Jan 2003
Thu, 30 Jan 2003
Health Care Sucks
Dave Winer's been talking about the importance of the US healthcare system for a while and I tend to agree. I've had insulin dependent diabetes for most of my life so I have considerable experience with the healthcare system.
Tonight, my wife and I stopped by the local pharmacy to get our prescriptions refilled. We were very clear with the girl at the counter, and she wrote down our instructions, which were correct - I watched her write them down. We came back, paid our money, 2x$20 copays and headed home. I virtually always check the bag at the store but for some reason I didn't do that. That was a mistake.
The girl had informed me that my insulin, which is one of the most used brands and types on the market, was out. Now, the typical experience is, "oh, we're short a bottle" (I get 3/month). But this was literally, "we don't have any of your insulin. We'll get it tomorrow after 4." Fortunately, I don't wait till the last minute to get this stuff or I'd be headed for the emergency room, where it's always in stock.
If that was the end of our troubles it would be merely amusing. It wasn't.
My wife's medication should have been 30mg, the bottle she was given contained 40mg. On top of that, my other script wasn't filled at all and no excuse was given at the store.
Needless to say, I'll have a few choice words for the manager of this place in the morning. Hell, 16 year old crack addicts run McDonald's more smoothly. It really pisses me off when something as absolutely life-and-death critical as pharmaceuticals receives less care and attention than the feeding of my dog. I have a right to be pissed off. If I don't get insulin, I become ketoacidotic and die relatively quickly.
I have less-than-zero sympathy for these places when they get the shit sued out of them by a skilled attorney. In many cases, they've brought such wrath on themselves. It's not the healthcare victim's (or consumer's) fault that these morons can't do their jobs correctly.
This is the state of the healthcare system in the US. We pay more than ever and yet the service sucks in every conceivable way from my experience at the pharmacy to trying to make an appointment at the endocrinologist. And it's not getting better, it's getting worse. Do I think George W can fix this mess? When elephants roost in trees.
I pay in excess of $300 per month for the piss-poor HMO that my employer thinks I should be thrilled about. They just dropped the other major local choice from the menu prior to christmas, citing rising costs. That one could cost as much as $500 to over $1000 / month for family coverage. These are the costs to the employee after the employer paid it's share.
And what's the fundamental problem? Endless demand - as long as our need for healthcare is unbounded, the costs will continue to skyrocket. Sure, there are a bunch of odd complexities visited on this situation by government and the health care industry but does that change the fundamentals? I don't think so.
I am fortunate to be able to afford such ridiculous rates, many are less fortunate. Where this is all headed is unclear to me, but it's not something that inspires a warm fuzzy.
Posted at: 00:50 | permalink
Wed, 29 Jan 2003
Please Wear Your Seatbelt
Or you'll be hanging on by a very thin thread.
Posted at: 07:47 | permalink
Tue, 28 Jan 2003
Miguel De Icaza's In The Spotlight
MSNBC reports on the progress made by Miguel de Icaza's Ximian team working on Mono, the open source implementation of microsoft.net. Could Ximian finally be headed for the mainstream? It's an interesting question. I'm not sure how much progress will be made until a massive educational effort is made with regard to helping the movers and shakers comprehend what it means to use, if not embrace and extend, GPL'ed software. I hear conversations on a daily basis in which decision makers make ill-informed and costly strategic blunders based on misinformation about the technology licensing implications. That's unfortunate, but it's going to remain a limiting factor for free software (particularly going beyond the installed hacker base) until an effective campaign is developed.
Posted at: 22:36 | permalink
Cocoon Portal For Imbeciles
If you're new to Cocoon, you'll find a comprehensive description here. I've been using Cocoon off and on since 1999 and have all of the appropriate battle scars from trying to get it running back in it's early days. Suffice it to say that the install and config for cocoon have come along way since the 1.x release. I've been researching portal technology for a project at work and came across Matthew Langham and Carsten Ziegler's article about the Cocoon Portal technology.
I decided to dive in and give it a try and I'm happy to report that using Java, Jetty, Cocoon, and the Cocoon Portal technology, I was able to get it running in about an hour. If you'd like to give it a try, follow the instructions below. I did this experiment on Redhat Linux 8. If you're on another platform YMMV. Of course, this assumes that you're an imbecile that knows how to do sysadmin on your target platform and has some level of comfort with Java. ;->
- Download and install the latest JDK for your platform
- Download and install the latest version of Jetty
Installation shoul consist of expanding the zip and setting JETTY_HOME and JAVA_HOME appropriately. Test installation by issuing /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1_01/bin/java -jar start.jar and load http://localhost:8080/ in your browser. You should see something like this. - Put this file in JETTY_HOME/etc.
