The sky has been smoky for the past 4 days (since Sunday Morning) because of several forest fires, ALL of which were human-caused. Dammit, people, when the grass and the bush is tinder-dry, and fire-risk danger level is PAST extreme, you do NOT take a walk through them SMOKING, and then ditch your cigarette butt into them!
The fires are far away enough that this house isn't in danger of burning down, and the smoke has been up fairly high, though at its worst the air totally reeked of smoke. I swear you could have hung up fillets of salmon and smoked them right outside.
I remember one year it got this dry, but there was not even this amount of smoke in the air from distant forest fires, and maybe only for 2 days, and they said we should not go into the back forest behind our house, so I didn't.
First off - @Sunny -My condolences for people behaving in subhuman ways at you, and I really hope things get better. I'll pray for you if you are not adverse to that. (I always ask before firing off a salvo to the Lord, its just polite.)
Rant Time!
FUCK Open Door and their shitty, shitty service. They're the main paratransit company for Indianapolis, so they pretty much have a captive audience of the disabled. Things that cause them to deserve a major beating:
The bus can arrive anytime between 30 minutes early for your scheduled pickup to two hours late. Don't like it? Too bad. Be ready when the bus arrives.
The bus only has to wait 5 minutes for you to be visible to the driver. If they don't see you within that time they can just leave you, If that happens, you get a black mark on your record for missing the bus and normally the company won't help you by sending a second bus. (Unless you just missed your /return/ trip and are stranded somewhere in the city. Then they will send a bus to get you home - when they feel like doing so. Br prepared for a wait, possibly hours.)
If you accumulate too many missed rides, they suspend your service. The first offense is a month. Subsequent offenses could be up to a year. When you absolutely depend on them to get anywhere this is a disaster.
If the driver breaks your mobility equipment, you'll have to pay for it to be fixed yourself. Open Door never admits liability for that. They broke my wheelchair twice. 100 dollars total for parts.
Some of the employees are insanely stupid. They /will not/ check to see if you're in an Obvious Place like the main entrance of a facility, before deciding to No-Show you.
While I was adopting cats from FACE, I had 2 cats in carriers and myself (wheelchair) out in the heat and the fucking bus No-Showed us without even coming into the parking lot or approaching the entry of the building (right behind us). I am normally stoic to the OD bullshit, I have been riding fir over five years. Normally I would just accept my fate, roll my eyes and call for a bus to actually take me home. But I had 2 scared cats in carriers, In high heat, I was getting seriously worried about them and considering having them taken back inside where the air conditioner was running.
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
@Corruption I don't mind; people express their hopes that things get better in different ways, and I'd never tell somebody they couldn't do something they thought would help. I appreciate the willingness to think of me. 
Open Door sounds like it needs to have some unexplained spontaneous combustion happening, for srs. I feel so blessed with our local transit stuff, hearing horror stories like this. Uuuuugh.
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
Waiting. Waiting on a transfer with my present employer. Pisses me off. In the meantime, I have six-seven jobs currently hot as irons in a fire, waiting to see them develop. I hate waiting on employers...
This one farm, for some unknown reason, is applying manure fertilizers in the summer rather than the spring, starting today. They must've gotten some sort of discount on the manure because this is the worst stink I've smelled in 10 years; instead of normal cow shit, this smells like the cows had diarrhea, and then they all puked into their shit afterwards. This stench has spread over half the city and it's giving me a fucking headache.
There's gotta be laws against this sort of.... shit.
My dog (points at icon) is my first attempt at learning the dog sport of agility. It's been over a year and I think we are doing amazing. We should at least be in open class by now and probably with some wins in that class.
We are still at novice with no qualifying scores. See... I've got an insanely fast, insanely smart, and insanely driven dog. She also is not overly focused at this point. Jumping ring nets or greeting judges is not going to get us anywhere.
... I already had to drop out of some competitions after she jumped netting.. It's just so frustrating.. it'll be months at least I'm guessing .. like 6 or so.. before I can hope to enter competitions again.
I want a quick fix.. which is enough to tell me I'm not ready to compete again yet...
@Ganymede said:
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
You don't understand! Privatization is always more efficient, and always provides better service than publicly-funded stuff!
The Tea Party tells me this!
@WTFE said:
@Ganymede said:
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
You don't understand! Privatization is always more efficient, and always provides better service than publicly-funded stuff!
