09:21 – It was 55.3F (13C) when I took Colin out at 0700 this morning, partly cloudy and breezy. Barbara just left for the gym. This afternoon, she’s headed down to Winston to meet friends for dinner. She’ll stay with Frances and Al tonight and then run some errands and head back home tomorrow.
For more than a decade, I’ve been doing what I can to encourage young people to pursue careers in science. Long enough now that I periodically get emails from parents and students who’ve gotten not just undergrad degrees in science, but graduate degrees and jobs in science. It doesn’t seem that long, but kids who got started as middle- or high-schoolers with one of our books or kits are now in graduate degree programs and some are actually employed as working scientists. Here’s the latest bit of cheerful news, this one from the Royal Society of Chemistry. My life in science: the good, the bad and the ugly
Email overnight from a young woman who’s been reading my blog for several years. She and her husband met as freshman undergrads, he majoring in pre-Med and she in nursing. They married immediately after graduation. She became a nurse and put him through med school. He finished his residency as an internist a couple years ago, and they both work at the same hospital in a large city in the Northeast.
Both are originally from smallish towns, and both want to get away from urban life and find a home in a smaller town where they can raise a family. Her husband has been offered a job in a small town practice in southwestern Virginia and has accepted the offer. The local hospital always needs nurses, and has offered her a job. So they’ve made two trips down to look for a house. They found what they were looking for, put in an offer, and it was accepted. They close the first of May and are now packing up their apartment in preparation for the move.
It’ll be a big change from urban apartment life to living in a large home on 10 acres with a barn and other outbuildings, but they’re both looking forward to it. She’s really excited about the prospect of having a horse again, as she did when she was a teenager. And she’s already planning her new chicken coop.
Her email to me ended, “Oh yeah. In case it isn’t obvious, Peter and I are serious preppers and our move is motivated as much by our desire to live somewhere safe as our love of rural life.”
Escape to the Country, indeed. Good for them.
* * * * *
10:47 – I just got the following email from Dreamhost, which hosts this site and other various domains:
Our monitoring systems show that your site is frequently reaching the technical capacity of its hardware.
Hey there! Our monitoring systems show that your site is frequently reaching the technical capacity of its hardware. When this happens your website crashes and becomes briefly unavailable as we automatically restart it.
Here are the website usernames and how many times they were restarted within the last 30 days:
<my username>: 120
You have a few options at this point:
Upgrade your hosting to a fully managed Virtual Private Server (VPS). This will give you plenty of power tailored to your site’s exact needs.
Optimize your web apps and web content to be less resource-intensive. You may want to enlist a skilled webmaster to help you.
Take no action. Your site will continue to run up against its hardware limits, but if you’re okay with it we are too!
This is not a high-traffic site, so my guess is that it’s one of the plug-ins that’s sucking CPU ticks. I’ve already deleted the Search Everything plug-in. I installed that only because Google had stopped indexing blog comments. They resumed indexing comments some months ago, so that plug-in was obsolete anyway. Google or another search engine gives better results anyway.
If I keep getting notices like this from Dreamhost, I’ll start disabling other plug-ins, so you may notice some changes in how the site works.
Her husband has been offered a job in a small town practice in southwestern Virginia and has accepted the offer.
Unfortunately, practicing general medicine in a rural location in the US is a really tough way to make a living anymore. I’ve posted bits and pieces of our experience in what I call “Vantucky” (SW WA State), but as much of a financial disaster as that was for us, a few of my wife’s med school friends who went to more remote locations tell horrifying stories about having to make decisions about things like paying themselves enough to eat vs. paying staff vs. paying the office electricity bill.
I trust your reader and her husband are going into that situation with their eyes open and had a lawyer go over the contracts. In retrospect, the single biggest mistake we made (beyond killing my career) was my wife letting herself get bullied into a partnership buy-in with a non-compete clause that covered hundreds of square miles in a region with an effective adult unemployment rate of 37%.
Even in rural areas, Medicine is the last refuge of MBAs whose skill sets are limited to passing the B-school classes and not much else. Doh-bamacare just made the situation worse. I would advise your reader that, unless her husband is a specialist, the starting salary will not last, especially in partnership, and they should plan accordingly. Be a little nosy and figure out quickly if the other doctors in the area live above subsistence levels because of family money (always a factor small towns in The South) or from practicing medicine. It doesn’t sound like they come from wealthy backgrounds with financial backstop — much like us.
You have permission to pass along my email if your reader has questions about our sentence -er- tenure in WA State or my wife’s friends’ experiences. I’ll try not to be too bitter/cynical when responding.
I’ll send that along to her, although they’re already committed. Hell, she’s probably reading this exchange.
added- “Escape to the country…”
That is the biggest difference between your prepping and mine, and in a sense, we’ve each done the illogical thing.
You don’t expect the horde to be an issue, but you moved away from the city, far enough that the (non-existent) horde won’t impact you.
I DO expect the horde but haven’t moved out of the suburbs. If the horde was the only factor, our decisions wouldn’t make sense. Of course the horde isn’t the only factor determining where we live, and our decisions presumably do make sense, to us at least.
So the question remains, if I expect the horde, how does that affect my prepping?
I think that if things are bad enough to cause the horde to flee our city, they’ll skip right past us, headed for whatever bright lights there still are. If that’s the case, laying low, hiding essentially, and being off the main paths, should provide some level of protection. Any trouble should be local, and local trouble is everywhere. Upgraded awareness and defense, and partnership with neighbors should help with that. A local mob is still a horde for whoever they swarm though, and those who stayed behind will have more room to run wild.
If things are so bad we can’t stay, then we’re in trouble. Without a cross country trip, our options are limited. I’ve begun the process of getting us an option, but face a number of obstacles.
More likely is another katrina scenario where hundreds of thousands of people show up in surrounding areas, looking for help. As long as the disaster is regional, that should be manageable. With 4 million people we have some resources as we’ve already proved with katrina.
