Okay, first off, I need to be clear here.  I'm a Google employee, however I'm writing this entry, this analysis, from the perspective of an observer.  These are not Google's words, they are mine.  The information I've used to come to these conclusions is all public.  If you're looking for some special, secret knowledge about Google, you're not ever going to find it here.  That being said...

About a year ago, I excitedly read the releases about Google's new open-source browser, Chrome, and downloaded a copy for myself.  Most importantly, I read report after report about how Google was doomed to failure in a head-to-head battle with Microsoft.  How foolish it was to be developing a browser when the market was already entrenched.

Now, I'm seeing the same sorts of reports.  Google is taking Microsoft on head-to-head with a new Operating System.  Chrome OS is destined for failure.  Google is overreaching.

I call bullshit.  I call bullshit on the Chrome naysayers, and I call bullshit on the Chrome OS naysayers.  I am not a frequent Chrome user (primarily because I use a Mac), however I can tell you, simply by using the latest version of my preferred browser, Firefox (3.5), that Chrome (and Google) has already won.  Shortly after the release of Chrome, Microsoft, Apple, and Mozilla all came out with new browser updates which all focused on improvements in performance.  It's my theory that this was Google's primary intention: browser development was too slow and in the "wrong" areas, so by developing a browser that was nothing if not fast and then opening up the source code so that everyone could see how it was made to be so fast, it forced the hands of all other browser manufacturers to hasten their Javascript engines and their HTML rendering.  In less than six months, it was clear that Chrome had already reshaped browser development across the boards, and in doing so, Chrome won whether it gained market share or not.

So here's a prediction and a speculation.  The speculation: Google doesn't necessarily care about capturing market share on netbooks with its new Chrome OS; it just wants netbook performance across the boards to be fast.  I've read reports from some people using very early versions of Chrome OS, and the one thing they all have to say is that it's fast.  I speculate that Google wants this because the faster the net is, the more the net is used, and the more the net is used, the more information gets placed out there, and the more content that is placed on the internet, the more people are going to need to _search_ for that content.  And finally, when people search, they are indirectly looking for advertising which is Google's bread and butter.  The prediction: by pre-announcing their desire to enter the netbook Operating System fray with yet another open-source software release, Google is automatically a winner, because all it really wants is to help guide and shape the development of this technology, setting a minimum bar in netbook performance.  If Intel and Apple and Microsoft all react to Google by focusing on making their own netbook Operating Systems more customer friendly, more usable, and faster, Google wins even before their open source SDK is released.

What's more, the winner isn't really Google.  From my perspective, Google is just increasing the competition in markets that seem to be slow to respond to users' desires.  Ultimately, the winner will be all of us.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

My head asplode.

I am for universal healthcare and against school vouchers.  Anyone who knows me knows that this is 180 degrees from my position of only a few years ago.  I was for vouchers and I was against universal healthcare.  I had a very libertarian stance that the government should butt out of anything that could be handled privately.  In my mind, healthcare and education are very comparable subjects.

The problem is that I now realize that when these things are handled privately, they reach an economic efficiency which limits access and quality for people without wealth.  Let's look, for example, at what vouchers would do to the public school system:

Let's say that we take the entire budget for all school children and divide that by the number of children.  The end result is the amount of money that is spent on that child in public education.  Instead of giving that money to a school, let's give that money to the child's guardians and tell them that they must spend it on their child's education.  No, wait.  We can't trust everyone with money.  Instead, let's trust them with a piece of paper which they must give to a school, and the school can then collect that money.  And that piece of paper is called a voucher.  So now we have a voucher system in place.

