention that a weekend-long blizzard was beginning. The funny thing is, this is just the background to the story.

To actually begin the story, I left my room with my suitcase a few h0urs after it began snowing, so there was already a couple of inches of snow on the ground. And I had to drag my suitcase through this snow, with more of it blowing through the air and into my face. And I had to walk the distance to the bus stop (which, normally, isn’t that far). So, as I’m standing there, waiting for the bus that is 15 minutes late on sunny days, I get a call from Small Dog telling me my computer is ready to be picked up. At first I thought it was my parents telling me that my flight was canceled. (It remained on time up until the point I left my room, despite my girlfriend’s and many other flights being canceled or seriously delayed.) But it wasn’t. It was Small Dog. It was kind of funny, actually, because, after he told me my computer was ready, I replied sarcastically with, “Of course it is.” And then there was silence on the other line, as if he didn’t know how to respond, until I thanked him for the call and allowed him to hang up.

So as we’re standing there, literally freezing our hands off, waiting for the bus, my girlfriend announces that she’s going to walk to the store—which is on the way of the bus route—and pick up my computer for me, and then meet me at the airport. So, I told her she was crazy, and then proceeded to call Small Dog back and set it up for her to have the permission to get my computer. And she ran. She ran through the blizzard, as I nearly got frostbite just standing there, just to get my computer for me. And the bus was so late, with the traffic so slow, that we barely got past the campus grounds by the time she called me enthusiastically to tell me she got it. But I told her that she better find someplace warm to go, because we were going to be awhile. So she was able to get into the mall and all the way through it, to where the bus stopped, before we even turned into the parking lot. Which meant she was able to get on the same bus she left me waiting for about a half hour previous—with my laptop.

When we finally got to the airport—15 minutes after the supposed cutoff to get on the plane—we found out it was delayed. I walked up to the Delta ticket counter and the guy simply asked me, “Are you only going to JFK?” (As opposed to requiring a connection flight.) He then asked for my last name and printed my boarding pass. He told me to not even bother going through security just yet, and he didn’t ask for ID. So we waited, ate dinner, and waited some more. But we also, thanks to her, used my computer. It functioned great. We watched movies, read comics, and did a bunch of other stuff. No problems. And then, around 10 PM or so, the ticket guy announced that the plane was finally in the air and on its way to BTV. So I walked her to a taxi, which she’d have to take back to the dorms to be a late stay, waiting for her Continental flight the next day. Then I went to security.

Despite there being that announcement, there was no one on line. And there wasn’t even a TSA agent at the podium. I was baffled for a second before one waved me down to the metal detector and conveyor belt and informed me that they’re understaffed at night, so they group together to avoid being lonely. (I swear to you, the city of Burlington and the surrounding area completely shuts down at 10 PM, and the only reason there’s an “International” in the name of the airport is because it flies to Canada.) But whatever. I got to the gate, and took out my laptop to begin editing that video that I’d meant to a little over a week before. I got through a bit of it before I had to board the plane.

Now, this plane was so small. And I mean it: Three seats per row—one on one side of the aisle, and two on the other side—and a six-foot ceiling, tops. I was in the single seat and, despite there being enough seats to fit 60–80 people, the flight attendant counted only 33 onboard. After a bit of deicing, we headed to the runway. But after the flight attendant turned off the cabin lights, it was pitch black, and I fell asleep before takeoff. When I woke up, we were above the clouds and I could see the stars. (Well, sort of. My window wasn’t the cleanest, inside or out, so things were distorted and blurry.) It was an interesting sight, and I may have seen a shooting star (or a satellite), but then I went back to sleep for a little. During our descent, we had to go through some thick clouds. There was a decent amount of turbulence, plus a change in (ear) pressure, and the clouds were so dense that the light from the wing was reflecting off of everything and then back into the plane.

The flight was still the normal 50 minutes or so, and we landed at 12:40 AM. I know because I looked at my watch. We taxied to just outside the gate, but then we sat there as we waited for the plane to be deiced—four or five times. Apparently, the planes in New York had been sitting there for a couple of hours. Then, to make matters worse, once the plane was finally ready to leave, the tug that was supposed to get it going couldn’t gain traction on ice and slush! So we waited some more. And then, once we got to the gate, they rolled the stairs up to the door, and we all stood up (under the 6-foot ceiling), we still couldn’t get off because “it was too icy”. We stood there for probably 15 minutes, until the finally opened the door and let us out. And when my sneaker-covered feet hit the pavement, preparing to slip and fall, they were greeted by asphalt. Not ice, not slush—asphalt. We stood for 15 minutes in fear of slippery ice that didn’t exist. In fact, I slipped more walking in the enclosed walkway between the airplane and the airport than I did while on the actual tarmac. I finally got home at around 2:30 AM.

