It's been a while since I've written about anything political, but this seems like a good topic to start back in on. I'm going to start by making an admision—one that's pretty much guaranteed to earn me a phone call as soon as my dad reads this: I don't have health insurance.

Just to be clear, let me expound on that. I live in Massachusetts, a state that requires by law that all residents have health insurance. I am currently, as I type this, breaking the law just by sitting here minding my own business and daring to make my own decisions about my life. Starting in December (and I think it's important that it be made more widely known that even though it's currently illegal to not have health insurance in Massachusetts, you won't actually start being punished for it until December) the state will theoretically even begin to fine me for not having health insurance (although, to be honest, had I not just make a public admission of it how would they even know?). And yet, I am among America's uninsured. Funny how outlawing a behavior (or, in this case, a lack of behavior) doesn't actually stop people from doing it, isn't it?

There are a number of relatively cheap insurance options available to me, although not as cheap as I'd like since Massachusetts' wonderful law making health insurance mandatory only focused on lowering health care costs for people older than myself. The truth is that I could afford health insurance. When I did some research a few months ago I think the cheapest plan out there was around $125/month (and I'm sure it would be possibly to get those rates even lower if I went with a high deductable plan that would actually save me even more money in the long run; more on that here). I can afford that. I just don't want to. And why should I have to? I honestly can't remember the last time I went to the doctor's office. I can't remember the last time I was sick for more than 3 days. I can remember the last time I went to the emergency room: it was when I was 12 and I broke my pinkie in a karate mishap. If there is anyone who doesn't need health insurance, it's me. Of course Massachusetts says I do. And they're going to start fining me if I don't get it by December.

Some might say that this is a travesty. Some might say that someone should intervene to protect me from myself. Some—and I think everyone knows who I'm talking about at this point—might say that the government should step in and provide me with a service I'm not asking for and actively refusing despite being legally obligated to avail myself of it (the position of universal healthcare makes a lot less sense when phrased that way doesn't it?).

Some might want to know why I'm bringing this topic up now. The answer is that I just read this post over at Clasically Liberal (a favorite political blog of mine) and it really gave me pause to think. Most of the information in there is pretty old news to those of a more libertarian bent: the cost of health insurance is so high not because of greedy insurance companies, but because of lazy consumers and moronic government policies that encourage that laziness. And it's not a problem to be solved through government regulation, which repeated evidence in massive experiments carried around around the globe to the detriment of millions of unsuspecting and undeserving subjects shows only decreases the cost of health care by not providing it in the first place. Amazingly enough in this era of enlightened liberalism, and this is the part that really caught my attention, the market has actually provided a better solution.

Enter Dr. Jay Parkinson. Dr. Parkinson has introduced a totally new kind of health care: the kind that doesn't cost a whole lot of money. When you sign up for his service he becomes your personal physician. He handles just about everything for you, but for very low costs. He keeps his costs down by not having an office: he makes house calls. But more than that, he'll talk to you over the phone, or by email, or even a video conference to determine if you actually even need to see a doctor. And of course he charges less for that than for a house call. He also only takes patients between the ages of 18 and 40 (hey, that's me!). When you need to see a specialist, or even go to an emergency room, he'll help you make the arrangements. And more than that, he's already done the price comparissons for you so he can make sure that you're not getting overcharged by a hospital or doctor that's used to people who don't question their high prices. Basically he'll help make sure that you get the best care you can for the least amount of money. He's even done the research to let you know which pharmacies charge the lowest price for the medication you need. All in all, he saves you a ton of money by not making you pay for things you don't need. For most people in the age bracket that he services, they'll only be paying about $500/year, just 1/3 of the cost of the cheapest traditional health plan I could find that doesn't provide anywhere near as good service.

There's only one problem: he live in New York, and therefore only takes patients in the New York area. If he, or anyone else for that matter, set up a similar practice here in Boston I would sign up in a heartbeat. As, I'm sure, would a ton of other people. (You here that, Massachusetts doctors?) I'll even help them out with their web page! But for now, I'm sitting here with no health insurance, breaking the law, just because the only guy out there who's offering a service that would be worthwhile for me is a couple hundred miles away.

Apple has surprised me again and really come through. Apparently it's no longer the case that all laptop repairs are sent in; they now do about 95% (according to the woman at the Genius Bar that I talked to) right in the stores. They had the right size hard drive in stock, so I was in and out in less than an hour with a fully functional MacBook. Also, for the first time since the Genius Bar concept really took off (it took about a year, really) I didn't even have to wait in a long line for service and even got in before my scheduled appointment. So apparently they've done something to vastly improve the appointment system.

On top of all that, since they had to replace the hard drive I got a fresh OS install. And the version they installed is 10.4.8. Ordinarily I'd be a little annoyed about the forced downgrade, but in this case I'm rather happy about it. I've been one of the unfortunate few who's been experiencing AirPort problems in 10.4.10 (although I was only having intermittent dropped connections and not kernel panics like some people), so I'm leaving it at that version for now. Hopefully the 10.4.11 update that should be available in the next day or two will fix those problems, otherwise I'll just wait for Leopard to update.

In other news, the Indian place in the food court at the CambridgeSide Galleria is extremely disappointing. At first I thought their prices were ridiculous. Then I saw how huge their portions were and though the prices might actually be fair. Then I tasted the food... Needless to say I won't be going back (not that I often eat at mall food courts anyway).

I've been getting bad about updating regularly, and I'm trying to fix that. I have, however, been very busy lately. Here's a quick rehash of what's happened since my last post:

1. It turned out that the work I was expecting to have to do while I was in Illinois ended up getting pushed back by my client. So I never really had to test out my Parallels/Gentoo/Lighttpd/SQLite setup for web development (although I did some very basic tests that worked out just fine).



