Cant Keep Quiet!

I am so sick and tired of people taking what Barbara Boxer said to Condoleezza Rice last week and twisting it to be an insult to single, childless women in general and Rice in particular. It was nothing of the sort.

Boxer said this

I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families.” — emphasis mine.

Immediate family does not mean only your spouse and children. Immediate family means your siblings and your parents, possibly your siblings’ families. It does not mean strictly your spouse and children.

Personally, I feel that a very valid question to ask everyone in the Bush administration is what price is their personal family potentially going to pay for the Iraq war.
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Orlando’s slogan used to be Orlando: The City Beautiful. Nice but bland.

The new slogan? Well, it’s dull and ignores an entire segment of tourists that come to this city.

I’ll be the first to admit that the slogan means nothing. It’s a gimmick by the hospitality industry to attract tourists. Nothing more, nothing less. This new slogan, though, is definitely nothing more than a gimmick. It is, however, less then appealing.

So just what is the new slogan? Built for families. Made for memories.

Sorry, but that sounds too much like a saying we used to have about a Florida town where I once worked. I won’t name the town (it’s on one of the coasts) but the saying was The the newly wed and the nearly dead.

The new slogan Built for families. Made for memories. is really for the Greater Orlando area. The Greater Orlando area consists of a population of nearly 2 million people because you’re including those people who live in the suburbs and in the area surrounding Orlando proper. Orlando proper has a population of just over 200,000.

The new slogan was definitely designed by the theme parks. It totally ignores the fact that Orlando is ranked in the top 10 for convention sites. It also ignores the very diverse population that lives here.

It’s also very, very boring.

Now, if they wanted to make something more reflective of the actual area they should have gone with something like the following (some serious some not):

Orlando: The Biggest Small Town in the World

Orlando: Gunning for Murder Capital of the U.S.

Orlando: Much More Than Just Disney

Orlando: Made for Traffic Jams

Orlando: Made for Memories

Yes, I actually don’t have a problem with the second sentence of the new slogan. It’s perfectly fine for all types that the hospitality industry should be pursuing. Not just “families.” Plus it works for those who live here as well.

I sound awful. My voice fades in and out and cracks at will.

For 6 or 8 weeks I’ve been playing a game of keep away with chest congestion, sinus pain and congestion, a sore throat and a nasty cough. I haven’t been sick for 6 or 8 weeks. I’ve been sick off and on for 6 or 8 weeks.

Typically it’s been working this way: I’ll feel like hell for a week and a half to two weeks. After that I’ll be just fine for about 2 weeks. Then the cycle starts over with feeling like hell.

Right now I’m feeling iffy. I don’t really feel like hell but I don’t feel great.

My chest feels heavy and I’m coughing from time to time. Not all the time because the stuff I’m taking seems to be keeping it in some control. That is except at night when I want to go to sleep. No matter what I take I spend a couple of hours trying to cough up a lung before I finally fall asleep.

Currently my throat doesn’t hurt. But I am getting laryngitis.

I’m just waiting for my voice to fade away completely.

In the meantime I’m getting all sorts of advice on what I should do to “feel better.”

Personally, I’m tired of all the advice. I just want to stop sounding like a frog.

This message is for the technology gurus at the Orange County Public Schools building in Florida:

Fix the damn servers over the break!

I am sick and tired of watching the “Waiting for information” message flash at me while my computer tries to access my e-mail. It took me two days just to read one message this week!

It was bad enough when you had to watch that stupid thing flash on the bottom of the screen for a minute or two between reading every e-mail message. Now, though, it can take 20 or more minutes just to read one message. In the last two days e-mail has been down more than it has been up.

Not only can I not access my e-mail, I can’t access the districts information system, either.

I understand from my school’s tech guy that the school district is really on top of this problem. Not! It’s been going on all year, but that hasn’t made a dent in your plans to do nothing about it over the two week break that starts on Friday.

WTF!

Most schools will be closed from Friday evening until January 2nd. The demand on the servers will be down to practically nothing. It seems like the best time to spearhead an effort to solve the problem.

It makes sense. Must be why you all aren’t doing anything about it.

I’m a teacher but I don’t have a class. Instead, my job is to provide support for the teachers to help them determine if any of their students need extra services. I also work with parents to help them understand the services available for their children. Often that means that I spend a lot of time on the computer scheduling meetings between parents and teachers and verifying information.

Yes, I do have an aide that is supposed to be able to do that but she is incompetent. Besides, that is a whole other issue.

My point is that there are those of us at the schools that need to be able to have access to their mail/calender programs. If the mail/calender server is down or responding so slowly as to be ineffective, you basically have a lot of people who can’t get their work done.

If the district wants to pay me to play solitaire while I wait for my mail to open or for the information system to understand my command that’s fine with me. Just let me know so I can bring a book for the times when I get tired of solitaire.

Here’s the situation: your local public airport (or library, or courthouse, or city hall, or. . . you get the idea) has a display of lighted “Christmas trees.” Your local airport (or whatever) decides to call them “Holiday trees” and figure that will be enough to keep all cultures happy. It works for several years and then a local rabbi asks that the local airport (or whatever) put a menorah beside the trees. The rabbi doesn’t ask for the trees to be taken down. He only wants to menorah added to the display to make it more culturally diverse. He also asks for the menorah to be included in the display back in October.

Your local airport (or whatever) doesn’t respond to the rabbi. Maybe they think if they ignore him the rabbi will go away. Maybe they don’t think at all. Maybe they decide to “research” the issue. In any case, having received no response to his request, the rabbi threatens a lawsuit.

Remember, the request was simply to add a menorah to the display. Add something, not take something away.

Your local airport, to ensure cultural sensitivity, responds by taking down the display completely. And by making sure that the implication is that the rabbi forced them to take the trees down. Hoping to hide their inability to make a decision or admit to their actions, your local airport tries to have the trees taken down after midnight.

If you live in Seattle, this really is your local airport. Instead of making a decision anytime between October (when the request was first made) until December 9, 2006 about including a menorah in the display, the port authority decided to take their ball and go home.
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