spugbrap’s blog

For the most part, I’ve been ignoring the barrage of radio and TV commercials for Obama and McCain that have been coming with increasing frequency as we get closer to election day. They’re almost always 90% focused on bashing the opponent, and every time I listen to one of these ads it makes me dislike BOTH candidates more, because I hear bad things about one of them and I get annoyed at the other for mudslinging.

This morning, on the way to work, I heard an ad for each candidate in the course of about 5 minutes. I actually paid attention this time, because there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was a discrepancy between ads I’d recently heard from both of them.

Sure enough:

- Obama’s ad said that McCain’s plan will cause 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

- McCain’s ad said that Obama’s plan will cause 50 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage.

Going by the “lesser of two evils” approach, it seems like I should vote for McCain, because 30 million fewer Americans will lose their health insurance coverage. That’s a significant number, representing roughly 10% of the U.S. population!

However, I’ll still feel guilty for being somewhat responsible for that unfortunate 20 million Americans that will lose their coverage under McCain’s plan (around 6.7% of the U.S. population).

I’ve created some 10×10 grids to graphically represent the number of Americans without health insurance as of 2007 (about 15%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), and the numbers if McCain and Obama are both giving realistic estimates (highly unlikely) in their ads attacking each other’s health care reform plans.

The shaded regions in the grids indicate the number of Americans without health insurance in each of these cases.

15% without health insurance in 2007	22% without health insurance under McCain’s plan	32% without health insurance under Obama’s plan

Aren’t infographics fun? Ideally, there would be no shaded regions, or a candidate would offer a health care reform plan that would result in fewer shaded regions (i.e. fewer uninsured Americans).

So, how many Americans are you going to help screw out of health insurance in this election? I’d love to hear what you think about these numbers, about my infographics, or anything else you might want to share with regard to the 2008 presidential election!

I got an email from DirecTV recently, telling me that prices are going up. They linked to a PDF with new pricing info. It looks like the price of just about every subscription plan/feature they offer is going up by $2-5/month. It was not customized for me, though–it was very generic.

To find out how much my own rates were going to increase, I had to login to my account on directv.com. When I got there, though, I had a very hard time figuring out exactly what my current plan is, and how much I’m currently paying for it.

See, the problem is that I signed up with my bank to receive e-bills from most of my billers, including DirecTV. For some reason, because I usually like to view and pay all of my bills from one central location (my bank’s website), DirecTV will not allow me to view any of my bills–past or present–on directv.com.Here’s what I got when I tried to view a bill (to see which subcription package/rate plan I’ve been on for the past few years):

Our records show you are signed up to view your DIRECTV bill through your financial institution, or another bill paying web site, and not through directv.com. Because the DIRECTV online bill view service allows you to view your bill at only one web site, you are unable to view your bill at directv.com.


To view your bill here instead, you must first discontinue the online bill view you set up at your other bill paying website, by following the instructions they provide. Once de-enrolled from their bill view feature, it may take up to 30 days before you can view your bill statement at directv.com.


In the meantime, you still have access to all other directv.com account functions, including making an immediate, one-time check or credit card payment. Thank you.To ensure the privacy of your personal information, this message will no longer appear once you close the pop-up browser window.

I don’t understand the point of preventing me from viewing my bill from multiple locations. I encountered this same odd behavior with Verizon in the past. Does anybody know why they would do this? I could understand limiting users to having monthly e-bills sent to only one bank. But I think you should always be able to view your account information, including at least the most recent bill, on the company’s site, itself.

To make matters worse, it can take a month or two to get them to start sending e-bills to a bank, and then it can take a month to stop them from sending e-bills to that bank. That huge delay puzzles me, as well. Online customer account management and B2B communication should be instantaneous. 30 days is worse than snail mail! Couldn’t DirecTV print out my bill, send it to my bank via horseback mail carrier, and have someone at my bank type the bill into their system in less than 30 days? Ugh!

