I have an old Minolta camera from the 1960's. It weighs about five pounds, has a metal body, and has a nice sturdy strap. It'd be a heck of a weapon if I ever wanted to clock someone with it. Never had even one comment about carrying it with me, naturally.
The last time I went through an airport checkpoint was about five years ago. They let me keep my camera, of course, along with the glass filters that could easily have been broken to make sharp edges.
I also had a lunch that included cheese and crackers and a plastic picnic knife to cut the cheese. They took the plastic knife.
My favorite typo ever is, "She wrapped herself around him like a wonton woman."
Was it hyperthermia or CO poisoning that did them in, or a combination thereof?
I can easily see a scenario where people were disoriented by a combination of CO poisoning and hyperthermia. Also, there's a weird sort of peer pressure in situations like that which tends to cause people to push themselves beyond their limits.
And Sedona has a higher than average percentage of complete nuts. The landscape has an almost otherworldly beauty to it, and I swear it attracts folks who aren't fully grounded in the realities of this world ...
I am sitting outside by the first fire of the season. It was about eighty-five degrees today, and about seventy now. Not really fire weather, but the ambiance of the flames is helpful when I'm trying to write.
One of the nice things about living in the country is that you can sit by a fire in your front yard.
One of the nice things about living in the 21st century is laptop batteries.
Desert flats of Arizona. I'll be doing this from now until April-ish.
Though, I think I need bug spray. *swats*
Interesting article here that illustrates the need for an emergency go bag and planning:
http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2009/sep/02/evacuees_grab_pets_bibles_and_flee/
(And also, I am amazed they didn't lose any homes. A lot of those houses have -- or had -- dense vegetation around them.)
This is not a cure for bullying. It's a form of bullying. "We're going to make you do what we want even when you're NOT in school. We can control you wherever you go."
And I was bullied. Badly. By both students, teachers, and school administrators, throughout my school years. I was provoked to hysterical tears, hyperventilating, and vomiting on nearly a daily basis for several years. The fault, of course, was mine -- I was too sensitive, I provoked the bullies because I wasn't nice to them, the other kids teased me because they really liked me. Yadda yadda yadda. It was always my fault for being weird or different.
I'm sorry. When someone comes up to me and dumps a full cup of piss over my head and tells me that they're going to rape me after school, and I'm a young ten and the bully is thirteen, I am not going to be nice to him. Nor do I especially think he liked me all that much. Even if he did, there are limits to what one should have to accept as friendly overtures from other students.
Aside from multiple examples of bullying from other students (and that is a real example above -- really happened, and I got suspended for a week for hitting the kid with a math textbook the next day when he groped me), I can think of several instances of school administrators and teachers bringing up my extra-curricular activities and using them against me, or just using them to make fun of me. Sometimes it was stuff I didn't bring up, it was stuff they just found out.
It was very common for a teacher to pick on me in class, and for kids to torment me later, following the teacher's lead. If there'd been an internet then, I am certain I would have had blog and it would have been full of examples of my differences from other students. Fuel for the bullies, if I had been forced to give that information up to my teachers and the teachers shared it. I had a few who almost certainly would have.
You know, I think the effects of lack of public healthcare are even more far reaching than most people realize.
I've been working full time since I was seventeen so that I would have health insurance. Health insurance is mandatory for me; I have major chronic health problems. Expensive problems. To make a long sob story short, I had to turn down a full ride scholarship (including housing) in my twenties because I could not get health insurance except at a nine to five type day job, and the work schedules at full time day jobs conflicted with the full time course schedule I would have had to take.
I never did finish that degree. If we get universal health coverage it would be tempting to go back to school now.
In regards to Michael Jackson, I really wonder what will happen to his kids. By all accounts I've ever heard they've never gone to school, and have never had a normal life. Their lives are going to change dramatically now.
With Michael Jackson, my suspicion is that not only did he have a controlling/dysfunctional family, but all he ever knew was the crazy, insane world of being a star, basically from the time he should have been in kindergarten.
He was never, ever, in his entire life, been able to do anything normal -- your "average" star could put on a pair of sunglasses and go to the movies, or for a stroll down a beach, or go play a round of golf or go clubbing. Jackson's fans are abso-fricking-lutely INSANE. At the height of his fame, even when he looked fairly normal, can you imagine the reaction if he decided to go catch the premier of a movie with a girlfriend, or go dancing with friends? It would literally have been a riot.
So his entire life, he's been cloistered. Add to that what I suspect were probably managers and agents who weren't looking out for Jackson's best interest.
And ... how much education did he actually get? He obviously never went to college. He was likely taught by tutors ... how good were they? Did they teach him what he really needed to know -- money management and some law and general this-is-how-the-world-really-works? Or did his schooling consist of the bare minimum required by law, and assurance from his handlers that, "We'll take care of you."
I don't know the answer to that, but it's something I've always wondered about whenever he made a dumb move.
He always seemed out of touch with reality ... I think the truth was, the reality he knew -- all he EVER knew -- was not the same as our reality.
It's a shame his life was so screwed up. He truly had an astonishing talent and such an amazing voice.
This doesn't surprise me. Sadden me, but doesn't surprise me. I'm an Arizona native and live in a rural area ... there's racism from the top down in this state. The only thing that surprised me about this story was that the guys were actually caught.
The BEST use I ever found for cheez whiz is crawdad bait. Things learned while camping as a child ...
Re: #807, from KeithS
In regards to DIY animation xtranormal.com, is interesting. You create a script with dialogue, character gestures, and camera angles, and the site renders a flash animated movie for you. It is fairly primitive right now (what you can do is pretty limited) but they have some big plans for more features, and a downloadable app.