Now, let's just throw out some random numbers here.  Let's say a voucher is worth $6,000 a school year, and that this is roughly the amount that gets spent on each child in public schools.  Of course, private schools generally start in the $7,500 a year ballpark for religious schools, and they go up from there.  Some even cost $20,000 and up!  But now, a parent has a voucher worth $6,000 which they can give to a public school, or if they can wrangle $1,500 a year, they can give that cash and the voucher to the local Catholic school.  Wrangling $7,500 a year just wasn't possible, before, but now, $1,500... a lot of families will begin to be able to afford that.  So demand for lower-end private schools goes up significantly.  Immediately, the supply will remain the same, however, so people will get wait-listed.  In fact, people who used to wrangle $7,500 will get wait-listed just the same as those who only have to wrangle $1,500.  But it's no harder for them to wrangle $7,500 now, so maybe the kids who could previously only afford that $7,500 private school can go to that $13,500 school.  And just like the parochial school, the middle-grade private school now has increased demand, and begins to wait-list.  And, in the end, the high-end private schools will see an increase in demand without an increase in capacity.

Now, I know there are some folks out there reading this who actually studied economics.  So what happens when you increase the demand for a good or service without increasing the supply of that good or service?  Say it with me, now: "the price increases."  Suddenly, $20,000 a year private schools cost $25,000 a year, and why shouldn't they if the parents of their students are willing to pay.  And the same things goes for every level of private schools.  People have more money they're willing to spend, so the price goes up.  The parochial, non-profit schools probably won't jack up their prices much, though.  Anyway, the end result is that the cost of the vouchers will partially go straight to private schools in the form of tuition increases.

But we haven't looked at what happens in the public schools.  Suddenly, the public schools are full of two kinds of people: people who can't afford $1,500 a month for parochial school, and people who can but are wait-listed.  In all, there are fewer people in public school, now, so public schools don't take in as much money as they once did.  Sure, they have fewer students, but economies of scale came in to play when there was a huge student body.  Now, not so much.  Public schools start shedding teachers and facilities.  Public schools start to provide a somewhat lesser quality of education, as a result.  No more band.  Hell, no more PE.  The schools can only focus on the core subjects, now.  But wait!  The school shed qualified teachers and facilities!  Someone has a bright idea!  Form another private school, and take care of some of those kids who are wait-listed!  Brilliant!  Now, there are even fewer kids in public schools, so the public schools shed more jobs and more faciliies.  Eventually, most of the wait lists work themselves out (either by increased price or increased supply), and public school is attended _only_ by people who can't afford the small differential for private school.  These students don't get much of an education.

Vouchers lead to a pretty bleak future for public education.

A system for which there is universal need and by which there is a minimum standard, paid for by everyone regardless of use, benefits everyone.  It shouldn't be the only option, of course.  Those with wealth should be able to pay for a better quality or better access.  So it goes with healthcare; people should be able to purchase supplemental insurance for varying degrees of service.  I don't think public healthcare will be particularly good, but I do think that it will set a minimum threshold which is much, much higher than what is available to those who don't have much cash or benefits through their employer.  I think there are going to be lots of people who will want to purchase private insurance as well, resulting in shorter waits to receive treatment and, possibly, the ability to see a better class of doctors.  Mind you, there will be some fantastic doctors as part of the public plan, as well, just as there are some fantastic teachers in the public education system.

I haven't spent much time explaining how everyone benefits when everyone's basic needs are met with a guaranteed minimum.  This is a bit more challenging to explain, however let me try with education.  Because public schools exist, economically poor people have a place to send their children to get educated.  It's possible that one of these children has the will and the intelligence to do great things, and having the opportunity of an education is all they need to hit the ground running.  And with healthcare.  If a person has the ability to see a doctor, they might just do so, and get the antibiotic which prevents further transmission of their disease.  It's all a bunch of hypotheticals, really, however I'm positive, I have faith, that there's an alternate universe in which we are all worse off because someone who started off poor stayed uneducation, and I also have faith that there's an alternate universe in which enough people who got sick visited their doctor to prevent a major disease outbreak.


