Sunday, September 17, 2023

2000 Ford Focus wagon, rear tail light assembly, changing the turn signal bulb

2000 Ford Focus wagon, rear tail light assembly, changing the turn signal bulb. (I used a Philips 3157 Long Life, comparable to the Sylvania that was in there originally.)

Once you open the rear hatch, there are two visible Philips head screws. What is not visible is a metal clip about 2/3 of the way down between those two screws, and two plastic posts on the opposite side of the assembly. Instructions elsewhere say to just keep pulling it straight out, but do not specify that the direction "straight out" is straight toward the side of the car, not straight back from the car.

Once the assembly is out, you just twist the light housing a little and then pull it straight out. The bulb pulls straight out from its housing, and the new one clips into place. You may want to take a moment now to check that the new bulb works.

The light housing has to go back on in exactly the right orientation (look at the plastic molding of the housing and line up the gaps), then twists a bit to stay in place. The entire assembly then goes back on with a bit of effort to get the clip reattached once everything is lined up correctly. Then put the screws back in.

Non-wagon versions of the Ford Focus 2000-2007 also have thumb screws for this tail light assembly which you access from inside the trunk or inside the hatch for the hatchback, but the 2000 wagon doesn't. No idea about the 2001-2007 wagon.

If you pull straight back instead of to the side, you risk breaking off one of the two pins on the far side of the assembly from the screw holes. As long as one pin remains, that seems sufficient to keep the assembly firmly attached when you put it back together.

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Release your wrath redux

Some musings this week, not well organized and with no conclusions.

Back in 2015, I wrote about the "Release your wrath" passage in the haggadah:

https://houseoutoffocus.blogspot.com/2015/03/release-your-wrath.html

I want to collect here some references of other thoughts about this passage.

First, some questions:

1. Is there agreement in modern haggadahs about when Elijah's cup is filled?

2. Is there agreement in modern haggadahs about when the 4th cup is filled?

Discussion of a simply inverted passage from curse to blessing, connections to searching for chametz:

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/105867?lang=bi

Legitimacy of anger at injustice and oppression:

https://merrimackvalleyhavurah.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/pour-out-your-wrath-the-legitimacy-of-anger-at-injustice/

History of the passage:

https://images.shulcloud.com/634/uploads/Shabbat-Hagadol-2017-Cup-of-Wrath-Web-Edition.pdf

Perspectives from rabbis of different movements:

https://momentmag.com/ask-the-rabbis-should-jews-at-the-seder-ask-god-to-smite-our-enemies/

Someone who wants it removed entirely:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/offensive-liturgy-passove_b_521009

A response defending keeping it:

http://lady-light.blogspot.com/2010/04/pour-out-thy-wrath.html

I think it's worth looking at the entirety of Psalm 79, which provides context for the start of this passage extracted from Psalm 79. How different does this passage sound if you know the entire psalm? What is the right way to recognize that many people today do not have that context, and instead have the context of broad strokes history of recent and contemporary antisemitism and the horrors it has led to? Do we add explanation? Add context? Change the passage? Provide alternatives in the haggadah?

Do we point out the reasons why we might feel this passage in our bones? The reasons we might reject it? Do we point out that the passage asks for God to act, not for us to act on God's behalf? Is that any comfort to those who are distressed or repelled by the passage?

Do we hope to spark questions and discussion at the seder? If we do, what do we include in the haggadah to best accomplish this goal?

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Bilingual personalized books from Tim Tim Tom

In exchange for a free sample, I agreed to write a review of a bilingual personalized book service from Tim Tim Tom. I am really glad I did, because the book is charming and the production is really high quality.

You can choose from a few different stories, one or two languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Chinese (Simplified or Traditional)), and customize the child's name and some physical appearance attributes (boy or girl in appearance, skin color, eye color, hair color, and hair style). You can even add a dedication of your choice. The customization process was easy, and my kid was delighted when I gave him a book starring him as the main character, at least once I explained that he didn't need to be able to read Spanish to read the story. For a bilingual book, the entire story is printed in both languages on the page, so it works no matter how little or how much you know of the second language.

