Cool and damp again. Yeah, whoddathunkit? Got into the low 60s yesterday. There was part sun in various places in town but predominately overcast.
Spent the morning watching various auction lots for beds and mattresses for the lakehouse. Didn’t win any. Then I got my pickup done. Dropped some stuff off at my secondary, and swung by Goodwill’s Outlet store.
There are things we will need for the lakehouse. And because of the way my life works, in one of the bins was a box for a cell phone booster. There were actually two different ones in the bin, so I scooped up all those pieces. I’ll know later today if all the pieces are there, and if they will work now that 3G sunsetted. I also picked up two pieces that will pay for the rest of my full cart. They are the rarest of vintage audio gear– black face components that are worth something on ebay. Kenwood GE-76 and the tuner from the same line. No power amp though I did find the instruction book for it. You never know what you’ll find.
Today will be a meeting with one of my auctioneers, and pickup of some medical stuff. I’ll have to go spend some time at my storage unit, and at my secondary. I got another two pallets ready for the pallet lot auction, but I’ve got to get at least a couple more with some more valuable stuff to fill out this first auction with them.
The purchase of the lakehouse is proceeding. The seller kept having ‘trouble’ with her email, claiming she didn’t get our signed contract, and we thought she might be entertaining other offers without telling us. I now think she was actually having net issues, because she’s told us that she finally has the doc and is proceeding with the escrow company, etc. Or maybe the offers weren’t sweet enough to overcome us being first through the door… we’re still set to close on the 21st. The first quote for insurance was pretty freaking expensive. I’ll have to take a few minutes and talk to them about changes and maybe we can get it down into the reasonable range.
I’m really looking forward to finally having a Bug Out Location. It was a pretty big gap in our preps to not have anywhere specific to go if we needed to leave town. Fixing it up, stocking it, and actually using it for weekends is going to be a ton of work, but will be satisfying too.
Should generate some blogfodder too.
Now I can stack even more things. And you can too!
nick
We need to replace our car, and we've decided on a full electric car, mostly because we have the excess solar power to charge it "for free" about 9 months of the year.
I just went through and made a list of all the vehicles we will consider. I compiled it from various lists around the internet, filtered for essential features, and was left with around 20 models. There were a couple of Fords on there. Nope, just nope, first ones knocked off the list. Maybe things have improved since I left, but I have an image of US cars as unreliable and cheaply built.
There are several manufacturers I've never heard of. Cupra? Aiways?. Who knew that MG still existed, apparently now owned by a Chinese company? The MG models get surprisingly good reviews. Anyway, 20 entries left.
The biggest problem is 4WD vs. size. We want a smaller vehicle, but we also want 4WD for the snow here. Literally every 4WD model is bigger than the car we have now (RAV/4 from 2008). For that reason, I've left a few non-4WD models on the list.
Prices are painful. Along with 4WD come a host of other up-market features, meaning that most of the cars cost $50k to $60k. By far the cheapest is the Tesla Model 3, but I am skeptical of the touchscreen – I would much prefer mechanical switches.
We're also looking into leasing services. There are companies that offer a package deal: they pay all maintenance and fees, even tires, and even your auto insurance. The prices are surprisingly reasonable. The reason I would consider these is because I'm not convinced of the longevity. Our RAV is now in its 14th year – I doubt the batteries in electric cars will make it past 5-6 years, especially in a climate with cold winters. Let someone else carry that risk.
Anyway, now that I have the list, I need my wife to make a pass through it. I'm sure she'll have some other criteria, and the list will shrink further before we go as far as looking and test-driving vehicles.
Some region in Australia recently made it through an entire week on renewables. Of course, that was a happy conjunction of various factors. The elephant in the room is storage, or rather, lack thereof. You will have cloudy weeks with little wind. Storage to carry the load for days – not hours – simply does not exist. Whatever storage option one pursues: hydrogen/methane, pumped hydro, whatever – requires you to have a fully redundant set of power plants, so you're building twice the infrastructure. Somehow, that never makes it into the calculations of "green".
49F and only 54%RH.
Very tired. Whole family still in bed and grumpy.
Stayed out too late.
n
The last generation of Focus in the US had a transmission problem so widespread that buying back and/or fixing every vehicle properly could have easily bankrupted the company. Fortunately, when Ford settled the class action lawsuit, the court set a window for claims so narrow that only a few owners managed to reach the point in the process where the company bought back their vehicles.
