Cool and sunny. Nice. I hope.
Was a nice day Saturday. Sunny but not too hot. It did get to 90F in the sun at some point, but there was a breeze. Kids and wife even got in the pool although they thought it was chilly in the beginning.
I did get some things done and chipped away at the list. I’ve got so much more to do.
That’s my plan for today. Sleep in, make breakfast, work.
Keep chipping away, and keep stacking.
nick
Pray that you do not go through these nightmares and have to use your health insurance. There are a lot of other expenses that are associated with these issues that got paid out of pocket.
My son’s premature birth resulted in a “starting point” bill of nearly $800k, and two years before that, my wife had thyroid cancer treatments. In between, my Verizon stress got so bad I was passing blood and got scoped on suspicion of colon cancer. Everything was big money until the negotiations started.
I still view the $20,000/annual bill my employer pays just so I can have access to the HSA mechanism to stash $2400 a year pre-tax as a waste. I haven’t had stable employment since The Death Star so coverage has been on my wife’s plan for 10 years, with my work plans always being about HSA’s for our routine care.
The movie was War Games with Mathew Broderick. Still a great and entertaining movie. Kids loved it. And serendipitously, the anniversary of the real life incident in the USSR was Sept 26. Google “the man who saved the world” to see the story of the Lt Col. who DIDN’T launch… The movie was from ’84? and is filled with vanished life. Rotary pay phones. Pay phones. Smoking. Smoking indoors. Pull tabs. Funny too that now hackers and computers are everywhere, while the other things are not. The version on Netflix must have been restored and remastered. It looked great.
Modems. VT100 terminals. WYSE when it wasn’t a private equity-licensed brand used to sell Chinese cr*p. “War” dialers.
How about middle class people living in decent housing in Seattle proper.
(Ok, most of the locations were around LA, but the concept wasn’t ridiculous at the time.)
Next time you watch “WarGames”, pay attention to the face of the actor who does not “turn the key”. I love flooring “West Wing” fans with that one.
I’ve dropped the suggestion before, but the first “Bill and Ted’s” movie is a very accurate slice of mid-80s life, much more so than the John Hughes flicks.
“Freaks and Geeks” is also true to 80s life before the basic cable cultural weapon of mass destruction got dropped on the suburbs. Your kids might have to be a bit older for that one, however.
I still view the $20,000/annual bill my employer pays just so I can have access to the HSA mechanism to stash $2400 a year pre-tax as a waste. I haven’t had stable employment since The Death Star so coverage has been on my wife’s plan for 10 years, with my work plans always being about HSA’s for our routine care.
I forgot to add that the company “contributes” $1200 to the HSA, matching my out-of-check contribution of $1200 to get to $2400, but, really, it is still part of my compensation and just doesnt appear in my check in the top line figure. Contributing more than that to the HSA means I end up with tax penalties.
I’m the only person I know of at work who takes the plan featuring the HSA. Everyone else either takes the much more expensive PPO or the “free” plan which is a strict HMO, no HSA with severe out-of-network penalties.
Ironically, when she was in private practice, my wife’s employer was in the HMO network.
I know a lot of snowflakes these days don’t like the responsibility of an HSA, but the account regulations shouldn’t be at the current insane levels.
I have a yard full of Halloween decorations. Four big inflatables, three bales of hay on which sets a skeleton family, Mr Bones, Mrs Bones, and baby Bones. I finally found the big box of scarecrows yesterday and now have them everywhere. I put bluetooth LED spotlights on the set so we can see them at night. And I added LED flame bulbs along the walk to the house for effect. I try for more fun than scary decorations to accommodate the little ones.
I usually dress as a Pirate and hand out candy if the weather cooperates. I enjoy bantering with the kids about their costumes.
