We took Lil' S to a Halloween event at the National Zoo last night -- Boo At the Zoo. It was really fun. You get a bag when you go in, and then there are a bunch of sponsored booths, with people giving out various goodies. We went with two other couples who each have a kid between two and three, so Lil' S was the young 'un of the bunch. He's right on the borderline for events like this. He had fun, even though he doesn't really get the whole trick-or-treat concept yet. I ate almost all his candy. And by the way, my taste in candy could not be any different than it was as a kid. I used to love Skittles and Mike & Ike and Starbust as a kid, and now I think it's pretty gross. Might as well just eat spoonfuls of granulated sugar. That's what it taste like to me. In general, I don't really get candy as an adult. If I'm going to eat something sweet and ingest those empty calories, I want it to be something good -- ice cream or pie (or ice cream and pie) -- that's what I want, not gelatinous corn syrup pellets. I don't care what Marshawn Lynch has to say about the matter.
But if I am going to eat Halloween candy, I want the mini Snickers bars. At the Mars booth I used my, S's, and Lil' S's bags to get three of them. Or so I thought. They were actually Milky Ways, which I might enjoy, if not for the existence of Snickers. Every time I eat a Milky Way, I just think to myself, "Where's the peanut?!" I still ate 2.9 of them, though. (I may not understand candy as an adult, but I definitely understand lack of willpower.) I gave Lil' S a small piece of one, which he seemed to enjoy.
He was dressed as Kermit the Frog, and he was just adorable. The kids of the other couples were dressed as Curious George and a dog. I took a really great picture of the three of them (well, it's great by kids standards -- one smile, one deadpan, and one not looking at the camera -- Lil' S is the smile, which is why I say it's great), which I will hopefully post to Facebook soon. I forgot to ask the other parents if they're OK with having their kids' pics posted online. Most people don't mind, but just in case. I think it's good to ask even with adults. The other day, a friend of mine took a picture of me at a bar making a stupid face, and then posted it on Facebook without telling me with some sort of caption implying that I was drinking heavily (which I wasn't, I was drinking moderately). I don't care enough to actually say anything to her about it, but I did think it was slightly inconsiderate. It's not like she put up a picture of us together hanging out. It's just me being goofy. What's the Facebook etiquette here? I'm not really sure.
In other news, I watched a really interesting 30 for 30 documentary last night called Big Shot. It's about this guy named John Spano who bought the New York Islanders in the mid-'90s for $165 million, despite the fact he had maybe a couple hundred thou to his name. He conned everybody into thinking he was a billionaire and actually closed on a deal to buy the Islanders -- an NHL team was his for several months -- before shit hit the fan. I love conman stories (see this post). I realized that being a good con artist isn't about being a good liar; it's about picking the right things to lie about. If you find lies that people want to believe, they will believe them no matter how outlandish they are (ahem... Fox News). In the case of John Spano, everybody was desperate to find a new owner who would keep the team on Long Island. When Spano came along and said that he would do that, it didn't matter what he said next, people were going to believe it. Anyway, I don't want to spoil the film too much, in case you want to watch it, which you should.
In other, other news, the Obamacare website continues to a debacle. Supposedly the plan is in place to fix it by the end of November. We shall see. The powers-that-be fucked this one up royally. There's no two ways about it. They bit off more than they could chew, and you can't do that with complex computer programs. It sounds to me like it wasn't a time crunch that fucked them per se; it's more that the time crunch forced them to go about things in a way in which fucking things up royally was almost a guarantee.
I don't know anything about the code behind Obamacare specifically, but I do know about computer programming in general. And the way you build complex programs is to build a bunch of small individually tested component modules, which are themselves composed of smaller modules, which are made of even smaller modules, etc. It sounds like they didn't do a good job of this with Obamacare. They tried to do everything in one fell swoop, which has predictably been a nightmare.
In my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, they should have built three separate modules: 1) The browser module, where the user shops for plans. All the prices would be based off user input and insurance catalogs. This module wouldn't link to any outside sites, so everything would be estimates and would be contingent on the user providing accurate data. 2) The verifier module, in which all the info from Step 1 would be verified by linking to the various agencies and a final price and plan would be determined. 3) The provider module, in which the plan in Step 2 would be sent to the healthcare provider and the transaction would be completed. Initially, the modules would not be linked, so the user would have to bridge the gaps between the three steps himself or herself, nothing would be automatic. (Like they'd get an electronic output form in Step 1 and then be responsible for submitting it online for Step 2.) And the user might have to iterate back and forth a few times between steps to get it right. It might be annoying, but then once they're all working independently, you could link them automatically, for one-stop shopping. And if one module crashes you could isolate it quickly and put in temporary work-arounds just for that one module until you fix it. It might be a grueling, user-unfriendly process at first. But it'd get better, and look at the alternative.
As you can probably tell, I've spent too much time thinking and reading about this. I've been having daydreams where I'm the guy who somehow single-handedly fixes Obamacare. It's similar to the fantasy, where you're in attendance at the big football game, and the home team's last quarterback goes down with an injury, so the coach picks you out of the crowd to come in and lead the team to victory. Only replace "football game" with "computer program" and "coach" with "president". What? When you spend a large portion of your day debugging software, these are the types of things you dream about.