The rumor is that Ford sent the vehicles with new transmissions to South America. Who knows what really happened. Maybe they put electric drivetrains in them and sent them to Europe.
Ford only kinda-sorta cares about trucks, where 95% of their profits come from right now. Thanks to the commercials airing during the NFL playoffs, the F150 Lightning EV truck has become a fetish item for the "Show Ya" crowd in US absent any actual production models rolling around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSLHjvgAqfQ
The Super Bowl commercial should be a scream depending on your point of view.
Ford is contemplating some draconian restrictions on the dealers and customers with regard to how the vehicles are sold and subsequently resold in order to maintain the fiction that the truck could roll out of the showroom for $40,000.
The touch screen isn't the problem as much as how the car is dependent on services provided by "The Cloud". Of course, all the manufacturers are discovering how much money they can make with monthly fees for features like remote entry from a phone so all of the cars are increasingly dependent on remote server access, and AWS along with Hashicorp, Ansible and Docker in the US is a Hot Skillz combo — no one runs their own servers so they don’t think about outages.
“I need 1000 servers to provision the headlight control in this new truck.”
“Make it so.”
Tesla uses the same touch screen as all of the other manufacturers. That will probably be the least of your problems with a Model 3.
Subaru is introducing it’s all electric Solterra this year. A possibility?
We call that “shadow values” in maths.
That’s what I love about this joint! There’s always some nerd with the answer.
The goal is to impoversh on a large scale in order to return Napa to a one hour drive in the Tahoe from San Francicsco for dinner at The French Laundry. Just like Gavin Newsom.
https://thefoodxp.com/french-laundry-menu-prices/
Say, that menu doesn't strike me as being very vegan. I’m sure they are accomodating — it *is* California — but something tells me Gavin & co. weren’t eating Keller’s famed Ratatouille.
Yes, created for the movie.
And in other news. Picked up my iPad air. Originally was supposed to be shipped as the local store did not have the sky blue 256GB version I wanted when I placed the order. Checked yesterday and the item was in stock. I cancelled the online order and picked up in the store. Quite seamless. Scan a bar code in an email, show ID, use the Apple credit card on my phone by getting near the device the store people carry. In and out in less than 2 minutes 3 seconds.
I have to wonder why people don't chastise Apple for the packaging. It is really well done but seems excessive. 1.5 inch thick box for a device that is less than 1/2 inch high. Even accounting for the charger there is still 1/2 left in the height of the box. Heavy cardboard.
Return box for shipping my old iPad is arriving today. I will get $130 trade-in on the device. Not bad considering I have had the device for 4 years. Only paid $5.00 a month for two years, total of $120, through a Comcast deal. I got good use out of the device at basically no cost.
Do I like the new device? It's an iPad. No real serious use for me. Excellent screen, speakers are much better, narrower bezels, faster, supports WiFi 6 so better internet speeds, no longer dull grey (I got the sky blue model), can store a boat load of music (3,300 songs) and 30+ videos many of which are 4K, USB-C which means changing some of my cables and getting a USB-C to headphone adapter. The latter is not really necessary as Bluetooth headphones work well but I have one set of wired headphones.
I did look at the iPad PRO. Too costly for my needs. The regular iPad which was even cheaper did not support the Apple Pencil 2 and has larger bezels along with the screen not being quite as good. The iPad Air seemed a good option. Neither has colors other than silver or grey. I wanted to match my watch and phone. (Yeh, call me a limp wristed fairy.)
Hay for the pee-ons. We rich will remain the carnivores we've always been.
Isn't the Pro an M1 module like the MacBook Air and low end MacBook Pro?
Priced too low, that would cannibalize Mac sales.
Yes, it does contain the same chip. Supposed to be faster. Whatever. Nothing I do on the iPad requires blazing speed. I have never found anything I do on an iPad wanting for more CPU speed. It might be an issue if I was rendering video. That is for my desktop where I have much larger screens and dual screens, high speed memory, and a 16 core CPU.
The biggest complaint is Apple won’t port their pro level apps to the M1 iPad Pro. I still got one since I’m a fairy, too.
