• valdelane and I have moved into The House (sometimes still a.k.a. "this... *ulp*" but I'm getting better).


• Consolidating two 900sf houses worth of stuff into one 950sf house worth of space is not easy. Someday I hope we will be able to see our floors again.


• I still don't feel great about hitting our friends up for stuff, but I find myself wishing that "establishing a household" was the socially acceptable trigger for establishing a gift registry rather than "getting married".


• I still hate moving, but I hate it a lot less having taken time off work to do it.


• !*&(@$ flaky-ass people on Craigslist. No, I will not deliver a $40 piece of furniture, advertised specifically as "you haul", to you on a moment's notice. No, I will not hold on to said piece of furniture indefinitely while you "think about it and see when you might make it over".


• Speaking of Craigslist, since the $OldHouse landlords live out of state I set up the rental listing for them and arranged showings. I am amazed at the level of personal info people shared with me simply when inquiring about the rental. I got credit scores, work status and occupational history, and one guy even told me when he likes to go to bed.


• One of the things that got consolidated was V's and my liquor collections. They are both large and had little redundancy. It's taking up most of a kitchen table and damn, do we look like a bunch of lushes.


• Don't have much to say yet about cohabitating because V has been out of town this week, but J has been here and I will say that it's kind of nice to come home to spouse(s).

"I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare.'" (source).

At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."

"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn't having any of it." (source)

"I don't want any socialized medicine, but don't touch my Medicare"? What the heck is wrong with people? Where do they think Medicare comes from, the health care fairy? This is not an obscure piece of information or subtle aspect of policy analysis. It is a basic matter of fact that Medicare is a government program.

Then you have the people Godwinising the debate before it even gets off the ground. Comparing Obama to Hitler? The proposed healthcare reform is "Nazi policy"? Seriously? Stay classy guys.

See, this is why we can't have nice things. This is not a principled opposition-- you can't have an adult conversation with these people. I'm a little slow sometimes so it took me a while to realize that raising a principled opposition is most definitely not the goal for some. So, what's actually going on here? Various parties obviously have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo-- and/or in seeing reform efforts fail badly, which is not quite the same thing-- and are happy to play off people's fears of change, prejudices, etc in order to hype up an obnoxious opposition.

The sad part is that it's so easy for them to do so. I guess I should stop being surprised by people's ignorance (and also keep in mind that making news out of howlers like "keep your government hands off my Medicare" is its own kind of strategic hype). Even so-- it's understandable that people are suspicious of the health care bill. They should be. But shouldn't they extend that same suspicion to politicians yammering about OMG Socialism! and "death panels"?

There is a lot we should be questioning about plans for expanding (not creating!) our socialized health care system. I think we should be concerned any time there is an opportunity for any group, corporate or political, to consolidate power over a significant aspect of our lives. I think people who assume that government is necessarily a force for good are incredibly naive. We should also be concerned about whether particular programs are economically sustainable over more than a few years, whether they impose undue burdens on us consumers (financially, by restricting options, or by degrading quality of service), whether they would make a significant number of people substantially worse off than they are now, and whether they are based on resource allocation that is both efficient and fair.

So, how do we get to have an adult conversation about this?

• I'm nominally interested in growing my hair out a bit (there's not too many ways a short-haired person can change their hairstyle except by growing more hair (my work environment is a little too conservative for "interesting" colors)). I realized a few days ago that the last time I grew my hair out from being this short was when I was in college and a) didn't care that much what my hair looked like and b) didn't have money for regular visits to a good stylist. Since that time I've gotten both more vain about my hair and less tolerant of coiffure awkwardness. It's already starting to get kind of awkward and poofy and generally irritating, and maybe I should just not mess with the hairstyle that has served me perfectly well for the last 4 years or so.
  


• As a software developer, one of the things I'm periodically reminded of is that it's often not the big, flashy features that have the most impact on user satisfaction. For example, a user recently went out of his way to compliment us on a minor enhancement that took me maybe an hour to write, while large feature upgrades representing weeks' worth of work go by seemingly without notice. I think a similar concept applies to bugs. No one likes a showstopper, of course, but it's the little things that really seem to get to people.
  
  This leads me to my actual peeve, which is about the Blackberry OS upgrade that RIM pushed out a month or two ago. Display of Chinese characters works now, which is cool (and would have been useful when I was actually in China and trying to view Chinese websites) but doesn't do a lot for me on a day-to-day basis. They made the user interfaces to the mail program and web browser a little snazzier. BFD.
  
  In exchange, the device as a whole is slower and more prone to locking up. To my great annoyance, two simple functions that I use a lot are now flakey and unreliable. Like many people I use my cell phone as a watch, and after the OS upgrade the clock display does not always update properly. Even worse, the alarm clock will now occasionally simply fail to ring the alarm. So, now I have a nicer email interface but don't know what time it is and might be late to work in the morning.
  
  These are not flashy or technically difficult items, but they are an important part of my user experience with my phone. RIM, I shake my fist at you.