I feel like a real oddball sometimes. And by "sometimes" I mean pretty much every moment of every day. Sometimes I really can't say I understand people. I feel so totally out of step that I just don't feel like I belong.
I was watching "Louie", which is Louis C.K.'s sitcom, and he said a line that seemed to resonate with the audience. The gist of it was that a parent looks at their kid and at the same time, feels the conflicting emotions of, "I love you" and "I wish you had never been born."
I can honestly say I have never felt like I wish my son had never been born. Hey, I'm not saying this for swagger effect. I'm the first person to acknowledge the darker sides of human nature, especially when they manifest themselves in me, and I'm almost biologically incapable of not-admitting to them if they're comic in nature.
My son? Has been, hands-down, the best thing that's ever happened in my life. I'll even go so far as to say that being a father is, truly, the only significant thing I've ever done. The rest means nothing. The year on a Special Operations Team in the 5th Special Forces Group, the Ironman Triathlon, the MBA from Case, everything I ever thought I was proud of, that I ever thought was an accomplishment, is dwarfed by the absolute sheer magnitude of being a father. It is the most rewarding thing in my life. I suspect I will never have another thing in my life that is nearly as significant.
Do other parents feel this way? Enough of them that this is something that resonates comedically? I can't ever even regret marrying my ex-wife because we had my son together and he is just perfect. I would not change a thing about him. He is a wonder and a joy.
Another glimpse like this was similar, but it involved a mother who was walking behind her children, who apparently were being very difficult, and flipping them off behind their backs. The general gist was that the mothers who heard about the episode had no negative judgement and the consensus was that they all had felt exactly this way at one point in time or another.
Again, never felt that way. Granted, my son is not a teen, yet, but neither were the little kids in the flipping off story. I can understand being frustrated, but flipping off your own kids? Would you flip off your co-workers? Would you flip off your relatives? Maybe some people would. I wouldn't.
The last episode like this was another comedian, Bill Burr, who said something to the effect of, once in a while, you just look at your significant other and you could just kill them. Wow. The audience cracked up. Apparently, this is another idea that resonated. I have not had a great marriage. In fact, it ended in divorce. But I never looked at my spouse and was so angry that I wanted any harm to come to her. There were plenty of times when I was so angry I wanted out of the marriage, but good lord!
I just don't get it. The ironic part of all this is that I spent a lot of my life wondering if I was a sociopath. Not so much as a adult, but as a kid, I can remember not being particularly empathetic in situations where I thought I probably should have been. I think I was fortunate to have joined the Army when I did because you are thrust into a giant cross-section of humanity and forced to interact with people from all walks of life.
I went from having, at most 2 or 3 close friends to having a bunch of good friends all the time. I started to feel connected to the world.
I guess I believe that I'm not alone in this. That I'm not the only person who seems to lack these rather odd, antisocial urges that seem to be common, at least if stand-up comedians and mommy bloggers are to be believed.
At least I can only hope so.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Avoid Student Loan Debt like the Plague!!!
When I was young, I feared student loan debt at a level that might have approached a genuine phobia. Back then, you'd hear about students accumulating outrageous amounts of debt. Sometimes as high as 5 or 10 thousand dollars! Good lord, college might have gotten you a better job back then, but not THAT much better!
I joined the Army, which at the time offered a program called VEAP (basic summary, it was absolutely the worst GI-bill type program since WWII. It offered a paltry monthly stipend and that was it.) Thanks to scholarships and an ungodly amount of work at both jobs and a small business I ran, I graduated with my bachelor's degree and no debt at all. Even more remarkable is that it took me six years to get a bachelor's degree.
As I progressed through life, I saw something interesting. People who were willing to go into debt were able to do things I couldn't do. They went to better schools. They finished in four years. They went to graduate school. They got great jobs. They paid off their loans.
When you consider the fact that I spent 4 years in the Army, it took me ten years to get my bachelor's degree. Now, not all of that was due to finances. There was a lot of aimlessness, transferring schools, changing majors in there, too. But there was also the fact that its hard to maintain a full-time courseload while working 30 or 40 hours a week, too.
Did I have it all wrong all along? For years, I thought I did. I went to law school for a year last year. I even got a half-ride scholarship. I figured that student loans couldn't be all that bad, so I took out what I could.
I've since dropped out of law school. I work in a field tangentially related to law and business. A lot of the folks I work with are recent law school grads who are dealing with up to seven years student loan debt, not just one.
My opinion: generally speaking, people who avoid student loan debt will come out far ahead of people who do not. Because I work in the public sector, my co-workers will have any unpaid balances forgiven after 10 years in the career. However, without that, their student loan debt would be a crippling burden for more than half of their working lives.
I am the first to admit that a lot has changed since I first went to school. When I left High School, I tried a little community college in California. The total cost of attendance was about $10 a credit hour. When I got out of the Army, I attended a small liberal arts school in Texas. Nobody I knew there paid the sticker price, but if you did, the total cost of attendance was about $2,500 a semester. That was for a private school education. These days, a state school in Ohio will cost about $10,000 a year in tuition, alone.
That's a pretty big sum of money for a high school graduate with few employable skills to their name. I realize that not all people have families of means who can help them get through school. Sometimes it really is just on the shoulders of a young person to figure out how to pay for this stuff.
