Obama Nominates Openly Gay Man to Be OPM Director

The article below is from http://www.govexec.com/. The full artilce can be found here.

by Alyssa Rosenberg arosenberg@govexec.com March 3, 2009

President Obama on Tuesday nominated John Berry, currently the director of the National Zoo, to lead the Office of Personnel Management.

"From turning around the National Zoo to fostering a more productive work environment at the Department of the Interior, John Berry has a tremendous record of effective management in key public service roles," Obama said. "I'm confident that he will provide that same leadership at OPM to help ensure that government works for the American people the way it should."

Berry has a long history in federal workforce and management issues. He served as legislative director to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., for 10 years.

Berry is also known as an advocate for gay and lesbian federal employees. According to the Human Rights Campaign, if confirmed, he will be the highest-ranking openly gay official to serve in the executive branch in any administration.

During his time at Interior, Berry worked to create a grievance procedure for employees who experience discrimination because of their sexual orientation, expand relocation benefits and counseling services to the domestic partners of employees, establish a liaison to gay and lesbian workers, and eliminate discriminatory provisions of the National Park Service's law enforcement standards -- including a ban on security clearances for gay and lesbian employees.

Under President Bush, OPM opposed allowing the domestic partners of federal employees to receive health and retirement benefits available to heterosexual married couples. OPM argued in a 2008 congressional hearing that extending partner benefits was too risky because gay and lesbian federal employees might commit fraud to get them.

Leonard Hirsch, international liaison at the Smithsonian Institution and president of Federal GLOBE, which represents gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender government employees, said in a January interview with Government Executive that he thought Berry would reverse OPM's benefits policy.

My New Apple Product -- Running With Blue Shuffle

Yesterday, my friend Archer, from Archer Radio, bought a brand new 24" iMac with the 3.06 GHz processor, 4 gig of ram, and a 1 TB hard drive (TB? Does that mean it has a cough?). Not to be outdone, I also purchased an Apple product yesterday too. Don't be jealous Archer. I bought my fourth iPod Shuffle! In case anyone is keeping score, I lost one of the previous three and the other two got ruined in the washer. This is my first blue one and my first 1 gig. I had always purshased the 2 gigs previously, but since it will just get lost or ruined in the wash soon, I thought the smaller one would be fine.

I was thinking that I could live without a Shuffle and just use my iPhone for a iPod. I quickly learned that wasn't such a good idea. I was running on the treadmill yesterday, listening to my running songs, when my arm got tangled in the headphone and I knocked my iPhone off the top of the treadmill, down onto the belt and then it got thrown to the floor. I jumped off the treadmill and was relieved to find that it still worked. However, when I started running again, the music on the iPhone would suddenly stop and start. It seems to be working OK now, but that was freaking me out. Anyway, I thought running with the iPhone wasn't such a good idea, and went out and got another Shuffle.

My Band's Album Cover

I'm blatantly stealing this from QCast Connection's blog, Digital Meatloaf, who stole it from Idol Eyes and a Dormy, who in turn stole it from Bobby's Blog, who stole it from god knows, but here goes:

What would your own album look like if you were in a band?

Follow the directions below and find out…Here are the rules:

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3. The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

OK... so I cheated a little. I did find these randomly, but not on my first try -- more like my fourth or fifth. So sue me. Interestingly, Homeosis is the transformation of one body part into another. I thought it sounded like a gay Christian rock group. The album title sounds a bit pedophilia-like, especially when paired with that photo. Yuck.