9 degrees F today. Did get to the upper 20's yesterday. Gas jumped a quarter overnight. Was stuck at $2.89 for over a month. Even gas station donuts are up 10%. Woe is me.
Same basic issue — cannibalization of Mac sales.
IIRC, the "cheese grater" Mac Pro hasn't seen Apple Silicon yet. Gotta sell those $10,000 towers.
Those were being assembled here for a while.
Well, hush my mouth. Costco's Chore Boy has been busy doing something other than Issaquah’s bidding. I don't miss WA State.
It wouldn't matter to me, but I've seen a lot of WA plates on cars rolling around here over the past year, and I know Microsoft is recruiting for large Dallas and Austin offices they have planned.
Beyond the freedom issue associated with the pandemic, they show up here for the relatively cheap housing and then want all the same stupidity that made living there unaffordable. The latest brain fart is light rail to the airport and a big underground homeless shelter -er- commuter bus/rail transit station downtown.
https://www.q13fox.com/news/wa-cares-delay-of-washingtons-long-term-care-tax-program-signed-into-law-tax
And y'all needed eye bleach yesterday over some tats
https://theferalirishman.blogspot.com/2022/01/according-to-chief-nosewetter-alert-has.html
Question for anyone who might know: What costs more, a full sleeve of tattoos or the amount of food needed to grow a back end and thighs so fat that you can be mistaken for a plow animal?
You're asking rhetorically, right?
Tattoo work can get into the thousands even for a small area.
Growing/producing/cooking french fries is largely an automated process so they are still fairly cheap.
Does that include the lubricants needed to keep friction under control so the risk of fire is reduced?
"Images emerge of one the US Navy's newest stealth fighters crashing into the sea"
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/asia/us-navy-f-35-crash-photos-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
Oops. Only 250 million dollars.
“FA-147 Argonauts now has eight F-35Cs left.”
That is eight more attempts to land the jet fighter.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
And a big rush to recover it. Top Secret shite all over it. Maybe they need to add auto-deploying floats on the things for quick recovery. I wonder what can be salvaged and put back into the supply chain? I'm sure the contract maintenance will say "sorry, once its' submerged, it doesn't meet milspec anymore. You'll have to buy a new one."
Super size fry is over three bucks. For real lard-ash requiring Gen 3 Spandex containment you need to run +1000 calories a day for years, so the cost differential may not be that large.
“Does that include the lubricants needed to keep friction under control so the risk of fire is reduced?”
G3S with Scotchguard. Stand in a Walmart parking lot Saturday afternoon and you can hear the whispering swish. Do not look withou eye protection.
Didn't know about that one – I'll have a look!
Taking a one day welding class today. I’ve always wanted to learn, and a local CC finally offered a class. We spent the morning going over basic terms, some demonstration, and a lot of time laying down welds on flat metal. After lunch we will start joining metal together. Learning a lot, and it’s fun. I also have quite a few projects in mind. Now I just need to save up a little money…
Is that what makes up the unique wal mart smell? French fries and Scotchguard? 'cuz I can hardly stand to breathe inside one, and they all smell the same.
n
@ITGuy, I'm 'shop taught' in MIG for steel and aluminum, and can make a proper mess in stainless too.
I learned gas and stick during college for building scenery, and artwork, brazing and cutting with gas too.
Unless something has gone horribly wrong over the years, I can heartily recommend the Hobart "Handler" 125 as an entry level machine that will cover 95% of all steel welding needs you are likely to have. Add the flowmeter and gas bottle, run regular wire.
I've had mine since the early 90s and it's still going strong with zip for maintenance. I do keep it covered when not in use.
You want it on a cart too, to hold your bottle, fire extinguisher, helmet, spare wire, etc. The cart does a lot to protect it too. Put a 3 way adapter on your extension cord, so you can have the welding machine, and two angle grinders plugged in and ready for work. One with a grinding wheel or flap disk, one with a wire brush wheel.
Get a welding 'beanie', leather sleeves, and a good quality autodarkening helmet. Always wear safety glasses under the helmet. Lots of stuff bounces off your chest and then the inside of the helmet, and into your face.
I wear TIG gloves with long gauntlets, they're easier to control and manipulate the gun and materials with than the cheap thick "welding" gloves. Takes a long time to wear thru them and it's worth it.