- Download the latest version of Cocoon
I chose cocoon-2.0.4-vm14-bin.tar.gz. Unzip into the default directory. Create a cocoon directory in JETTY_HOME/webapps and copy cocoon.war from the root of the cocoon distribution to the newly created cocoon directory. Issue the following command in the newly created cocoon directory: jar xvf cocoon.war This will expand the cocoon web archive so that jetty can parse it. The cocoon portal technology can be found in the root of the expanded cocoon.war under a directory titled sunspotdemo - Issue the following command to start cocoon: /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1_01/bin/java -jar start.jar etc/cocoon.xml Wait for a message resembling the following: 18:34:14.660 EVENT Started org.mortbay.jetty.Server@1d8957f Open http://localhost:8080/cocoon/ in your browser. You should see something like this.
- Access the portal by typing http://localhost:8080/cocoon/sunspotdemo-portal in your browser. You should see something like this.
Posted at: 18:06 | permalink
Curly Quotes And Apostrophes - Oh My!
Thanks to Jeff for informing me that my XML feeds were broken. It was the use of unescaped curly quotes and apostrophes in an attributed quote that killed the feed. Sorry for the inconvenience if you saw the same amphetadesk problem that Jeff did. I used to test my own stuff in amphetadesk; I guess I should go back to that plan.
Posted at: 08:35 | permalink
Random Updates
Or man, have I been asleep at the wheel lately.
Eric has an interesting article on the nature of coders.
Jeff has completely redesigned his site and the look and feel is fantastic.
And I can't resist this one, where does the other Jeff find these Czech women? Heh.
Posted at: 00:40 | permalink
Mon, 27 Jan 2003
Jaron Lanier On Phenotropic Computing
java.sun.com has an interesting conversation with Jaron Lanier concerning Jaron's current research interests, which involve finding better ways to solve complex programming problems.
Jaron's commentary on the loss of faith amongst the programming multitudes is interesting:
And at that point, there's a danger that you lose the faith that used to exist in prior generations: that computing could get better at a fundamental level. And since almost everybody in the whole profession goes through the academic world and out into the industrial world, everyone gets consumed in this way. So, I'm afraid we have lost our greater ambitions, and that deeply concerns me.
That thought really resonated with me since I've seen this occur over the dot com era to a certain extent. Attitudinally, it's like you're stuck in a coal mine in West Virginia for the rest of your life.
Finally, Sun asks Jaron whether he's got any advice for developers just starting out and he offers the following:
There's a lot I would say. If you're interested in user interfaces, there's a wonderful opportunity these days to push what a user interface can be. If a user interface gives a user some degree of power, try to figure out if you can give the user more power, while still keeping it inspiring and easy to use. Can you do it? For instance, could you design a search engine that would encourage people to do more complex searches than they can do on a service like Google today, but still do them easily? I haven't seen a really good visual interface, for instance, for setting up searches on Google. Could you do that? Could you suddenly make masses of people do much more specific and effective searches than they currently are doing just by making a better user interface?
Yep. That's the one that interests me. The rich UI interface to google. I had that goal when I wrote swingin google almost a year ago now and somehow it got lost in the painful experience of dealing with swing. I'm gonna take another stab at it with some other tools, but I need to make the tool decision first since what is possible is predicated on a tool choice. Isn't that ass-backwards? Isn't that part of the problem, that the UI that you produce is inexorably predictable from the toolset that you choose? Hmm...
Posted at: 18:29 | permalink
Sun, 26 Jan 2003
DCI Gets Pit Amplification in 2004
Drum Corps International has voted to allow amplification of the front ensemble or pit instruments in 2004. This has been a controversial point in DCI for years, and brings the activity more in line with the competitive marching band circuit. I, being an old man, would prefer to see DCI remain an acoustic activity. Of course, my wife and I stopped going to DCI shows a year or so ago when we just didn't get much out of it anymore. That's a funny predicament considering how long my wife marched drum corps. Anyhow, the comments of Cavalier's director Jeff Fiedler resonated with my own teaching in the activity over the past fifteeen years:
I think it goes against the basic nature of our activity. We don't need it in our pit. The members are taught how to play to project.
Hallelujah, brother. While I admit to being a huge fan of electronic music and I use a variety of amplification and electronics in my own work as a musician, I think there's considerable educational value to be gained from learning to be creative about making acoustic instruments speak in a variety of timbres and DCI is where that has always been a tradition. Sigh.
Posted at: 21:09 | permalink
Wed, 22 Jan 2003
Salon On Microsoft vs. Sun, C# vs. Java
Salon has a good read (I especially liked the DOJ links to the internal M$ email from the trial) on the history and evolution of the battle between Microsoft and Sun on Java and C#. It's well-written, particularly for those who may not have much experience with the technologies in question.
Posted at: 18:49 | permalink
Sat, 18 Jan 2003
Sanyo SCP-4900
After changing work locations I discovered that my cell service was getting pretty bad. After a bit of debugging, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't my cell service that sucked but my phone was getting progressively worse. Since I don't own a land line but instead use cell as my primary phone service, it's gotta work reliably.
I had used the Kyocera 6035 for a while and while it provided a plethora of features and did some things well, the things it did poorly it did very poorly. I would describe the user experience with this phone as just plain quirky.
That's kinda funny since I had seen Scott Weiss speaking on handheld usability this week at HCII. Scott's made quite a career out of condemning handheld devices. His talk was quite funny and informative. You'll find the slides from Scott's talk here.
