Anesthesia Gate

The latest health scare to hit the headlines did not originate in China.  It came from Corporate America, more specifically, the insurance industry in these United States of America.  Whether it’s an account of insurance companies not on track to make their quarterly numbers, so they decide to deny all insurance claims no matter what; or the latest: Anesthesia-gate.  

It seems one of the largest health insurers in New Jersey recently came out with a plan to limit the amount of anesthesia that could be administered during medical procedures…like brain surgery.  Seems the executives at the insurance company thought their cost accountants had a better handle on medical requirements in the operating room when compared to the insights of trained healthcare professionals.  They’re taking a cue from professional baseball where in an attempt to speed up the game, they reduced the time a pitcher has between throws to home plate.  The idea was that the time saved would provide for longer commercials, because that’s what we need.   

The plan our insurance providers envisioned was that jumbo-sized hourglasses would be installed in each operating room.  There would be a one hour glass for tonsils to be removed, a two hour unit for a knee replacement, four hours for a heart transplant, and a five hour mega-glass for brain surgery.  Before operating, each patient would have the option of being given either a bullet or wooden hanger to bite down on in the unlikely event that the surgeon could not finish in time.  This new process would also make for good theater.  Picture the surgeon, sweating bullets as the sands of time begin to run out.  He’s forced to take shortcuts (stiches become a nice to have) as he tries to win at a do or die game of beat the clock.  I’m sure Dateline will be calling.

As healthcare challenges continue, a family member and I recently needed to make two visits to the Emergency Room (ER) within a week.  During the second visit, we waited for over ten hours to be admitted. To be fair, they do an excellent job of setting patient expectations.  In every room and hallway is a placard listing how long it takes to get results from blood work, EKG, or CT Scans.  One of the downsides of having the hospital app on your phone is that you get the results of the tests before a doctor does.  This can be problematic when the AI software interpreting your EKG results says you’ve had two infarctions…heart attacks! Finally one of the doctors assured us, that the AI software has an obsession with heart attacks and to disregard its suggestions.  We gladly complied.  

A day or two after being admitted, we were told that the ER can handle admitting a maximum of 60 people a day.  These days, routinely, they have 120 people waiting to be admitted and quite often they have spikes of 190.  This environment is not like TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, or Chicago Med where if they have eight people in the ER, everyone starts whining and throwing temper tantrums.  In this real world, there are infirmed people lined up in chairs in multiple rooms, down hallways and for the really sick, lying on gurneys up and down hallways. It’s a large facility, but it needs to be twice as big.  And once all of my grousing is done, it needs to be said that these under pressure healthcare professionals all keep an upbeat and civil attitude.  They do an amazing job with a near impossible situation.

And to brighten your day, a quick tale about our first visit to the ER:  After six hours of tests and waiting to see a doctor, they determined diverticulitis was the culprit.  For those not familiar with diverticulitis, imagine have kidney stones up and down the 27 miles of your intestinal tract.  It’s fun like that.  But while we were waiting in the bowels of the ER with the horde of other tortured souls, some thing or somebody walked by and the smell went off the Richter scale bad.  My wife turned to me with a look of horrific pain and disbelief.  For a split second I thought I saw an accusatory look on her face and I thought to myself, “Really, I’m flattered but only an evil mutant with a super power could produce that.”  Then everyone in the hallway started vigorously denying responsibility.  It was like someone was cleaning out the clogged toilets at Taco Bell, put the aftermath in a fishnet stocking and was whirling it in the air as they slowly walked by…and then sat down next to you.  I naturally had to make some choice comments and my wife started laughing to the point where she thought her appendix had burst.  This was the first of many occasions that I was asked to leave.

Final note: after the CEO of United Healthcare was assassinated, the killer leaving bullet shells with the word “Deny” written on them, the Insurance company referenced earlier in this column quickly made a management type decision to rescind their plan to cut back on anesthesia. 

My New Car with a Video Game Console

Outside of being lit on fire, there are few things I enjoy less than purchasing a new car.  Having said that, when faced with a lit match, I have three requirements when purchasing an automobile.  First, it needs to be reliable.  Someone could give me a rocket ship of a Lamborghini, but if I’m constantly bringing it in for repairs, it’s a non-starter.  

Second, the vehicle needs to get decent mileage and or a refueling time of less than 10 minutes.  I’m sorry, but I don’t plan well and dovetailing nicely with that characteristic, I have no patience.  People tell me I’m a joy to be with.  

Lastly, and this requirement trumps the first two: I’m extremely vain; I have to be able to look at the vehicle and not get violently ill.   If it makes me sick to look at a car, it wouldn’t matter if it ran on air like a flying carpet; I can’t pull the purchase trigger. Now add to these three requirements, I need a car that can fit into a small garage slot…for the purpose of thwarting the hooligans who run the transcontinental car theft ring.  One might say I need a mini car.

