Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Told You!

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See, I told you the posting would be much more limited for a while!

Things are progressing very well. We have a final estimate of how much money we have to pay at settlement on the house (less than I had feared), all the utilities are lined up, the Internet gets connected Monday (the day before we really, officially move in), and so on. It’s very exciting but, especially combined with a new job, very stressful.

Speaking of the new job, it’s going well. I’m still the ‘new guy,’ and I’m just struggling to keep up and learn the ropes on a very complex system, but I haven’t screwed anything up too badly so far. I’m also just now starting to feel like I know what I’m doing, at least on the simple things. I’ve already learned a couple of nifty new technical things I’m going to implement on my own site whenever I get around to its next revision.

The biggest drain on my attention though is the house stuff—making sure everything is lined up and ready to go for Friday (settlement) and through the next week. I think we’re good and have all the important things ready, but I still need to do some purging in my office (which I’ve been putting off since before the last move) and other random little things. I’ve also started to map out what things we need to do on what days from Friday until next Wednesday, since it’s too much to remember on-the-fly.

Wish us luck!

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Posted in: Life

Less Posting Than Usual for a While

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You’ve probably already noticed that I’m not posting quite as much as usual, and this is likely to get worse before it gets better. Between the new job, buying the house, and everything else going on there just isn’t much time for blogging.

What little time I do have for the site is going into some technical things I’m doing, like moving to a new host. More on that later.

Anyway, forgive my poor blogging for a few weeks and I promise that things will eventually get back to normal. In the mean time, maybe check out my links page and visit some of the sites I visit.

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Posted in: Life, Site

D.C. Sniper to Die Tomorrow

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September 11, 2001, was a terrible day, no doubt, for the people of the Washington, DC, metro area. While New York took a much worse hit than we did, it was still terrifying to live here that day and in the weeks and months to follow. We suspiciously eyed every airliner that passed overhead to make sure it was following a proper flight path. We kept a careful eye on our surroundings. Soon after, as the anthrax attacks started happening (some of which, again, in our region) we started checking every envelope for suspicious white powder.

But the terror of living in this area in September-December 2001 paled in comparison to the terror of living in this area in October 2002 under the siege of the ‘beltway sniper attacks‘.

It’s hard to explain why two guys with a rifle would be more frightening than radical Islamists with hijacked airliners. It doesn’t seem logical. I think it’s because, on some level, you expect to be at increased risk in an aircraft. You expect to be at increased risk in a high-profile federal building like the Pentagon, White House, or Capitol. You don’t, however, expect to die of a gunshot wound while you’re mowing your lawn, pumping gas, or leaving a restaurant. These are inherently ‘safe’ activities, but in October 2002 John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo made them horribly frightening.

Read more . . .

House Passes Health Care Bill

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The U.S. House of Representatives, with a narrow 220-215 majority, has passed a health care bill which would establish a so-called public insurance option. The vote was largely on party lines. The bill will now go through a reconciliation process with the Senate health care bill passed earlier this year which did not include the controversial (and unconstitutional) public insurance plan.

Before passage, an amendment was considered and passed which would definitively prohibit the use of government insurance or funding for abortions. The inclusion of abortion coverage in the original bill had caused consternation among moderate Democrats and other groups (such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) that might otherwise have supported the bill.

It is unclear at this point how likely or unlikely it is for the abortion limitation or even the public option itself to survive the bicameral reconciliation with the significantly different Senate bill.

Zombie Health Care

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zombie-healthcareNo, the title is not a Nancy Pelosi joke (tempting as it might be) or a reference to the terribly misguided health care reform efforts making their way through Congress. It’s something much more trivial and humorous.

Under the COBRA health insurance law, people who have employer provided health insurance (i.e., most employed Americans) have the right to continue their employee insurance coverage at their own cost for a period of time after their employment ends. The whole idea—and it’s a very good idea—is to make sure that people don’t find themselves saddled with huge medical debts if they get sick or injured while they happen to be between jobs.

Well, since I’m between jobs (for a couple of days), my former and future employers both provided me with the standard government boilerplate information about COBRA ‘continuation coverage’. I probably won’t need it, but I read through the information anyway just so I’d know what my options were. I got a real kick out of one bit:

“In the case of losses of coverage due to an employee’s death, . . . , coverage may be continued for up to a total of 36 months.”

Yes, if you lose your employee health insurance because you die, you can extend your coverage under COBRA for up to three years! Even the un-dead need to be able to get their swine flu shots, after all. (And before anybody writes to correct me, yes, I know, this provision is actually intended for dependents like spouses and children who are covered on the decedent’s health care.)

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.