Random Ideas, Comments & Thoughts, Sometimes Political, Sometimes Adult… Hope you don't choke.
It’s going to be a hot one here.
I had planned to keep doing chores around the house. And that’s likely, but I don’t think I’m going to do anything too strenuous.
Was up & down a little too much on a ladder yesterday and one of my knees is pitching a nasty fit this morning.
So… It’s a national holiday.
I’m taking it! 😁
I might even BBQ!
So, after many years of not having health insurance I finally dropped the hammer, and filled out the application.
I got the card from them. I went on their website to finish the registration and that was annoying but not overly enraging.
Mind you, I’ll not be taking my BP anytime soon!
I get that there’s all kinds of notices, acknowledgments, agreements, and stuff. But Damn!
On these websites, it’s the little things. They’ll tell you to enter a number, but provide no clue about how that number should be formatted, inevitability your entry is somehow wrong, then you try to fix it and they erase the whole field. Just FYI, I entered the number including the spaces and dashes exactly as they’d printed it on their little card.
It’s those kinds of things that make websites frustrating.
Another classic is they wanted a phone number. Okay, My computer helpfully pasted the phone number in as (NNN) NNN-NNNN. The website corrected this to NNN-NNN-NNNN. Great! That’s what I’d expect.
What I didn’t expect was the website, after correcting the number to their preferred format, wouldn’t accept the corrected number, with the changes they’d made. I had to blank out the field and enter number again. This time in their preferred format from the get go.
Sigh…
This is what comes from exclusively automated testing. This is why a human being on the keyboard working with the web page is important. Automation is freaking great to catch regressions, but it rarely catches things like this because of the inherent bias of the preprogramed input dataset.
Anyhoo, I fought through that mess and it’s really obvious that there are different groups working on different parts of the programming. Some parts of the site correct and accept normal deviations. Other parts correct but don’t accept the same normal deviations.
This too is why a real person sits down with the program and looks at not only the function of the programming, but also at how the various parts of the site integrate with each other.
Not that many corporations seem to care about user functionality/experience these days.
Then I spent time with their mobile application. My blood pressure increased! However, it appears I got it linked to the web application properly. At least I’m seeing the same data in both places.
Since I was sitting here with all the health shit already out, I decided to change pharmacies. My local Rite Aid pharmacy will close mid July. There is as yet no information if the building will be sold, and a new pharmacy will open in its place. The rest of the Rite Aid, the retail portion will close mid August. I guess they can’t reveal any information about what’s going to happen to the building until then.
So I signed up with Walgreens. Their site kept trying to send me to North Victorville, bypassing 3 locations in Hesperia, and another 2 locations nearer to my house. However, the really convenient location for me is next to the Costco down in Fontana, near the bank, and the grocery store.
I rarely go to Victorville, and NEVER go to North Victorville because it’s not near anything or anyplace I do business.
The Walgreens site (AND Their Application) was equally annoying with clearing fields, rejecting passwords, (because they don’t like dashes or spaces. And when it came time to enter the prescription information they wanted a photo of the RX from the bottle. Trouble is, the text on the photo was unreadable because the bottle is a 90 day supply and their photo controls wouldn’t allow me to focus on the important bits of the label. Their “AI” was apparently looking for an object and didn’t care if the labeling on the object was readable or not.
Again… This is why you have a real person interacting with the application / web site.
I’ll wait for them to call me… Or If I don’t hear anything from them in a few days, I’ll fill out the transfer form on their website since that’s text only.
Then just to top off the list of annoyances, I ran into my neighbor at the gas station and he was asking why a roll of 5 Zyn packages went up $10 between last week and today. The clerk (who’s just above drooling on herself,) said the special had ended. My neighbor wasn’t happy and pointed out that the price behind her for the product was posted $10 less than she’d just tried to charge him.
The mouth breather shrugged her shoulders and called the manager at home. After a lot of “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, and saying, he can see the old price behind me, then uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,” she hung up. My neighbor said “Well?” As she looked at him with cow eyes highlighting her mental deficiency.