One of the new baffling car design flaws that I wanted to avoid started being implemented about two years ago.  They replaced the time honored and very logical PRNDL gearshift layout.  For over 50 years, at the top has always been Park, then Reverse, then Neutral, followed by Drive and then Low, the slow cousin to Drive.  I had the misfortune of encountering the new layout while renting a car in Florida…like I needed any more driving challenges.  The new layout is:  RND, with a P located in a rural hamlet outside of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.   It’s like the car designers were bored out of their minds, went out for a liquid lunch, came back to work and decided to break things.   With this new design, when you pull into a busy mall parking space and throw the gearshift up to the top, you erroneously think you’re in park.  Then you take your foot off the break and find out, holy crap, you’re actually in reverse.  At this point of horrific disbelief, you’re backing up over baby carriages and senior citizens as they try to get their walkers out of 2nd gear.  Seriously, it’s dangerous.   That design decision is akin to saying, we’re changing the color schema on traffic lights, and we’re not going to tell anyone.  Green still means go and yellow still means slow down, or speed up to avoid red depending on your political affiliation.  But to stop, we decided to make that color…invisible.  If you really want to stop, you’re going to have to work for it.  We replaced the blaring red light with a minuscule, inch square black light that 98% of the population will never see – Safe Travels!

So I do my homework reviewing the Consumer Reports CAR issue and find a vehicle that when it first came out years ago, people were burning through their warranty mileage due to the number of trips they were making to the repair shop.  But now, this vehicle has the number one rating for reliability.   And when I got to the picture of this particular car, I had no problem keeping my lunch down.   

I decided to head to a local dealership and get a first hand look at this vehicle.  One thing I forgot was that the car I was looking at in the magazine was the old car model.  What’s on the lot are the new models, and it’s been completely redesigned - Rut-Roh!  But it’s too late; I’m already under the ether.  

The new model looks up to snuff and my intestinal fortitude is intact.  It has tons of features that I’ll never use, except its 30 airbags.  You could drive this car off a cliff into the Grand Canyon, and bounce your way down to the Colorado River with nary a scratch.  The car actually performs well and has decent pickup.  But here’s the problem: You need a degree from MIT to be able to operate the car.  For starters, you’re required to have an iPhone to be able to run this computer, I mean car.  (You’ll have a new reason to keep iOS updated.)  And instead of a reasonably sized square management/entertainment screen, there is a two foot circular disc mounted off the center of the dashboard.  I’m sorry, but I’m a square guy, and now that I’ve just said that… There are more options per screen than a DJ has working the console at a rave.  

And if you don’t like a particular screen, just swipe left or right, or up or down.  There are an infinite number of screens with an infinite number of options of things you can do per screen.  Can you spell DISTRACTED.  

They also have their own emergency phone home capability.  The only problem is there are seven different ways to access it.  I’m pretty sure if I find myself upside down in a ditch and I need to execute this function, I won’t be able to remember one of the seven.  That’s if I can fight my way through the mountain of airbags.  It seems that the car designers with their wealth of driving and technical knowledge, didn’t have a good handle on what might work best for people.  Instead, they decided to let the user pick and choose among a plethora of options.  The net effect is that it now takes five touches to accomplish something where as in my old car it only took two.   As much as I appreciate the army of airbags, these car companies need to remember, for now, we’re actively driving these vehicles, not playing a video game.  I’m told this is progress.

And the best, on the ride home from the dealership I was finally able to maneuver to a screen, without driving into a tree, and play some Beatles music.  I get home, pull into my claustrophobic garage space, and then had to go into the house and get my wife, the technologist of the family.  I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the radio. As fate would have it, the radio “off” function is one of three items on the car that is not controlled by the circular screen of death.  It actually has a mechanical button you push in.  Hallelujah, I’m sold! 

Abraham, Where Art Thou!?!

At times, I’m completely baffled at the thoughts and actions of people within our great nation.  In particular I’m referring to the “sheeple” mentality that many of us have where we continue to support political people who have continually proven themselves to be heinous criminals, delinquent in some way, or just plain perverted.   

Generally speaking, we are judged by the company we keep.  If you hung out with Al Capone in the late 1920s, there’d be a decent chance you were viewed as a thug or criminal.  Modern day, we have Jeffery Epstein, who was arrested and or convicted of sex trafficking of minors and procuring a child for prostitution.  He easily gets classified as a very rich despicable sub human.  Who would keep his company?  Both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were good friends of his - like they hung out together for years.  And the Donald doubled down when he was asked about Epstein’s long time madam who got 20 years for sex trafficking, saying, “Yeah, I wish her well.”  I can only imagine that they must have had a special relationship.   A rational person generally judges people and situations by “The Test of Time.”  These two deviants hung out with “Jeffery the Horrible” across multiple years.  And you didn’t know what was going on?  This defense goes in the category of “Yes, I smoked pot, but I never inhaled.”  It’s just not believable.  Stick your head in the sand if you want, but when you look in the mirror, you can’t lie to yourself.  How does it feel to say, “I’m supporting a pedophile?”  Kind of harsh, right?

In some cases you’d like to look the other way, especially if it’s a Robin Hood-esque type of offense.  Like dropping off the expensive leftovers from a White House feast at a local DC soup kitchen.  But unfortunately this is not the situation.  Case in point New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez collecting gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and wads of cash sown into his clothing, all from his special friends in Egypt.  The current mayor of New York City also seems to be battling this affliction as it seems he has a less than holy relationship with folks in Turkey.

Then there are the politicians who can’t seem to keep their marriage vows.  There was a time when the media gave cheating politicians a hall pass.  That ended when Gary Hart, the Democratic front running candidate for the 1988 presidency stuck it in their faces…too many times.  This shift in attitude spelt doom for Ted Kennedy as well.  These days to qualify as a political candidate, it almost seems like you need to have multiple documented indiscretions on record along with acts of perversion.    In the perversion only category we have the ex-North Carolina Lieutenant Governor, who is still on the ballot for Governor.  Seems he likes to leave comments about his heinous political stances on porn websites.  At a minimum, one has to question his decision making process.  Al Franken, former SNL comedian and later a senator from Minnesota for ten years, was sited for sexual misconduct during an overseas USO show in the early 2000s.  To his credit, he apologized and resigned from the Senate.