The resulting hardback was impeccably produced. I publish books for a living, so I'm pretty picky. The customization is on the front and back covers as well as the inside text and illustrations. The illustrations are bright and cheerful. The cover is a durable printed hardback with a matte finish, with no dustjacket, and the inside text pages are on a heavy coated paper with a great feel and excellent printing. The printing quality for this one-off book is higher than many books on my shelf that were commercially produced in long runs.

As I write this, Tim Tim Tom is only offering an ebook rather than a printed book. Book printing has been hard hit by supply chain disruptions, which may be the reason for that shift. Ebooks have their place, but I hope they will return to offering printed books soon. We all deserve to star in books that feel and look as good as this one does.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Driving lesson

I recently gave a friend’s daughter a 2-hour driving lesson. It was in the middle of a stressful couple of weeks (a hospitalization, our air conditioner broke, our car’s gear shift broke, I had a fall at PT, a recent dental filling fell out, etc.), and I found it strange that the driving lesson felt so calm.

I know some of the reasons that the lesson did not add to my overall stress level. This wasn’t my own child, there wasn’t a deadline, the car is 20 years old and has no residual value, and this wasn’t her first or last driving lesson. But this experience was actively calming in a way that I didn’t expect.

Focus played a role. I was entirely present in the moment, paying close attention to the driver, the car, the immediate environment, and nothing else. That sort of focused attention is often hard to achieve for very long before the next demand comes from my child or my work or the world at large. But this was two hours where other concerns were gone.

Simplicity played a role. The controls are two pedals and a steering wheel. Make the car go, make the car stop. Learn to control where the car goes, and avoid non-moving objects. If another car shows up, stop out of the way until it’s not near you any longer. Driving around a half-empty parking lot with very light traffic is drastically simpler than the usual Boston driving experience where you are surrounded by moving maniacs who are allergic to the rules of the road.

Feeling useful played a role. I like to be of service, and this was a great opportunity to help someone out. Completing a task played a role, and a task that is simply “teach for an hour or two” is by definition complete at the end of that time. That is quite different from my usual tasks that involve solving problems with myriad complications and no clear timeframe. We got up through successfully parallel parking behind an actual car, so there was also a clear sense of accomplishment.

And my student was an excellent student. She wanted to be there, she wanted to learn, she didn’t want to show off, she listened to instructions, and she embraced practicing. I rarely get that with my 7-year-old for 10 minutes, let alone 2 hours.

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Tapering budesonide capsules

I am not a doctor. I am not a pharmacist. This is not medical advice.

We’ve learned a few things about tapering the Mylan 3 mg extended release budesonide capsules. These capsules are designed to deliver a steroid dose to the intestines. These are a generic of Entocort EC.

We don’t have experience with other brands, because we have stuck with one brand (Mylan). We have heard that different brands may tend to release the medication at different points in the intestines due to different coating formulations, so once we started on one brand, we stuck with that brand for consistency.

Some amount of the steroid has systemic effects, not just local effects. That can make it important to taper carefully.

After a number of failed attempts to taper the dose of 3x 3 mg capsules (9 mg total) by dropping to 2 capsules, by dropping to 2 capsules every other day, or even by dropping to 2 capsules every several days, the doctor suggested we might have to use a compounding pharmacy to taper in smaller increments.

It turns out that the capsules are easy to open, and each capsule typically contains 20-21 tiny pellets. The outer capsules dissolve quickly in the stomach, and the pellets are what actually have a coating to delay the release of the budesonide until further down in the digestive tract. That means that it is possible to open a capsule, remove any number of pellets, close it back up, and taper your budesonide dose in as little as 0.15 mg increments instead of 3.0 mg increments. That allows for a much slower and more gentle taper when that turned out to be necessary.