And now, to make everyone think I'm a _total_ socialist... I think I have to extend my belief to _all_ universal needs.  Basic food, basic housing, basic healthcare, and basic education should all be paid for by everyone.  Basic food, basic housing, basic healthcare, and basic education will all probably be pretty crappy, but if things go really, really wrong for any one of us, we can at least be assured that we're not going to have to die of starvation or freezing to death on a sidewalk while sleeping.


I don't think I'm a socialist, though.  I hope that having a net to catch the fallen enriches everyone, and that, with decreased demand, private systems begin to differentiate on quality, which is what happens when people don't want to lower their prices.

And for all the other things that we don't need but want, well, the government should keep their filthy paws out of it.

gbloom$ curl -I 'http://www.google.com/'
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:37:09 GMT
Expires: -1
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Set-Cookie: PREF=ID=0df7dfac1cae97f0:TM=1245130629:LM=1245130629:S=AZ2F2Y1Jyvitwq_3; expires=Thu, 16-Jun-2011 05:37:09 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.com
Server: gws
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

gbloom$ curl -I 'http://www.bing.com/'
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
P3P: CP="NON UNI COM NAV STA LOC CURa DEVa PSAa PSDa OUR IND", policyref="http://privacy.msn.com/w3c/p3p.xml"
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:35:20 GMT
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: _FS=mkt=-US&ui=en-US; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: _SS=SID=58F669CFBAEE485989D84DB7FCB50C35; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: _UR=OMF=1&PV=1; expires=Thu, 16-Jun-2011 05:35:20 GMT; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: AFORM=NOFORM; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-2015 23:59:59 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: MUID=046EBE73FB4E449890C45A9D193756C5; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-2015 23:59:59 GMT; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: OrigMUID=046EBE73FB4E449890C45A9D193756C5%2ca93a55dbfde74cf58b4a9a773b854898; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-2015 23:59:59 GMT; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: OVR=flt=0&PerfTracking=0&DomainVertical=omtest1&Cashback=cbcontrol&MSCorp=kievfinal; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: SRCHD=D=766415&AF=NOFORM; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-2015 23:59:59 GMT; domain=.bing.com; path=/
Set-Cookie: SRCHSESS=GUID=15EF52369F02498C8F0F074913533ACE&TS=1245130520; expires=Tue, 16-Jun-2009 05:55:20 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: SRCHUID=V=2&GUID=A2380E9B9F1B48F5A0C58C9CB809B493; expires=Mon, 20-Jul-2015 23:59:59 GMT; path=/
Set-Cookie: SRCHUSR=AUTOREDIR=0&GEOVAR=&DOB=20090616; expires=Thu, 16-Jun-2011 05:35:20 GMT; domain=.bing.com; path=/

1. Google reports a "Server" value, while Microsoft doesn't.  Hrmm.  What is Microsoft hiding?  Is it possible that Bing runs on Linux because IIS/Windows isn't scalable enough?
2. Google sets a single cookie.  Microsoft sets eleven.  What possible reason could there be for this, except perhaps Microsoft doesn't really know how to make use of cookies?
3. Google's user identification cookie expires in two years.  Microsoft's user identification cookies expire in six years and a month.  Why aren't privacy advocates in an uproar about this?

Okay, peoples: when it becomes publicly available, you've got to get Google Voice (http://www.google.com/voice).  It's absolutely brilliant.  To be honest, most of the functionality and the idea came from Google's acquisition of Grand Central about two years ago, so I'm not trying to play this up as the next awesome thing just because it's a Google product.  No, it's just freakin' awesome.


So, I got my account about two years ago and it's been sitting around kind of collecting dust.  A few people know about it and use it, but not too many.  Here's some of its coolness, but I'll save why I'm so excited about it until the end...

First off,  Google Voice let me select a new phone number by picking a geographic location and it then presents a set of available numbers in that geography and I pick the one I like.  I selected phones nearby to 95006, the ZIP Code for Boulder Creek.  None came up, but ones for very nearby Ben Lomond did, so I grabbed 831.609.5025.