Then we have the “Time to Get out of Town” politician category.  In 2021, in the midst of one of the worst icy winter storms to ever hit Texas, Ted Cruz tried to slip away unnoticed and fly to Cancun…while millions of his constituents froze in the dark.  Unfortunately for Ted, someone with a social media account saw him on the plane.   Ted was good enough to show up in Uvalde after the shooting stopped and 19 children were killed.  Of course once the press left he went back to supporting the gun lobby.

And finally we have the interesting case of George Santos, if that’s really his name.  George was finally expelled from Congress in August of 2024 just weeks before he was to go on trial for Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft.  (There were a lot of juicy details about his criminal activities that will make a great Hallmark movie some day.)  But why with all of the clear evidence about his criminal activities was he allowed to stay in office as long as he did?  One can only wonder about his special relationships   

Sorry, no more comments about Donald Trump, his continuous actions speak for themselves.  That and I’m not allowed to take up multiple terabytes on BlogSpot.  But seriously, this is a bipartisan sickness that needs to be addressed before we achieve some sanity.

I understand that politicians working together can be difficult.  I get the notion of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”  But it should not include stashing gold bars in your coat pockets while said scratching is going on.   The list of less than charming characters either in political office or seeking office is astounding.  It feels like 98% of politicians give the rest a bad name.  Where are the Abraham Lincolns of the world?  Is it really that tough to find candidates with integrity?   We need someone who believes in Truth, Justice and the American Way!  Alas, Superman was an illegal alien too.

Cracking the Code on Streaming Services

Whatever happened to the notion of streaming content services with no commercials?  What I mean is, the deal we had with these new streaming services was: You pay extra for viewing our content and you get the pleasure of not having to bite off your fingernails waiting for commercials to end.   You need to go to the bathroom, no problem, just hit the pause button.  How civilized!  Sirius radio which is now in every car manufactured offered the same basic deal:  You pay us a ridiculous amount of money for content you’ll never listen to, or care to listen to and we won’t make you sit through commercials. 

But then something happened.  The rug got pulled out from underneath us.  Actually, a couple of rugs were pulled. As it turns out if you add up the cost of all these content providers you’ll be paying a ginormous king’s ransom every month.  MIT is working on the algorithm to determine if we can save $7 a month by giving up cable and going with streaming services over the internet.  They estimate having a prototype ready by 2026, it’s a tough nut to crack.  Recently, I heard there’s a new service called, “Sling.”  It promises very inexpensive content, but you have to watch it with one eye closed, otherwise you pay double.  And do we really want to use a service called Sling?  It just sounds like an illegal app only found on the Dark Web.  In the era of big brother is always watching, I’m sure the FBI is waiting for me to download the app so they can put me in the slammer for Slinging.  I’ve given up. They win on this front.  It’s just too painful to try to figure out and I can’t listen to the litany of pros and cons any more.  

But what I can tell you is that these services have broken their contract with the United States of America!  And what I mean is, let’s say you’re listening to Joel (Osteen) on Sirius.  He’s pontificating about some of David’s missteps, post slaying of Goliath.  Then all of a sudden you get a commercial for Fixed Term Life Insurance, brought to you by, “Who Did It and Ran.”  But wait a minute; I’m paying a lot of shekels for Sirius.  I’m not supposed to be getting commercials.  Obviously I didn’t read the deceptively fine print of the contract as my atomic microscope was in the shop for repairs.  The Hulu streaming service has also lost its moral compass.  Recently, without warning they began injecting commercials into their content.  And not only are they force-feeding commercials into their programing, but the commercials are odiously long and frequent.  They’re doubling down.  It's like they’re saying, “In your face, we don’t give a…hoot!”  (Good choice of four letter word, right?)  My wife spent about three hours online scouring every corner of the Internet universe looking for an explanation of what happened.  It seems in a distant dark region of the Web, out by Pluto, she found that Hulu is thinking of offering a new more expensive service with no commercials – what a surprise! Unfortunately you need a law degree to understand the verbiage of the new and improved contract, if you can find it.  The unredacted version is not available.

I think we can all see where this is going.  Over the last couple of years Wikipedia, my “goto” for online information began asking for donations to keep their business afloat.  Facebook has recently been making comments along the lines of…and I’m paraphrasing, “If you don’t give us access to all of your Personal Information (PI) and your contact lists, we’re going to need to start charging you for Facebook.  What’s next, are we going to need to write Al Gore a check every time we use the Internet? 

Happily, there is a rainbow at the end of this story.   But we all have to stick together, no division.  Remember, we are the United States of America! My hope is that these media organizations that enable our online world and the content in it do start charging the public directly for their services.  Here’s why…warning you may get dizzy trying to follow my fuzzy math.

Let’s say for an average family of four, we were charged:

• Five cents for every e-mail & text message we send or receive.  Figure 200 a day per person, that’s ~ $15,000 a year for the household.  

• Social Media - $2 a post, two posts a day.  Three platforms ~ $17,500 a year.  

• AI Tools - $500 a profile.  Run of the mill requests of the AI engine $10.  Want a term paper - $500.  Want a term paper that’ll get you into Stanford - $5,000.  (Your kid gets caught and you go to jail for helping, value to you: priceless) My wild guess at the annual cost for AI: $25,000.  And if you don’t pay, they’ll just create a new identity of you and it’ll pay.  How much are you loving AI now?

