Life in Maryland
May 10th, 2009

I've now been living in Maryland and working at Discovery Creative for a whole month, so I think it's about time I started writing again! My first couple weeks I was here alone while Jessi finished things up in Boston I had little motivation to do much outside of work, so I found myself going in to work early and home (I was staying with my aunt and uncle who graciously offered me a place to stay at their home in Bethesda during the limbo time between moving out of the condo in Somerville and into the apartment in Silver Spring) late. That left me pretty exhausted at the end of the day so relaxing, eating, and sleeping were much higher on my to do list than writing. Since Jessi got down here my time outside work has been dedicated to unpacking boxes and transmitting what little I know of the area to her and her sister Becky who flew out to help with the move. Now, however, we're unpacked—if not completely then at least enough to be comfortable—with most of our furniture in place and awaiting delivery on the few remaining items that we've purchased. So time to start looking towards the future again.

My experience here thus far suggests that there's a lot of interesting work ahead. I've got a few Django projects already going on, including working with some new stuff like OpenID, OpenCalais, Clickpass, Twitter, and many other things. I'll probably be starting work on a project using Google App Engine in the near future, and I've already begun learning about and starting to work on iPhone apps as well. So I should have lots of good fodder for technical posts in the coming months!

On top of that there's a whole new city to explore, and nearly the entirety of my family spend time with. Before we knew we were going to be moving, Jessi and I had been planning on getting kayaks this summer so we could spend some time on the Charles and Mystic rivers, maybe the Harbor Islands, and hopefully take them up to the Adirondacks to explore the lakes up there. That plan certainly hasn't changed as now we've got the Potomac and other bodies of water to play with. Plus we're now so close to Shenandoah that it would be a crime not to get in some camping and backpacking. (And after the missed opportunity last winter, I'm definitely planning on some winter backpacking in the Senandoah back country this year!)

So with any luck I should be doing a lot of writing on a lot of different topics in the future. At the very least I need to do some work on this site as I want to integrate my portfolio into the personal site and phase out the business one. And working on this site always seems to give my something to write about.

Good news, everyone!
Mar 26th, 2009

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you'll likely have seen my big news: I have a new job! That's right, I've been hired on as a web developer for Discovery Communications (the parent company of the Discovery Channel). More specifically, I'll be working at Discovery Creative, the subset of Discovery Networks that works on things like web sites (duh) and advertising. It's a pretty awesome job, and I can't wait to get started.

But, true to form, the transition to this next stage in my life is not as simple as that. The job is not here in Boston, rather it's down in Silver Spring, Maryland (just outside the northern tip of DC). So just three short years after moving to Boston, we're moving to Maryland! This is a little less crazy than it might sound. Nearly all of my family is down there, within about 10 miles of Silver Spring. The next largest concentration of my family members (which consists of just my grandmother and an aunt) is in South Jersey, about a 3 hours drive away. Other than that, there's no single place in the coutry where I could live near more than a single blood relation of mine (although there are a number of other places we could go to be overrun with members of Jessi's much larger family). On top of that, Jessi's sister and her daughter (our niece) are moving to Virginia this summer, about an hour away, and my sister is going to be in DC for at least the summer after her graduation in May. Strangely enough, DC actually seems to make a lot more sense for us logistically. The only real complication is what to do with our condo. Fortunately it's about four blocks away from Harvard Law School, basically on the campus of Lesley University, and within walking distance of Tufts University. So we're pretty confident that we'll be able to get it rented pretty quickly, and after some consulting on our mortgage (Best thing about the current economy? We can refinance and knock a good 2% off our interest rate!) it seems as though it should work out pretty well financially too.

So yet again this blog will turn into the chronical of a move. A much shorter move than last time (thankfully; as much as I enjoy driving cross-country, I really am not in the mood to do it again right now), but one that will, I think, prove quite interesting.

Oh, and the best thing about this new job? They have a dinosaur in the lobby!

How cool is that?