Next, I told Google Voice about my four other phones: my home phone, my cell phone, my work phone, and my work cell phone.  I told the system what times of day it was okay to call each phone, as well, so if it's the evening, calls don't get routed to my work number.

At that point, when someone called, all of my four other phones rang, and the call was routed to the first one that got picked up.  So if you have a home phone and a cell phone, people just call the Google Voice number and they don't know whether I'm talking on my cell or at home or ... wherever.

Then I turned on the phone screening feature, so people who I don't know will have to somehow identify themselves (either by caller ID or, if their caller ID is off, by saying who they are).  This way, I don't have to answer those annoying non-profit telemarketers if I don't want to, and I never get an automated call.

I also told it about a few common contacts: Heather, my parents, my sister, Heather's family, etc.  I grouped these contacts into different groups, like "Family", "Work", and "Friends".  I then set up different routing rules for the different groups, and turned off phone screening for these folks.  This way, when my sister calls, _all_ my phones ring, and when my boss calls, just my work phones ring.

A few months ago, I started using Google Voice to call friends in Bulgaria, at a rate comparable to Skype - the difference is that I can use any of my phones to make the call.  First, I call from one of my phones to my Google Voice number and then the system identifies me and lets me dial out.  So I can actually make _all_ my calls through Google Voice, which would be a really cool feature if I had one of those call plans that lets me select five phone numbers for which minutes don't count against.

Now here are the two parts that I think are really, really cool...
Last week I figured out how to change the forwarding rules on my cell phone so that if I don't answer my phone for any reason, the call is forwarded on to a different number.  Normally, the call is forwarded on to my cell phone provider's voicemail number, but now all of my missed calls are routed through to my Google Voice account.  This way, if my sister is calling my cell phone and I accidentally let my battery discharge so it's off-line, the call is automatically forwarded to Google Voice and can be picked up by any of my other phones.  I also caught a screened call from my doctor's office this morning in precisely the same way.

The other thing is that I was traveling on Saturday and my phone had discharged, so I put it on the charger in the car.  Once we got to Woodside, it had charged enough to turn it on, which I did while we stopped for some supplies.  There was an open wireless connection there, so I connected and checked my e-mail.  Turns out, a friend had called to get a status update on my travel plans, but my cell phone was off at the time so he was directed to Google Voice.  I didn't answer any of my other phones, so the call was sent to voicemail, and a message was left.  Once the message was left, Google Voice used our own text-to-speech technology to transcode the message into an e-mail, which I read while in Woodside.  It also sent me an mp3 with the message, which, just for grins, I compared to the transcoding, and it was spot on.

Anyway, pretty cool stuff!  I now feel a little better connected even when I've yet again forgotten to charge my cell phone...

It's been a while since I've had a substantive update, I guess.  There are some major changes...

I've been vegetarian for nine days, now.  If anyone asks me why, I'll just point them to the correlation of the timing between my becoming a vegetarin and the declaration by the World Health Organization of a Swine Flu Pandemic, so they can conclude that I gave up all meat because I think that eating pork can cause the passage of H1N1.  Of course that's nonsense, but it'll make 'em think (about how dumb I must be).  The real reason is that I had already given up pork and beef last September and I found that in doing so I had simply replaced my intake of those meats with chicken, turkey, and fish, each of which is better, but none were particularly good for helping me actually control my weight.  There was a bit of a kicker that happened at work, nine days ago.  A co-worker and I were discussing fish and recent discoveries of the damage that tiny bits of plastic have done to our seas.  To top it off, another co-worker and I were discussing a third co-worker, and I relayed that that co-worker had had a cholesterol scare and shed over 100 pounds, and is now an avid runner and health enthusiast.  He was surprised, and said, "you know wh used to be huge?" and he mentioned another co-worker with whom I'm friends.  He's thin as a freakin' rail and I had no idea he was once over 300 pounds!  One of the keys to his success turns out to have been becoming vegetarian.

