Dealing with the Economic Situation

Academia is its own little world, which means we have our own rules. I found this easy to follow flowchart on how we're dealing with the economic crisis in America. Enjoy this and everything else PhD Comics has to offer.

Best Commercial Mom

I ran into this series of commercials for Mamá Lucchetti pasta, but I wasn't able to find a site to reference it. It may just be a video collection based on a pilot series. Or a delicious food.... Either way, Pepper Melon is the creator.

Anyways, this commercial was particularily funny to me.

Mamá Lucchetti - Perfect Mom from Peppermelon on Vimeo.
Check out the others at Vimeo or Dekku's Blog or at the creators website... Pepper Melon.

Don Hertzfeldt Classics

Very strange animations that turned into cult classics. Made by Don Hertzfeldt. It takes a special humor to appreciate them, but for those that do... they are awesome!

Everyone's Doing the Morris Dance!

While out and about in Fells Point, I stumbled across this group of guys dancing in front of the Wharf Rat Pub. They're the Foggy Bottom Morris Dancers from Washington DC. The Morris Dance is an old English dance that's really focused on drinking nowadays more than anything else. They seemed to have a great time doing what they do... read a little about them when you have the chance, including the video I attached on this post.

Foggy Bottom Morris Dancers
List of Other Morris Dancers

How much do you think the war is costing America?

I just wanted to post a couple videos I thought were very well done. First is from National Priorities non-profit website. Really go through it sometime.




Find out more:
National Priorities-Cost of War
AFCS home
Common Dreams
Antiwar





Second comes from GOODMagazine (also on my list of links to check out).


"In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is more than 10 times that estimate. So what's behind the ballooning figures? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme's exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we'll pay for many years to come. RESOURCES: The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict; War At Any Price? The Total Economic Costs of the War Beyond the Federal Budget. By the Joint Economic Committee; threetrilliondollarwar.org. Thanks to the authors for their support, and to W. W. Norton for permission to use the research conducted for the book."


I hope you enjoy these vids as much as I did.

Hopkins Pharmacy Hell

I'm going to restrain myself from too much anger and profanity, but I do warn about the future content of this message. The Outpatient Pharmacy at Johns Hopkins has been a very sore spot for me and my diabetes. Within this first month I have had to confront them concerning several issues.

Briefly, my diabetes is in decent condition with a regiment of Lantus and Novolog. I test as many as 6 times a day and I am taking preventative measures with Lipitor. I also take Fluoxetine for seasonal depression.

Firstly, my fluoxetine prescription for 1 month was short by 10 pills. That's 33.3% of my medication missing. Their response yesterday was, "Oh, sorry about that. I'll go fill it back up for you." There was no report or documentation that I am aware of, which seemed very bizarre. When drugs go missing, people should be worried.

I also disputed several refill numbers that were on my prescriptions. I want to point out that in almost every case, the number of refills on the drug itself had been scratched out and written over by hand! That's quite a lot considering ~9 scripts! And even then, neither number matched their digital records for the needles. Also to mention, there is no ability to check these data online through a personal account. I can only call or show up...then pray. Through the single helpful employee in the entire Pharmacy (a rarity here) we saw that my doctor had forgotten to prescribe a time-frame for one of the scripts and mis-numbered another. Oh well. I had to hurry out to a Postdoc benefits seminar.

How serendipitous! The seminar gave me all kinds of information and today I went back to dispute several things.

(1) I was given the wrong kind of lancets in early October. I actually have no idea what fingerprick device uses this shape of lancet, but I've never seen or used it. The guy yesterday said that they would fix it and to bring them in today and exchange them. When I did, the Pharmacist said they were out and I would have to come in tomorrow when their order came in. However, after about 5 min when I became heated about their mistakes, my script all of a sudden appeared. How strange! I wonder how the shipment came so fast (note my sarcasm).