Empty gelatin capsules are available from Amazon if you want to put pellets into new capsules, rather than just discard the extra pellets.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

The will of the people

I've long hoped for a second Brexit referendum to reverse the results of the first one. It seems clear that the British public knows now that the promises of the Leave campaign are not going to be realized, knows the actual terms worked out for leaving the EU with a deal, and knows more of the consequences of leaving the EU without a deal at all. The logical (to me) conclusion is that enough people would change their minds that a second Brexit referendum would result in a majority of the public voting to Remain rather than implement either of the alternatives.

But that's not a guaranteed result. And even if it were, supporting a democratic vote only because I like the expected result is using democracy as a fig leaf, not honoring democracy.

However, it is also not honoring democracy to insist that a referendum result in 2016 be treated as a valid guide to public sentiment in 2019, and to insist that a subsequent vote based on new information would be anti-democratic.

A fundamental problem is that what the Leave campaign wanted (exiting the EU with the UK having full autonomy over trade and regulations and movement of people, a better economic position than before, no internal borders, no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and no negative consequences) turns out to be unachievable. It does not appear to be for lack of trying.

The original Brexit referendum question itself did not delve into details. It was simply Leave the EU or Remain in the EU. The government worked to implement the decision as comprehensively as possible while achieving the best possible result for Britain. That was the point of the last two years of negotiations. It seems right for the government to have pursued that goal, but there has also been far too much pretending that the democratic will was to "Leave the EU on whatever terms Theresa May and the EU negotiate." That's not what the referendum said in plain language, it's not what every Leave voter wanted, and it's not the only outcome that would honor the results of the referendum. Many Leave voters wanted to stop the free flow of people, but not all. Many Leave voters wanted to regain regulatory autonomy for Britain, but not all. Many Leave voters wanted a better economic outcome for Britain, as did many Remain voters. Some Leave voters may have imagined a Norway-style Brexit, other Leave voters may have imagined a Swiss-style Brexit, many Leave voters may have imagined a Brexit resembling the Leave campaign's fantasies, and few probably imagined anything like the present prospects. A singular notion of the will of the voters is a mirage.

I like to imagine a statesman in Britain making the point that the will of the people has been respected through the efforts of the government over the past 2+ years. The nation cannot be held hostage by a blind insistence that the Leave campaign's promised outcome is on the table. The negotiations show that the result the Leave campaign sought is not achievable. The only options available are different than the result the Leave campaign sought, and Parliament therefore needs to decide on the best path forward among the available options.

There were, to be sure, some Leave campaigners who wanted the economic self-immolation of a hard Brexit. They still see a possible victory, and will happily shed crocodile tears about the will of the voters. But that is not what the Leave campaign promised and it is not what the Leave voters wanted. The notion that a hard Brexit reflects the will of the voters must be forcefully rejected, and presumably will be rejected by Parliament shortly.

Parliament is where the will of the people must be implemented, and sometimes where it must be thwarted. Perhaps the politics are such that a second Referendum will lessen the social unrest that will follow from the failure of the government to achieve the unachievable. I suspect that the better way forward is for the government to say "We tried our best. We are sorry." Saying that convincingly will require someone quite unlike May or Corbyn.

Friday, December 14, 2018

TextWrangler multi-file search problems

TextWrangler is the free baby brother of BBEdit, and is a fantastic text editor. On an older computer that runs Mac OS 10.5.7, we’ve been using TextWrangler 3.5.3 to do large-scale web site updates for years because it has multi-file search and replace capabilities that work quickly and smoothly.

