Hit this link and sign the petition if you want your voice heard for a “public option” in this round of healthcare reform:

Stand with Dr Dean

This is a great way to make your voice heard.

Via: Torrie over at I Pretty Much Hate Everything. o

Over the next little bit, I want to post about healthcare reform in the United States. Before we start calling names and yelling, I thought it might be super fun to see where readers of blurbomat™ stand:

Thanks for playing and stay tuned. o

Before Marlo was born I taped an episode of Momversation where dads talk about getting the “raw end of the deal” when it comes to parenting. I really enjoyed the conversation and I think that the producers deserve a medal for wading through all of the footage. My videos were close to 20 minutes of yapping. I definitely think they pulled out the best bits.

It was great talking with Danny Evans, Chris Loesch and Marcus Jennings. Great perspectives and conversation, lads! Happy Father’s Day!

So, blurbomat.com readers, do you think dads get the raw end of the deal? o

If you think that the “market” is going to do better than the federal government at administering a health plan, this is a good place to start:

How Bluechoice Carefirst scammed me, and how I beat them | Chasing Mist

Via: A Whole Lotta Nothing. o

Healthcare CEOs Shoot Themselves in the Foot | Mother Jones

Article about hearing where CEOs of healthcare companies display the arrogance that will be their undoing. Even if you pay into their systems for years, they will drop you from the plan using a process called rescission. In plainer terms, it’s called getting screwed by an immoral corporation.

UPDATE: Source article in the LA Times. Best bit:

“It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.”

You can watch the three-plus hour hearing here.

Q: Where’s the “free market” now conservatives?
A: The free market can’t talk right now, it’s buy figuring out ways to no longer offer insurance coverage to the people who need it most.

Broken system. Time for change.

Via: Daring Fireball. o

Not looking so good right now:

Oh Apple, I thought we’d moved past these kinds of things…

I wonder how well all the new push notifications are going to work if they can’t handle the rush of people upgrading software. o

Marlo Iris Armstrong
7lbs 15oz
21 inches
born 1:53am, 6/14/09

Named after a husky voiced actress/author and my favorite aunt. We’ve gone the rounds on naming this kid, but when Heather suggested both these names, I knew pretty quickly that the other options weren’t as good. Sure, I tried, but this little one is definitely gentle and sweet so far.

Yesterday in the hospital we had a lot of visitors, and it reaffirmed our desire to live near our immediate families. My youngest sister grabbed our camera and started taking pictures of everybody. She got some great shots, but my favorite is this one where Leta is meeting her sister for the first time:

And now for the delirium brought on by lack of sleep, adrenaline and absolute beauty. o

Op-Ed Columnist – The Big Hate – NYTimes.com

Krugman is dead on. In the past 10 days, conservative extremist domestic terrorists have killed on U.S. soil. The rhetoric from Beck, Limbaugh etc. is toxic. Conservatives are laughably fringe at this point. There appears to be no such thing as a middle ground or moderate conservative in the U.S. o

Here are three tracks that we released on I Wish I Had a Raygun that we redid for the CD. These were all recorded at the same studio, but we’d beefed up our sound considerably and we pushed the 16-tracks as hard as we could.

Clueless:
Featuring a guitar solo from Lou that is pretty close to what Jeff played on the original. I love the beefed up horns. The tempo is slowed down substantially from the original and I think it’s better as a slower song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Clueless (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

Chevy Bossa Nova:
You can really hear my custom programmed synth sound this time. Plus, Kent had this thingy on his bass that he’d flip and it would drop the low E string down a few steps so he could play the bassline an octave lower. Super awesome. Instead of the ponderous and horrid fake timbale solo, the horns stepped in to add a really nice bridge on this version. I’ve always loved Pat’s playing on this song as well. Something about a lighter touch on the skins… The tempo is noticably slower, which probably cost us at least 30 minutes in studio time with me arguing with Pat and anybody else that this song should be slowed down. We had that argument quite a few times.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Chevy Bossa Nova (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

Baby Babaar:
A more metalized version, particularly at the end. I believe that Merkley sampled the backing vocals from I Wish I Had a Raygun and laid them into this song.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – Baby Babaar (MP3, 320kbps constant)

Compare to original here.

In the weeks of listening to these songs I’ve been struck at how much personality Rod has in his singing. I believe we owed a great deal of our success to his stage presence and persona, particularly as the band got harder. Good lead singers are hard to come by. You want somebody who can put on a show. Rod did that. I’ve given a lot of props to others in these posts, but I should really give the most ups for Rod. He drove from Salt Lake City to Provo three nights a week to rehearse, while working a demanding day job. He and Pat carpooled, but Pat wasn’t working as stressful a day job as Rod and I think Rod paid a particularly personal cost with the band. That is entirely speculation on my part…

More to come over the weekend unless Heather kills me or gives birth.

STILL NO BABY. o

This and about a dozen other tracks on the CD were recorded at the same studio that we did I Wish I Had a Raygun, with Lou the guitarist doing the engineering and Merkley taking primary producing. Others weighed in, but Merkely was there for most every session. I was there for some of the sweetening/mixdown, but I didn’t put anywhere close to the time that Lou and Merkley did into these tracks.

This was written in the spring/summer of 1991 and always reminds me of starting shows. We used this as our intro for awhile. Merkley would introduce us in the fashion of the BYU halftime show announcer, super cheesy and sarcastic. This song was the slow build and then we’d kick into one of the harder, faster songs to whip the crowd into an early frenzy.

I recall playing a summer show at a waterpark in Provo, Utah and this song was the intro. The kids loved it. I’m not sure any of us had seen James Brown perform, but if Rod would have worn a cape and had a cape wrangler, I think this song might have been the ska equivalent.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Direct download: Swim Herschel Swim – Burn Swim Burn – General (MP3, 320kbps constant)

I’ve figured out how to get these tracks sounding good with minimal tweakage. It’s only taken a few weeks. A good mastering tech can take about 2 hours to get a solid master done. At least that’s how it used to be back when I followed and knew about such things. Today, I’m just keeping the audio nerd dilettante alive. o