Now back to working on the Red Line Studio site! I uploaded Phase I last week, now I am just refining it a bit and preparing for Phase II, which will include the Java gallery.

One of my classmates, who is a wiz at Flash, is networking some of us designers and developers so we can start getting work. He used to sell insurance so is just the kinda guy to drum up business. I’m excited about having someone else find me work so I can focus on designing!

And finally, the website designer and developer students at KVCC have started their own student organization called Valley Devigners. We just started the organization so our website will not be up until the fall semester. I’m really excited about being appart of this group. It will give the designers and programmers an opportunity to interface outside of class and potential work on some projects together as well as offer a contact point to the surround communities. Appartently, quite a few job leads come through the school but there is no official way to deceminate the information!

My plans for 2009:

• School, school, school
• Finish my website redesign
• Continue to build my website design business Red Line Stuido
• Take more photos (my good friend Robert gave me a pinhole camera for Christmas I can’t wait to use!)
• Spend time at the beach on Lake Michigan (I really miss San Diego sometimes)
• Find a hiking or running partner
• Read more! (so hard to do while in school)
• Run the Borgess Half Marathon in 1:30:00.
• Run the Chicago Marathon in 3:50:00 (if I can get registered)

There really isn’t enough time to fit everything in but I’m sure going to try.

Happy New Year everyone!

In short, Obama’s proposal contains the basic components necessary for effectively addressing the most important shortcomings of the current health care system, that is, limited coverage, inadequate risk pooling, and high-cost growth.

In brief, McCain’s proposal would dramatically change how many Americans obtain health insurance coverage, make coverage less accessible for those with health problems, have a high budget cost, but have little effect on the number uninsured.

The above quotes are from the summary. You can read the complete analysis of each candidates proposals at their website. This isn’t the only issue I’m concerned with but when you read the analysis, you learn a bit about what each candidate values and which one lies in their ads!

And how many people refuse to start a new business because of the cost of insurance or the incredible risk of not having it? Take me for example, I’m a new business owner, paying my own way through college, and have Type 1 Diabetes. I’ve shopped around and simply cannot afford health insurance. Even if I could, they wouldn’t cover my diabetes. What is the point! Not that something new cannot happen but most medical issues I will face in the future will almost certainly be a result of the diabetes. And if it isn’t, the health insurance company will do everything in their power to deny coverage because I have this pre-existing condition. The only insurance policy I found which would cover pre-existing medical problems required a 12 month waiting period before they would provide coverage all the time paying $600 per month!

So health insurance is one of thee most important issues to me this campaign season. And certainly it is intimately tied in to our economic well being. What gets me is that nearly 47 million Americans don’t have health care, even though we spend more on it than any other industrialized country (almost all of which have health care for EVERY citizen!). And the cost of health insurance increases every year at every increasing amounts, now out-pacing inflation. So what does the top 2 Presidential candidates have planned for fixing our health care system? Check out their plans: Obama & Bidden McCain & Palin

The first thing I noticed is that Obama’s is more clear and concise while McCain’s is filled with political hyperbole and no clear steps to fix the system. It appears that Obama is honestly trying to address the millions who are uninsured, reduce spirally costs, and build in measures that both stimulate the economy and increase the number of insured while attempting to reduce costs for businesses. But for a more articulate argument read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece. It is co-wrote by David Cutler, a Obama campaign adviser so you may want to also read this article at Reuters.

Oh, McCain’s plan includes NEW TAXES on health insurance costs! The caveat is the plan adds tax breaks to offset the new taxes but they disappear after 10 years. Does McCain believe that the cost of health care will go down in that time? Or that all Americans will somehow magically be able to afford the taxes in that time? Must be nice to have so much money to not know about such hardship.

I don’t think either plan is adequate but Obama’s certainly is the better of the two. Outside of a full National Health Insurance plan, nothing will fully fix our problem or save us any real money.

Over the past several years there have been a couple of things that inspired me. I’m not talking creative inspiration, like in my last post, but more of a life changing, out of left field, didn’t expect it, subtle but once you think about it that is exactly how I feel inspiration. I guess inspiration isn’t the correct verbiage but it will have to do.

This Dilbert cartoon came across one of those Apple widget thingies while I was working at Ruff Haus Design in San Diego last year.

I loved it so much I saved a copy of it to my laptop desktop and look at it all the time. It reminds me of exactly why I reject conventional jobs and it really spoke to me at a crucial time. It coincided with my decision to move back to Michigan and go back to school and pursue my own dreams to work for myself. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job at Ruff Haus Design but that isn’t what I wanted to do everyday for the rest of my life. In fact, working there inspired me to pursue my passions and do my own thing. So here I am.

The other day, I finally found a copy of Meryn Cadell’s CD Angel Food for Thought. My friend Dennis introduced me to her work via a cassette tape sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s. Her monologue Job Application summarizes so succinctly my detest for the whole job search/interview process. I’m so tired of having to satisfy someone else’s random, meaningless expectations just so I can be a slave for their desires. To be denied for not jumping through their hoops, or say the right things, or watch the correct TV shows, or align myself with the appropriate corporate identity to later find out that the person who was so much more perfect for the job and was going to solve all of the companies problems suddenly fails to show up for work one day and disappears off the face of the earth, this after working for only 3 months.

Oh, my! What a rant. You get the picture though. So let’s end this post with a fun video!