[Edit: Corrected a mistake. The parent company of the Discovery Channel is Discovery Communications, not Discovery Networks! Thanks Matt!]

Hours of Operation
Dec 16th, 2008

As you probably know, I've been working on a Django-based re-build of BostonChefs.com (the new version of which is actually live now, but due to DNS propagation issues isn't yet available to 100% of people which is why I haven't yet written a post about it). Among other things, BostonChefs.com provides information on some of the fantastic restaurants in the Boston area. One piece of information it provides is the hours of operation of those restaurants. In order to store this information I created a model called HoursOfOperation. It looks like this:

class HoursOfOperation(models.Model):
    DAY_CHOICES = (
        ('0', 'Sun'),
        ('1', 'Mon'),
        ('2', 'Tue'),
        ('3', 'Wed'),
        ('4', 'Thur'),
        ('5', 'Fri'),
        ('6', 'Sat'),
        )
    restaurant = models.ForeignKey("Restaurant")
    meal_period = models.ForeignKey("MealPeriod")
    day = models.CharField(max_length=3, choices=DAY_CHOICES)
    open_time = models.TimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)
    close_time = models.TimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)


    def _get_hours(self):
        return "%s - %s" % (self.open_time.strftime('%I:%M%p'), self.close_time.strftime('%I:%M %p'))
    hours = property(_get_hours)

As you can see, each 'hour' is related to a restaurant and a meal period, which allows us to display the information in a manner similar to that you might find on a store's front sign. For example, if you go to the Grill 23 & Bar page (my personal favorite restaurant in Boston, although Craigie on Main is a decent challenger), you'll see something like this:

DINNER
* Sun: 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m.
* Mon-Thur: 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m.
* Fri: 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m.
* Sat: 5 p.m.-11 p.m.

Building a list like that out of the above model proved slightly more difficult that I might have hoped. It required quite a lot of template logic, including writing a custom filter. The block of template code necessary to generate that list looks like this:

<div class="hours">
    {% regroup restaurant.hoursofoperation_set.all by meal_period as periods %}
    {% for period in periods %}
    <div class="hoursMealPeriod">{{ period.grouper }}</div>
    {% regroup period.list by hours as hour_list %}
    <ul>
        {% for hour in hour_list %}
        <li>{{ hour.list|collapsedays }}</li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
    {% endfor %}
</div>

As you can see, somewhat complex. Those nested {% regroup %}s can be nasty to wrap your head around, if nothing else. But basically it's taking the set of HoursOfOperation objects related to the restaurant, grouping them by meal period, then taking the subset of those objects for each meal period, and grouping those by the hours of the day they represent. So what you're then left with is a list of all the different time periods (still represented as HoursOfOperation objects) that the restaurant is open for a given meal period, and the days on which it is open during those hours. As you can see above, the days are represented by number of the day of the week (0 for Sunday through 6 for Saturday).

Converting that list integers into something like 'Mon, Wed-Fri' was not very easy, and certainly not something I wanted to try to tackle using Django's template tags. I ended up drawing heavily on my hazy memories of CS 127 (many thanks to Dave who taught me all about recursion way back then) and creating a filter that considers the list of HoursOfOperation objects as a list of those integers, then recursively converts it into a list of lists representing the subsets of contiguous days in the list. So if you start out with [1, 3, 4, 5] you end up with [[1, 1], [3, 5]] which is then converted into 'Mon, Wed-Fri'. After several false starts I ended up with this beauty of a Django template filter:

from django.template import Library
from django.template.defaultfilters import time


from types import ListType

register = Library()

def simplify(index, found, days):
    high = index+1
    mid = index
    low = index-1
    if not found:
        days[low] = [days[low], days[low]]
    if high >= len(days):
        if not isinstance(days[-1], ListType):
            if days[-1] == days[-2][1]:
                days.pop(-1)
            else:
                days[-1] = [days[-1], days[-1]]
        return days
    if int(days[high].day) - int(days[mid].day) == 1 and (found or int(days[mid].day) - int(days[low][0].day) == 1):
        days[low][1] = days[high]
        days.pop(mid)
        high = high-1
        found = True
    else:
        if found:
            days.pop(mid)
        found = False
    return simplify(high, found, days)

