Category: Going for Broke

Another epic struggle against the forces of evil

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Health insurance, billing departments, complaint resolution offices, and the automated phone answering system… horsemen of the apocalypse or God’s warning shot across the bow of today’s later day ark of bureaucracy and civilization?

All I know is that I don’t want to pay $800 for services that were supposed to be covered by my health insurance provider.

See if this sounds eerily familiar… your doctor sends you a bill for services your health insurance provider (HIP) denied coverage. You call your HIP and verify that these kinds of services are normally covered; but, they tell you your doctor never submitted the claim. You call your doctor and they tell you they did. You call back your HIP and they tell you your doctor didn’t. You call back your doctor for proof they submitted the claim, and they tell you it was submitted electronically… or in other words, fat chance getting your proof. You ask to speak to a supervisor, and they tell you she’ll call you back. A week later you get that call in the evening, at dinner time, at the precise moment your one year old son starts tossing a grand fit, whilst in the throes of hunger. The supervisor assures you she will have someone call your HIP and get things all straightened out… and that if she has any problems she’ll be back in touch. When she doesn’t get back in touch in two weeks, you become hopeful… until you get another bill in the mail for $800. So you call your HIP with the specifics of the bill (again), and they advise you they’ll forward the information to their complaint resolution office, who will respond in two weeks with their results.

My guess is there’s some research out there which suggests “two weeks” is the optimum answer to give to a complaining customer. It’s not enough time to seem like NEVER to the customer (like three months would), while still giving a fair chunk of time to actually do something; and, (most importantly) it gives the customer plenty of time to forget the complaint in the first place. What I’d like to know is if they actually intend to be DONE in two weeks, or if they’re giving a research based answer of placation. In either case, I’ve got my calendar marked. Maybe this is one case where business should run more like a government?

Gloria in Excelsis Deo

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No, I’m not over doing it. My little buddy made it out of surgery this afternoon and sped right through recovery. In fact, he’s out playing right now. If you really must know, he’s playing INXS.

That’s right, this is another iPod post.

I can’t tell you how crushed I was when I thought he was dead. It makes it all the more joyous to see him resurrected. I’m so giddy I’m having visions of hacking my way back in for a little homemade upgrade.

Can you say forty gigabytes? She-it, maybe even 60!

The times, they are a changin’

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If your iPod is out of warranty, and nothing on the Apple support web site helps (to fix your iPod), try the following…

1. Open you iPod. This is tricky, and it voids your warranty, so I won’t explain it here (it’s a liability thing).

2. Disconnect the battery and hard drive.

3. Reconnect your hard drive and battery.

4. Reassemble your iPod.

5. Reformat your (iPod) hard drive and restore your iPod settings.

Queue up the Hallelujah Chorus… It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!

Cross my fingers, knock on wood, and all that… I just hope it keeps on goin’.

iFailed

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Things break. It can be disappointing, but it’s a fact of high-tech life. What really hurts is when the occasional breakage points to a painful truth, I’m an idiot.

Two months ago my iPod started acting funny. My keen diagnostic senses deduced that it was a software problem. However, my honed procrastinating tendencies put off any attempt to fix the problem. After all, the odd behavior wasn’t that bad. And besides, even if it wasn’t a software problem, the warranty was up anyway.

Yeah, it turns out I was horribly wrong on both counts. Two months ago I had one month left on that warranty.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my self-loathing.

Well and truly f,.. by warranties

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Palm Handheld, 90 day warranty.
Apple iPod, 365 day warranty.
Broken, 383 day old iPod, bundled with a broken, 496 day old Palm handheld, worthless.

According to the Apple web site, I could send in my iPod for “out of warranty” service, cost: $249 (plus $6.95 shipping and handling), warranty: 90 days.

According to the Apple web site, I could purchase a new iPod, cost: $299, warranty: 1 year.

According to my budget, I could go iPod and handheld free indefinitely.

Now that I’m well and truly depressed, I think I’ll burn a couple “old school” CDs for work tomorrow.

“Pardon me sir, would you like a little salt for your wound?”

It’s getting wet in here

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How would Noah have felt if, after the flood waters had receded, God had said, “Thou hast served me well Noah, but I am still not pleased. Getting creation right is like trying to get an indigo stain out of my toga. Let’s try that again.” Would Noah’s wife have borne witness to the Old Testament’s first tantrum – or had Adam already laid claim to that distinction?

If I weren’t so preoccupied with scratching I might be bearing a little tantrum myself. No, unlike Noah – God isn’t calling to me, or if he is he hasn’t taken advantage of Sprint’s Free and Clear Plan. However, signs can be a powerful communication tool. The thing is: we’ve got a leaky water heater again. Damn those plumbers and their ilk! I’ll bet the Romans didn’t have this much trouble with their aqueducts. Sure, they had the occasional run-in with the Goths to contend with, but, oh hell, this metaphor is going nowhere.

I don’t care how it works. I just want reliable indoor plumbing. Is there any such thing?

It had to be me

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It’s happened to you before. You get your hopes up and they are unceremoniously dumped in the crapper. The pisser about this evening is that my hopes were so fresh. I hardly got to know them before they were gone. Hope can be fleeting, but to come and go in less than five minutes? This keeps up and I’m going to need a better prescription drug benefit with my health insurance.

The evening started with such promise. What could be more exciting than a trip to the Apple store? All right, I’m not that pathetic. There are at least two things better than a trip to the Apple Store, but whose counting? I got to the store and someone said the four words that would change the emotional tone of the evening, “That’s the garage sale.”