I never wear a respirator while welding, I will position a fan to blow across my face, and I try mightily to keep my head out of the flux smoke plume. YMMV.
Foam earplugs are critical.
Welding is an awesome and powerful tool, and you can 'fix' a lot of mistakes the you couldn't fix if you were working with wood.
n
If you have been on the Olympic Peninsula in WA on Highway 101 – the east-west portion at Blyn, WA, you may have noticed the "Fat Smitty's" burger joint on the side of the road.
And if you went inside, you would see thousands of dollar bills thumbtacked to the walls and ceilings. All put there by patrons over the years. And every 5 years, the bills are taken down and donated to a local charity.
A nice video news story about it is here https://www.king5.com/article/entertainment/television/programs/evening/olympic-peninsula-fat-smittys-veterans-burger-dollar-bucks-chainsaw-art/281-a1eb77cd-b6ea-4bcd-82e0-0106c160fd95 .
The haul this year was about $25K. Took most of a day to remove and stack the bills. The money went to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society .
And the burgers at Fat Smitty's are huge and excellent.
Floor cleaner if I had to guess.
Once smells get into linoleum, only ripping up the floors will completely remove the odor.
My wife's office in Florida never stopped smelling like garbage to me, even after she got the lousy office manager removed and the cleaning vendor replaced.
In times of food abundance, carbs are relatively cheap. Think about the foods you started putting back as a beginning prepper: beans, rice, wheat, pasta, Add fat to the carbs, and you get the results we see displayed here.
Protein is comparatively more expensive. Add fat to the protein, and you get your basic keto dieter.
Add carbs plus fat plus protein in unlimited quantities, and all bets are off.
Most of us fatties have trouble cutting the carbs, or at least doing good portion control on them. Although I say "us fatties", let's just say I'm not in her weight class…
I've got a 2002 Explorer still going strong, first year of the independent rear suspension. The only service outside of maintenance has been a dead fuel pump a couple of years ago. But consequently I've no experience with anything more recent.
My wife's previous office was in a medical offices building. The smell of the ABX soap, and the 'strips the blood cells of their bonds' cleaner permeated all her clothes, shoes, bag, hair, pretty much everything. I hope it was doing a nuclear job on the germs, it certainly was killing her sinuses.
n
From Thursday…
Quebec wants to be part of Europe, but isn't France dropping restrictions on the 1st?
Of course they can get away with the stupidity because the stores on the US side of the border aren't going to enforce a similar mandate, specifically Vermont and New Hampshire. Heck, New Hampshire is moving to make Ivermectin available on a pharmacist's discretion.
In the last decade, I’ve lived in two “safety valve” areas providing relief for liberal stupid in nearby geography — SW WA State (well, relatively speaking) across from Portland and unincorporated Williamson County Austin. I recognize the signs. Now the US is going to serve as the safety valve for Canada’s collective brain fart.
Well, as always it helps to remind the many (well mostly) Americans reading here that Canada does not have a health care system. We have provincial health care systems that are similar but separately administered with different rules. So, if it is a brain fart, it belongs to Quebec only. (Quebec is "different", and it is not just the language.) These sorts of restrictions are not being seriously contemplated elsewhere in Canada. I am sure Ottawa (in Ontario) will see many people coming across the river from Hull shopping to shop there as well. However, since close to 90% of the qualifying Canadian population is already vaccinated, these rules are mostly about playing for political popularity to the 90% by making life for the 10% a bit more difficult. I doubt Vermont or NH will see significantly more shoppers than they already do. Unless you live near the border, you are not going to save much on groceries vs. travel costs.
>> Prices are painful. Along with 4WD come a host of other up-market features, meaning that most of the cars cost $50k to $60k. By far the cheapest is the Tesla Model 3, but I am skeptical of the touchscreen – I would much prefer mechanical switches.
Have you considered a used EV? Very happy with the deal I got on my used Leaf.
BTW, Nissan is coming out with a crossover SUV EV, the Ariya. Also with a waiting list. And in line with that they've reduced their pricing on all the Leaf models.
.
>> Subaru is introducing it’s all electric Solterra this year. A possibility?
Didn't know about that one – I'll have a look!
Not sure where you are, but in the US there's a waiting list for the Solterra.
.
