Category: Modern problems

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Another week has gotten behind me

How did that happen?

I guess some of the time was chewed up dealing with trying to find health insurance. What a nightmare!

Transitioning from the Obscenely expensive COBRA Plan to something less obscene isn’t as easy as you’d think it would be.

I can’t imagine what people do. I’ve been quoted as much as 1200 a month.

I’m Healthy!

But due to my age and the fact that I’m actually addressing some of the age related issues, health insurance feels that they need to rape me.

When one of them quoted me $1200 I lost it. I mean really? That’s my house payment! It’s also 600 a month more than COBRA.

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Then theres the HIPAA plan which is supposed to make sure that everyone has access to health insurance. And it does that…. At rates that are more obscene.

Basically I’ve been quoted rates form 202.00 a month to 1200 a month.

How the hell is that reasonable? I’m looking for nothing more than the ability to go to my doctor, keep getting the prescriptions that I need, and have hospital coverage. I see my doctor maybe twice a year and haven’t been in a full on hospital since I was 16.

I’ve had minor outpatient surgery once in the last 4 years and that was to tend to an issue before it became a problem… You know, the way it’s cheaper and easier to replace your brake pads before they destroy your brake drums or rotors on your car. No reason we shouldn’t look at our bodies the same way. Fix minor stuff while it’s minor. Dental care is a prime example. Get the filling… before you need the root canal. It just makes good sense.

I find myself wondering,  is this yet another situation where my having been a responsible individual is screwing me? 

Because I’ve taken care of myself and work at remaining healthy, am I paying the price for all those people who haven’t? 

I can’t even explain how frustrating this is. 

Ironically, the most expensive of the insurance options is the HIPAA plan. HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

In what reality can someone coming off of COBRA possibly still unemployed, or returning to the workforce in a part time position or to a company that  doesn’t provide group insurance afford 700 – 1200 a month in health insurance?

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COBRA and HIPAA are the two main reasons that I question the efficacy of the Obama Care plan.

Both of these “services” are made available and administered due to government intervention and regulation.

Yet they are without question the most expensive options. It’s a pretty funny racket too. Before you’re eligible for HIPAA you have to exhaust your COBRA benefits. After exhausting your COBRA benefits then you get to pay higher rates to maintain a  HIPAA plan.

It doesn’t make any sense at all since our politicians run around wringing their hands about how “Our Children” don’t get the care they’re supposed to.

Those same politicians seek to criminalize the lack of health care insurance but at the same time they do nothing to reduce the cost of the government mandated plans. 

Better questions are why does health insurance cost so much? What is driving that cost?

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Why can I go see a doctor pay cash for his services and pay less than the negotiated insurance rate? Why do doctors and hospitals always charge the maximum negotiated rate to Insurance providers?

Is it really all about the administration costs that doctors incur, while insurance companies screw around trying to deny claims?

If that’s the case then the problem isn’t the cost of services being rendered. The problem is that the patients, AKA consumers are caught in the middle.

Perhaps the solution isn’t a 16 trillion dollar health care plan that just stokes the fire allowing more and more abuses driving the cost of even basic services up. Perhaps the solution is to terminate all health care insurance.

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We’ve seen what happens when an artificially inflated price for goods or services collapses. It was called the housing bubble. Maybe it’s time for a similar “correction” to happen in healthcare and health insurance.

I can tell you that if my only choice is a 1200 a month health care policy, the insurance companies can put it where the sun don’t shine.

I’ll go without insurance pay straight up for my doctor, and the prescriptions I need and if it comes to me being hospitalized I’m guess I’m going to die.

After all I’m just a useless, misogynistic, testosterone poisoned, moronic, dumbshit, racist, republican, gun totin, white man, who’s responsible for the oppression of all the other races, global warming, inflation, and who deserves to die horribly.

Isn’t that the Über Liberal party line? Did I get it right?

If Obama wants to criminalize me for not having medical insurance… well he can come and arrest me. 