So... while I'll call myself a vegetarian, I have to say that I'm not really much of one.  I take no issue in, say, ordering a chicken chow mein for everyone's enjoyment and then picking out all the chicken in my serving.  Meat contact with my food is no big deal.  Also, I figure that there are going to be special occasions, mentally I've budgeted about one per month, which will warrant my enjoying meat.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, etc.  Finally, I still love cooking, and I'm still amazing at cooking meat, so for friends and family, I will continue to share my talents with them, even if I won't partake of it myself.

So there's that.  I don't generally eat meat, and I'm doing just fine.  In fact, in the nine days that I haven't, I've lost quite a bit of weight, however it isn't fair to attribute this to my diet.  Turns out that I caught the cold that spread through my family last week.  It hit me hard.  I was too sick to work on Thursday and thought I was okay enough to work on Friday but I wasn't, so I took the rest of the day off.  Saturday, it settled down into my chest and made it so that I couldn't get a full breath, kind of like when you're up in the mountains.  That seems to have gone, today; I have much more energy than I did on Saturday.  I'll be returning to work, tomorrow, but I'm still not at 100%.  I'm not even sure I'm at 75%.  I just think that I'm capable of doing my job and I'm not contagious any longer, so I'll go.  And if I was wrong, there are doctors at work...

During the first three of the last four days of sick, I hardly ate.  I had my multivitamin and apple juice.  An occasional hunk of bread filled my tummy nicely.  Other than that... not much.  This is why I lost weight.  It happens.

So tonight, the family gets home and for some reason, Gator is hissing at both Rozz and me.  She was actually herding Rozz, keeping him stuck in the bedroom.  I came out to help him get a cut of water, and sat down somewhat near to Gator to talk to her.  I was making nice and she came over to me and I pet her a bit.  A moment later, she hopped up on the chair next to me and came around to where I was leaning and rubbed up against me and I pet her some more, and she seemed happy.  I then turned and started talking with Heather, a few feet away.  I didn't move.  After maybe fifteen second, Gator clawed me with no warning and no provocation.  She drew blood, and would have drawn a lot more if Heather hadn't trimmed all her nails earlier today.  Thirty seconds later, she became an outdoor kitty.  Sadly, the moment she was outside, she bolted and we can't find her to show her where we're putting her food and water.  So be it.  Poor girl.  I'm sad about it, but everyones' safety was my main concern.  There is more to this story, including some backstory, but I'm not up for the telling right now.

Okay.  Now... sleep.

So we go from Tiananmen Square Day to D-Day.  Maybe the first week of June should be referred to as "Heroes Week"?

I recently read that the NRA is pushing through a supreme court case that will force a decision on whether a state or municipality has the right to trump 2nd amendment rights.

Here are my rhetorical thoughts:
What would happen if a state or municipality were allowed to pass laws abridging any other rights granted by a constitutional amendment? What if Texas outlawed the discussion of abortions? What if cruel and unusual punishments were permissible in New York City? What if police offers didn't require a warrant to search your person or property in Washington?

Reference here: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/new-2d-amendment-case-on-the-way/

You'll need:

• mahi mahi steaks - 12 oz. will make about 8 sliders
• one bag of kettle-cooked Hawaiian style potato chips - onion-flavored if you desire
• 4 oz. macadamia nuts, ground
• 1 can crushed pineapple
• teriyaki sauce
• Hawaiian dinner rolls - you know, the really sweet ones that everyone loves!
• Monterey jack cheese, sliced

Marinate the mahi mahi in the teriyaki sauce for several hours.
Crush about 4 oz. of potato chips into a bowl.  Mix in the 4 oz. of ground macadamia nuts and 4 oz. of crushed pineapple.  Mix together with a spoon - the concoction will be a bit pasty.
Place the mahi mahi on a baking plate.  Coat the top and bottom of the mahi mahi with a layer of the chip/nut/pineapple concoction.  Bake at 450 for 10 minutes.  When done, remove the fish and cut to slider-size.
Slice the dinner rolls in half so they're like mini buns.  Fold a slice of monterey jack in half and then in half again, so you have four pieces.  Place one piece on the bottom of the bun and one on the top.  Place the fish on the cheese and close the bun (so it's bun, cheese, fish, cheese, bun).
Devour.