@register.filter
def collapsedays(value):
    hours = "%s-%s" % (time(value[0].open_time), time(value[0].close_time))
    days = simplify(1, False, value)
    for i in range(len(days)):
        if days[i][0] == days[i][1]:
            days[i] = days[i][0].get_day_display()
        else:
            days[i] = "%s-%s" % (days[i][0].get_day_display(),
                                 days[i][1].get_day_display())
    return "%s: %s" % (', '.join(days), hours)

Politics; it's been a while
Sep 22nd, 2008

I haven't written about politics in a while. Strange considering how much is going on lately. Well today in the mail we got our copies of 'The Official Massachusetts Information for Voters: The 2008 Ballot Questions'. Direct democracy is a hoot, so this seems like a great way to get back in the swing of things.

Question 1:
I've written about this one before. Question 1 is on the issue of ending the Massachusetts income tax. My previous assessment boils down to the thought that ending the income tax is all well and good, but I'd much rather see the property tax go, as property tax is, in my opinion, in direct conflict with the concept of private ownership. But you can read about my previous thoughts on that in the post linked to above. In reading the provided arguments for and against presented in the packet I'm struck by a couple of thoughts. First, in the argument against there's really only one point, that the government needs that tax money. The rest is just supporting arguments for that. Most strikingly, however, is the way they chose to phrase the argument. The argument opens with, This legally binding initiative would slash state revenues by more than $12 billion a year - nearly 40 percent of the state budget'. This contrasts nicely with the opening statement of the argument for: '"41% waste in Massachusetts state government," reveals survey'. Nice. So in theory it's possible to end the income tax and still come out ahead. Didn't Deval Patrick say he was going nto cut waste or something? What ever happened with that? One other point on the argument against. Their conclusion, which really should be their best argument: 'Times are tough enough. Let's not make them worse. Vote NO'. While I understand they're saying that repealing the income tax will result in fewer services and smaller budgets, I'm not sure it's in their best interest to claim that an extra $3,700 in your pocket (on average) is going to make tough times tougher. I'm thinking I'm probably going to vote 'yes' on this one. If for no other reason than that I enjoy being contrary.

Question 2:
This one actually caught me by surprise. Apparently I just haven't been paying enough attention. Question 2 is about decriminalizing possession of marijuana. I'm sure we're all familiar with the arguments against decriminalization: it encourages usage, increases crime, &c.; It's probably not much of a surprise to anyone who reads my blog to find out that I don't really buy that. Regardless of what you might believe about the morality of mind altering substances, there is absolutely no reasonable way to believe that marijuana is any worse or more harmful than alcohol (except for the fact that you generally smoke it), and plenty of reasons to believe that alcohol is more harmful than marijuana. If for no other reason than to save the billions of dollars that we pour into finding, arresting, trying, and incarcerating people whos represent no threat to society, and who probably outnumber (or close to it) the 'law-abiding' population. Let's stop throwing our money down that bottomless pit.

Question 3:
Question 3 is about prohibiting dog racing in Massachusetts. The argument for is that it's cruel and inhumane. The argument against is that we've always done it, besides it makes money. I'd say all three of those statements are true. So I'm probably voting yes.

Mihos for governor!
Jul 17th, 2008

I hadn't even started thinking about it, but in the course of writing my last post about Sean Tevis, I just happened to find a very interesting Boston Herald article from the first of this month: Christy Mihos unveils 2010 bid for Mass. governor.

