Category: General

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Well Happy New Year.

Okay, Okay, I’m late.

Happy New Year.

Here we are in 2026. Big Deal! So What?

I’ve been trying to actively ignore the news. I was doing a pretty good job of it.

Then I went to get a massage in Palm Springs and was listening to the radio on the way out there.

It’s a good thing that I was getting a massage!! I’d hoped that for at least the first few weeks, the world would tone the crazy down. Uhhh, Nope!

The Somali Fraud continues, and is beyond breathtaking.

We’ve captured Venezuela’s president. Some politicians want to call it a war, if so 90 minutes seems very short.

Then a woman interferes with legal operations in MN. According to one side, she tried to run down an ICE officer and he shot her dumb ass in self defense. According to the other side, she was an innocent mother just trying to get home to her children.

Helpful hint… If you don’t follow ICE around harassing them. If you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. If you accidentally turn down a street where ICE is actively trying to do their job, stop… ask an officer for the best way to exit the area and then do as they instruct. Then guess what? You’re probably not going to get shot!

What part of this didn’t this lady understand? 

Then we find out that the officer who shot her had in fact been dragged six months ago, he was hospitalized and got 33 stitches. Perhaps, he was a bit twitchy, but she did gun the engine, and she did in fact hit the guy.

Then people tried saying that he shouldn’t have been standing in front of her vehicle. Okay… Does that same rule apply to protestors standing in front of my car? Can I run their dumb asses down?

OH… by the way officers regularly stand in front of cars. They stop you if there’s something going on that they’re trying to protect you from. They stand in front of cars while their partner is checking your ID if you’re trying to get back to your home in a disaster area.

Guess what? Having your ID ready, presenting it when requested, smiling at the officers then following their directions makes the whole process safe, remarkably fast and efficient. I speak from recent experience having just dealt with it after the mudslides near my home.

It seems that a substantial portion of people in this country don’t know the basic rules. During the restricted access to my neighborhood I sat behind a moron who was arguing with CHP for a good 10 minutes demanding access to a disaster area when he didn’t live here and refused to provide ID. He ran the checkpoint! 

When the officers waved me forward, I asked the officer checking ID if his partner was okay. I couldn’t tell if he’d been hit or not. The officer asked his partner who responded with a thumbs up. Then I offered the officer my phone number and the license plate number of the guy in front of me. I’d happily have showed up in court to testify about what I witnessed.

He smiled and thanked me. His radio crackled there were some spoken codes then he laughed saying I wouldn’t need to testify, they’d caught the guy at the first turnout. He reminded me to approach the turnout with caution since the officer there was still dealing with the situation, wished me a happy rest of my day, then waved me through.

I’ll admit that I was grinning as I drove past the turnout. The guy was in handcuffs sitting on the cold wet ground next to his front tire.

I thought to myself, it would have been so much easier if the guy had just turned around as he’d been asked to do in the first place. Then I thought about the hassle it would have been if he’d caused an accident on the only road into town.

I keep asking myself what’s wrong with people.

On Sunday, returning from my 3-4 mile walk. A strange car pulled up beside me asking how to get to the snowy mountain I can see from my house. 

This kind of thing happens all the time. People don’t want to go to the ski resort & put up with other snow players in the designated areas. The guy driving was polite and asked how to get to that mountain. I stopped for a second and my brain kind of rebooted.

I told him, “These roads all dead end. The mountain is at least another 2 miles from where we were standing and you don’t want to go up there in any case because it’s incredibly dangerous this time of year.”

A woman in the passenger seat said “He’s lying.”

My brain rebooted again. I was thinking, “the mountain in question tops out about 8 thousand feet, maybe a little more. It’s very steep and the snow up there is very unstable. But hey, if they want to hike up there, more power to them we’ll collect their bodies and the bodies of their kids, come springtime. I really didn’t give a crap.”

I’d already turned away. I don’t have time for this kind of bullshit.

The guy told her to shut up.

The guy politely called me back. “Where can we go to play in snow?”

