There it is again

As I've been reading Audacity of Hope, I find myself, over and over again, thinking "that's EXACTLY what I think!" This was another one of those times.

Obama is writing in response to a women who called into a radio show he was on in response to his stance against same sex marriage. The woman said that, while she had chosen to vote for him knowing his position, she felt that bringing religion into the issue diminished her and other homosexual couples.

I felt bad, and I told her so in a return phone call. As I spoke to her I was reminded that no matter how much Christians who opose homosexuality may claim that they hate the sin but love the sinner, such a judgment inflicts pain on good people -- people who are made in the image of God, and who are often truer to Christ's message than those who condemn them. And I was reminded that it is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a hristian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights [editorial note: he is pro choice.] I must admit that I may have been infected with society's prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus' call to love one another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I may be seen as someone who as on the wrong side of history. I dont believe such doubts make me a bad Christian. I believe they make me human, limited in my understandings of God's purpose and therefore prone to sin. When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but a Living Word, and that I must be continually open to new revelations -- whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion. [previously in the book, he described another interaction with a supporter who was prolife.]

If you aren't surprised by that kind of candor from a politican, you ain't been living in the same america as me.

This is why Barack Obama has my vote

From The Audacity of Hope, p 162, on the shortage of experienced teachers in America

The problem isn't that there's no interest in teaching; I constantly meet young people who've graduated from top colleges and ahve signed up, through programs like Teach for America, for two-year stints in some of the countrys toughest public schools. They find the work extraordinarily rewarding; the kids they teach benefit from their creativity and enthusiasm. But by the end of two years, most have either changed careers or moved to suburban schols -- a consequence of low pay, lack of support from the educational bureaucracy, and a pervasive feeling of isolation.

If we're serious about building a twenty-first century school system, we're going to have to take the teaching profession seriously. This means changing the certification process to a llow a chemistry major who wants to teach to avoid expensive additional course work; pairing up new recruits with master teachers to break their isolation; and giving proven teachers more control over what goes on in their classrooms.

It also means paying teachers what they're worth. Theres no reason why an experienced, highly quaified, and effective teacher shouldnt' earn 100,000 annually at the peak of his or her career. Highly skilled teachers in such critical fields as math and science -- as well as those willing to teach in the toughest urban schools -- should be paid even more.

There's just one catch. In exchange for more money, teachers need to become more accountable for their performance -- and school districts need to have greater ability to get rid of ineffective teachers.

emphasis mine.

You know what I hate?

Bad customer service. This whole Tivo thing has exposed me to some very very good and some very very bad customer service the last few days.

First: Directv. They have been fabulous. They, allegedly, no longer support tivo units, but they were incredibly informed and helpful when I called to set up my tivo, and then when I was having trouble getting local channels. Even though I called at 11:30 at night, I was able to talk to someone quickly and they were extremely helpful. This issue eventually resolved itself.

Vonage, on the other hand, is a different story.

Since I did a factory reset on the Tivo unit, it has to dial the tivo service for it's initial set up before we can use the DVR feature. We use VoIP (vonage) which doesn't handle data calls very well (signal gets converted from digital, to analog, then back to digital before it even leaves my house, too much room for error, I guess.) I tried to solve it myself using Google, and then I tried to call Vonage.

Their call center is CLEARLY overseas somewhere, both of the people I talked to (I had to call back) had thick accents and the call center was VERY loud. It was hard for me to hear them because of all the back ground noise, and then the accents made it worse. Not to mention, they had never even HEARD of Tivo! Finally, the first person transferred me to someone who spoke english and knew what they were talking about. When I had to call back later, I tried to get the second non-english guy to just transfer me right away. They kept asking for my cellphone number in case they "had to call me back" Bah.

Long story short, I'm taking the Tivo to a friend's house this afternoon to try to get it to dial in, wish me luck.

tivo update

Both the upstairs and downstairs tivos are working . . . except the downstairs one wont' show local channels?? Directv customer service was great about trying to help (their DVR's may suck, but their people are excelelnt,) they said wait until the morning, and it may just be the receiver. I guess thats the risk of buying a used receiver. Worst case, I'll just switch the upstairs and downstairs one, and deal with having the smaller hard drive downstairs (or hack it and expand the hard drive!)

In all, not a bad experience.