I'm alive.
I have my head down, I'm doing things. Lots of things.
We're fully multihomed now at work. I spent today tweaking our bgp so the traffic is mostly in balance, and our routing is (mostly) symmetrical. Hooray for BGP communities and stupid carriers like internap that fuck with them, forcing me to have an arms war with my peers so I can route traffic how *I* want to. I may do a selective no export to them tomorrow to the upstream I have that uses them if they keep doing this shit. (why should I have to tell UUnet to set me as localpref 120 just to get my announcements to leave UUnet? It's ridiculous.).
Anyway….
I'm enjoying my house. I'm enjoying my life. I'm enjoying my work. I'm enjoying my wife.
Hopefully later this month or next I'll have stories to tell. This month is just too fucking busy so far, not that I really mind that.
Just noticed it's been like 15 days since my last post, and I wanted to let you all know I'm alive.
Bedtime!
PS: This is the first presidential primary I have not participated in since I have been registered to vote. Fuck you very much, Democratic National Committee, for what you did here. If it weren't that I detest (almost) everything the republican party stands for, I'd vote for their ass.
You know, you threw away a free chance to be Oh-so -Strategic with your primary vote.
Howso?
Well, you could have talked to your friends on the other side of the aisle and asked us which candidate to support, such that this would be a race about the issues, rather than the increasingly common race about personality, etc.
No republican candidate cares about the issues I care about in unison. the environment, healthcare reform (most likely defined as some form of universal healthcare), more spending on education, goals and timelines on iraqi withdrawal, increased access to birth control and abortion.
And frankly, I don't want the republican party to elect a qualified centrist candidate. I want one polarizing enough to lose in a general election to the democratic nominee.
1.) Both front-runners in the Democratic race are polarizing candidates.
2.) Guess you didn't take a serious look at John McCain.
3.) Universal Health Care will suck compared to our current system and it will result in well over 50% of our incomes going to federal taxes. Trust me, you don't want universal health care. I'm really surprised that someone with your logic and critical thinking skills has been taken in by that snake-oil scam.
1) They are only polarizing to you. Well, Clinton is pretty polarizing, but I just don't see a whole lot of polarization toward obama.
2) I did. He doesn't support heath care reform, increased educational spending, goals and timelines on iraqi withdrawal, or reproductive rights. I want someone who will reverse what bush did to planned parenthood.
3) Ad hominem. Not replying.
3.) was not intended to be ad hominem at all. Please tell me how our country, which is already deeply in debt, is going to afford a new massively expensive health care system. Socialized medicine in Europe (and Canada for that matter) is hardly able to deliver the quality of care that the US system does in as timely a manner.
I've yet to hear any Democratic candidate take all of the parameters of this problem into serious consideration.
It should be noted that the last time this was tried, with a Democratic President and a Congress much more strongly Democrat than our current one, the proposal utterly failed to pass.
Just because the proposed and current solutions are lacking does not mean there is not a solution. This is the attitude I want to avoid with my elected leaders. And if you have seen the sorts of bills I have accumulated for medical stuff, realize that taxing 50% of my income wouldn't be that much worse. I have over 8 outstanding collections, all medical related. I go to the doctor for something, fight an insurance company to get them to pay for shit they're supposed to, and still get stuck with hundreds of dollars to 50 doctors for every thing I've done (even my "fully covered" foot x-ray that showed nothing wrong (then why does it still hurt? I don't know, and I don't want to pay another few hundred to find out!), I was sent to collections for by beaumont because I had to fight my insurance company over whether it was workers comp related or not, and they still only covered part of the procedure when they're supposed to fully cover it.)
Fuck. that. shit.
All I want is for my legislator to care about the issue enough to make a lot of noise about it. It makes them that much more interested than the others who shut up, do nothing, and talk about the joys of privatization.
While I do empathize with your plight, have you also considered that the Federal govenment has had the habit of making whatever it touches a whole lot more bureaycratic I look at what I went through with Unemployment in both Illinois and Michigan, as well as any other time I have to ask the governemnt to do something, and I certainly don't want to do that with my health care every time I need something.
If you think what you're going throgh with health care is bad, wait till you see how Federal progams like Medicare and Medicaid are run. It was a full-time job for my mother to deal with paperwork and their bungling when trying to ensure care for just a couple of her older relatives.
Then there were all the Canadian patients my Dad cared for in the Coronary Care unit at the hospital where he worked. HealthCanada told them that they had six months or so to live and the waiting list for the bypass surgery which would save their lives was typicaly nine months or more long.
The irony that I see is that while American liberals are touting socialized medicine (which is what "universal health care" is) the Europeans who came up with the idea are moving away from it due to the crushing burdens of the expense that it engenders. Both the UK and Germany are looking for ways to reduce their health care costs because they can't shoulder the expenses much longer.