If you were reading my blog around the time of the last Massachusetts gubernatorial election (or, as I called it Mass Guber '06), you'll know that I was a pretty big Mihos supporter at the time. Although his campaign website hasn't yet been updated to reflect his renewed candidacy (though it does have the new www.christy2010.com URL), I'm going to go ahead and assume that I still agree with most (though not all) of his positions, and probably that there won't be any other contenders in the race that I'm likely to consider voting for (though I did like Gabrielli last time around).

So, as of this moment, I'm announcing my official support for Christy Mihos for Governor of Massachusetts, as well as the beginning of my coverage of Mass Guber '10!

The intricate ballet of government beaurocracy
Jul 15th, 2008

I just got off the phone with the California DMV. That's right, the California DMV not the Massachusetts RMV that I've already spent countless hours waiting in line at or on the phone with.

As you may recall, I recently (and after many many failed attempts due entirely to problems on the RMV's end of things) converted my California driver licence to a Massachusetts one. In doing so, they managed to forget my motorcycle endorsement. Having put quite a lot of time, effort, and money into getting that endorsement in the first place I wasn't really all that interested in losing it for no good reason. After two relatively pleasant chats with a woman at the RMV they sent me the paperwork I needed and told me that all I had to do was take it into a branch office and they'd be able to take care of it.

So yesterday I went into the RMV branch at the Cambridgeside Galleria. They're open until 7, and I got there at about 5:30. After waiting in line for a scant 45 minutes I gave them my paperwork and explained what was going on. The woman behind the counter told me that, unfortunately, she'd have to call into the Boston branch office which had closed at 5 so I'd have to come back the next day (today) before 5 to take care of it. So today I went back in. I got there at two and spent maybe 10 minutes waiting in line. The same woman was there and she called the Boston office. They told her that before they could correct the mistake that they made, I would have to call the California DMV and request that they send a copy of my driving record over to them. Hence my call to the California DMV. Unfortunately, the woman I talked to at the California DMV told me that I'd have to submit a form and pay a $5 fee before they would send my driving record.

The form and check will, of course, have to be mailed in, so who knows how long this is going to take. What I want to know is exactly how much of my money is being wasted on this crap. Is this really what I'm paying taxes for? Is it really worth the effort for me to be a law abiding citizen when I could probably have a motorcycle with invalid but normal looking plates illegally in no more than a couple hours if I really wanted to?

Best interaction with the RMV yet
Jun 30th, 2008

I just got off the phone with the RMV. After being on hold for about 30 minutes (annoying, but not a huge deal) I explained my problem to the woman who came on the line: that I gave them a California C & M1 license (passenger cars and motorcycles) and received a Massachusetts D license (passenger cars only) in return. She said she'll pull my application, double-check that I did, indeed have a California motorcycle license and that my application was properly filled out to reflect that (both true) and then add the motorcycle endorsement to my license free of charge. Took about 5 minutes of actually talking to a person and hopefully things will be fixed soon. Sadly it will apparently take until Wednesday before her request for my application paperwork goes through, but whatever, I can deal with that.

Now this is just a slap in the face
Jun 20th, 2008

After two years and far too many visits to multiple RMV offices I now finally have a Massachusetts driver's license. A CLASS D driver's license. The forms I submitted as well as the California license they took from me both clearly specified that not only am I qualified and certified for, but was applying for a CLASS D AND M license. Of course it's well beyond business hours now, so I'll have to wait until Monday morning before I can even attempt to rectify this situation in a way that doesn't involve me having to pay money to take tests I've already passed.

And here I was all ready to start maybe being possibly very slightly less hostile toward the Massachusetts state government in all its various and sundry forms.

I did it!
Jun 15th, 2008

Finally, after five failed attempts, I've managed to get my California license converted to a Massachusetts one. On Friday Jessi, who's been using her Illinois license for the past 4 years in MA, and I drove up to the RMV in Lowell (we'd had enough with the one in Boston) and actually managed to get our licenses converted. At the moment we've only got temporary ones, but soon I should, for the first time in my life, have a license that actually has my current address on it! Now I just have to hope that my new Massachusetts license retains my motorcycle endorsement, because the temporary license they gave me has no indication of that. I'm not going to be very happy if, after all that, I only have a half-functional license. Especially if they want to try and make me take the motorcycle test again.

