Fraud Alert: Fake Healthcare.gov Websites

I've heard a report that there are over 700 fake Obamacare websites trolling for victims.
Supposedly, most of them look almost exactly like the authentic version except for one critical feature: You can actually log on and apply.

Caveat Emptor.

Bad Day at Work

What a crummy day.

If you don't know, I work in a medical lab, with lots of high-tech equipment and computers and stuff. Even when things run smoothly, it can be challenging. But when things go awry, it can be insane.

Today when I got there, they were changing the tanks that purify water for our chemistry analyzers. We need our water to be very, VERY  pure, in order that it doesn't affect the analysis of the whatever's being analyzed.

So, the day starts out with me having to carry jugs of water across the lab and filling the reservoirs by hand. And those analyzers go through water by the gallon. 

And one of the analyzers was just starting to go out on me, which it proceeded to do right about the time first shift left.

And my quality control wouldn't work, so I had to recalibrate, which is time consuming.

And I kept running out of water, because I had to keep filling the jugs and lug them out and empty them. Which makes the analyzers stop cold. And to get them to work correctly again they have to be shut down and restarted. Which takes 15 minutes.

So, I had an analyzer I couldn't use, because it was starting to throw out random values, which is an indication that something ain't right. I had analyzer that kept running out of water and needing to be restarted. And my "automation" line was lighting up and screaming at me from one end to the other.

I put automation in quotes because I really don't think it's very automated when you have to keep getting up and fixing it every time it malfunctions, which is about every five minutes. I'm pretty sure the concept of automation is to AVOID doing everything manually.

And then all the interfaces went down. The lab computers couldn't communicate with the control system, which was having trouble communicating with the analyzer. Which meant, again, everything had to be done manually.

Add to that the fact that the user interface on the analyzers appears to have been programmed by a bunch of chimpanzees pounding on keyboards and it gets frustrating. The "troubleshooting" "help" is like something out of Lovecraft: If you look directly at, it you'll go mad. I'm pretty sure it's translated from some foreign language by someone who thinks throwing random English words onto a screen is the same as actually writing instructions in English.

I am usually pretty cool under this sort of pressure, but almost everything that COULD go wrong, DID go wrong. I didn't panic, but I sure was on the edge of losing it.

It was truly a testament to the fact that our second shift ROCKS that the work left for third shift was negligible, except for the analyzer that was down, which would have had to go down anyway for maintenance when they got in. I love my supervisor.

So, I hope your day/evening went a little better.

No One More Than He

Has anyone else noticed that in ever speech, TOTUS forces Obama to use the phrase, "Nobody's more _____ Than I am?" The most recent example was the botched rollout of Obamacare, following which he informed us that :No one is more upset over this than me." He absolutely must be the angriest, most upset, smarter, what ever than anyone else, every time.

I've thought of a few more that would fit the pattern that likely won't show up on TOTUS:

Choose your favorite:

Nobody is more _______ than Obama.

• Angry
• Unqualified
• Unvetted
• Incompetent
• Mis-educated
• Of a cipher
• Opaque
• Profligate with other people's money
• Devoid of Actual Accomplishment
• Overrated.

I'm sure someone out there can think of a few more. Feel free to leave some  in the comments!

Beggar's Night

Well, I finally got my wife and kids through the door of my church on Friday night for their annual Halloween get-together. It went better than I expected.

There was a potluck dinner, followed by games for the kids, then trick-or-treating through the building. There was a pretty good turnout, from what I understand (I'm fairly new to the church), and there were a lot of kids for my kids to play with.

The kids got so much candy they could barely carry it all, and when I told them that that's what every Sunday is like, they ALMOST believed me.

For my wife's part, she met the wife of one of her co-workers, and some of the people I know from Sundays, and she talked with a number of them. I think she was a little surprised our heads weren't spinning around, or that we weren't chanting backwards in Latin.

It's a good thing we put of the sacrifice of the virgins until next week.

Anyway, some small hope for the future...

Bending the Cost Curve

When the democRats forced Obamacare through Congress, they kept telling us they wanted to "Bend the cost curve of healthcare downward." Well, now that people are finding out how much their new policies are going to cost (because the old ones they could "keep" suddenly went away), let me remind you of why healthcare costs are so high in the first place: democRat government programs. Here's an illustration:

Those are real numbers by the way: For a unit of blood cells to be transfused, the government reimburses the hospital less than the hospital pays the Red Cross for that unit. And consider that at my hospital, approximately 60% of transfusions are to Medicare patients. 

So, where does that extra $17 come from? Take a wild guess.

This happens in other departments, as well. Ever wonder why a hospital charges $3 (or more) for a Tylenol pill? The government reimburses the pharmacy less than the pharmacy pays for a large variety of medications. 

So the democRats get the credit for "providing healthcare," and you get stuck with the tab.

And this is just ONE example of how liberal policies have CREATED the "crisis" that the democRats now claim that only more government can "solve."

Never let a crisis go to waste. And if there's no crisis, create one. It's the liberal Alinsky way.

Metaphor of the Day

It's been quite a while since I captioned this picture, maybe a year or so, but I think it is still not only relevant, but captures the subject matter perfectly.

A Rumor

I heard a rumor that the old rumor that Cookie Monster from Sesame Street was going to be renamed Veggie Monster to coincided with Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" Program.

Apparently, all the fourth graders at my local school HATE her, because Cookie Monster is COOKIE MONSTER, darn it.

When you've lost the fourth graders...