| I'd just like to point something out that annoyed me recently...
When I was un-insured, I was charged $15 for a one-month supply of the generic thyroid medication I take.
When we got new insurance, the pharmacy assumed I would want the brand name. It was about $26, less than my $35 co-pay at the time for brand name medication so I had to pay 100% and the insurance company paid nothing.
Then we got another new insurance when Charles was switched from contractor to full time. Now the same brand name medication bears a sticker that says such:
Amount: 14.49
You pay: 5.07
Ins pays: 9.42
Reminds me of when a Ford dealership quoted us $4,000 for a repair, and then after they learned it was covered by insurance the quote dropped to about $2,500.
This ridiculous price gouging is infuriating! Because I had no insurance, they were charging me almost twice as much as what they tell the insurance company the medicine is worth! I was being charged an $11 un-insured tax! Not only that, but generic medicine out of pocket costs more than brand name to the insurance company???
Horrible. This is why people should shop around for products and services and consult experts when appropriate. For example, see a mechanic you trust before you let an oil-change-only place fix anything on your car other than your oil. (Not random, that's on my to do list for the near future.) | comments: Leave a comment   |
| So for a solid week, NBC was airing commercials about a news story coming up about Disneyland. I quote, because I have it recorded when they played the commercial during my soap opera:
"(Picture of castle) Disneyland: (video of teacups spinning) a place (Minnie Mouse taking a picture with some teenage girls) where millions escape (boy with mouse ears on his dad's shoulders, dissolves into video of people on Astro Orbitor) into the world of fantasy, (page curls up into aerial shot of the plaza at the north end of main street) but is the magic kingdom (black and white closeup on a datebook someone's flipping pages in) receiving (black and white closeup of a male hand writing in the datebook) special privileges to (back to color, mouse ear balloons) maintain that fantasy? (Chuck Henry standing across the street from a Disney building in Burbank, NBC had to drive almost half a mile to get that shot!) Chuck Henry (small plane banking right over a residential area) uncovers what's happening (NBC ad) above (back to a castle shot, flanked by blue and logos as are all future images) the Happiest (the castle shot changes to a shot of a crowd with a monorail track in the background) Place on Earth. (Same plane as before, flying toward the camera from a hilly background) Thursday on the Channel (Mickey in flowers in front of the Main Street train station) 4 news at 11."
That's 16 images in 15 seconds, with at least three different transition techniques between them.
Well, they said that there was something going on above Disneyland. Another commercial, which I deleted without thinking about it, says that this privilege is not given to any other place, including a nuclear power plant or LAX (the Los Angeles International Airport, never did figure out where they got X from International, but that's a subject for another post).
So, I'm thinking, what could Disneyland get that other people don't? A no fly zone was my first thought, but then I thought, "what would LAX doooo if it had a no fly zone around it???" Become a new NASCAR venue?
My next thought was maybe they can keep their nightly fireworks display even though it's illegal (I'm not sure if it's illegal there or not, this is just my train of thought). Why would a nuclear power plant want to have fireworks, though? Or LAX for that matter?
So I bit. I watched the show. (Well, technically, I had MythTV record it, fast forwarded until I saw Disneyland, and watched just that segment. I fooled them!)
So what was this thing that no one else can have? It's a no fly zone after all. You can't go closer than 3 miles to the center of the parks unless you're above 3,000 feet. It's supposed to be for security, but the newscasters say it's probably to keep people from flying banner advertisements above the millions of park guests and keep sightseeing helicopters away. (I'd like to point out that they say that Disney "won't talk about it," but they display on screen a statement from the Parks and Resorts spokesman.)
There seems to be some debate over whether there is a credible threat to the parks. The internet tells me that "Counterterrorism officials said the Disney parks have come up in interviews with al Qaeda operatives. Pictures and information about the parks have been found during some terror sweeps overseas, they say." but yet other sources say that there is no credible threat. (Source) Lack of communication here? I can totally see the theme parks being targets, though. On Halloween night of 2001, Knott's Scary Farm was nearly empty because of a threat against it, even though the tickets were sold out in pre-sale.