I turned back to him, “You can go back down to Highway 2 then through town. About a mile further on, you’ll see a sign for the ski resort on the left. It’s been cold enough at night that they’ve been making snow. There’s a large parking lot and they maintain the place pretty well so nobody gets hurt on rocks.”

The woman was still giving me the stink eye, but he thanked me.

I kept on walking up the mountain. Jesse was impatient to get home.

The last quarter mile, I was thinking, “Why would she assume I was lying, much less say it?” Again I was wondering what the hell is wrong with people? Just a few days ago, that kid fell and died up on Mt Baldy?

ICE is surging in MN and they’re meeting more protests. Today it looks like ICE is being liberal with mace and teargas. I’m good with that.

When I ask, “what’s wrong with people?” It’s not rhetorical. I really do not understand. Am I so different from other people? Do I operate on a completely different set of rules? 

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Flood, Mud, and dead batteries!

My little town has had quite enough!

We had rain, then mudslide through town, then the power went out on Christmas Eve. Power didn’t come back on until Saturday. That’s actually better than we thought it was going to be, the initial estimate was that we weren’t going to see power until Dec 30th.

Friday night, I slept in my sleeping bag on the couch. That allowed me to close off all the house and conserve limited heat from the fireplace. Even so, when I woke up it was cold enough that I could see my breath.

This experience has taught me more about dealing with disasters. One primary thing I learned was, while I may romanticize about simpler times and life. I’m not willing to give up electricity!

I was using solar power to keep my phone, and only my phone charged to about 20%. It was at this point that news broke on the national stage that my town was in the midst of everything except a plague of locusts. That meant my family members started calling.

I’m sure that I offended some of them with my curt responses. But sometimes members of my family simply don’t listen. When I say, “I can’t talk for long I’m running on almost no power to my phone,” I really mean it!

Not that my needs, desires, or wants being ignored is a surprise. Many of the family still treat me like I’m 16. I’m sure their view is something like, “He’s a child, what could he know…” Except that I’m well over 60 years old and have lived more of my life without them, than I did with them.

Then after the initial problems were resolved. I got in my car to go to the grocery store after having everything thaw out, and begin to spoil. I was greeted with a message on my car that said: Battery depleted Start Engine.

Odd, sure enough it started. I took the long way around to the grocery store. I had to so that I could avoid the washed out roads. When I got to the store, I got another message: Some Electrical accessories have been disabled.

This was  the car’s way of telling me that the battery was shot. Oh great!

Another expense that I really don’t need. These days the battery my beast requires is expensive. Plus it needs to be replaced by a qualified mechanic. They apparently have to reset all kinds of sensors and other portions of the computer just to replace a battery.

What happened to going to Auto Zone and plunking a new battery in your vehicle in the parking lot??? Okay, I do miss some of the simpler ways of doing things.

So here I sit at the deanship awaiting my car and the inevitable bill. On the plus side, I put the car on a trickle charger last night so this morning it started and brought me reliably to the dealer.

While typing this, I got a message saying that everything mechanically looked good and that the battery had been replaced. The mechanic is taking it out for a test drive.

So it doesn’t look like too much of my day is likely to be chewed up.

My bank account on the other hand may be a different story.

 

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I’m at that point in the year when I want to yell at the top of my lungs…

Shut The Hell UP, and act like human beings!

Just for a week or so, please. Let us all have some peace & quiet.

That goes for everyone in politics, the news, social media, and everything else.

Can’t we just stop?

I don’t give a crap about the Epstein files at this point. There’s no way in hell anyone from the political arena will ever be called to account. Bill Clinton could literally be spit roasting Joe Biden with Hunter Biden and nothing, would be said. Likewise Nancy Pelosi could be naked in a photo on Epstein Island holding a 12 year old down while Paul Pelosi had his way. No one would say a damn thing, hell the DNC / RNC spin machines are standing by ready to claim whatever comes out, about whoever, is faked AI shit.

