Ronney Black dot Com

As you may or may not know, I'm a Vietnam era vet.  As such I have been eligible for health care from the Veteran's Administration.  For the last six months or so I have suffered periodic episodes where I have trouble breathing.  Often the episode is coupled with chest pains.  Well I finally got an appointment for a stress test. Actually I had an appointment for last November. But as it happens the appoiintment was the same day that Cuyahoga County held elections, and being a curius sort of guy, I worked the polls as an electronic voting machine technician.  - More about that later. When the lady from the VA called to set the appointment I told her I was unavailable that day and she tooks offense.  Heaven knows why - but she hung up quickly after saying someones else would call me.  Well by March the call never came so I went to the VA and they got me another appointment, rather quickly.  I was really amazed at the assortment of equipment and professionalism of the VA staff.  I was treated courteously, almost everyone was friendly and I guess I passed the test because the doctor smiled and said not to worry.  So here's a hip hip hooray for the VA. They are much better now than they were in the early seventies.

Being a cumputer guy and techie sort, I thought electronic voting would be a good idea.  And it will probably work fine, provided you let the technical peiple rather than the business people have a leading say in the implementations.  Here in Cuyahoga county, the suits decided on the system to purchase, and it was a bad decision.  Much has been written about the Diebold product so I won't say much other than poor design, and poor training.  Maybe that's why Diebold changed the name, I think it's now called Premier Systems.  In any event a name change does not reduce  the suck factor.