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One of the most interesting statements I’ve heard today was from Bank of America to the effect that Wall Street businesses aren’t allowed to pay people based on performance then those businesses will lose the best people to turn the company around.

Two things immediately come to mind. First, if they were paid for performance they would be unemployed because these same executives ran their companies into bankruptcy. They have jobs today only because of government intervention. That intervention came in the form of tax dollars. Tax dollars that came from the same people that they are now screwing over daily with outrageous interest rate hikes, imposing a wide range of fees, and thumbing their noses at with outrageous pay packages while so many are out of work (many because of the irresponsible management of these companies.)

The other thought that came to mind was in response to the argument that the top people would leave. What these folks are really saying is that this “top talent” has no allegiance to the company, but operate solely for their own benefit (which is, again, how we got into this mess.) They are saying that these people have no integrity (a fact that most us suspected.) People of integrity, already having large incomes and investments that exceed what the majority of Americans will make during their working lives, recognizing their contribution to the failure of their businesses would take it as a personal challenge to turn it around, regardless of remuneration.

But, alas, they have no integrity. They have no sense of responsibility for their actions. They have no comprehension of what their selfish and irresponsible actions have done to others. They are only concerned with themselves. Clearly they’ve learned nothing.

In recent weeks I’ve been researching backup options for my home computers. At the top of the list, of course, is Windows Home Server. Other options I’ve tried include Amahi running on Fedora 10. Now, as I’ve written previously, I’m pretty OS agnostic. I work with all of them and really don’t have a preference. Well, I do have one preference: If I’m aiming to get something accomplished, rather than just futzing around with it, I’ll choose the product that helps me do that. After all, Isn’t that the purpose of computers: to make life easier?

The challenge — and frustration — is that every time I try to get reasonable information from an internet site, some idiot has to interject his personal opinion in a way that basically says anybody that doesn’t agree with him is wrong. Even when he’s posting on a site that has a very clear focus on a given topic.

Let me give you an example. Windows Home Server is a very good product. It does exactly what it says it’ll do and it does it with virtually no intervention on my part. Nor does it require any significant skills to get set up. In other words, it helps me to quickly and efficiently accomplish the task of ensuring that my network is properly backed up.

Now, yes, I can do that with Amahi, too. Except that it isn’t as easy to do. And, for the person who isn’t as technically adept, it doesn’t provide (yet) that easy setup and essentially hands off operation. I think it’ll get there, but it’s not there yet.

But, go to any WHS website and you’ll find somebody who has taken on himself the responsibility for evangelizing Linux. To me that’s about like going into a synagogue and preaching Christianity. It’s just plain disrespectful and betrays the ignorance of the evangelizer. There is a time and a place.

More importantly, and the real thrust of this post, is that some people like Fords, others like Chevy. Neither is wrong, just different. Why can’t people just accept we’re all a little different, with different tastes, interests and preferences and leave it at that? why do some people feel the need to abuse others who don’t believe as they do? Especially on something as trivial as OS choice?

Well, after four years, we’ve finally gotten a vacation. The Florida Gulf coast is a nice place to visit. The soft, white sand, gentle breezes and surprisingly not quite so much traffic as other places I’ve been. But then, maybe I’ve just not really gotten out at the right times of the day yet.

And, the friends with whom we’re staying have an awesome 24″ iMac. I’ve seen them, lusted after them, but never really played with one. But, this is being written on one. So far, I’m impressed. The keyboard is really nice and easy to work with — much more than the Windows counterparts I’ve owned through the years. Of course, it might be that I tend to be rather, shall we say “frugal” in my purchases. Still, I’ve worked on a lot of machines and this is one of the best keyboards I’ve used.

Lest you think me a Mac fanatic, I’m not. I work with virtually every kind of machine out there. And really don’t have a preference. I think my interest in Mac is its versatility. After all, I can use Windows on it if I like. Linux, too, for that matter.

Anyway … I’m gonna just kick back and enjoy the sun and sand and take a few days off from even thinking about work.

I often remind my fledgling nurses that there are two kinds of nurses: those that everyone wants to work with and those that nobody wants to work with. While I focus here on nurses, the same ideas could  be applied in virtually any work

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I really should have written this a few hours ago. About 9:30 or so, I’d say. I was in Wal-Mart when I saw the first images on the TVs in the electronics department. Few people were attending to the screens. Someone had turned the sound up, though, to see more of what was going on.

At home, a friend called and was convinced the world was coming to an end. And, in a way, it did. The idyllic world we’d known for so long here in the US was no more. We, who felt we were above such acts finally had to face what many other countries had already encountered. Terroristic acts  were happening in virtually every other country on the planet — Spain, Germany, Ireland, and of course the Middle East, but not here. And then 9/11 changed that.

An awful lot of people died needlessly that day. For them and their families, I mourn the losses. Our innocence died that day as well. I mourn that, too.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about how the terrorists thought they’d tear us apart but instead they brought us together and to some extent I think that’s true. But, sadly, I do think they won on one level — they’ve succeeded in increasing our unease. They succeeded in making us paranoid. They succeeded in bringing us to violate the rights of our people, and ignore the Constitutional mandates of freedom of speech, and of assemby, and of being secure in ourselves and our papers and our homes and the other amendments that the states felt were so vital to the acceptance of our constitution.

I would like to think that if those many people who died that day could somehow come today and provide their own perspective, they’d condemn the actions we’ve taken in the name of Homeland security as being an affront to the freedoms for which they had to die.