Our Autumn decorations are out, along with a new Halloween-specific one I made. I keep it simple: a wreath, a Scarecrow that is a Crow (just in time for crow season here – I don’t know why we don’t have them the rest of the year, but I only hear their caws in the fall). a few pots of mums. I usually buy a pumpkin to set on the step but haven’t gotten to that yet. The one I made is a colorful signpost with a couple words on each of several boards: “The only ghost in this house is the Holy Ghost”. One year, I bought a couple bales of “straw” to use and it looked great… until I realized it was not straw but baled OATS. I had oats coming up in the yard the whole of the next summer!
Halloween in this little town is a lot of fun, because we often have a great many trick-or-treaters of all ages, and parents bring the little ones. Last year, due to the day of week and weather, we only had a few, but the year before, more than 50.
This year…. I have not decided whether to turn our light on or not. COVID still has me nervous. The schools are having physical classes, and few people take it seriously, so it continues to slowly spread around our county.
Yes, my autumn decorations are out too. The usual dead plants in the flower beds and growing amounts of leaves from my lazy neighbors’ deciduous trees (I have only pines).
This will be an interesting Halloween. The various Tri-Cities have not decided if they will allow house-to-house trick-or-treating. They have forbidden any organized “treating” like trunk-or-treat or the downtown merchants handing out treats.
We had a big bump in WuHuFlu cases this past week. The “officials” have traced a big Labor Day event as the source. There has been another “source” determined to be in the seasonal workers who have come from Mexico to work the fall harvests and in the vegetable processing plants, Twin City Foods being the worst including one who died on the processing room floor.
We got our “Voters Pamphlet” in the mail yesterday. The number of whack-a-does running for office is staggering. The WA State Legislature has passed a number of socialist/fascist bills that should have been voted on by “The People” first. But that is not the way WA State does it. Their way is to pass a bill and then put a “non-binding vote of the people” on the ballot. So it’s a done deal and the public be damned.
Is there any truth out there any more?
I haven’t decided on HOW to distribute treats to the little beggars, but I intend to. Lots of displays up in our neighborhood. Lots of people in the moms club have declared that Halloween must go on. I will do a display no matter what the status of the door to door.
And given the number of hispanics that normally come by, and their more ‘lazy fair’ attitude toward disease, if the weather is nice, they’ll be out in numbers.
n
The WuFlu (or whatever you call it) is highly contagious and will eventually get to almost everyone. Doctors know this and have concentrated on trying to spread out the infections over time(flattening the curve) because eventually everyone will be exposed. The wife and I are in the high risk group but we don’t spend time worrying. Eventually we will be exposed and, God willing, survive. No one lives forever.
The WuFlu (or whatever you call it) is highly contagious and will eventually get to almost everyone. Doctors know this and have concentrated on trying to spread out the infections over time(flattening the curve) because eventually everyone will be exposed. The wife and I are in the high risk group but we don’t spend time worrying. Eventually we will be exposed and, God willing, survive. No one lives forever.
I think the most telling statistic about the virus is that my wife has yet to see an random infection which can’t be explained among her patient base. Granted, the VA patients are not a broad cross section of the population, but any case she’s seen has been from contact with friends, family, or — the scariest — home health caregivers who did something stupid/selfish.
The VA *staff* has been particularly stupid/selfish on occasion. I figure that’s how we will get it sooner or later.
Robert Francis working for the Subcontinent candidate running for our local Congresscritter’s seat.
No friggin’ way. She has billboards up featuring his endorsement just outside our subdivision entrance.
https://www.facebook.com/betoorourke/posts/3109476709102018
She’s the only candidate advertising his endorsement. Lots of BETO yard signs lingered around our area after 2018.
@Harold:
Me, too. Not so much my wife, but I’m somewhat of a fatalist. If my number comes up, so be it. Obviously, I hope it doesn’t, but if it does…
G.
Somewhat long and dense article for a Sunday afternoon.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/emerging-evidence-hyperinflation
–the world has been reducing their dependence on the dollar and US controlled banking for many years. They are not doing that on a whim.