Our other big difference is long term storage food, and the amount. I’ve only been storing more food since the Ebola outbreak and am not nearly as committed or scientific about it.
I also expect our ordinary disasters for the area to continue. I don’t wonder if I’ll ever need my preps because I’m quite sure we’ll have another hurricane.
I’m in agreement that the long slow slide looks like a high possibility, as is a sudden but (relatively) short collapse along the lines of the Great Depression.
In most of those scenarios, and in normal everyday life, being close to amenities and civilization is a benefit. Since things continuing mostly as they are is the MOST likely scenario, we are where we are.
What I’ve done to attempt to mitigate the downsides of our location– we are on the western edge of the urban area. If we need to flee west or northwest (the two most logical directions) we’re ahead of almost 3 million people. I’m working on getting us a place to go, but have a couple of waypoints to use in extremis.
We can shelter in place for a long time without resupply.
We can protect our home from ordinary threats. I’ve hardened the doors, can board over all the windows with only an hour or two notice, have blackout material for all the windows, etc.
In WROL there are additional defensive measures I can put in place.
I’ve got some like minded neighbors although nothing organized.
I can reduce vehicle access to our area with a chainsaw and an hour’s notice.
I’ve got offsite storage and backup in place although it’s in the wrong direction if we were leaving.
Got my zombie gun for the truck and a big brush guard.
One other thing to keep in mind is that this is Texas. That really does make a difference. We have an underclass, but for the most part, TPTB don’t coddle them, esp when push comes to shove.
nick
added – while writing this comment, we had a massive power outage that took out our whole community. Given the weather is fine, and there were no blinks, I had to check that the internet was up before I ruled out a NOK emp strike. Perhaps a sign of the times, or a window into my mind….
“added – while writing this comment, we had a massive power outage that took out our whole community.”
Most likely someone texting while driving taking out a power pole. It is becoming an all too regular occurrence.
Just the other day a driving while texting idiot killed a motorcyclist, smashed him into the back of a truck while both were stopped. Kennewick WA is the premier city of round-a-bouts and almost daily texters try to go straight through. Does not go well as the center of all the round-a-bouts have big basalt rocks in them.
Well in the last 40 years I’ve spent a great deal of time with doctors and their practice management. Up until recently computer were mostly billing machines.
#1 get someone who know medical billing. If you have to, use a billing service,
#2 practice medicine and just oversee billing. (this applies to most businesses. do your job and hire others to do the rest)
Way too many of these guys have troubles because they let the cash flow fall. Real cash is nice but most of the revenue is insurance. Hire someone that can bring that money in.
Given the extent of the outage, nothing makes sense. Also it came back up fairly quickly, less than half hour. That points to something other than physical damage. The whole Spring Branch area was dark, which is a whole bunch of substations and distro.
n
The horror (clutching pearls)! It’s almost as if the rock is there to *kill* people who just want to drive straight through. Definitely not a safe space.
“Her husband has been offered a job in a small town practice in southwestern Virginia and has accepted the offer.”
Bob, didn’t you say your vet in Sparta is mucho cheaper than the one you had in Winston? I like rural areas too but the pay may not be as good or reliable.
I’ll send that along to her, although they’re already committed. Hell, she’s probably reading this exchange.
Sure.
The first thought that will spring to mind is that our experience was WA State. My wife’s friends’ experiences took place in rural sections of Western North Carolina, North Florida, and Texas.
WA State, outside of Seattle and the I-5 corridor near Olympia, is as red as anywhere in The South IMHO.
“WA State, outside of Seattle and the I-5 corridor near Olympia, is as red as anywhere in The South IMHO”
Why do they let those people vote?
“Bob, didn’t you say your vet in Sparta is mucho cheaper than the one you had in Winston? I like rural areas too but the pay may not be as good or reliable.”
Pretty much everything up here that’s sourced locally is less expensive, but that also means a lower cost of living. Our doctors/dentists/vets/lawyers/accountants, etc. Earn less, but they also pay less for what they need.
The way for the rural MD to make a living is to expand the range of services. I’m thinking … state-of-the-art body mods. You know how you hear about the people with magnets embedded in their arms, compasses in their chests, various RFID this-n-that? Almost all of them are embedded with no painkillers because they’re done in tattoo parlours and the like. Just think of how many more people would get implants if they could get some painkiller first.
Field-expedient claymore mines, my good fellow. Or RBT’s 0.1ga shotguns (carefully labeled “This end toward enemy).
-sniff- I love a story with a happy ending.
How true is that? A vial of some drug is going to cost the same whether you’re in Sparta or San Francisco, isn’t it? Would the insurance reimbursement be different? Same goes for autoclaves and scalpels and what-not. And what about malpractice insurance?
Why do they let those people vote?
The Legislature is pretty evenly divided, and the initiative process is very healthy even though the activist courts overturn winning initiatives on a regular basis.
The Northwest isn’t a police state … yet.
It’s not what you get paid, it’s what you have left….
n
Staff salaries are lower, rent is lower, non-medical insurance is lower, services are probably lower too.
Supplies are probably the same, and you probably get less free stuff from drug reps.
On the other hand, you probably don’t need a Pediatric OB/GYN on staff either.
n
and yes, that was my buddy’s wife’s unfortunate job at our big public hospital.
n
Supplies are probably the same, and you probably get less free stuff from drug reps.
The drug reps’ free stuff is very restricted anymore. The drug companies shifted to spiffing pharmacists over the last decade, especially the manufacturers of generics.
The next time your pharmacist recommends the “equivalent” generic to a name brand med, keep in mind that he/she has an incentive, especially if they work at a big chain store like Walgreens or CVS.
“How true is that? A vial of some drug is going to cost the same whether you’re in Sparta or San Francisco, isn’t it? Would the insurance reimbursement be different? Same goes for autoclaves and scalpels and what-not. And what about malpractice insurance?”
That’s why I qualified my statement with “locally sourced”.
