Travel Insurance Hell is Over!

Well, it looks like my travel insurance saga is over. After the clinic sent me notice after notice demanding to be paid, and finally threatened me with a collection agency, I called the travel insurance folk. They told me that they had been sending the clinic in San Rafael letters, but they hadn’t gotten a response. So I got on the horn to the clinic, was put on hold, and left several messages. Something I said must have rung a bell in someone’s head, because the notices stopped coming.

A few weeks later, I called the insurance people again. To my surprise, they told me everything was settled! Apparently, at the end of August, the people in San Rafael sent them the info they needed, and they paied the bill. It would have been nice to receive a letter from either the insurance people or the clinic. It would have been especially nice if the insurance people would have thought to let me know, since we’d been having trouble paying this baby off for about four months. A little communication would have been just dandy. But oh well. At least it is settled. I wasn’t sure if I could believe them because they have trouble getting their story straight. I’ve been told that they’re trying to work out a discount, they’re waiting for info, that they’ve received nothing, and now things are settled.

It’s been about a month and a half since I’ve gotten an angry letter, so I guess I’m in the clear. But I’ve learned a few things about travel insurance and American health care.

  • Facilities can refuse to take travel insurance!

  • Getting the bill paid is a painfully slow process.

  • Even if you just end up leaving messages, it must help somehow to get your problem straightened out, so don’t feel like leaving messages is getting you nowhere.

  • Companies are really good at communicating when they want something, but they suck at it when it’s time to let you know things are all good.

Ug. Hopefully I don’t have to deal with travel insurance for a long, long time. At least this story had a happy ending.

The End Of An Era?

The United States Supreme Court
has agreed to hear a case brought by 2 Kentucky death row inmates
who say that lethal injections are cruel and unusual punishment and are therefore in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the country’s Constitution.

I’m not sure how much chance they have of winning, but it’s definitely far from impossible. And in any case, the issue raises quite a few interesting questions, mainly, what would this mean for the future of the death penalty in America?

If lethal injections are cruel and unusual in their current form because they inflict unnecessary pain on the recipient, what would the alternative be? There’s no way to ensure with absolute certainty that any death is sufficiently painless, because neither you nor I nor any scientist has ever been able to wake up a freshly dead person and ask how it felt when he went.

And if injections do not and cannot meet constitutional standards, what about other popular methods like the gas chamber or the electric chair? I’ve never been in one, but I feel pretty safe assuming that the chair would suck big time, probably more than being shot full of chemicals. And the gas chamber, while not quite so obviously violent, has also been known to have its own issues. So with that said, if the current case is a winner, it would clear the way for challenges of these other methods as well, and with precedent set against painful deaths, they would likely be struck down too.

That leads us back to the main question of what happens to the death penalty. if a painless death can’t be guaranteed and that’s the standard by which everything is being judged, it follows that the death penalty in and of itself is cruel and unusual and must be ruled unconstitutional. I know that we’re likely years away from that point because there surely will be many appeals, but it’ll be interesting to see how things ultimately play out.

The Short Circuit Isn’t On The Board.

A girl walks into an airport with what looks like a circuitboard and thinks it will be perceived as art? Ok then. How stupid is she? Surprisingly, she’s smart enough to be an MIT student in electrical engineering. But something obviously isn’t wired up right in her brain.

Star Simpson, 19, wandered into Logan International Airport in Boston to pick up her boyfriend. But she decided she would look cool if she came in wearing a black hoodie with a circuit board and 9 lights attached, and clutching a handful of play-Doh. Can you see any problems there, chief?

The police sure did, and had she not followed their instructions, no neurons would be firing in her brain anymore. But she’s lucky to be alive, locked up and charged with possessing a hoax bomb device. And she didn’t even have enough brains to just plead guilty and be done with it. How do you plead not guilty on charges of having a hoax bomb when you’re arrested for wearing wires? If it wasn’t a hoax, was it real?