I presume the ID.4 is on your list? A bit over the top with gadgetry IMO.
Are you eligible for any tax credits on an EV purchase?
Vegetarian (maybe). Thomas Keller isn't stupid. He won't go vegan.
I've tried several times to get a reservation there. It's very, very difficult.
9 degrees F today. Did get to the upper 20's yesterday. Gas jumped a quarter overnight. Was stuck at $2.89 for over a month. Even gas station donuts are up 10%. Woe is me.
Food for you and food for the vehicle are jumping at 15% inflation rate. Just wait until we have been through four years of this crap. That will be 75% of inflation after four years of Bite Me. Hope you like it cause all those people who retired early on fixed income are going to be screaming.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
@Rick H, my post above (at 14:06) gave me a 'go away spammer' error. Had to post it through the comment editor.
Taking a one day welding class today. I’ve always wanted to learn, and a local CC finally offered a class. We spent the morning going over basic terms, some demonstration, and a lot of time laying down welds on flat metal. After lunch we will start joining metal together. Learning a lot, and it’s fun. I also have quite a few projects in mind. Now I just need to save up a little money…
I took three years of welding instruction at my first junior engineer job. Bob, our chief welder, pronounced me as worthless when I made a hole while arc welding on a 3/4 inch eight foot diameter steel plate. Later I proved him correct again when he tried to teach me how to weld with a acetylene torch.
Also from Thursday:
I lived in Spokane, WA, for about 9 years. Canada's wonderful, marvelous, near perfect socialized medicine system provided an unending stream of patients to the 2 medical centers in Spokane. It seems that if you want timely diagnostic and elective procedures, you have to jump over the border from Canada to get them. But don't say that care is rationed! That's a lie! It's just sometimes delayed a little bit. Like, until the patient dies.
That's why a town of 100,000 people had 2 major hospitals. And why Washington had, at the time, more veterinary MRI machines than all of British Columbia had for humans.
Not sure what to start with here. How about, yes is is near perfect, about as nearly perfect in its own special way as what passes for medical systems in other 1st world countries. Not a single one of them is perfect.
If you need emergency care, if the problem is life-threatening, there is no waiting. So juxtaposing "elective surgery" to "delayed… until the patient dies" is a bit much. Very true that we don't have many non-hospital based MRI machines. I live in the Toronto area and if I was told I needed an MRI for something I considered urgent I would likely drive down to Buffalo and pay cash to get that done in the next day or so. It is a flaw in the provincial health care systems I would like to see fixed, but no luck so far (as I said, near perfect). Of course, if what you have is urgent enough to require hospitalization, you will have immediate access to the machines in the hospitals.
Of course care is rationed. In Canada, we do it by queuing for non-life threatening procedures – you wait unless you can find a way to jump the queue (hello Buffalo, Spokane, etc…). In the US, you do it by price which makes the poor (the uninsured) wait for elective procedures, perhaps forever. It also explains why something like "Dr. Pimple Popper" (or the foot doctor show – can't recall the name) is a US show – poor people coming in to take care of disfiguring or crippling injuries they cannot afford to otherwise treat. They might have to wait in Canada (and we do hate waiting and complain about it, but then also complain about the increased taxes to reduce the queues), but they would get treated. It is a basic difference in approach – health care is a commodity in the US and a government service in Canada. Both approaches have advantages and problems.
Questionable Content: Tattoos and Sprays
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4710
Speaking of tattoos …
It is a game unless you are Bill Clinton, Gavin Newsom, or wealthy enough to buy both seatings in an evening.
My wife's office partner in Florida did the latter for his 40th birthday. The doctor job was his "shoe money" since he stood to inherit the fortune of his father, who had a cash pile gained from farming dozen of patents for pneumatic tube systems installed in banks.
Divide 72 by 15. That's how many years will be required for prices to essentially double. The math works the other way too.
The next time the Progs retake power, they will campaign on confiscating private retirement accounts. My generation has very little saved and will be pushing 60 when the pendulum swings again.
Putting Trump back in the White House will virtually guarantee a Dem sweep in 2026.. I’ll be 58.
As things currently stand, I’m looking at “Nomadland” being what my retirement looks like.