She said, “That’s the old price.”
At this point because I’m a real bastard. I told my neighbor to take a picture of her, the shelf tag behind her, and forward ti to the State of California consumer protection / fraud department.
I explained that California has pretty strict consumer protection laws regarding bait and switch. In California, you must sell a product at the price shown on the shelf, or advertising materials displayed in store. It’s not the consumer’s problem that the store employees didn’t take the advertising down, or couldn’t be bothered to do their job changing the shelf prices.
When I left, she was practically crying because she didn’t know how to make a deduction on the cash register, and he was being adamant. Other people in line were holding up their Zyn boxes and nodding with every point he made. The line was getting longer by the second, the gas pumps were all blocked, and people were starting to get really irritated. Poor dear, she must’ve had a very bad first hour of her shift all alone…
There are times when I really like being Loki!
I was curious, so I came home a looked up, or tried to look up all the new California taxation that went into effect yesterday. Most of the news channels only covered 2 or 3. The Fox website didn’t even mention the increased excise fee on gasoline. They mentioned pet insurance companies being required to explain rate changes, and Air B&B cleaning fees. They didn’t mention minimum wage being jacked up again. Or the minimum wage for hotel workers going up to $20 per hour.
The other TV station web sites were doing puff pieces but not listing all the changes.
I went to a California Tax/Fee watchdog site, (listed four pages down the google search results,) and found that Cannabis, excise taxes had gone up, as had tobacco, gas, Air B&B, The Pet Insurance disclosure, Hotel wages, Minimum wages in select counties, and several others.
Non cigarette tobacco products jumped 54.7%
So the special on Zyn wasn’t over, the State of California had decided to impose another “Sin” tax. They may also have increased the taxes on alcohol. Of course, the mouth breather clerk had neither the intelligence or English fluency to provide a proper answer.
In California, “YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE YOUR RECREATIONAL MATERIALS WITHOUT HAVING TO PAY SACRAMENTO TAXES ON THEM!”
According to Sacramento… “It’s for your own good. Think of the children! We’re trying to make sure you’re healthy.”
And Newsom wonders why companies, and people are leaving. There comes a time when the state steps in and denies personal freedoms enough, that people say, “Fuck this!”
The neighbor just came home. He sent a text saying, “Thank you. He purchased 10 rolls instead of one, and he got them at the old price after dragging the manager of the place in, on her day off.”
Apparently everyone else after him cleaned their entire supply of Zyn out at the old price.
Sometime, I really love being a fucker.
Now I need to take an aspirin. Working with those websites gave me a headache. I am not going to work on the painting and sanding.
Had a first interview yesterday.
Indian woman, who pushed my translation matrix to the max.
And to boot, setting up the interview, she couldn’t commit to an actual time she instead chose to act like a cable TV installer. Will call between 8AM and 3PM. Fanfuckingtastic!
When she did call she actually asked if I remembered that we had an appointment. DUH!
Then there’s a spiel about training and all kinds of other bullshit and Oh, this wasn’t an interview. She’s going to set me up with their HR department to have a “Mock” interview.
But the real kicker was that she didn’t have my resume in front of her and she didn’t have the ability to get my resume in front of her. So this was essentially a cold call.
What the actual fuck?!?
At least I got someone’s attention. So there’s that.
But for fucks sake, I’m supposed to appear or be available for an interview prepared. I’d at least expect that of the interviewer.
It’s fire season. Yipeee.
Woke up this morning to the smell of smoke. Something had Jesse stirred up last night about 3am. I don’t know if it’s related.
I might have to run the A/C if the air quality continues to degrade. The daily dog walk will have to be curtailed. It’s clear skies, but there’s something in the air that’s irritating my nose.
I suspect this is from the Lake and Cable fires. The good news is that the Lake fire has had the mandatory evacuation lifted, now the area appears to be under evacuation warnings, and they’ve got some containment on the fire.