Is it even possible to get through school without accumulating a mountain of debt? Yes, I believe it is. Or, at a minimum, it's possible to graduate school with very little debt.
For a young person looking for a plan, I'd offer the following:
First, community college credits transfer to big-name schools the same as if you'd taken the credits at the big-name school. So, 2 years of credits from your junior college, that cost you a total of $2,000, will transfer into a school like Dartmouth where the credits would have cost $80,000.
If you can, live with relatives. Minimize your expenses. Take Summer classes and get 2 years of education in just 15 months. Even if you have to take out student loans to pay for all of it, you're talking taking $2,000 in loans, versus at least $20,000 at a state school and nearly six figures at some exclusive private schools.
Then, transfer. There are other advantages to a community college as well. For one thing, if you did poorly in High School, community college is a great do-over that can still get you accepted into Stanford. The other is, community colleges have a lot more degree options for people who like to work with their hands. You can study everything from nuclear reactor technology to diesel engines. While your friends are making $45,000 as brand-new district attorneys with $150,000 in student loan debt, you could be making $100,000 a year as a welder in South Dakota after a 2 year welding certificate.
Other genuine career-options for people with 2 year certificates and degrees:
For determined students on a budget, community colleges aren't just an option, they're a great one.
Second, the GI Bill is better now than ever. You get the equivalent of tuition and fees at your state's in-state tuition rate, plus a living stipend (free money to live on.) So, you can attend NC State, and have the GI bill pay for your apartment and groceries, too. The military still offers three-year enlistments. While in the military, you will be eligible for tuition reimbursement if you attend college part-time. (I was never able to. Some branches and jobs are more accommodating than others. Research carefully.)
You will also be able to take as many CLEP tests as you want for free. That's the college level examination program and the basic gist is that you take a test and get credits for a specific subject. For instance, I took two exams in American history and by passing them, got 6 credit hours in American History. Not all schools accept CLEP credits, so again, research carefully. One of my biggest mistakes was not attending the University of North Texas, which would have accepted 36 CLEP credits, versus attending Texas Wesleyan University, which only accepted 6. Graduating a year early would have been, by far, the better move financially.
For those who are not sure they want the rigors of military life, day-in and day-out, the Reserves have generous GI Bill benefits and sometimes have cash enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000. Obviously, any military commitment is a big deal, especially during a time of war. However, spending four years in the military has led to a lifetime of benefits from me, including VA loans to buy homes with, creditable years towards a federal retirement and money for college. You have to give a lot, but you get a lot in return.
Third, graduating early is a big fat hairy deal. A lot of your cost of attending college is the cost of simply living. If you're borrowing dorm money, etc., you're racking up debt at a phenomenal rate. You need roughly 4 years of academic work to graduate with a baccalaureate, but there's no requirement that it take you four years to get those credits. Attending in the Summer is not only a good way to graduate faster, the classes are usually easier to pull good grades in, if my experience is any indication. If you attend a High School that lets you take college classes, that's a great option as well. I've heard of kids graduating High School with an Associate's Degree. This means they can have their bachelor's in just two more years.
Your total cost of attending school includes both the direct cost and the opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is what you would have made by doing something else.
So, in this case, a simple illustration. First, a guy who goes to 4 years of school, borrowing all the way:
Tuition X 4 years: $40,000
Living Expenses X 4 years: $40,000
Total end-position after 4 years: -$80,000 (plus interest)
Versus somebody who went to 4 years of school, but attended Summers, maybe took 18 hours a semester or two, and finished in 3 calendar years, then got a job paying $30,000 a year:
Tuition X 4 years: $40,000 (the credits cost money whether he's taking them in summer or in regular school-year)
Living Expenses X 4 years: $40,000 (he will have living expenses regardless of whether he's in school or not)
Income from working in calendar year 4, versus being in school calendar year 4: $30,000 to the good.
Or:
-40,000
-40,000
+30,000
Total end-position after 4 years: -50,000.
So, those are just some general ideas. Take heart and avoid that debt. The interest on it is a mutha. It literally can be like paying a mortgage for a house you don't get to live in. I've made about a half dozen payments on the student loan debt for just one year of law-school (an amount of debt probably comparable to one year in undegrad since I had a scholarship) and I have yet to even pay off the INTEREST that has accumulated. That's just the interest that's accumulated in less than a year!
Now, some people will take on student loan debt, and it really won't hurt them. If you're in medical school, no whining, okay? You can afford $200,000 in debt if you're entering a profession where the median income for non-specialists is $200,000 a year. You're going to be a multi-millionaire, so shut the hell up about your finances. Likewise if you're a top graduate of a top law school. A new associate making $165,000 a year can handle a student loan debt of $150,000. Others, though, won't be so well served by getting into debt.
Most people, myself included, look back on their lives regretting a lot of the decisions they made and the attitudes they held as they were learning how to deal with the world. But on this one, I was dead right: avoid student loan debt like the plague. It is absolutely bad for you.
I joined the Army, which at the time offered a program called VEAP (basic summary, it was absolutely the worst GI-bill type program since WWII. It offered a paltry monthly stipend and that was it.) Thanks to scholarships and an ungodly amount of work at both jobs and a small business I ran, I graduated with my bachelor's degree and no debt at all. Even more remarkable is that it took me six years to get a bachelor's degree.