Until the last couple of weeks, when the multi-file search broke in very strange ways. I don’t know whether to describe this as a bug, error, corrupt file, issue, or some other term that might lead you here if you are also experiencing this problem. The behavior was that when we press “Find all”, it acts like we chose “Search all”. When we enter a text string that is in one or more files, TextWrangler claims that it’s not present at all. When we enter a text string that is not in any files, TextWrangler brings up every file, highlights nothing (because there is nothing to highlight), and claims that every file contains the string. Choosing case-sensitive or grep did not change the wrong behavior. Choosing small or large file sets did not change the behavior. This was all perfectly consistent and reproducible despite rebooting and reinstallation of TextWrangler 3.5.3.

What finally fixed it was removing a few TextWrangler files from the Library:

Library>Application Support>TextWrangler
Library>Preferences>com.barebones.textwrangler.plist
Library>Preferences>com.barebones.PreferenceData
Library>Caches>com.barebones.textwrangler

After removing those (or renaming them to "problem-[...]" so we still had a copy) and relaunching TextWrangler, the multi-file find no longer got confused with multi-file replace, files turned up and didn’t when they were supposed to, and we were back in business solving actual problems with our web site.

I’m sad that TextWrangler will no longer exist for new computers, even though BBEdit can apparently do even more than TextWrangler ever could. There’s something very satisfying about using software that works (and aside from this short period, TextWrangler has been rock solid) and doesn’t have a huge number of features that I don’t need.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Deprec(i)ated

Who doesn’t love tax software? That glorious buffer between unreadable IRS forms and an intimidated public, hoping to turn a simple page of data entry into 45 interview pages of single questions that feel like a miserably intrusive first date.

Hmm. When I put it that way, it’s less appealing.

But you know what’s even less fun? Reading someone else’s complaint about tax software!

But this isn’t a complaint about tax software. Certainly not about H&R Block’s 2017 TaxCut software for Mac, which inexplicably displays and prints the wrong depreciation percentage (3.1750%) on line 40 of Form 8829 while still secretly applying the correct depreciation percentage (2.5640%) to line 39 to get the correct result on line 41.

It’s a complaint about tax software companies. See, isn’t that better?

Bugs happen. People make the software, and people make mistakes. The trick is to have a sane ticketing system to document and then fix the bugs.

Digression: We don’t call them bugs any more; now they are issues. Bugs are unambiguously errors, and errors suggest blame or fault. Issues are simply disagreements. The software and the IRS instructions disagree about what to put on line 40, for example, so there’s an issue with line 40. An issue is something to be resolved through negotiation or compromise, and makes it clear that the source of the disagreement and responsibility for fixing the disagreement belongs to both the software and the user. This is much like the change in how apologies are phrased these days: H&R Block is sorry if you feel that line 40 should show the correct depreciation percentage. When I was young, apologies did not have a conditional “if” and did not focus on the aggrieved party’s feelings, as if the problem is that anyone paid attention to the wrong behavior.

Further digression: I should clarify that H&R Block is not, in fact, sorry for anything that their software does incorrectly on line 40 of Form 8829. I invented that apology example out of whole cloth. I am sorry if (not that) H&R Block feels (not is) confused by the (not my) suggestion that they would ever actually apologize.

But back to the idea of a ticketing system. See, there should be a way to report a bug. But a company like H&R Block doesn’t want to get flooded with bug reports, so they use a challenge and response system to weed out the reports they don’t want. Which appears to be all of them. The specific challenge they use is this: “Find the online chat function that our phone system, our website, and our software help system all tell you to use.” The response they are looking for is for users to give up, because there is no actual chat function. If you fail to provide the correct response, their phone system will put you on hold for a very long time, transfer you to a person who may or may not understand the complicated phrase “line 40,” put you on hold again while they look to see if this is already a known issue, and then transfer you to the survey without ever gathering any actual details.

After spending over three hours trying to get the bug report to H&R Block, I successfully reached a human being who confirmed that the incorrect depreciation percentage was a known “issue” and was not currently expected to be fixed. Yay! So I can either let the software show the wrong percentage on line 40 but the right result on line 41 and efile, or I can override the software to show the correct percentage and be forced to mail in my return via the US Mail like an animal in the wilderness (to borrow a phrase). First world problems.

