> Nadeau: 10.05

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Health care cure-all

In the minds of the elites, socking workers with a larger share of the costs of health care is just a natural part of the new economic order. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board said about the health care cost-cutting deal between GM and the United Auto Workers, “We hope it’s the beginning of wisdom about the global economy for the American labor movement.”

Speaking about UAW president Ron Gettelfinger, Delphi CEO Steve Miller—who took his company into bankruptcy—said, “He’s going to have to help half a million of workers get used to the idea that globalization has taken away the ability to have someone who mows the lawn or sweeps the floor get $65 an hour.”

At least one thing is refreshing: It exposes as a fraud the liberal and conservative mantra about the wonders of the global economy. Democrats and Republicans alike—from Bill Clinton to George Bush, with a supporting cast of media and academic geniuses—have repeatedly told workers that the global economy will bring great benefits to America, after a period of “adjustment.” To their credit, Steve Miller and the Journal are more honest: The global economy is a tool to drive down living standards, starting with health care. Get with it, folks: Living large is so “old economy.”

So, the first obvious point to make is that employer-provided health care coverage has failed.
Jonathan Tasini
October 25, 2005

posted by Tom Nadeau at 10:06 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 24, 2005

Truth be told

I wouldn't know a "spec" from a spitoon.
I can send him the model numbers on the mixer, but
there's no dials to read on the mixer, just a bank of
blue lights that go on IF we go through the mixing
board and not the laptop. Some lights is good, not
enough lights is not, too many is worse. That's all I
know.

I think if I get a CD player and we start going
through the board and use the earphones we can probaly
tell whether it sounds "right" and we'll be OK.

Truth be told, this inability to discern, understand or care
about specifications is why Ulanowicz could never get
me interested in building ham radios and collecting
QSL cards and all that crap.

At Bay Films Alan did the camera work and Mike handled
the sound set-ups and film editing. Both guys were
technical detail men, with camel hair brushes to wipe
the Ikigami lens clean and tidy up the wires and gear
just so when packing up and use a stop watch to time
each sound cip to hit 2 mins 29.5 secs on the button,
etc. Me, I was just the creative and sales guy. I just
came up with the ideas, shmoozed the clients, wrote
the scripts and fronted the operation.

And apparently I wasn't very good at that, either.
Otherwise, I'd still be living on Telegraph Hill in
San Francisco, enoying a view of the bay, lunching at
Jack's Grill on O'Farrell and pullling down what would
be about $110K a year when adjusted for inflation.

posted by Tom Nadeau at 11:34 PM 0 comments

In the wee small hours

I really shouldn't be writing essays at 3 a.m.

Getting a CD device could have nothing to do with the
recording process, since it is merely a playing device
that is used to feed sound information into the the
mix, so that can have no effect on the ultimate sound
levels quality recorded.

Also the tale I sketched out on "my back pages" in my
previous note was waaaaay to optimistic in one
respect.

I would likely still be living on Napier Lane with a
good-looking, 6-foot-1, intelligent,
sexually-demanding, crossword puzzle-doing brunutte
with hazel eyes and dependable coke connections.

However, I would NOT be making anywhere near the
$110,000 I estimated in my foggy 3 a.m. mind. It would
be closer to $80,000 (I decided this after checking
comparative time-line inflation figures on the
Internuts).

The $80K would still be more than enough for me to be
happily tossing down shots of Old Overholt and
Tullamore Dew along with Pamela and Jill and Seamus
the Owner and John My Hat and the occasional TV
anchorette and just-passing-through IRA fund-raiser
down at McGovern's Bar, that is, if they haven't
demolished that revered meeting place for another
Walmart, too.

Honestly, I don't know why I keep struggling to
write fiction when I could do better, quicker and
easier, by telling the autobiagraophical truth -- with
names amended to protect the guilty, of course.

Finally, for this email, I'm wondering if the problem
for our sound levels is the difference between sound
levels as registered on the mixer and the sound level
registered on your laptop. You know, as Microsopft
somehow insists on forcing the .wav format over .mp3.

After getting the CD player, maybe I should look for a
plain, non-Microsoft linked digital recorder to accept
the mix and then upload the digital recording to my
drive and then covert the content to .mp3 for copies.

But the plain recording wouldn't be in a formet that
could be accepted by the drive, would it? So I've not
got us any further along with this long email.

Maybe it would simpler and cheaper just to bring the
levels down on the mike and channels 1,2 and 3.

We'd have to do more tests all the way through the
formatted and saved disk to know which levels were
"perfect" levels for us.

All of which problem could probably have been solved
in advance by simply asking a knowledgeable geek what
to do and where to set things -- but then we don't
have consultent fees worked into our $0 budget, do we?

posted by Tom Nadeau at 11:25 PM 0 comments