As I progressed through life, I saw something interesting. People who were willing to go into debt were able to do things I couldn't do. They went to better schools. They finished in four years. They went to graduate school. They got great jobs. They paid off their loans.
When you consider the fact that I spent 4 years in the Army, it took me ten years to get my bachelor's degree. Now, not all of that was due to finances. There was a lot of aimlessness, transferring schools, changing majors in there, too. But there was also the fact that its hard to maintain a full-time courseload while working 30 or 40 hours a week, too.
Did I have it all wrong all along? For years, I thought I did. I went to law school for a year last year. I even got a half-ride scholarship. I figured that student loans couldn't be all that bad, so I took out what I could.
I've since dropped out of law school. I work in a field tangentially related to law and business. A lot of the folks I work with are recent law school grads who are dealing with up to seven years student loan debt, not just one.
My opinion: generally speaking, people who avoid student loan debt will come out far ahead of people who do not. Because I work in the public sector, my co-workers will have any unpaid balances forgiven after 10 years in the career. However, without that, their student loan debt would be a crippling burden for more than half of their working lives.
I am the first to admit that a lot has changed since I first went to school. When I left High School, I tried a little community college in California. The total cost of attendance was about $10 a credit hour. When I got out of the Army, I attended a small liberal arts school in Texas. Nobody I knew there paid the sticker price, but if you did, the total cost of attendance was about $2,500 a semester. That was for a private school education. These days, a state school in Ohio will cost about $10,000 a year in tuition, alone.
That's a pretty big sum of money for a high school graduate with few employable skills to their name. I realize that not all people have families of means who can help them get through school. Sometimes it really is just on the shoulders of a young person to figure out how to pay for this stuff.
Is it even possible to get through school without accumulating a mountain of debt? Yes, I believe it is. Or, at a minimum, it's possible to graduate school with very little debt.
For a young person looking for a plan, I'd offer the following:
First, community college credits transfer to big-name schools the same as if you'd taken the credits at the big-name school. So, 2 years of credits from your junior college, that cost you a total of $2,000, will transfer into a school like Dartmouth where the credits would have cost $80,000.
If you can, live with relatives. Minimize your expenses. Take Summer classes and get 2 years of education in just 15 months. Even if you have to take out student loans to pay for all of it, you're talking taking $2,000 in loans, versus at least $20,000 at a state school and nearly six figures at some exclusive private schools.
Then, transfer. There are other advantages to a community college as well. For one thing, if you did poorly in High School, community college is a great do-over that can still get you accepted into Stanford. The other is, community colleges have a lot more degree options for people who like to work with their hands. You can study everything from nuclear reactor technology to diesel engines. While your friends are making $45,000 as brand-new district attorneys with $150,000 in student loan debt, you could be making $100,000 a year as a welder in South Dakota after a 2 year welding certificate.
Other genuine career-options for people with 2 year certificates and degrees:
- In some states, you can get an RN degree in 2 years. An actual full-blown RN, with median wages of over $60,000 a year and career opportunities in pretty much every county in the United States
- Most community colleges have MSCE programs where you learn to be, say, a network engineer with computers. Again, starting wages are excellent and job opportunities are some of the best in the country.
- Diesel mechanics, which you can learn in a 2 year program at many junior colleges, have median pay of about $40,000 a year.
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/diesel-service-technicians-and-mechanics.htm
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/network-and-computer-systems-administrators.htm
For determined students on a budget, community colleges aren't just an option, they're a great one.
Second, the GI Bill is better now than ever. You get the equivalent of tuition and fees at your state's in-state tuition rate, plus a living stipend (free money to live on.) So, you can attend NC State, and have the GI bill pay for your apartment and groceries, too. The military still offers three-year enlistments. While in the military, you will be eligible for tuition reimbursement if you attend college part-time. (I was never able to. Some branches and jobs are more accommodating than others. Research carefully.)
You will also be able to take as many CLEP tests as you want for free. That's the college level examination program and the basic gist is that you take a test and get credits for a specific subject. For instance, I took two exams in American history and by passing them, got 6 credit hours in American History. Not all schools accept CLEP credits, so again, research carefully. One of my biggest mistakes was not attending the University of North Texas, which would have accepted 36 CLEP credits, versus attending Texas Wesleyan University, which only accepted 6. Graduating a year early would have been, by far, the better move financially.
For those who are not sure they want the rigors of military life, day-in and day-out, the Reserves have generous GI Bill benefits and sometimes have cash enlistment bonuses of up to $20,000. Obviously, any military commitment is a big deal, especially during a time of war. However, spending four years in the military has led to a lifetime of benefits from me, including VA loans to buy homes with, creditable years towards a federal retirement and money for college. You have to give a lot, but you get a lot in return.
Third, graduating early is a big fat hairy deal. A lot of your cost of attending college is the cost of simply living. If you're borrowing dorm money, etc., you're racking up debt at a phenomenal rate. You need roughly 4 years of academic work to graduate with a baccalaureate, but there's no requirement that it take you four years to get those credits. Attending in the Summer is not only a good way to graduate faster, the classes are usually easier to pull good grades in, if my experience is any indication. If you attend a High School that lets you take college classes, that's a great option as well. I've heard of kids graduating High School with an Associate's Degree. This means they can have their bachelor's in just two more years.