I’d rather see the bug issue reporting system be publicly accessible, so I could check for myself to see what people have reported. That sort of transparency would probably be terribly embarrassing for H&R Block, but works well for users like me. I also used to like the “data source” feature in tax software, where you could select a number on a form and have the software tell you which piece of its digital ass worksheet or interview it pulled that number out of.

The IRS doesn’t help by having a complicated depreciation system. We could simplify that. Line 40 of Form 8829 is about depreciating my house. In my experience, no piece of my house lasts 39 years or even 27.5 years. More like 2-3 years. Or possibly falling down faster than I can keep propping it back up. I’ve seen Ford Fiestas with fewer miles than my house hold up better, and my house isn’t moving a whole lot faster than a Ford Fiesta.

Tax software, like a Ford Fiesta, isn’t meant to last. It’s a transient object of ridicule interest, meant to meet a need briefly and then be replaced. But in both cases I’d like it to work while I have it, even if it makes a terrible putt-putt noise and lurches every time I turn left or try to take a child tax credit.

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Using Skype on Mac OS 10.7

Skype has been removing the ability of older Mac operating systems to run either the Skype application or Skype through a web browser. Here’s what worked for me today to get Skype working on a Mac running OS 10.7.5.

Download Skype 6.15.0.335, which was the latest version of the application that can open on my Mac.

Right-click or Control-click on Skype in the Finder and select Show Package Contents.

Navigate to Contents folder and open the file Info.plist in TextEdit.

Change "6.15" and "6.15.0.335" (two locations) to "7.59". That makes it look like you're running a current version of Skype.

Save the file, and launch Skype. Login as usual.

I have no idea if there are terrible security vulnerabilities to doing this. But Skype finally worked without forcing me to upgrade my operating system just to talk to my parents.

Monday, October 30, 2017

A little experiment

Here’s my current daydream of how to make it easier for young Jewish adults to stay engaged or remain engaged when membership at a specific synagogue is not a good fit.

Are you a young Jewish adult between the ages of 18 and 30? Looking for activities and connections? Join the new URJ young adults group. It’s a regional membership that is mobile, social, and flexible.

Temple membership is great for kids, families, and older adults who need the stability and strength of a locally centered Jewish community to draw on. But young adults are more mobile and need a Jewish community that goes beyond neighborhood boundaries. That’s exactly why the new regional membership is perfect for young adults. Fun in-person activities around your region just for young adults give you new experiences and new friends. Online chat groups provide new connections and contacts. Our tikkun olam (repair the world) calendar gives you chances to give of your time and skills and energy to help out around our region in different ways, and our education meetups let you go to local talks and classes with other young adults.

Want religious services? We organize two options, and you’re always welcome to either or both. There’s a monthly Friday night dinner and services just for young adults. On a different weekend, our touring minyan picks a different synagogue each month for either Friday night or Saturday morning.

For High Holiday services, you can choose any local participating synagogue, and we will get you tickets and the schedule of services.

Life can throw us curve balls, and you may want to seek a rabbi’s counsel. We can set you up with a time to meet with someone convenient to you.

This new young adults group is run by a regional leadership team with the full support of synagogues in the region. A portion of the membership fees are distributed to the synagogues, and the rest supports our regional staff and programming. The annual membership fee is a sliding scale based on your income MINUS your loan payments. And when you find yourself settling down more locally and want to transition to a membership at a specific synagogue, know that our programs are open to young adult synagogue members as well.

Whether or not you went to religious school or Jewish camps, whether or not you participated in a NFTY or Hillel group, no matter how you identify or who you date, we want to meet you where you are and help you connect to other young Jewish adults in your area. Welcome!

