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I just got word that the marching program at my high school is being eliminated, the board (particularly Shar Giard) didn’t allow comment from any of the Band Parent Association that were present during the vote. The board has regularly voted to give more money to the football team (not they’re ever really contenders though) while constantly shafting the award winning (Centennial is responsible for winning hundreds of awards in the last 30 years for musical performance, including over 18 sweepstakes awards at the Grand Floral Parade).

I’m a product of that marching program. Until I joined the band I was a completely undisciplined wallflower incapable of any real interaction with anyone. Now I’m a successful small business owner, father and husband. If it wasn’t for the tutelage and experience I received being a part of something bigger than my young high school mind could perceive I’d likely have not gone on to anything notable in my life. Curtailing a long running program because a. it’s too expensive and b. the new band director doesn’t like marching activites is idiocy. Why apply for the job if you want to eliminate half of it? Moron. Too expensive? Really? Music is time and time again proven to be better for academics as well as improving future prospects for success.

Here’s the note I received about the board’s decision:

In a very sad turn of events the Centennial School district board voted to shutdown the 2009/10 fall/winter marching program. A large contingent of Band Parent Assc members were present when the board was presented with the recommendation to continue the music program but only march for the rose parade. To our amazement the board pres. Shar Giard would not allow comment from any of our group even though it was clear they were acting on mis-information about the number of students currently participating in marching band and colorguard. They did not give any consideration at all to the members of the colorguard as they are not band students. We have had several meetings with the superintendent and members of the board and have had representation at all their meetings and all along they have been telling us that they are very supportive of the marching band program, that they wanted it to continue.
In case you had not heard we were also in a transition of directors this year, spearheaded in part by the band parents assc. because we wanted to see more dicipline and control of the program. Mr. Dave Mann has served as the director since Bret Cappelluti and with great enthusiam and effort. We applaud him for his time and wish him well in the future.
The position of director was posted and a number of very qualified applications were received. In the end the position was given to Mr. Claud Garrett, the current photography teacher at CHS, who had also applied. The administration said their hands were tied because of union rules and the fact that many teachers were being laid off due to the budget crisis. It seems Mr. Garrett had the right to bump anyone the school might have hired from outside. All that said the fact is that while Mr. Garrett has the credentials to teach music he has no interest in marching band, doesn’t even pretend to like drumcorps. He came to a band parent meeting last week and stated that the decision of whether there would be fall marching was out of his control. But it was very clear that given the choice he would not want to run it.

For all of you alumni I am greatly saddened as I was a parent during years when the CHS Marching Band and Colorguard was at the top of its game. I’m sure as you have chosen to be a member of this group that you too have fond memories of your marching days. It is very sad that there could be no future competitive marching band at Centennial.

I would ask that if you feel moved to do so you either write or call the superintendent, Dr. Mckean and all the current district board members and remind them that this is a program that has a rich history and should be preserved. You can find their contact information at this link..

http://www.centennial.k12.or.us/contacts/contacts_board.php

this group will continue and I invite a discussion on this matter

thank you

Mark Huff
CHS Band Parent Assc Communications Director

To the members of the board: You obviously weren’t members of the band so don’t understand the bond we all share regardless of what years we attended. If you want to kill something to save money why not cut out some of the athletic programs? More kids went through the music program then the athletics programs so it’s obviously a better investment. Regardless of anything the liklihood that I’ll ever donate money to the school again is exactly zero. I experienced how it was spent then and it doesn’t surprise me in the least that once again the band gets the sharp pointy end of the stick.

Oh and Claud Garett, obviously you aren’t qualified for this job in the least no matter what degree you’ve got. The Centennial band deserves someone who will appreciate their history. If you apply for a job do the whole job not just the parts that appeal to you.

In honor of the abject backwards cowardice of the California Supreme Court (and every other court that believes that popular opinion supersedes that pesky constitution (the one that says we’re ALL equal)) I am hereby declaring that I am gay and standing with all of the other oppressed people.

Not opressed you say? Really? So not being able to visit your partner in a hospital without lengthy paperwork ahead of time? Not being able to have all of the same rights as any other couple in love? Seems like oppression to me.

Exactly when did the government have the right to determine who someone loves if they’re both of consenting age? Why is this still an issue in this day an age at all? Doesn’t case law from the 60s establish that discrimination is illegal? Meh it’ll take more than facts, truth and logic to sway the minds of blind stupidity, ignorance and fear.

I strongly endorse the idea of everyone on twitter, facebook, myspace wherever it is that you spend your online social time and be gay for the day, the week, the month. However long it takes for people to wake up and end the all too common standard of discrimination we live in.

Fuck oppression

Fuck discrimination

Fuck religious ideology being forced upon the masses.

The above is how I feel, apparently the courts think otherwise.

I’ll be hashtagging on twitter using #gayfortheday

So I’ve been meaning to write a cookbook for awhile but always seem to have work, distractions or other ideas crop up before the chance. Well that’s slowly changing now. Zoe & I have broken ground on our cookbook and to celebrate I’m sharing the very first recipe in the book with everyone who reads my little blog.

It’s interchangeable as a sugarfree recipe too so read it, try it and enjoy the tastiness below.

So a week and a half ago I woke up in incredible pain. It literally felt like a large truck was parking (or at least attempting to) on the right side of my jaw. Since I’m in the midst of starting my own business I have no insurance coverage (Cobra payment from my old job would have been $1600/month which coincidentally is exactly what my unemployment benefits were) I had no other option but to ask on twitter if there were any good dentists that could take payments (especially since my tax return is coming this week). I got what I thought was a good referral and called. “sure we take payments”. Only problem was: I had a full week to wait for an appointment.