At which point, I set my laptop up on the desk and finshed editing that video. It took a number of hours to render and upload to YouTube, but here it is, in all its edited glory (however much that is): It may or may not have audio/video sync problems. I know the “HD” version does (it wasn’t actually filmed with an HD camera), but that’s because YouTube is working through some bugs in its transcoding process.

Later in the day on Saturday, right as I was going to get started working on stuff for the UVM Web Team (which I get paid for) that I had already had to put off for a week, my screen goes glitchy. And I mean, GAH-I-JUST-BUMPED-MY-NES glitchy. And, like the NES, things still worked for a little while, but then I got a (glitchy) message telling me to restart my computer. I did that, but it continued being glitchy, and again told me to start over. Things never got better, so I called Small Dog to find out what to do. He said he thought that I had gotten a bad board from NVIDIA, because apparently these problems are widespread and they’re scrambling to replace them all, and he told me to bring it in to an Apple Store near me. So I called the Apple Store and made an appointment for this past Sunday, at 7:20 PM. That’s another day without my precious computer.

When I finally got to the store, and went through the whole “official” (political) process, I got to talk to a Genius. Woo-hoo. He told me that it was more likely to be a connection issue than a bad board, but they’d have to send it out to Apple to get it fixed. (Huh? An Apple Specialist can replace a logic board, but an Apple Genius can’t reconnect cables?) And, since Apple is notorious for ditching your old hard drive if they so much as think it clicked, the Genius got me to sign for a $50 charge for backing up my data—a charge that will have to be paid whether or not Apple even looks at my data. (By the way, as the Apple Genius informed me, that “restart your computer” message is actually a kernel panic. In case there are any Linux-to-Mac converts out there that didn’t know.)

So here I am, chugging along on this stupid Windows computer, where I had to upgrade all the software from their 2005 versions. And this CRT monitor is hurting my eyes. Plus, I have a bit of video I want to edit from the night when my computer had a panic attack, but this doesn’t have any good importing and editing programs (especially for dealing with my pseudo-widescreen DV footage), so that may have to wait until I get my computer back—which, thanks to the holiday season, may take up to a week and a half.

One final complaint before I end this: Why bother giving me a repair number if it’s just to track you running in-store diagnostics on the computer before creating another repair number—without telling me—which tracks the actual sending of the computer to Apple? Could someone please explain why these people are called Geniuses?

Thanks for getting through the past 1800+ words, and I hope that I’ll have good news to report the next time I come here (while, hopefully, using my laptop to do so).

Last month (mid-November), my laptop was sitting open, minding its own business, when my girlfriend decided to accidentally walk into the open water bottle on my desk. This, of course, spilled about 2 mL of water onto the laptop. Now, I’d done this myself a number of times without incident, but because my girlfriend has magic powers, she coerced the water underneath the keyboard and into the circuitry of the keys. This resulted in some strange results when certain keys were pressed. The most notable one, after I had given the keyboard some time to dry, was that pressing any key on the home row caused the output to also contain the output of the corresponding key on the number row (and vice versa). In addition, a couple of keys just flat-out died, including my ever-precious A key. These problems led to sentences that looked like this: Th6e quick8 brown f4ox j7umped3 over th6e l9y d3og5. a1s2d3f4g5h6j7k8l90

So I got the keyboard replaced, for a measly $150. (You might recall I’m a college student—attending a $40,000/year school with financial aid [which, by the way, is code for $38,000/year in loans that I'll be paying back for the rest of my life].) Nevertheless, they were able to do the replacement rather quickly, and I was only without my computer for a day, and I was able to bring it home with me for Thanksgiving break.

Fast forward to about a week ago. There I was, singing my heart out, making this video on YouTube: However, due to the extensive memory it takes to run 80+ tabs in Firefox, the audio and video were not synced up properly. So Adam Kontras, the author of that song, suggested I set up my real recording equipment and really edit it together. So I set up my camera (which also has something wrong with it, though I’ll save that story for some other time) and recorded a new version, which also included snippets from a number of Beatles songs. By the time I was done recording, though, it was time to go eat dinner. Being the genius that I am, I unplugged my laptop from the power, and shoved it into my backpack, for editing on-the-go!