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Someone else’s need

The Atlantic has published a lengthy article about the current debate in the Conservative Jewish movement over interfaith marriages. While this is clearly an important debate to many people in the Conservative movement, there aren’t very many people left in the Conservative movement. Perhaps it’s because the Conservative movement has spent decades driving away enormous segments of its membership.

Rabbi David Wolpe is quoted in the article as saying “I don’t necessarily feel that someone else’s need is my obligation. Someone else may need a rabbi to bless that union, or may want a rabbi to bless that union. It doesn’t mean that I have to do it.”

That is the exact attitude that rabbis and synagogue leaders decry in the unaffiliated and the underaffiliated. People do not join synagogues or do not provide enough money or time to keep synagogues afloat, saying “I don’t necessarily feel that someone else’s need is my obligation. Someone else may need or want a synagogue to feel connected to a Jewish community, to provide Jewish education for children or adults, to offer worship services or social services, or to help with major life events and transitions. It doesn’t mean that I have to support a synagogue.”

I certainly cannot persuade someone who has no need for a synagogue that they should personally support a synagogue. I feel I can make a reasonable case to someone who does sometimes need or want a synagogue, as long as rabbis and synagogue leaders are not actively dismissing them. The quote from Rabbi Wolpe, on the other hand, makes that case much harder to make. I am sure he would be able to explain why I should not expect him to extend his logic to refusing to lead a funeral or refusing to counsel a congregant, though I do not see that distinction in his quote.

Someone else’s need is not my obligation.

Am I my brother’s keeper?

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Onwards

“This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” —Deuteronomy 30:19

Prioritizing people’s lives over convenience should not be a difficult or controversial position for a synagogue to take. Yet our synagogue has refused to stop serving nuts and mango at events connected to the Hebrew School, despite knowing that doing so endangers our child’s life. After over two years of discussions, endless meetings, and broken promises, it is clear that the synagogue has other priorities.

The synagogue watched a child in their Hebrew School have to leave family programs in tears on two separate occasions because they decided to serve nuts or mango in the middle of the program. The Chanukah party was also directly connected to the Hebrew School, but our request to make that party nut-free was met with overt hostility rather than any shred of concern for ensuring the safety of our child.

In the minds of many people in the synagogue leadership, it is fine to continue to exclude a child with life-threatening food allergies from active participation in synagogue life. It is more important that they be able to serve foods with nuts at every Tot Shabbat than to allow that child to be welcome and included at onegs and kiddushes. It is more important that they be able to serve mango sorbet than to allow that child to play with other children afterwards. It is more important to avoid any additional thought or possible inconvenience than to care about a vulnerable member of the community. Instead they are willing to tell a child that his life is unimportant and does not have inherent worth.

That does not reflect any values that I recognize as Jewish, human, or decent.

The synagogue leadership has spoken repeatedly about how the rabbi has a responsibility to make the synagogue into a community of chesed, of caring. But the rabbi is not the Wizard of Oz who will make this tin man synagogue discover that it had a heart all along. He can talk about the value of welcoming and including others all he wants, but he will never truly reach people who focus on Otherness and do not start out with a true interest in being welcoming or inclusive, people who do not have a core of caring to start with.

The synagogue leadership is not monolithic. But sadly, it has now transitioning from non-functional to non-existent. I've come to lectures and classes and services and family events for 5 years, I've donated hundreds of hours of my own time to the synagogue over the past 2 years of being on the board, and there are many people I will miss seeing. But David is now old enough to start seeing the world as it could be in addition to seeing the world as it is, and to understand that individual people are responsible for making decisions that hurt him, that exclude him, or that risk his life. It is vital for his sake that he know that I am not one of those people.

When we formally converted our child to Judaism, we promised to raise him in a Jewish community. Calling this synagogue a Jewish community makes a mockery of Jewish values and of the term “community.” The Jewish values I was raised with, the values I still hold, insist that I leave.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Choice in health care

Choice is such an important term in health care. People want to choose their doctors, their treatment options, their hospitals, and their insurance plans. Every informed consent form spells out the alternative to make it clear that you made a choice to consent.