I don’t view it as someone else’s responsibility to make sure I don’t live like that, but most of my peers do not, having been given houses and other lifestyle embellishments by their War Baby or Boomer parents, their own lifestyles enabled by Depression-era parents’ compulsive saving. The generation coming up behind me feels even more entitled.
Yes … direct posting via CURL/WGET is blocked, as that is the way that comment spam bots do it. The blocking is done by my plugin. The plugin requires the use of the comment box via a hidden field with a specific type of value, which is set after a delay. That's also why you don't see the 'submit' button on the form until after a delay.
The plugin is very effective at blocking comment spam. Even before the Akismet plugin (it also blocks spam comments) see it, which makes the whole process faster. A bot-comment will not even be stored in the database.
This site was getting many bot-comments each day. They were caught by Akismet (for the most part), but they cluttered up the comment database table, and had to be manually removed. My plugin blocks bot-comments, but doesn't let the bot-comment get into the comments table.
So, only comments entered via the comment form are allowed.
Thankful that corduroy is no longer in fashion. The noise would require ear protection.
One of the dollars on the ceiling was mine. The food was good. I could not eat all of the burger. I could almost feel the veins clogging. Hard to believe it has been about 10 years since I was on the peninsula. Beckett Point Road overlooking the bay.
>> So, only comments entered via the comment form are allowed.
I did attempt to post it initially via the "Add Your Comment" form – that's what returned the spammer error.
So then I posted (successfully) just the word "post" and went to the newly added comment, clicked Edit, deleted "post" and pasted in my comment text and clicked Save which saved my actual text.
So then I posted (successfully) just the word "post" and went to the newly added comment, clicked Edit, deleted "post" and pasted in my comment text and clicked Save which saved my actual text.
I have done this several times. Works like a champ, the comment editors are very different.
"Court blocks latest GoM offshore lease sale, wants more greenhouse gas calculations"
https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/government/article/14232851/court-blocks-latest-gom-offshore-lease-sale-wants-more-greenhouse-gas-calculations
"A federal court Jan. 27 invalidated the latest Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas lease sale, the judge ruling that the administration must run additional calculations on the leasing plan’s potential contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions."
Another judge thinking that they are Congress. Congress did not authorize these greenhouse gas calculations.
Taxes are done. I used http://www.olt.com/
Free. Ok, add $7.95 or whatever for folks filing state returns.
I found them a couple/three years ago on the IRS website.
The site works very well.
Just ridiculous. Making stuff up as they go to advance the narrative.
I wonder what y'all are doing to get the 500 error. I've had it once. But I usually ctrl-a ctrl-c before I click Submit.
Hey. Isn't "submit" raysist or reee!!! or whatever the latest anti honky thing is?
Well. Crack the whips!
"Alert: Let's Encrypt to revoke about 2 million HTTPS certificates in two days"
https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/26/lets_encrypt_certificates/
"Let's Encrypt, a non-profit organization that helps people obtain free SSL/TLS certificates for websites, plans to revoke a non-trivial number of its certs on Friday because they were improperly issued."
"PG&E proposes 6.4 GWh battery storage plan in response to California's 11.5 GW procurement order"
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pge-proposes-64-gwh-battery-storage-plan-in-response-to-californias-115/617646/
I wonder if their warranty will cover fires ?
My mother is out of the hospital / rehab after six weeks for a hip replacement and is home in Port Lavaca. Dad thinks that Mom is actually stronger now than before the hip replacement. Mom is still taking intravenous antibiotics for an infection in the hip incision and Dad is the antibiotic infusion tech which he actually trained for. Mom can stand on her own now and walk ten steps with a walker, a vast improvement than before the surgery.
WRT lynn's Mom: Whew!!!
In 2019, my husband was in a rural Texas hospital for a stroke. They ran every test they could get away with, and billed Medicare $25,000 for an MRI. Unnecessary, since they had what they needed to know from the CT Scan they billed Medicare $10,000 for. Of course, Medicare only approved some reasonable amount for each of them… a few hundred $ if memory serves. It's a hospital we will never go back to. They tried to cheat us when our bill(s) came too.
That is wonderful news about your mom, Lynn! I've been praying for her. Sounds like the operation and rehab were successful. So happy to hear it.