And another thing
May 1st, 2008

Why is everything that disrupts parking labelled an 'emergency' around here? When it snows enough to disrupt parking it's a 'snow emergency'. When they're forbidding parking so that they can paint lines on the street it's an 'emergency'. Last night we walked into Porter Square for dinner and passed no fewer than two different 'emergencies': 'Emergency! We're painting lines on the street! Please file calmly, but quickly to the nearest exit!', 'Emergency! We've torn up the sidewalk! Please ...walk around it!'.

Seriously, people, these are not emergencies... Ok, there's a vague case for the 'snow emergency', but there is absolutely no excuse for labeling an event that has been planned for weeks if not months as an emergency.

Super-Duper Tuesday (Really?)
Feb 5th, 2008

Ridiculous fifth-grade name aside, I suppose this is a big day. Not for me, however. This morning I drove Jessi over to our polling place to vote in the primaries before work. I suspected it wouldn't really work, but I decided to go in and see about voting myself. My name was in the rolls, but rather than the familiar D, R, G, W, or, apparently, U next to my name there was a very cryptic and unknown symbol: L

'L, what's L?', said the woman checking people off in the book. 'Do you know what L is?' The gentleman next to her mused, 'L? Liberal? That's Democrat, right?'. My clarification that L stood for Libertarian didn't really clear things up very much, and they ended up having to make a phone call to ...someone who told them that there was no Libertarian ballot and that I wasn't eligible to vote. I figured this was probably the case as I hadn't heard anything from either the state or national party about primaries, but it was disappointing none the less, especially as we have a local, George Phillies of Worcester, in the running for the LP presidential nomination. Phillies also happens to be my favorite candidate for President being not only a Libertarian, but a science fiction author and college professor as well. With any luck he'll get the nomination and I'll actually get a candidate that I want to vote for this time around (in '04 none of the candidates I liked got their respective nominations: Dean, Nolan, McCain; I'm not longer a McCain supporter however so his likely nomination this year doesn't really help things). Oh well, at least I won't be barred from voting in November.

Which brings me to another topic I've been meaning to discuss: a particular ballot question. Come November there will be a rather important question on the ballot, the question of whether or not to end the Massachusetts state income tax. If you check out their website it sounds like they actually have a decent chance of passing this. It was on the ballot before in '02 and just barely failed with only 45.3% of the vote. That was with very little publicity and the media presenting it as a cause that couldn't possibly succeed. However with that strong a showing in '02, no one can claim this time around that it has no chance. It very clearly has a chance, and therefore media reaction to it has been a little more positive this year. They're also investing a lot more in publicity to spread awareness, so I think there's a very good chance this might pass in November.

That said, I don't want it to, I think we should keep the income tax. Well, that's not entirely true either, I don't want the income tax, but I think that repealing it right now is the wrong thing to do. This is Massachusetts, after all, and with a democratic legislature and Deval Patrick in the Governor's office I find it unlikely that, even given an $11b drop in tax revenue, the state is going to put the brakes on any spending. Instead they'll just look for different ways to bring in money like increasing the sales tax, increasing fees, and just generally taxing more things. One area where spending is probably likely to fall, however, is local aid. A lot of the cities and towns of Massachusetts are already suffering from anemic income and getting very little help from the state. This clearly isn't going to improve if we stop giving the state part of our paychecks. So how are those municipalities going to keep making ends meet? Easy, they'll keep doing what they always do and raise property taxes. I pay enough in property taxes as it is (about three times more each quarter than Jessi's mom in Illinois pays in a year), and I find property taxes to be by far the more egregious kind of tax.