Anyways, my rate increase is about 5.5%. Oh well, not like I have much choice. It’s Comcast or DirecTV, here, and I’m happy with my DirecTV DVR that I got before their agreement with Tivo ended. I tried Comcast cable for a while, last year, but I couldn’t deal with the horrible Scientific Atlanta DVR that came with that.

**UPDATE BEFORE POSTING**Okay, I’ve been meaning to blog about this for several weeks, now. I logged into my account at directv.com, a few minutes ago, and I was able to see the name and price of my subscription plan right at the top of the main Account Details page, in a section called “Activity Since Last Bill.”

Click the above link to see the expanded Activity Since Last Bill section from my directv.com Account Details page.

I’m not sure if I just didn’t notice/find this link when I was looking for it, a few weeks ago, or if they’ve since made some changes to their website. I think I’m seeing a lot more DHTML/AJAX going on, so I’m thinking they made some UI improvements recently.

Unfortunately, the “View Bills” link still takes me to that page quoted above, where they tell me that I can’t view my bill on their site since I signed up to be able to receive e-bills on my bank’s site. Hmpf.

… and I don’t mean potholes.

As I was sitting at a traffic light with 2 left turn lanes, in the right left turn lane, I noticed a pickup truck to my left pull up closer to the car in front of it, so that it was directly next to me. I looked up and saw the passenger (and possibly even the driver) in the truck making faces at me. I thought to myself, “Wow, you don’t see that every day. What is this, high school? Or a college campus on a Saturday night?” I avoided making any more eye contact with them, because I didn’t want to react and give them any more satisfaction.

When the light turned green, and I was turning left (making an appropriately wide turn, so the people next to me had room to turn, and the people turning the opposite direction had room, as well), I heard some honking. I had no idea why, but assumed it was directed at the people turning from the opposite direction.

I soon noticed that the black SUV in front of me, in the right lane, had a middle finger sticking out of it, towards a white SUV in the left lane. I looked over at the people in the truck next to me, and they were clearly entertained by this display. I decided to back off a little bit, because I feared something stupid might happen between these people.

The truck next to me decided to get up closer to the white SUV, and then moved over in front of me, and pulled up next to the white SUV. They lingered there, for a minute, presumably to make their own immature gestures at the people in the white SUV. Then, the truck swerved over towards them a little bit, making them swerve a little bit towards the median. This was exactly why I had backed off, because I wanted to be prepared in case some idiot caused an accident.

Thankfully, the truck then sped up and passed the white suv, and shortly after that, they turned. The rest of my commute was uneventful. That was more drama than I’m used to during my morning commutes, and am just glad none of these idiots took it any further.

Accidents suck, and it just seemed like someone was begging for one. I should also point out that most of this took place near an elementary school, at a speed of around 40mph, while the shool zone 25mph speed limit sign’s lights were flashing. I’m glad the kids were already in school, so they were not put at risk by these immature drivers.

I woke up this morning, turned off my alarm, took my morning wake-up medicines, and got in the shower. About half-way through my shower, I noticed that it was still dark outside. This was odd, because I’ve been noticing sunlight peeking through the edges of the miniblinds during my showers, lately.

Then, it dawned on me–the alarm I had turned off was not my “morning-wake-up” alarm; it was my “middle-of-the-night” (take second Xyrem dose and go back to sleep) alarm.

So, I finished my shower, then puzzled over what to do next. One option was to go back to bed, but I had already taken my wake-up medicines, and did not have any spare doses to take upon reawakening. The other option was to proceed as usual, getting to work freakishly early, but only having had about two hours of sleep. If necessary, I could always take a nap in my car, at some point during the day.

I decided to head to work. When I got there, I realized that if I was going to take a nap in my car, I needed to do it early, because it would be too hot later in the day. So, I found a nice, quiet, shady corner of the parking lot, cracked the windows, set alarms on my cell phone, and attempted to get comfortable.

