07:53 – Barbara’s dad was doing very well when I visited him yesterday, acting almost like his old self. I took him the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich he’d requested, along with a small cup of strawberry ice cream, both of which he ate. The Hospice representative stopped by later, and told Barbara that Dutch was exactly where he needed to be for the time being. Barbara’s friend Marcy stopped over yesterday afternoon to visit as well. I’ll run over there today to return the clothes I washed yesterday, and Frances and Al plan to visit Dutch this afternoon. Barbara may also stop to see Dutch on her way home from work, and plans to go over for a longer visit tomorrow. So, overall Dutch is getting plenty of visitors. It’s not much, but we hope it’ll help keep his spirits up. Being stuck in a nursing home is no fun at all, even one as good as the Brian Center.
I met yesterday afternoon with Abby Esterly, and wrote her a retainer check to get her started on doing a logo for the business and a hand-out sheet. I told her that I was the client from hell because I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know when I see it. I again encouraged Abby to focus all of her efforts on building her own business rather than beat her head against the wall trying to find a job in the film/animation industry. That’s what she’s trained to do, but there are simply no jobs available and not likely to be. At age 26, Abby is part of the new Lost Generation, coming into the job market just as the job market has collapsed, with no prospect of any significant improvement any time soon, if ever. But Abby is smart, talented, and hard-working, which still counts for something. I told her that there is no security, other than what she makes for herself. And she has all the tools necessary to do that.
Barbara and I are about three quarters of the way through series six of Heartland, which we’ll probably finish this weekend. They just finished shooting the first two episodes of series seven, so it’ll be almost a year before we can start binge-watching series seven. So, once we finish series six, I’ll go back and start again at series one episode one and watch my way through the whole six seasons again at least once and probably twice while I wait for series seven.
16:08 – Stuff like this really pisses me off: Smoke? Overweight? New regulations could raise your insurance rates
And here’s the problem in one sentence: “Smokers, of course, run up more health care bills than non-smokers.” The only problem is, that’s utterly wrong, as is grouping “smokers” without differentiating between cigarette smokers and others.
Cigarette smokers tend to die young and quickly from causes like heart attacks. Few of them make it to 80, which is when the real health-care costs start to kick in. My father-in-law, who is a non-smoker, is almost 91 years old. I have no doubt that in the last year Dutch has consumed more health care resources (and costs) than he did in the previous 90 years combined. It’s end-of-life care that is costly, and people who don’t smoke cigarettes both live longer and consume more resources for much longer than those cigarette smokers, most of whom died quickly years before they reached 80.
Any honest actuary will tell you that cigarette smokers incur higher health-care costs than non-smokers, but there’s a key gotcha concealed in that statement. In the past, insurance companies could drop coverage on people who became seriously ill, and deny coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. So, while their policies were still in effect, cigarette smokers did indeed cost the insurance companies more, so those smokers accordingly paid higher premiums. With Obamacare, it’s a whole different ballgame. Now, everyone is eligible for coverage regardless of their health or pre-existing conditions. So the insurance companies will be stuck paying the bills. As that actuary who he’d rather have a policy on: a cigarette smoker who will probably die of a heart attack, with their only costs an emergency room visit and possibly a day or two of ICU, or a non-smoker, who is going to be in and out of the hospital as he ages, and eventually in more than out. There’s simply no contest. The non-smoker is going to cost much, much more than the smoker possibly can.
Then there’s the problem of lumping in cigarette smokers with pipe smokers, like me. That honest actuary will tell you that pipe smokers on average outlive not just cigarette smokers, but NON-SMOKERS. It’s not that pipe smoking is particularly good for your health, but pipe smokers are self-selected Type B personalities. We tend not to get excited, and we tend not to die of the stress-related problems that kill a lot of those non-smoking Type A personalities. Before political-correctness, pipe smokers were rated for life insurance the same as non-smokers. For that matter, people who smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day or less were also rated as non-smokers. That’s because the actuaries knew that life expectancy was the same for non-smokers, pipe smokers, and those who smoked half a pack a day or less of cigarettes. That’s still true, although you’ll have to do quite a bit of digging to discover the kind of raw data that establishes it. It’s also true that the general health of pipe smokers is statistically indistinguishable from that of non-smokers, and insurance companies used to write health insurance policies at the same rates for pipe smokers and light cigarette smokers as for non-smokers.