Your total cost of attending school includes both the direct cost and the opportunity cost. The opportunity cost is what you would have made by doing something else.
So, in this case, a simple illustration. First, a guy who goes to 4 years of school, borrowing all the way:
Tuition X 4 years: $40,000
Living Expenses X 4 years: $40,000
Total end-position after 4 years: -$80,000 (plus interest)
Versus somebody who went to 4 years of school, but attended Summers, maybe took 18 hours a semester or two, and finished in 3 calendar years, then got a job paying $30,000 a year:
Tuition X 4 years: $40,000 (the credits cost money whether he's taking them in summer or in regular school-year)
Living Expenses X 4 years: $40,000 (he will have living expenses regardless of whether he's in school or not)
Income from working in calendar year 4, versus being in school calendar year 4: $30,000 to the good.
Or:
-40,000
-40,000
+30,000
Total end-position after 4 years: -50,000.
So, those are just some general ideas. Take heart and avoid that debt. The interest on it is a mutha. It literally can be like paying a mortgage for a house you don't get to live in. I've made about a half dozen payments on the student loan debt for just one year of law-school (an amount of debt probably comparable to one year in undegrad since I had a scholarship) and I have yet to even pay off the INTEREST that has accumulated. That's just the interest that's accumulated in less than a year!
Now, some people will take on student loan debt, and it really won't hurt them. If you're in medical school, no whining, okay? You can afford $200,000 in debt if you're entering a profession where the median income for non-specialists is $200,000 a year. You're going to be a multi-millionaire, so shut the hell up about your finances. Likewise if you're a top graduate of a top law school. A new associate making $165,000 a year can handle a student loan debt of $150,000. Others, though, won't be so well served by getting into debt.
Most people, myself included, look back on their lives regretting a lot of the decisions they made and the attitudes they held as they were learning how to deal with the world. But on this one, I was dead right: avoid student loan debt like the plague. It is absolutely bad for you.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Do We Really Have That Luxury?
I've known for a few days that I probably should say something about the firearms debate that is taking place after the mass shootings Newtown Connecticut. As a life member of the NRA and a proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, I am squarely in this controversy, whether I want to be or not.
I understand the anti-gun sentiment in the aftermath of this shooting. It defies logic to say that guns are not part of this problem. Not just this problem, but a whole lot of other deadly problems, too. Suicide in the US is most frequently done with a firearm, to the tune of about 15,000 people a year. Violent crime claims another 10,000. That's 25,000 deaths a year where firearms are involved.
Do things need to be done about guns? You bet. The question is, what, exactly, should we do. What results do we hope to achieve? If we really want to solve this problem, it's going to take a multi-faceted approach. We don't have the luxury of only examining the parts of this problem that we already have preconceived notions about, while trying to exempt the parts of the problem that we identify with.
Firearms proponents will immediately point out in the aftermath of a situation like this, that if somebody else had been armed, that the shooting spree could have been shortened. This response seems to draw a great deal of condemnation from those who are simply disgusted by gun-violence.
Allow me to ask this question, though. In the Newtown shooting, the principal of the school saw the shooter and ran at him headlong. The consensus appears to be that she was trying to attack him. To disarm him, perhaps. Mostly, she was trying to do something to him, physically, that would prevent him from harming those little kids.
If you ask me, there's Medal of Honor courage, and then there's a step higher, which is what this principal did. I can't imagine the level of bravery and selflessness that would be required for a person to attack a heavily armed man with nothing more than your bare hands. To run straight at him. To know that you have only about a one-in-a-million shot, but that saving yourself by running away is not an option at all.
As we know, unfortunately, she never got to him. She was shot and killed rather easily.
So, my question is this: Imagine if she'd been armed. Or ask yourself this: in those heroic, yet futile moments as she charged at the attacker; during that time when she knew that she absolutely had to do anything she possibly could to stop him in his tracks; even if it meant losing her life; would she have even killed him if it meant saving the lives of the students? At that precise moment, what would she have given to have had a gun in her waistband?
Or, imagine if right next to the fire alarm, there were an active-shooter alarm that she could activate. That alarm not only blared within the school, but immediately sent an active-shooter notification to the police department. With the utmost respect, I am saddened to say that her sacrifice really accomplished nothing. If she had been able to run to an alarm? Could have meant a police response that was one or two minutes faster.
Imagine if, strewn throughout the school, there were half a dozen active-shooter responders who were tactically trained. People who had to go through periodic mental health assessments. People who had to regularly qualify with their weapons. People who, when they heard that alarm, had the same reaction the principal had: that they had to act immediately to stop some very evil person from hurting the kids.
Except imagine that they were not going to try and assault him with their bare hands. Imagine if they were armed.
Is the idea of "more guns in school" so crazy, now? It's not "guns in schools" that are the problem. Schools all over the country have both police officers and armed guards in them, now. It's not the guns of the protectors we need to worry about.
Nor is a proliferation of guns in schools the problem. The problem is isolated incidents of very bad people bringing guns into a school. The problem isn't that there are 50 shooters in a school. The problem is when there's only one and he is intent on hurting the kids.