Choice is a proxy for agency, the notion that we control our destinies. We believe that if we get to make choices, we will make the right choices. We will find better doctors, more effective treatment options, kinder hospitals that will soothe us and salve us. Placebo effects suggest that this belief can actually be important.

We extend this preference for choice into insurance plans to our own detriment. Insurance plans are deliberately complex, designed to limit care and limit payments for care. It can be very difficult to understand all the details of the insurance plan you have, let alone all the plans you might choose among. Choosing an insurance plan also requires you to guess at your future health needs, which are inherently unpredictable. You may be able to make reasonable guesses, but serious injuries and severe acute illnesses are unplanned.

Our employer-based insurance allows us to choose among four plans, all with an identical provider network and similar plan limitations. Choosing is made easier by knowing that we have chronic illnesses in our family which require expensive care, and by knowing that shifting thousands of dollars from premiums to out-of-pocket expenses allows us to seek third-party reimbursement for some expected medical expenses. (Would you rather pay $10,000 in premiums and $4000 for specific care, or $4000 in premiums and $10,000 for specific care? That’s an easy choice if you know that half of your specific care might get reimbursed.) Despite that, there are two plans out of the four that could make sense for our family, and no way to be certain which was the right choice until after the year is completed.

Choosing between plans with different provider networks is far more error-prone. You may know one or more of the doctors you expect to see regularly, and should choose a plan which includes those doctors. You may be fortunate enough to have them continue practicing and stay in network for the entire year. But a new medical condition may require one or more new specialists, and even in a doctor-rich area like Boston there may only be one specialist who is the right one to see. How can you possibly know ahead of time which specialist you will need for a condition you don’t yet have, and confirm that they will be in your insurance network?

There are also many medical specialties and situations where you have no choice in provider. The canoncial four specialties where providers often refuse to join networks because they are reimbursed far more being out-of-network are radiology, anesthesia, pathology, and emergency room care. Those happen to also be specialties where the patient typically has no choice in who is providing the care. Being in a hospital is also a vulnerable time when you have no control over who is providing the care. You may never even meet the person who will be billing your insurance, and then you.

The flip side of telling people that they have choices in health care is assigning them blame when those “choices” don’t turn out optimally. Lousy doctor? You should have chosen a different one. Side effects from medication? You should have read the pages of boilerplate warnings.

And that blame gets worse with insurance catastrophes. We can tell ourselves and each other that we would not have ended up seeing a provider who is not in our network, or that we would have chosen a different insurance plan that had the right network, or the right limits on the right services, or the right assortment of deductibles and coinsurance and copays. When we tell that tale in a year when we ourselves had few serious or unexpected medical issues, it has the ring of truth. That just makes the falseness of it all the more pernicious.

It doesn’t have to work this badly, but the plans being floated -- plans to allow more choices in insurance plans with smaller networks, plans to allow balance billing even in network (a long-time favorite idea from Tom Price), plans to shatter the core of Medicare into a voucher system paying into a fractured assortment of privatized plans -- those plans make the situation worse. We end up with more risk, more expenses, more medical bankruptcies, and more blame assigned to people who “made the wrong choice” when they discovered their plan didn’t adequately cover the newly discovered cancer, or the birth defect, or the premature baby, or the medicine they suddenly need that costs $100,000 per year.

Don’t fall for these sorts of changes. Work for health insurance for everyone, with no annual limits, no lifetime limits, no balance billing, no narrow networks, and no constantly shifting exclusions. Work for a public option, for single payer, for transparent and reasonable pricing, for affordable cost-sharing, for sane financial policies, and for choices that provide benefits rather than blame. Work for an end to medical bankruptcies, so if you like your house, you can keep it.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Why shovel? and ice dam info

Today was the first day that really felt like winter here. Even with the dusting of snow on the ground Monday morning, the air on Monday just wasn’t as brisk as today.