• Other services like Wikipedia, gaming, or the weather service etc:  To make the math easy ~ $10,000.  

• Internet access & a plentiful bundle of content we’ll never watch: ~ $12,500.

Conservatively, we come to a total of 80,000 after tax dollars a year to continue using these services that rot our minds and cause our kids to need an abundance of psychotherapy.  The simple math tells us this can’t go on.  In the words of John Lennon: Imagine!   

Imagine if we all came together and said, “No more!”  Kids would go outside and get exercise as a way of occupying their minds and bodies.  And to replace the adrenaline rush they need, maybe they try skydiving.  Or turn to artistic endeavors and create. Maybe we listen to music or try a really crazy idea…turn a couple of pages and read a book.  (Hopefully something inappropriate as determined by someone’s inappropriate rules.)  In the end, we work harder for what we want and become healthier - if the parachute opens.  And we stay out of jail by not helping our kids cheat their way into a good college.

Air Travel Gods looked the other way on July 19th

As if air travel wasn’t challenging enough, some of us, including those on the 2,000 USA flights that were cancelled on July 19th were treated to a rude awakening.  As much as Artificial Intelligence is simultaneously going to destroy us and enable us to reach new heights, it couldn’t save any of us on July 19th.

So after another attempt at flyfishing, we’re driving back to Salt Lake City airport from the northwest corner of Utah.  It’s about a three and a half hour drive.  But first, a quick painful flyfishing story: I have all new microscopic leader on the end of my fly line.  Naturally, someone else put it on as tying knots is not my thing.  Before we leave for the river, I masterfully attach a sumptuous fly (a massive black Mormon Cricket the size of Nevada) to the very tip of my line and use my handy dandy clipper to remove the excess line.  You see you need to remove the excess line because these are exceptionally intelligent fish - think brain food. If you leave excess line near your fly, the trout will have none of it.  No AI here, these fish learn the old-fashioned way, trial and error.  As we’re fishing and I’ve endured a commensurate amount of angst, it becomes clear that my fly is not as enticing as I thought it was.  Time to change the fly.  I come to realize I can’t find my clipper, I must have left it back at the cabin.  So I yank off my fly, again the old-fashioned way.  And with the assistance of Walgreen’s Foster Grants, I’m able to thread the microscopic tip of my line through a submicroscopic hole in my new tiny fly…that had to be constructed using an atomic microscope.  Okay, new knot has been tied and a minimal amount of four letter words have been disbursed.  I need to clip off the excess line stemming from my new knot.  Without my clippers I need to resort to using my teeth to remove the excess line…much like Huckleberry Finn would do.  As I attempt to chomp down on the excess line, I feel the point of my new fly hook piercing my lower lip.  Luckily there were no carnivores in sight.  {Note: We get back to the cabin that night, I take off my fly vest and find my clippers in a small top pocket of the vest.  Who said life is fair?;-}

On the way back to the airport we pass what had to be the port-a-potty capital of the world.  Being that I had just relinquished my own front yard garden variety port-a-potty during a 12 week kitchen renovation, I felt an earned appreciation for this sea of equipment on display for all to see.  Heated seats, huckleberry scenting, built in stereos, they had it all.  Add a microwave and you have a very tiny house.  It was about the time we were passing this amazing display of hi-tech equipment that the radio alerted us about a snafu in the technology that our global airline industry uses.  At first I was nonchalant about the news, thinking, “Oh too bad for them.”  Whoever them is.  Then my iPhone buzzed with an alert from my airline and I quickly realized I was one of them.  The message: Due to circumstances beyond our control, your flight will be delayed two hours.  I’ve learned over the years that a message like that means, we have no idea how long you’ll be camped out at the airport…make yourself comfortable.  

It seems that a security company named, Crowdstrike and Microsoft had a finger pointing contest trying to decide who was responsible for allowing a revision of new software to flummox the global airline industry.  And when it happened, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…and all the king’s AI bots, couldn’t get humpty back up and running again.  At least not right away.  For more years than I’d like to admit to, I worked in the technology field.  One of the scariest times was when we were forced to upgrade a customer’s code before it was fully baked.  Invariably, horrendously bad things would happen and the lashing received from my customer would leave permanent scares.  I remember during one such occasion we thought we caught the bug in the new code that had just crashed their world.  Upon suggesting we try it again, my customer looked me sternly in the eyes and said, “I’d rather be lit on fire than try that again.” 

Back at Salt Lake City Airport, an angry mob of potential flyers is waiting around our new gate.  The captain for our flight arrives and begins to address the mob, many of which have started lighting torches.  I liken the scene to an old Frankenstein movie where the townsfolk are surrounding the castle where the monster is hanging out.  The good doctor comes out trying to convince the crowd that has much as the monster has ripped off a couple of heads, he’s really a nice guy once you get to know him.   Actually the captain did a very nice job of clearly explaining the situation and that it wasn’t his fault, this time.  He went on to explain that we do have a plane and it does have fuel and he knows how to fly it to Newark, NJ.  People seemed to calm down and I was thinking of asking him if he’d like to run for President.   

It was a smooth flight home; we made up some time and land with no problems.  Spirits were high.  As we’re taxiing to the new, state of the art Terminal A, with it’s bazillion available gates, the head flight attendant gets on the PA system and asks that anyone who does not have a connecting flight to hold your horses and let those running to a connecting flight to pass.  All of these stressed out people are lined up in the aisle ready to bolt.  As we pull into our gate, we’re all cheering them on with words of encouragement.  You could smell the good karma wafting in the air.  Then, as luck would have it, someone lit a stink bomb and we waited 20 minutes for someone to connect the jetway to the plane and open the door.   And with that, pop goes the karma balloon!  