Think about what it means to have to pay property tax. Essentially, it means that you can never actually own property. In all but name, the State owns your property and you merely rent it from them. Don't believe me? Try not paying your property taxes and see what happens: the same thing that happens if you stop paying your rent. You have to pay for the privilege of living on your own land! I say that rather than repealing the income tax, by far the better thing to do would be to repeal property taxes. This would a) strengthen the right of people to own property, b) reduce the cost of living significantly by lowering rent as well, and therefore c) reduce the prices of goods and services by lowering the costs for the providers and sellers.

Now, maybe repealing the income tax would actually be successful. Maybe next year we'd get a budget that was $11b lighter (wasn't that one of Patrick's campaign promises anyway?). Maybe Massachusetts will implement something like the FairTax on a state level, and prove one and for all that either it can work or it can't. Probably not, but one can hope. Regardless, I think our first priority should be repealing property taxes. I would much rather see that happen, and I think it's a revenue loss that could be more easily and quickly accommodated (rent assistance payouts, for example, would suddenly become much lower which would free up more money for local aid to compensate). But we'll see what happens in November. I may even vote in favor of repealing the income tax just on principle; if it passes and our legislature and governor surprise me by taking it in stride there could still be some good that comes of it.

As promised
Oct 26th, 2007

...my account of Blogtoberfest 2007.

As expected it was a lot of fun. There were a ton of people there, far too many to be able to actually have any sort of real conversation with even most of them. In addition to our illustrious host Jenny, I was able to meet a number of area bloggers for the first time including: Dana Zemack, Michael Krigsman, Jesse Baer, Andrea Mercado, and a few others whose names and/or URLs I sadly can't remember. All in all, there were actually only three bloggers that whom I had met before: Jesse Legg, Steve Garfield, and Adam Gaffin. From the sound of things most of the people there were meeting a bunch of new people as well.

The highlight of the evening was probably the raffle. Everyone who attended put their name in a hat (well, bowl) for a chance to win a number of prizes including a beautiful print of Fenway Park shot by Jenny herself. As per usual, I didn't win a thing, although both of the two people standing to my left at the time won things, as did at least two other people I had been talking to throughout the night. I'll just try and claim credit for that.

Afterwards Jesse (Legg) and I made our ways back to Somerville via TC's Lounge and the Newtowne Grill. A good night, I think, was had by all.

In other news, I think it's safe to say that it's officially starting to get almost kinda cold here. It looks like Monday will be the first day that the temperature doesn't even break 50°, although overnight temperatures appear to be remaining strictly above freezing for the foreseeable future (at least according to the weather widget in my dashboard). I did, however, actually turn on the heat today for the first time in months. The furnace hasn't actually kicked in yet as the residual heat from the day is still keeping us above the 65° I set the thermostat to, but it probably will within the next 30 minutes or so. I also bothered to take the time to figure out how to program a schedule into the thermostat. It's a much more useful feature than I thought, letting me program in 4 distinct periods for weekdays (delineated by Sleep, Wake, Leave, and Return), and 2 periods for weekends (Sleep and Wake). This actually works out rather well since despite the fact that I work from home and so will want the heat to be on during the day, I prefer a much cooler temperature than Jessi does. Thanks to the programmed in schedule the condo will only be too warm before Jessi leaves for work in the morning and after she gets home at night leaving it nice and comfortable for me during the bulk of the day.

Blogtoberfest
Oct 25th, 2007

Well, I'm off to the Pour House for Blogtoberfest 2007. It'll be a great chance to meet some more of my fellow area bloggers, as well as catch up with the ones I've met before. Expect a post summarizing the night ...assuming anything interesting happens.

Somerville power outage
Oct 13th, 2007

The power is out in much of Somerville and has been for about three hours now (since most of the way through the top of the 8th inning of the Sox/Indians game). The Porter Square area has power fortunately, but I recently returned from eminent local blogger Jesse Legg's house where we had been watching the game until the power went out (afterwards I contented myself with cleaning everyone else out at poker), and from my bike ride back (not very fun in the pitch dark, even with a headlight) it appeared that pretty much everything on the other side of Elm St. is dark. The Ball Square area certainly is at any rate.

