Annual posting

Well I think Google wants me to log in and post something every once in a while (weird) so here I am. 10 days to the Ogden Marathon and 77 days until I head East to go to grad school at Notre Dame. Still sticking to my 180 days of awesome plan for the new year!

Another job bites the dust!

Wow, I haven't posted in forever! Well, now that I'm back at it I'm leaving another job; this time at RxAmerica. I've been a contractor there for 6 months and the money has been great but I'm ready for a break. Friday I head for Alabama until July 12 and then on July 24 Melanie and I are going to Hawaii! That will leave me with only 4 states left to visit: North Dakota, West Virginia, Florida, and Alaska!

Freedom!

I've been unhappy at Qcomm/Emida for awhile now so last Friday I quit! I don't have a new job and don't plan on pursuing one for some time. My first order of business is to take care of some nagging house chores and then put together a business plan for myself. Since I didn't get into Stanford I need to take a look at business schools and see if that's really where I want to go. I also have some web site ideas I'd like to put together and see if I can generate any income off of that. Of course it won't be all work, I'm going to invest some time in completing some of these video games I have sitting around as well as using my snowboarding passes :)

If anyone has some freelance work to throw my way I'd love to hear about it.

Drew

Capitalism

I was thinking about how unchecked capitalism seems to create far more problems than it solves. An example of this is how many things are designed to just be thrown away. Ever wonder why you can't just have one milk jug and refill it or bring in a container to bulk buy some Captain Crunch in? Same thing with all of the plastic bags we get. People always give me a funny look when I tell them they don't have to bag something and that I'll just take it out. This cartoon says it perfectly.

I think the government or some other body is needed as a check on capitalism because people will always buy stuff without considering the real cost. Bottled water is a premier example of this. Not only is it usually just filtered tap water from somewhere but creating the plastic bottles uses up a ton of water! How ever did society manage to get by without bottled water for thousands of years? It really irritates me when I someone I think is at least reasonably intelligent has to drink bottled water. But don't suggest to people they can't have it because they will go off.

So anyways, I came up with a new slogan I thought was fitting. Here it is:

Capitalism: Not making your life better, just more expensive.

Big Brother

For those who didn't know I signed up for the Big Brother/Big Sisters in June and I got matched last week and had my first outing with my 'little' on the 12th. His name is David and he turned 12 in August. I picked him up at 6 and we went to the park near his house and chatted a bit and shot some hoops. We ended up playing an impromptu pickup game which he beat me in 5-3. After that we went to the Leatherby's in Midvale for some celebratory ice cream. Turns out that particular Leatherby's also doubles as a small Mexican food restaurant and a place to buy tamale's! David got some bubble gum ice cream and I got his huge thing called the Black and White which I couldn't finish. We couldn't think of what to do next so we drove to my work and I showed him the building and the office. He kept talking about how big it seemed. Then we drove up to my house ('big' again:) ) and played some Madden '08 on the Wii. We were totally murdering the raiders 42 - 7 at halftime when we saved it and I drove him home.

He seems like a well-behaved, smart kid. His favorite school subjects are math and art. He's into muscle cars and rap music and he wants to play football for a living with his backup career being some kind of engineer. Not too shabby.

Retaining wall

For the last couple of years I have had a barren, desolate, and sometimes weed infested side yard on the north side of my house. No more! I've been working for the past week or so to landscape it nicely by adding a decorative fence and some retaining walls. Pics of the work can be seen here.

I've had several people in the neighborhood come by when I've been out working and tell me how nice they think it looks. Even though I wish I'd bought this other house I had looked at for the prestige and valuation, I have to admit that I picked a pretty darned nice neighborhood. Most of the people are friendly, my neighbor across the street has helped me on quite a few projects, my neighbor to the north cuts my hair (and does a good job), I can walk to the grocery store, work is 5 minutes away, Home Depot is 5 minutes away. So why can't I get happy with my house?

Cheeseburgers and bottled water

How many people have seen this phenomenon: An obese American who will only drink bottle water? Don't they realize that most bottled water is just filtered tap water and that the U.S. has the cleanest water supply in the world? Are they convinced that their health problems are a result of their drinking tap water? Maybe they should try eating fruits/veggies instead of McD's and exercising instead of watching TV. I know that some people have thyroid disorders and the like and that's fine, they can't do a lot about it but that is an extreme minority.

Have you noticed that the term 'overweight' discrimination is getting a lot of play in the media lately? I was reading an article about how some companies are penalizing workers who have high BMI's in the form of payroll deductions (essentially higher premiums). The same companies provide support for weight loss and will refund the money if that employee gets below the target BMI. For some reason this has people in an uproar, claiming that all of these people can't help it and to discriminate against them is cruel. Let's dissect this argument. First of all, is it possible that we have evolved to have a 40% obesity rate in the last 30 years? That's the only way I can think that these people "can't help it". Secondly, why is it okay to discriminate against someone who can't control their urges to harm others but not those who can't control their urges to eat? Many people say the second option is a victimless crime but in reality it is not. Weight bias is not simply about looks, it implies several things about that person including the fact that they are generally less healthy and have poorer productivity. This ends up costing everyone of us whether through higher premiums or job loss because of low productivity. This ends up feeding into the welfare and medicaid/care systems and before you know it we're victims. I love the idea of penalizing people who decided to engage in unhealthy activities (smoking, not exercising, eating poorly, drinking to excess). Why should everyone else pay for your poor judgement?