You earn less, so you pay less income tax. Property values and rates are lower, so you pay much lower property taxes. Anything with a labor component costs less, often much less.
The Northwest isn’t a police state … yet.
No, that would be California.
As I said
http://www.bakersfieldobserved.com/2017/04/the-ugly-side-deals-made-by-gov-jerry.html
@dkreck: Just a random question, because I regularly do consulting in this area. Do you know of any medical software (practice information system, i.e., for tracking patient data in group practices) that doesn’t suck? For bonus points: software that is international?
Last time I really looked, all of the big players in Switzerland had software that looks like it started as a Filemaker application 20 years ago, and has grown by fungal growth. One of the biggest players must literally be something like that, because it duplicates its entire database on the local machine, when you start it up. Which can take up to 20 minutes for a big practice. I have no idea how they deal with synchronization problems, and probably don’t want to know.
I’m thinking of going up to a trade fair in Germany, to see if there are any interesting products up there that just haven’t made it to Switzerland. But I would truly be interested in new players from farther afield.
Congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Peter X and our best wishes to them as they head for the southwestern VA hills. Sounds like they have their heads on straight, and though no one mentioned it, their medical skillz will be worth their weight in gold (or more likely, bartered stuff) if and when SHTF.
Bright overcast here and ICE-OUT! No ice visible on the bay and the pier is completely submerged. All the ponds, lakes, streams and rivers are at “high water.”
Another exciting day of chores and errands while both parties are functionally crippled. And pissed off about it because we’re only in our early 60s. So we’ll fight on.
Well, you could be flying to a funeral tonight, for a beloved uncle who went early and unexpectedly…
So there is that.
n
Every day above ground is a GOOD day. Some days are just more good than others.
Do you know of any medical software (practice information system, i.e., for tracking patient data in group practices) that doesn’t suck? For bonus points: software that is international?
My wife has used Epic EMR at her last two jobs. Dunno if they are international.
Back in the legendary days of yore, when I did anything in the medical software consulting field, verily, the medical scheduling, billing, and records software did sucketh and great was the suckage. Between FileMaker, FoxPro, Visual Basic, and ColdFusion, and sometimes a mix of the above, yes, the suckage was great.
And most doctors’ offices were very chincy on the payments. Considering the state of their accounts receivable I understand their problems, but they aren’t my problems and I’ve just done 30 hours of consulting and I’d like to be paid.
@Brad – I’m not so much into that now. I used to find the biggest problem was trying to make Practice Management and Electronic Medical Records one unified program. Other than the basic demographic data they don’t share much. EMR has exploded while PM has been around for years. Just because you might like one doesn’t mean they can do the other. EMR has almost become required because of government regs (what else?).
Good luck on that search.
@Greg: And was happy with it? I’ll note the name, thanks.
@SteveF
+100
Yes see my advice about medical billing. #1 is keep up the cash flow.
I consider PM to be billing and EMR medical records just to keep the two straight.
And was happy with it? I’ll note the name, thanks.
My wife is fairly happy with Epic, but it requires a large up-front cost in terms of installation and training. You will also need a full time admin.
My impression is that Epic is not for small practices.
@dkreck: Yes, that is a basic requirement anymore. Paper records are dead, or should be. The real joke are the attempts to create official standards for medical records: the standards exist (sort of), but because everyone got to put everything in they ever dreamed of, they aren’t actually usable. I know a couple of software packages that claim to import and export to the format (and if you believe that, I have this bridge…), but none of them use the standards natively, which is really what you want.
On a vaguely related topic: I just had the privilege of writing an import function for the list of payments made to our bank account. Swiss banks are moving to the European XML standard for electronic banking documents, and my wife’s business gets payment information in the new format (camt.054, if anyone cares). The specification is ridiculously complex for what it actually does. Again, because everyone was allowed to stick their oar in. And the real joke? The information we actually care about (invoice number and customer number) is tucked away in a comment field, where we have to parse them out of a string. There’s a long story behind that, but it doesn’t matter: the point is that this overly complicated standard is functionally useless.
@Greg: Well, if this current (potential) contract works out, it won’t be for a small practice. Anyhow, thanks for the recommend, I will definitely add it to the list of packages to look at.
Many years ago I had a client that started out in the fifties as a war surplus store. He built it up to a multi-million dollar hardware store. He offered local in store charge accounts and made a fortune. He would sit down at his desk with the aged receivable reports and start calling customers himself. Now, he was very charismatic and I’m sure talked to people as if they were old friends, that’s the way he was. But man he knew how it worked. Told me the older the account was the greater the chance they wouldn’t pay (of course). He really worked over that 60 day plus. Guess he was giving me advice 😀
Anyway my point is “Chase down that money!”
@brad
I always say “That’s the beauty of standards, there are so many to choose from”.
EDI especially.(I do a lot of logistic work now that involves that)
Don’t get me started on XML – needlessly reinvent the wheel.
On a vaguely related topic: I just had the privilege of writing an import function for the list of payments made to our bank account. Swiss banks are moving to the European XML standard for electronic banking documents, and my wife’s business gets payment information in the new format (camt.054, if anyone cares). The specification is ridiculously complex for what it actually does. Again, because everyone was allowed to stick their oar in. And the real joke? The information we actually care about (invoice number and customer number) is tucked away in a comment field, where we have to parse them out of a string. There’s a long story behind that, but it doesn’t matter: the point is that this overly complicated standard is functionally useless.
My impression of a lot of European IT and engineering standards, especially electronic information formats, is that the whole purpose is to serve as a kind of tax on US companies wanting to compete in that market.
ASN.1 is complete misery to use properly and misuse has been the root cause of some fairly major security problems in X509 certificates. I’ll take XML over that anytime.
The only paperless practice I’ve seen is my dental office. The only paper you get is a receipt if you want it and an appointment card if you want it. Usually when you walk into a dentist’s office, you see a wall of records. Not at mine. Wasn’t Algoricle crowing about paperless unified medical records when he was VP? Take a look at the VA or any Military installation. Ha ha.