Rob & Michelle Reiner’s murder, apparently by their own Son, horrific as it was, is being framed as some drug reaction their son had due to an alteration of his schizophrenic medications. It should be noted that the son was in & out of rehab something like 17 times. They were at a party the night before the murders where some kind of family altercation was ongoing and other guests wanted to call the police. I question why he was at a party where in all likelihood there were guests that had some kind of illicit drugs? That seems like a really bad idea.

Trump was super low class in his comments about the Reiner’s murder. There’d been a long standing feud between Reiner and Trump. However that does not excuse Trump’s comment nor does that knowledge assuage my disappointment in Trump.

That being said, I don’t need the media clutching their pearls and wringing their hands over Trump’s mean words. Especially when many of those same media folks were practically giddy when Trump was shot at, or who essentially said Charlie Kirk, was asking for it, or deserved it.

I don’t much care that Trump is seizing oil tankers, I don’t care that ICE is deporting illegals, and I especially don’t care that Trump is blowing up drug boats with one, or a second shot.

I don’t want to hear anymore shit out of Jasmine Crockett, Joy Reid, or Whoopie Goldberg’s foul mouth. I’m sick of everything being about racism.

I have no desire to hear about another Islamic asshole telling anyone that Christmas trees aren’t permitted, or interrupting a street musician for playing an instrument to make people smile because it’s forbidden in Islam, or that dogs are haram. I don’t want to concern myself with the religion of Islam. I don’t care. I have enough trouble with my own religion and beliefs.

Don’t get me started on the Transgender bullshit. For me, it’s really simple. If you won’t let a child drink, get a tattoo, or have sex, because they’re too young to know what they want… Then obviously, they’re too young to know that they want to engage in a sex change either.

So for all these reasons (and more), I’m going to turn down the noise and simply not be online or watch the news for the next couple of weeks. During my shutdown, If you’re my friend you know how to reach me.

If after the first of the year I’m uninformed, I beg your pardon.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, or Happy Hanukkah whichever is appropriate.

Have a peaceful joyous holiday.

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I’ll give them credit, I still think they’re Indian Scammers.

A while back, I responded to a want ad on one of the job search sites.

Within a couple of days, I got an email from a company called Ace IT.

This company is peopled with nothing but Indians and probably owned by Indians as far as I can tell. It’s located in Austin, TX and after much back and forth, several “pre interviews” and their highly unprofessional cancellation of one of their “evaluations”. They finally got round to admitting that the position I’d applied for didn’t actually exist, but for an undefined “Fee” or fees they would accept me into their training after which I’d be sure to get a job, and they’d help…

In other words they wasted a ton of time trying to lure me into plunking out a bunch of cash to them buying “Training” then would in all likelihood not come through with any real position.

Based on my experience with them, I concluded they were a scam and disengaged.

Jump forward 4 months and they call again. They’re routed to voice mail and within seconds of them leaving a voice mail, there’s an email about the Software Quality Assurance position I “recently” applied for.

The email was addressed to “undisclosed recipients” 

Uh huh… 

The sender was a different person but the game was the same. In the intervening time, I have very specifically avoided anything to do with Ace IT so as not to waste my time.

Later in the day, I got another phone call that went to voice mail from yet another person, followed by the exact same email with a new sender’s name. Again the email was addressed to “undisclosed recipients”.

I was mildly annoyed, and again wondered if I should write a letter to the Attorney General of Texas to report these apparent scam artists.

While pondering what I would put in such a letter, I wondered if this sudden resurgence of Ace IT was due to more or less recent moves within the federal government. Specifically those moves concerning H1B visas.

Then my annoyance turned to a big smile.

Staffing firms have in recent years become overwhelmingly Indian, even those that were known for decades in my industry as being useful and reliable.

I haven’t spoken to a native English speaker at any recruitment firm for at least a decade.

Aerotek, who for years was my “Goto” staffing firm during the 1980s, ’90’ & 2000’s has been overrun by Indian workers. Back in the day, I had a particular guy at Aerotek that kept me working with pretty continuous contracts. We’d sometimes have lunch or meet for happy hour in Irvine. He’s long since gone and I haven’t spoken with anyone at Aerotek for at least a decade. I stopped dealing with them because they stopped being able to get me in front of hiring managers.

