Largest Sales Force In America

Almost every single day since the start of school here in AZ I have had to andswer the door only to find a couple of kids at my door selling some kind of crap I don't want and I don't need for their school. We have labor laws in this country for a good reason, why are our school systems allowed to utilize our gradeschool kids as the largest sales force in America.

In a world where every single day our news is cluttered with the kidnapping, rape and murder of innocent children why do parents allow their kids to go door to door selling?

It sickens me.

I challenge each and every one of you to who have children who are being asked to participate in these types of events to take the material sent home, stuff in an envelope with a letter and mail it to your congressman asking them to stop this ridiculous bahavior. Attend the school board meetings and lobby to end it, sign petitions.

Imagine how these poor children feel being subjected to kind of rejection they are receiving from people who are angered by having to put up with this barrage of door to door sales people. Isn't being a kid hard enough having to deal with peer pressure, working parents, learning right from wrong, school and everything else they have to put up with. Why do we allow the schools to put them through a regime of rejection.

End it!

Love

Okay, I know today's topic is going to make a lot of you read something into it that isn't written. Hopefully you know me well enough to know this is just the way my brain works.

I was thinking about love. Hopefully we have been and are currently in love. I have been in love several times, and I am currently in love. I guess I am lucky. It is true you can't help who you fall in love with, just ask my wife. You just can't help it, it is an emotional state like any other that can't be controlled. How many times has someone you know pronounced their love for someone you thought was a dirtbag and you yourself said, you can't help you fall in love with.

So, tell me ... why then, when you are married it is such a terrible thing to fall in love with someone else (dirtbag or not). How is it that as a society we not only accept the double standard, but condone it? If you are single you can't help who you fall in love with, if you are married you damn well better. What's up with that?

Do we expect the act of marrige to turn OFF the act of falling in love? Isn't that just a little absurd?

Why do we also make the leap that falling in love with an additional person (not someone else, someone additional) it must mean you don't love your spouse as much or more than you always have? Is there a limit on how much love you can have? Is there a limit to the number of additional people for which you can have it? That can't even be possible can it?

So why then is it such a terrible thing? Why don't we live in a society where you can tell people you are in love with them and not feel like you have done something terribly terribly wrong. Why can't spouses be thrilled that you got to fall in love with an additoinal person? Wouldn't it be great if you go home and say ... "I fell in love with someone today" and your spouse be happy for you?

I don't know ... these are just the kinds of things I think about sometimes.

Near Death Experience

I want to start by simply saying I am lucky to be alive.

We all have those moments in life when something happens and you have that few seconds where you can feel your life flashing before your eyes in slow motion. You can feel the grip of the reapers bones clutching your soul and she is ready to give it a yank.

Well ... I had one, last night and it was ... well it was life changing.

For starters let me say, we are very busy at work all kinds of things going on and there is a lot of stress. Lots of pressure, my blackberry goes off fifty to a hundred times a night. So last night we were in bed, doing the ... well you know.

My blackberry went off ... "bong" ... I did not flench, I did not make a motion toward the blackberry in any way ... though I admit, it did cross my mind to answer it.

Suddenly and without warning ... she looked over her shoulder at me. I knew right then, without a doubt, if I made even the slightest move toward the device, my life would be over. Done, snuffed out in the throws of passion. It might be the closest to death I have ever been.

I am lucky to be alive.

Dr. My IPhone

If you have read my blog for a while you know I got a new Iphone about a month ago, "Gema". Don't give me that look, you have some inaminate object with a name too, you know you do.

Anyway, Gema and I were doing a thing ... a thing ... you know what I mean? A thing, with a phone.

It's called an App you dirty minded perv. I was using the new pizza hut app which from the geeky director of technology in the corporate world perspective is really a nice use of the technology, well done. Anyway I was admiring this application and it occurred to me there are a lot of applications I think could make a real difference in the world.

None of them anything to do with girl on girl porn (if you are offended ... go away). So I am starting a new category called IPhone Apps, and I am going to post a few things. This is the first one.

Any major insurance company on the planet that has a 1-800 ask a nurse hotline should do this. Note, don't call the 1-800 do a nurse hotline ... that is a whole different topic all together.

So, let's say Cigna does this ... ready?

You click on your "My Cigna" app on your Iphone 3GS the latest one. It opens up and asks you if you want to speak with the nurse, message the nurse or email the nurse. You choose how you want to communicate. Typically the nurse responds and asks you a few things about your condition. Now what if step this level of communication up a bit.

The nurse asks for your vital signs:

You plug into the bottom of the iphone the IThermometer that Apple is going to create for the "improvement of our health care system". You plug it in and pop it in your mouth and a minute later your temperature is displayed on the iphone, submitted to the nurse AND registered into your cigna health medical record and immediately available to your Dr.

Next, you do the same thing with the IBP Meater (blood pressure), the ISugar to test your blood sugar, you take a photo of the injury and submit it, or you attache the ILens to the camera face and take a photo of your throat, your ear ... and you use the IHeart to check your pulse.

From there the nurse (or Dr.) comes on and asks you questions about your condition and makes a diagnosis, noting that diagnosis could range from take an aspirin, go to your Dr or call the coroner.

Think about this ... you could have an "online" appointment at 9 a.m. with a note to log in and submit all your vital signs 15 minutes early, it's just a checkup right, if it were something different than that you would have gone to the dr. right?

So, you could have a call the nurse thing, you could have a dr appointment without ever leaving your office. The cost would be less, the insurance company could collect more data and potentially provide better care, in fact they could save billions of dollars because you would do as many of these kinds of appointments as you could and that might keep you from letting conditions go to long and stuff like that.

What do you think?

A dozen Years Ago

We have been working around the house the last week doing some spring cleaning. Yes, Yes, I know it is damn near August ... what's your point?

We have a considerable "stash" of cross stitch, craft and art supplies and they have been stored in a a half dozen different places. So ... we are consolidated them all into our newly established craft central command, code name CCC located in the loft. As with every home we have had currently this is a shared space. In a year it will be a Tracy space and I will have the corner of the closet again. My fault, I almost knew what I was getting into when I married her ... ALMOST.

Point being ... while we were going through everything we have come across a bunch of stuff we had not seen in a while. For example, a dozen years ago or so I bought her a ring. I didn't just want to hand it to her, where is the romance in that. So, I hid it on the chandeleir above our dining room table. It was there about a week before I was going to give it too her. I figured if she accidently found it we would have fun with that. But she didn't, so I gave her a note one day that said something like ... remember when James was born, one of your office friends gave us a gift to commeerate the occasion. Near that item is your next clue.

and so on and so on. If memory serves it was our 12th anniversary and so there were 12 clues. The last one being the clue to lead her to the chandalier.

She kept all of those little clues and we came across them the other day. It was kinda cool.

We are coming up on our 23rd anniversary and I have been checking the house for a hidden Mac Powerbook, I looked in the Chandalier for car keys, I even thought she might be clever enough to hide a $1000 iTune gift certficate in my wallet.

Nothing so far.