WRT medical billing and cash flow:
My Daughter, the Certified and Accredited Medical Coder (the first step in the billing process), confirms what I thought; cash flow is a joke. Most money doesn’t come in for 6-months, if at all. Just look at the EOBs (Explanation of Benefits) you should get from your insurance company, at best you get them 45 to 60 days after service. The insurance companies then wait at least another 60-days before they send the provider a payment. In most cases, if you owe anything after insurance, you are not going to be billed until after the provider gets the insurance payment. Then you get a bill, unitemized, from the provider and you have to go dig up that EOB to find out what the heck you are being billed for.
Many bills sent to uninsured patients get returned “Addressee Unknown”. The real reality too is that since ObuttwadNoCare, the no pay uninsureds have gone up and those with ObuttwadNoCare can’t pay their co-pays and deductibles because they spent all their money on “premiums”, even those getting “subsidies”.
“Robots Read News about United Airlines”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/159453937346/robots-read-news-about-united-airlines
I’m flying Delta in May. They are vying with United for being last in customer service.
And who was the moron who approved the merger of Continental and United ?
Great comment on the Scott Adams blog:
“Seen Southwest Airlines new motto? (I did not come up with this)”
“We beat our competitors, not you.”
My GP (part of a fairly large group associated with the larger local hospital) is totally digital. They print out a walk out statement, letting you know how much you paid and will probably owe, and lab orders for future reference. My dentist (part of a three person practice) is also all digital. Again, they print out a receipt after a visit; since I pay cash it amounts to Total Owed = 0. All the medical records & x-rays are digital, shown on a couple of screens in the exam room. If you need a rood canal on tooth #x, they’ll print out a piece of paper saying that and giving an estimate of the cost, what your insurance will pay, etc. I would assume that since dentists focus on a fairly narrow portion of the body and with a fixed set of options that practice / case management was a little more straightforward.
“Well, you could be flying to a funeral tonight, for a beloved uncle who went early and unexpectedly…”
That day is probably coming fairly soon, but not unexpectedly. Then we have the aunts, one in her early 90s and still riding a bike and kayaking on the lake, my MIL, who turns 89 tomorrow and moves furniture around, and a third down by Lake George in her 80s. Plus my own mom, and aunt and uncle. We expect to be going to more funerals over the next few years, and also realizing that WE’RE NEXT.
WRT health care and billing, etc; we’re just waiting to see how the cookie crumbles up here, with a failed $2 million website that people have had continuous trouble with, including Mrs. OFD, and the new administration’s fiddling around, probably ending up with making ObolaCARE even worse. Wife is again w/o insurance and will need surgery on at least one eye, but right now she’s just coping with a painful pulled muscle/scar tissue. And we’ve meanwhile discovered that apparently I have to be 100% disabled for her to get care in the VA system, but I’m looking into that.
Gave up on the PBS Great War three-part series; it’s basic high-skool-level history whereas I’ve forgotten more about that war than the vast majority of Murkan peeps will ever know, coupled with the usual PC “sensitivity” and making sure to let us know that Afrikan-Murkans and womyn were involved. Then you look at the vid footage and pictures and gee whiz, all them mofos slogging through the trenches and being mowed down by machine-gun fire on both sides were the hated, loathed and despised white MEN.
And quoting yet another KIA poet with his “I Have a Rendezvous With Death” in its entirety.
We all do, bro. There is no exit.
But as someone else said earlier today, every day above grass is a good day, mostly, with some more good than others.
My medical provider is digital, part of the Jefferson Healthcare system (based in Port Townsend, Jefferson County, WA). All records are digital, like pcb_duffer’s dentist, as are tests and xrays.
I get digital access to all my records through a website set up by them (mychartwa.com) , including test results, messages from/to doctor/staff, visit records, appointments (past and upcoming), etc. I can make an appointment on-line through that site with my user credentials.
Any lab tests (blood, xray, etc) are digitally stored. Had a look at my wife’s’ broken leg xray just yesterday (done the day before) (tibia plateau break).
The ‘mychartwa’ site says that the software is ‘Epic’.
I don’t think either of us has acted illogically. Yes, it would be better for you to be far, far away from that megalopolis, but life imposes constraints. Your wife has a job there that would be difficult to quit. In my opinion, Sarah and Peter that I mentioned this morning are behaving logically. They’re both aware that they’ll earn much less in the rural location, but they’re willing to make that sacrifice for improved quality of life. It’s easier for them than for many, of course, since they’re just starting out.
And I was originally prepping for suburban survival. You may recall that Lynn pointed out several years ago that it sounded like I was prepping for the whole neighborhood, which in a sense I was. I still am up here, although not necessarily the geographic neighborhood, but rather the community of people we know. But, one way or another, we need more than just a few of us if things really go south.
In effect, you’re making the best of a bad situation, which is all most of us can do. At least you’re thinking things through and acting accordingly. That’s a lot more work and thought than just stacking stuff, but please remember that stacking stuff is at least equally important.
You’re welcome here, although it *is* a 1,200 mile drive.
Yeah, from my perspective you need a LOT more food. Enough to feed your family, nuclear and extended, for however long you expect to need to. I’d suggest at least a year, to give you time to get a crop in no matter when trouble strikes, but I’d be a lot more comfortable with two years’ worth, to cover a crop failure, etc. And when I got to that point, I’d want still more to keep on hand to help friends and neighbors without shorting myself. If nothing else, you can lay in livestock feed: wheat, barley, oats, soybeans, etc. Around here, you can buy it either in bulk or in those little, bitty 50- and 100-pound bags. It’s pretty damned cheap, too. But it provides basic nutrition–calories, proteins, and oils. Everything but flavor.