If Ace IT is desperate, and it appears that they are, it may mean that the Trump administration’s stance on H1B visas is having an impact. I love that.

If they’re not going to be able to funnel low wage, low quality H1B people from India into American jobs, they’re going to have to become a real recruiter or they’re going to have to close their doors.

I vote for the latter. I really hate people playing bait & switch. Especially when their game pollutes the actual hiring pool and creates postings for jobs that aren’t real.

I know I’m sounding more nationalistic, but the fact of the matter is these firms are nothing more than obstructions to the real job market. I’d like to see them all investigated for fraud and where applicable deportation or criminal proceedings.

The H1B system has been abused for decades and I’m all for it being completely reworked.

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Who the Hell is Complex Care Solutions?

I’ve found them to be remarkably annoying!

Who they are is a 3rd party vendor that works with many of the major health insurance companies.

They seem to be a bunch of paper pushers, whose job is to arrange things like in-home nurse assessments. Yeah, their name says it all. Complex Care Solutions, indeed adds complexity to your medical care.

In my case they forced me into some bullshit video assessment with a nurse practitioner.

After that one contact. Then they embarked on a campaign of twice weekly phone calls asking for me to review their service, or their nurse practitioner. They said they were gathering information for the insurance company. But I ask “Why?”

Surely that information was provided by my “Doctor” during our appointment, wherein he played on his computer for the entire appointment, but didn’t really examine me as a patient. In truth the entire appointment could have been handled on a video call and honestly the level of actual “care” I got, was about as impersonal or useful as WebMD.

They called again today mid-morning asking when my next Doctor’s appointment is.

Okay… That’s it!

Why do they, a third party, need to know that bit of information?

The insurance company will find out when they’re billed.

I called the insurance provider and asked what this was about. More importantly, I asked if this bullshit was necessary to the continuance of my policy.

Turns out, Complex Care Solutions can be cut right out of the equation. Which I did!

I explained that I was talking to Complex Care Solutions more than I talk to my own family. Every time I spoke with these people it was like I was talking to  my own personal mother hen. There may come a time when I’ll need their services but not today!

A) I’m not keeping my current Doctor
B) I’m actively researching and investigating new Doctors
C) I’d like to keep my private medical information, oh I don’t know… private.
D) They got real quiet when I mentioned privacy and cited HIPPA rules. Which thankfully I know due to previous employment (quarterly training will do that). They haven’t violated HIPPA, but as a patient, I have the ability to exercise at least some control over my personal information and who has access to it.

I may be over-reacting but it’s like they’re trying to rope me into some endless bullshit loop of living my life around the medical profession, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies.

Again… I’m not to that stage of the game.

But there’s another aspect to all of this. It’s billing. 

I said it to the insurance company. “Just because I’m insured, doesn’t mean that I as The Insured should abdicate my responsibility to control costs.”

I don’t need their service or the attendant annoyance or billing from their phone calls. Believe me when I say, for each time they call me, they’re getting paid.

I also mentioned that I was less than pleased with my (Doctor of record) billing the insurance company almost $1000 for that single appointment. That’s obscene especially since the “physical exam” wasn’t in any way physical.

I mean, what happened to the days when the doctor looked at your eyes, ears, throat, felt the glands in your neck, did a cursory exam of your skin, listened to your heart & breathing, in the case of men, had you drop trou examined your naughty bits, maybe did a DRE, ordered up your blood work, asked if there was any concern you had, then took a look, made some suggestions, told you if there was any issue the blood work uncovered he’d call you, then swatted you on the ass and said, “Go Play!”

(Okay, maybe they didn’t swat you on the ass,) but it was personal and when you left the place you at least felt like you’d been seen. Maybe you felt a little violated, but you at least had some reasonable confidence that a professional who’d seen thousands of bodies, had in fact examined you and didn’t see anything glaringly obvious that needed immediate attention.