One last thing about Obamacare. Mike Konczal has a good article about how the problems with it are precisely those that were needed to make it less "liberal" and thus more politically viable. This is an excellent illustration of the broader plight of rational-thinking non-Republican these days. You end up defending a lot of not very good ideas, because "not very good" is a huge step up from "nothing" or "completely terrible", which are the only alternatives Republicans are offering right now. It all comes back to our two-party government monopoly. It always does.
Until next time ...
But if I am going to eat Halloween candy, I want the mini Snickers bars. At the Mars booth I used my, S's, and Lil' S's bags to get three of them. Or so I thought. They were actually Milky Ways, which I might enjoy, if not for the existence of Snickers. Every time I eat a Milky Way, I just think to myself, "Where's the peanut?!" I still ate 2.9 of them, though. (I may not understand candy as an adult, but I definitely understand lack of willpower.) I gave Lil' S a small piece of one, which he seemed to enjoy.
He was dressed as Kermit the Frog, and he was just adorable. The kids of the other couples were dressed as Curious George and a dog. I took a really great picture of the three of them (well, it's great by kids standards -- one smile, one deadpan, and one not looking at the camera -- Lil' S is the smile, which is why I say it's great), which I will hopefully post to Facebook soon. I forgot to ask the other parents if they're OK with having their kids' pics posted online. Most people don't mind, but just in case. I think it's good to ask even with adults. The other day, a friend of mine took a picture of me at a bar making a stupid face, and then posted it on Facebook without telling me with some sort of caption implying that I was drinking heavily (which I wasn't, I was drinking moderately). I don't care enough to actually say anything to her about it, but I did think it was slightly inconsiderate. It's not like she put up a picture of us together hanging out. It's just me being goofy. What's the Facebook etiquette here? I'm not really sure.
In other news, I watched a really interesting 30 for 30 documentary last night called Big Shot. It's about this guy named John Spano who bought the New York Islanders in the mid-'90s for $165 million, despite the fact he had maybe a couple hundred thou to his name. He conned everybody into thinking he was a billionaire and actually closed on a deal to buy the Islanders -- an NHL team was his for several months -- before shit hit the fan. I love conman stories (see this post). I realized that being a good con artist isn't about being a good liar; it's about picking the right things to lie about. If you find lies that people want to believe, they will believe them no matter how outlandish they are (ahem... Fox News). In the case of John Spano, everybody was desperate to find a new owner who would keep the team on Long Island. When Spano came along and said that he would do that, it didn't matter what he said next, people were going to believe it. Anyway, I don't want to spoil the film too much, in case you want to watch it, which you should.
[J. Spano]
In other, other news, the Obamacare website continues to a debacle. Supposedly the plan is in place to fix it by the end of November. We shall see. The powers-that-be fucked this one up royally. There's no two ways about it. They bit off more than they could chew, and you can't do that with complex computer programs. It sounds to me like it wasn't a time crunch that fucked them per se; it's more that the time crunch forced them to go about things in a way in which fucking things up royally was almost a guarantee.
I don't know anything about the code behind Obamacare specifically, but I do know about computer programming in general. And the way you build complex programs is to build a bunch of small individually tested component modules, which are themselves composed of smaller modules, which are made of even smaller modules, etc. It sounds like they didn't do a good job of this with Obamacare. They tried to do everything in one fell swoop, which has predictably been a nightmare.
In my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, they should have built three separate modules: 1) The browser module, where the user shops for plans. All the prices would be based off user input and insurance catalogs. This module wouldn't link to any outside sites, so everything would be estimates and would be contingent on the user providing accurate data. 2) The verifier module, in which all the info from Step 1 would be verified by linking to the various agencies and a final price and plan would be determined. 3) The provider module, in which the plan in Step 2 would be sent to the healthcare provider and the transaction would be completed. Initially, the modules would not be linked, so the user would have to bridge the gaps between the three steps himself or herself, nothing would be automatic. (Like they'd get an electronic output form in Step 1 and then be responsible for submitting it online for Step 2.) And the user might have to iterate back and forth a few times between steps to get it right. It might be annoying, but then once they're all working independently, you could link them automatically, for one-stop shopping. And if one module crashes you could isolate it quickly and put in temporary work-arounds just for that one module until you fix it. It might be a grueling, user-unfriendly process at first. But it'd get better, and look at the alternative.
As you can probably tell, I've spent too much time thinking and reading about this. I've been having daydreams where I'm the guy who somehow single-handedly fixes Obamacare. It's similar to the fantasy, where you're in attendance at the big football game, and the home team's last quarterback goes down with an injury, so the coach picks you out of the crowd to come in and lead the team to victory. Only replace "football game" with "computer program" and "coach" with "president". What? When you spend a large portion of your day debugging software, these are the types of things you dream about.
[One of the best Homer clips ever!]
One last thing about Obamacare. Mike Konczal has a good article about how the problems with it are precisely those that were needed to make it less "liberal" and thus more politically viable. This is an excellent illustration of the broader plight of rational-thinking non-Republican these days. You end up defending a lot of not very good ideas, because "not very good" is a huge step up from "nothing" or "completely terrible", which are the only alternatives Republicans are offering right now. It all comes back to our two-party government monopoly. It always does.
Until next time ...
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