Operator, give me long distance, can you hear me now?

In the 60’s and 70’s I can still remember the telephone numbers I grew up with, and the phones themselves.  Note to reader’s under 45, you’ll have to look up some of the terms I am about to use.  The phones, each house had one, and it was wired into a box on the floor.  No quick plug in,  you had to call a repairman to come fix it if you tore it off the wall and threw it out a second story window because somebody drunk dialed you at 3:00 o’clock in the morning. Like my father did.  The phone was fine, just a few scuff marks and the repairman rewired it without saying a word.  Dad was running a print shop and pennysaver publication at the time and our number was 863-92-double oh.

Dad disliked telephones and telephone companies in general and our local telephone company, “Chenango and Unadilla" in particular.  He wrote editorials in his paper about them, their cute logo, “C&U” or as he often referred to them as “Careless & Useless”.  They never had enough operators on duty to suit him and one year in the late sixties installed a new switching system on a holiday weekend, just after the directories were published that changed everyone’s phone number.  Customers were notified of their new numbers with the next month’s bill.  For that month nobody in the area knew what their new phone number would be.  Not only that, but you couldn’t call anyone because their number had changed.  Dad managed to get his phone number by calling the president of the company whose number had mysteriously not changed.  My favorite quote from Dad was;

The Telephone does not have

a constitutional right to be answered

 

 

 

Those of you who are vintage enough to remember live operators probably had to take a few days in school to learn telephone etiquette. 

• If you call someone , let it ring 10 times, that gives them one minute to answer the call.
• If you have to yell for another person to come to the phone, cover the mouthpiece with your hand.
• When answering the phone, tell the caller the name of the household or business, and your name ie; “Smith residence, This is Tom”.
• Keep a pad and pen by the phone so you can write down messages.

HIPPA and Patient Privacy, Hypocrisy and Stupidity

When anyone is treated in a medical facility in the US, they are guaranteed privacy by law.  The first thing they make you do is sign away that privacy so they can bill your insurance policy. The second thing they make you sign is that any Dr., Nurse, Aide or janitor can know anything about you because they are part of you “treatment team”  HA!

 

If you just happen to be lucky enough to have medically educated family, they and you are just Shit out of luck.  Unless the bureaucrat that is handling your family or friends case is a human being with feelings and understandings, you can just forget about trying to get vital medical information into their record.

As a health care worker, I know that any information I can get about a patient can help me customize care to include many different needs, If I know about them!

I have a cardiac condition, Coronary Artery Disease, or CAD.  Yet there are some facilities that have refused to listen to my WIFE try to explain that to medical staff

Add in the stigma of anyone being accused of being a danger to themselves, or others and anyone can end up held against their will, incommunicado, in places much worse than Guantanamo Bay.

You will be told you have rights, be promised care, visitation, and freedom if you participate in “treatment”.  From the inside I have seen this used again and again to create vicious cycles in which innocent people have been held hostage, playing by the rules, while those in charge change the rules on a constant basis. 

 

When people take a good idea such as the HIPPA law, and twist it into something unrecognizable that prevents information from getting into the hands that need it most, then everyone’s healthcare will suffer. Indeed it already has, Our life expectancy is now going down instead of up. One of the major political points of my youth was that the Americans could continue to grow in prosperity, and live longer, work shorter hours, and be able to enjoy more time with our families.

Technorati Tags: Health,HIPPA,American Nightmare

There are still good people out there

A very stressful event happened to me yesterday.  So stressful that our family had already talked it out,but I still needed to vent some frustration.  Luckily I went down my list and found the perfect person to talk to.  I’m grateful to that angel of mercy that had the time and inclination to listen to me rant and rave about a situation enough to calm my nerves down enough that I could get some sleep last night.

Speaking of sleep, although I’ve managed to get my pattern back to somewhat near normal, I’m still having terri

Technorati Tags: Venting,sleep,nightmares

ble nightmares.  The dream catcher I have just doesn’t seem to work as well as it used to.  Any Ideas?

Ghosts of Christmas Past

When I was a child, Christmas had many meanings for me.  Presents of course. but there was always so much more.  At my youngest until I was 10 we lived in Upstate NY, which always meant snow on the ground, cold windy raw days and the worry that we had to drive somewhere for a Christmas Dinner, or the preparations that preceded people coming to our house.

Preparations usually started in the fall, with decisions being made as to who would hold Thanksgiving, and who would hold Christmas.  Tradition held that a stranger, or family of strangers must be invited to each.  A feast for 20 or 30 was not unusual until we left NY.

Cookies were Diane’s specialty, and she would begin in the first week of December,  She made dozens of dozens of cookies, put them in baskets as presents for our doctors, friends, etc.

Christmas was always stressful for the ladies in charge of the cooking, but they enjoyed it to.  As most of the family left the area I suggested that we go to a local restaurant for thanksgiving one year shortly before we left.  I thought it was great, no stress, no dishes to clean up, they even sent leftovers home with us.  The ladies didn’t like not having control so we went back to the usual.

Stressful day

Nothing really bad happened, just a lot of waiting around for news and information.  My wife has started a new medication regimen that is working much better without making her a zombie, YAY! 

The granddaughter is a toddler doing toddler stuff, nothing bad.  She is also starting to read, has got the potty thing down really good and behaves most of the time.

She also spends 10 minutes every night with grandma and grampa in their bed before she toddles off to sleep. This is the time that gets me through the whole day.

Knowing that my youngest boy’s ex is in Connecticut has me saddened, so many themes around Christmas and Yule center around the family. I was raised in New England, so I know the difference in attitude up there.  Also they have snow now and bitter cold.