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At least then, I’ll have 3 hots & a cot… ohhh and state supplied health care.

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Enough Already — Updated —

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I hope it’s not just me.

I’m beginning to think we’re over stimulated. 

Watch young people, go to a Starbucks. There’s a constant din of chirps, beeps, buzzes, and squeaks as the people in the room drink their coffee say one or two sentences to their companion then turn all their attention to responding to the never ending text messages.

I’ve lately found myself annoyed at people in my house interrupting a conversation dealing with where we were going to dinner to answer texts.

After a few minutes of being ignored… I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, went to the table and began eating. I was 3/4 of the way through the sandwich before my visitor realized I was eating.

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Then they got upset with me because I’d ruined our dinner plans. I pointed out that they’d been texting for 45 minutes solid and hadn’t said a word to me during that time. I was hungry and now had no need to go to dinner. They left in a huff, I still feel justified in my actions. 

I mean I was physically in their presence but I took a back seat to someone else who was god knows where.

There are just way too many distractions!

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I even do my best to avoid gas stations with those damn video loops playing on top of the gas pump. As an aside I hate playing 50 questions with the pump too.

It’s like I’m being assaulted. The video is playing music and talking at me, the gas pump is beeping and booping asking questions, do you want a car wash? do you want a receipt, check out our drink selection inside, please enter your zip code, you qualify for a discounted car wash are you sure you don’t want a car wash, please select the grade of fuel. 

I just want to get the hell away from the noise and confusion. Maybe it’s because I’m an adult with ADD… it’s like there’s too damn much input!

I just want to put gas in my car and get going.

This summer while I was driving to Denver, I noticed that once I got out of California the gas stations calmed down. So perhaps this craziness at the pump is only a California thing. I really do hope so.

I feel the same way about reading news on the internet.

I hate clicking on a news article and beginning to read then having loud music or a voice blathering at me about some product or service. Lately it seems to be getting worse. 

I’m reading the article precisely because I don’t want to hear commercials screeching at me over my morning coffee. I like silence in the morning… I like to read the news and come to my own conclusion about a subject after reading several articles from different sources.

Aside from an increasing number of articles being so poorly written I can’t imagine how they made it past an editor, now I’m having to listen to commercials followed by a talking head describing the article I’m reading.

I’ve actually started keeping the sound muted on my computer. I can’t even imagine trying to take a break and read a news article at work. 

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I’m also driving with my navigation system off.

If the car needs to tell me something it can turn on the display, but normally I’m just choosing to be un-assaulted by yet another information display. I really prefer to notice the scenery i’m passing at 90 MPH while trying to not be run over by an asshole in a Mexican 18 wheeler.

Lets turn down the noise.

Really, try turning off the TV, and the tablet, and the computer and the text message notifications.

You’d be surprised how wonderful silence is. 

I play a game sometimes, I’ll simply leave my cell phone in quiet mode on the nightstand. I’ve done this for days at a time.

Folks get a little weird after just a few hours of no responses from me.  I suppose it’s because  they’ve gotten so used to the digital interactions they’re demanding an instant response to whatever they’ve sent me.

They’re content if that response is nothing more than an emoticon. I’ve often thought I should create an autoresponder that picked a random smiley or LOL. I wonder if that would work? I wonder if there’s a app for that?

When I decide to pay attention to my phone again I’ll get messages from people telling me my phone sucks, or that I really shouldn’t ignore texts.

I ask why not? 25 years ago cell phones weren’t all that common. People got along just fine leaving a message on my answering machine and I got back to them when I felt like it.

If you want to register your opinion about the assault at the pump you can send an email to the contacts here

http://www.outcast.net/fuel/

Cynopsis

Also brought to you by these people is this…

I’m not sure if it’s a marketing ploy or simply a demonstration of poor editing.

The word is synopsis.

I suppose I could see it if the misspelling saved a number of characters but in this case, it just looks like someone couldn’t spell.