So why is Obamacare going to charge smokers 50% higher rates than non-smokers. They should be giving smokers a discount. And the higher premiums also apply to those who are “overweight”, which is just as outrageous. The problem there is that people who are of so-called “normal weight” actually have higher morbidity and mortality than those who are the next step up, so-called “overweight”. That speaks volumes: being “overweight” means you’re healthier and less likely to die than if you’re “normal weight”. That makes one wonder who defines “normal weight” and, uh, what they’ve been smoking.
I took him the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich he’d requested, along with a small cup of strawberry ice cream, both of which he ate.
What, no banana slices? Dude, you made me hungry for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich now.
Seriously, sounds like Dutch got just what he needed. Comfort food and comfort. I believe in quantity time with family. This quality time mantra is all nonsense.
That’s what she’s trained to do, but there are simply no jobs available and not likely to be.
Come to Texas where our state unemployment has dropped to 6.1%. STEM unemployment is about minus 2%. So is the unemployment in the Eagle Ford Shale project where if you have a class A license, breathe and pee without illegal substances in it, you too can make $100K per year driving a truck.
Quality Time isn’t nonsense, it’s a lie devised by those people who are trying to avoid admitting that other things are more important to them than family time.
I met yesterday afternoon with Abby Esterly, and wrote her a retainer check to get her started on doing a logo for the business and a hand-out sheet. I told her that I was the client from hell because I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know when I see it. I again encouraged Abby to focus all of her efforts on building her own business rather than beat her head against the wall trying to find a job in the film/animation industry.
BTW, this is a good thing. She is working on her 10,000 hours on becoming a professional at her thing. Once someone gets 10,000 hours of practice in something, they are generally regarded as a master of their work. And college hours do not count.
About five years, in other words, of full-time work. So OFD is a master soldier, master cop, and triple-master IT drone. Outstanding! I should be running the NSA! Hey, maybe I am!
And don’t remind me, as an English major and grad student, that those college hours don’t count.
Once someone gets 10,000 hours of practice in something, they are generally regarded as a master of their work.
So OFD is a master soldier, master cop, and triple-master IT drone.
Somewhere, for a fleeting moment, masturbater entered my mind. But 10K hours would leave significant calluses.
“Dude, you made me hungry for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich now.”
Seriously?
Both would be nice in separate sandwiches, but together? Pass.
Well, from what I’ve been told, animation studios are hell-holes anyway. Rotten pay, few or no benefits, no job security, and so on. In fact, I’ve heard several of them have nicknames reminiscent of Nazi camps. Of course, trying to earn a living in any artistic/creative field is difficult at the best of times, and even more so now with the state of the economy.
Even if Abby puts in her 10K hours in this field, I suspect she wouldn’t be happy with what being an expert in the field gets her.
“Come to Texas where our state unemployment has dropped to 6.1%. STEM unemployment is about minus 2%. So is the unemployment in the Eagle Ford Shale project where if you have a class A license, breathe and pee without illegal substances in it, you too can make $100K per year driving a truck.”
Class A license?
Truck?
If you mean semi trailer I’m out, but I have a rigid truck license and I breathe. The last urine test I had a couple of months ago tested positive for amphetamines at some level. WTF? I don’t take any of that crap.
My son’s best friend is working as a animation scene specialist at one of the major game shops out in Kalifornia. He got his masters in Animation Art a couple of years ago. He is working about 80 to 100 hours per week and loving it. He is single and they have a chef on site to feed all the employees three hots a day. Plus they have a laundry service on site. My son says it is just like the Marine Corps, only air conditioned. I do not think that a marriage would survive this work environment.
Texas has three classes of licenses:
1. Class C – can drive a car
2. Class B – can drive a rigid or articulated bus
3. Class A – can drive a semi tractor pulling a trailer (or two)
The motorcycle license (Class M) is a addon to any of these.
I do not have a clue what other states do.
That’s a different story than I’ve heard, and obviously a lot more attractive. Is there any way I could presume upon you to get Abby an introduction by email or phone to your son’s friend?
