They should trash the entire bill as it is and start over. It should have 3 pages.

Page 1. Allow health insurance to be sold across state lines, and for the companies to pay taxes based on where they have insurees, not where their businesses are located.  Apparently there is concern that opening state lines will force companies to move to states with lower tax rates…

Page 2. Commit public money to health and physical fitness in schools again. Instill a healthy lifestyle at a young age to short circuit obesity, smoking, sedentary lifestyles, etc.  I’m not talking about throwing dodge balls or inflating parachutes as a group activity (I did this in public grade school for gym class).  I’m talking about getting kids on bikes, skates, skateboards, pogo sticks, doing orienteering, camping, running, etc.  Anything that gets them moving and participating.   Gym class needs to be totally revamped, given more time in the school year, and made an integral part of child development.

Page 3. Tax credit for not using health insurance each year except for wellness checkups. We should incentivize healthy choices and reward those who make the effort to stay healthy and not drag on the system.

The only downside is that this doesn’t provide any entitlements or cash cows for politicians or the health industry. Therefore, these things won’t ever be discussed as reforms. That is why I want this process to fail. It is overly complicated and has little to do with the health of our citizens.  It is one thing to say you want health care reform, which we all agree needs to be done, but there is no rationale for throwing in with a convoluted, opaque, mysterious bill like we are seeing in Congress today and accepting it simply because the cover of the 1000 page tome says “The Fix for Healthcare.”  There are 999 more pages of political insanity behind it.  Insanity that is even beyond the understanding of those who write it!

The correct answer to the question in the video should have been “you know, you have a point, we should all be able to openly and freely read each bill that is signed into law, giving you the American public time to see what it is we in Congress are doing on your behalf.”  Instead, like this clown says, the bills aren’t even read.  What is worse, the Democrats have fought to stop us from even having a chance to read the final bill before it is signed…saying it would take too much time to write so a lay person can read it.  Clearly, they are hoping to pass this before we can digest what is in it.

Do you want this bill to be passed as is, simply based on your trust of these politicians?  I sure as hell don’t (and to be clear this goes for both parties).

She had several hobbies, one of which was gardening.  As she got on in age she was less and less able to maintain the huge gardens she once did – but she always dabbled.  I think this year we are going to start a garden in our backyard to celebrate her life, and to help us keep her memory as vibrant as this picture.  I’ll post photos once I get it started…

The motherboard does have onboard video, but the documentation was a bit vague about whether I could run the onboard video in addition to the add-on video card.  This is one area that was pretty sparse with online help too.  It turns out that this motherboard has something called ATI Hybrid CrossfireX, which simply put allows both onboard video and add-on video to work at the same time as a team.  Thus, it was possible to have 3 monitors running at once.

The solution isn’t as nice as having 2 identical high-powered PCI Express cards in true crossfire mode, but it is perfect if you just want to put a spare monitor to work for simple tasks.  Since it isn’t very well documented in the manual I took this opportunity to put it out on the net.

So what do I use 3 monitors for?

Primary (center 22″ widescreen) monitor : Graphics and HTML editing, email management, movies

Right Flank (17″) : web browsing

Left Flank (17″) : IM windows, status indicators, Winamp, low-fi movies while doing other work on the big screen

Talking point:

Does this hybrid mode in any way tie the onboard video with the performance of the primary card?  I’d say no, because Crysis plays just fine with high video settings before and after I went to 3 monitors.  I can’t be certain there isn’t a downside somewhere though.

Then, as if on cue, another little girl comes in off a side street riding a motorized razor scooter. For a minute we were all on the same street heading up this hill – and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was a kid today if I would also opt for the easy route of those fun rides or if I would have suffered up the hill riding a bike. “When I was a kid” we didn’t have anything but our muscles to get around town…

Looking at my watch I noted that I am officially “old” in the cosmic sense of the word. Our triad broke up, each to our destinations.