Of course, with a draw like Disneyland, I can't blame them for not wanting advertisers over their parks either. The internet claims that, "At its height, the Orlando air wars daily featured biplanes towing banners, blimps and single-wing skywriters competing for attention." (Source)
Now, the internet tells me that there are other places that have no fly zones, "including President Bush's Texas ranch, nuclear submarine bases and stockpiles of sarin gas and other weapons of mass destruction." Also, "While the bill had originally offered flight protections only to some sports stadiums during games, it now forced the FAA to put the no-fly zones over the entertainment giant's parks as well." So that means that we can add stadiums during games to the list. Also add the Valdez terminal of the Alaska oil pipeline. (Source for all)
The internet also tells me that since the no fly zone came into effect, it's been challenged by conservatives who want to fly anti-homosexuality banners over the park. (Source) I can't say I'm disappointed that those efforts were blocked, that's the last thing I'd want my school-aged child to see while at Disneyland.
My conclusions:
1. No one's being hurt except for the aerial equivalent of pop-up window advertisers.
2. I believe that there has been and continues to be a credible threat to the parks.
3. The idea that LAX should have a 3-mile radius under-3k no-fly zone is ridiculous.
4. The idea that the Las Vegas strip should have a 3-mile radius under-3k no-fly zone (the news story says, "not even the Las Vegas Strip, which has a denser concentration of people...") is also ridiculous. If you look at this map, you'll see that if you put a three-mile radius around the strip, it would nullify the McCarran Airport.
5. The idea that the San Onofre nuclear reactor should have a 3-mile radius under-3k no-fly zone is probably a good idea.
6. The claim that Disney is the only commercial operation to have a no-fly zone is a lie.
7. NBC's 11pm news ratings must be dropping.
So, that's my take on "the Magic Kingdom getting special privileges to maintain that fantasy." | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Now, I know that not many people are checking into their finances at 11:54pm Pacific, but I want to! I know that my credit card company does weekly maintenance downtime on Mondays, which always confuses me because it's still Sunday in my head (they're Eastern Time). So I went there today, and I was like, "Huh? It's Sunday night already?" (Don't scare me, I have homework due Monday morning!)
Both my bank and my credit card company are down!
The bank says:
Our Web site is temporarily unavailable due to a scheduled technology upgrade. Bill payments and transfers scheduled during this period will be initiated as scheduled. We regret any inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.
Do not be alarmed, they'll still be taking your money. The credit card company says: Our site is currently unavailable while we update our system. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you check back later today to view your account information. If you have an urgent account servicing need, you can contact our customer service representatives at 1-800-951-6951, 24 hours a day. We look forward to your future use of Online Account Services.
However, when they do their actually scheduled weekly downtime, it says something to the effect of "customer service reps can't access your information during this downtime" which is missing in this message. Are they going to have downtime again tomorrow night? So, this makes me curious about our store credit card, so I go to their website and find:
We are sorry, but we are experiencing technical difficulties at this time. Please try back later. If you have questions you may contact a Web Support Representative at 1-800-298-4240. Our representatives are available: - Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.CT
- Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.CT
Web Support is closed for Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.
Color me confused... (that's a shade of blue I think.) It's like the whole interweb is hiding our money... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I found this amusing for some reason. I opened up an I Love Lucy episode on MythTv, only to find a newscast isntead. It was a live shot of a memorial type service being held at Virginia Tech. I watched for a few minutes, and then there was an emergency alert system weekly test right during some important-looking guy's speech! They interrupted my interruption to my recording...
I would have thought there'd be something in place to prevent that kind of timing! What if it was an actual emergency instead of a press conference, and then a weekly test of the emergency alert system interrupts it... the very thought irritates me for some reason. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So I bought myself a cute little chain charm bracelet at Disneyland last week...
