spugbrap’s blog

For the most part, I’ve been ignoring the barrage of radio and TV commercials for Obama and McCain that have been coming with increasing frequency as we get closer to election day. They’re almost always 90% focused on bashing the opponent, and every time I listen to one of these ads it makes me dislike BOTH candidates more, because I hear bad things about one of them and I get annoyed at the other for mudslinging.

This morning, on the way to work, I heard an ad for each candidate in the course of about 5 minutes. I actually paid attention this time, because there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was a discrepancy between ads I’d recently heard from both of them.

Sure enough:

- Obama’s ad said that McCain’s plan will cause 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

- McCain’s ad said that Obama’s plan will cause 50 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

Going by the “lesser of two evils” approach, it seems like I should vote for McCain, because 30 million fewer Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. That’s a significant number, representing roughly 10% of the U.S. population!

However, I’ll still feel guilty for being somewhat responsible for that unfortunate 20 million Americans that will lose their coverage under McCain’s plan (around 6.7% of the U.S. population).

I’ve created some 10×10 grids to graphically represent the number of Americans without health insurance as of 2007 (about 15%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), and the numbers if McCain and Obama are both giving realistic estimates (highly unlikely) in their ads attacking each other’s health care reform plans.

The shaded regions in the grids indicate the number of Americans without health insurance in each of these cases.

15% without health insurance in 2007	22% without health insurance under McCain’s plan	32% without health insurance under Obama’s plan

Aren’t infographics fun? Ideally, there would be no shaded regions, or a candidate would offer a health care reform plan that would result in fewer shaded regions (i.e. fewer uninsured Americans).

So, how many Americans are you going to help screw out of health insurance in this election? I’d love to hear what you think about these numbers, about my infographics, or anything else you might want to share with regard to the 2008 presidential election!

I had to go to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last week, for the first time in several years. Their web site is very useful and usable, so I’ve done most of my DMV transactions online in recent years. Things like vehicle registration renewal, change of address, driver’s license renewal, etc. only take a few minutes on the website.

Apparently every other 5-year driver’s license renewal cycle, you have to get a vision screening, though, so you have to go in to a physical DMV location. This year was one of those years, for me.

Before going in, I looked up my local DMV location (Manassas) on their Office Locations page, to see how long the wait time would be. The site shows realtime stats for your closest location and two or three other nearby locations. At 11:41am, the site said 9 minutes and 12 seconds, which seemed reasonable enough.

So, I headed down there. The wait ended up being a bit longer than that–35 minutes or so to get called to a window (just the first of 3 things I had to wait for).

When I got to the window, I had to take my vision test, and apparently I did not understand how to use the simple device they use to perform that:

I was supposed to put my forehead on the pad, look into the machine, and read the first line of letters. But I could not find a “line of letters”! Not a first one, not a second one, none.

I could see a tiny ‘F’, and what I believe was a tiny ‘B’ or something, but depending on how I looked at it, the B was sometimes below the ‘F’, sometimes to the right, and sometimes below and to the right. In any case, these definitely did not constitute a “line of letters”, and I could barely see them.

I tried numerous times to step back, re-set my forehead on the pad, and look into the device, but I kept seeing the same thing. This went on for a minute or two, and I was freaking out by this time, thinking I was going to be unable to renew my license because the machine says I’m blind.

I asked if I could try a vision test machine at a different window, but she said this one should be working. She tried looking into it, to make sure, and she somehow saw lines of letters. She suggested I read the second line instead of the first. I maintained that I could not see any lines of letters, let alone a “first” or “second” line.

Eventually, I bent down and looked into it from a different angle (I looked upwards instead of straight down the barrel of the machine), and saw a whole chart full of large, clear letters. I read the first line, with no trouble at all, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

In hindsight, it might have helped if she (or I) had angled the machine upwards towards me, since the thing that finally worked for me was bending down AND looking upwards. Not once did she suggest changing the orientation of the machine to fit me, though, and I didn’t know if/how much they actually move, so I never thought to ask.

After the vision test, I paid the renewal fee, then sat down and waited to have a new picture taken. I didn’t ask to get a new picture taken–I kind of liked my old picture. It’s from 8-9 years ago, when my hair was the longest it’s ever been. It was a conversation piece, if nothing else. Here it is, feel free to point and laugh and call me a dirty hippie (notice the Phish t-shirt, too)! I’ll post the new picture eventually, whenever I have a reason to scan my new license.

It was about a 10 minute wait to get my picture taken, then another 5 minutes waiting for the new license to be printed. So, all told about 50 minutes of waiting. I’m glad I won’t have to do that again for 10 years.

After I got home, I checked the website again, expecting to see much higher wait times (since I’d just experienced them first-hand). The site did show a longer average wait time: 17 minutes and 32 seconds, but that’s still way less than what I actually sat through.

Summary:

There are 2 main points I hope that I’ve conveyed with this blog entry:

1. Although the real-time average wait time information on the Virginia DMV website seems pretty cool, and may be useful as a *very* rough indication of how busy they are, there is a huge margin of error. I don’t know what exactly they’re averaging to come up with those numbers, but my actual wait time was at least 3 times as long as the website showed.
2. When looking into the vision screening device, look upwards a little bit, rather than straight down the barrel of the machine. Otherwise, you’ll look like a moron, and waste time, which means longer wait times for everyone else.