Musings from Work
First thing this morning at the hospital was fire extinguisher training.  I knew it was going to be interesting when the "teacher" gave us a paper with a quiz on it and only after we'd all completed it did he teach the class and give us the answers.  This guy must have slept through high school, 'cause he definitely got it backwards.  Anyway, after the reverse quiz, he took us all outside to play with fire...extinguishers--to play with fire extinguishers.  I thought after the reverse quiz, we'd put out a fire backwards too, but he started the fire (with kerosene instead of gasoline--fewer carbon offsets, I think) and we had to put it out.  Yeah, every morning should start like this.  Mike and I had fun with it, although I don't think pinko-hippie fire dude was so amused.

After that, I went out to the new hospital to start installing monitors.  Well, I got about halfway through hanging the mounting brackets when the floor people decided to start waxing the tiles in front of the only freight elevator in the building.  No problem if you're on foot, but I had a pallet jack full of mounts and now I'm stuck on the second floor.  Yeah--hope nobody thieves those empty boxes or the pallet jack tonight.

Way to Collate!
So while I was standing around waiting for Smokey the Beatnik, a guy came through the loading dock and I happened to glance at the title on his name badge:  Job Coach.  I don't even know what to think about this.  I mean, is he the guy that stands behind you at the copy machine yelling things like, "You gotta attack that staple!  It's not going to pull itself out!  You gotta reach in there and grab it!  Take it by the horns and rip it right outta there!"  Is he auditioning for a bigger coaching job, like maybe if he gets promoted he's the Junior Assistant Women's Ping Pong Coach at the State's Medium Security Prison?

Ending Islamic Terrorism
I had a brilliant idea the other day--and this will actually, I believe, work.  (Not that any of my other ideas won't work, but this one's golden).  In order to put a complete stop to Islamic terrorism, we need to first of all understand why they want to blow themselves up.  I'm going to have to go with the virgins, because in every poll of twenty- and thirty-something single men, not one of them will die for geopolitical reasons or because some cave-dweller with half a Reuben in his beard tells him to.  Nope--sorry, not buying it.

Now, all we need to do is convince these guys that the seventy-two virgins they will receive in Islamo-paradise will (1) be wearing burqas, and (2) underneath said burqas look like Hillary Clinton.  "See here, Ahmed, these women are virgins for a reason.  Tell you what, I'll introduce you to Paris Hilton.  So you won't blow up anymore buildings?  Good."  Works like a charm.

A little more sedate week here at the VCU-MCV startup.  The only real excitement was from the guy I worked with.  He's from the Virgin Islands and had to fly to Richmond.  Since we worked together, I was the driver for the week.  He was a nice enough guy, but as we were the only two single guys here this week, his insistance that we hit the clubs in an attempt to "score" was a bit taxing.  (He did finally stop asking--though he was somewhat confused--when I told him that "scoring" wasn't an option because I wasn't very good at sports).

It's getting to the point in the startup that we've been to every area in the hospital and we're just going back over to pick up the rest of the pieces.  This next week is going to be tough as we still have to find another five or six thousand pieces piecemeal rather than wholesale.

I'm sorry to say that my experiment with eHarmony has been a terrible failure.  In the week since I made my attempt to be rejected by the site, they've managed to find me over fifty potential matches.  I don't get those kind of results when I look for a used car.  Maybe Neil Clark Warren should do an eHarmony project for used car buyers.

Gotta brag on Apple real quick before bed: At the startup here at VCU-MCV in Richmond, we're using laptops to inventory hospital equipment--IBM ThinkPad laptops. Aside from lousy battery life (2 hours?!), these machines feel cheap and fragile. I feel like if I type more than forty words per minute they might melt or something.

My MBP on the other hand is solid, elegant, functional, and just downright sexy (for a computer).

IBM v. Apple? It's like the difference between a Kia (or better, a Yugo) and a BMW.