So I've lived through the days of the Internet bubble and the housing bubble.  I remember what it felt like to be talking about the Internet before the turn of the 21st century.  I remember that talking about real estate circa 2002 felt much the same.

I'm getting that vibe off of the word "green" these days.  I know the idea of a "green bubble" isn't original...

Today was the right day to begin refinancing our house.

Here are the details:
We bought the house for $385,000 and have invested about $50,000 into upgrades (forced air heating, air conditioning, tankless hot water heater, granite/maple kitchen, relocated doorways to improve flow, increased storage space, marble shower, bamboo floors, walk-in pantry, recessed refrigerator, bar).
Zillow has the house being worth $310,000 in a range between $275,000 and $375,000 or so.
We mortgaged $345,000 over 30 years at 5.875%.
We are six years into our mortgage and currently owe $290,000 with monthly payments of $2,077.44, but we pay $1,100 every two weeks instead, meaning that we pay down our principal by an additional $122.56 a month and an additional $2,200 a year.
The new mortgage will be for 15 years at 4.575% with $4,000 in closing costs, of which $1,500 are tax-deductible points.  Our new payments will be $2,198 a month so if we maintain paying $1,100 every two weeks we'll overpay by an additional $2 a month (woo!) and still an additional $2,200 a year.

We'll own this house just about in time for Rozz to head to college, meaning that at that time we'll be able to stop paying mortgage and start paying tuition.

Hey!  I've got a great idea!  There's a seat opening up on the Supreme Court!  Instead of finding the best person for the job, how about we find the best woman for the job!

Dumb-asses.

If the best person for the job happens to be a woman, that's fantastic.  If the best person for the job doesn't even get considered because he's got a cock, that's disturbing.  Why on earth would the media push for Obama to nominate a woman?!

I received funds from Heather's family for my birthday for the express purpose of Rockband song downloads.

Tonight they are visiting, so we worked together to fulfill that gift. Here's what we got:

• The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
• Pearl Jam - Jeremy
• R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
• Roy Orbison - You Got It
• Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
• No Doubt - The Singles (1992 - 2003), which includes:
  • Just a Girl
  • It's My Life
  • Hey Baby
  • Bathwater
  • Sunday Morning
  • Hella Good
  • Underneath It All
  • Excuse Me Mr.
  • Running
  • Spiderwebs
  • Simple Kind of Life
  • Don't Speak
  • Ex-Girlfriend

If we get around to purchasing more, we'll get:
Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug
The Pretenders - Brass In Pocket
Nirvana - Polly
Nirvana - Something in the Way
The Shins - New Slang
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Under the Bridge
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Kiss Them for Me
Pat Benetar - Heartbreaker
David Bowie - Heroes
Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain
The Police - Roxanne
The Police - Synchronicity II
The Police - Can't Stand Losing You

So who wants to come over and rock out?!

Heather dragged me to a quilt show, today. There were a few lovely quilts, however the highlight was the sudoku quilt. Sudoku with colors instead of numbers is kind of challenging.

Anyway, Heather and I collaborated (because she's generally better at Sudoku than I am) and I managed to pull it through for a quick finish. We were the first to finish the quilt at the show and therefore we have to return tomorrow to pick it up, as it's ours, now.

It was fun.

This is unimportant to anyone else, I'm pretty sure.

I was thanked for an in-kind gift. http://www.iasusa.org/pub/topics/2006/issue5/dec_jan2007.pdf

As promised, I filed a motion to dismiss the case, today, which was accepted.