2. I got to meet Jessi's sister's new daughter, and basically my niece, Maura, just hours after she was born at around midnight on Sept. 28. Here are some pictures of her meeting her aunt Jessi, her grandma, her great-grandma, her mom, and, of course, me, all taken on my iPhone (the one to the right is my favorite of the many funny faces she made).


3. Went to the wedding of some of Jessi's friends from home.


4. Flew back to Boston.


5. Had a whopping 4 or so days before some other friends came from Illinois to visit us, and then got to show them around Boston and expose them to some of our favorite things here (like G'vanni's in the North End and Tacos Lupita in Porter Square). Though in the process it finally dawned on me that since we have a car now the Providence and Manchester airports are within range so we can actually fly on SouthWest and save some money when we go places that JetBlue won't take us (they flew SouthWest into Providence).


6. Finally sold the Mercedes. I didn't get quite as much for it as I wanted, but I still got enough that it was worthwhile having repaired and sold it rather than just junking it when it died.


7. Finally got that project that I had expected to be working on while I was in Illinois. Ended up having to do the whole thing in two days (ah, the joys of sub-contracting).


8. I lived out my 9,125 day, remarkable only in that it's a multiple of 365. This was the same day we ate at G'vanni's, and afterwards got pastries from the North End's Modern Pastry.


9. I put off development of my WiFi database site in favor of a different project. This one will be less flashy, but will have much greater personal utility. It will also probably be useful for a lot of other people too, so my plan is to make it a hosted (free) service and open it up for anyone to use. I'm considering the possibility of maybe some premium features that you have to pay for, but that will have to wait.


10. My MacBook, which I've had for approximately 17 months now, died. I'm fairly positive it's a hard drive failure as when it happened there was no kernel panic or any other sort of error message. The computer was still running, but any processes that were trying to access the hard drive locked up. Then the hard drive started making a pleasant clicking sound. Upon attempting to reboot I sill get the starting chime, but then it just goes to a white screen and clicks. This all seems consistent with a hard drive failure as when it happened most of the system would have been running in RAM and so unaffected, and the startup chime is stored in firmware and so also unaffected.

And that brings us to today. Currently I'm waiting until it's time to head over to the Apple Store in the CambridgeSide Galleria to have them look at my MacBook. The problem is such that they'll spend a few minutes looking it over and then tell me that they'll have to send it in to the service center for repairs (they only do work on desktop locally, laptops are always shipped out). It should be a fairly quick repair though, so I should only be without my laptop for probably a week at the most. Fortunately I bought AppleCare for it, so the repair will be free.

I'm also working on designing a home theater setup for the condo. Currently the only screen we have to watch the few tv shows and movies we watch is my monitor. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as it's a Dell 24" LCD with greater than HD resolution (1920x1200), but it does mean that we have to sit in the office on our desk chairs which isn't as comfortable as it could be. The other day we tried moving my computer out to the living room to see if the screen was big enough to use as a tv in there. It isn't quite, but it wasn't actually all that bad. However since my MacBook just died I had to move the computer back into the office so that it would actually be useable. So now I'm planning out what will become our home theater system. I'm fairly positive that for the screen I'll be getting the Olevia 342i, a 42", 720p tv without an HDTV tuner. This may seem lacking, but it isn't. At about 8-10' away, the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 42" screen won't really be noticeable. And we dont' need a built-in HDTV tuner, because I'm going to be using the TV with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun. The HDHomeRun is a much better choice for us becaues it's a dual-tuner device, and it's compatible out of the box with MythTV, which is what I plan on using to manage our video library and for it's DVR capabilities. That leaves only the question of how to implement the MythTV system. I've narrowed that down to two options:

1. A Mac Mini. Actually, that's a vast oversimplification. The Mini would only be running the MythTV front-end. The back-end would be running on a Linux box. I already have a suitable machine to use for the Linux box (I built it a couple years ago as a gaming rig, and it's more than up to the task), I just need to reformat the drives and install MythTV. So the only cost there would be the Mac Mini (about $600) and the drives for storage ($330 for a 1 TB drive to start). So the total initial cost of that MythTV setup would be around $1000.


2. A TVease Zodiac. I'd get the $900 base model, because I don't need/want the analog tuners and it's cheaper to use the HDHomeRun than to get a model with HD tuners; also it's cheaper to add more storage myself. This ends up being a little costlier, but significantly easier in terms of setup and usage. It also reduces the number of components the system has by allowing me to put the MythTV front-end and back-end in the same box without significantly reducing my storage capacity (it has room for three drives, so a maximum of 3 TB, but I can always add external drives as well so the maximum storage capacity is essentially infinate). I probably wouldn't get a new HD for it right off the bat. Even though it will only come with a 250 GB drive, I can point it to the 500 GB RAID that I currently store my digital video collection on over the network so I think it will be sufficient for now. Of course eventually I'd probably want to put another TB or more into it. The total initial cost of this MythTV setup is also about $1000, but much easier to accomplish.

So I have to figure out which setup I want to use. The Mac Mini will look better, but the Zodiac doesn't look that bad, and the eventual plan is to recess it into the wall anyway which will look pretty cool no matter which I use. I'm really leaning towards the Zodiac right now, but I want to do a little more research before I make any sort of decision like that. In the mean time, I can at least get the TV and see about hacking it into the current setup (perhaps using KnoppMyth on my PC (the reason I'm not going to just go with a plan like that is it won't look as good and will be loud, should be perfectly fine for a temporary setup though).