Right now, the tagline for the gun-control folks is, "Guns in school are the problem. More guns in schools is not the solution."
Well... to put a finer point on it, bad guys with guns in schools are the problem. Good guys with guns could be part of the solution.
To me it would make no sense to say, "Bad teachers in schools are the problem. More teachers is not the solution!"
Well... yeah, but more GOOD teachers is absolutely part of the solution. To ignore the difference between bad and good teachers is foolish. To ignore the difference between armed good guys and armed bad guys is absolutely stunning in its depth of stupidity.
Now, the other issue that's coming up is mental health. Just as quickly as some dismiss the idea of protective weapons in a school, others immediately dismiss the idea that mental health is an issue. But let's be frank, here. A mentally ill person shot up Gabby Giffords. A mentally ill person shot up the theater in Aurora. A mentally ill person shot up Virginia Tech. A mentally ill person shot up Newtown.
Mental illness and firearms are a very, very bad combination. I am told, and have no reason to disbelieve, that mentally ill people undergoing treatment are no more violent than people in general. However, mentally ill people not being treated have a greater possibility of being violent. To me, a person who is one missed dosage away from being violent has no business owning or keeping firearms. People who live in a house with a mentally ill person have no business having them, either.
Whatever laws are keeping us from identifying people who have conditions that could lead to violent behavior need to be changed. If that means amending HIPAA, so be it. If that means amending doctor-patient confidentiality laws, then that's what we need to do. If the public wants to be protected from avoidable dangers, we have a right to know who is dangerous and restrict their access to firearms.
Now, on the positive side of the equation, for the first time in my lifetime, I'm hearing dialog about committing more resources to mental health. If that's part of the solution, we should be pursing that, too, and the benefits would be widespread throughout society.
However, ultimately, if we're talking about mass shooters, the argument seems to be: mentally ill people cannot responsibly be trusted with firearms, therefore nobody should be trusted with firearms. I don't see that it's reasonable to give everybody the same level of rights as a mentally ill person.
Lastly, schools need to change the way they do things. Right now, the trend is to turn schools into little prisons. One entry point, one exit point, highly controlled. Is that really the answer? Maybe to some security threats, but not to a mass shooter. If every classroom had an exit to the outside, the prospect of walking from room to room shooting people would be entirely different.
Unfortunately, I think active-shooter drills are going to become part of the school day, just like fire drills. What to do? Get out into the open and RUN. Kids like to do that, anyway. In just ten seconds, a kid can put themselves out of the effective range of a minimally trained shooter with a handgun and in a minute the best pistol shots in the world would have difficulty hitting them. Moving targets aren't easy to hit with a rifle. It can be done, but if experience is any indication, these shootings aren't being done by Navy SEAL at the peak of their powers. They're done by sociopaths with little to no actual tactical training.
Huddling kids in a corner? Not a good idea. Anybody can rack up fatalities when your target is 10 feet wide and 10 feet away from you.
The debate on armed teachers is red-hot right now. It's as controversial as any I can ever imagine. Rest assured that more schools are going to allow teachers to have weapons. I hope that they require intensive training and screening, and that teachers are just as adept at handling an active-shooter as they are responding to somebody who needs CPR. In the ideal world, they'd need certification and training. In my ideal universe, they'd get a modest pay premium to compensate for their off-hours spent in training and practice.
So, to solve this problem, really, it's going to take fixing it from several angles. First, we need to limit access to weapons. We need to make the penalties for illegally acquiring a weapon severe. We need to make gun sellers responsible if they sell a gun without running a valid background check, and that goes for private transactions, too.
We need to know who the mentally ill are, though, to make sure that they are at the top of the list of people who cannot legally acquire weapons.
Lastly, we need to acknowledge the reality that all the prevention in the world may fail. However, we can mitigate the damage of a shooter in our schools by allowing teachers and administrators the right to defend themselves and their kids.
We are all absolutely heartbroken about the events in Newtown. There will be action taken. My only hope is that it is effective at stopping the next shooter, instead of merely being emotionally an satisfying way to lash out against guns.
I understand the anti-gun sentiment in the aftermath of this shooting. It defies logic to say that guns are not part of this problem. Not just this problem, but a whole lot of other deadly problems, too. Suicide in the US is most frequently done with a firearm, to the tune of about 15,000 people a year. Violent crime claims another 10,000. That's 25,000 deaths a year where firearms are involved.
Do things need to be done about guns? You bet. The question is, what, exactly, should we do. What results do we hope to achieve? If we really want to solve this problem, it's going to take a multi-faceted approach. We don't have the luxury of only examining the parts of this problem that we already have preconceived notions about, while trying to exempt the parts of the problem that we identify with.
Firearms proponents will immediately point out in the aftermath of a situation like this, that if somebody else had been armed, that the shooting spree could have been shortened. This response seems to draw a great deal of condemnation from those who are simply disgusted by gun-violence.
Allow me to ask this question, though. In the Newtown shooting, the principal of the school saw the shooter and ran at him headlong. The consensus appears to be that she was trying to attack him. To disarm him, perhaps. Mostly, she was trying to do something to him, physically, that would prevent him from harming those little kids.