In what realm does wearing a wire-covered hoodie qualify as art anyway? Even if she somehow managed to not hear about September 11 2001, Richard Reid trying to light his shoe, liquid explosives, and all the other terrorist events, how did she miss the lecture about not talking, joking, or even insinuating anything about bombs near an airport, let alone wearing a fake one? I’ve known ever since I was little that airports are understandably twitchy about anything that may have the potential to go boom. So where has she been? Well, if she gets charged, we know where she could be for the next five years. She’ll be showing off the art of a striped uniform from inside prison gates.

A Bad Trip

Wow. This horrible chain of events definitely would qualify as a bad day as the story put it. Our unknown star of the show from Val Des Monts, Quebec, had a little too much crack cocaine. So, down he went into a violent seizure. This upset his pit bull tarrier, who promptly took a bite out from under his ear. His friends, all high, decided this had to be stopped. So they picked up a baseball bat. But they didn’t connect with the dog, they smacked our helpless seizuring druggy square in the face. Eventually, the dog stopped feasting on him and he was taken to hospital. But things didn’t stop there for our friend. How did the story put it? Oh yes. There it is. “the nurse noticed something abnormal in the man’s intimate parts,” and pulled out a nice bag of crack cocaine from his, well, crack. There was 10 grams of it, enough to give him a good ol’ charge of trafficking. Oh yeah, and he was also fined for having a pit bull. That’s when you know your day sucks.

I think this guy’s bad day beats the calamity of errors committed by the guy who flashed a gang sign at the wrong car. That sucked, but I think this is worse.

And While I’m Ragging On Beeping things…

Wow. I’m just on a ragging on things theme aren’t I?

This weekend, Steve, Barbie, and I got talking about something that always made me raise my eyebrows whenever I thought about it. The practicality of the beeping baseball.

Yep, I said beeping baseball. A long time ago, someone thought it would be great if blinks could play baseball by being able to hear the ball. Great! So, they put something in it that you could hear. Super! What was that thing? A beeper! Uh-oh!

Think about that. You’re going to hurl a ball which encases a piece of electronics through the air, then hit it with a large wooden stick, and wait for it to plummet to earth. How long do you think the electronics will survive? Every beeping ball I ever saw was lucky if it made it two throws. Upon dying, it would:

  • cease to beep mid-course through the air.

  • cease to beep when it contacted whatever it hit.

    • or

  • make its final death cry in the form of a beep falling in pitch the way Pakman sounds when he dies.

At first, I thought that I must have had a bad ball, and maybe the design was flawed in the early 80’s when we tried it, but since our horrible experience left us saying fuck beeping balls, we never bought another one, they got better and we just didn’t know it. But Steve and I got talking about it, and he saw the same thing years later! So they must still be plagued with the same problems.

Barbie thought you were just supposed to roll the ball, so I went out in search of a product description for a beeping baseball. ILA has a whole section of beeping balls, but none of them are baseballs! There are balls that are designed to go in the water…the water? Hmmm. There are volleyballs, soccer balls, all manner of balls designed to be subjected to rough play, but no baseballs!

So, off I went to google, trying to find one. All this because of a conversation about beeping baseballs. I couldn’t find people selling them, but I did find out that you don’t roll the ball.

Beep baseball is a form of baseball adapted for the visually impaired. The game is played with standard softball bats, a 16-inch circumference ball, which emits an audible beep tone, and two bases (48-inch pylons) which emit an audible buzzing sound.

Two bases? Hmmm. And how do those survive after being stomped on, slid into, all the things that baseball entails. Just imagine if the bases decided to die! Just picture the strains of “He can’t find Home! The base isn’t buzzing anymore!”

But I found something else out that shocked me. There is a National Beep Baseball World Series! They cannot be using the same balls as we used. They can’t! They just can’t! They’ve been doing this since 1976! It can’t be possible! If they are using the same balls, how many balls would they have had to have laid waste to? How much yelling of “Christ! Where did the beep go? Did Joey get it? oe! It just fell over there! Run! Run! Get it!” would there have had to have been over 31 years?

I saw something that made me very excited. I found a beep baseball podcast! I was hoping and praying that there would be recordings of beep baseball games so I could hear the number of balls that met their unfortunate end in a given game. But alass, all I found was a horrid butchering of Take me out to the ballgame that I can only hope against hope was a joke, a lot of badly constructed sentences because I think the poor soul who made this thing kept forgetting what came before his links, and podcasts of…interviews! booo!! I wanted games!