Anyhow, I decided to replace the kyocera, and since I had good experiences with Sanyo's previous generation phone, after considerable research, I decided to go with the Sanyo SCP-4900. The primary concern in my decision making was how well the phone supported the fundamental phone functions, not all the bells and whistles that Sprint's pushing via it's 3G service. I'm pleased to report that reception (I live in a weak cellular coverage area with lots of hills and few towers) and the look and feel that I missed from the old Sanyo are fantastic and the color display really improves the readability of the screen in most lighting conditions, particularly for folks with bad eyes.
While I was primarily concerned with the phone's reception performance and usability, I have to admit that it browses this site better than my old phone.
That's about all I have time for right now, but watch this space for more on the sanyo 4900 in the future. I have to admit, I am enthusiastic about this report from Nate Carlson on using the wireless internet service with linux!
Posted at: 10:11 | permalink
Tue, 14 Jan 2003
The Radio Button vs. Checkbox Design Dilemma
While considering some UI design issues this morning, and in the midst of arguing with people about the design, I decided to document my beliefs about user interface design with regard to radio buttons and checkboxes. I use the word beliefs because 1) while garnered from years of experience, that's all they are, and 2) they contradict typical advice with regard to UI design. In short, it's an oft overlooked and undertreated area of design. A cursory google search yielded nothing particularly useful, so here's an exercise to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
An Exercise
You are given the following paper form and told to replicate the form in a web browser.
-------------------------------------------
Schedule A Attached Yes _____ No _____
Schedule B Attached Yes _____ No _____
Schedule C Attached Yes _____ No _____
Schedule D Attached Yes _____ No _____
-------------------------------------------
One school of thought is to replicate the form exactly with absolutely no changes whatsoever. I reject this approach for a number of reasons not the least of which is that it doesn't optimize the experience based on the advantages that the human computer interface offers. Instead, my approach is to try and find the optimal solution while balancing the competing design goals of correctness, clarity, usability, etc.
If we go through the typical analysis, we pause at the schedule attachments section and ponder whether it can be improved in the web design. The answer is yes, it can.
So we introduce a simple hierarchy based on the common word attachments. That is...
Attachments
Schedule A
Schedule B
Schedule C
Schedule D
This is where the problems begin.
Typical web design would just convert the yes/no choices into yes/no radio buttons but I reject that design for a number of reasons. One major reason is the resulting increase in clutter. This is a simple example but imagine a form that has 20 yes/no choices. 20 choices means 40 GUI widgets with a radio button design. That's a lot of visual clutter.
A better approach is to realize that within this hierarchy of attachments, each schedule is not mutually exclusive. If it were, you'd have one radio button per schedule. Instead what you have is a single checkbox per schedule, indicating that 0-4 schedule attachments may be chosen.
If more designers would think about the radio button vs. checkbox dilemma in such detail, the result would be more usable web forms. And that would be a good thing.
Posted at: 10:22 | permalink
Thu, 09 Jan 2003
Affluent Teens Document Drinking Binges On The Web
In an attempt to prove that human nature doesn't separate kids in the most affluent neighborhoods from those in the poorest, Mt. Lebanon teenagers have taken to photographing their inebriation and publishing the whole affair on the web. I'm still laughing as I think of all the social climbers who live in Mt. Lebanon shuddering in their slippers as they realize that even a town with 35 police cars per square mile can't stop such gaffes.
Posted at: 06:57 | permalink
Sat, 04 Jan 2003
I'm Getting Too Old For This
I started running with the dog informally this week. I say informally because it's the dog who wills me to run, not the other way around. This is also a special form of running that involves deep snow and hiking boots and so it's quite painful for someone this out-of-shape. Of course, the dog makes it look effortless. She looks at me like, "why are you panting so hard? what's wrong with you?" The biggest trauma from the whole thing seems to be this dull ache in my achilles tendon. Not sure what to make of that though it's somewhat unique - not something I've experienced previously.
Posted at: 16:14 | permalink
Thu, 02 Jan 2003
New Year, New Leaf
Well, I noticed it was January 2 and figured I'd better start saying something or people will figure that I had expired. I've been mostly trying to mold the new pup into something resembling a dog and so I haven't taken quite as much time to write as I would have previously.
I'm just going to make a quick entry now before I run off to work. The holidays have been complete turmoil on the work front but thus far I've emerged unscathed. Basically, I've been working in B2B e-commerce since the summer of 2000 and my work there is coming to an end.
As of today, I report to the CIO and will be working on a consulting basis within the company on a variety of projects, some of which are imminent and others which are much fuzzier. My perception is that this is one of those define your own role things. I think I'll give it my best shot and see where it leads.
I'll no longer be working in the city anymore so my commute gets shorter and contains less traffic. That's a welcome change. The new location is in a rural industrial park so it may be the year that I finally break down and buy one of these. That'd certainly cut my fuel bill in half.
I'll try to post on a more regular basis this year, assuming I don't get buried in the corporate monolith. :)
Posted at: 07:27 | permalink