(2) Also with the correct lancets, they refilled needles for some unknown reason, which I didn't ask for nor did my doctor. The woman at the counter tried to blame me, "we don't fill it without asking, so are you sure you or your Dr didn't call it in?" WTF!!! NO! I didn't call it in, and my Dr has absolutely no reason to! None whatsoever! I had it canceled. With several monthly prescriptions, I prefer to handle it all at once. Not that its any of her business. They are a service and I am a costomer. I did not ask for the needles to be refilled and do not want them. I guess that pissed her off.

(3) We then agrued about the price of my Lantus and Novolog. The result was that the insurance (although it was probably the Pharmacist and not the insurance) deemed that my Lantus was a 2 month supply and charged me as such without telling me. However, they didn't discount me my $5 for the 2nd month worth of script. This was quite a debate with the Pharmacist who was quick to pull out a calculator and determine the dosage with me.

(4) The Novolog was the Pharmacy's fault also. I was double-charged as a 2 month supply when everyone agreed it was only a 1 month. $20 back for that mistake.

(5) So I got $25 back from the Pharmacist. However, I didn't need to sign anything and I took the receipt. It seems the guy simply gave me $25 bucks without listing why for their records!!! Unbelievable! He gave me cash for a transaction that was credit and didn't record why he took out the $25.

I left enraged and called my Dr at the office. I asked that he call in the Lantus, because right now, it had no refills and they had charged me as a 2 month supply. And also to change the test strips to Freestyle because the new glucometer wasn't to my liking. No problems there, Regina was very helpful.

(6) Regina called me back and said that the Pharmacy listed the Lantus as actually having 4 refills left.... ?!?!?!?!??!?!?! What are they doing in that Pharmacy??? They showed me on 2 separate occasions that the Dr had written no refills and that in their own system, I had no Lantus refills left. They simply changed it to their desire because I was angry with them! And the numbers don't even make sense! If it were 4 refills of 2 month supply...even with the first fill.... that's only 10 months over a 12 month period. If it was written for a 1 month supply that would be a total of 5 months for over a 12 month period. This was done without prior consent from my Dr and really ticks me off that they tried to smooth the issues by just adding a few refills. Completely unprofessional.

This is probably the worst Pharmacy I've encountered. Incompetent people, rude Pharmacists, unorganized setting, and mismanaged drugs. On top of this there's an inherent disrespect for my wishes. Completely intolerable.

As soon as I know that my scripts and refills are accurate, I will use the mail order system, which saves me both time and money. But before I left, I made sure to tell the Pharmacist,
"I have a job other than filling my prescriptions, but your job IS to fill MY PRESCRIPTIONS."

Jerk.

Politically Incorrect

I don't know. I just don't know what to say. I've always tried to avoid conflict in certain groups and one large group is the "Work" group. The rule of thumb in unpredictable situations is to avoid the following:
-Politics
-Religion
-Sex

My three favorite flavors...
Anyhow. My coworkers share my thoughts on politics, so that's not the problem. The problem is that we all agree and its made politics a commonplace of the workplace. That's a big change for me. I've always fallen just short of not showing up to the polls in the past (with 2004 as the major exception). Politics simply doesn't get a rise out of me and I've been comfortable with that fact.

Times have changed and politics completely encompass my thoughts within the States of America and now I'm seeing a continual upheaval of Religion circumventing the Political stances. Two of three "no-no's" have crept into my daily conversation at work and I can't say that's necessarily a good indicator of things to come.

With America's heated battles, the dimly involved seem to diffuse the rage. The neutral people play their part as sides compromise or complain, and soon enough we pull through with either a "That wasn't so bad," or an, "I told ya so!" But this election is atrocious. I've lost friends because of opinions. I get excited about commentaries. I even feel my own words of defense become more heated and quick with time, which sends me back to the table of my enemies own actions.

My heightened sense of this came today and in concert I realized many Americans feel this way, and many don't share my opinion as my coworkers do. This election is gonna be HARD! Someone's going down... they're gonna lose big and a big portion of people are gonna have a hell of a lot to yell about. I think this is different from Bush and Kerry. I think this is heated beyond belief.

...I think I need to find a bomb shelter.