So maybe the taking off, tracking, and the landing of aircraft is not the area we should cut back on as if these peoples’ jobs are akin to those who flip burgers at McDonalds.  For the last year I’ve noticed that “no gate available” and “no people to man the jetway” are neck and neck delays.  And just because in preparation for one of my flights this year, where the pilot ran our plane into the jetway… this should not raise a red flag…especially if you have laser focus watching the bottom line.  In the not so distant future I can see the airline industry’s new motto will be, “Safety Second!”

Kitchen Magic

So we’ve had a small kitchen project (small in the sense that our kitchen is small) going on for 9 plus weeks and I’ve had enough.  My patience is now like a gift card.  Not sure how much is left on it, but we can give it a try.  As I professionally raise my voice to the contractor I feel like the Pope who was yelling at Michelangelo as he was working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Me/Pope: “When will you make an end of this!?!”  My contractor/Mich’s response: “It will be done, when it is done.”  

A combo convection oven / microware is part of our cadre of new appliances we now have.  This seems counterintuitive as it comes with metal grates.  And remembering as if it was yesterday, when I accidently left a baby fork in a microwave…sparks flying around as if it were a fourth of July fireworks show, I’m thinking how can this new combo be safe?   I’ll never use this.   Instead, in the dark of night I’ll go to Best Buy or PC Richards (where you can still potentially buy and take home a product) and purchase a toaster over and separately a microwave.  I can’t have them shipped to the house because if they show up on the doorstep, my wife will take it as a personal affront, return the items and send me to purgatory but yet again.  Seems her gift card is on empty these days too.

Also in the lineup is a new full oven.  It’s an interesting creature.  Raritan Valley Community College is going to be offering a class on how to communicate with it.  You need a master in computer science to navigate the various levels of the command panel.  It’s also quite vocal.  When you wake up the beast, it makes the sound from Star Trek when Captain Kirk and his landing crew would beam down to a planet below.  Only a lot louder.  If Kirk was trying to scare the crap out of the people waiting for the landing party, he could use our oven.  And when food is finished cooking it makes a very melodic ding noise.  It’s the same noise that European subways emit when they’re making stops.  I’m waiting for a British voice to say, “Mind the Gap.”  And the oven takes a while to cool down.  While it’s in this cool down mode, it sounds like a toilet that is stuck in flush mode.  I find myself continually getting up to check the bathroom.

We have a new electric cooktop.  We had an electric one before, but it was vintage 80s gear and was probably days away from burning our house down.  This new cooktop is a single piece of glass and it doesn’t matter where you place a pot or pan on it…it will heat that spot.  A little scary, right?   But to be clear, that scary cooktop magic will only happen if you’re using your new, read expensive pots and pans designed for such a cooktop.  If you try to use your existing pots and pans (like I would do) you won’t even be able to warm soup.  I will not be going near this appliance either.  It has “accident waiting to happen” written all over it.  We’re going to need to put a special paws off training class together for the cat…the same cat that clawed my face last month.  Hmmm, might need to put that class on the back burner ;-}

We found out the hard way that the old style circular shutoff water valves currently installed in our house are no longer used because they rust and leak.  We now have a number of leaks in our basement.  Luckily we have plenty of pots no longer in use.  I won’t be touching the new hi-powered dishwasher either.

And the piece of resistance: I’ve had an industrial size dumpster that takes up both sides of my driveway for over nine weeks.  And to contrast the dumpster, I also have a wonderfully odiferous port-a-potty planted up against my front garden…no pun intended.  Recently local neighborhood workers have been knocking on my door asking to use the port-a-potty.  (I kid you not)  I’m thinking of converting it into a pay port-a-potty and make a little cash on the side.  The neighbors are loving the view.  We’ve become the pariah of the neighborhood.  No threats yet, but with the constant dirty looks I get, they can’t be far off.  One neighbor suggested I paint the port-a-potty something bright and metallic.  He said, “It’ll make the port-a-potty…POP!”   I told him Thanks, but I’ll pass on a popping port-a-potty. 

So How Do You Like Your Coffee?

So I broke down, got out the crowbar and opened my wallet.  You see just about every appliance in our kitchen, along with the cabinets are disintegrating simultaneously.  On top of that, I’ve never liked the color or pattern of our granite countertops, they make me nauseous.  Appetizing!

So I enthusiastically signed up for kitchen remodeling – Read Sarcasm.  (Shortly I’ll be writing a book, “Remodeling Kitchens for Idiots.”)  

We’ve taken the precaution of sending our dog on vacation and we have the cat sequestered in the basement with a plug-in cat-calming thingy working overtime.  It’s now day one of our kitchen project, otherwise known as demo-day.  An unnerving amount of loud, angst inducing noise is happening pretty much non-stop.  Just when you think it might be over, a bombastic crash startles the bejeebers out of you, sending you back into a fight or flight mindset.   In concert with the noise is the vicious house shaking that tells you destruction is underway.  Shaking so bad, it put to shame the cadre of earthquakes we had last month.  By the end of the day our kitchen or what was our kitchen is nothing but framing wood and a lot of pipes and electrical stuff I wish I never knew existed.  No sink, no stove, no refrigerator, and no microwave-Nada!  And worst of all, no coffee in the morning.   It’s time to get creative, there must be coffee in the morning.  We came to realize that without the kitchen sink and its faucet, our bathrooms were going to need to start pulling double duty.  We started off by calling it bathroom coffee, but with my affinity for toilet humor, I so deemed it, “Toilet Coffee” or TC for short.  I can see the commercials now as Juan Valdez makes a pit stop for a fresh cup of TC.