If you ask me, there's Medal of Honor courage, and then there's a step higher, which is what this principal did. I can't imagine the level of bravery and selflessness that would be required for a person to attack a heavily armed man with nothing more than your bare hands. To run straight at him. To know that you have only about a one-in-a-million shot, but that saving yourself by running away is not an option at all.
As we know, unfortunately, she never got to him. She was shot and killed rather easily.
So, my question is this: Imagine if she'd been armed. Or ask yourself this: in those heroic, yet futile moments as she charged at the attacker; during that time when she knew that she absolutely had to do anything she possibly could to stop him in his tracks; even if it meant losing her life; would she have even killed him if it meant saving the lives of the students? At that precise moment, what would she have given to have had a gun in her waistband?
Or, imagine if right next to the fire alarm, there were an active-shooter alarm that she could activate. That alarm not only blared within the school, but immediately sent an active-shooter notification to the police department. With the utmost respect, I am saddened to say that her sacrifice really accomplished nothing. If she had been able to run to an alarm? Could have meant a police response that was one or two minutes faster.
Imagine if, strewn throughout the school, there were half a dozen active-shooter responders who were tactically trained. People who had to go through periodic mental health assessments. People who had to regularly qualify with their weapons. People who, when they heard that alarm, had the same reaction the principal had: that they had to act immediately to stop some very evil person from hurting the kids.
Except imagine that they were not going to try and assault him with their bare hands. Imagine if they were armed.
Is the idea of "more guns in school" so crazy, now? It's not "guns in schools" that are the problem. Schools all over the country have both police officers and armed guards in them, now. It's not the guns of the protectors we need to worry about.
Nor is a proliferation of guns in schools the problem. The problem is isolated incidents of very bad people bringing guns into a school. The problem isn't that there are 50 shooters in a school. The problem is when there's only one and he is intent on hurting the kids.
Right now, the tagline for the gun-control folks is, "Guns in school are the problem. More guns in schools is not the solution."
Well... to put a finer point on it, bad guys with guns in schools are the problem. Good guys with guns could be part of the solution.
To me it would make no sense to say, "Bad teachers in schools are the problem. More teachers is not the solution!"
Well... yeah, but more GOOD teachers is absolutely part of the solution. To ignore the difference between bad and good teachers is foolish. To ignore the difference between armed good guys and armed bad guys is absolutely stunning in its depth of stupidity.
Now, the other issue that's coming up is mental health. Just as quickly as some dismiss the idea of protective weapons in a school, others immediately dismiss the idea that mental health is an issue. But let's be frank, here. A mentally ill person shot up Gabby Giffords. A mentally ill person shot up the theater in Aurora. A mentally ill person shot up Virginia Tech. A mentally ill person shot up Newtown.
Mental illness and firearms are a very, very bad combination. I am told, and have no reason to disbelieve, that mentally ill people undergoing treatment are no more violent than people in general. However, mentally ill people not being treated have a greater possibility of being violent. To me, a person who is one missed dosage away from being violent has no business owning or keeping firearms. People who live in a house with a mentally ill person have no business having them, either.
Whatever laws are keeping us from identifying people who have conditions that could lead to violent behavior need to be changed. If that means amending HIPAA, so be it. If that means amending doctor-patient confidentiality laws, then that's what we need to do. If the public wants to be protected from avoidable dangers, we have a right to know who is dangerous and restrict their access to firearms.
Now, on the positive side of the equation, for the first time in my lifetime, I'm hearing dialog about committing more resources to mental health. If that's part of the solution, we should be pursing that, too, and the benefits would be widespread throughout society.
However, ultimately, if we're talking about mass shooters, the argument seems to be: mentally ill people cannot responsibly be trusted with firearms, therefore nobody should be trusted with firearms. I don't see that it's reasonable to give everybody the same level of rights as a mentally ill person.
Lastly, schools need to change the way they do things. Right now, the trend is to turn schools into little prisons. One entry point, one exit point, highly controlled. Is that really the answer? Maybe to some security threats, but not to a mass shooter. If every classroom had an exit to the outside, the prospect of walking from room to room shooting people would be entirely different.
Unfortunately, I think active-shooter drills are going to become part of the school day, just like fire drills. What to do? Get out into the open and RUN. Kids like to do that, anyway. In just ten seconds, a kid can put themselves out of the effective range of a minimally trained shooter with a handgun and in a minute the best pistol shots in the world would have difficulty hitting them. Moving targets aren't easy to hit with a rifle. It can be done, but if experience is any indication, these shootings aren't being done by Navy SEAL at the peak of their powers. They're done by sociopaths with little to no actual tactical training.
Huddling kids in a corner? Not a good idea. Anybody can rack up fatalities when your target is 10 feet wide and 10 feet away from you.
The debate on armed teachers is red-hot right now. It's as controversial as any I can ever imagine. Rest assured that more schools are going to allow teachers to have weapons. I hope that they require intensive training and screening, and that teachers are just as adept at handling an active-shooter as they are responding to somebody who needs CPR. In the ideal world, they'd need certification and training. In my ideal universe, they'd get a modest pay premium to compensate for their off-hours spent in training and practice.
So, to solve this problem, really, it's going to take fixing it from several angles. First, we need to limit access to weapons. We need to make the penalties for illegally acquiring a weapon severe. We need to make gun sellers responsible if they sell a gun without running a valid background check, and that goes for private transactions, too.