This reminds me (in a very stream-of-consciousness way) about my theory of why the Bush-McKennedy amnesty-for-illegal-invaders bill failed. If you think about the consumer products you love to use (for example, the ubiquitous iPod), what do they have in common? They're simple, elegant, and easy to understand and use. None of these things applies to the defeated (thank God) bill (or Congress as a whole, for that matter). Maybe that's why their approval ratings are at 19%.

Here's my plan for illegal immigration (and Congress in general):
1. Seal the border. "But a fence sends the wrong message to Mexico..." What message is that, exactly? "Stay out?" or "Come in through the gate?" I'm not hearing anything I disagree with.
[1a. Failing that, annex Mexico and seal their southern border. We should be able to do that with the same amount of border enforcement we have now, and I'm sure we can better leverage Mexico's oil production to pay for the social programs and whatnot].
2. Astronomically high fines for anyone caught employing illegal immigrants--fines on the order of $10M per instance. If companies are that hard up for illegal workers, they can pay for insurance and schooling so the taxpayers don't have to. "But, that'll put the produce farmers out of business..." I don't eat vegetables (aha! Finally a principled reason to eat marshmallows and spray cheese!!) so I don't care.
3. Move phone-based tech support jobs from India to Mexico. Half of us already speak Spanish because the illegal immigrants wouldn't learn English. I say that half of us understanding a Mexican support operator is better than none of us understanding an Indian named "Roger." Also, that will provide good paying jobs in Mexico (y'know, other than drug mule) and remove an incentive to be in this country.
4. Offer citizenship only to illegal immigrants who serve for four years in the US military and denounce allegiance to their country of origin. While we're at it, remove "birthright" citizenship. If you're born in this country to a citizen, you're a citizen at birth; if you're born in this country to an illegal, you're not.

As for Congress:
1. Stop passing non-binding resolutions. We elected you to get things done. If you don't have the stones to stand up for your convictions, then don't bother--or just stay out of Washington already.
2. Naming something after yourself should be an offense punishable by removal from office. (I drove through West Virginia on Sunday, and everything was the "Robert C. Byrd something or other." Soon, it won't be West Virginia anymore--it'll be the "Robert C. Byrd Memorial State.)
3. Laws and projects should be voted upon independently. No more using another bill--especially an omnibus budget bill--to slide in $200M bridges to nowhere that will only benefit 50 people and put a ferry business out of business, Senator Stevens of Alaska.
3a. As a consequence, most bills should be no more than three or four pages long. They should also be written in plain English so that citizens--yes, even congressmen--can understand them. Thus ending the practice of voting on a bill you've never read.
4. Filibusters in the Senate will return to actual filibusters rather than filing paperwork. If you really want to block a bill, take the floor and read the phone book.
5. Call in regular citizens (like jury duty) to approve or vet special spending projects (pork). If you can convince twelve normal people that your district needs $30M to fund a study for other uses for wood, you can have it. If they laugh at you, you lose (and should probably have to wear a sign saying "I waste taxpayer dollars").
6. Any member under investigation will be prohibited from voting or serving on committees until cleared in the investigation. The governor of their state (or the state legislature) may appoint a proxy to serve in the interim.
7. Strict term limits--two full six-year terms in the Senate (no more than sixteen years if a senator was elected in a special election), and four full two-year terms in the House (no more than nine years if a congressman was elected in a special election).
8. Committee chairs should be qualified to run their committee. The chair of the house intelligence committee didn't know that al-Qaeda was a Sunni organization and didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shia. Gee, ya think he should hold that job (especially when Rep. Jane Harman, who though a Democrat, is qualified to answer those questions and would be a better fit for the chair).
9. Lobbyists will be prohibited from lobbying their family members or close friends who are members. Members will not be permitted to secure lobbying jobs for these people--nor will they be able to lobby for twelve years before or after their terms.

I'm sure there's more, but it's late and I'm tired.