New York nixes natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania
http://www.pennenergy.com/articles/pennenergy/2017/04/oil-and-gas-new-york-nixes-natural-gas-pipeline-from-pennsylvania.html
This is so cool, those &^%!$ yankees are gonna freeze themselves ! We don’t have to turn on any light bulbs down here (on the Gulf Coast).
Also from New York:
Gov. Cuomo: College is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
That’s why I’m proud to have signed tuition-free college for middle class families into law.
Who’s gonna pay for that? Mr. SteveF?
Andrew Cuomo: the stupider replay of Mario
What a piece of shit.
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate New York?
Gov. Cuomo: College is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Tell that to a licensed electrician that got a four year head start on their career and is making three times what a liberal arts major is making (if the liberal arts major is making any money at all).
Once upon a time I wrote medical automation and billing software for pathology labs. It was written in MUMPS for PDP-11 minis. Ran really fast, especially with an extension we wrote to allow some faster access to the database. One of the first EMR systems, one used by the VA, was written in it. Worked well.
The current EMR systems apparently are like the SAP accounting system – huge, expensive, and requires consultants to install and get running. Apparently there are two major ones in the US used in big hospitals and they only talk to each other with difficulty. There have been some horror stories about what can happen when you transfer records. I know that some of my Mom’s records that got transferred from one system to another ended up as captured faxes. The originator sent a fax to the recipient, they captured it electronically, and appended it to her chart in the EMR system. And this was at the biggest medical center in the world, the Texas Medical Center.
As for the consultants, I heard a doctor and a hospital administrator bitching about how the consultants were being paid more than the doctors made at the hospital.
Got both of my new iPads. One for me and one for the spousal unit. Hers was an iPad II, non-retina screen, 64 gig 32 bit. Mine was an iPad 4, 64 gig, 32 bit. It was time to upgrade them both to 64 bit devices. B&H had the 128 gig model for $419.00 ($10.00 cheaper than Apple), free shipping and no sales tax. Thus I saved about $120.00 on the purchase (I also got AppleCare+).
Nice devices if you are into the Apple world. Price was good. Need them for our upcoming trip to Europe where we can watch movies while on the plane. Not flying United so the chance of getting beaten are markedly reduced. In fact we are flying on Air France which is a partner for Delta. Never flown on Air France before.
Purchased our seats so we would not get seated next to the head (toilet for you civilians) or the mess (food galley for you civilians). Cost me $64 to reserve specific seats. Relative to the price of the tickets was not much. Returning from Edinburg I also purchased seats on Virgin Atlantic (another Delta partner) which will be a 747. Got window seats with extended leg room. The seats I chose also have extended legroom behind our seats. Should make the flight a little easier. That cost me $96 which relative to the price of the tickets was not much. The flights are eight hours so comfort was worth the additional cost.
This will be our seventh trip to Europe. We know what to expect, how to dress for comfort, what to pack (and not to pack), etc. Still a long flight. Going to Europe most of the travel is in the dark, sleep almost impossible. Coming back is daylight all the way, easy to stay awake and crash when you arrive. Six hour time change both directions.
“Have I mentioned lately how much I hate New York?”
Some years ago, and I probably told this story before here, wife and I were at a sort of party with one of her VT health care pals (wife was the state’s director of Medicaid/Managed Care at the time), and it was a lake house on a small lake out in the middle of nowhere southeast of Montpeculiar.
Anyway, the conversation turned to political matters, and several of the guests had been very deeply involved in NYC and Albany politics for years and they knew LOTS of inside stuff. These were liberal Democrats, and they absolutely loathed both of the Cuomo’s, and minced no words about it, either. They also had a lot of nasty stuff on Giuliani. I’ve always remembered that night as being a bit of an awakening as to how filthy are the criminal scum who purport to rule us.
And that’s just at the city and state levels; I already had a pretty good idea about the Federal level for some odd reason.
“And who was the moron who approved the merger of Continental and United ?”
About 15 years ago either United or American and US Airways attempted to merge. The lefterosos in WDC stopped in on the fake grounds of monopoly and anti-trust. Subsequently, they both went into bankruptcy. Consequently, the morons allowed them both to merge with other airlines and the also bankrupt Continental was allowed to merge with United. It seems as though mergers will be allowed after multiple bankruptcies.
We lost a true American patriot and fighter for liberty today:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/william-norman-grigg-rip/comment-page-1/#comment-220436
This is a sad day for many of us.
Only 54 and a heart attack; as the man said above, every day above the grass….
And from the You Heard It Here First Department:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/this-moment-or-the-other-moment/
Gag.
Retch.
Brain bleach needed ASAP.
Yeah, run, you pig, run. The next stumble or fall could be your last. Hope it’s live.
lol! The Dumbocrats couldn’t be dumb enough to back her again, could they? Maybe that’s why nobody has come to the front of the Dumb-o-Crat Party as of yet. She’ll be so old she probably will have grown a penis. Still won’t be the first woman President. Will Bernie still be alive? lol! 2016 all over again.
Gave up on the PBS Great War three-part series; it’s basic high-skool-level history whereas I’ve forgotten more about that war than the vast majority of Murkan peeps will ever know, coupled with the usual PC “sensitivity” and making sure to let us know that Afrikan-Murkans and womyn were involved. Then you look at the vid footage and pictures and gee whiz, all them mofos slogging through the trenches and being mowed down by machine-gun fire on both sides were the hated, loathed and despised white MEN.
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918
“Will Bernie still be alive? lol! 2016 all over again.”
I’m guessing that at least some degree of SHTF will have happened between now and then, the way various things are going around the world right now. Too many potential powder kegs floating in a lake of JP4 and some guys in a leaky rowboat are smoking cigars and ciggies and drinking heavily.
“A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918”
Looks interesting; I’ve got Great War fatigue about now; I have a whole shelf of books on it and have seen a dozen films concerning it. Main interest due to Grandpa H. having been with the U.S. Army during that caper, circa 1917-18. Ditto the Good War, ’cause Grandpa D. and my dad were in that one.