Food prices, which are not in the CPI iirc have increased 150-200% in many cases. Very little is still selling at pre-covid prices, and if it it, it is likely to be suffering from ‘size inflation’ where you get less for the same money. Kid’s cereal is a good example, the boxes are the same size on their face, but are now so skinny they barely stand up on the shelf.
I know I’m looking to convert my retirement cash savings into “stuff”, primarily real estate, and I’m not the only one. Second home sales are off the charts, especially if they are within one tank of gas of a big city and yet have a rural feel. We are now working with a realtor, and she confirms that ‘mountain’ homes are seeing the same extraordinary sales as ‘lake’ homes.
Further, I’m starting to see the predicted sale of ‘toys’ in the auctions. Guns, collector cars, stamp and coin collections, man cave stuff, jewelry, and artwork are starting to dominate some of my higher end consignment auctions.
Just read an article that wealthy people are turning their art collections into cash by borrowing against them. If I was a bank shareholder that would concern me because unless the banks are giving pawn shop valuations, they are likely to be WAY overvalued. The value of a painting during an economic disaster is pretty close to zero.
We are just getting started with this mess.
n
I like morality plays, whether Bros. Grimm, Elizabethan, or Star Trek. Found one last night that knocked my socks off:
https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-46-Whit-Hertford/dp/B01G4IAI26
Essentially just the tale of Prometheus.
Honest to God, you could easily imagine it as an undiscovered screenplay by Ayn Rand.
Maybe this will lead to a reboot of Hollywood and movie production, much like the internet changed music. Or maybe it won’t.
-since it’s an industry I used to work in, and is one of the US’s biggest exports, and WAY underappreciated by most people, the collapse of the movie industry would be and is A Bad Thing ™. On the other hand, people have been talking about its imminent collapse since I was in high school at least.
n
Maybe this will lead to a reboot of Hollywood and movie production, much like the internet changed music. Or maybe it won’t.
No more “tentpole” movies, certainly. Under the old model, until March, even badly made event movies could recoup their $250-300 million budgets within a couple of weeks in the US before heading to China.
After the disappointment of the last “Star Wars” flick, that model was probably headed for the dustbin regardless, but, as with many other economic situations, the Wuxu Flu sped up the process.
I can’t shake the feeling that, at a minimum, “Picard” and “Doctor Who” were edited or scenes reshot to avoid p*ssing off fans post “Rise of Skywalker”. Though, in the case of “Doctor Who”, putting a match to 57 years of storyline can’t be undone easily, even with a John Barrowman cameo hastily shot at the end of December and inserted into the series in January.
Dr who lost me years ago.
I did like the spin off, if you just completely overlook ‘teh gay’… and it was good practice training your ear and mind to understand what they were saying. (learning a language is supposed to create new pathways in the brain after all, and BBC4 requires a whole new set of mental filters.)
n
I did like the spin off, if you just completely overlook ‘teh gay’… and it was good practice training your ear and mind to understand what they were saying.
I tuned in to see John Barrowman’s hastily shot cameo, ‘teh gay’ and all. It looks like they’re hastily reshooting the New Years show to include him in the story as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm998vJEBU0
Amazon’s “Good Omens” involved a lot of former “Doctor Who” creative people beyond David Tennant and might as well have been subtitled, “Remember when this schtick was fun?”
And if you are a “Hitchhikers” fan and haven’t seen the opening of the first episode of “Good Omens”, go find it now. I’ll wait.
See — Someone still gets it even if Disney didn’t
Hollywood has done a lot of this themselves. With the liberal actors supporting candidates, threatening to leave if someone is elected, “can’t breathe” because of the current president, etc. They have labeled themselves as progressive, “woke”, when in reality they are two faced hypocrites. Complaining about income inequity while living in a $30 million mansion.
Add in the political, specifically racial, correctness. Quotas of minorities to be considered for an award. Creating an award that can only be won by one film who featured minority actors. Movies about deviant lifestyles then telling everyone they should embrace the same otherwise we are homophobic.
Hollywood generally deserves to go the way of the dodo. I would not be unhappy at all if all the major movie studios went under and the majority of the current “stars” all found themselves without a job. Better yet, found themselves on welfare.