Power outages in and of themselves don't really bother me, but several hours of nothing but candle light can start to get annoying. I can only imagine that for the power to be out for this long it must be a downed line or something similar that can't just be routed around. Of course the wiring in this part of the country is probably so old that it could be just about anything. Hopefully I'll know more soon. In the meantime, I just hope it isn't another days-on-end without power scenario like we had in the Bay Area when I was a kid...

Edit: I just took a look at the City of Somerville website and apparently this is a 'scheduled emergency power outage', whatever that means. It appears that the power will be out until 8am for the 100 through 400 blocks of Highland Ave. Of course it also said that it wouldn't start until 12am, so who knows what's really going on. Also, my Verizon DSL went out about 30 minutes ago. I wonder if that's related.

Edit 2: Thanks to Boris for pointing out that the notice I found on the Somerville website was from 2002. Oh well, guess it was an unscheduled emergency after all.

Edit 3: Cool, if you do a google search for 'Somerville power outage' this post is the number two result.

The state of young Somerville
Oct 12th, 2007

Next Monday (October 15th) at the Somerville Theater in Davis Square Mayor Joe Curtatone of Somerville will be holding a State of the City address targeted specifically at the 21-35 year old demographic. Topics will include: the Green Line Expansion, redevelopment of the city's website (sadly I have nothing to do with that), the Somerville school system, and many other things. There will also be a question and answer session with the mayor and city department heads following the address. Food will be provided, it'll be a great chance to meet other young people from around the city, and apparently the Somerville PD will be there so you can register your personal electronics. I'd post the flyer they sent out to those of us on the Young Somerville Advisory Group, but ...let's just say it would clash with the design of my site.

If you're in Somerville you can call 311 for more information.

Vital info:
Monday, October 15th
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Somerville Theater
Davis Square

Health care
Oct 10th, 2007

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.

4th time's NOT the charm
Jul 11th, 2007

Today was supposed to be a nice, lazy, relaxing day. The Restaurant Week Project is finished, and I've got nothing pressing to do. So I decided to take my new bike (Oh yeah, last weekend I bought a bike off Craigslist. $25 for an old Schwinn hybrid in pretty good shape.) for a ride and get some things accomplished.

First things first, I decided I'd go back to the RMV to try again to get my California license converted to a Massachusetts one. So I got on my bike and headed towards Boston. I got all the way to the Boston Common before I ran into my first problem: a nut on my rear wheel had come loose and my wheel got pulled out of position so that it was rubbing up against the fork. I had foolishly not brought any tools with me, so I just locked it up and went the last few blocks on foot. I got to the RMV and got in line with 51 people ahead of me. One hour and 30 people later, I figured I was finally going to be getting my license. Then, all of a sudden, things slowed down. Up until that point they had been calling a new person every couple minutes.

Then for a long time nothing happened.

Then, as before, in a flash of smoke and brimstone an RMV employee appeared and announced to us all that the Social Security computers were down. AGAIN!!!

This is now the fourth time I've been to the RMV to try and convert my license and failed. It's the second time that my trip was a failure thanks to a crappy Social Security computer system. Had I previously had any faith in the state of the RMV, the Massachusetts state government, or bureaucracy in general, it would now be lost. Having never had such a thing, I'm simply wallowing in despondency and despair at the thought of having to try yet again.

So I left the RMV thwarted yet again and contemplating the issues involved in getting my immobilized bike home. Fortunately, I was able to borrow some pliers from a friendly bus driver and get my rear wheel mostly straight and my bike ridable again. So I continued along my planned route to the Copley Square branch of the Boston Public Library where I checked out a copy of Charles Stross' Accelerando, then bike back home via Storrow Drive and the Harvard footbridge.

All told, my main accomplishment of the day—which was supposed to be getting my Massachusetts license—turned out to be the fairly pedestrian achievement of biking ~12 miles. It is, at least, a very nice day for a bike ride.

