HIPPA To Be Square

A local hospital’s mobile mammogram bus visits the plant every year. The nurse makes a schedule of when each person is supposed to go get their test done. She makes up a little spreadsheet, but gets me to print it out at 18 x 24 on my plotter. It gets posted on a stand in the main entrance corridor between her office and HR.

When we walked by it the other day on our way for one of our walks on break, Donna commented that maybe that shouldn’t be there because maybe the participants didn’t want everyone else to see it. I quipped something about HIPPA and she said, “Well my name isn’t on there, so I’m not going to worry about it.”

Later that morning as I was walking by the sign, a woman who was on the list, wondered aloud, like me, if maybe that didn’t violate HIPPA (feel free to try and figure that out, here is a link to the 101 page PDF.) She must have said something to Human Resources because the next time I passed that way, the schedule was gone.

That afternoon as I sat in my cube working, I heard that same woman passing by and she must have came upon a friend going in the opposite direction because she announced to her (loud enough to be heard over a 100′ radius), “I can’t talk now, I’m off to get my mammogram!”

So much for taking down the schedule so people wouldn’t know…

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Be Careful What You Wish For

Last night we went for a little bike ride with the express purpose of ending up downtown for an ice cream cone. We almost blew it, didn’t realize that they closed at eight o’clock on week nights and we walked in just before quitting time. When we left the store, one of the employees followed us to the door and flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. As we sat on the chairs on the sidewalk outside the Sweet Cow Creamery several people had to turn away empty handed. I almost felt bad sitting there eating my cup of Moose Tracks, almost.

One of the young guys who worked there when he finished mopping the floor, came out to take down the ice cream cone shaped flag. When he passed by us Donna asked him, “Because you work here, do you get to eat all the ice cream you want?” “Yep,” he replied. “Ever eat too much?” “Yeah,” he told us, “made myself sick a couple of times.” As he walked back inside he said, “Be careful what you wish for.”

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Press 1 For Incompetence, Press 2 For Frustration

We picked up the cable converter box last night, but I didn’t hook it up until just before leaving for work this morning. I didn’t have time to put the batteries into the remote, but when the TV was tuned to channel 3, I did get a cable channel.

Tonight when we got home from work there was a message from the cable company saying they had a man at my house at 3:15 PM to upgrade my service and I should call back and reschedule. Huh? I didn’t need any upgrade, when I asked for the converter box I told them I wanted it so I could have the digital basic line-up. As the woman handed me the box I also asked did she need to program it or anything (the last couple years this was the procedure) and she said no. So I was mystified as to why they needed to send someone out, until I checked the channel line up, I didn’t have any of the upper channels (which is what I wanted.) Guess I better call them.

I dialed the local number and was greeted by a message stating that the number was no longer in service and I should dial the 1-888 toll free number. I did and it was answered after one ring and I was dumped into voice mail hell. Press 1 if you blah, blah, blah, Press 2 for yadda yadda, Press 3 for whatever, etc. I try 1 and get a secondary menu with no options that I need, press 9 to back up one menu. Try 2, but that leads no where as well. Third time is a charm because I just punch in zero for a customer service representative. Wait, wait, wait while listening for advertisements for their internet service, their phone service and a friendly reminder that on February 19th of 2009 I better have all my TVs hooked to their cable or I’ll be out of luck. The office is less than a mile from my house so just about the time I decide to just unhook the box and take it back, I get a human. Dan takes my info and asks some basic questions: Is the box hooked up? Am I home and in front of it? Do I have any picture? Yes, yes and yes. He says, “Let me send a signal to your box.” “Try a channel above 100. Anything?” No I tell him. “Let’s try again,” he says. “still nothing. He suggests “re-booting” the box. I unplug it, wait 10 seconds and plug it back in. A sequence of lights flicker and I’m in business. Dan comments that he didn’t know why they didn’t do that in the office. I tell him I didn’t think that the woman I was dealing with yesterday in the office was the sharpest crayon in the box.

How come I can set a couple different lists of favorites, but I cannot subtract channels I don’t want to see, or hear, in the case of the music channels?

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TV Stars

MAL: We’re not gonna die. We can’t die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh? Look at that chiseled jaw.

This is what happens when you win the World Series, you get to play on TV a lot. Last Saturday on FOX, yesterday on TBS, tonight on ESPN and this coming Wednesday on ESPN2. So far the FRS are 1 and 1 and trailing by one run tonight going into the 9th.

Hasn’t left much time for Netflix disc watching. We still have 3 episodes of Due South to watch on the first disc of Season One and we also have P.S. I Love You collecting dust on the coffee table.

On the way home from work tonight we stopped by the cable company and picked up a converter box. We need the box to get Versus, Le Tour starts in less than two weeks.

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Stuttering Cat

A teacher is talking about science to her 3rd grade students. ‘Human beings are the only animals that stutter,’ she says.

A little girl raises her hand. ‘I had a kitty-cat who stuttered,’ she volunteered.

The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked the girl to describe the incident.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I was in the back yard with my kitty and the Rottweiler that lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over the fence into our yard!

‘That must’ve been scary,’ said the teacher.

‘It sure was,’ said the little girl. ‘My kitty raised his back, went ‘Fffff, Fffff, Fffff’… And before he could say ‘Fuck,’ the Rottweiler ate him.

Going Green

No, this is not another Boston Celtics post.

When I went out to get the Sunday paper today, instead of getting into the car and driving the mile or so to the Qwik-e-Mart, I rode my bicycle.

Matter of fact, no petrochemicals were used at all today as the Emperor never left the garage.

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78,000 Pieces of Candy

The MMC was “float” #30 and Gnorm was there to make sure we parked in the right spot, in front of the horses and a few participants behind the DJ Man.

This morning when we got in the Emperor to meet the club for breakfast before the parade, the odometer read 78,000 miles even, which is coincidentally the total number of pieces of candy tossed out of the 4 cars to the crowds lining the streets of Trenton, SC today.

This afternoon we watched the last four episodes of Season 3 of House. Instead of waiting to watch Season 4 on DVD when it comes out in August, I thought I’d try my new TV Gizmo and watch it online. Can’t, sorta. All that are available on Fox or Hulu are episodes 1,2,13 & 14. Seems as if they are rerunning the show during the summer and only want you to see it on network TV.

Which leads to a full review of said Gizmo — pretty much what I said before, OK for video, sucks for text. Will I probably get my forty bucks worth out of it? Yep.

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