Creating an award that can only be won by one film who featured minority actors.
You mean the “Best Popular Film” award the Oscars contemplated a few years ago for “Black Panther”?
They cancelled that idea when “MI: Fallout” appeared to have a chance to take the award.
Exactly. Now the Oscars have decided that films must have a certain amount of diversity to be considered for an award. A top-notch film, best ever created, could not win any awards unless it has minority performers. The very racism that Hollywood is trying to eliminate is doing so by being racist. Quotas or awards based on skin color. Hollywood can suck an egg as far as I am concerned. The ego infested morons who think their opinion is worth more than a pile of gorilla feces are clueless dolts.
Dilbert: Golden Age For Wally
https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-10-04
Every dog has his day.
collapse of the movie industry would be and is A Bad Thing
Hollywood has done a lot of this themselves. With the liberal actors supporting candidates, threatening to leave if someone is elected, “can’t breathe” because of the current president, etc. They have labeled themselves as progressive, “woke”, when in reality they are two faced hypocrites. Complaining about income inequity while living in a $30 million mansion.
Add in the political, specifically racial, correctness. Quotas of minorities to be considered for an award. Creating an award that can only be won by one film who featured minority actors. Movies about deviant lifestyles then telling everyone they should embrace the same otherwise we are homophobic.
Hollywood generally deserves to go the way of the dodo. I would not be unhappy at all if all the major movie studios went under and the majority of the current “stars” all found themselves without a job. Better yet, found themselves on welfare.
Hollyweird has been moving to other places for two decades now: Toronto, Nashville, Austin, Georgia, Bollywood, etc.
When I say Hollyweird I am talking about the entertainment industry in general. The entertainers are too full of themselves. Gone are the Lee Marvin types who would let me in their vacation house to play with me as a youngen. Now they are so full of themselves and think their opinion is valuable.
Hollyweird has been moving to other places for two decades now
When I say Hollyweird I am talking about the entertainment industry in general. The entertainers are too full of themselves. Gone are the Lee Marvin types who would let me in their vacation house to play with me as a youngen. Now they are so full of themselves and think their opinion is valuable.
In that case, it is not just Hollyweird. It is also the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Not sure about the soccer types.
And: “Parents Outraged After Ohio High School Football Game Turns into a BLM Rally”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/paula-bolyard/2020/10/03/parents-outraged-after-ohio-high-school-football-game-turns-into-a-blm-rally-n990257
“In case you haven’t noticed, racially charged political movements are invading every area of American life. High school football games are no exception. Parents attending a football game at Lakewood High School in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, were outraged when someone took to the public address system before the game to declare that the school would henceforth be an “agent of change” in combatting “systemic” racism in “society as a whole.””
““All of the visiting parents were completely caught off guard,” popular Cleveland radio host Bob Frantz, whose son was playing in the game, told PJ Media. “We were standing respectfully for the playing of the Lakewood alma mater, and when it ended they began a new song,” which turned out to be “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Also known as the “black national anthem,” the song is featured before NFL stadiums as a part of the BLM movement.”
““Then, when [the announcer] began telling everyone how horribly racist American society is, we were livid,” said Frantz, who hosts “Frantz Authority” on Salem affiliate 1420 The ANSWER. “Most of us sat down immediately, and the three dads near me, all of whom were police officers, were visibly angry. One said he would have walked out if it wasn’t his son’s senior season.””
Mathematics association declares math is racist:
Western Civ is officially closed for business. 🙁
Well, that was fast. Got my wuflu test results and the RT-PCR test says Negative. At this time anyway. Cough and other issues are not related, which is good news.
They sent an email with a note to download an encrypted file, which turned out to be HTML. Clicking on the file wanted my to log in with my Microsoft account, or a school or work Office365 account, neither of which I ever gave to anyone. There was an option to use a one time login, so I selected that. It just sent another email with a number to use. SO if I could get the first email, and click on the link, D/L the HTML (created by Office365 according to the footer), and then ask for a one time login, which came to the same mail account, I could “decrypt” the result, which then let me d/l a pdf of the actual result.
