I’m not sure I would buy this tent, but I do like the name. An inflatable tent does sound interesting, but at 11.5 pounds plus a hand pump, I’m not sure it’s for me. Then again, my current “big” tent does take 5 to 10 minutes to setup and teardown.
I’m in the final stagings of writing my book, and to help out, the wife gave me the okay to spend a few days in Vermont along. No wife. No kid. Just me and my laptop.
The trip to Vermont has, so far, been great. It’s given me the time I need to make some real progress on the completing the book. It’s also given me time to do things I don’t normal get to do anymore.
(Acknowledgement: Yes, I know what follows will likely anger the wife, but hey, I’m just trying to keep it real.)
Things I’ve done this weekend that I normally don’t do:
The combination of sleep and alone time is just want I needed. And the daily showers, icing on the cake.
Thanks Melanie and Rowan for giving me this time.
Update: I do miss having reliable high-speed Internet access.
Salem Mass is often known as The Witch City, but it’s also trying hard to become a bike city. One example of this comes from today’s announcement about a free bike sharing program here in Salem. The city has also made improvements to off-road bike paths and recently completed the striping of on-street bike lanes. The problem, however, I have with biking in Salem is with the North Shore drivers.
I’ve lived and biked in four different cities (and surrounding metro areas): Memphis, St. Louis, New York, and Salem. And of the four I find Salem to be the least bike friendly. The problem isn’t the city and its attention to bicycling as an alternative form of transportation. The problem is with the annoying, and often times, clueless North Shore drivers in Salem.
Many of these drivers ignore the most basic of driving rules. Left hand turns from the right lane. Right hand turns from the left lane. Pulling out into cross traffic to stop traffic. And stopping the flow of traffic to let an oncoming car turn left. These are but a small example of the poor driving I witness almost daily in and around Salem.
When my wife and I moved to Salem, we thought the Boston area had the worse drivers around. As it turns out, the problem drivers seem to be restricted to the North Shore area only. Family and friends who come to visit are oftentimes shocked at what a North Shore driver will do.
So the randomness of poor driving by North Shore drivers makes Salem a bike unfriendly city. But it doesn’t stop there. Some of the drivers who don’t drive like complete idiots think the sidewalk is the place for bicycles. I’ve been yelled at many times from drivers to “get off the road” and “use the sidewalk”.
One particular time I was stuck in traffic on Essex Street. A clueless driver driving a van kept stopping. The driver was apparently lost. The street was narrow because of cars parked on the side, so I had to claim my place in the line of traffic. Now mind you, I was riding with traffic. In other words, I was keeping up with traffic and not slowing anyone down. We were only moving about 10 miles per hour, and that’s when we were moving. Oftentimes we were stopped. The van was making the traffic stop and go. As I said, the driver was lost or even possibly talking on the phone (another rant for another time).
A car squeezes up to me, and the woman driver, apparently nervous to have a bicyclist in front of her, started yelling at me. I told her she should be yelling at the driver of the van ahead of us because it was him causing the traffic problem. And I said it was perfectly legal for me to ride my bike in the lane as long as I obey traffic laws, which I was (and better than she was – she would pull into the oncoming lane just to yell at me). Of course, this woman had to make it her duty to continue harassing me every time the van stopped traffic. I finally had enough of the yelling woman and the crazy van driver, so I rode past the line of traffic and darted down a side street.
This is just one example of the many problems I’ve had with motorist in the witch city.
I hope Salem continues to promote bicycling in and around the city. I, for one, would like to see this city become more bike-friendly. But I think one part missing from Salem’s bike strategy is education. Area drivers need to be better educated about the rules of the road.
Hey! What’s going on here? A new blog post after more than a year and a half?
Yes, that’s right. I’m slowing getting back into the swing of things, and one of those things is updating thecave.com with my pointless, boring, thoughts.
A lot has happened since that last post in December 2009. My company, White Peak Software, has changed directions and is now focused entirely on iOS and Mac OS X development. Rowan has gotten older. And I’m nearing the end of writing my first book.
Time will tell if I’m truly back into the swing of things, but I’m hopeful I will have more time to post personal rants. Welcome back…to me.
I finally got around to uploading pictures from my recent Long Trail hike. Thanks Shawn for taking the pictures.
It’s the Internet. If you post it then you are sharing it with someone. And who knows what that someone will do with it. You want privacy then get off the Internet and stop sharing.
I received an email today telling me a company is attempting to use my company name to register a .asia domain name. My first call to action was to check with my preferred domain name registrar to see if the .asia name was actually available, which it is. Next I searched to see if there are any rules or restrictions regarding a U.S. based companying owning a .asia domain name. Then finally I decided to search the name of the company attempting to register the .asia domain name. Turns out it is a scam.
This scam almost got me. It wasn’t until I searched the literal LYP International co., Inc that I discovered this insightful blog posting by Joe Wein about domain registration scams coming from China.
Don’t you just love the power of the Internet?
We have the Griffin Evolve sound system for the iPod, which I use from time to time to listen to music from my iPod touch. Unfortunately the sound system was within reach of Rowan who decided yesterday to pull back and forth on the docked iPod touch. This unfortunately bent the connector pins in the iPod touch connector port. And now whenever the iPod touch is docked the music starts and stops, plays out only 1 speaker, and or sometimes it makes an awful noise.