The Tea Party tells me this!
Hospitals in the US certainly did an awesome job as for-profit entities for a long time. A++.
@HelloRaptor said:
@WTFE said:
@Ganymede said:
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
You don't understand! Privatization is always more efficient, and always provides better service than publicly-funded stuff!
The Tea Party tells me this!
Hospitals in the US certainly did an awesome job as for-profit entities for a long time. A++.
See? Raptor gets it! Privatized medical care in the USA is so much more efficient than the creaky, ready-to-collapse shit north of the border! FREEDUMZ!
@WTFE said:
@HelloRaptor said:
@WTFE said:
@Ganymede said:
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
You don't understand! Privatization is always more efficient, and always provides better service than publicly-funded stuff!
The Tea Party tells me this!
Hospitals in the US certainly did an awesome job as for-profit entities for a long time. A++.
See? Raptor gets it! Privatized medical care in the USA is so much more efficient than the creaky, ready-to-collapse shit north of the border! FREEDUMZ!
Both systems have their flaws. Some Canadians actually have to go have important tests (MRI, for instance) in the USA because the waiting list for the same test in Canada is over 2 years now. People who need knee replacements have had to endure even longer waits (up to 5 years). People have died of cancer before they could get some kinds of tests.
I'm spooning a Barrett .50 cal.! I could kill a building.
@Shebakoby said:
Some Canadians actually have to go have important tests (MRI, for instance) in the USA because the waiting list for the same test in Canada is over 2 years now.
Why were the tests needed?
People who need knee replacements have had to endure even longer waits (up to 5 years).
Why were the knee replacements needed?
People have died of cancer before they could get some kinds of tests.
For how long did they suffer undiagnosed before seeking tests?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede said:
@Shebakoby said:
Some Canadians actually have to go have important tests (MRI, for instance) in the USA because the waiting list for the same test in Canada is over 2 years now.
Why were the tests needed?
People who need knee replacements have had to endure even longer waits (up to 5 years).
Why were the knee replacements needed?
People have died of cancer before they could get some kinds of tests.
For how long did they suffer undiagnosed before seeking tests?
Occasionally stories will pop up in the newspaper, and the waits in question tend to be over 6 months. Depending on the type of cancer, the more aggressive kinds can progress to stage 4 in that time.
This isn't a question of waiting to seek a test. This is a question of waiting after seeking a test, to actually get the test scheduled and then performed.
Some of this wait is often waiting to see a specialist, because some things can ONLY be done by specialists rather than General Practitioners, both of which are in short supply because some idiot bureaucrat in 1991 thought it was a great idea to "save money" by the government restricting how many people could become doctors and specialists. Specialists can ONLY be seen through a referral by a general pracitioner. The current waitlist for dermatologists, where I live, just to SEE one, is two years. Imagine how much skin cancer can advance in that time.
As a result, millions of canadians can no longer find a family doctor, and thus have precisely 0 access to specialists.
I'm spooning a Barrett .50 cal.! I could kill a building.
I found out today that I probably officially have Ankylosing Spondylitis. I say probably because there's no official test but I do carry the HLA antigen that is strongly associated with the disease, so this is not entirely a surprise. The worst outcome is that my spine slowly fuses together but that's pretty rare, but I do have to worry about my immune system deciding it hates my eyes and attacking them ded. Mostly, the general ache in my back that I've been sucking down Tylenol for in the last few years now has a name.
It's a form of arthritis, but at least now my insurance will more willingly pay for a nerve block while this shit gets sorted out. However, I've been told that I'm probably going to have to give up running, which I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. Luckily, this sort of thing sees no greater relief from any sort of surgical intervention and that was my bigger fear. Something something about a doctor with a knife being near my spinal cord. No fucking thanks.
That neck pain I've been ignoring for a couple years has just been my cervical spine decorating itself with bone spurs. So that's... festive? On the upside, my MRI images look pretty metal.
@Shebakoby said:
As a result, millions of canadians can no longer find a family doctor, and thus have precisely 0 access to specialists.
Are you one of those millions of Canadians? Because, as a Canadian, I was, and am, not.
Nor was my mother, who was diagnosed (again) with thyroid cancer. She was diagnosed within 2 weeks, and had surgery scheduled 3 weeks later. She could have gotten in earlier, but she was busy traveling.