What I like so far about them is that that the interface is intuitive and simple, almost google-like, in its ease of use. As they add features it will be interesting to see if they stay simple.
Linkmeister, re: FTC/Obama/Cephalon/etc.
I figure this is why Cephalon is releasing Nuvigil, which they've had waiting in the wings for awhile. They're working very hard to transfer patients from Provigil (which may end up with a generic earlier than planned) to Nuvigil. Among other things, they've made Nuvigil cheaper (they've essentially doubled the wholesale price of Provigil in the last five years, BTW), and are actively trying to get Nuvigil approved for a few things that Provigil isn't, including jet lag and bipolar disorder.
Linkmeister, there's no generic for Provigil in the United States. Pardon me while I make some rude noises about that .... yeah. It has "orphan drug" status, which was supposed to be reserved for oddball medications used to treat small handfuls of people. Provigil is multi-billion dollar drug.
Based on the "orphan drug" status they just increased the patent time until 2015.
You'd think the generic drug manufacturers would challenge this, right? Well, they did. And Cephalon, apparently openly, paid them $200,000,000 to drop the lawsuit. So instead of being a $60-$100 a month generic as it is in Canada, it's a $800 a month brand-only drug here.
Meh. I just dug up the relevant laws re: importing it from Mexico, and after reading over things a bit there's some risks there I'm not comfortable assuming.
My Provigil appeal was denied -- and it was a hard denial based on plan provisions. So it's not likely to be covered through insurance.
I'm sort've at a loss here. I cannot work without this drug. Yet, I have to work because I have to have health insurance, as I have rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and (just diagnosed) probably a kidney problem. If I don't want to end up dead or crippled, I have to have insurance.
Finding another employer isn't an option -- I need to be eligible for FMLA leave. (Rheumatoid arthritis + asthma is not a good combination. I'm immune compromised and get pneumonia every time I get sick.) Also, another concern with a new employer is if they would cover preexisting conditions on their plan.
(Years ago, I took a job and both the hiring manager and an insurance rep assured me their plan covered preexisting. After I'd quit my last job, I discovered he was wrong. At the time I was just dealing with asthma, but I still ended up owing thousands in medical expenses.)
I've explored all the options I can think of -- patient assistance programs, going out on disability, state medicaid, cheaper medications, etc. etc. -- nothing seems viable. I'm really at a loss here. I could post the gory details of my research into every option I could think of, but the quick and easy summary is that I have no options to get this med covered, period, as far as I can find. Either I make too much money or I'm otherwise disqualified.
I'm sort've at a loss. I just don't know where to go from here.
On beads -- I have not had much luck selling high end beadwork. I sell a lot of child-sized bracelets for a couple of bucks each, a price which about covers the cost of the materials.(My pay is the grin on the kid's face.) And a lot of earrings for $1 with a profit margin of about $.75, made with plastic beads and surgical steel french wires ... but the more expensive stuff just isn't moving.
I've tried everything, including showing up at a farmer's market with trays of beads and custom making the necklaces on the spot to the buyer's specifications.
Most buyers underestimate the cost of materials or the labor involved. I may have $20 wholesale in materials in a necklace and the buyer only wants to pay $5 for the whole necklace -- I've quizzed a few people and there seems to be a perception that beads cost pennies each when we're talking about things like natural turquoise and amethyst, crystal, and hand blown glass. And they're not willing to pay a price that would cover my wholesale cost, much less my labor.
PNH @ 191 -- I'm on round three, I think. It got rejected at mail order after they asked for a diagnosis code, and then the prior approval was denied. I'm at the "reconsideration" level of fighting this.
And yeah. I know most of the tactics. The prescription benefits manager in question? Is my employer.
That I'm an employee adds a certain extra flavor of fury to the whole thing. You are right about "certain kinds of pushback working" (though not for the reasons people generally think) but I honestly have no idea if it will work in this case or not. No clue.
The fact that I am an employee doesn't help me get it approved. There's tens of thousands of us -- and I'm just a peon. However, I do have the advantage of understanding the process in fairly good detail.
Julie -- no sleep apnea, at all. Nada. There's no reason for this that they can identify.
Will ya'll cross your fingers for me and think good thoughts? Am sending an appeal in to my health insurance.
I am currently doing battle to try to get insurance coverage of a med -- preferably Provigil, but I'm open to other options. Insurance isn't willing to cover any of the options. Short version of the problem is that I have idiopathic hypersomnia, which is similar to, but not quite the same as, narcolepsy. Difference is no cataplexy, and my sleep cycles are apparently normal, but I seem to have many of the other symptoms.
I can't drive, safely cook (I've started a kitchen fire), cross the street, or generally function without medication. And as you can imagine, my job performance sucks without medication -- I've been in the same department since 1996, and used to joke I could do my job asleep, but it turns out, after testing this theory, that this is not actually true. (Google "microsleep" ... much is explained. Not much is solved, but much is explained.)
Anyway.
Insurance won't cover the meds. They're all prior approval and it's an off label use. They're approved for narcolepsy, and hypersomnia isn't listed. Though I have a large stack of medical research papers and pages printed from medical books referencing Provigil as a successful and/or suggested treatment. It's just not FDA approved.
Yet I clearly need to be treated, before I become road kill in a crosswalk or burn my house down.
This is me, beating my head against the wall. This is also why I've been largely absent from many of my usual haunts online, and why various projects online have been neglected lately ...
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