Personally, I didn’t mind being buck naked in the exam room and didn’t bother with those silly paper gowns or any pretense of modesty. It was the same mindset as being in the gym locker room. Who cared? The Doc was doing his job and that meant he was gonna see ya, all of you, including parts of your body you probably haven’t seen.

Today What passes for an “exam” might as well be done in a freaking board room.

Human bodies are messy, organic, and sometimes downright disgusting. I think that’s why, when I wrote the check for a yearly exam, I didn’t mind the expense.

That Doctor probably didn’t want to see another naked body by the end of the day. But it was his job, and his education gave him the baseline normal to compare against. The fee I paid was exchanging value for time spent & experience.

My favorite Doctor, spent our first appointment asking me about every scar on my body. “How’d you get that? When?” If I showed up with a new scar, he’d ask what that was about and if I’d had appropriate care when it happened.

That’s an intimacy that’s been lost, it was being seen and it felt like he gave a damn about me, the human standing naked in front of him or his nurse. Granted, if his nurse didn’t need to see me completely nude, he’d say something like, “Pull your boxers on, I’m going to need my nurse to…” do whatever needed doing.

Admittedly, I was comfortable putting my life in his hands because we had a relationship that was personal, and not based on how many billing codes he could tic on a form.

I knew he was a “Cookie Monster” with a fondness for home made chocolate chip cookies, well anything chocolate. I knew he performed in the Pagent of the Masters in Laguna Beach. I knew he was an avid bicyclist, and that often he’d bike to work. I knew he took his profession very seriously and when he lost a patient to illness it was personal to him. I knew his first whole name, and if I encountered him outside his office I never introduced him as “Doctor”. He was Tom. Why? Because if anyone knew he was a “Doctor” there were always people that tried to get free medical advice. If we happened to be at a social event I, among others kept an eye on him and would be rude to someone that had him “cornered” talking shop. He was respected, and he took care of a lot of my friends too. The man referred me when necessary, to other doctors that worked on him. If he trusted them, then so could I.

There’s nothing quite so comforting as coming out of anesthesia and seeing “Your Doctor” at the foot of the bed conferring with “The Doctor” that did a procedure on you. I remember snippets of their conversation. “Wow he’s got a mouth on him!”, “Yeah, but he’s a good guy, anything well need to follow up on?”, “Nah, he’s good, you might want to make a note that he’s cranky with this type of anesthesia.”, “Okay, thanks. I’ll hang out for a few minutes to see he comes out of it okay.”, “Hey thanks, I’m going to check on my next patient, we still on for… RIY&#%*^@ this Sunday?”, “huadiry7%$#3”

Then “My Doctor” prying one of my eyes open, “Hey, there you are… They’ve got you on O2, it’s the good stuff so breathe deep. There you go, nice & slow, trust me it’ll help clear your head. Apparently you were searing like a sailor at some point.”

“Muff uhh, probably like a Marine Doc. My friends… all Marines.”

I still remember his chuckle and the warmth of his hand on my forehead telling me to take it easy before I started moving around. 

He was a healer, a man I trusted and no matter what, I knew he’d see me through.

That bond of trust, and confidence is missing these days. The humanity has been bled out of medical care.

Now it’s about how many different Doctors can get their finger in the insurance scam. How much can be billed and that’s dependent on sheer numbers of patients. At the same time the rates keep going up for less time spent with a patient the insurance companies keep jacking their rates, and plugging in more “services” that add nothing but opportunities to bill.

I’ve digressed, but I think it’s really important to remember what the title “Doctor” once meant. The profession was once about humanity, care, respect, and dignity.

When was the last time you felt like baking, individually wrapping, and labeling 2 dozen cookies with ingredients, then delivering them to your Doctor’s office before a holiday?

When was the last time you had your Doctor compliment you on weight loss, increased musculature, quitting smoking, your baking skills, or a custom holiday card made up of a photo you’d taken?

When was the last time you felt you’d been seen?