If tRump isn’t a shoe-in in 2020 it will be the Redumblican’s fault. They still can’t get simply shit done. Give tRump a series of little “wins”. Bills everyone wants with no earmarks. I’d vote for Bernie over Cankles. Nobody will back anything Bernie wants.
Nobody will back anything Bernie wants.
He will still get to pick Supreme Court justices even if they aren’t confirmed right away.
I still think enough bad chit is gonna happen long before 2020 here. Probably stuff no one expects or sees coming.
Like, right now the NORKs are very busy around their nuke launch facilities; Syria is on full boil with more chit expected there; Ukraine in more or less continuous turmoil; our own national infrastructure crumbling plus vulnerable Grid and cyber attacks ongoing back and forth; and through it all the banksters and financial charlatans and hucksters and snake oil speculators play their games. None of this bodes us any good, particularly, and the political theater that goes on is just a sideshow for the rubes and bumpkins who still believe in things like elections, voting, different political parties, the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.
I get the distinct feeling that something wicked this way comes in such a way as to make the 2020 sideshow a non-starter, and certainly not for Spanish-American War veteran Bernie Sanders or the stumbling bag of toxic waste. I only hope to be alive and tuned in when either or both of the Clintons finally croak.
Meanwhile Comrade Sanders and Comrade Welch (our Rep.) are stumping around the AO up here and making noises about this and that and trashing the current National Administrator.
Here’s some fun late-night/early morning links:
http://38north.org/2017/04/punggyeri041217/
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2017/04/12/China-tells-military-to-be-ready-to-move-to-North-Korea-border/5871492003177/?utm_source=fp&utm_campaign=ls&utm_medium=1
More fun here:
https://earloftaint.com/2017/04/11/kim-jong-un-takes-command-of-nork-navy-sets-out-to-confront-us-armada/
Are we saying buh-bye to Europa?
http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2017/04/the-coming-civil-war-in-europe.html?m=1
At least in its current state; things are likely to erupt drastically in the next few years; you can’t keep turning the heat up under the pot and expecting the amphibians to not notice at some point.
Are we saying buh-bye to Europa?
No. Au contraire.
That’s a very biased article, misleading a lot (intentionally?). The article is based on this lie:
In fact many of those foreign-born populations are other EU or western immigrants. In fact Europe is a huge bowl of ethics populations, and the answer to the “civil wars” problem was to create the European Union. And EU is doing quite well in spite of rumors.
Europe is fairly populated, highly competitive and expensive. Foreign non-westerns immigrants would have a hard time making majorities here, and the rules (without being assimilated first!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_Union#Immigration_and_emigration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe
Eugen’s right, but we probably disagree on the range of “foreigners”. If you take the Polish workers in the UK, for example, the biggest problem is that they often work harder and do better work than UK workers. The crappy construction practices I’ve seen there…shudder. If you’re a native slacker, you don’t like this, but realistically it’s a _good_ problem for the UK as a whole.
In the middle: The wave of refugees out of Croatia and Serbia are slowly assimilating, but it was a problem, and still isn’t entirely resolved. While they are European, the culture they came from is overly macho and violent, and this will take another generation to correct.
And on the other extreme, we have the migrants from Africa and the Middle East. Poor educations, no useful work skills. There are crowds of young guys hanging around the train stations here, because they have nowhere to be and nothing to do. Because they have not brought women of their own cultures with them, and local women aren’t interested in them…well, this makes the problems worse. This is trouble, and it isn’t going to be easily solved.
It’s not going to be a civil war. However, when the right-wing parties take power (which they will), there may well be serious violence with the African/Middle-East migrants.
“You’re welcome here, although it *is* a 1,200 mile drive”
Thanks, and the reverse is true too. Although I can’t think of a realistic scenario that would pry you guys loose from there that would still allow that much travel.
Aesop posted an interesting alternative to the”failed bombing mission” story. Whoever is right, he points liking that we were quick to accept the MSM / Russian version, despite knowing that msm lies, initial reports are always wrong, etc. The story fit a lot of our confirmation biases. Can’t link cuz I’m on my phone but I’ve linked to aesop at raconteur report recently.
“Celebration of life” in 3 hours. Joy.
Gonna be a long night.
Flight was uneventful. No beatings. Got thru TSA without a secondary search. Deff helps to have a toddler with you.
Nic
Can toddlers be rented for this stuff?
I’m not sure about rentals, but I think you can buy them on eBay.
That’s a great use for anchor babies! Ship their illegal invader parents out, and then put the kids to use. They can be rented out to anyone who needs a little kid for a brief period — travelers, employees trying to scam more time off from their employers, and anything along those lines.
I’m in favor of ending the granting of birthright citizenship, possibly even retroactively, but my current plan will at least get some juice from that lemon.
You were lucky, have you not seen the dozens of videos where babies and toddlers have been basically assaulted by TSA. And the protesting parents then get even worse.
Eugen (Romania) criticism of my article on “The Coming Civil War in Europe” is typically lame. Let me clear his head: By only focusing on the 20% foreign-born Eugen obviously wanted to bury the part where I state “demographers are predicting that Europeans will become full minorities in the latter half of the 21st century”. Regardless, stats show that the majority of non-natives are not other European; in Britain, Whites are already around 80% of the national population. The wikipedia stats have remained the same for almost 5 years; there are more reliable stats and sources from elsewhere.
Ideas that suggest Europe was already awash with ethnic groups from all over the world and that the EU was created to prevent civil war and is doing quite well, are false. Europe was originally a mixture of Europeans not non-European ethnic groups, the EU isn’t doing well as consistently shown by various stats and polls, and that ethnic mixing creates civil war conditions as shown by decades of expert research. The EU was created in order to become a major powerhouse in the world at the economic and political level, to become a federated bloc that would ‘balance the powers’ and avert threats from the other major blocs, Russia and America, and eventually, the idea was, these blocs would form the World federation of states in peace. Diluting and mixing ethnic groups was just one part of the plan, it was not the main intention of the EU, and was not an effort to prevent civil war (which the commentator equates with war between European nations, which is not the meaning of civil war). In any case, it hasn’t prevented civil war – look at France. And ethnicity is not the only cause of war, and so by focusing on it only, one misses the whole complex of other causes, such as ideology, resources, politics, territory, religion…which is also to say, the commentator obviously has little knowledge of the complex of ideas behind the creation of the EU.