” The last urine test I had a couple of months ago tested positive for amphetamines at some level. WTF? I don’t take any of that crap.”
Some antihistamines, foods and spices will light up those test like that. I’m having a pretty extensive background check done on me right now, including new fingerprints, and the dope test hasn’t come up as an issue yet. But I believe my pee is now as pure as the driven snow, so no worries. They were taking hairs for a while a few years ago but seem to be back to the urinalysis stuff; in SEA the medics used to fix our tests for us and we took care of them real good out in the field.
Actually, there are two types of drug tests. Presumptive tests, usually color-change, are not legally evidence, but are merely used for screening. If the presumptive test says there’s a controlled substance present, it’s likely that there is, and if it says there’s no such substance present it’s pretty certain that there’s not.
If the presumptive test is positive, the next step is normally to do an instrumental test, which is legally considered reliable evidence. If an instrumental test says the substance is present in the specimen, it is.
There are a few examples of people who tested positive when they in fact had not used the controlled substance, or not done so intentionally. The most common example is someone who tests positive for opiates because he consumed a poppy-seed bun or two. But those aren’t failures of the tests. Opiates are indeed present in the blood and urine of the suspect, albeit in extremely tiny amounts.
The other example is prodrugs, which are basically uncontrolled substances that metabolize in the body to yield a controlled substance. In most cases, someone intentionally consumes the prodrug to get high, but there are some situations in which innocent consumption of an uncontrolled substance can result in a positive test for a controlled substance.
Most testing labs retain a control portion of the specimen in case they need to do follow-up testing (usually, when someone credibly claims that a positive was a false positive or that specimens have been mixed up) but it’s worth asking what the procedure is.
Ah, I just realized that I didn’t state it specifically. The kind of things that OFD is talking about–OTC drugs or foods causing a positive–are almost always positive only during the presumptive testing phase.
Great, give MRE’s to the Marines, but send billions to arab countries, for what:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/31/18592339-the-drawdown-diet-marines-steamed-by-loss-of-hot-meal-at-afghanistan-base?lite
Par for the course; nothing too good for our brave warriors fighting for freedom, liberty and justice in horrible and evil foreign lands. I sympathize, to a point; but when you sign up, you sign up to get fucked over, pretty much. The recruiters need to spell that out a little better, maybe. OFD recalls his time in SEA many, many Oriental moons ago, when he discovered he could eat a helluva lot better on the cheap OFF-BASE, with the locals. Of course the current situation with the locals in the Sandbox and the Suck sort of preclude this kind of thing, but hey, Charles coulda slit my throat very easily had he been so minded back then, and no doubt some of the village honchos I ate rice and veggies with were friends, at least, with Charlie.
I see that civilians back here are stepping up, though, which in a way, is a disgrace and makes the blood boil; WTF, we’re not paying enough in fucking taxes to give our guys a hot meal anymore???
Can’t even get a fucking sammich at midnite anymore. It just doesn’t make sense. I bet units training stateside have at least that out in the field.
And this, apparently the IRS can just say “fuck you very much” to the Senate. Any citizen would be hung high and then forced to answer questions:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/31/Exclusive-IRS-Ignores-Senate-Deadline-to-Answer-Questions-About-Scandal
I used to love Midnight Chow, too; we worked all kinds of wack shifts and I generally ate four or five meals a day. Over on the plantations I ate off-base during the day but if we had the night gigs, I used to roll over there and just load up a tray a couple of times with good old American Southland grub.
The IRS and other State entities can say fuck you to the Congress because the Congress lets them do it and has long since abdicated their responsibilities under our Constitution. It’s now sort of like a puppet government in Nazi Germany or the old Soviet Union questioning agents and management of the Geheimstatzpolizei or the KGB. Not much gonna get accomplished.
But let MrAtoz or OFD or Ray refuse to spill, and yeah, they’d have us waterboarded in the Tidal Pool toot-sweet.
That’s a different story than I’ve heard, and obviously a lot more attractive. Is there any way I could presume upon you to get Abby an introduction by email or phone to your son’s friend?
