Digital Nostalgia
WRAL.com – Five On Your Side – Study: Medical Bills Account For Half Of Bankruptcies
Soon I will launch a petition and lobby for the removal of ALL medical collections from the records of Transunion, Equifax and Experian. Yep, this quest is personal but if it will also aid in reducing bankruptcies by 50% then throw a few more coals on the fire, here comes the train – get on board.
Check out this composite panorama I made from seven different shots taken from behind my desk today (click to enlarge):
This is so wrong it’s funny.
Seems everyone’s asking the wrong question. It’s not if, it’s how.
As a co-worker put it this morning, everything must be AOK in the USA. I suppose the war in Iraq is complete and the budget deficit is taken care of. The argument over social security must be over and oil prices are fine as long as we’re paying more than $2.00 a gallon.
Now that the government has fixed all these “little” problems apparently they have time to concentrate exclusively on Terri Schiavo. It’s important for the government to act quickly to decide who lives and dies. Medical professionals be damned. We don’t want the medical community making medical decisions now do we?
Of course not. We want the courts to decide based on hearsay and a power of attorney agreement. But when the courts rule in favor of the current state laws we want our federal legislators to quickly enact new laws because the current laws don’t suit an immediate cause. Queue the President and the moral right. There’s something to gain here – it adds credibility to “the right to live” which, lucky for them, sounds a lot like “the right to life”.
But what about Terri Schiavo’s implied wishes that she not be left in a vegetative state? Certainly her husband would know if she wanted to be left in this condition. So let’s quickly abide by the state courts decision and once again sentence her to death by starvation. The feeding tubes have been removed. Terry you will wither and die.
But wait – the aforementioned emergency legislation could save you – if indeed you need to be saved. No doctor would want to put the cause of death as dehydration and starvation on a death certificate would he? Well then, do we have a credible case for euthanasia? One beyond the tabloid version of the “right to die” promoted by Dr. Kevorkian?
There’s no way euthanasia would get past the conservative right. Doctors can’t be in the business of putting people to sleep like dogs, even if it is in their best interest. So here is our conundrum in detail. Doctor’s can’t be trusted to make straight-forward medical decisions when there are moral and political issues at stake. Clearly this requires legislation at the federal level???
So we went to Toys-R-Us and bought Connor a new slide for the backyard. We got the big red one. When the store rep brought the first slide up to the front of the store someone stole it with another purchase that was loaded into their car. How cheap and low can you get, stealing kids toys. We waited 30 minutes for them to bring up another one.
Connor was a little scared of it at first but after he figured out he could drag his feet to slow himself down we couldn’t stop him. Later this afternoon he’s going down head first like he does it on the bigger slides in the park. As you can tell by the photos it’s time for him to get another haircut this week.
I took this picture of my odometer yesterday when I got in my truck and noticed it was at exactly 36000.0 miles. Makes me feel good about the extended 3-years or 36,000 miles of warranty I purchased. It sounds like I may have to use it for the transmission very soon. I have some kind of metallic rattle going on when the truck’s idling.
I found some images on my Stylus 300 from back in Feb. including the little spread Amy set out for me on Valentines day. She even cooked! The poor Stylus is getting on it’s last leg but I don’t want to buy another digital camera until I can get a digital SLR.
Connor’s got something to tell everyone:
mhj nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn v v j BN B V
After seven years I finally switched to a local bank. TD Waterhouse was good to me but recently I ran into a few glitches that made it time to switch. One of those glitches was a 10 day wait for a deposit of $678 to post. Another thing I didn’t like was their on-line banking. When looking at transactions they only say something like: Visa 00562432353543 – $20.00.
That doesn’t tell me anything. Most banks websites convert the transaction to the exact location where the money was spent. Like Starbucks, Target, Exxon etc. including the address. I asked several times why TD Waterhouse didn’t incorporate this over the last couple of years and I never got an answer. Worst of all was I had to mail in deposits because there are no local branches in NC. Oh well, Bank of America has the best on-line banking and the account is completly free. Bye, bye TD Waterhouse.
Amy and I spent last weekend in Williamsburg. It was actually pretty cool because I found out a lot of things about how Virginia played into the revolution. Here’s a couple of interesting things about the area:
The Virginia colonies were the first to declared independence from Britain at the Fifth Virginia convention and told the Virginia delegates to propose total colonial independence before the Continental Congress in Boston.
Basically Virginia always revolted first from the Williamsburg Capital. Therefore they had a large armory where the powder kegs to the right were stored.
Amy wasn’t happy that I didn’t take her on a ride in a horse drawn carriage. 
Instead I took her on a tour of North America’s first insane asylum now called the DeWitt Wallace Public Hospital. Nice accomodations.
That’s when she had me put in the stock for the rest of the day.
So I was right in the middle of Duke of Gloucester St. ready for everyone to throw rotten cabbage at me.
Turns out that one week ago I was right where the revolution really started and tomorrow I’m leaving for Charleston where it all ended.
Here’s the insurance settlement for the Mustang. I’m starting out with 34,545 miles on the ODO (I don’t buy new cars – I despise the immediate depreciation). I found this and several trucks on autotrader.com. Then I started calling around and emailing the dealers. I finally bought this one at University Ford in Durham. They were extremely easy to work with. From the time I got to the dealership until the time I left with the truck was less than 2 hours.
I’m pretty happy with the deal I got including an extended 3 year 36K mile warrenty and gap insurance for an extra $495.00. I never have to worry about the possibility of being upside down in an insurance settlement again. Only bad thing is that it already needs an oil change and I just drove it off the lot a week ago. Oh well, that’s nothing compared to how I’ve been screwed on ebay deals recently.
The Coolscan scanner is proving to be bear to install under XP because of the SCSI drivers. And I won a used Minolta X370 from some guy for $27.00 and he shipped me an old Maxxum 3000i with a broken lens instead. I’m trying to stay civil to get it resolved because I think it’s pointless to argue with people via email.