It’s like that annoying spelling of fat. Phat doesn’t get you anything except to identify your ethnicity, musical choices and education level. On top of that you’ve turned a 3 letter word into a 4 letter word, what’s the point?

The only way I’ve found to register my displeasure about instant play videos on webpages is go to the source of the video and send a complaint.

I guess I’m old school. I think what happens on my computer should always be under my control. That includes videos or music playing. If I didn’t press play… then keep that crap to yourself.

I’ve actually gone to blogs, then closed the browser window when music started playing. I went to the blog to read what the person had to say, not to listen to their John Denver albums.

That goes double for going to a massage schools website and being blown out of my chair by Ravi Shankar at a volume that could be heard in a neighboring star system.

I like most of Ravis work but I don’t like anything at that volume, especially when I can’t make it shut the hell up!

We seem to have forgotten that we own the technology, the technology shouldn’t and doesn’t own us. 

I love technology. But I’m finding that I’m less and less interested in it running my life, or destroying the silence of my day.

UPDATE

Within hours of my posting this, I was confronted with another element of the over-stimulation and the demands for instant responses. I was on the phone taking care of some business. Another call came in, without interrupting the phone conversation I was having, I sent the new phone call to voice mail.

Within a second there was another call from the same phone number. Once again I sent the incoming call to voicemail. Two seconds later the persistent caller was calling again!

I excused myself from the conversation I was having, explaining that I had someone who was desperately trying to reach me and asked to interrupt my conversation for a few moments. Fortunately, they understood and said they’d hold. 

 I answered the persistent caller and honestly I wasn’t exactly polite. I hate people who won’t be patient, wait their turn and leave a fucking message!

It was an unknown headhunter.

They start the conversation with “Hi, are you busy?”

I responded, “Yes… which is why your were sent to voicemail Twice! I’m on another phone call.”

“Oh… well I calling to find out if you’d be interested in a temporary contract position.”

“Yes, however as I’ve said I’m on another call right at the moment. Did you leave a voice mail?”

“Uhhh I think so” <— LIE!!!

“Could you please send me an email regarding the position, I’ll review it and call you back.”

“Sure” <—LIE!

“Fine then I’ll review the information and call you back, Good bye…”

Then I returned to my previous phone call. I have yet to receive an email, this headhunter didn’t leave a voicemail and I’ve pretty much decided to blacklist them in my email and phone.

This guy didn’t even apologize for his annoying behavior. 

WTF?

I don’t want to be represented by a company who doesn’t even understand basic courtesy. If they make a prospective employer angry because they’re discourteous, my chances of employment are nill.

Politeness and professionalism still count a lot with me.

I guess I’m showing my age.

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Patience has paid off.

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After many days of tweaking and patiently letting my computer do whatever the hell it needed to do, I now have an alternate backup.

Not only do I have an alternate backup, It’s working very nicely and for the time being all is peaceful in computer land here.

Getting the backup took days (Still scratching my head over that one…) But now the incrementals are quick, efficient, and on a par with the TimeCapsule. Even though they’re being made on a Western Digital NAS

I’m over the hassle for the time being. I’ll probably do something like put the Time Capsule into maintenance mode when I’ve got nothing better to do. For the time being I’m just going to take a breather. None of the other computers backing up on the TimeCapsule seem to be having problems. I can only assume the problem I was having is some kind of corruption in the backup for my machine alone.

I can’t stress how much everyone needs to have a backup of their computers or at least their data. That is one thing I can say Apple has done mostly right, The Apple backup system in it’s various iterations has saved my behind on a number of occasions. 

Were it not for the automated system I can’t tell you how many times I’d have been lamenting over losing all the stuff on various computers.

Whatever you do to back your system up, be consistent about it.

DAMN! 

As I was sitting here typing I pondered the question about why the WD drive was so slow. It occurred to me that I have several really fast ethernet ports on the back of my TimeCapsule. Those ports while nice, had never really mattered all that much because the rest of the devices in the network are incapable of capitalizing on their speed.