Okay, so I can’t use the iPod touch with the Griffin system by docking it. That’s fine. I’ll just connect it using the headphone jack. Problem solved, or so I thought.
Today I discovered the iPod touch shorting out when connected to my laptop. It didn’t occur to me yesterday I would have this problem but an electrical short is an electrical short. And no matter what I try the device keeps disconnecting and reconnecting every minute or so when plugged into the laptop.
I’m debating whether I should try getting the device fixed or just buy another one. If I get another one I can let the kid have the broken one. It could be fun to see how long it takes before he completely destroys it.
Regardless of what I decide to do, I did learn my lesson and now the sound system is out of the kid’s reach.
My wife and I have health insurance provided through her employer. The coverage is good, typical of what most large corporations offer. And yet even though we have health insurance we still had to pay $2634.20 in out of pocket medical expenses, and this number doesn’t even include the cost for medicines such as the $50 cream we had to buy for our little one. Oh, and did I mention that we opted to NOT pay Cobra $3000 for the 3 months of medical coverage NOT provided by the insurance company due to the fact that my wife was taking some unpaid time off to be with our new child?
During that 3 month period our out of pocket medical expenses were $322.03. The great state of Massachusetts requires all residents have health insurance, but honestly we could not afford it. Do the math, folks. To stay “legal” we were being asked to pay just over $3000 to cover $322.03 worth of medical expenses. That makes no freakin’ sense.
For those wondering, Cobra is pro-rated so we had up to 3 months to apply. The unpaid time off was only 3 months, so we decided to wait until the final day to decided whether to pay for Cobra coverage or not. If our total medical expenses during the 3 month period were more then $3000 we would apply, otherwise we would pay the expenses ourselves. Since our total medical expenses were during that time were far less we opted to not enroll into Cobra. But wait. There’s more.
As I said Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance. According to the official document from our insurance company that must be included with our state income tax return, we did not have health insurance for 3 months during 2008. This means we violated state law for 3 months. I’m just waiting to see what penalties we will have to pay to the state because I refused to pay $3000 to cover $322.03 worth of medical expenses.
Back to the math. So $322.03 of the $2634.20 was because of the Cobra slash unpaid time off issue. I’m okay with paying $322.02 to save $2677.97. This still leaves $2312.17 worth of medical expenses not covered by our health insurance provider during the time when we did have full coverage. What were these expenses, you ask? More than half of the expenses were related to my wife’s pregnancy and the delivery of our first child. We had to pay an additional $1577.55 out of our own pocket just to have a baby.
This leaves $734.62, which is the amount I paid to get 4 stitches near my eye from an accident. Had the accident happened a couple of hours earlier the amount would paid have been around $291.28 but the medical clinic near our house was closed at the time of the accident leaving me no choice but to go to the emergency room. And no, I couldn’t wait until the next day. I had a deep cut less than a quarter of an inch away from my eye with lots of blood coming out. Waiting was not an option.
Let’s recap the out of pocket expenses:
* $1577.55 to have a baby
* $734.62 to stitch a cut near my eye
* $322.03 pediatric visit during the unpaid time off
Grand total: $2634.20
There is a serious problem in the United States regarding healthcare. And while the government powers that be are focused on stimulus packages, corporate bail outs, and trying to improve the economy, it seems to me healthcare reform is something the U.S. government ignored for years. Don’t believe me? Watch Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko and see for yourself.
I know my situation is minor compare to the many, many others who have major medical issues. However the point I’m trying to make here is that even with health insurance a typical American family may still have to pay out of pocket medical expenses that can be a struggle to afford. Not only that, but in my own situation if the U.S. had a better healthcare system like the ones found in other countries such as Canada and France I would have been able to put the $2634.20 into the pockets of local retailers or maybe a contractor to do some work on the house thus doing my part to help stimulate the economy.
As a side note and since I did mention Canada, I have to say from personal experience that the Canadian healthcare system is awesome, really awesome. A few years back I fractured my leg on a snowboarding trip in Canada. The total cost to see the doctor, get x-rays, etc, $86 Canadian which at that time came out to about $60 U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., 4 stitches and an ER visit costed me $734.62. Something is seriously wrong with our healthcare system!
Update: My wife found 2 more invoices totaling $190 bringing our out of pocket medical expenses for 2008 to a total of $2824.20.
I really need to find time to make more blog posting. I definitely have lots to say, opinions to share, tips and tricks learned from some of the programming work I have done over the last few months. But it seems I never have time to write.
I’m currently working on new releases for Labor Mate, my labor contraction stopwatch for the iPhone and iPod touch, and Killink CSV Editor, a csv editor for the Windows desktop. I’m also working on 3 different custom software development projects for customers and I have another one that will be starting soon. And the new White Peak Software website will be ready very, very soon with new customer support features coming soon. Needless to say, I’m swamped.
And of course Rowan is only 10 months old and I have to spend as much time as I can with him. Lucky for me I work from home so I get to spend plenty of time with the little guy daily, which is great. But he does interrupt my work from time to time.
With luck and some focused time getting some of the projects completed, I’ll be back blogging before you know it. Meanwhile you can follow me over at Twitter.
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