Rants

Lovers Lane

Lovers LaneGnorm went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods with us today (some peektures) It was another beautiful fall day, almost a carbon copy of yesterday; cool, crisp with the very definition of blue sky overhead. It was great to get out and take a hike. Because we got a late (for us) start we had to share the woods with dog walkers, runners (Hi Anne) and horseback riders. We probably saw 10 people! Donna and I took Gnorm down our favorite trail, but it just made him sad because his new girlfriend from yesterday wasn’t with him.

At the end of last week, every time I came home from work the internet connection was down. I would have to reboot the modem, and sometimes the router too, a couple/few of times to get it stable. Yesterday it was fine, but today as I prepared to listen to the FRS‘s last game of the season, it just wouldn’t work no matter how many times I rebooted everything. I ended up on the back porch with the laptop and took a ride on the internet on a neighbor’s dime. Someone close by has an unsecured WAP… After on more reboot of everything, including the PC, I now have internet on the desktop. I can connect to my wireless network with the laptop, but I cannot see the desktop nor the internet. Plus I can no longer get the router’s admin panel from the desktop even after resetting the router. Fixing that will be a job for tomorrow after work.

The Emperor got a bath this afternoon and had the royal scary dentures installed. They will add a little spice to some of the October Post Office photos.

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Somebody Has Paid Somebody Off

When I first started dealing with GERD a couple years ago I was prescribed Nexium by he ENT specialist. It was on the non-preferred list of drugs and carried a much higher co-pay ($50 or 25% of cost.) I used it for about three months until my sore throat cleared and then I started using an OTC antacid. Pecid, for maintenance.

This worked good for a while, but the sore throat returned and my GP doctor wrote a prescription for Nexium. After he first month, my insurance administrator company (BCBS of AL) balked, they wanted me to step up to Nexium if this was to be a maintenance drug. I needed to start with a generic or preferred, we went with Protonix off the preferred list for a $25 a month co-pay.

The Protonix has worked out fine for the last year or so. The other day I got a letter in the mail telling me that starting October 1st, Protonix is being bumped to the non-preferred list, meaning a bigger co-pay. Guess what is replacing it on the preferred list? Nexium.

For grins I called my pharmacy to see what these medicines cost. They could only tell me list prices; 40mg Nexium is $180 a month, 40mg Protonix is $150 a month. The generic, omeprazole (AKA Prilosec) in a 20mg dose costs $110 a month and if I needed 40mg that would double to $220. Seems kind of backwards to me, the non-preferred drug is now the cheapest while the generic is he most expensive.

And just is what’s up with the generic, omeprazole, at $110 a month? You can get Prilosec OTC for less than $20 a month at the local drug store….

I know these costs don’t really accurately reflect he price of these drugs because the discounts negotiated by Blue Cross Blue Shield. The pharmacist told me to call BCBS to find out the real cost, but I didn’t feel like dealing with that today (maybe tomorrow.)

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
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You Can Dance If You Want To, But I Don’t Have To Watch

Because the FRS have the evening off I had nothing better to do than watch a little tube. We started to watch Fever Pitch and made it a whole 34 minutes before shutting it off. Part of the problem was the whole language problem you see, it was not the Drew Barymore / Jimmy Fallon American version, but the original British movie. Maybe if they had American English sub-titles…

From there I started to watch a Law & Order episode that was about 5 minutes in. I had seen it before, but as usual didn’t remember the ending, so I watched it through. Beautiful thing of it is, that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it again, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.

Right after that, TNT segued right into another L & O episode. This one I hadn’t seen, so I watched it for the first time. It started out with a thinly disguised re-hashing of that poor Cubs fan in 2004 who tried to catch a foul ball and was then subsequently blamed for them not making the playoffs. It later turned into a whole corrupt police officer and DNA clearing a wrongly accused murder, yada, yada, yada. Beautiful thing of it is that in another year or so if I stumble on that episode again, I’ll have forgotten it, so the ending will be a surprise. Again.

Two hours of TV was enough, even when it is “good” TV, so I handed the remote to Donna and picked up a book. She started channel checking while I read with one eye and watched the flashing images with my other. She paused on something I didn’t recognize, (The TV listings say it was Supernatural, but I can’t confirm or deny that because I am not familiar with the show.) and I looked up for a second and said that I thought that a couple of the people in it looked familiar. She tired of whatever it was and clicked to the next channel. Two people were salsa dancing? It was Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance? I made a smart aleck crack like, “There’s something I *don’t* want to be familiar with.” She laughed and changed the channel. Wouldn’t you know it but the next channel was PBS and they were showing Live From Lincoln Center : “Mozart Dances” The Mark Morris Dance Group performs… We both looked at each other and thought the same sarcastic thought, only I voiced it, “Now there is something I *want* to be familiar with.”

Next up, was the Weather Channel. There was a meteorologist in a parking lot in San Antonio standing in a dry parking lot waving his hands vaguely stage left telling us how much water used to be there. Riveting. That’s when I left the room.

With apologies to Men Without Hats: We Can’t Dance If We Want To

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Lost Time

Yesterday at 2:35 PM I scraped my arm.The nurse and I spent 20 minutes treating it. We then spent the next 15 minutes examining the scene of the crime and recreating the event. We then called in the maintenance supervisor to have him look at the offending junction box cover and he then got a maintenance guy to remove the cover, smooth off the sharp edge and then replace it. Another 30 minutes used up. From there we ended up in my boss’s office while he, the nurse, and I filled out the accident report, spending another half hour. Pretty much killing the rest of the work day.