The bad news is that we’re early in the season, these fires are coming from a direction that hasn’t burned in a while and Silverwood Lake is just across the freeway. At least the fire crews have an ample supply of water from the lake to make air drops with.
Just saw a notice that Pacific Crest Trail has been closed until further notice due to the Lake Fire, I hope there are too many hikers up there, if so, they’re going to be miserable.
With the 4th of July weekend coming up I better get my evacuation kit in good order. There are always idiots that decide to set off fireworks up here on the 4th and as dry as everything is, it’s only going to take one moron to screw us all.
I’ll have to modify my plan to keep working on sanding the trim for today the dust combined with the particulates from the fires are not healthy.
Articles have been appearing about large sponsors pulling out of Pride events all over the country. Almost unilaterally these articles blame Trump and his war on DEI.
The Atlantic put a predictably negative spin on it.
To boil it down, most articles imply that corporations are afraid to sponsor Pride events due to Trump. They seem to want to paint Trump as the boogyman.
I think this is disingenuous and wrong. Many of these companies supported Pride through multiple Presidencies. Regan, Bush I & II, Clinton, Obama, Trump, & Biden.
During the Regan years I don’t think these companies supported Pride out of DEI policies, they supported them because A) There was money to be made, and B) It was the right thing to do.
Back in the day Pride was about basic civil rights, and visibility of people who literally were treated as second class citizens because of who they peopled their beds with.
When HIV started killing gay men, these companies stayed in the Pride events because it was right to shine a light on the problem. HIV was being ignored, insurance companies refused to pay for HIV care. Some insurance companies specifically excluded HIV care or hospitalization from their policies Others would cancel an individual’s coverage entirely if they tested positive for HIV.
Back then, gay people of all walks of life were being denied fundamental rights or services. Housing, Medical care, Jobs, loans, and myriad other things that everyone else enjoyed, simply because they chose to sleep with members of their own sex.
That was fundamentally wrong and Anti-American.
One could make a case that today’s trans people experience similar oppression. I can maybe see their point. But, generally speaking, the LGB community of old weren’t trying to “Gay everyone”, they were simply demanding equal representation and rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and Constitution.
Trans people cannot, under law, be discriminated against. They may face harsh words, or people who refuse to use arbitrary pronouns, but they have the same rights everyone else has. In other words, the very rights the old LGB movements fought for are granted without question to the Trans people of today.
The Atlantic says young people will lose rights. I’m not sure that I see their point or that what they’re printing is true.
The Trans movement has gutted the LGB community. More and more “moderate” and even “liberal” gay people are walking away. The LGBTQIA+ whatever community is a confused and confusing mishmash of conflicting goals and seems to be mostly about rage & victimhood.
A Trans person these days will as quickly open up a screaming tirade on an LGB person as they will on anyone else who dares to question them.
They’ve become off-putting and simply too difficult to understand or deal with. It doesn’t help that so many Trans people have in recent years been mass shooters.
Sure, the LGB had Jeffery Dahmer but he was a rarity. He was a cannibal that also was gay, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he was a very disturbed individual who was in desperate need of psychiatric help.
The point is, the trans movement has co-opted the LGB community to such an extent that normal gays are no longer interested. That means they’re not attending Pride, which means that the advertising benefit large corporations derived from being supportive, is diminishing too.
It always comes back to dollars.
Add to it, that most of America, including LGB people are sick and tired of the Trans activism, protests, & conflict, and it makes perfect sense that large corporations are pulling back.
What exactly can’t Trans people do? What rights don’t they have? Name something. Oh maybe you can make a case for a man who thinks he’s Trans to be in a women’s locker room.
The real question is should he be in that locker room waving his dick around at children?
If the answer is “yes” then all locker rooms and bathrooms should be co-ed and at that point who gives a shit?
Along that line of reasoning comes this reality. No-one man, woman, or “other,” can be offended if they’re in a bathroom, locker room, or designated changing area, and they see a dick, hairy chest, a pussy, or tits.