Charles and I both have silver passes that get us discounts, but they don't like it when you use someone else's credit card for your discounted merchandise. One of my sisters carries cash, and she paid as she went. My other sister doesn't carry cash (which is good, she'd lose it) so I put everything on my check card and she was going to pay me at the end of the day. (I mention this because I normally wouldn't have even looked at the receipts that carefully.) I was going through my receipts to add up how much my sister owed me, and found out that my bracelet came with a warning label. Not anywhere near the bracelet of course, but only after you buy it and read the receipt. It says:
"WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm."
Lovely, huh? I think it would be amusing to try to return it and say "I want my money back because I'm going to have reproductive harm if I wear this!" Too bad I like the bracelet more than I fear the warning!
Anyhow, just wanted to remind everyone to be careful what they wear... oh, and don't eat bracelets! =P | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I've watched two documentaries about prison life recently (Salinas and San Quentin), and I can't help but think that there are a couple of simple solutions to most of the issues.
At first, after watching the San Quentin one, I thought "wouldn't it be safer if everyone stayed in their cells except for activity time and didn't eat in a big, crowded, common cafeteria?" It was an observation based on just the simple logistics, avoid having a big concentration of inmates per guard in a place where you're giving them weapons (plastic though they may be, silverware can be dangerous) and giving them something to fight over (they said some fights are because people feel that they're getting less food than someone else).
Then, after watching the Salinas one, it made me think "wouldn't it be safer if you did recreation time and meal time in shifts with the same race?" I'm all for racial equality on the outside, but it's pretty obvious that it's a major issue in the prison system. If you don't have warring factions in the yard at the same time, no one will get stabbed. Makes sense to me.
Or I may just be crazy, who knows. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As evidenced here, it occurs to me that if Google ruled the world (or if the world neglected to sanity check), we might not get to places in quite the same way as we did before.
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| Community college is an excellent place to people watch. It's like high school, except a higher percentage of students have cars, the books are more expensive, and there's hardly any 10-foot high chain link keeping you in. Therefore you could even people watch without being a student!
Some of my observations this week:
- Similarly blocked class schedules means a constant and predictable ebb and flow of cars in the parking lots. Arrive 10 minutes before class, and you'll be parking on the other side of the school, no matter where your class is. If your class is on the north side of the campus, you'll be in the south parking lot. If your class is in the south side of campus, you'll be in the north parking lot. Do not attempt to spot swap with a student from the opposite side of campus, this will upset the delicate balance of the universe (or at least of the community college) and leave you both spot-less, but not in the clean way.
- No one wants to be at school half an hour early, except the people who park in the side of the school where your class is. The near parking lot will be full by the time you arrive even half an hour before classes start. The parking lot on the opposite side, however, will be empty.
- Emos run funny. This was observed at about 9:25am with a male emo running through the center square of the campus. This could be caused by their funny pants, or by the skateboards in their backpacks. If you are emo, you should plan to arrive in the near parking lot at least an hour before your class (or the far parking lot half an hour before) so that you don't have to run to your class.
- My Spanish professor uses a Mac laptop, and heavily recommends Firefox over Safari. When a file looked funny, she claimed that it was due to being in Safari and closed it to open Firefox and start the demonstration over again. Yay! (I'm not a Firefox user anymore, I use Flock, but I like Firefox too.)
- There will always be more left-handed desks than left-handed people, and thus right-handed people will have to sit at left-handed desks.
- You have to have a receipt showing that you've paid for your classes to buy a book. I personally think that's ridiculous, particularly for a store in the business of selling books. "How DARE you buy a book that looks interesting and learn stuff without being in a class???" So much for studying to quiz out of stuff. The only possible justification I can think of is to make sure that there are enough books for the enrolled students, but I somehow doubt that the non-enrolled purchasers outnumber the people who forgot their receipts in their backpacks (which are not allowed into the bookstore). The short answer to this: keep 5 more in stock than you think you need, that'll last you until the next edition comes out!
Next time I'll tell you what I've learned that's actually related to my class!