Today the nurse spent almost 2-1/2 hours with me, driving me to two different doctor’s offices, so I could get my tetanus shot. (At the first place we went, the front office person “couldn’t get me in the computer”, so we left after an hour.) Back at the plant we spent the next 45 minutes together to 1) re bandage the cut because the doctor did a lackluster job after he spent all of 10 seconds looking at it, 2) filling out the appropriate paperwork to have me take a drug test and 3) me peeing in a cup and her testing it. Later my boss brought around the accident report for me to sign (anther 2 minutes, but who knows how long it took to complete it.)

Next week the Director of Operations, the Facilities Manager, the HR Manager, my supervisor, his Manager, the supervisor of the department I was passing through and his manager will meet to discuss how to prevent this from happening again. More than likely after all of these folks spend an hour in a room, a maintenance man will be dispatched to reroute the offending junction box and it’s associated conduit, another maintenance man will be dispatched to place yellow tape on the floor to designate an official aisle and the department supervisor will spend a half an hour instructing his people not to place pallets in the new aisle.

This was not considered a lost time accident, because I did not “miss” any work, even though over 8 man hours have been spent on it so far, with lots more to come.

As a bonus, as far as OSHA is concerned it is not a recordable accident because I did not require stitches, x-rays, or antibiotics (tetanus shots don’t count) so our company’s accident free hours numbers don’t get reset.

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Ouch

This afternoon while cutting through a department in the back to get up to my office I got an owee. There was a stack of palettes in the “aisle” and I dodged left to go around them. I moved a little too far left and scrapped my arm on the wall. After about 10 step further along I thought to myself that hurt. When I looked down I was bleeding pretty good from a silver dollar sized scrape on my left forearm. I stopped in the next restroom I passed and ran it under a faucet. Ooooh. Wet some paper towels and pressed hard for a while. Still bleeding, I guess I better go see the nurse.

She took a look, hmmm’d, donned the rubber gloves and spent the next 5 minutes spraying on some sort of “Stop Bleeding Powder” and did manage to get it down to just weeping. Covered the crater with a big gob of antibiotic cream and wrapped it in gauze, all held in place by a magenta piece of that crinkly stretch bandage. It took about 40 minutes before the red spot on the gauze stopped expanding.

Because it happened at work there were forms to be filled out and now because I admitted that I hadn’t had a tetanus shot since sometime in the 80’s I get to have her drive me to the “company” doctor tomorrow for said shot.

We went out to Chinese buffet for lunch today.

Meal Cost: $12.31
Tip: $1.69
Spent Today: $14.00
Year to Date: $1746.78
Meals out, 102 of a possible 654.

Finished my tenth Spenser book today, Playmates, and didn’t find any Crime Buster Rules. Although in chapter 13 there is a statement that might have been called one: When in doubt do something, and hope if you keep doing it you’ll come to understand what it is. Later in the book Spenser gets called into the Boston Police station where there are an assortment of agencies represented (a couple being reoccurring characters) and is asked if he knew why he was called in. To which he replies,”I assumed you were holding a crime stoppers seminar and wanted me to lecture.”

Started down, went up, still up.
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Over the Limit

Cameron, SC With this past weekend’s excursion we now have 204 Post Offices. Not yet half but getting there. I have them all up in my gallery, but I don’t have any captions for the last dozen or so (yet.) I have also been posting the photos on Flickr! to give them a little more exposure and they have that neat-o map thing. Plus there is a group dedicated to just U.S. Post Offices that I’ve been adding too.

When I uploaded the last of the photos to Flickr! today I went over the limit, seems that all you get is 200 photos with the free membership. When you add a new picture, one falls off the back. The photos are still there on the site, but you can’t see them unless you know the photo’s URL. They also don’t display on my map anymore (I really liked that feature), but remain visible in the U.S. Post Office group.

The cost to upgrade to the Pro level is $24.95 a year. If it was more like ten bucks I’d jump at it, but I’m not so sure I want to spend that much. I’ll probably just quit uploading the Post Office photos there. There is the option of adding another free account, but I’m going to have to end up with 3 of them to do all the 460 South Carolina Post Offices. Of course if some one were to give me a Gift Upgrade…

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Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeal

The Emperor had it’s 60k mile service last week. Not only did they change the timing belt, but while they were in there they changed out the two accessory belts. We picked it up Thursday evening and all was well until Saturday morning. We had a MMC breakfast date, so we left the house at about 6:15. Less than a half a mile away from home in our quiet neighborhood is a 4-way stop. When pulling away from the stop the Emperor started to squeal like a stuck pig. I felt about 2″ high. I was sure that lights were going on in the houses around me as the people tried to locate the Siamese cat in heat. The sound went away after about 5 seconds and didn’t reoccur. I figured a little condensation from the car coming out into warm moist air from the air conditioned garage, so the belt slipped a little bit.

Nice theory, but how do I explain what caused the same squeal this afternoon after work. It lasted longer than Saturday’s episode, about 10 seconds. I had time to cycle the A/C a couple times and when off the first time the squeal stopped and restarted when the A/C was turned back on. When I turned off the A/C the second time the squeal continued, but stopped shortly there after. Donna said lets take it back to the dealer. I would have, but the place is over 60 miles and an hour away. If they were less than half that I probably would.

So, what causes belt squeal? Too tight? Too loose? Either? Bite the bullet and take it back? Is this fixable by a novice knucklehead? Learn to live with a random dying pig noise?

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