We have a roof rake. We have ice melt. We have a shovel, and we probably have ice scrapers for the cars. And our neighbor just got a snowblower and says he’s looking forward to doing the whole block.

But we don’t have Heat Trak mats for our front steps. Those look convenient.

Update February 19, 2017:

The second winter after having our roof redone, it started leaking into our enclosed porch again. We think that it wasn’t through the roof itself this time, but rather from behind the gutters. The gutters filled with ice, the melting snow from higher up pushed its way backwards through the fascia and soffit boards, and came in dripping from the soffit boards inside the porch. Unlike 2 years ago, there was no water coming in through the porch ceiling.

Even if our house were completely unheated, we would have snow melt on our roof because of sunshine. With the right combination of cold temperatures and snow melt, the front gutter will gradually fill with ice and create a larger and larger block of ice.

We need to replace the fascia and soffit boards when we rebuild the front porch, and we need to replace the beat-up gutters anyway. Hopefully with a proper pitch to the soffit boards and a sane flashing approach, we can keep the water that backs up behind an iced-up gutter from backing into the porch itself. In part, that requires a contractor who understands that the gutter will ice up, that snow will melt, and that we want a backup plan for keeping the water outside.

I’ve also been looking into heat tape or heat cable for the gutter and downspouts. There are two basic types of heat cable: constant wattage, and self-regulating. We want self-regulating. We also want some sort of sanity control that turns it off if the weather is warm or if there’s no snow, so it’s not using power when it’s not needed. Perhaps a wifi-interactive switch would help.

If we want to melt ice on the eaves, there’s lots of panel choices shown here:
http://www.meltyourice.com/wp-content/uploads/Product-selection-guide1.jpg

Here are some other useful local links:
http://www.heaterzone.com/Roof_Gutter_De_Icing_Heater_Cable_s/36.htm?gclid=CNTz38WFm9ICFY6KswodJ7kGtA
http://www.moonworkshome.com/gutters/
http://www.negutterkings.com/products/gutter-protection/

Moonworks and NE Gutter Kings both offer gutter caps that can have heat cable run through them, which seems helpful in terms of distributing the area that can melt.

In general with gutters, we want to look at materials options and size options. Larger size seems better, given that the majority of the overly large house roof goes down to a total span of 25 feet of gutter. We want strong, because we don’t want ladders to damage the gutters. Would fiberglass or nylon be strong enough? Would the heat transfer characteristics be better or worse for preventing ice build-up and for letting the heat cable work?

How far out of the downspouts do we want to run the heat cable?

Where should the outlet and switch be for ease of installing heat cables?

Do we want cleanouts to create escape paths for water? Removable gutters for the winter? Rain chains instead of downspouts?

Monday, November 14, 2016

Make the investors unhappy

When would you be willing to go to jail? What would be so worth protesting that you would give up your liberty and maim your future in order to speak out?

But wait. What would going to jail accomplish?

Does it increase your credibility once you regain your voice?

Does it amplify your message?

Are the people who run our justice system and our jails going to be horrified at jailing you or a thousand like you? Are you human to them in a way that millions of others are not? Are you immune from vilification? From lies and smears and innuendo and mockery and disbelief and dehumanization?

Will our justice system and our jails be overwhelmed by the vast numbers of protestors? In this existing and scalable system of mass incarceration, the largest in human history, will so many people join you that the cells will fill and no more will be able to be built?

Will the cries from broken families reach the privileged who have not had to hear the cries from hundreds of thousands of families torn asunder by our deportation of millions over the past two decades?

You may not be able to avoid jail. You may decide to engage in meaningful speech or action that puts you at risk of being jailed (whether you realized it or not), where jail is a side effect. But do not kid yourself that jail itself is a practical or even impractical path to resistance or change.

Find another path.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/private-prison-stocks-are-surging-after-trump-s-win