I was originally committed to weekly updates, but some may have noticed a lag since my last set of changes. This Friday the 13th I bring bad news: I have been afflicted with a repetitive stress injury in my right hand. This is an occupational hazard for computer programmers and users alike, so I'll share some of what I've learned.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

I caught it early, the pain is minimal, and my hand is steadily recovering. In fact, I don't expect I'll need surgery. However, I'm not taking any chances and have no intention of aggravating the injury or endangering my other hand. The obvious impact is that my development efforts will be delayed until I heal. As it happens, I am between engagements and could quite frankly use some time off. Once better, I intend to return to the project with renewed vigor. To safeguard my career I considered not telling anybody, but I've decided instead to continue my commitment to being honest and open by telling everybody.

In the meantime, I need to address the response from my Congress example, and I'll just have to use my left hand to do it. Everybody liked the application itself, a few wanted more capabilities, and some were able to try it out before voting in the last election. However, the most vocal response was from Republicans who didn't like the slant. I even found this new bylaw for the otherwise pedestrian Computer Society of Western Florida, passed and published November 9th:

What is one person's slant is another person's angle. The selection of votes and their descriptions come from the voting records recorded by Public Citizen's Congress Watch. I happen to value Public Citizen's perspective. They focus on issues in our political and legal system that affect the individual voter or consumer. As a sole proprietor, I take an interest in the common man. While I don't always agree with Public Citizen's commentary or conclusions, I appreciate the fact that somebody is paying attention.

However, I wasn't trying to change history here. I like to build examples with publicly available information, and the database was the perfect size for what I wanted to demonstrate. Modern people aren't easily fooled, most people put up their BS detectors at the mere mention of politics, and the Republican nose is twice as sensitive. From what I gathered, anybody that had strong feelings and actually voted in the example followed their own party lines and were generally unsuprised by the comparisons.

I really just wanted to show the world something engaging. Politics is not my deepest passion, so no hard feelings. It's just a little example. It can even be about something else if you like. As for the members of Congress, George Carlin puts it well:

Our politicians are the product of our culture, so if they are failing us (and I conclude most of them are) it's just a symptom of greater deficiencies. I see a great deal of hatred and intolerance coming from so-called Christian conservatives, but I have a big heart that wants to set a better example by exercising forgiveness. I may even have a little love left at the end of the day for villians like Orrin Hatch and John Ashcroft, but by then I guess I'd only have a few Nazis, Bill Gates, and maybe Judas Iscariot to go.

Happy Holidays!