The notion of immigrants being assimilated in Europe: millions have been spent over the last few decades on integration programs, special courses, studies, and so on, which have not been successful – and research and polls show a majority do not want to integrate, let alone assimilate! They have loyalties to their home land, have transnational ties, and their non-European identities are re-enforced through chain migration, multicultural immigrant rights, travel, and ICT’s. The statistics speak on crime, welfare consumption, education levels, incarceration rates, anti-Western sentiments, ethnic enclaves, religious fundamentalism, and expert analysis on Islamist networks show them to be wide and deep involving infiltration, rape, sharia zones, demographic conquest, terrorism and yada yada yada.
The notion that immigrants can’t afford to become majorities: they live off the taxpayers and have lots of children and cry racism when we complain and then get more free stuff and exceptions.
Welcome, Clare.
My own opinion of EU issues is much closer to yours than to Eugen’s, but we do enjoy reading his take on things, as he’s our only regular commenter who lives in Eastern Europe.
Hi Clare,
USA has a comparable amount of foreign-borns as Europe.
So, I guess the demographers will predict civil wars for USA too? Or things are different in the USA, maybe?
In rest, I stick with what I said already about your very biased article.
ADDED: How about Canada? New Zeeland?
Interesting discussion here, it all hinges on ones perception and experience. Are we inside looking out or outside looking in. Perspective.
I enjoy watching a good debate. My mind and memory is not very quick these days, so a spectator I will be.
USA has a comparable amount of foreign-borns as Europe.
I agree with this statement. But, my understanding is that most of the foreign born in the USA are Christian (mostly Catholic). My further understanding is most of the foreign born in the EU are muslim. There is a big difference in culture between these two groups.
And some people are predicting civil war in the US.
“And some people are predicting civil war in the US.”
Among them, that pesky and annoying OFD character, repeatedly. I don’t see any way to avoid it; we are too polarized now and the Left has made it abundantly clear that they hate our guts and would imprison and/or slaughter us all, given the power to do so. This is illustrated by their increasingly violent rhetoric and outright threats, and their schedule of disruptions in recent and coming warm seasons, particularly in the cities.
They currently control our major cultural institutions, including education, mainstream media, large sectors of government and corporations, and a third to a half of the military and law enforcement sectors. They tend to be concentrated along the “Clinton Archipelago” and they face many tens of millions of armed citizens who are becoming increasingly angry and fed up.
Maybe not this year or next, but I tend to think that some trigger event/s or other will finally light us off and the resulting carnage will make the previous civil war look like a picnic at the beach. Probably coinciding with financial collapse and/or more foreign war clusterfucks that get people maimed and killed for nothing.
Civil war, eh? The thought just struck me that it might be a good idea to keep a few extra cans of food handy, just in case.
I’ve got my Rebel Flag at the ready 😉
This is not the appropriate place to debate the immigration question in Europe and the West generally; I can tell that no one here knows much, other than a few things they heard from the mainstream media; probably have no idea that migrants from Africa and Muslim countries are systematically raping white girls across Europe:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/14/african-migrants-brutally-rape-swedish-teen-leave-male-friend-brain-damage/#disqus_thread
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8663/germany-migrants-rape
Have no clue there is white genocide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-_KZExlJ0&feature=youtu.be
that the government protects immigrant rapists: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/04/13/facebook-rapists-will-not-deported-sweden/
This is just a list of brainwashed, cucked white males, bereft of any identity, pride, and manliness.
“…I can tell that no one here knows much, other than a few things they heard from the mainstream media…”
Good day to you.
You may wish, or not, to scroll back through several years of posts here and observe that some of us have posted links and commented repeatedly and continuously, to the present day, on just those matters you linked to above.
I would hazard a guess that not only many of us on this blog are aware, but also hundreds, if not thousands of other readers out here, thanks to Mr. RBT hosting this platform for so long and leaving it just about entirely free and open.
Furthermore, if Breitbart and YouTube are not mainstream, then I don’t know what is.
@OFD
+1,000
I took Clare’s “no one here knows much” to mean “here in the US”. Could be wrong and we were all being dissed and Clare owes us all donuts. Chocolate cake donut with chocolate icing for me, please.
“…donut with chocolate icing for me, please.”
PERVERT!
Maybe I’m wrong because I took it to mean us here on this board, WRT the context and recent posting history.
If Clare means the U.S. in general, then yeah, for sure. For tee-vee nooz it’s about evenly divided between the MSNBC/ABC/NBC/CBS/FaceCrack people, and the Faux Nooz Network/Limbaugh/etc. folks. And that’s all most Murkan derps know or care to know.
And if doughnuts are being distributed, make mine apple-cider w/maple icing. Warmed, please, with a big steaming mug of cocoa. Sure, go ahead, throw the marshmallow in there, too.
Plain glazed or cinnamon is fine with me.
Rather partial to maple bars.
Today I listened, unwillingly, to about 45 minutes of some TV morning “news” show. It was obviously geared toward middle-aged women of no particular intellect, judging by the stories covered and the slant of the coverage. More than twice as much time was given to the tragic story of a devoted and loving and in all ways perfect wife whose 50-year-old husband ran off with a younger woman* than to the recent conflict in Syria, international tensions, and the use of a MOAB.
I can’t compare this to the coverage on the evening TV “news”, nor to any changes over the past decade. In 20 years I’ve watched so little TV that the norms and expectations are a mystery to me.
