Matthew Botos

1. Corporate America doesn’t care how smart you are. A wise man once told me your first degree might get you in the door, but after that it’s all about what you do in the workplace. And the best thing you can do is network with the right people, maintain upward momentum, and if at all possible, avoid doing any real work. Unfortunately, there’s little glory or reward for the technical experts who really make things work and bring in the dollars that the CEOs brag about on their new yachts.

2. You should’ve found your soul mate already. The dating scene changes dramatically after college; no longer are you surrounded by people your age and intelligence. People are tougher to find, much less idealistic, and many are already married or in long term relationships.

3. You never stop learning. The technical world moves so fast that almost anything practical you learned is outdated before the ink is dry on your diploma. Many work in fields only loosely-coupled to their studies, and being successful often means learning a good bit about related disciplines. One caveat is to avoid letting yourself become spread too thin; another piece of good advice I’ve heard is to be knowledgeable about all areas and an expert in one.

With all the yahoos making a run at the Whitehouse in 2008, we really need a few more real representatives to take a shot. Take congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, who made Fark today because of the following:

• He’s got a blog
• He’s trying to live on food stamps
• The TSA took away his peanut butter and jelly and he didn’t stick around to argue since he had to make cattle-call boarding on a discount airline

Now that’s a man of the people!

So it seems the same White House that wants to read your email without just cause or due process doesn’t want anyone reading their own. Smells like… justice. Perhaps the Republicans and Democrats should start soliciting for cryptography software instead of cash?

Actually, it’s surprising these people expose themselves to email at all. Years ago, I read about a ceremonial email sent by Bush, and it was noted that neither he or Clinton used email personally. It wasn’t for any technical or time reasons, but rather because their lawyers had advised them that it would be subject to subpoena and thus a liability.

I got my annual social security summary today, which is a bit of a cruel joke. It essentially says, “here’s all the money we’ve taken from you, which you’ll never see again because the system will either be collapse or have benefits drastically reduced. before you retire” I’d much rather have that money going into some tax-advantaged account that I can manage and know exactly what I have for retirement. Trusting three decades of Congress with that money just doesn’t seem like a wise investment.

I’m watching the State of the Union with a healthy Tivo delay, but without playing the drinking game, so I might as well make some commentary. I expect a lot of it to be posturing that won’t necessarily be followed through, as many news organizations have shown in checking up on the promises from the 2006 State of the Union Address. But on with the show…

• This must be a fun gig for cameramen, scanning the audience for Democrats with particularly bemused expressions.
• Budget: This reminds me of someone maxing out their credit card and then deciding they really ought to pay it off.
• Health care: Leveling the tax playing field would be a good first step; having to buy insurance on the open market with taxed money is a real double blow.
• Guest worker program: This is just reality catching up; this nation can’t function without additional labor, much less have any hope of funding social security.
• Energy: One point for mentioning Plug-In Hybrid Cars.
• Iraq: It seems clear that this is nothing but a long haul now. If we’re sending additional troops, though, how many additional Iraqis are going to come forward to take control of their country’s destiny?
• Troops: +92,000?! No wonder Rumsfeld and his “smaller, leaner” vision finally were shown the door!
• Darfur: “Awaken the conscience of the world” sounds like lip service.
• 49 minutes and 62 applause interruptions according to NBC

That’s it; I don’t think the hour of post-speech analysis and rebuttals will be of much interest. More interesting is the number of comments the Fark thread on the address is getting; even if it degrades into the usual flamewar, at least people are thinking about politics tonight.

I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, in which Al Gore makes a compelling scientific case for global warming. I’ve been a bit skeptical of past global warming claims because the environment is such a large, complex system and the measured changes so small. Despite being a logical person, even the scientific evidence in the film wasn’t what really convinced me.

Like most people, I’m more swayed by personal anecdotal evidence than broad scientific results. In particular, the consistently unseasonably warm winter we’ve had in the northeast this year. It’s tough to deny something has changed when January has multiple 65-degree days and the local ski resorts are bragging about having 2 trails open.