I wondered what speed if the WD drive? Sure enough, it can capitalize on the additional speed so I took a break from writing this blog and did a little reconfiguration. Now time will tell if I notice the different in access speed. 

When I plugged the WD in a year or so ago after the Buffalo drive died I just used the same port and really didn’t think about it. I was so focused on saving what data I could save I just wanted a drive that was online. In retrospect I probably should have given a little more thought to the situation.

Yet another time when I’m doing the Homer Simpson “D’OH”

Now before my non technical readers start bleeding from their eyes I’m going to change the subject.

OK I’m going to break yet another taboo… Gun Control!!!

I don’t know how many of you watch Piers Morgan… ( I don’t as a rule, I think he’s a pompous ass and wish that CNN would just shut him down.)

However, poor Piers has really been taking it on the nose the past few weeks.

Most recently he was pretty much outclassed, out thought, and out maneuvered by a young Attorney, Author, and supporter of the 2nd amendment named Ben Shapiro.

 You can view the interview here 

http://youtu.be/hJ8jcsaDK1k

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ8jcsaDK1k]

I like what Mr Shapiro has to say. He’s asking for a logical description of gun control. His point that relatively few murders are committed with AR type weapons is interesting and that if you’re going to ban weapons to be consistent you really should ban handguns. They are, after all used far more often in crimes of violence than assault weapons.

It’s an interesting point and In general I agree with him.

However I believe that banning handguns in this country is a lost cause. Therefore President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the congress are choosing a weapon to “Ban” as nothing more than simple theater.

It’s a way for the government to look like they care, and they’re doing something.

They may get assault weapons banned. Then what? 

Automatic pistols are sold in California with 10 round magazines

Depending on how good a shot you are that single magazine represents 10 people dead. I’ve posted previously that the people most likely to carry out the kind of insane crimes we’ve seen in recent history are planners. They think long and hard about what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, and they practice.

Remember Anders Breivik in Oslo? There’s evidence suggesting that he tested his bombs on a farm outside the city limits, prior to his rampage in 2011. 

Given the proposition that these people practice their murderous plans beforehand, nothing short of a complete ban on all weapons is going to stop the violence.

But then do you really think the violence will stop?

Even if by some feat of draconian socialist government control you manage to remove all firearms from this country. If someone wants to kill another person or multiple people… explosives, incendiary  devices, bows and arrows will do the same job just fine.

So are you going to outlaw gasoline? How about basic chemistry? Gunpowder is a really simple compound to make. I’ll grant you, it wouldn’t be high yield, but the Chinese were using gunpowder in explosives 1000 years ago. And the basic recipe can be found in a StarTrek episode.

Oh wait… One of the oldest human traditions is the good old fashioned club, There goes baseball bats and forget about Cricket bats. OH wait I guess we’ll need to cut down all the trees.

My point is this, a reasonably intelligent NUTJOB who wants to make a statement, or commit suicide by cop will find a way to express their violence or make their point.

The sad part is that a lot of these people are reasonably intelligent.

They may be crazy but they’re not stupid, unlike our politicians and TV pundits.

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I’m beat to the bone!

I’ve picked up what I suppose is a cold. Whatever it is… It’s really unwelcome right now.

Last night I think I slept a maximum of 2 hours at a shot.

Today, I got my first cup of coffee then got the bright idea to kick it at a Starbucks before I had to get to my class.

WTF???

It used to be that you could find a Starbucks on every freaking street corner in Orange County.

Now it was like Where the fuck is Waldo?

I found one that was really close to where I need to be, and the parking lot was full of cars… most of them in the drive ways. It was a drive through and the drive through was so poorly designed that if you had scored a parking place to actually go inside, you’d never get the hell out.

It was like the Hotel California of Starbucks.

I figured no problem I’d just drive to the next one. That one was inside a Ralphs and I the those, they’re not what I pay top dollar for in my coffee. I want to sit, relax, and enjoy the ambiance.