He is the exception unfortunately. And may be joining the rule soon as they are finishing their death march XXXXX game. It is my understanding that unemployment in that industry is brutal. He got his job by being #1 animation art graduate from SMU a couple of years ago.
I will ask my son if they are soliciting resumes. Please send an email to lmc@winsim.com and I will send you his personal website which he apparently does not maintain at the moment.
Ah heck, why not, here is his personal website:
http://www.jeremythurman.com/
OFD recalls his time in SEA many, many Oriental moons ago, when he discovered he could eat a helluva lot better on the cheap OFF-BASE, with the locals
My son’s Marine squad, on patrol in Iraq in their Humvees, used to stop in a village and grab a chicken or five off the broiler rack and some local bread. $1 each for chicken and bread. So much better than MRE’s and fiber! MRE’s apparently have no fiber, just carbs and calories as they should. His first tour in Iraq, they had one hot meal per month, burgers and hot dogs, flown in from the big Marine base in Northern Iraq.
If you want to send food to anyone in the Suck, the tuna lunch meals (tuna, crackers, mayo) were very popular with his squad. I’ll bet that I shipped 200 of those to him after I got word that his guys were stealing these from each other:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Starkist-Chunk-Light-In-Water-Lunch-To-Go-Tuna-4.1-oz/13398021
From everything I’ve heard, graduating from S&M U is the perfect training for work in the animation biz, the computer gaming biz, and a handful of others.
One last one for the day. If this was my kid, I’d be in jail. How can these cretins get away with interrogating a five year old? You got zero tolerance means you can intimidate anybody? I wish the community would get together, go to the school and beat every teacher and staff there to intimidate them. “If the gun had caps in it, it would have been an explosives charge.” How can anybody be the dumb.
http://www.infowars.com/5-year-old-interrogated-by-school-over-toy-cap-gun-until-he-wet-himself-with-fear/
Is there any way one can send a bunch of these to our troops without knowing a name to send it to? I just shipped a science kit this afternoon to an APO/FPO address, and they have all kinds of warnings about not being allowed to ship stuff to “any service member” or something similar. Otherwise, I’d probably just fill up a priority mail box with these things and ship them off to some unit.
There ought to be instructions somewhere for how to do this.
(Texas) … STEM unemployment is about minus 2%
Unless you worked in the space program, and are older, as I and quite a few others have found out.
http://www.anysoldier.com/index.cfm
OFD wrote:
“Some antihistamines, foods and spices will light up those test like that.”
I take an anti hayfever tablet called (here) Claratine that may have set off the test. I was seeing a sleep physician, trying to work out why I was feeling drowsy during the day. The Claratine is the only thing I can think of that might be responsible.
http://www.anysoldier.com/index.cfm
Nice! Looks legit. Pick somebody and send them something. They will appreciate it!
We were sending our son about 40 to 50 lbs of stuff a month while he was in Iraq. Food, books, wipes (premoisened facial), Food, a portable shower (solar heating), socks, Food, etc. He said mail call would show up and the guys in his squad would cluster next to him to see what he got. He was the only guy in his squad who got stuff regularly so we sent extra all the time. And my mother sent stuff, and other family members sent stuff. Food (not MREs!) was always best for the variety. And I always put everything in Ziploc gallon freezer bags for protection. Just assume that the Marines will run over all boxes, just like UPS.
For Christmas, we sent homemade Christmas cookies in 40 bags. Maybe 50 bags. Double bagged. The guys apparently saw those and went nuts. There was no orderly distribution of the goodies that day.
He shipped some of the books back and I made the mistake of opening a box in the living room. I got a pound of Iraqi sand in the living room floor. Nasty, face powder sand that clings to everything. Almost greasy.
(Texas) … STEM unemployment is about minus 2%
Unless you worked in the space program, and are older, as I and quite a few others have found out.
Yup, sorry about that. However, KBR, Bechtel, Fluor Daniel and Worley Parsons are all hiring and starting to get desperate. If your experience is anywhere close to the Oil and Gas industry, they will hire.
Lynn wrote:
“Texas has three classes of licenses:
1. Class C – can drive a car
2. Class B – can drive a rigid or articulated bus
3. Class A – can drive a semi tractor pulling a trailer (or two)
The motorcycle license (Class M) is a addon to any of these.”
