After healthcare.gov

The strange and annoying healthcare.gov error
that no one understands and which is keeping me from enrolling.

I've spent a month, off and on, trying to get past a site error and #getcovered. I've talked to about five official HealthCare.gov workers. I haven't spoken to any unofficial ones but I have posted to the Facebook page and tweeted. Don't bother. Whoever is running the online presence is stuck in broadcast mode.

Anyway, I managed to get on the call-back list today. This means I am now a number on what I presume to be a very long list indeed. I no longer have to worry about the deadline because healthcare.gov will call me back at some point to enroll in healthcare.

The application is finished*. I got that far before the website crapped out with some weird error that no one understands or knows how to fix. Asking for a supervisor got me to "send us income verification." I mean, come on, this is the FEDERAL government. They have a record of my income going back to my first job ever. I sent it in, though. Gotta cross all those T's and dot those I's. heh

Friday I was on hold twice before giving up. Once for 20 minutes after which the call spontaneously aborted. Then for 30 minutes and I hung up. It just wasn't happening.

Meanwhile, I wonder just how good my coverage deal will be. I'm am discouraged by hundreds of reports from those at the Facebook page about high deductibles ($12,000 per year) and high premiums. I keep thinking about the poor soul who continues to pay cash for medical care in addition to having (basically) useless healthcare.gov coverage. Because they can't afford a non-insurance penalty on top of all the bills.

Thankfully, I've worked through to the point where I can do no more. It's all on the government now.

_____________
*It's a two-part process. You apply, after which you get a notice of eligibility, and then you enroll in coverage.  I'm stuck at the enroll part because I get a tax credit which generates the above error.

The Elaine Report: Feb 7 2013

Nothing to report because I watched this video 
and all the headlines seemed terribly ridiculous and petty afterwards.

However, I do recommend this post if you have an interest in letting a living award-winning author know your opinion on the reselling and lending of ebooks and audiobooks.

Sky 323 - tower of insanity

Just beyond the village at the top of the cliffs.

You can log in but you can never leave

Bumped! A standard occurrence since I got my free Linden home and land.

I still have a paying account in Second Life (SL) due to the weekly bonus being enough to cover my quarterly dues. I also have a free alternate account and thought that having a paid account stopped all the spurious logouts. I was wrong.

Regional density of my home in Second Life. Every grayed square represents a house.

I availed myself of the free home and land deal which comes with any paid account. I chose an Asian theme thinking that I would be online while most of Asia was offline. I was right about that. What I hadn't realized from the enticing images of free homes is that the homes are packed in. Every square inch of available space is crammed with houses. No yards, no gardens, no public areas – in short, no free space at all. How many 512 parcels can you fit into a region? The Linden answer: too many!

Continental density of my home land. Obviously the servers weren't made for this kind of greed.

The set up process was easy, if a little funky. I had to log in from the email notification and not the online landmark to actually log into my home. However, once at home, it's nearly impossible to leave. 90% of the time when I try to teleport elsewhere I end up logged out. In the few experiments I've conducted, I have been able to teleport if I log back in right away and then teleport. Is this how it's supposed to be? I think not.

If I were a Linden, I'd try to make SL enticing, easy, and fun, not a technological, mystical, unexplainable, frustrating horror.

If I ran the cosmos ...

If I were in charge, things would be organized and make sense. Not like the way they are in this cosmos which is full of randomness and chaos. I mean, how are you supposed to know you've got a message if everything is just chaos? Mediums and psychics make money pulling out the right messages and passing them on. I guess they would lose their jobs. But as enterprising business owners I'm sure they'd find another income stream.

Just imagine how nice things would be if tea leaves arranged themselves nicely at the bottom of the cup, your dirty clothes naturally floated into the hamper, trash into the bin, and fruit landed gently on the ground and waited for you to pick it up without rotting. The latter could be an issue if you rely on rotting to grow anything. So, okay, then things that are intended to rot – like fallen leaves and dead flowers – would automatically end up where they are supposed to be and they would rot quickly so you don't have to wait around for them decompose. And the used bowl shown here would have the remaining bits settled nice to the bottom of the bowl, not splayed around randomly and looking dirty. Hey! Dirt would be pretty!