As luck would have it, my wife convinced me months earlier that we should rent a cottage in Florida for the last two weeks of April when the rates are much lower.  This sounded reasonable and it wound up coinciding with the start of our kitchen debacle, I mean work.  What unbelievably good luck, I should have bought a lottery ticket.  We left on day three of our remodel and arrived at our cottage with no issues – Hooray!  The manager for this small enclave is a very nice older gentleman.  When he stops by our cottage to pick up our final payment he tells us, “You know you could stay no charge for an extra three or four days, nobody has rented the cottage after you.”  Wow, we thank him and take it under advisement.  I’m leaning against it - too messy and lots of moving pieces would have to be dealt with.  That and I’m a bit of a homebody.  But since my home was a wreck, what the heck?  Let’s stay, it’s a gift.  

So now it’s time to leave Florida.  At this point I’m climbing the walls.  More like King Kong scaling the Empire State Building.  We arrive at the airport in plenty of time and cruise through security.  As we approach our gate, I can see through the large windows that our plane is already here – great!  But as I get closer, I notice the plane is a strange distance from the jetway boarding bridge.  And the jetway itself is only half extended.  If I were going to make it onto the plane, I would have needed a big bowl of Wheaties that morning and then set an Olympic long jump record.  There are now a number of serious looking fellows down underneath the plane taking pictures of the wing.  It seems that when the pilot was coming in with the plane we were to be taking home, he hit the jetway.  How do your do that?  (Further investigation revealed that while at Top Gun school, our pilot’s nickname was Eagle Eye.)  As it is, I’m not hard of smelling, and this situation reeked of impending doom.  After a short eternity, my wife gets through to the airline and believes she’s made us a reservation on the next flight out.  Airline then cancels our original flight and the reservation system goes bonkers.  The AI capabilities of the phone App could not handle the onslaught of enraged travelers.  It was sent back to night school for anger management training.  We go to our new gate and the overwhelmed gate attendant with access to their computer systems tells us, “Yes, I see your reservation, but you don’t have seat assignments.   And now this flight and all remaining flights to Newark for the day are oversold…by a lot.”  After a commensurate amount of further torture, our luggage is lost and we’re put up in a Best Western that was supposed to be two miles from the airport.  I’m not saying it was as far as the Braidwood Inn, but it was a hike.  We caught a 6AM flight out the next morning, and thank goodness Eagle Eye was nowhere in site.  

We’re back in our broken home now.  And I’m enjoying the perks of toilet coffee in the morning…pun intended.  Or as Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse Now would say, “I love the smell of Toilet Coffee in the Morning.”

Crime Doesn't Pay, Except in the AI World

Has the noise of the day ever bombarded you with one too many injustices and you just need to sound off?  We have all come to accept a number of the upsetting nuisances associated with living in the electronic world.  A couple that have gotten under my skin of late:  

Our inboxes are loaded up with e-mails or txt messages daily from a plethora of valid and invalid seller in the virtual marketplace.  For example, the other day a bedding provider wanted to make sure my wife knew they were having a sale.  So they sent her five txt messages in one day about the same sale.  They must have assumed we suffered from dementia and really needed clean sheets.  

And the cookies, always with the cookies.  The e-world wants our cookies so they can sell them to whatever flavor of NoGoodNick pays the highest price for our data.  And if we don’t allow them to gobble up our cookies – No Soup for You!  (Ala the Soup Nazi)

Using Google to search for something has become more of an art, than a science.  Last month I searched for “Coffee Icing” and the results I received were: Amazon Best Books for February, Today’s Deals, and Editor’s Picks.  Note:  I just resubmitted my search today – St. Patrick’s Day.  It did come back with valid results.  So maybe it’s me, which is not out of the question…or is Google listening to my tirade? 

And in the vane of who is listening and reporting…very recently General Motors was put on the hot seat.  It became public that without driver knowledge, their On-Star communications system was collecting data on driver performance and selling it.  So if you happen to brake hard or if every once in a while you get the urge to set the new land-speed record, you can expect your insurance premiums to skyrocket.

But I’m actually more concerned with the blatant thievery that is allowed to happen in the supposed name of free enterprise.  Or more accurately, in the name of Greed.   As an example, about a year ago, the AI tool called ChatGPT made headlines as it was being used by high school and college kids to get their homework assignments completed more quickly (See ~March 2023 issue of New Jersey Monthly).  There was a big debate with proponents for the AI technology saying, we can’t put any regulations on this technology, it would be bad for business.  And others saying something to the effect of, “Hey, but this could get out of hand.”  Well I recently attended a seminar and heard about how it is in fact getting out of hand.  Unscrupulous characters are generating books with AI tools based off original authors’ work.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, they’re posing as the real authors selling their AI generated, copyright infringing books on our country’s major on-line bookseller platforms.  It only gets better.  With today’s modern technology, these booksellers can’t help but know exactly who the fraudsters are.  (Guess what tools they use to detect the fraud...wait for it - Artificial Intelligence!) But they refuse to take down the fraudulent books until the original authors, who are being hurt, make a big public stink.  So they know fraud is happening, and they even encourage it until negative public pressure is applied.  I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds like these large organizations are complicit in fraud.  I’m wondering if they’re so bold as to have a breakout category on their income statement with a heading of “Derived by AI Generated Fraud.”  