Working with the Mayor
Jun 22nd, 2007

If you read the Globe you may have noticed this article that ran on the 17th. Basically, Mayor Curtatone of Somerville is putting together a group of young Somervillians, the Young Somerville Advisory Council, to help provide the city with input from its younger citizens. What the article doesn't mention is that I am one of the 25 Somervillians on the council. So far, I don't have a whole lot of information about what, exactly, we'll be doing. But our first meeting is scheduled for next week so I'll get a chance to meet Mayor Curtatone, some of his staff, and the other 24 members.

I'm really looking forward to this. Now that I'm a homeowner, I've made a bit of a commitment to stay here in Somerville for at least a decent period of time, so it makes sense for me to be as involved as possible with the city and, if possible, the city government. Short of running to be an alderman, being able to, in at least some small capacity, advise the mayor on some matters seems like a pretty good start. It'll definitely be an interesting experience and, hopefully, a rewarding one.

They're everywhere!
May 29th, 2007

Apparently it's not just the MBTA and RMV that are extremely horrible at expediting transportation in Massachusetts. I'm starting to think that poorly implemented transportation is simply endemic to the Commonwealth.

I was at Logan airport earlier, at the E terminal, waiting to pick up some friends who have since flown in. The signage there is less clear than it could be. I wanted to just stay in the terminal E loop, but the only options I could see were Airport Exit and parking to one direction, and indeterminate other things in the other direction. So I went the other direction. It didn't seem quite right, but it was an airport, and they're never laid out logically, so I kept going. Besides, there was no obvious way to turn around and go the other way. Eventually, I found myself in Maverick Square; clearly I had made a wrong turn somewhere.

Having never been in East Boston or Chelsea before I didn't really know where to go. The plus side was that I had, by that time, learned that my friends had missed their flight and wouldn't be coming in until later, so I could go home rather than trying to find my way back to the airport. I had no idea where I was, but I could see the water, and, as I still know very little of the local geography, figured it must be the river and that following it must eventually lead me to Cambridge. So I drove toward the water ...and discovered many large ocean-going ships. Last I checked there are no large ocean-going vessels in the Charles river. This was when I realized that East Boston is on the other side of the harbor.

Still, I figured, following the water would probably be the best bet. Eventually it led me to the Sumner Tunnel where the signs indicated that the normal car toll is $3. I very rarely carry cash, and had been expecting to only have to pay the $1 I'm used to getting on and off the pike, so that was all the cash I had on me. So I decided to keep going and see if I can find a cheaper way to get home. A little while later I saw signs pointing towards the Tobin Bridge. Again, my lack of familiarity with the local geography, cause largely by the fact that I pretty much never drive here, got me in trouble. For some reason I had it in my head that the Tobin Bridge was actually the Bunker Hill Bridge. This idea was reinforced by the fact that the Bunker Hill Bridge is clearly visible from East Boston. So I followed the signs knowing that from the base of the Bunk Hill Bridge I could easily get myself home. The signs, of course, didn't take me where I expected and I ended up on the on-ramp for the Tobin Bridge, hoping that there was no toll to cross.

Of course there is, and as I was in a Zipcar which has commercial plates, that toll was $4.50. Being $3.50 short I had to tell the guy that I had no cash. I figured he'd give me some sort of ticket so I could mail the toll in later, maybe with a small fine. Well, he did give me a ticket, but closer examination leads me to believe that I'm going to have to pay a $50 fine. Plus whatever fee Zipcar charges me for having to deal with receiving the notice of violation and informing MassPike that it has to go to me instead which I think is about $20.

So, just because I don't usually carry cash and am not really familiar with driving in the area I may be out $70. That's just a load of crap. At least they offer an option to appeal the violation. An option of which I am definitely going to avail myself. One advantage to being self-employed is that I actually have the flexibility to deal with bureaucratic nonsense without fear of being fired.