What vexes me so about american conservatives is they think the free market is the best solution for every problem you can throw at it.
The problem occurs when you perform an essential service, the free market breaks. This goes for utilities, health care, gasoline, and other things of that nature. And even if the healthcare workers are not making that much (and I'll entertain that), there's no legal basis to restrain the suppliers that are charging $13 for a single asprin, etc. (yes, I have evidence they charge at least that much, and becky got charged something like $3 for turning the tv on at beaumont during her thing, and I got a similar charge for using one in pontiac during my appendectomy).
Nobody on the right seems willing to concede that the idea is even possible. They all point at systems that don't work as advertised elsewhere (usually pointing out edge cases, which are often far better than what's happening here – how many people get to routinely see a doctor in the US, versus the UK? Getting treated for minor problems before they become major is huge.) and say "hey, it is failing in (insert country here) so we had better not attempt anything at all!".
No thanks. I don't need the empty glass attitude.
I wonder about the way you view your insurance, given the explanation above. I've dealt with plenty of insurance companies (good, bad, and indifferent), mostly HMO's (and even the dreaded COBRA for a couple years), for the last 20 years or so. I've never had a problem getting things paid for.
I've always assumed this was due to the fact that the insurance company does what it's supposed to do. But maybe it's just that I read the fine print quite freqently, ask a zillion questions, and advocate for myself. Given all the list of doctors I see and the things we've done over the years, the fact that it's never been an issue really makes me wonder about how it becomes an issue for others.
I don't typically involve myself in wellcare – I treat it as "here's what I use to get it fixed when I sever my finger with a firearm", or "hey, I feel like I'm going to die, and I'm shaking and vomiting. Hooray Insurance!" (that one was the appendectomy).
You have at least one identified chronic condition, so you typically involve yourself in a different part of the system. I've never had a problem with office visits (other than becky's douchebag doctor sending stuff to the lab that wasn't covered under our shitty insurance we used to have, even after we demanded he ALWAYS send it to the one that was covered (which I think was probably the same lab, it just was sent via a different process). Becky's office visits and prescription stuff goes well. My big problem comes with catastrophic care, where you get bills from like 5 doctors, a hospital, maybe an ambulance, then some other group, and a few other people you've never heard of, and then you get a second set of bills that show different amounts, and then a couple send you to collections, then you get a letter of inquiry from the insurance company wanting to play 20 questions about what happened, and then you send it back, and they sorta pay a few more, and don't pay some of the crap they should. Some of the doctors go "WTF" and chase the insurance company down. A couple of others say "oh, well, fuck them, we'll just bill this guy and make him figure it out".
Most of my problems came from assurant health (the previously mentioned shitty insurance we had before hap). Those morons are still sending me stuff like "we're paying $30 to this doctor for a visit becky had back in May of last year" etc. They covered medication in really weird ways where it was hard to track whether they were providing the right coverage, and they did similar things to doctors too.
Hap is way better. I'm almost looking forward to my next serious accidental injury because it looks like they have things under control.
Actually, McCain does support increased education spending goals. I learned about that one when I went to hear him speak at Clawson High School.
# Voted NO on $52M for "21st century community learning centers". (Oct 2005)
# Voted NO on $5B for grants to local educational agencies. (Oct 2005)
# Voted NO on shifting $11B from corporate tax loopholes to education. (Mar 2005)
# Voted NO on funding smaller classes instead of private tutors. (May 2001)
# Voted NO on funding student testing instead of private tutors. (May 2001)
# Voted NO on spending $448B of tax cut on education & debt reduction. (Apr 2001)
# Voted YES on declaring memorial prayers and religious symbols OK at schools. (May 1999)
# Voted YES on allowing more flexibility in federal school rules. (Mar 1999)
# Voted YES on education savings accounts. (Jun 1998)
# Voted YES on school vouchers in DC. (Sep 1997)
# Voted YES on $75M for abstinence education. (Jul 1996)
# Voted YES on requiring schools to allow voluntary prayer. (Jul 1994)
# Voted NO on national education standards. (Feb 1994)
# Focus educational resources to help those with greatest need. (Jul 2001)
# Require state standards, regular assessments, and sanctions. (Jul 2001)
# Support Ed-Flex: more flexibility if more accountable. (Jul 2001)
# Rated 45% by the NEA, indicating a mixed record on public education. (Dec 2003)
http://www.ontheissues.org/John_McCain.htm
Supports repealing Roe v. Wade. (May 2007)
Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
Leave gay marriage to the states. (Jan 2007)
Ten Commandments would bring virtue to our schools. (Jan 2000)
Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)
Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)