The sad thing is that outside of fellow skiers and boarders, people don’t seem to mind and most actually enjoy the warmer weather. Until rising sea levels start to drown beach-front houses and the edges of Manhattan, I don’t think there’s going to be much of a reaction. To cite a similar situation, consumers basically ignored cars’ fuel economy for decades until faced with steady gas prices above $3 a gallon.

It’s not totally pessimistic, though. Congress has introduced a number of climate change bills, and there are a number of actions we can each take individually.

Between getting HDTV and DSL, I’ve had a first-hand chance to experience the service of rivals Comcast and Verizon. They’re both obviously trying to up their level of customer service to win and keep customers in a competitive and saturated market. They still come up short sometimes, though, and occasionally in amusing ways.

Comcast first; after installing HD but screwing up my old channels, they promised to return 3 days later to fix it. They’ve narrowed their window to 2 hours, and I figured I was safe with the 2nd window of the day. I got a call with ten minutes left to say the tech was on the way, and another call at the end of the window to check on his arrival, which hadn’t happened. When the ETA came back as 45 minutes past the end of the appointment, I had to reschedule. I pressed them about an appointment guarantee, and did get a $20 credit.

Verizon should’ve had no trouble with DSL; I’ve had it at this address before. Their tech was outside first thing the day they said it’d be ready, and knocked on the door to let me know. After clunking through their install CD and an hour with tech support, they promised to send someone out Monday and I gave them my cell as a contact. I never heard anything, but found a message on my home phone that everything. The tech had come out, checked the line, and needed to know what the modem was doing. Aside from calling the wrong number, so far so good. Then he started rambling about how everyone else he was out to lunch except him, so he was just going to be sitting around waiting.

Both get mixed reviews so far; we’ll see how they fare with actually getting things to work.

I was a good citizen and exercised my right to vote today, though I can’t say it was terribly inspiring. Voting has always seemed to be a choice between the lesser of two evils; this year the evils made themselves quite while known and I showed up more to vote against them than for their opponents. I’ve spent past elections poring over platforms and candidate’s positions on the the issue; this year was more of a gut feeling on who wasn’t a complete jerk.

This year’s campaigns has been fairly obnoxious, and more intrusive than in the past. My mailbox has been stuffed full of flyers, and my voicemail always has “important policital messages” sent by automated lobbying groups. The latter should be illegal; perhaps I could let my congresspeople know with an automated system of my own…

Despite past miscounts and questions about closed, proprietary voting machines, the physical polling place was pretty relaxed, once you ran the gauntlet of last minute lobbyists up to the front door. It wasn’t as bad as Robert Stack’s scene in Airplane, but there still needs to be a greater standoff distance. Inside, there was no ID check, just a signature next to your name in the book.

It’s a striking contrast to any election photos you see in developing nations getting their first taste of democracy, where seriously determinted pollsters shuffle locked ballot boxes under the watchful eye of armed guards. A bit dramatic, but it leaves no doubt as to the gravity and passion of the event.

It’s benefits election time again, which provides an opportunity to take a first hand look at the real costs of health care and insurance. Aetna provides a great web-based tool called Navigator that shows you what charges doctors submitted, what Aetna paid, and what you paid. In a sign of the times, you can now even download the raw data to do your own cost crunching. Some interesting findings:

1. Having insurance gets you a significantly discounted rate from the “list” price
2. My primary care physician only gets my copay for an office visit
3. I pay more of the small bills, insurance pays more of the big ones

The last point is the most poignant reflection on health care today and into the future: it really only kicks in when you have major events. With higher deductibles, it also means customers are going to demand more up-front pricing information. I think greater personal responsibility and choice in health care are a good thing, though the system needs to be more transparent to really make it work.

Kudos to Harvard for announcing the end of early admissions. With skyrocketing tuition and applications making college applications into a real pressure-cooker for high school students, it’s about time someone took some of the stress out of it. While elite colleges may love filling 20-50% of their classes with more affluent students set on attending their schools, it rushes others to complete SATs and applications while giving up choice and flexibility to weigh financial aid offers.

Harvard and the other Ivies really have the impetus to start such a change; they’ll always have the reputation to draw plenty of applicants. Hopefully the idea will trickle down to more schools and give high school students back a bit of their time and sanity.