3 days later I couldn’t handle the pain anymore (nothing really helped) so I went to a local dentist who could see me plus give me an xray for $35. The appointment took all of 15 minutes and I left with the knowledge that I had a cracked & impacted wisdom tooth:

Incidentally (heh pun intended) I discovered a dark side to dentistry. Apparently the dentist I originally went to is a “meth dentist”. Meth heads pay a pittance to come in and get a quick prescription for painkillers they can then use OHP/Walmart to get cheap meds to sell. Neato eh? “but they’re only trying to help people”. bah.

Anyhow, I notified the Dentist’s office that I was on unemployment, had no money to spare at all until my tax return came and was told “no problem we can work with that”. Went in for an initial appointment and was told that my top wisdom teeth needed to go as well but shouldn’t be an issue even though there was an added cost. Sadly I wouldn’t be able to get nitrous oxide since the dentist charges so much for nitrous, but no problem again right? If only that were the case.

Today arrives with much excitement as I know my horrifying wisdom tooth of agony +2 will be removed once and for all. I hopped a bus and arrived for my appointment only to be told “If you can’t pay $1500 up front then we can’t help you”. uh what? I was told the payments would be small enough to be manageable. If I had a spare $1500 laying around I’d have dealt with this weeks ago when it first became an issue.

Apparently because I didn’t have enough I’m not worthwhile of “emergency treatment” which is what the dentist told me I needed. Last I checked if it’s an emergency they’re not supposed to turn down patients without the revenue. Shows what I know.

What’s hilarious is if I’d been in Canada, the UK or anyplace with socialized medicine I’d likely have gotten in to see a dentist the day the pain started and then once antibiotics kicked in I’d have the teeth removed no harm no foul. Instead under our awesome capitalism based healthcare system I got to wait a week and a half for no treatment. Last time I checked the GOP morons always say that you wait for socialized healthcare and you never wait for medical care here. How delightfully backwards those cute little republican idiots are.

Funny how you’re only a person anymore if you have money. It’s never been a perfect egalitarian system but years ago you could count on the medical community helping people, now it appears in the day of the HMO that if you have no money you are persona non grata. I think they used to call that the fuedal system.

Ironically I’m pretty sure that this is how my family ended up emigrating from Ireland over to the US originally. They were tired of being peasants that continually got the sharp pointy end of the stick. Happily I learned at a young age to not get mad, but to just get even. This is why I’m going to find a new dentist, one with ethics and more concern for patient care instead of being interested only in money like the asshat I went to this morning.Once I find this new dentist I’m going to do everything in my power to bring him more patients.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go take my goddamned tylenol 3 and hope my jaw stops hurting. Also fuck you George Nowland. I just had to call the 5 people I referred to you and tell them to find a dentist that isn’t a soul soliciting pigfucker.

So it’s been a couple of months since I’ve taken the time to write anything new in this little blog of mine. Laziness? Nope just far far too much has been going on to take anytime at all to sit back and think up the words I usually have no issue spewing forth (isn’t that a great mental image? no…guess it’s just me then). Between parenting, working and trying to stay sane in this crazy world (omg! The inaugration went off without a hitch! Congrats to our intelligent President Obama! Nice to have a leader who can talk again! Plus seeing not one but two (TWO!) competitive drum & bugle corps do the parade was awesome go Colts!)

Anyhow the last bit of 2008 had some very odd ups and downs. Let’s start with the upside though:

• Launched the website for my newest endeavor: Slate Technologies woo. Looks great and was designed by the team over at Duel Designs who do such excellent work that they’re now part of the Slate Technologies team (which is very cool and will help us launch quite a few spectacular projects coming very very soon).
• Started putting more effort into No Filter Fridays, which for those of you who are fans there is now a twitter account called succinctly enough nofilterfriday. Up next on that plate is a weekly podcast with video and some other coolness

On the downside at the end of 2008 was some family drama. Sucks that it had to happen but nice to finally know what type of people some of my relatives are.

Into 2009 we have even more great news!

• I got to have a whole week with my awesome wife Zoe while the boys were off visiting Grandma. It was like a 2nd honeymoon of awesomeness!
• Slate Technologies took just a short 3 months to outgrow Cubespace so we’re moving on down the road to a much bigger place which is good since our team has now grown from 2 of us all the way to 7 of us! Holy crap!?
• We managed to set up a couple of strategic partnerships with a couple of different local startups
• A launch page has been setup for the WordPress Dreamteam site.

Aside from trying to launch multiple products, setup new sites, migrate friend’s websites to better hosting I also found my time even further in demand due to the obligations of being both a “charter member” of the Portland WordPress user group (I’m not entirely sure what a “charter member” does only that it sounds somewhat cool with just a dash of pretentious) as well as being one of the Legion of Tech’s new board members.

In just the last week I’ve managed to juggle a whopping 5 different projects all while attempting to deal with an impacted abcessed wisdom tooth. Finally managed to get into a dentist today and got a prescription for antibiotics & Tylenol 3. Biggest upshot of the dentist appointment was getting to see just how badly impacted my wisdom tooth is. Ow!

I am setting aside some time to post more often (Friday’s between 2 and 3 I will get a post up no matter what) as well as get back to posting less about work and more about the family and I.

Anyhow there’s a nice tasty little update on what the hell I’ve been doing with my time and if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go enjoy some of the painfree time I’m getting to experience after a week of agony :D