My Spanish class is 5 units, whereas a typical class is 3, so I decided to only take Spanish this time around. It'll ease me into the whole reading and homework routine, and I'm only one PE class short of having a "normal" unit load. I've actually learned quite a bit already, this will help me communicate with my family in Mexico, as well as help my genealogy research, reading documents and writing letters to request such documents. =) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| We love our mechanic, he's been good to us and our cars. But his wall is confusing. Left to right, it reads: "We welcome your check," "Your check is welcome," and then "No checks accepted." Good thing we're not the check-writing type!
| | comments: Leave a comment |
| I found this amusing: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0111072wynn1.html
Steve Wynn purchased a Picasso painting for $48.4million, accidentally poked a hole in it, and is trying to get $54million from his insurance company. Plus he still gets to keep the painting... which he can probably still sell for at least $48.4million...
Now, to find a way to capitalize on this plan without having $48.4million in initial capital... (Something that appreciates rather than depreciating like cars. What would an insurance company pay 111.5% of the purchase price for that I can afford that would still be usable after the damages? Hmmm.) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| In poking around the school's website, I was reading some stuff about the Selective Service (links to there in relation to financial aide and such). Did you know that illegal immigrants are required to register for the draft? However, they're told that "Selective Service does not collect any information which would indicate whether or not you are undocumented. You want to protect yourself for future U.S. citizenship and other government benefits and programs by registering with Selective Service. Do it today!"
I just found that noteworthy. I'm tempted to say I have a bridge to sell you, but then I decided that it's actually more thought-provoking that it's quite possible they really do want to draft the illegal immigrants. They're keeping their information filed away with promises of future benefits, and choosing not to pursue immigration-related charges against them. Not sure what to think about that... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The draft analysis, obtained by [newspaper], shows that the [train system]'s four tunnels are structurally fragile enough that the damage from a bomb small enough to be carried onto a train could allow 1.2 million gallons of water per minute to gush into a tunnel and flood the system.
About 230,000 people use the [train system] each weekday.
This is the article I referenced in my earlier post. I've actually decided not to post the entire text or the link, because I feel that it should not have been posted in the first place.
Can't you see it now?
News source: News at 11, this city's train system is vulnerable!
Terrorist: Really? Which trains?
News source: The four tunnels of this particular line...
Terrorist: They must be reinforced if they go under water, you can't drive a truck into there...
News source: You'd only need a bomb small enough to be carried onto a train in a medium-sized backpack...
Terrorist: Oh.
News source: Miiiillions of gallons of water...
Terrorist: Oh!
News source: Drowning or stranding 230,000 on a weekday...
Terrorist: Oh!!
Can't be good, right? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Somewhere in Minnesota (in fact, quite likely here) there is a place called Young America. While it is only about yae big, it spans zip codes from xxx50 to xxx60 inclusive. Much like phones in movieland, zip codes in Young-America-land start in 5s... This wouldn't be so sinister, you know, a town of 3,108 people taking up 11 zip codes, including 55555, if it weren't for the fact that all the world's rebate forms go there. (In contrast, my former hometown of El Monte is the 191st largest city in the USA with a population of 115,965 and has only has 2 zip codes.) Well, maybe 95%. All five of the five that I sent out after my post-Thanksgiving shopping went there. I've sent so many UPC codes there that I remembered that I had sent many UPC codes there, so therefore I must have sent many of them!
Yes, sounds sneaky doesn't it? I bet many of those 3,108 people spend all day long opening envelopes and scanning barcodes (how else would you know I sent you the UPC from my new purchase and not from a box of cereal... unless of course I had a rebate for a box of cereal...). Yes, until I meet someone from there, that is what I shall choose to believe. Who's with me? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | I would just like to point out that although they're the same price on the website, when I went to the store I found that  this black ice cream scooping device is $5 more than
 this red one, which is $5 more than
 this stainless steel one.
Note that only the cheapest one has an intergrated ice-cream un-scooping device.
Kind of makes you wonder, you know. The store price is labeled with a hand-fired label gun with no bar code... | | comments: Leave a comment |
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