Garbage In Garbage Out!

Garbage In, Garbage Out!

September has gained momentum and is now one more waning month. Waning also is the year. Saturday the 23rd was the first day of autumn. The days are growing visibly shorter, the sunlight ever more lacking with each fall of the golden orb into the Western Sea.

Luckily, San Diego's seasonal changes are less dramatic than those of most regions. The weather's still warm and sunny.

I have started my latest battle with Medi-Cal. The program's annual "redermination" has proceeded to bollix me up. As happens nearly every year, I have had to file an appeal in order to keep my health benefits in tact. The state seems determined to punish honest, working people with disabilities. Even though they are not supposed to count my SSDI income among my resources, the genius social worker in charge of my case went ahead and did so. This would give me a share of cost on IHSS (In Home Supportive Services) of $380 per month. In other words, they want to force me to pay nearly all of Harold's wages.

When I argued with the social worker about what he'd done, he got defensive and replied "We have a new computer system and all I do is put in the numbers." When I recited the formulas he's supposed to use, he blamed the computer. I slammed the phone down after telling him "a computer is only as good as its operator."

Well, back to playing EQ or WOW for a while.

Arminius Returneth

Arminius Returneth

Well, today I had some free time and logged into EverQuest, my old stomping grounds. It was great to see all my guild buddies and especially Salelann, my friend who's taken such good care of "Arm" in my absence.

I got to explore the new zones a bit, but then typical of SOE, the game server crashed and dumped me out to Windows. After seven years of playing, it's good to see some things never change!!

More later... Or, WOW, here I come!

David

Go Chargers

Go, Chargers!

Last night's Chargers-Raiders game was sweet for all of us fans in San Diego. The Chargers rolled over the Raiders, 27-0. Phillip Rivers looked ready to go as the new starting QB. Now, let's see what the team can do next week!

Everything else is rolling along well for me. I've been working hard, and reaping some of the benefits of that.

Also, I finished watching all the episodes of ROME on DVD I bought a few weeks ago.  The series is superb, and I can't wait for the new season! Don't forget, LOST will be starting in a few weeks. And a new AMAZING RACE starts Sunday!

The weather's been great; you can "sort of" feel autumn in the air, as we think of it in Southern California.

Worst Episode Ever

Worst Episode, Ever!

So, Joe and I are big Deadwood fans--that's the very dark western that's been running on HBO for the past three seasons. After a rather long and slow build-up, we had great expectations for the series finale.

Well, I sat through the final episode and all I can say is, "What a crock!" Got to be one of the worst episodes, and worst series finales, in the history of TV. It was as though the writers set out to give the audience a big "middle finger."

Let us count the sins:"

1. Hurst got off Scott-free after a season and a half of sociopath behavior, including ordering the murders of half-a-dozen characters.


2. This whole season, Swearengen has been coming off as rather an honorable and likeable criminal. He started out as the show's villain, before Hurst showed up. In the final episode, he slits the throat of an "innocent" prostitute in his employ in order to keep Hurst from murdering Trixie, the whore who shot Hurst. Why build Swearengen up to be a "good guy" and then knock him back down at the end? Why did he and the others choose to cop out of the battle with Hurst?


3. Bullock was oddly taken out of a couple of the last episodes to "campaign for sheriff." Why? Clearly the hands of the authors were visible in this machination, to keep Bullock out of the way for other action.


4. The widow sold her claim to Hurst in order to be able to stay in town, then left at the end, right behind Hurst's stagecoach! Both her husbands died in vain.


5. The Earp brothers appeared in the last third of the season for a couple of episodes, giving hope that they might stick around to battle Hurst. No way the writers could have conceived of that, I guess. Instead, the Earp boys just uselessly disappeared after Bullock told them to leave town.


6. There's more, but that basically runs the gamut of the important stuff.

On other fronts, not much new to report. I finished the Project Management class and got an A. Next up, Presentation Skills for Technical Communicators in about a month. On other projects for ML, I've been quite busy. Which is great! I'll never get back to Europe without money!

The weather here has been quite pleasant. Low 80s at the worst. A great Early Autumn preview.

More ruminations later....

David