Now I’ve written myself into a corner. What exactly is my point? I wanted to laugh at the concept of the beeping baseball. that’s how this started off. But as I looked for more info, I was left with a million questions. What does the Beep Baseball world series look like? Do they actually use the same balls Steve andI saw? If so, how has it survived 31 years? Was there a big secret we weren’t let in on? Are there actually beeping baseballs that defy common sense and survive the abuse of a baseball game? So many questions, hopefully there will be some answers!

And While I’m Ragging On Morons…

I had someone say the most moronic thing to me yesterday. I was standing at a corner. But something felt off. Because I didn’t feel like dying, I was going to wait through a few repetitions of traffic before I could either fix what was off or realize that I was just halucinating and everything was fine.

After a cycle of traffic had gone through, a man pranced over to me and yelled, not spoke, but yelled, “Did you realize that you waited through a whole light there?” I told him yeah I had a feeling, but I wanted to make sure everything was cool before I stepped out into the street and turned myself and my dog into a pile of road pizza. And this is what the man said before prancing off, probably feeling like he was the saviour of the poor helpless blind girl. “You should go down to the square. The lights beep there.”

Let’s follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion. This man thinks I’m just walking around for the sake of walking around. He thinks I have no specific destination. So, I can just sub one area of town for another one. I was not trying to get to the square. I was trying to buy a greyhound bus ticket.

I wouldn’t have minded him asking why I’d waited through a light. I was at a kind of creepy part of town, so he probably wondered why on earth I would stand there any longer than I had to. But at least listen to the answer! I wouldn’t have even minded him saying the thing about the beeping lights if he had stayed long enough to tell me if the light was green, or followed that up by asking why the lights don’t beep here. But he just basically made a special effort to ask me if I was a flaming retard and then assumed I had no particular place to go, and then went off on his merry way, feeling like he’d done his random act of kindness. Thanks for the help, or lack thereof.

Every time I write one of these posts, I’m afraid I’m making people afraid to approach blind people. Really, we’re approachable if you talk to us like you would talk to anyone else, at least most of us are. Would you walk up to a random person and tell them where they should walk, or yell at them for not going through the lights? No. You might ask them if they’re looking for something. Why not start there with us?

And While I’m Ragging On Rogers…

I’ve meant to write about this for a while now. Remember, in my last post, I talked about being able to get a little thing from rogers they called a treat. I ended up getting a ring tune, which is just a bit of somebody’s song that plays when your phone rings. I’m not uber fond of it, but that’s what happens when you have to pick it through your cel phone and can’t preview it and you don’t recognize the song…don’t get me started on that! Point is I got it.

Anyway, I had to get the treat via text message because the site was inaccessible because of that ugly, unlabeled flash. The point of all this is the text message they sent me. It still weirds me out. I quote.

Thx 4 ur biz! Ur ring tune link will arrive shortly. Depending on ur phone it cud arrive in ur browser msg inbox.

Ok, did two people take turns writing that message? Was there a monkey using lete-speak and someone talking normally? Were they worried about running out of room in the message window, so that’s what they had to do? But they could have saved space by using words like come instead of arrive. What kind of demented mutant message is that? And should any lete-speak be in business messages? I already ranted about seeing lete-speak in my rogers bill. To me, this is similar. Next, teachers will be forced to except text message lingo in exams… oh crap, that’s already happening!

Say Hello to a Broken Website

Ok, time to throw the advocacy hat back on, on a smaller scale.

I got something in the mail from Rogers. It said I was eligible for a gift because I’d been with their wireless service for a while. I thought, woohoo, free gift! First of all, in order to get this gift, I had to input a code. I scanned the card that had the code on it, and got some letters and numbers. I got excited, thinking I could actually scan the code correctly. I ran to the website, and slammed head-first into my first barrier. I couldn’t see anywhere that I could click on to redeem my gift. I found out later, thanks to a talented man on a tech list, that this is because the wonderful web designers at Rogers decided to make the “select my gift” button an untagged image. Um, hello? This is basic html. Tag your images! They’d labeled a bunch of other graphics on the page. Why not that one?

