GenXJamerican

Today is my 32nd birthday. To me, it doesn’t seem like a particularly special birthday. It isn’t like turning 13, when you’re finally a teenager, or 16 when you can drive, or 18 when you’re officially an adult. I remember being excited about turning 18 because I was finally old enough to vote. I don’t drink, but 21 was still a good birthday. People talk about turning 25 as a milestone, but I feel 24 was a bigger year for me because I bought my townhouse that year.

Looking back over the past year, I see a lot of changes. I finally got my MBA after 3 years of working full-time and school nearly full-time. I made my first career change by leaving a full-time programming role and moving into project management. Looking forward, I see the potential for more change. The Lockheed-Martin buyout could change things completely. I might start a business of my own this year, or get out of project management and into something else, like business development or strategy.

The entire list is here. It includes how much he gave and when.

Improve My Health

• Exercise 3 times a week
• Cook 3 times a week

Maintain My Hobbies

• Shoot 36 film and/or digital exposures a week.
• Post 3 shots on the photoblog each week.
• Start re-learning the piano.
• Go skiing once more (or snowboarding twice) this winter.

Strengthen My Faith

• Read the Bible every day
• Pray every day
• Help out with a church activity once a month

Improve My Career

• Work on a business plan once a week.
• Learn Ruby
• Attend one technology conference this year.
• Attend one business conference this year.
• Write a technical blog post once a week.
• Contact a different person in my network once a week.

I admit it–I’m a C-SPAN junkie. The purpose of the open phones topic this morning was to air people’s opinions on how the Clinton presidency should be taught in middle and high school history classes. As is usually the case with these shows, the callers didn’t so much answer the question posed as bash George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. The calls I found the strangest were the ones that blamed Clinton for the current Bush years and for how divided the country currently is. Those opinions aside, my own is this: teach Clinton’s successes and his failures–all of them.

I voted for Clinton both times. Despite that, I don’t consider him the best president ever, or even a great president–merely a good one. In the success column: NAFTA, welfare reform, the economy. Perot said plenty on the “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the U.S., and that’s true. But that has as much to do with companies not doing what was necessary to modernize as it does with lowering tariffs. I remember being disappointed that Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, but in retrospect, it did get a lot of people off the welfare rolls. Clinton should get credit for mostly staying out of the way as the economy recovered from downturn under the first Bush. He should also get credit for increasing taxes on the highest earners in this country. That contributed a lot to the government going from deficit to surplus. I would count Clinton’s actions on Bosnia as a success too, if only because he helped get NATO involved in stopping the slaughter of Muslims there.

In the failure column: healthcare reform, Rwanda, impeachment. The failure of healthcare reform is perhaps the one with the most consequences for the present day. The voices who said there was no healthcare crisis when Clinton was trying to get this passed are probably the same ones who passed the narrow, expensive and poorly-planned prescription drug benefit. While Clinton isn’t the only one to blame for the genocide in Rwanda (the whole world stood by on that one), as the leader of the greatest military power in the world, his government’s inaction was very disappointing. Impeachment ranks as the worst of his failures from an opportunity cost perspective, not just the moral one. A lot of time was wasted that could have been spent doing far more useful things (like chasing al-Qaeda for example). It allowed people to question his motives for trying to do what was ultimately the right thing.

This article from the NY Times (free subscription required) tells us that those of us who use Google will soon have to contend with graphical ads. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but I’m still disappointed by the news. There are areas when simpler is better, and search is definitely one of them. We can only hope they’ll be small and tasteful (or that CustomizeGoogle will still allow us to remove them).

I came across this article via the Signals vs. Noise blog. While the entire piece is 100% on target, this passage really spoke to my current situation:

But the worst are the ones that become slaves to their clients--often driven by the fear of losing one.

And fear leads to underbidding. And underbidding leads to… pulling all-nighters to make an impossible deadline on too few resources. (And the dark side is in there somewhere.)

It’s more fuel to do things differently when I (finally) start my own business.

Trying to find some information about Bush’s latest appointee to the Supreme Court, I found two comments especially troubling:

"The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas who had been the president's lawyer. The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it. However, the president deserves the benefit of a doubt, the nominee deserves the benefit of hearings, and every nominee deserves an up or down vote." — Manuel Miranda, chairman of the conservative Third Branch Conference

"This is a smart move. You try to pick a nominee that Democrats won't be able to criticize as much because they are a woman or minority. This is a classic Clarence Thomas strategy."

— Artemus Ward, Northern Illinois University political science professor.

For other reactions, see the full version of the article (free registration required).

They are minority opinions to be sure, the bulk of the comments so far range from polite to unalloyed praise for Harriet Miers. Still, I shudder at the mention of Clarence Thomas in connection to anything at all. Few things in politics have made me more angry than his nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall’s record as a lawyer, his tenure as judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (none of his 98 majority decisions was ever reversed), and his record as solicitor general of the United States (winning 14 of 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court), stand in stark contrast to Thomas' brief and unremarkable tenure as an appeals court judge. Thomas was notable only for being a black conservative (and his alleged conduct while head of the EEOC). To replace a lion of civil rights like Thurgood Marshall with someone so opposed to what he’d fought his whole life for was has always disappointed me.

What’s sad is that Artemus Ward is probably correct. Miers won’t have enough of a paper trail for anyone to effectively oppose her–unless a significant amount of conservative reaction falls along the lines of Mr. Miranda’s commentary.