Everyone would be 100% equal and that’s the end of the story. A.K.A. the end of victimhood.
It also means that women will have to clean up after themselves in public restrooms. Because while men may piss on the floor around a urinal, women are traditionally much filthier in public restrooms. I know, I’ve cleaned bathrooms, and I’ll generally take cleaning a men’s room any day of the week.
Trans people have access to medical care, lots of insurance companies cover the hormone costs. The real problem seems to be that the Trans agenda is to transition people as early in life as they can.
That’s a problem.
In most states, someone under 21 can’t smoke, drink, get a tattoo, body piercing, or a host of other things they might like to do because they’re not old enough to make up their mind. They lack the maturity.
By that logic, a child shouldn’t have the maturity to undergo gender re-assignment. Yet, the Trans activists push for it. So which is it?
That’s not loss of rights, that’s something entirely different.
When a person is over 21, they’re welcome to start taking whatever hormone therapies, or undergo whatever surgeries they want. They’re adults, of age, and can make their own decisions.
Much of America seems to have concluded that the Trans issue is something else.
Not because of bigotry, although I’m sure it’s there.
When Trans activists are given copious ink bemoaning that straight men should sleep with them or they’re transphobic, something is wrong.
Most straight men want to have families. A trans person (M to F) isn’t capable of producing the necessary genetic components to satisfy a straight man’s desire for children. So straight men aren’t interested. I’d suggest that straight men aren’t so much transphobic as they are trans-disinterested.
They might go for a quick fuck, but they’re not likely to be interested in a long term relationship. Let’s face it a trans person generally has a lot more baggage than even the most spoiled gold digger woman, to boot.
At least with a gold digger, you know you’re likely to have some kids.
Then people will say, “Well, there are F to M Trans people.” Yep, but most straight men want a woman that looks like a woman, they’re not likely to get turned on by a woman who’s got more hair on their chest than a female gorilla. So that leaves the F to M Trans person sleeping with who?
I’ve seen a lot of them bemoaning that Gay men aren’t interested in them. Well, Duh! A gay man is interested in another man and that means a penis and a male mindset. F to M trans people in many cases don’t meet either requirement.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some straight men who are just gay enough, and some gay men who are just straight enough that F to M Trans people could find happiness.
In neither case, do the Trans people have less rights. They can get married, they might have issues with their ID or passports, but I think there’s existing legislation that allows for changing all ID documents.
I believe where the trouble occurs is when someone hasn’t done the precursor work going all the way back to their birth certificate. I don’t think I can renew my passport with a different gender and name without having the underlying paperwork in order first.
Is that an infringement on rights?
Or do these blocks exist to prevent creating false identities? If identity is no longer a stake in the ground, then why have documentation at all? Bank accounts? Mortgages? Rental Agreements? Retirement accounts? Jobs?
So demanding that you do the work, and alter all your ID to match your new gender isn’t a loss of rights, it’s about needing to work within a framework that ensures there are no complications in making sure an individual’s rights are preserved.
I think the overarching pull backs on the part of large corporations isn’t about DEI. It’s about dollars, and that the LGBT community has become the TRANS community. That’s a community that has become viewed very negatively by a large swath of America and indeed the world.
Even Gay bars had to reduce orders of Budweiser beer. Why? Because LGB people joined in the boycott. What does that say about the Trans?
I think corporations are pulling out of Pride because there’s no percentage in it. Pride has become synonymous with Trans activists.
We’re all tired of hearing Trans this and Trans that. Nobody cares anymore, and I for one look forward to Pride not being a cash cow for the HRC, Glaad, and all the other organizations who should have disbanded once their job was done.
Pride might need to go the way of the dinosaur.
I’m glad Pride month is over. I’d be fine with Pride month being cancelled entirely.
Maybe I’ll go out to Palm Springs in July to sample the prevailing opinion of gay men.