I called Rogers, and got someone who could not grasp for the life of him that I could not see and was using a screen-reader. This was just too much for the poor fellow. He eventually came around enough to sort of tell me what gifts I had available to me. I could get a magazine subscription. Nope, something tells me that wouldn’t work. I could get some cell phone accessories. Ooo! What are those? Ah crap, nothing I’d want. Or, I could get a music CD. Double ooo! When I asked him what was available, he sort of stammered, “Name me an artist, we probably have it.” I asked him if he could list them off. He said no, there were too many choices. Luckily, I lucked out on only my second try.

Then the fun really began. He asked me to enter my code. I spewed back what the scanner gave me. He just said nope, that’s not right. I asked him if he could cross reference my name with the code that had been mailed to me, and he said nope, that wasn’t possible. I had to laugh. With a company that has everything linked together and databases out the wazoo, this was impossible?

Defeated, I told him I would have to call back. I had to find someone with working eyes to read the code to me. I could have had that person sit down and go through the site, but I decided out of principle that it should be Rogers doing this.

I came back with a code that was no where near what came out of my scanner, and called Rogers. I managed to befuddle a second person, but persisted until I got my CD. Damn it, Rogers is offering stuff for free, I’m gettin’ it!

This isn’t the first time I’ve had trouble getting stuff out of Roger’s website. I was eligible for some kind of treat thing. I went to that site, and was greeted by some ugly, unlabelled flash. I emailed them, and they practically kissed my feet, giving me a way to get my treat via my cell phone and a few bucks off my cell phone bill. I really appreciate their flexibility, but this is starting to become a recurring problem. If it’s starting to become a trend, maybe they should overhall their website, especially since they’re marketing a talking cell phone. If they don’t, they may have a lot of pissed off customers.

So, here’s the page. Blind people will see absolutely no sign of the words “select your gift.” People with working eyes will see them plainly, but they’re in an image. If you want to let them know about this little bug, you can contact them. If they actually respond to you, let me know and I can give you some links that the dude from the list gave me so you can give them some other resources to consult.

I know it’s just a promotional program, but if we don’t let them know this type of design is wrong, they may love it and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread and start using it everywhere. When this kind of inaccessible web-design starts to bleed into essential parts of the site, we’re in real trouble, so we might as well start letting them know now.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m saying that Rogers is evil. It’s more like they’re not informed. So, let’s be proactive and enlighten them a little bit before we have to bitch that their whole site has gone to the dogs. I have already contacted them, and I’ll post about whatever they say, if they say anything. If anyone else contacts them, let us know what happens. This could be interesting.

Merry Christmas Dad, And Don’t Forget To Check Out Our Big Boxing Day Sale

What price would you be willing to pay for a free phone call? It’s a strange question I know, but if
Pudding Media
has its way, it’s one to which people are going to have to give some serious thought.

The company is behind a service similar to ones like Skype that allow you to make phone calls using your computer. However instead of charging you for the privilege, Pudding Media will let you talk as much as you want for free in exchange for you allowing them to listen in on your conversations with voice recognition software so they can serve you advertising based on what you’re talking about. So if you talk about cars with your brother, you’ll see ads for car dealers in your area. If you talk about music with your sister, you’ll be shown commercials for the hottest new releases. Talking about flowers with your mother? Get ready for flower shops and gardening tips, and on and on and on. The company is even working on ways to deliver ads to the person on the other end of the call, either through what would have to be considered spam email or by using that person’s cell phone screen as its own personal billboard.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Who are the people that Pudding Media is expecting to sign up for this service? Are they marketing to the
AttenTV
set who doesn’t give a thought to the privacy of their activities? Other than them, I can’t think of a single reasonable person who would be down with this idea, especially given all of the controversy over unauthorized government surveillance these days. If we don’t want the government listening in on us, why should a marketing firm be any different, even if they’re giving something away at no financial cost?

