The purpose of this communication is to raise questions regarding your February 21, 2008 article ‘Parents worry as I-SS loses therapists, struggles to hire teachers‘.

I know one of the therapists to whom the article referred. She is my wife of 8 years. She is a wonderful spouse, an excellent mother, and a passionate SLP (Speech Language Pathologist). In addition to her genuine concern for special needs children, she has the crafty intelligence, objective reasoning and tenacious work ethic to be arguably one of the best therapists around.

From all accounts, I’ve heard she’s also rather pleasant to work with – and she’s pretty.

Throughout her 7 years in ISS, she’s consistently gone well beyond the extra mile to be successful in her profession, which is worthy of praise in any work environment, but deserves even more credit in the public school system, a system with the odds stacked against its success and effectiveness.

My wife has given her time and energy during late evenings and weekends for years. She accepted a meager salary well below her potential in the public sector as trade-off for the fulfillment she finds in helping children communicate, and the purpose of the system as a whole.

Throughout 7 years of hassle and headache, she maintained a positive outlook. Her only occasional complaints consistently revolved around the “blocking and tackling” of running any organization successfully – communication, competency and execution.

Whether it was being constantly inundated with excessive and redundant paperwork (still not effectively automated or digitized even in our age of relatively affordable IT solutions), or having to walk to the office to use the office phone for her many daily phone calls despite the fact that there was a functioning phone in her office which the system refused to activate, she kept her attitude positive, and her intent focused.

The amount of paperwork that SLP’s are assaulted with is truly unbelievable. Manual data-entry regarding children and their specifics is often required redundantly amongst and within different departments. And by manual, I mean pen and paper… sometimes even with a specific requirement for ink color. Many times a submitted form will be returned for violation of very subtle technicalities, all in what seems to be an organized attempt to achieve acute progress by means of obtuse labor. If effective therapy were appropriately gauged by the number of forms the therapists complete, this system would be very highly ranked.

The administration mandates new regulations and guidelines so frequently that therapists are always guessing if their latest paperwork will be returned for failure to meet newest specs, specs which were likely not communicated effectively. Shortages in the time or energy required to clearly communicate the purpose and justify the burden of additional red tape can be mitigated by having the therapists keep turning forms in until they are acceptable.

Clunky and inadequate software “solutions” are half implemented, often times not replacing the same data requirement on paper, but in addition to it.

These are just a few of the hurdles I’ve heard mentioned. Yet, despite what seems like every attempt by the system to render her impotent, my wife stayed in the game.

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I made the drive to Enventys this afternoon to have an FDM prototype printed of my H2-15 Spider. I’ve already made changes to the design after examining a real version - some changes voluntary, some mandatory… Prototypes are good.

I’ve submitted a provisional patent, which I guess allows me to say “Patent Pending”. Next phase is to prototype the revisions, and then move onto the fully machined casting mold. Here she is.

I’m appalled at the nerve of our crooked, meddling government to stick its fangs in the National Football League.

When exactly did the Congressional NFL Oversight Committee originate?

Coach Bill Belichick said it best with this phrase — “It’s a league matter.” You’re exactly right coach!

The thug spearheading this witch hunt is Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter.

Mr. Specter, a lifelong Eagles fan who still calls Philadelphia sports radio stations most Monday mornings, said he was concerned about the integrity of sports as much as any fan.

Sorry Mr. Specter, your concern isn’t a legitimate legal backing for this intrusion, nor does it entitle you to super constitutional powers.

By what right does some pandering, conniving bureaucrat make an inquiry into the affairs of a private entity? The manner with which the league handles it’s private rules and regulations only pertains to the league and its affiliates.

Apparently, raping the NFL has been a personal goal for Mr. Specter for some time. In late 2006 he further illustrated his anti-capitalism:

“Wouldn’t consumers be better off if teams could negotiate [individually]?” Specter said. “This is the NFL exerting its power right down to the last nickel.”