Rozz plays pretend quite often. It's a game he started by himself, but now, every time I take him to the library (every other week), we spend time in the amphitheatre, each of us calling out for what the other should pretend to be while on stage.

Today, Rozz pretended to be a plumber, and was using a tinker toy apparently as a snake to unclog a toilet. Rozz exclaimed loudly, "I'm drilling the poop-hole!!!"

I was asked in a comment about what I meant in my recent entry, regarding thinking like a lower-middle class person versus thinking like an upper-middle-class person.

In answering, it dawned on me that I really want to discuss this subject with everyone. I want other opinions, and I hope you'll share yours.


In my mind, there are three primary economic classes, the lower class, the middle class, and the upper class. It is very important that I state right now that an economic class does _not_ indicate what kind of person someone in that class is. It is not a judgment about the person, it is a statement about that person's wealth.

Defining the primary classes:
Lower-class people struggle to afford basic needs in life. Food. Rent. Transportation to/from work. They tend to live paycheck to paycheck and have difficulty acquiring all of their needs, often having to go without a portion of one in exchange for a portion of another.

Middle-class people have their basic needs covered and have to shuffle around their wealth in order to pay for their wants, usually via savings and small investments. A car. Private and/or advanced education. Internet. Summer vacations.

Upper-class people have their basic needs and wants covered and shuffle around their wealth in order to maintain and expand their wealth. Estates. Business ventures. Hedge funds.


Each class has a secondary differentiator, also lower-, middle-, and upper-, however the secondary differentiation is most commonly applied to the middle-class (because everyone knows the lower-class has it rough any which way you slice it and the upper-class is just wealthy). Here's my differentiation:

Lower-middle-class people have very little savings, no investments, and only infrequently acquire enough wealth to spend on their wants. Often, a lower-middle class person is a hard worker with no college degree who struggles at a manual job in order to pay for their childrens' college degrees.

Middle-middle-class people, or middle-class people, have some savings and some investments, are usually college educated, and struggle in order to provide the same for their children.

Upper-middle-class people have savings and investments and can usually pay for their wants without too much re-shuffling of accounts. Buying a mid-range car (like a Camry or an Accord) isn't that big of a deal with a modest down-payment and not-terribly-difficult-to-arrange financing.


I reserve the right to re-define these as you convince me to. :)

So, what do you think?

So I was at lunch with some co-workers the other day, and we were discussing my move to my new role. I commented, as I'm wont to do, that _finally_ I'll have an opportunity to put my MBA to use, nine years after receiving it. I'd been disappointed at how useless it had been to date.

He pointed out politely that that piece of paper may have caused me to receive a higher salary than I would have otherwise, even in a role in which an MBA wasn't particularly useful. In thinking further, I may have gotten jobs because I had that piece of paper, even if it wasn't particularly useful for that specific job.

So, in a sentence, my co-worker pointed out a perspective that I hadn't considered, and now considering it, he's probably right.

I'm really glad people cause me to consider other perspectives, periodically. Thank you, Brian.

All of the preparation I've done for my court trial was for naught.

My first trial date was a week ago Tuesday. St. Patrick's Day. Officer Minor was in SWAT training that day and couldn't attend, so he requested a continuance. I, however, showed up, because I wasn't made aware of this beforehand.

The judge offered me to reschedule my trial date and told me that he wouldn't permit the police department another continuance. He also told me that if for any reason I was unable to attend the trial, I could call in and request a continuance as well. We rescheduled for this Friday, the 27th.

I received mail, today, from Officer Minor, telling me that he's requesting another continuance, and that I can either not show up for my trial in which case the court will automatically reschedule, or I can show up and contest the continuance with the judge.

In other words, I'm off the hook. I've got to show up on Friday and I'll be done. No $175 fine.

I was looking forward to seeing if my argument had legs. Heck, I've spent some time researching and preparing an opening argument and cross examination questions. But I'll take a dismissal instead. Here's me, victorious.