azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
Suspension of disbelief = I will not start verbally poking holes in the physics of this action movie until we are out of the movie theater

Suspension in disbelief = a frozen state of constant WTF

Mood theme

8 August 2025 22:21
coffeepaws: Furry style side portrait of a wolf wearing headphones and a green hoodie (Default)
[personal profile] coffeepaws in [community profile] getting_started
I can't figure out where / how I can select a mood theme. Could somebody help me? Thank you :)

still ridiculous

5 August 2025 22:32
kareila: a lady in glasses holding a stack of books (books)
[personal profile] kareila
I tripped and fell into another library book sale and now my TBR list is up to almost 800. I took all of their Steven Brust and half of their Heinlein at 50 cents each.

Connor picked out a book by Haruki Murakami although he's still working his way through his last book sale purchase, One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as an online copy of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. I'm still bemused by his taste in reading material.

simplifying

4 August 2025 11:22
kareila: CLEAN ALL THE THINGS! (clean)
[personal profile] kareila
Since 1999 or so I had been maintaining a Perl script that would run every morning to download new images for as many as 20 different comic strips and combine them all into one daily digest web page. Over the years the strips have dropped off one by one, either because I lost interest or because I started following them on my DW reading page instead.

Inertia has kept that setup running for this long, but lately the old Mac mini that I was running the script on has been dropping off the network every few weeks, which means it will miss several days until I notice and reselect my network from the WiFi menu. (Not just that machine; I've also noticed these dropouts happening with the downstairs thermostat and the autonomous vacuum cleaner, which are even more annoying to reset. Maybe it's affecting devices that only use 802.11b?)

When I went to fix it again just now, I noticed that it was only successfully still keeping up with 3 comic strips, 2 of which I didn't really care about any more. I added the other to my DW list, and now I'm done. After 26 years.

The one I'm still keeping is Kevin & Kell, which turns 30 next month. Which means it started when I was 20. So, yeah.

After turning that job off, I realized I only had one other automated script still left running on that machine, which was backing up the DW wiki files once a week... the wiki that got retired last month because [staff profile] mark moved it to Github. So I turned that one off too.

I guess it's the end of an era.

Starlinography?

30 July 2025 22:24
azurelunatic: (Greater) Tits Against the RTE (the bird kind of tit). (put a bird on it)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/yes-you-can-store-data-on-a-bird-enthusiast-converts-png-to-bird-shaped-waveform-teaches-young-starling-to-recall-file-at-up-to-2mb-s

Taking this proof-of-concept to a ridiculous destination, imagine taking a very simple secret message, converting it to sound, and tasking a starling to smuggle it out somewhere. (This seems very impractical compared to an amateurishly knitted scarf with a code in the seemingly random purl stitches.)

Prior Auth, my beloathéd

28 July 2025 21:54
azurelunatic: A martini glass full of pills of all colors, haloed in a rainbow. Resin sculpture. (meds)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
July 22: I message my symptoms team for a refill on my primary pain med (which is still only the next step up from Tylenol 3). And yet, it's what keeps me from regularly screaming when I exert myself in a way that stresses my right hip. I have 21 + 5 (a week plus a day and 2/3) left.

July 24: A list of detailed follow-up questions from the symptoms nurse, and my detailed reply. About 20 left.

July 25:
Hi [Azz],

I wanted to let you know that [doctor] sent a refill of the [med] to the Costco!

[Discussion of discontinuing another med]

And can I just say how much I enjoy your MyChart messages; I am always impressed at how in tune you are with your body.

Take care,
[Nurse]

Me: It's time to renew my prior auth again, alas.

Nurse: Aw dang!
No worries though, you gave us time (thank you by the way).
I have asked our billing specialist to help with this so we will call the Costco when we get it and then let you know.
Thanks,
[Nurse]

About 17 left.

***

July 26: About 14 left.
July 27: About 11 left.

***

July 28
Different nurse:
Hi [Azz],

We needed a new prior authorization on [med]. We received approval for this over the weekend. However, Costco has been unable to get this medication to process. They are in the process of calling your insurance to figure out where the issue lies.

[Image of prior auth as sent to doctor]

I will keep you updated

Thanks,
[Nurse]

Me: Thanks for the update!

***

A hair bleaching, trip through the shower, and time to drip dry later, I figure I will call Costco pharmacy and see what they've discovered, since they're still open and the symptoms care office is not.

[Call time: 6 minutes 54 seconds]

***

Me: I talked with darling [Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant] at the pharmacy, who had my back the last time UHC was like this, and we had a real good chat about the state of things at UHC, and she is putting me through for 12 days so I can have some breathing room while you and she go and wrestle alligators. I will get that picked up tonight and we'll see when UHC can be made to see the light.


I drive to the pharmacy.
I receive my jar.
I tell our friend that I was so glad it was her who picked up when I called.
Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant tells me that when she took my call about the prior auth on my med, the rest of the pharmacy was looking at her funny, because she swapped registers straight out of professional. "Is that a family member on the phone?" And yet again we had words about United Healthcare. Also, the pharmacy we used to go to is shutting down; she has this from her friend and ours, the guy with the Emperor's New Groove pin. He prefers to stay with that company, so he's not coming to Costco.

***

About 8 left, plus 12 days.

Alas, new glucometer

26 July 2025 17:40
azurelunatic: "Sanity" St. John's Wort flower.  (the good drugs)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
As sent to my primary care, who I actually do like:

United Healthcare, in their omnibenevolent wisdom, sees fit to drop the One Touch Ultra from my preferred drug list as of September. They have offered several alternatives.

My primary goal with a glucometer is to not require a smartphone to do the simple task of marking whether any reading is before or after a meal. Out of their list of suggestions, the Contour Plus Blue meter meets my requirements and is not discontinued.

Joy. And happiness.


(This is the primary care who, upon learning which insurance I had, while we were trying to solve a problem, asked whether I was up to date on the then-recent news about their CEO, then said "You'd think they'd have learned their lesson." She's from Canada.)

[Edit: I am not currently in need of a CGM, I just want to be able to enter whether a reading is before or after a meal without involving an app.]

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kjwcode: Bella, the little silly dog. (Default)
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