Longer commute

This summer was one of the slowest times I've had in the 5.5 years that I've been self employed. While there have been ups and downs, I actually considered taking a job in an office. I went through the whole interview process and was offered a position, but ultimately realized that I couldn't give up the flexibility I have being self-employed and working from home. While it is possible to be employed by someone else and have flexibility, this job didn't afford it.

Seeing how hard things were on me and that working from home was getting tough for me with my son around a lot, my wife offered up our guest room for my office. This room is about 315 square feet and in the very back of the house. For the most part, we have been using it for storage over the last 4 years. I gladly took her up on the offer, had a little work done to remove some cabinets and a sink, had some tile put in where the cabinets were (to match the rest of the floor), painted it, ran some Cat6 to 2 walls for Ethernet, moved in my furniture and presto, a new office!

I've been in here about 1.5 weeks and really enjoy it. It's pretty quiet and easier for me to work. The main downside to it is that there is no insulation in the ceiling, so it is a bit toasty now and will be cold in the winter. However, I positioned my desk right under the fan and there is a room A/C unit that I can use. Another downside (and hence the title for this article) is that my commute is now a bit longer; I think it takes me about 45 seconds to get to work.

Pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Health insurance solution

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have ideas on how to handle universal health care. Both plans are pretty weak in my opinion. McCain's plan talks about giving each person a $2,500 tax credit to pay for insurance. That doesn't pay for squat and requires that individuals actually qualify for insurance. As someone with a pre-existing condition (ulcerative colitis), I'm not sure that I could quality for an individual plan which would put me up a creek or leave me stuck with the plan for those that can't afford insurance even after the tax credit. While I pay a significant amount for health insurance now, I get decent care.

Obama's plan may sound a little better, but where on this earth is the money going to come from to pay for it? The government has already taken on a significant amount of debt with this financial bailout.

So my solution is quite simple; now that the federal government is going to own a very large insurance company (AIG) that sells insurance, use that to provide universal health insurance for everyone. Since we've already bitten the bullet to waste taxpayer money bailing out private companies, why not use that to their advantage?

That wasn't so hard, was it? Maybe I should run for political office. Nah, no party would support me as my views are all over the board and I manage to offend everyone. I guess that's what happens when I'm a free thinker and actually think about issues on an issue by issue basis instead of doing what my "party" tells me to do.

Final word on phone GPS

After one success with the Sanyo Pro-200, I began to feel confident that a phone based GPS would work. However, the following day, we used it again and I didn't quite follow its directions, so it had to recalculate the route. Unfortunately it was far too slow at recalculating the route to be useful. It had to upload the GPS information to the server, recalculate the route and then send it back to the phone. By the time the phone got the information, I was in a different place and it had to recalculate again. Stopping the car and letting it figure out where we were got things going again.

I'm used to the GPS unit in my wife's Honda CR-V and it's extremely fast at recalculating its route. I've also used Garmin and TomTom units and been pleased. Before my next trip that I have to rent a car, I'm definitely buying a Garmin nüvi (the new ones look pretty cool) to save me a lot of frustration.

Smartphone GPS Followup

After our disaster with a smartphone based GPS yesterday, I was given another phone to try, this time not a smartphone, but a Sanyo Pro-200. We used the Sprint Navigation service and we were quite pleased with it. It gave us directions and spoke the turns. I took another look at the Treo 800w and found the issue; I was using Google Maps's navigation instead of the Sprint Navigation (which was available on the 800w). However, Sprint Navigation has a monthly fee and still won't work when you don't have data coverage. So while my initial review was a bit harsh, I still think I want to get a Garmin nüvi as it doesn't require a data connection, has a larger screen, and just works.