I was thinking the term and technology used to create “Deep Fakes” during the time of the pandemic is now so outdated compared to our new shiny AI creations.  It would be like comparing stick figures drawn with crayons to a van Gogh.

And the phrase “crime doesn’t pay” seems like it might be outdated.  The Bernardsville News ran a story on March 21st with the headline: Bedminster Twp. Oks an anti-crime ordinance.  The purpose of the ordinance is to fight off the numerous car thefts happening in our area.  The thefts are being perpetrated by gangs, many of which are coming from Newark.  One of the reasons for the increase in thefts is that our county prosecutors have been directed by our state Attorney General’s Office not to prosecute car thieves.  So we have brazen gangs of thieves working in an organized crime fashion, and we don’t want to prosecute them?  What am I missing here?  Similarly, I recently walked into my local bank to transact some business.  While I sat waiting, the topic of fraud leached out of me.  The person I was speaking to told me how they’re constantly battling fraudsters who enter the bank posing as someone else.  She said their security team has a database of these professional thieves.  They have their pictures and they are aware of them.  She said that when one of the crooks does enter the bank, the staff is immediately put on high alert.  Everyone puts eyes on the fraudster trying to get the message across to Joe Fraud that it’s not going to happen here today.  Still, the larcenist will look around casing the bank, searching for a weakness.  When the scoundrel does go to the counter and tries to cash a bad check they hold his transaction and wait for the crook to eventually feel uncomfortable enough to leave.  This can take some time.  Often the swindler will chat with the branch manager, giving her compliments to try to get her off the scent.  Eventually the cheat does leave and moves onto his next target, hoping for a score.  My question is, why are these heinous individuals not being arrested before they decide to up their game and or steal some senior citizen’s retirement savings?    P.S.  You have to love an on-line thesaurus.

Where Focus Goes Energy Flows

Over the years I’ve tested out a number of volunteering opportunities.  I tried Habitat for Humanity for a week.  They have great people and are an excellently run organization.  But I came to the conclusion that putting dangerously powerful tools in my hands in conjunction with scary amounts of electricity clearly was not the best idea for me.  It would be like sitting in front of a bowl of Nitro and looking across the table, seeing a pitcher of Glycerin and saying, I think mixing these two would be a superb idea.  I also volunteered at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center for a few months.  St. Hubert’s is another wonderfully run organization doing the work of a higher power.  There are many ways you can volunteer at St. Huberts.  You just need to keep in mind, not everyone gets to work in the puppy pen.  That and you might have an issue if your spouse continually pressures you to bring home new pets.

After a bit of trial and error, I’ve settled on a volunteering opportunity that suits me well.  Last year as I was leafing though my AARP magazine, I saw a small, almost hidden advertisement from the New Jersey AARP Speaker’s Bureau.  They were looking for storytellers…I mean presenters.  After getting over my fear of being responsible for leading our senior citizens astray when it comes to their Social Security and Medicare benefits, I signed up.  When presenting for AARP, you cannot modify their scripts.  Bad things can potentially happen if you do – think lawsuits.  But you can embellish your presentations with your own personal stories that relate to the topic.  Read – open season for Steve.  On a more serious note, I read a very handy formula for figuring out where to volunteer and how to get motivated to do it.  “People serve when their passion meets their discipline at a moment of opportunity.”  In my case, I had a passion for storytelling.  One of my disciplines is public speaking (or at least it used to be.)  All it took was an opportunity, which presented itself in an AARP magazine ad.

The three presentations I usually do are: Medicare 101, Downsizing & Decluttering -You can’t take it with you, and the Six Pillars of Brain Health.  The latter presentation being the one I have the most personal experience with, or lack thereof.  For instance, quite often I’ll take a short stroll to check on the laundry.  On the way though, for whatever reason my brain goes out to lunch and I happen to notice there’s a tumbleweed of dog hair on the floor.  Something clicks and I decide, “I better get the vacuum cleaner out and address that untenable situation.”  As I’m vacuuming, I’ll notice a bill that needs be paid.  Well I can’t leave that alone.  And then I’m off to the races.  I eventually grab that pile of wrinkles out of the dryer a day or two later.  I’m told that this kind of activity is somewhat normal, not a sign of impending doom.  Now if I leave the house, get in my car and drive off looking for my home, then I have a problem.  And the current wisdom on how to address my affliction is to stay focused and practice self-talk as you’re doing activities. Something like, “Hey Einstein, remember you got up for a reason and the bathroom was it.”  (But really, is this what it’s come to?  I have to start talking to myself?  But isn’t that a sign I have dementia?) Well as inspirational speaker, Tony Robbins espouses in one of his mantras “Where Focus Goes Energy Flows”.   Truer words…

During my presentations, my wife usually becomes my foil.  It’s a lot of good-natured fun and I really don’t mind sleeping at the local Best Western motel.  One more punch of my BW loyalty card and I get a free night.  I’m convinced I should have been an arctic explorer because I’m constantly skating on thin ice.

So the other day I was presenting to about 50 women.  As I stared out at the crowd, in an uncommon moment of brilliance I thought to myself, "maybe these ladies aren’t going to find you quite as funny as you think you are."  