Unfortunately, my new car is not so good for sleeping in. No matter how I adjusted the seat, at least one part of my body was either cramped or unsupported. After about 45 minutes of trying to get reasonably cozy, I finally found the right combination of seat position, neck support, and foot placement. For neck support, I ended up using my owner’s manual package (it’s inside a zippered soft leather case) wrapped in a towel, with the seat’s headrest up a few notches. About 30 minutes later, my alarm went off, and I went into the office, feeling very much like a zombie. I bought an energy drink from the deli on the way in, which helped a little bit, but really I was pretty zombified all day.

This started out very similar to the last time I got up way too early, but I took a very wrong turn this time (in part due timing factors, like my current prescription wake-up meds running out next week). Last time, I went back to bed after the shower. If this ever happens again, I will be doing that.

It is also worth noting that last time, I woke up insanely early without any external cues, whereas this time I had an alarm go off. I’ve had that middle-of-the-night alarm go off every night for months, though, so why did I handle it wrong this time?

Perhaps it’s because I changed some variables last night, relating to alarms. I’ve been having trouble remembering to actually take my Xyrem when that alarm goes off, more and more lately. I’ve also been crawling back into bed after turning off my morning-wake-up alarm, on several recent occasions.

So, to combat both of these issues, I did two things differently last night:

1. I put my morning-wake-up alarm clock on the floor, on the other side of my nightstand, with the time facing away from the bed. This way, I would be forced to get up to turn it off, and would have to get conscious enough to figure out that it’s facing the wrong way, in order to successfully find the little tiny switch on one side that turns it off.
2. I put my middle-of-the-night alarm (an old cell phone) under a paper towel, inside an open box, with my Xyrem bottle on top of the paper towel, and a sheet of bubble wrap partially covering the top of the box. Really, there’s no way to adequately describe what this looked like, so here are some pictures:

If my alarm clock had been on my nightstand–facing towards the bed–I might have noticed what time it was, when I turned off my middle-of-the-night alarm. If my middle-of-the-night alarm had not been hidden inside the odd little box, the way it was, I might have simply turned it off and gone back to sleep. Even if I didn’t take my second Xyrem dose, at least I would have gotten more sleep.

Tonight, to be on the safe side, I’m going to put things back the way they were. Well, I might go ahead and hide my morning wake-up meds a little bit, so I might think twice before taking them. Really, the thing that would help most with my sleep/wake cycle would be to stop staying up late doing things like finishing blog entries! :)

We received an ad in the mail, recently, which immediately disturbed Lacey and I. It’s a service that lets you create real, usable postage stamps with a picture of your choice. Sounds kinda cool, right? But take a look at the ad, and see if you can find what’s wrong with this picture:

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It seems like a cool concept, at first, to put whatever picture you want (as long as it’s yours/legal/etc) on stamps. But this ad is proudly showing a picture of a cute little kid, on a stamp. That would be cool if you’re just sending mail to your friends and family, and nobody was going to handle that mail in between.

But the reality is that several people are going to handle each piece of mail, and you’re probably going to send some to billers/rebate warehouses/misc. companies as well, and multiple people will probably handle the mail within those companies. If any of those people happens to like little kids, in a NAMBLA sort of way, then you’ve just given them your cute kid’s home address via the return address on the other corner of the envelope.

In other words, you’re announcing, “Hey, pedophiles! Here’s a picture of my cute kid, and here’s where to come get him/her!”

I remember Lacey talking about some online moms’ group forums where there was some controversy, a while back, when people posted their addresses (for swaps/co-ops/etc) publicly and had cute pics of their kids in their signature blocks. These stamps aren’t quite as bad, I think, because at least their exposure is limited to a few people handling snail mail, whereas the online message boards are googleable.

But, still, stamps.com might want to consider this before enabling proud, naïve parents to advertise their children this way. Art would be fine. Maybe even the family pet. But not children.