The problem was, once I got to where I was going, I opened up the laptop and… nothing happened. Well, nothing showed up on the screen, anyway. It still made that sound like it was waking up from sleep… it just never did. And the sleep light would stay solid when the laptop was closed, instead of snoring, like it usually does. So that was the first uh-oh moment. And they kept coming all through the night, as we (a team made up of myself, a couple of non-technical friends, and a little thing called Google) tried anything we could think of to try to bring my baby back to life. No luck, though, as you can probably tell.

So, as per some of the suggestions I found online, I let it sit for a while. I even left it out overnight, with no battery in it. Eventually, it would snore while sleeping. But upon awaking, would go back to its old habits of showing me nothing. So I wrote another e-mail to Small Dog Electronics (the folks that did the keyboard replacement), detailing all of the symptoms and everything I had tried, and asking for pointers I might have missed. When the response came back Monday (despite the fact that their service center is open on Saturdays), it had one sentence: At this time the only this I can say is you need to bring the unit back in. That one got me pretty upset.

But I got up and I brought my baby back to them, detailing the symptoms again to the guy at the desk (who had no previous knowledge of my really long e-mail). When I was finished, he indicated to me that it was definitely a hardware issue (something I had already figured out), but that it might cost me hundreds of dollars because the computer was out of warranty. However, since it was only recently out of warranty, I might be able to call Apple and get them to grant me an exception. I hadn’t realized that was ever an option, but it didn’t matter. He offered to take the computer back and verify the keyboard reinstallation didn’t cause this video problem—free of charge. So, having no use for a computer without a working display, I consented and left.

When I hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday, I decided to make the trek back down there to see what was going on. As it turns out, there was something wrong with either the graphics card or the logic board. I couldn’t figure out which it was (they may even be the same thing in the MBP, for all I know), but know it’s manufactured by NVIDIA, a graphics card manufacturer. They had put in a request to NVIDIA to cover the cost of the replacement part (which would normally cost $500–$600), but they were waiting for the approval. Apparently they had gotten it by the time I went back today, though, because I was told the part was on order and they were awaiting delivery.

And that’d be all well and good if I weren’t heading to the airport about 12 hours after my typing this. But I am. And it will apparently cost me $25 to ship the computer to my house when it’s finished. Now, I have to weigh my options here. I’ll be home for 3 weeks. Both of my Macs will be in Vermont. I’ll be forced to use my custom-built, circa 2002, Windows XP computer that makes a whole lot of noise and uses a CRT monitor that hurts my eyes. Or I can use nothing and be computer-free for all that time. However, if the computer is repaired over this weekend for absolutely no charge, and that $25 fee will get the computer to my house overnight or 2-day delivery, it might be justified. Except, now that I’m thinking about it, they’re quite like to charge me a $50 or $60 repair fee. So I don’t know how worth it it would be to tack over $75 onto my $1500+ computer that has already cost me an additional $150.

Any opinions from those out there in Cyberspace? (Do people still call it that? Imagine how behind I’ll become without a computer for three weeks!)

So, that’s what I want to put here. I’ll try to keep everything separate; that is, I’ll try to differentiate a rant about something that bothers me from a statement about people who need to wake up and smell the coffee (or roses, if you prefer). I hope you’ll join me in this endeavor, even if you only care to hear certain bits and pieces.

One thing I should note before I begin, though, is that I am apt to forget about a blog after a while. I generally don’t do it on purpose, but I often lose the drive to write things down. Which is interesting to me because, when I don’t have a blog, I come up with a hundred things that I want to write down and share with people—things that make me think “I wish I had a blog”. So I hope that by setting this up as a part-time thing, devoted solely to my rants and newsflashes, that I will be able to keep it continuous.

By the way, at the same time that I only want this to be for my complaining, I also kinda want to start posting videos to YouTube in a more regular fashion, and I want to be able to have entries go along with those videos. So I think I’ll include those posts here, as well. (After all, the domain is my main one.) So this will be some strange conglomerate of a bunch of negative complaints and positive videos. I hope I can keep it up long enough to turn into something.

Enjoy!