NPR : There Is No God Penn Gillette is the man. Th…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 7, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
NPR : There Is No God Penn Gillette is the man. This is the most positive description of a belief I’ve ever seen (well, heard - I downloaded the audio version).
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Symphony - Web publishing bliss: “Symphony uses XS…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Uncategorized
Symphony - Web publishing bliss: “Symphony uses XSLT-a powerful and robust templating language developed by the W3C-to transform data into web pages. This data can be internal to Symphony such as your entries or author information, or you can grab XML from external sources such as Flickr or del.icio.us and incorporate it into your website. With the versatility of XSLT at your fingertips, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.” Hey! I know XSLT! I helped develop two systems using it! I need to look into this further. Perhaps someone finally came out with a web publishing system suited exactly to my skillset.
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“They f*ck you in the drive thru!” -Joe Pesci, “Le…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Uncategorized
“They f*ck you in the drive thru!” -Joe Pesci, “Lethal Weapon 2″
On my second call to my health insurance company this morning I finally got someone with enough of a brain to explain what happened to my claims for the surgery.
- The way their plan works is you get $1000 each year to spend however you want. This is called the HRA.
- After you blow your HRA, you pay for the next $800 worth of services out-of-pocket. This is called the “bridge.”
- Once the HRA and bridge a taken care of, you enter traditional healthcare coverage of 80/20.
So they paid out of my HRA everything prior to my surgery (Urgent Care visits, consultations etc.) but also nearly exhausted my HRA before these two bills:
The surgeon: $949 (just the surgical procedure)
- Only $780 is “reasonable” and was applied to the $800 bridge (out of pocket amount between the HRA and traditional coverage)
- I’m responsible for the remaining $168-ish of “unreasonable” charges.
The surgical center: $955 (where the surgery took place - I should have asked how much the happy drugs were in addition to the anesthesia)
- Only about $240 is “reasonable” and was paid out of the remains of my HRA (before the surgeon’s bill came in) and traditional coverage
- The remaining $711-ish is considered by my health insurance to be “above reasonable costs” based on their fee schedule, which they say is determined by surveying similar services in my area (I cry BS but there’s nothing I can do). My surgeon’s assistant said the hospital would have charged a lot more.
So the upshot is that I now know how it happened, but it doesn’t do anything to alleviate this burning sensation in my rectum (”Rectum? Damn near killed’em!”).
P.S. I suppose it could be a lot worse - I could be dealing with the bureaucracy that is the Canadian health care system…
P.P.S. I was just informed by a co-worker that there are dozens of in-network providers in Billings, about four hours away. That would have cut my costs in half.
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6 Reasons on Why are You Procrastinating For me, a…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | December 6, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
6 Reasons on Why are You Procrastinating For me, at least at home, it’s all of the above. Mostly I have a problem starting any one thing when I have several to do of seemingly equal importance. I don’t have this problem at work where I’m very focused, only at home. I’ve got a couple websites to do, a company logo, a t-shirt design, a flash animation and then there’s all the work left on my house and the Mustang. I just shut down.
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Small Biz 101: How to Get Started Being debt free …
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Uncategorized
Small Biz 101: How to Get Started Being debt free is the big hitch for me. That and lack of motivation.
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An easy way to check for Firefox extension upgrade…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 30, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
An easy way to check for Firefox extension upgrades in bulk?
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Strange bedfellows: Televangelists Hope To Smite A…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Uncategorized
Strange bedfellows: Televangelists Hope To Smite A La Carte Cable: “The televangelists, who often side with the conservative advocacy groups, staunchly oppose the a la carte plan, because it would likely remove them from a good number of people’s TV sets.” I think they’re afraid of the truth. As long as their programming is carried by default they can delude themselves into thinking they’re making a difference. I’d love to see natural market forces squash that delusion like a bug.
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I knew I loved that country for a reason.
Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 29, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
Via Reuters.com: Ignoring the part about 70 year-old prostitutes, “Brothels are legal across most of Australia…”
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Experts: Introverted youth have deep roots for beh…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | November 28, 2005 by John in Uncategorized
Experts: Introverted youth have deep roots for behavior: “Introverted children enjoy the internal world of thoughts, feelings and fantasies, and there’s a physiological reason for this. Researchers using brain scans have found introverts have more brain activity in general, and specifically in the frontal lobes. When these areas are activated, introverts are energized by retrieving long-term memories, problem solving, introspection, complex thinking and planning.”
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My house is falling apart. Water damage from lea…
Permalink | Tweet This! | | by John in Uncategorized
My house is falling apart.
- Water damage from leaky clothes washer hose? Check.
- Living room carpet destroyed by dogs? Check.
- Cracked bathtub with subflooring most likely wet and warped? Check.
- Water heater drain valve leak and damaged utility closet floor. Check.
- Unfinished remodeling work? Check.
- Not even a smidgeon of equity left in my house after the garage project? Check.
This homo(wner) shit is for the birds. Sometimes I miss apartment life. Actually, I miss the townhome in Arvada, CO, I shared with a roommate in the late 90’s. Except the roommate was kind of a b… er, kind of difficult to live with. Ah well.
Before that I rented an apartment in a well-run complex in Wheatridge, CO. When the water heater was rusty and spewing forth reddish-brown water, the management had it replaced within two days, no questions asked. It was awesome.
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