On the other hand, if things were perfectly arranged all the time, anything that was not in place would stand out really badly. Actually, we may have that already ...
Current Fads
Listening. It Ain't Me Babe - Bob Dylan and Send in the Clowns - Judy Collins; high pitched whining in ears
Watching. It's Complicated (2010)
Activity. waking up
Gadget. iMac
News Sources. the news feeds in Safari, Twitter, Facebook friends
Reading. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen; Creative Visualization (sample) - Shakti Gawain; How to Get What You Want Just By Thinking About It - Me
Writing. uh...

when day is done and shadows fall I dream of you

when day is done I think of all the joys I knew

that yearning

returning

to be held in your arms

I know love, what's so love,

without you life has lost its charms ...

and although I miss

your craziness

the whole day through

I miss you most of all

when day is done

gobledeegook here geek glop easy

Still working on trying to get WordPress to do what I know it can do. Or, rather, to get my head to understand plugins. If that fails, then to get head to understand coding. Ack!

Obviously I'm not a coder. I am putting in this time so that I can reap the rewards of hard labor by being able to easily upload and add new content for the foreseeable future. I'm going down the list of WordPress gallery plugins hoping for one that will work as a portfolio viewer.

I click on a link in the list to a page about the gallery plugin hoping to see first and foremost to see a demo of the plugin and then maybe some explanatory text. What mostly happens is I end up on a page full of text with links to stuff I don't understand like alpha and beta versions, open coding sources, and, oh, incidentally, here's link to the actual plug in itself. Most frustrating was a plugin site that linked to screenshots of the plugin demo sites. After much digging I did discover links to the actual sites, most of which are obsolete.

The best bet so far is Grand Flash Album Gallery which offers this happy little 14 minute video to show you how easy it is to use.
GRAND FlAGallery WordPress plugin tutorial from pasyuk on Vimeo.
Am I the only one who's first interest is NOT in what the latest news is from the developer?

Current Fads
Listening. Marketing Mentor Podcast and Genius Mixes (Brit-Pop & Rock Mix: based on U2, Coldplay, Radiohead and others); hungry birds
Watching. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009)
Activity. keeping warm
Gadget. WordPress
News Source. Google News
Reading. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein; The Designer's Guide to Marketing and Pricing - Ilise Benun and Peleg Top; Story - Robert McKee
Writing. marketing plan

FIA CARD SERVICES ARE UNFAIR MONEY GOUGERS!

Get this! I made a payment in November that was one day late, over the phone. The person who took my payment assured me I would not be charged a late fee since the payment was due on a Sunday and I was paying on a Monday. Contrary to electronic wisdom, mail payments are still received and I am sure that if a payment is due Sunday (when the postal service does not deliver) and received on Monday it is not counted late (as was the custom in the good old days).

Since I am moving toward total electronic living, I get my statement online (saving trees, I hope). I didn't look at my November or December statements and made the standard payment through my bank's electronic system. However, the company did charge me a late fee in November thus making my December payment $3.00 short. Yes. Three dollars. What did FIA Card Services do? Did I get a friendly email advising me my payment was short? Did I get a nice phone call from a friendly employee? No. They charged me a $39.00 late fee and raised my interest rate to 27.99%. UN-BLOODY-BUH-LEEVABLE!!!

I am now in the process of closing the account by paying off the total amount. So, good bye FIA Card! My new loan will be at 5.47% and my card will be paid off in three years.

For those of you interested, I have been with this same card, administered by FIA Card, for over six years. I make regular payments. Although I have been late only twice (really!), I have also made extra and large payments. The amount I owe is less than half of my credit limit. Yet for three friggin' dollars they sell me up the creek.

By the way, I've always wondered about the wisdom that says, "Since you can't pay us we're going to ask you to pay us more by raising your interest rate."

bailout smailout

The whole bailout thing seems to be a lot like borrowing from home equity to pay the mortgage but what do I know! For those of you who are ready to jump on the cash-direct-to-you train that you read about in an email, the math is wrong. Check Snopes. I always do.