The topic on that day was Downsizing and Decluttering.   This presentation is right in my wheelhouse, I know it backwards and forwards.  But I did have some technical issues getting my nine year old laptop connected to their large gangly display system.  Seems the Xfinity cable service installed at the facility decided that I wanted to sign up for their special offer.  Xfinity was continually taking over my screen with alerts that flummoxed my presentation.  Being that I’m technically inept, this became mountains of fun.  But the presentation gods were smiling on me.  Just before show time, my eeny, meeny, miny moe method of troubleshooting succeeded, without throwing my laptop through a window.  Now the real fun begins.  I’m 60 seconds into my talk and I have a massive brain fart.  I forgot a significant line in the presentation.  And I can’t go forward because the line I misplaced in the far reaches of my gray matter is what sets up the rest of the presentation.  I’m standing up there like a deer in the headlights.  Inside my head I’m furiously thinking, “What the…heck?  This is not happening to me now!”  I’m okay if it happens in the comfort of my own home, like when I’m hungry and I forget why I went into the kitchen. (Side benefit to this move: I get to unnerve and scare the you know what out of my wife and kids.)  But here, right now during a presentation – Not Cool!  So after what felt like standing silently for two hours in front of the United Nations Security Council, I looked at the group and said, “You should see me do the Six Pillars of Brain Health presentation.  I kill that one!”  Oddly, as soon as I said that, the line I was trying to remember came screaming back to me and the uncontrollable pounding in my chest subsided.  

P.S. – AARP also an excellent organization.

Defund the IRS?

I know I’m going to regret this story, but here goes anyway.  First let me say that I am a capitalist.  My belief is that the harder and smarter you work, the more you should be paid, generally speaking.  I also believe that if you’ve lost your job due to no fault of your own and you’ve paid into unemployment insurance, then you’re entitled to appropriate unemployment benefits.  (In the same way if you’ve paid into Social Security and Medicare and you meet the requirements, you’re entitled to those benefits.)  Naturally there are exceptions to any belief system.  An example, hard working scam artists, especially the ones who call you from the IRS but have yet to garner command of the English language.  Contrary to a new belief that’s becoming popular, Fraud is not an acceptable pillar of capitalism or the American way. 

Side Note: I seriously believe that anyone about to collect Unemployment, Social Security, or Medicare should be required to listen to an hour long Fraud Alert seminar from AARP.  Just like wearing seat belts is mandatory, in desperate times, we need to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities. 

One of the valid concerns that one of our political parties has been touting is, “We’ve been spending like drunken sailors.  We need to cut back.”  A volatile area they seem to be chomping at the bit to steal from are the financial wells that fund Social Security and Medicare.  The same wells that many experts are saying will have completely evaporated in the not too distant future.  If I were a Doubting Thomas, I’d say that these folks are desperate to find additional funding to allow for a larger tax break for the wealthy.  But that’s just crazy talk.  I don’t have any facts to back up this thought and unfortunately when I do, it’ll be too late.  But this is a delicate operation for said party.  God forbid they wake up the sleeping political giant otherwise known as the Baby Boomers.  Instead, in the vein of “there’s more than one way to skin a…” they’ve decided to slowly, for now, defund necessary workers to run the social security administration.  So as much as you may qualify for benefits, you’ll never be able to get them because the remedial AI system in place is years away from a first grade education.  (P.S. the people I have recently spoken to from the Social Security and Medicare teams are very pleasant individuals.  You just need to practice your transcendental meditation as you wait to speak with someone.  On one occasion I opted to use the automated callback feature.  I missed their first callback.  During the next call I almost broke a leg diving over a couch trying to get to my cell phone.  You become paranoid that, Crap, if I miss this call...pfst, there goes my medical coverage.)

And now the tricky one, the IRS.  One of our political parties wants to defund the IRS as a way to balance the budget and potentially save the American taxpayers money.  What a noble sentiment.  Who couldn’t get behind that?  Well, depending on who you talk to, every dollar invested into IRS people and infrastructure yields three to five dollars in return.  Call me crazy, but I think we might have found a way out of our massive deficit situation.   The IRS says they need the funding to ensure they can perform audits across a wide spectrum of our population.  It seems that high value tax returns are rather complex and require more time and resources.  So without the additional funding, the IRS will have to concentrate on the middle class.  That’s just great…for the 1%ers.  Again, I’m being negative, one of our political parties would never do such a thing, right?

I do agree that being fiscally prudent is very important.  But when does it become dangerously counter productive?  For example, what if banks decided that vaults and security guards just cost too much.  Having them in place is really hurting the bottom line – they need to be removed.  Or the companies that make our mobile devices and home computers; what if they decided that security features cost too much to support - unfortunately they need teams of people to create code and stay ahead of the NoGoodNicks…no more.  And if towns and cities decided that traffic lights and streetlights inhale too much expensive electricity - We’re going to turn them all off and give back to the town folk…the ones that are still alive.  Police and Firemen, hmm?  But on a more constructive front, we could save a ton if we cut back on the number of congressional lawmakers we currently support.  (We do pay their salaries and enhanced benefit packages – no Social Security of Medicare for them.)  Montana is the 4th largest state in the union.  They have two congressmen supporting that massive state.  Texas on the other hand, is the 2nd largest state.  They have 38 congressmen.  I’ll be generous, we’ll let Texas have four congressmen.  That’s right to the bottom line savings of 34 lawmakers who really haven’t been doing anything useful for years.  

I await my call from either the IRS or the President’s subcommittee on go-forward budgeting.