* This “news” said she was 15, but if it’s the same story I read about a day or two ago, she’s actually 18 or 19 and it was misreported that she was 15. Not that I would expect that correction to be made on the show I unwillingly watched, as that would get in the way of the narrative that this poor, put-upon, perfect-in-all-ways woman was betrayed by a man she’d never done anything but support for thirty years.
MOAB.
The only references we’ll see from now on will be for the bomb dropped in Afghanistan.
Maybe the city in Utah.
But Moab was an area of land near the Dead Sea, and the Moabites were probably conquered by Pharaoh Rameses II (not to be confused with Pharaoh Roosevelt II) in the 13th-C B.C. Yeah, that’s right: Before Christ. I don’t buy this Before Christian Era crap. But that’s another battle for another day.
And the original Moab fellow was one of Lot’s sons (yeah, we only hear about Lot and his daughters fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah) BY his daughters, on the old ‘incest is best’ theory, maybe.
Now it will forever just be a giant bomb that we dropped on some people, and we only have the gummint’s word that it was the right people (this after bombing our “allies” in Syria recently), and in a country that is, of course, a direct and imminently lethal threat to us, and of vital strategic importance.
BCE = Before Common Era. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously if you can’t get even a simple acronym (initialism, rather) correct? Of course, you’re a white man, and not even transgendered or anything, so it’s not like you have anything worth listening to anyway.
Moab. Isn’t that Ahab’s brother. The whale guy, not the king. Or, maybe the king.
This is not the appropriate place to debate the immigration question in Europe and the West generally; I can tell that no one here knows much, other than a few things they heard from the mainstream media
Clare, welcome, but do be polite. I live in Western Europe (Switzerland, to be specific), and I’d be fascinated to know what secret source of information you have beyond what is available to me. Or to Eugen in Eastern Europe.
…migrants from Africa and Muslim countries are systematically raping white girls across Europe
Raping, yes. Systematic, no.
There are atrocities, certainly. What did our illustrious leaders expect to happen, when they let in hordes of young men with poor educations and no useful work skills? They have no women from their own cultures, and local women are (of course) not interested in them.
How should Europe (or the US, for that matter, see Minneapolis) deal with this? As OFD points out, this has been a topic of discussion here for some time. We’re happy to hear your point of view, but do avoid mistaken assumptions about your audience.
The commenters here, more than any other forum I’ve seen in almost 40 years of experience running fora and messageboards, average very bright and extremely well-informed. As a group, we are hyperliterate, hypernumerate, hyperhistorate, and hyper-just-about-anything. Our commenters include many scientists, engineers, physicians, military, entrepreneurs, authors, etc. As a group, we’re about as far from clueless as it’s possible to be.
Plain old-fashioned donut for Dad, and some strong coffee.
Opinions, everyone is entitled to their’s. However, you are not entitled to your own facts. Facts are hard to come by and never from one source. Today’s expert is tomorrow’s dolt.
Good company is contagious.
@OFD WRT MOAB/Moab: a lesson for all who care to be enlightened. There is more here than meets the eye (or ear). +1 and many more.
Rather partial to maple bars.
The king of all donuts, the apple fritter at Shipley’s donuts. Almost a half pound of pure delight. I try to limit myself to one per month.
http://www.houstonpress.com/restaurants/apple-fritter-at-shipleys-donuts-6402006
Jail House cinnamon buns!
Rereading Clare’s 11:54 comment, I think y’all were right the first time and my (uncharacteristically) overgenerous interpretation was wrong.
Chocolate cake donut with chocolate icing for me, please
Then you all can give me holes from such indulgence as I like all of them.
The king of all donuts, the apple fritter at Shipley’s donuts
That would feed a family of Ethiopian’s for about a week.
I have a little word puzzle in response to that:
F – C K T H – – T H – – P – – N S
Now, I realize this might be too challenging as it is, but you can buy a vowel. But the Ethiopians can’t because capitalism is an invention of evil white men, who ruin everything.
The king of all donuts, the apple fritter at Shipley’s donuts
That would feed a family of Ethiopian’s for about a week.
My body could feed a family of Ethiopians for a year.
I gotta start making our own fruit fritters again here; I’ve done apple, pear, blueberry and pineapple fritters. I can gobble down a whole batch but that would be piggish. I’ll let wifey have one.
Disappointed in Clare, as I thought the original article hit it on the nose pretty well, i.e., coming civil war in Europe. So I guess I’d hoped for similar contributions here.
As for nooz sources, one of them that I’ve seen regularly concerns the gummint-sponsored “resettlement” scams being run around the country for the past several years, including to Rut-Vegas, Vermont. The perps are always vague and ambivalent about who exactly is rolling into town, but of course it’s always a wunnerful thing they’re doing and these people will contribute SO MUCH to our country, etc., etc. The impression given is that it’s always young families and womyn and chillunz, too.
Needless to say, the regular citizens/serfs have exactly no say in any of this shit and dissent is rudely dismissed; except that the Rut-Vegas mayor who started the ball rolling got bounced out of office at the very next election, unrepentant and arrogant throughout. But the refugees roll in anyway, now in dribs and drabs, since the heinous and Nazi-like order to cease and desist from the Hitler-clone in the White House. Those with memory disorders probably forget that Obola did similar stuff during his eight-year reign of phone-and-pen terror.
“Somalis arrested in Clarkston, Georgia a long-time haven for refugee diversity”
https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/somalis-arrested-in-clarkston-georgia-a-long-time-haven-for-refugee-diversity/
“Voice of America his embassy has learned that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to deport about 4,000 of his countrymen. ICE confirmed that, as of last week, there were 4,801 Somalis in the U.S. who have been ordered removed. The vast majority of them are not being detained.”
“Until about a year ago, according to ICE, U.S. authorities could not get travel documents to deport people to Somalia, which has endured persistent deprivation and violence. Since Oct. 1, ICE has deported 237 Somalis, according to federal figures through April 1.”
A nice start. Only ten million to go.