We need to know who the mentally ill are, though, to make sure that they are at the top of the list of people who cannot legally acquire weapons.
Lastly, we need to acknowledge the reality that all the prevention in the world may fail. However, we can mitigate the damage of a shooter in our schools by allowing teachers and administrators the right to defend themselves and their kids.
We are all absolutely heartbroken about the events in Newtown. There will be action taken. My only hope is that it is effective at stopping the next shooter, instead of merely being emotionally an satisfying way to lash out against guns.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
2013 the Rebuilding Year
They used to have an expression in pro sports when I was a kid. When a team was just absolutely horrible, with no chance of success, they'd say they were in a "rebuilding year". In theory, that meant that they were writing off the current season, but were executing moves that would make the team stronger in the future. In reality, it usually just meant that the team was terrible, with no real prospects of getting better.
For me, 2012 was the year of destruction. So many things just crashed and burned. Some of the events were interconnected. Some weren't. It was as though everything bad that could have happened, did, though, all together.
I do try to keep perspective. I'm healthy and my son is truly a joy. As long as those things are true, it's hard to say that things are bad.
The difficulty with everything in your life crashing is that it doesn't happen in a series of instataneous, discreet events. It happens in a cascade of slow-motion train wrecks that you're powerless to stop. You just have to sit back, watch it happen, and look forward to the day when you can pick up the pieces and move on.
In the next few months, though, a few of those train-wrecks will be over. I'll have closure and resolution and can start moving forward again. I won't say the worst of it is over, but its getting there.
I have plans and contingencies from this point forward. For the most part, I am relatively sure (at least as sure as I can be) that things will be okay. Regardless of how things play out from here on out, I have ways to get through. Not all of them are pretty. Not all of them are optimal. None of them are easy. But I have a way to get through.
I also got some good news this week. I hit my diamond level on Best Western Rewards. I stay at a hotel when I'm in Dayton. It is actually cheaper than getting an apartment and/or room-mate and it comes with odd conveniences. The hotel staff all recognize me on sight. It feels strangely like my home when I'm down there.
I try to stay positive. It's not always easy. I am basically rebuilding from scratch, but in a way, that's not so bad. Some folks are really in a deep hole with no real plan to get out. The biggest difference for me is that I have hope, now. I have something to work for and towards. I have something to aspire to.
As long as I have that, I'm usually happy.
For me, 2012 was the year of destruction. So many things just crashed and burned. Some of the events were interconnected. Some weren't. It was as though everything bad that could have happened, did, though, all together.
I do try to keep perspective. I'm healthy and my son is truly a joy. As long as those things are true, it's hard to say that things are bad.
The difficulty with everything in your life crashing is that it doesn't happen in a series of instataneous, discreet events. It happens in a cascade of slow-motion train wrecks that you're powerless to stop. You just have to sit back, watch it happen, and look forward to the day when you can pick up the pieces and move on.
In the next few months, though, a few of those train-wrecks will be over. I'll have closure and resolution and can start moving forward again. I won't say the worst of it is over, but its getting there.
I have plans and contingencies from this point forward. For the most part, I am relatively sure (at least as sure as I can be) that things will be okay. Regardless of how things play out from here on out, I have ways to get through. Not all of them are pretty. Not all of them are optimal. None of them are easy. But I have a way to get through.
I also got some good news this week. I hit my diamond level on Best Western Rewards. I stay at a hotel when I'm in Dayton. It is actually cheaper than getting an apartment and/or room-mate and it comes with odd conveniences. The hotel staff all recognize me on sight. It feels strangely like my home when I'm down there.
I try to stay positive. It's not always easy. I am basically rebuilding from scratch, but in a way, that's not so bad. Some folks are really in a deep hole with no real plan to get out. The biggest difference for me is that I have hope, now. I have something to work for and towards. I have something to aspire to.
As long as I have that, I'm usually happy.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Update at the End of Year...
I know it's been a while since I really updated folks. It's been one really tough year. It's hard to know what to say without coming across as either self-pitying or whining. So, I've not really found a good angle to find a way to update folks.
For those who have been following along, the business is gone. It flirted with disaster so very many times that I thought maybe it could survive anything. Turns out it couldn't survive a divorce-inspired injunction, 3 straight years of unseasonably mild weather, the global economic downturn and overall changes in the industry and within my franchise system.
I miss being a business owner. Miss it terribly. But I don't miss that business. There were a lot of changes in the 8 years I was involved and none of them were positive, in my opinion. The business got harder every year. The franchisor made life harder every year. So, in the end, there is actually part of me that is glad that the injunction kept me from being able to save it.
The rest of me isn't so happy, but part of me is. So, I'll take it.
I also got a job almost immediately after the business concluded operations. It was a hassle trying to liquidate the business while starting a new job, but it's done. It dawned on me the other day that I have gone three straight decades, since I shipped off to the Army when I was 17, without ever really being unemployed.
The other day, I was writing out my life plan and immediately felt better when I wrote "start another business" as a to-do item sometime in the undetermined future. I honestly felt relief. My old business is gone, but it's not like I can't ever have another one. It basically took me 13 years of working to save enough to buy that business. I should be able to do it again much more quickly this time. Maybe seven years. Who knows.