In Apple Store terms, “the garage sale,” is the disorganized heap ‘o products they’d like to get rid of on the quick. Well what did I see on top of the heap? Signaling me through the fog of my caffeine addicted mind was a shiny pair of Apple Desktop speakers, marked down to $20. These are the same speakers that my father has plugged into his iMac. These are the same speakers that I’ve been jealous of since my father purchased his iMac. These are the speakers that I was more than ready to part with $20 for the privilege of owning. Yes, I said “privilege,” they are that cool looking. Momentarily suspecting a “too good to be true” moment sneaking up and biting me in the keester, I sought out the closest Apple Staffer. “Yes,” he replied, “those should work Jim Dandy with your iBook.”

I was a middle-aged geek in an Apple Store. I quite literally skipped towards the register, stopping briefly at my friend admiring the PowerBook display to gloat over my discovery. Here’s where the skies opened and the parade went home. “John, I don’t think those things are going to work.” SAY IT AINT SO! I wanted to believe. I wanted to trust the first opinion, but doubt lingered. That was when I opened the box and saw the plug. It was immediately clear it would not fit my poor iBook.

Next time you see Jim Dandy, tell him I’m looking for him.

I went in search of a second opinion, but my fears were not allayed.

&*%$!

For about five minutes I lived in a world where I had a cool set of speakers. Some dreams die hard. Some dreams die slow. Others check out before they even really get started.

Anyone know a really good therapist?

Restoration

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You’ve heard me mention the “natural order.” It’s one of the ways we make sense of a complex world, in order to keep up with all the crap out there, we take some things for granted. Growing boys will have more scrapes and bruises, growing girls will get into more trouble, my wife will have a good reason to yell at me at least once a week, Macs will continue to be a superior alternative to the Windows hegemony, and I will always have more desirable gadgets than my wife. Try to keep a hold on your emotions until the end of this entry, but for a while there the natural order was out of whack.

Last month we signed a two year contract to share minutes on our wireless plan. Since it’s considerably less convenient to share minutes with only one phone, we bought a second one. Owing to a moment of weakness, Cheryl got the new one, and it was pretty cool, way cooler than mine. I told myself repeatedly that this was an excellent opportunity to pretend to be an adult. “I don’t really need a new phone, the one I’ve got works just fine. I don’t need all of those extra features anyway. When would I ever use a speaker phone?”

Who was I kidding?

Don’t you know, the whole point of having a million features isn’t to USE them? Dear Lord Man, get a hold of your self. HAVING them is the most important thing, an ends in and of it’s self. Gadget features are like tick marks on the great scorecard of life. Carrying around a feature poor gadget is worse than not carrying a gadget at all. At least if you don’t have one on you, you can maintain the image of having just left it out in the car. No one is the wiser. Carrying a feature poor gadget not only says something about your social status, it also says something about your self-image.

“I’m not worthy of a really cool toy. I don’t like ‘me’ enough to buy cool stuff.”

So that’s how I wound up driving home with a camera phone yesterday. I had $100 of Verizon’s money to spend on a phone, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to spend every penny. I’ve got perceptions to maintain. The respect of my wife is at stake. The natural order hangs in the balance. The pecking order, no, nothing less than the Biblically ordained relationship between a man and a woman is a risk. Someone get me Jerry Falwell on the phone. Call the President. Bring in the Joint Chiefs. Break out the Bat Signal. DEAR GOD I NEED THIS PHONE!

It takes some of the worst pictures I’ve ever seen, but it does (technically) take pictures. That’s all that’s really important. Well no, that’s not it. It takes pictures and Cheryl’s doesn’t. THAT’S what’s really important. Rest easy my friends; the natural order has been restored.

Second guessing purchasing decisions

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I needed a pair of shoes for work. The old ones were developing an extra opening to the outside world, so it was finally time to find a replacement. Normally I can count on Cheryl to have better taste than me, but her choice of shoe was a bit unpractical, they don’t let you buy her choice without proper I.D. (re: AARP). That left me to make a choice of my own, and when ever I have to make my own fashion decisions we know there’s going to be trouble. I made a selection, we paid our money, and we went home. This morning I rode to work and put them both on for the first time with actual work clothes. Looking down at my feet, I’d swear these are the only shoes I’ve worn that are guaranteed to improve your time in the 100 meter freestyle. That or I look like a refugee from clown school.

Maybe I should have gone for the “Retired Dentist” look after all.

Miserly ways

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You can always tell how cheap someone is by how well they take to spending money. Moments ago I was compelled to pony up $200, and found myself in the throws of apoplexy.

Yes, it went that well.

In order for you to fully appreciate this tale of woe, you have to go back to the summer of 1998. It was hotter than Hades outside and we were just finishing moving into our new house. That was the first time our A/C needed some work. It has been a little over six years since that first overhaul of our central air system, and we’ve easily spent three times more on A/C repair than the principal payments we made on the house.

This morning we were told that our one year old, fully programmable, state-of-the-art, heat pump thermostat was broken. So that’s why our one week old, brand spankin’ new heat pump wasn’t producing heat! In almost any other context I would be overjoyed at the prospect of replacing a thermostat – better that than a compressor unit or an air-handler, right? Having recently replaced everything else in our A/C system (part of a cycle that has been more frequent than the rate we replace shower curtains), I was not keen on replacing our one year old, fully programmable, state-of-the-art, heat pump thermostat.

Cheryl has hope. She thinks the thermostat has a warranty. I don’t have the heart to take away her hope. I think the warranty was one year.

(Untranslatable, loud, and allegedly human noises omitted.)

I guess anyone willing to spend $200 on a fully programmable, state-of-the-art, heat pump thermostat can’t really be called cheap; but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be happy about it.