This New York Times article describes how some doctors are forgoing HMOs and going back to the old style of service. You pay, they treat you. What a novel concept! OK, so many people can’t afford to pay for their own medical care, but if this trend gets the attention of insurance companies then maybe the competition will be good for everyone.

Signs of the times: I noticed today that gas price signs were not really designed to handle numbers over $1.99. If you look closely, you’ll see that the $2 range prices don’t have decimal points or don’t have them in the correct place. The decimal comes with the 1. So tonight I saw a sign that read “Premium: 21.5”. If you don’t have the opportunity to verify this yourself since your gas prices are nowhere near what we gas guzzling Californians get to pay, count yourself lucky.

This InformationWeek article has some nice information on women in IT balancing their work and home lives. With understanding employers and flex time, working mothers have a better chance to get ahead, up to a point. You still need to make tough sacrifices at the executive level. Best quote: “women are often good change agents and project managers because they’re typically better than men at juggling many responsibilities at once, are frequently better communicators, and are generally better at motivating people through coaching. Women … are better at listening to different points of view–and in an IT organization, that results in solutions that better meet users’ needs.”

A new gadget called the Xenote iTag is a clever marketing device for radio stations and CD merchants. It looks like a car alarm remote, but cooler. When you hear a song on the radio that you want to identify later (assuming you’re listening to the station you got the iTag from), you hit the button and it “bookmarks” the song. Later, you hook it up to your computer, upload the tag and get a listing of what songs you’ve bookmarked, complete, of course, with handy links to purchase the CDs. Candace Murphy at the Mercury News is enraptured, calling it “the coolest invention on the planet”. I was skeptical (consumerism, ack!) as I read through how Xenote wants to enable this technology for “bookmarking” products you see and places you go, until I remembered that I use my PalmPilot mostly as an electronic shopping list. When I see or think of things I want to buy, I jot them down with HandyShopper for my next trip to the mall, bookstore, CD store, supermarket, etc. Maybe an instant bookmarker device, with UPC code scanning, would enhance my shopping list capabilities.

The least dullest person I know sent me this URL to the Dull Men’s Club. I especially liked the FAQ’s description of the difference between dull men and boring men: “Boring men are dull men who actually believe that they are interesting.”

This New York Times article prompted by the Tribune and Times-Mirror merger discusses the new style of multimedia journalism. Reporters are actually providing content to all the various information outlets of their corporation. One story may end up on the radio, Internet, television, and newspapers. This sharing of content and staff keeps costs down, but does give broader exposure in other media to the reporters involved. Of course people are worried that this new process will thin down the news and add further focus on profit margins. The challenge I see is to make the same thing interesting in the different media that it will be presented in. You can use the same information and research, but you can’t use the same writing and presentation style for the different outlets. By the way, the Tribune owns a hefty share of the WB Network and TV Food Network, making it partially responsible for my two favorite TV shows: Buffy and “whatever’s on the cooking channel“.

Need statistics on engineering degrees awarded in the United States? The National Science Foundation has published their studies online, which include statistics on how many women received degrees and also numbers for race/ethnicity. The study Loss of Confidence as a Cause of Field Switching Among Undergraduate Women in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Majors hit pretty close to home: “A recent study shows that many young women bring to their experience of science, mathematics, and engineering (SME) disciplines a pattern of socialization that is entirely different from that of young men.” More women base their self-worth on the judgements of others. They seek approval and depend on teachers for reassurance. Without the external reinforcement, women in the sciences are more likely to feel that they are not performing adequately. I hope the next generation of girls makes progress in the area of self-confidence.

While I was still half asleep, listening to the morning news on the radio, a story about Dan Marino retiring from football morphed in my head into the scary concept of software engineers getting recruited out of college to work in big league startups, working long hours and making millions on stock options, but burning out a few years later with strained wrists and poor vision, and retiring in the prime of their lives. So what if engineers were treated like football or baseball players? Some would be free agents, shopping themselves around to the most alluring companies. Others would be working their way up in the minors, trying to get noticed each year at training camp where they would show off their command of design patterns and the latest web technologies. Then there would be those chained to their companies via stock vesting plans that read just like contracts. But I guess programming isn’t a spectator sport. Surely someone would pay me to endorse their caffeinated beverage or Java debugger. Too bad we don’t get an off season and have a pro bowl in Hawaii every year.

This Zero-Footprint-PC, a complete PC in the space of a keyboard, reminded me of my old Commodore 64. That’s 64…as in 64KB. Of RAM. Gosh those were the days. Of not much RAM. (via Bryan)

While unhappily jostling over a newly dug up and poorly refilled strip of road today, a curse escaped from my usually well-behaved mouth: “someone f%&king; better be getting DSL because of this!!”