“As I look at what the NFL is doing today with the NFL channel with the DirectTV … a lot of people, including myself, would like to be able to have that ticket,”

Sorry again Mr. Specter, your desires for a specialty cable channel don’t trump the rights of a private entity…. Unless, that is, you’re a privileged politician who enjoys the monopolized wielding of legal force. To hell with the Constitution, Capitalism and individual rights. Who needs those when you can use government to enforce your vision of perfection on the ignorant and needy electorate. You are the entity that’s “exerting it’s power”.

Johnette Howard of Newsday offers a few other worthy insights:

Now Specter is threatening to call Goodell before his committee to not only talk about the NFL’s antitrust status but Goodell’s destruction of those Patriots home movies that confirmed they were stealing the Jets’ signals Sept. 9.

“That requires an explanation,” Specter told the Times. “The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It’s analogous to the CIA destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.”

Forgetting for a moment that the American people seem busier right now buying salsa and chips for their Super Bowl extravaganzas than plumbing the morality of the Spygate scandal, it is funny to see We the People invoked every time some politician has a self-aggrandizing idea that he needs to cloak in some big-picture rationale.

But Goodell, the son of a former New York politician, handled the matter smoothly when question after question at his annual state of the NFL address Friday was about the Spygate scandal.

He certainly wasn’t about to poke another stick in Specter’s cage when a reporter wryly asked if he thought Specter’s enthusiasm for this fight had anything to do with Specter’s second-biggest financial contributor of 2008 being Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., a cable concern that has been fighting with the NFL over how to carry its NFL Network.[emphasis added]

Now we have mention of the tangled, syrupy blob of anti-capitalist contradictions affectionately know as “Antitrust”. It’s only a matter of time before the league falls prey to one of the fed’s favorite destructive meddling devices. I also wasn’t aware that I as an American citizen am entitled to sporting with integrity. Either Specter doesn’t understand individual rights, or worse, he’s simply willing to sacrifice them for kickbacks. Ah… the bowels of the politico machine. Such an honorable calling.

And sure, the fact that this repulsive encroachment happened only days before what could be the single biggest sporting event in history is only coincidental. I wonder which bookie could’ve padded Arlen’s pockets in order for him to bring this up with such *interesting* timing? Howard suggests it may just be an attempt to wrangle the “Senate NFL office Pool”.

Yes, I am bitter about this. It was only a few months back when Major League Baseball was the victim of government groping. That episode was equally outrageous, but due to it’s core relevancy to substance abuse, I dismissed it as yet another effort in our silly “War On Drugs”. Now I rather suspect it was just another power play to construct the vision of the anointed.

Like ‘em or not, professional sports leagues are money printing enterprises, and bastions of Capitalism. They are also one of the last venues, despite the wishes of commentators and analysts, where selfish boasting by individuals isn’t sacrificed to the collective. Although I don’t enjoy the showboating at times, it does bring me joy to see someone blatantly saying “I did this. I am good.”

Step by step, our looting imperial GovCo. (courtesy of minions like Republican Specter) is dismantling this once great nation by not only violating individual property rights, but also conspiring to erase the concept of the individual as a whole.

Last June, with the birth of my son forthcoming, I hit the market for a video camera. We were also ready for a new compact as my old faithful Fuji S602Z is a bit too large for travel. I’d watched the market for months in anticipation of the Canon TX1, a hybrid boasting a very compact form factor and HD video capabilities. I’ve been very pleased with this camera. We’ve taken thousands of pictures, and hundreds of videos. It’s not perfect. The flash leaves a lot to be desired, and it doesn’t handle low light well. But, given good light and plenty of digital storage space, it’s a great camera offering excellent AV quality, great still shots, and it’s the size of a deck of cards.

One feature I’ve grown to appreciate (thanks to the Fuji) is black and white macros. They’re pretty good on the TX1, but I only discovered my newest favorite feature recently. They can also be enabled for video recording. This allows amazingly clear close-up videos. Here’s my first test, which coincidently resulted in a nice tribute to my oldest cat Coltrane.

YouTube takes quite a bit from the quality, but the original footage was a 600MB file, which is difficult to distribute on the web.