If you can afford the computer and internet connection that are required to make services like this work, then you can damn sure pay a few bucks to make a phone call, and you should. In the long run, whatever the cost might be will be a lot cheaper than the price you’ll pay for selling yourself as well as your friends and family out to companies who have no qualms about using you and your personal information in any way necessary to make themselves rich.

Here Comes Trixie’s Brain Again

Trixie speaks
Man, this new place I moved to a few months ago has weird weather. It’s certainly not California. One day, it’s cold and windy, and just when I’ve gotten used to that kind of weather, it goes back to hot and sticky! Can I please have some California weather? And whenever it chills off, the humans start wondering how I’ll handle something they call snow. I have never heard of such a thing. What is snow? Super cold weather? Then I hear some other talk about how they’re going to buy me boots for my feet for going through this snow. Come on. I can handle hot pavement. Why would I wuss out in the snow?

Gees! These last few days have been weird! A few days ago, Carin got up and started doing a bunch of stuff. She and Steve cleaned the house, did some laundry, and then she dug out this chain. The last time I saw one of those, we went on a trip and that’s how she put the tie-down by a couch in the other house where we stayed. Anyway, she tied the chain to the spare bed! Am I moving in there? Then we had to go to the grocery store. But she kept saying we had to be sure to be back by 5 or so. Why? We’ve been late for my food before. What was so special about today?

We got back, she fed me and stuff, and then she tied me down and grabbed that white stick, that cane, that she hates so much, and left without me! Steve left too! I was left wondering what was going on. There was no reason to do that! In a few minutes, she came back for me, and we started walking down to where I do my business, but I had just done that! Why were we doing this? Then, I saw another dog! It had the same leash as me, the human standing with it had the same harness as me, does it do the same job as me? Is it going to replace me? Phew! Nope, it looks like it does the job I do for another human!

It was kind of neat showing another dog the ropes. I got to lead the way, showing the dog and the human where to go. If they got off course, I would stop and look back and then Carin would say something and they would come back to being right behind us!

Then Carin did more weird things. I had to stay on my leash for a while. The other dog did too. We were so eager to meet that we kept getting our leashes tangled. For a while, I thought we were going to switch humans!

Then, finally, they let us loose! We chased each other around the apartment for what seemed like forever. Man, that dog is big compared to me. She would jump on my back and go up and down, up and down, up and down. What is that? Is she a lesbian? I don’t swing that way. Luckily, Carin would usually come over and separate us when that was going on. She’d also tell me to get her. Is she out of her mind? That dog is way bigger than me!

When she wasn’t pinning me down, she was a lot of fun. I sure liked running after her. But they never let us play too long. They’d tell us to settle down. These humans are such drags.

We decided to play a nasty little trick on them. The first time we walked our humans together, we were perfect little angels. They ooed and awwed about how impressed they were with us. We let them believe that we were stars. Hey, it meant more kibble, and who turns down kibble?

The next time we walked them, we had a little nose-wiggling meeting on the bus. I told the other dog, what was her name? Rosamae. That’s it. I told her that I’d show her some cool places to sniff. So, when she saw me sniffing, that was the place she was supposed to sniff. Oh, we had such fun…until we both got a few corrections. Ok ok ok we’ll work now.

I was just starting to wonder if the human and Rosamae were going to move in with us. I thought that was cool, if for no other reason, there was more dogfood for me to try and get. Every time the other human would feed Rosamae, I would eye up her food. I figured if she stayed long enough, I would get some of it. I’d be good, and just when Carin wasn’t expecting it, wammo!

Then, as quickly as they had come, they disappeared! I was convinced Rosamae was going to come out of somewhere and surprise me. I can still smell her on the balcony and in some places on the carpet. But she seems to be gone for good. I wonder if she’ll ever be back. Well, if she’s coming back, I’m getting ready. I’ll start with practicing pinning down the tug toy. Somehow, that seems much easier than trying to do that to her, but I guess I have to start somewhere.

I’m really starting to love my human. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her. She says I’m doing better and better and she calls me a star. I love to watch her beam from ear to ear as we walk down the street. I wag my tail and love every minute of it. I don’t even care about the weather here. Whatever snow is, bring it on! I can handle it!