Nothing special about that hospital. Many moons ago when my wife had endometriosis surgery insurance paid for most of it. I was still stuck with a large bill. I demanded, and received, a detailed bill of several pages. One item was for $250.00 for video which insurance would not pay and the hospital demanded I pay. I asked what was the purpose of the video. The hospital said it was for their protection. I told them then if I am paying for the video, I want the video. The hospital refused. I then told the hospital I was not paying for something I did not receive. The hospital took it off the bill.
There were several other questionable items. That little barf tray shaped like a kidney was $30.00, insurance would not pay. Hospital stated since it was used (wife never did) as the package was opened (by the hospital) I had to pay for the tray.
Wife's last chest pain incident. We went to the E/R. Sat in the waiting area for two hours and never really got into an E/R room. We still got charged for an emergency room. A couple thousand dollars. Medicare will pay most of the reduced rate, supplemental will pay the rest. We also got a charge from an E/R doctor which the wife never saw. Hospital said he looked at X-Ray, boom, $2,500.00. He is out of network but has to accept network pricing. I hope it gets reduced to $3.95.
Wife's doctor stated emphatically that the next time she experiences chest pain call 911 and be transported by EMS. No more self transport. That gets a person into an E/R room immediately. No waiting with the illegals and leaches who use the E/R for primary care each time they get the sniffles. And never pay a dime.
>> Hey. Isn't "submit" raysist or reee!!! or whatever the latest anti honky thing is?
Same reason we can't have "master" bedrooms anymore…now it's main or primary.
That's a lot of redubbing over at HGTV.
I wonder what they want to call the brake master cylinder on vehicles. Can there be a master key to a building? Mastermind racyst?
>> Wife's last chest pain incident. We went to the E/R. Sat in the waiting area for two hours and never really got into an E/R room. We still got charged for an emergency room. A couple thousand dollars. Medicare will pay most of the reduced rate, supplemental will pay the rest. We also got a charge from an E/R doctor which the wife never saw. Hospital said he looked at X-Ray, boom, $2,500.00. He is out of network but has to accept network pricing. I hope it gets reduced to $3.95.
Only because many, many hospitals continue to put roadblocks in place or simply choose to ignore the law.
And of course all have plenty of lobbyists crying why this is a bad thing while their clients contribute heavily to our Congress-critters.
Next time you're planning elective surgery, why not check if your hospital of choice complies, and if not, consider taking your dollars elsewhere.
Biden's Brain Turns to Confetti in Real Time During PA Remarks
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/28/bidens-brain-turns-to-confetti-in-real-time-during-pa-remarks-n514129
More like oatmeal with too much water added.
What is this dog’s name?
https://twitter.com/Yoda4ever/status/1486164488973799425
Should be Biden.
@tv, always glad to hear the details of life in the great white north, especially if there is a factual issue.
I did work with a contractor in Alberta that couldn't get scheduled for his followup tests after successful cancer treatment, within the period a recurrence would kill him. In other words, he was only able to get a retest every two years, but the cancer would kill him in one… so he paid out of pocket for testing in the US.
I've been uninsured in the US and insured, and now have the Harry Bergeron Obammma plan.
I couldn't keep my Doctor and my coverage got more expensive and provided less.
n
Cultural Facilities Growth in content providers creates new demand for soundstage facilities
https://www.bdcnetwork.com/video/growth-content-providers-creates-new-demand-soundstage-facilities?oly_enc_id=5578I3185145A6Z
Wife's last chest pain incident. We went to the E/R. Sat in the waiting area for two hours and never really got into an E/R room. We still got charged for an emergency room. A couple thousand dollars. Medicare will pay most of the reduced rate, supplemental will pay the rest. We also got a charge from an E/R doctor which the wife never saw. Hospital said he looked at X-Ray, boom, $2,500.00. He is out of network but has to accept network pricing. I hope it gets reduced to $3.95.
Wife's doctor stated emphatically that the next time she experiences chest pain call 911 and be transported by EMS. No more self transport. That gets a person into an E/R room immediately. No waiting with the illegals and leaches who use the E/R for primary care each time they get the sniffles. And never pay a dime.
My wife transported me to the ER for both of my heart attacks. The first one was in Port Lavaca, I was the only patient there on Thanksgiving day of 2009, no waiting. Usually they have a stabbing or two when people start drinking but every one was calm that day. They kept on giving me drugs until one worked and stopped the damage and the pain. Then they transported me up to Victoria for a heart cath to make sure I was still alive.