Oh well, I guess I won’t be coming to Texas to work. I have a license for a motor bike, car, rigid bus and rigid truck, but nothing articulated.
When I got those licenses in the mid Seventies they were pretty easy to get. It would probably be very expensive and time consuming now.
Oh well, I don’t like driving anyway.
“If this was my kid, I’d be in jail.”
Same here. It is one more in a long train of abuses and outrages in this country and we all just sit still for it. How about more lawsuits; let’s get the names of teachers and school officials viral on the net with their home addresses, phone numbers, emails, schedules and social media accounts. They wanna declare some kind of goofball anti-terror war on our children, how about we declare war on them, see how they like being intimidated and wetting their pink panties. Real tough, harassing toddlers. Let’s see them harass me.
I’ll have them shitting bricks.
I don’t get it either. We had a “meeting” with our son’s school a few weeks ago, where the (entirely female) school administration demonstrated that they have zero idea how teenaged male students tick.
Had tbey not dropped the issue, heads would have rolled, and I do mean theirs. There are too damned few men in the schools nowadays. Boys are not girls. They are not girls in different clothing, and too many female school administrators apparently lack experience with the opposite sex.
It’s not ignorance, brad; it’s deliberate. This demented matriarchy of hags and crones have been running the publik skool program and the humanities and “social science” departments of Higher Mis-Education for decades now. They hate and loathe boys and men and do everything in their power to undermine and humiliate them. Most boys and men have evidently knuckled under, from what I’ve seen in both the academic and corporate worlds thus fah. So that was the feminization of the culture; now we’re full speed ahead on its infantilization; adults are now treated as big babies and they appear to act and dress the part very well.
Uniform for males: baggy saggy shorts hanging to mid-calf, often tattooed. Filthy but expensive sneakers. Untucked grubby t-shirt. Baseball cap. Possibly more tatts. Usually overweight. Dumb as a bag of hammers.
Uniform for females: Baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt except in summer, when every possible/legal square inch of skin is exposed. Hair pulled back in a tight and greasy bun. More tattoos. Possible metal ornaments on face. Usually morbidly and grotesquely obese. Much dumber than a bag of hammers.
For that matter, people who smoked half a pack of cigarettes a day or less were also rated as non-smokers. That’s because the actuaries knew that life expectancy was the same for non-smokers, pipe smokers, and those who smoked half a pack a day or less of cigarettes. That’s still true, although you’ll have to do quite a bit of digging to discover the kind of raw data that establishes it.
The question I have with that is where did they find a baseline of non-smokers who were also not exposed to second-hand smoke from which to draw comparisons? There were few homes or workplaces that were smoke free. While they may have concluded that half-a-pack had no effect, I suspect the correct conclusion could not have gone farther than that it was no worse than regular exposure to second-hand smoke.
Brad wrote:
“There are too damned few men in the schools nowadays. Boys are not girls. They are not girls in different clothing, and too many female school administrators apparently lack experience with the opposite sex.”
In principle I would have liked to have been a teacher (high school maths, physics and history) but I am glad I never went near that snake pit. I’ve heard too many stories about the office politics, parents and kids.
OFD wrote:
“Uniform for males: baggy saggy shorts hanging to mid-calf, often tattooed. Filthy but expensive sneakers. Untucked grubby t-shirt. Baseball cap. Possibly more tatts. Usually overweight. Dumb as a bag of hammers.”
Hey! I resemble that!
Usually overweight.
Usually morbidly and grotesquely obese.
Isn’t it nice to be living in the richest time period ever know to mankind? Being hungry all the time sucks but the opposite sucks also.
Uniform for males: baggy saggy shorts hanging to mid-calf, often tattooed. Filthy but expensive sneakers. Untucked grubby t-shirt. Baseball cap. Possibly more tatts. Usually overweight. Dumb as a bag of hammers.
Whoa, scored 5 out of 7 today on the Sams and Wal*Mart run. Note to self, get some tatts and wear baseball cap outside the house. $50 sneakers are expensive, right?
I don’t eat much. Seriously.
I’ve lost about 20 Kg since Christmas, I just fill easier than I used to. Some days I don’t have my first food for the day ’till late afternoon.