The funny thing about these stories is that I've never actually met a Canadian that ever had a problem getting a required surgery done. I've also never actually met a Canadian that ever had to wait for a cancer scan longer than 2 weeks. And I've known plenty of them.
I have, however, met and read the records for dozens of Americans who have been the victims of medical malpractice. I've read medical malpractices cases for scores more. And this is only in the State of Ohio.
People like to attribute the Canadian horror stories to OMG Canada's health care system sucks. You should check out the actual number of Americans who have been the victims of their own health care system. I think you'll conclude, as I have, that whether the system is a single-payer public system or a oligopolistic private system is immaterial. You will likely conclude that doctors, nurses, health care professionals, and their patients make mistakes.
I think you will also conclude, as I have, that medical professionals that don't have to worry about coverage issues or costs will be able to spend more time training and researching than balancing monthly budgets.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
@Ganymede said:
@Shebakoby said:
As a result, millions of canadians can no longer find a family doctor, and thus have precisely 0 access to specialists.
Are you one of those millions of Canadians? Because, as a Canadian, I was, and am, not.
Nor was my mother, who was diagnosed (again) with thyroid cancer. She was diagnosed within 2 weeks, and had surgery scheduled 3 weeks later. She could have gotten in earlier, but she was busy traveling.
The funny thing about these stories is that I've never actually met a Canadian that ever had a problem getting a required surgery done. I've also never actually met a Canadian that ever had to wait for a cancer scan longer than 2 weeks. And I've known plenty of them.
I have, however, met and read the records for dozens of Americans who have been the victims of medical malpractice. I've read medical malpractices cases for scores more. And this is only in the State of Ohio.
People like to attribute the Canadian horror stories to OMG Canada's health care system sucks. You should check out the actual number of Americans who have been the victims of their own health care system. I think you'll conclude, as I have, that whether the system is a single-payer public system or a oligopolistic private system is immaterial. You will likely conclude that doctors, nurses, health care professionals, and their patients make mistakes.
I think you will also conclude, as I have, that medical professionals that don't have to worry about coverage issues or costs will be able to spend more time training and researching than balancing monthly budgets.
Okay, first off, I like the Canadian health care system, overall. Yes, it has its flaws. No doubt. However, in support of @Shebakoby, and having worked in the health care system in various capacities for 9+ years, there have been patients who have had to wait because of low priority. And yes, specialists can be very hard to get in to, and wait times do vary, some being upwards of 3-4 months or longer depending on what case your doctor makes for you. This ties in to the fact that there are increasingly few family doctors. Part of this is because the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to place caps on the seats for medical school awhile back to stem the tide, and partially because it is no longer as profitable nor as safe legally to become a family doctor. When you have a family doctor (if you are lucky enough to find one, either with their own practice or practicing out of a clinic) your case will likely be stronger than the walk-in clinic doctor who sends off a referral that is not nearly as detailed. It's not the best system. That said, privatization is not the best system, either. It's a very exclusive system that reflects inequality in society.
The upshot of all this is that Canada's health care system does not suck. But it is not the best, either.
As an American who still can't afford health insurance, I would take the trade of of a finite but long wait to the current state of unless i see a bone I don't get to see a doctor.
I hate that someone telling me I seem anxious and edgy all the time makes me more anxious.
This whole thing feels weird. I'm constantly being told how neurotic, anxious and edgy I am even when I feel perfectly okay.
Edit: It's even worse because I was feelin' pretty groovy until they kept repeating that I worried them, I was edgy ALL THE TIME and eeh.
In spite of the fact that I am a fairly right-of-center Libertarian, one thing I do believe we need in this country is a national health system. I say this as the husband of a type I juvenile diabetic.
@BigDaddyAmin said:
In spite of the fact that I am a fairly right-of-center Libertarian, one thing I do believe we need in this country is a national health system. I say this as the husband of a type I juvenile diabetic.
There are times when it is justifiable for the public to deliver a good or service. Health care is one of them, and has always been one of them.
@Ganymede said:
@Corruption said:
We were scheduled for a noon pickup. We finally got home around 2PM. I was beyond pissed and filed a complaint. Of course, that had no effect. FUCK this cheapass, moronic service.
This is what happens when you privatize what has traditionally been a public good.
You don't understand! Privatization is always more efficient, and always provides better service than publicly-funded stuff!
The Tea Party tells me this!