NO security at all, and a lot of confusing hassle. Typical MS actually.
n
Wife had hacking cough and light fever. She said it felt like a cold. Doctor said won’t see you till you have another covid test. So we stopped by a local clinic, they swabed her nose and gave us the results in less than 20 min. No covid. Failed the test for the 3rd time. Doctor said “You’ve got a cold” … well duh.
I’m taking MIL into the city for her pre-op covid test and meeting tomorrow. Assuming no surprises, she will have her spine surgery Tuesday. They are going to inject cement into the space where her crushed vertebrae is. She suffered the injury over 60 years ago and has been living with growing pain ever since. Doctors say this procedure has a 50% chance of solving her problems.
NO security at all, and a lot of confusing hassle. Typical MS actually.
Security through obscurity. Hopefully the HTML and PDF files were protected by HTTPS.
Of course, BillG got his copy … Kidding. Hopefully.
Mathematics association declares math is racist:
The Mathematical Association of America released a statement Friday claiming both that mathematicians should engage in “uncomfortable conversations” about race, and that policies of from the Trump administration, like the lack of a mask mandate in the United States, are somehow an affront to mathematics. The group concludes with a call for a “pursuit of justice” within math.
“Thanks to science and mathematics, we understand now that masks, social distancing, frequent, rapid, mass testing, and contact tracing are all fundamental to keep our communities safer during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the association wrote.
“Yet policies at the federal level have not consistently reflected these facts; for example, choosing not to incorporate a mask-mandate in the US has had serious consequences.”
Western Civ is officially closed for business.
The last stage of the cultural revolution is stand all of the STEM university professors against a wall. And shoot them in case if you are wondering why.
We are at stage 1 or 2 now. The up against the wall stage cannot be far away.
Well, that was fast. Got my wuflu test results and the RT-PCR test says Negative. At this time anyway. Cough and other issues are not related, which is good news.
Congrats for the negative !
If this was as bad as my symptoms would get, I was actually hoping for positive. If this was just the opening salvo, then I’m glad for the negative.
Positive would have been bad though for other reasons. My wife is returning to work every other day tomorrow, and one child has elected in person learning. Living with a positive would throw those plans into disarray.
n
“Sunday tropics update with two storms threatening the Gulf”
https://spacecityweather.com/sunday-tropics-update-with-two-storms-threatening-the-gulf/
“Jumping in here with a post because we’ve received several questions about the tropics now that potentially two storms may move into the Gulf of Mexico this week. Overall, our thinking has not changed. While the Gulf may may be busy in the coming days, the chance that anything significant tracks into Texas remains quite low. Let’s discuss.”
Do not evacuate. Yet.
“Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Kids Are Watching ‘Buffy’ For The First Time In Quarantine: ‘They Are Hooked'”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sarah-michelle-gellars-kids-watching-230700984.html
Wait until they get to the “Anne” episode. That should freak them out. I did not even recognize SMG at the beginning of the episode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer_episode)
I am currently binging the fifth season of “Lucifer” on Netflix. Maybe I should jump to “Buffy” for a while.
Positive would have been bad though for other reasons. My wife is returning to work every other day tomorrow, and one child has elected in person learning. Living with a positive would throw those plans into disarray.
My daughter has been in-person at school for several weeks. We received an email last week indicating two possible cases at the school and that everyone who came into contact with the infected would be notified personally, but nothing afterwards.
I doubt that the cases were kids. That would have been front page news with the teachers unions arguing for another shutdown. Round Rock ISD had their bond issue pass in 2018, but it was a no-frills package.
I am currently binging the fifth season of “Lucifer” on Netflix. Maybe I should jump to “Buffy” for a while.
H&I restarted “Deep Space Nine” over the 4th of July holiday. We’re back to where we were when we started watching every night in March.