I’m with you.

Never have I needed to work so hard to advocate for myself to get the care I needed as when I was with UHC.

By comparison, this year has held two major surgeries for me, neither expected, and my current insurer just shrugged, asked ONCE for proof of medical necessity, and paid the bill.

Also, let’s not forget the breach at a UHC subsidiary in recent months that brought down pharma payment systems for weeks…

I’ve been remote since 2014. Plenty of friends made. Wouldn’t date at work as a general rule, it creates unnecessary risk IMO.

Certainly wouldn’t eg move in with someone I worked with, etc.

Then again, being poly and happily married, risk calculus is part of my mental process before attempting to date a particular person. If it goes south, will they show up naked and screaming on my front lawn in the middle of the night?

Since an angry ex doesn’t have the option of along me look bad to my wife (who also dates), any serious crazy could escalate quickly and creatively. I want nothing to do with that.

$25 a month, US, MVNO on Verizon network.

Had to bring my own phone, which is in bad shape and I’ll have to replace eventually, but I basically don’t think about my service at all.

That MVNO also has a program to heavily discount service for up to three months due to loss of job or temp disability, because, yknow, you need a phone number to look for a job.

That discount was damn nice when I had a couple of surgeries this year.

Make sure that it can be backed up, somehow.

Save your recovery codes in an organized and secure fashion.

Offhand, Ente does backup I believe.

Bitwarden does export (save on encrypted drive, or print and put in safe deposit box)

Last month, I had a shoulder replaced that I injured in March. Seven months to get the surgery, another month before PT could start.

Waiting while in pain is brutal, but this is not a DIY project.

Not to mention, if this affects multiple limbs, there’s a very real possibility you could e.g., fall while exercising and dramatically worsen the situation.

Prices look decent at a glance as well.

I miss my BB keyboard something fierce.

I’ve worked side by side with RU devs who were both personable and damned competent. Never were their tech skills in doubt, and I retain quite a bit of respect for those individuals.

I’d not do the same today explicitly because of the political and compliance implications. It’s unfortunate, but necessary.

IOS presently, partially to simplify de googling.

What Google password?

I don’t intend to browse RMS-style, but I have zero need of a Google account, nor of the major search engines directly.

I just add layers between myself and that particular company. I still can get their data, but without the creep factor.

Mostly.

It’s an imperfect solution, but I’m more comfortable with access by proxy than direct access.

Been looking for this sort of device for my Pantech laser.

The cartridge is good for 1,600 pages - no more, no less.

All well and good, they’re cheap, except… the vast majority of my printing is in A5 size (roughly half-letter, or exactly half-A4).

Those half pages count just like any other page against the total, and I get shorted by the better part of 800 pages or so.

1. Suffer through working life
2. Retire, downsize, go see the world without having to convince a gf/partner

Nothing wrong with disliking dating, it’s a screwy social ritual intended to use a short series of interactions to determine if this is a person you could trust and genuinely like enough to share everything - including tough mornings - and compromise with for the next fifty years.

Works for some folks. Doesn’t work for others. I’m happily married, took a couple false starts and youthful indiscretions to get here - as well as the magic of the internet and some long discussions about relationships/commitment/poly/nonstandard stuff.

Works for us, maybe not for most.

Curious how common the truly bad ones are. I’d assume quite uncommon between licensing, hospital hiring, chart data analysis at scale, etc., but…

Counting down the days to a relatively minor surgery I need. No real concerns, I’ve met the lead surgeon a few times, but plenty of unknown humans are part of the process too.

Company has low-key software trainers - a ton of information to convey, but they mostly embrace and gently corral the inevitable side convos you get in a Teams room of thirty very confused people.

Some of us were more vocal than others and a handful were less pleasant. During a brief silence, as a woman is about to ask a valid question, we ALL hear,

“Oh, there’s Jennifer, running her fat fucking mouth again! (Pause) (gasp from speaker)”

Guy wasn’t getting it anyway, but he didn’t last the rest of the morning.

There were 29 of us in that room, two years ago. Now there are six of us remaining. Mouthy guy above is the only one I know left involuntarily.

I like your approach much better.

18, sex in the stock room, didn’t get caught.

Even had a handful of more standard dates afterwards, always with sex.

No negative outcome, fortunately. Except for the really damn cold stockroom floor, but that was her problem not mine…

Think we just lost interest, I moved onto another job, that was that.

Sell them to someone who will test and resell them to the airline or medical industry… Manufacturing is a likely customer as well, plenty of legacy equipment there that’s airgapped and still running decades-old hw/sw.

Youtube warning, some Boeing 747s

Recent BBC article

(This is a wrong answer since you only have a single pack. If you had several cases, you might actually be able to make a buck)

Saw a post on mastodon in the last day or so that someone dug up a network card for the old 486 they had been working on getting back to life. Might be a use case there, as well as in aviation and medicine - fields that move exceptionally slowly and tend to have expensive equipment with long lifetimes.

I use Arch, btw…

Kidding, of course - but there are some of those folks out there. TBF, they’re the vocal minority, but they are vocal nonetheless.

The value of my labor, daily.

The nominal “cost” of my healthcare, at every encounter.

Etc.

Dead on, and applicable to nearly everyone.