I really don't like the location of my job. Working in Dayton sucks for me. I spend the week down there, and a random weeknight and every weekend up here to be with my boy. Also, it doesn't look like it will be possible to finish law school. If I were in Cleveland, Akron or Toledo, those all have night law programs. Capital University has a night school, but it's very expensive and still over an hour away from Dayton. Not impossible, but I'm already so exhausted most of the time, I can't imagine adding night school and a 2 hour round-trip commute to the mix.
In a way, though, the one year of law school I did at Toledo wasn't wasted. It helped me get the job I have, now.
The rest of my life? It's an overwhelming mess at the moment, but things will get better. 2012 was a really rough year. Started off sorta bad and got worse almost every day. So, here I am, middle aged, and rebuilding. It'll happen. It'll just take time.
For those who have been following along, the business is gone. It flirted with disaster so very many times that I thought maybe it could survive anything. Turns out it couldn't survive a divorce-inspired injunction, 3 straight years of unseasonably mild weather, the global economic downturn and overall changes in the industry and within my franchise system.
I miss being a business owner. Miss it terribly. But I don't miss that business. There were a lot of changes in the 8 years I was involved and none of them were positive, in my opinion. The business got harder every year. The franchisor made life harder every year. So, in the end, there is actually part of me that is glad that the injunction kept me from being able to save it.
The rest of me isn't so happy, but part of me is. So, I'll take it.
I also got a job almost immediately after the business concluded operations. It was a hassle trying to liquidate the business while starting a new job, but it's done. It dawned on me the other day that I have gone three straight decades, since I shipped off to the Army when I was 17, without ever really being unemployed.
The other day, I was writing out my life plan and immediately felt better when I wrote "start another business" as a to-do item sometime in the undetermined future. I honestly felt relief. My old business is gone, but it's not like I can't ever have another one. It basically took me 13 years of working to save enough to buy that business. I should be able to do it again much more quickly this time. Maybe seven years. Who knows.
I really don't like the location of my job. Working in Dayton sucks for me. I spend the week down there, and a random weeknight and every weekend up here to be with my boy. Also, it doesn't look like it will be possible to finish law school. If I were in Cleveland, Akron or Toledo, those all have night law programs. Capital University has a night school, but it's very expensive and still over an hour away from Dayton. Not impossible, but I'm already so exhausted most of the time, I can't imagine adding night school and a 2 hour round-trip commute to the mix.
In a way, though, the one year of law school I did at Toledo wasn't wasted. It helped me get the job I have, now.
The rest of my life? It's an overwhelming mess at the moment, but things will get better. 2012 was a really rough year. Started off sorta bad and got worse almost every day. So, here I am, middle aged, and rebuilding. It'll happen. It'll just take time.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Learning Ruby and Rails
I have wanted to update my programming skill set for a while, now. The last time I actually wrote code for a living was... ummm... 1997. I hear some things might have changed since then. My brother is still a project manager in IT and keeps me informed of whatever the latest hot technologies are. A while back, he said the biggie right now is Ruby on Rails.
The name, alone, was enough to sell me on the idea. So, I'm trying to learn it at the moment. I sometimes have some very boring and unproductive hours in the hotel in Dayton. I've always enjoyed putting up web-pages. Granted, that's less of a big deal now that Facebook is around and everybody in the universe has their own web-page, but I think writing code can be fun. Sue me. I'm Asian. And a dude.
There are quite a few free resources on the web to get you started. I like Ruby, so far. More on the side of languages that use words, like BASIC and COBOL than it is on the side of languages that primarily use symbols like PASCAL and C.
The first thing I had to do was install Ruby on my Windows machine. This web-site is where I did it:
http://rubyinstaller.org/
http://rubyinstaller.org/
After that, I had to install Ruby Gems, which would allow me to install rails.
This is where learning stuff on the internet is a bit more challenging than in the classroom. You really have to figure out a lot of this crap by just digging in. In a classroom, the professor would just tell you how it is done.
The keys here are that Ruby Gems already came when Ruby was installed.
When it was installed, if you go to the Ruby Program folder under "Applications", you can run a command prompt with Ruby.
In that prompt, you enter the command, "gem install rails" to install rails.
I think I have that installed correctly. Plus, I've worked through some online tutorials in basic Ruby commands. It really is a fast, easy language to program with.
At that point, though, it gets increasingly harder to find information that's in my zone of not-being for a coding neophyte, and not being somebody who is a current professional web developer. So, I bought a book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934356549/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00
This is the 4th edition of Agile Web Development with Rails. It is supposed to walk you through how to put together a basic e-commerce site. So, I hope this gets me on the right path.
As for what I hope to do with it? Not entirely sure at the moment. Senior rails developers are making six figures out on the coasts. I guess I'm hoping that I can either do some web-development as a side-business or maybe teleconsult. We'll see. In the mean time, it's an inexpensive diversion. The only downside will be less time for Words with Friends.
As for what I hope to do with it? Not entirely sure at the moment. Senior rails developers are making six figures out on the coasts. I guess I'm hoping that I can either do some web-development as a side-business or maybe teleconsult. We'll see. In the mean time, it's an inexpensive diversion. The only downside will be less time for Words with Friends.
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