NOT listen to PRICE CHECK ON AISLE 6

So with certain trepidation I tried the Starbucks application on my phone. After locking up my phone requiring that I pull the battery to regain control. I asked the GPS in the car.

Wrong! The data is terrible and after the car taking me to one Starbucks that was closed and after that the GPS in the car started taking me to any coffee shop instead of what I asked it for.

SO I’m heading out to class from a parking lot in Tustin and I never did get my cafe mocha.

I feel a lot like the  Bruce Willis Hudson Hawk The poor man had to rob the Vatican and the Louvre just to be able to sit down for a Latte.

I’m actually in a pretty good mood… I just thought I’d share modern problems… 

I hope that your day is a winner.

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The Current Plan

NewImagePhase one of the current plan begins on Monday. As with all plans it’s subject to change without notice…

Monday I start class to become a Bartender.

This isn’t a lightly chosen direction. I sure as heck won’t make the kind of money I was making. On the plus side I probably won’t have the kinds of headaches that I once had.

According to the technology industry and especially according  those little 25 year old fuckers just out of college my skills are 5 years out of date. Thank YOU aerospace!

After all, we no longer use Binary… oh yeah that’s right we still use binary.

Well we no longer use Hard drives… wait… yep we still use them.

Well there are no servers anymore it’s the cloud… oh wait…

Clearly we don’t use displays, or ethernet, or the conventional model for networking. We certainly don’t use IP addresses or HTML, XML, Windows, Microsoft office, or bug reporting software of whatever stripe.

Oh yes that’s right we DO still use all those things! 

Well automation software has radically changed… after all no-one uses QTP, Loadrunner, Quality Center, or any of the Mercury interactive tools anymore. True… They’re all HP tools now because HP purchased Mercury interactive.

Oh well nonetheless, My skills and abilities are out of date.  I’m hopelessly old and outdated. I’m clearly too old  to be able to catch up or refresh my skills.

Well you little fuckers… when the house of cards comes falling down around your heads… and it will… don’t call me or my friends to fix it for you.

You’re on your own… And one day… you’ll be right where I am and If I’m still around, I’m going to laugh my ass off.

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Meanwhile MY plan calls for me to move into a career that lends itself to my pseudo-retirement.

Step one – immediate income. 

Step two – develop multiple streams of income. (This step involves writing, & photography. Perhaps it will involve becoming a life coach, and possibly a massage therapist. These options are still being fleshed out based on time required and costs.)

Step three – become a SCUBA instructor.

Step four – combine SCUBA, and one or more of the other streams of income into a nice retirement that involves me being on a warm sunny coast with a turquoise ocean and a regular flow of tourists. 

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I’m thinking about an island life, with island time, and little if any of the rat race.

That’s the dream… well,  I suppose it’s the goal.

When I check out. I want to remember a beautiful sunset, the smell of the sea, and warm tropical breeze. Maybe a seagull cawing in the distance.

So while I’m still kinda pissed off about the way the technology industry has gone for me, I’m not nearly as pissed off as I was, with each step toward a future that I’m in control of I’m less angry. 

I’ve got a plan and If at some point I’m working for a resort and they choose to pay me for my knowledge of technology I’ll gladly whore myself out for a few thousand bucks.

Overall, I see my days being a lot more relaxed.

I see myself bar tending and people watching. Then I see myself using those observations to color and bring realism to my characters. I see my near future self leading a less stressful life where I’m not worried all the time about being laid off and what thats going to do to my retirement plan. 

I think I’ll be able to travel a little more easily, instead of hearing the bullshit line, “Well business needs have to take priority, I’m sorry but you can’t go on vacation this year.”

I’m looking at these changes as building a somewhat recession proof income.

After all even in crappy times People drink.

I’d considered the sex industry. I’m a little past my expiration date.

I may yet run a couple of solo videos up on Xtube just to test the market…