The second one was in Sugar Land in 2012 ???. I walked in and said "heart". They grabbed me and took me back to an examining room. They did a walletectomy first and then moved me to the cath lab when they determined I was in full atrial fibrillation with tachycardia. They started giving me Lopressor via IV which is a great drug, it stopped the afib and let me breathe after 2 or 3 hours. A poor nurse had to sit in the cath lab and silence the klaxon every time my heart exceeded 200 beats per minute which was happening every 90 to 120 seconds.
The new new job is out-of-band server management using an embedded controller, and the various forms of communication enabling that are traditionally master-slave relationships. There was just no other way to describe it when the leads gave me the run down on how certain things work this week.
For the record, I was the only white person on the call.
My first child was born at 26 weeks because my wife had HELLP. I remember a sleepless night afterwards, *Christmas Eve to Christmas Day*, sitting in a chair in the OB recovery watching my wife's blood pressure trigger alarms every 10 minutes at 200/100. The doctors believed she would stroke out and die that night, something I only found out later.
No stroke.
My wife's clinic in WA State cut a bunch of patients loose in 2013, after Obamacare kicked in. Some rushed to see her in late 2012, ahead of their plan losing the clinic's providers from their in-network lists. The conversation usually went like this:
"I thought I could keep my doctor with Obamacare."
"Who did you vote for last month."
[Crickets chirping]
Ironically, the best plans in the area came from Georgia Pacific, owned by the "evil" Koch brothers. Even though many of those workers voted for Obama twice, their plan kept my wife's clinic on their provider list.
Again, I don’t miss that state.
What happens when pron goes woke?
mainbator?
primarybator?
zer-maphrodite, persons of diminutive stature, who enjoy restrictive garments?
n
>> The new new job is out-of-band server management using an embedded controller, and the various forms of communication enabling that are traditionally master-slave relationships. There was just no other way to describe it when the leads gave me the run down on how certain things work this week.
How about "parent-child?"
Of course, many parents will question exactly who's the 'master.'
One of the things I picked up looks very much like the Big Berkey water filter, and uses the same filter elements. It doesn't have a makers mark on it though.
Bob didn't like them, but I'll sell it to someone who does 🙂 We've got pumped backpack filters for our needs..
n
"Claim: Climate Change to Kill Coffee and Avocados (Again)"
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/01/28/claim-climate-change-to-kill-coffee-and-avocados-again/
"Don’t they ever get tired of being wrong?"
"Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change – new research"
One of the things I picked up looks very much like the Big Berkey water filter, and uses the same filter elements. It doesn't have a makers mark on it though.
Bob didn't like them, but I'll sell it to someone who does We've got pumped backpack filters for our needs..
n
Like this or different ?
https://www.amazon.com/Sawyer-Products-SP128-Filtration-System/dp/B00FA2RLX2?tag=ttgnet-20/
"The Glitz, the Glamour!" by Sara Hoyt
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/01/25/the-glitz-the-glamour/
"It is time — again — to talk of the glitzy, glamorous life of a working writer."
"I think I’ve done a couple of posts on the fact that whenever I get an award, or this blog gets mentioned by someone bigger, and my phone starts ringing off the hook with congratulations, it’s always on a particularly blah day."
"So, the last time Rush mentioned me, I was scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees when the phone started ringing."
"The Prometheus award call? I was in the middle of a Piss-war with the cats, who had peed on the sofas so much they mildewed. So I’d just dragged the sofas to the curb, to be hauled away by trash, and bought cheap used sofas, for which I was making impermeable covers, because I do learn. And yep, Euclid had just peed on the covers I was sewing. (Euclid was actually the issue, since he’d never been box-trained. In fact, he’d been inverse-trained since the elderly person who owned him before apparently put down towels and newspapers for him to pee on. BUT once he started the other cats all assumed that was the place to pee. The only good thing about his dying is that the p*ssing out of place has stopped.)"
Ewww. At least my 15 lb Siamese is dedicated litter box user that I only have to clean twice a week.
I've been to panel discussions at anime shows, sponsored by Funimation, where parents are made out to be bullies when they put limits on the kids, particularly with regard to the company's material.