Communications are also annoying me lately, intermittent internet, a phone that works when it feels like it.  and the change to digital TV that has cut the transmitting range of the Tampa stations in half.  We are now on the fringe area of reception for all but a few stations.  When the weather changes so does out TV lineup. 

Technorati Tags: Stress,Grandaughter,Communications

Struggling

Technorati Tags: Status,health,situation

I just feel like blogging again.  I’m having trouble understanding and using facebook so I”m going back to something I know. 

My health remains about the same.  I tire very easily and cannot concentrate for  very long.  We are now without a vehicle so have to depend on busses and friends giving us rides when we need them.

My youngest son is now a single father struggling to raise his daughter.  He had a great job as an apprentice plumber, but was “laid off” after his ex girlfriend made false accusations which she later recanted. 

The mother of my granddaughter has been gone for several months.  She refuses to give us an address to reach her and is dependent on phones of friends.  She has reported so many unbelievable events that we doubt anything she says.

All that we know about her now is that she is calling from a phone listed in Connecticut with a boyfriend that has repeatedly threatened us.  If she would only pick up the paperwork so that Matt can get some help with their daughter.

We have intermittent internet thanks to a very sweet neighbor, but they are in the same boat we are, and don’t know how long it will last.  There are also days that I cannot even get out of bed now, so if you don’t get a reply quickly, please understand.

I dearly miss socializing with my friends and getting out to celebrate nature. 

I’d like to end this on a cheery note, so I’ll share the fact that I’m doing so well on my diabetes that I’m down to half the dose of medicine that I take and haven’t had a reading over 120 in several months. 

Michael

Trying to get back to normal

A quick update on me.  I’ve had a small stroke, with very little permanent damage thanks to the quick actions of my family, and two more heart surgeries.  I am much weaker and tend to tire very easily.  I have some memory loss.  I apologize in advance if I’m repeating myself.  I’m walking almost every day and have a hot tub I can jump into which has helped amazingly.  It’s also relaxing.

Another “exercise” I’m going to try to keep up is working on the computer.  For the most part lately I’ve only been playing simple games and reading the mail that comes across.

For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to publish contact information for the local Pagan groups.  It’s time to start updating that again soon.  Before I do that I’d like to explain more about it in case anyone has questions.

Why I want to produce the Pagan Resource Guide

I first started doing research on the guide when Gaelyn from the Phoenix Council made a call for the leaders of the groups in the area to get together and share information, a post to Yahoo groups in which he mentioned that he knew of two groups and wondered if there were any others.  I spent weeks searching the internet and found 13 groups, some brand new that were created because the guide was coming out, some small and almost defunct. I also included stores and online shops in the first edition. 

My plan was simple.  Just organize information that was passed along to me by the leadership of these groups, and put it in the guide.  The rules were simple.  If it had anything to do with Paganism it was in, as long as the owner/leader gave me an email that said it was ok, or told me in person.

Later I tried to do a calendar to list the events that any of the groups were doing. 

I ran into one of the unwritten Pagan Laws;

Organizing Pagans is like herding cats

And this is why I wanted to create and share the guide.  I would like to know about every event going on because I like to get to as many as I can.  Unfortunately following all of the groups, and their activities it’s easy to lose track of what’s going on when.

Five years ago, when everything was discussed on the yahoo groups, it was easy to keep track of everything that was going on.  With the new shiny internet innovations like facebook, myspace, ning sites, etc… We have spread out and now information is much harder to get together.

One solution might be for people to copy some of the more important events, and post them to the Yahoo boards

Please spread announcements as far and wide as you can. 

If you send any announcements to me, I’ll be glad to pass them along to other groups.

Hospital how to

Keep a copy of your medical history with you at all times, include surgeries and events that will affect your treatment.

Make a list of Medications you take on a daily basis.  include herbal stuff and any over the counter stuff  you take.

Make a copy of your important phone numbers, and designate a spokesperson.  * this is important for Pagans.  You need to be able to depend on people who will not exaggerate.  For example I recently had an angioplasty done, from my point of view it’s like a large roto rooter snake being inserted in you *family friendly* I’m not exactly clear on what they did,  The darn doctor would not listen to me, and wouldn’t turn the monitor so I could see it.  he kept mumbling something about giving me more morphine and more versid. 

Now where was I …. oh yeah contingency and emergency plans.  My hobby years as a Ham Radio operator and my years of working at a health care facility run by the State of New York taught me a lot about having plans for every possible problem.

The first time I ever saw an emergency plan put into action was when we had a dryer fire on our unit.  We had practiced fire drills on a monthly basis, and knew exactly what to do.  we were at minimum staffing because it was a holiday (new years day).  Yet we managed to evacuate 24 patients to our gymnasium and get them fed and occupied while our support staff cleaned up 30,000 gallons of water, removed and replaced all of the furniture and essentially replaced everything we needed on the unit in less than three hours.  We were able to move everybody back in and get them to bed by 10PM.  The facility, the support staff, and our unit received recognition from the Governor because of our actions.  I was on the review team for the incident and all members of that team agreed that it wasn’t just the actions that evening that prevented injury and further damage, but the effort all of the staff put into each and every drill.

So it isn’t just about having a plan, but practicing it, looking at the problems, as well as the working parts of the plans, and figuring out how to use a plan for something it was never intended. 

We used the plans in Ham radio tests at least twice a year.  Now upstate NY can reasonably expect to have blizzards, tornadoes floods and plans were made available to all those interested that covered such events.

Sometimes I’m not the nicest guy on the block.  The first time I was asked to create a disaster scenario, I made the primary incident an Earthquake.  Our guys were very quick to adapt to this scenario, because they had practiced.

 

474 words

Freedom

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Hi, I’m Mike and I publish the Pagan Resource Guide.  The Guide is a simple listing provided to anyone who wants it listing Groups, Covens, Circles and Groves along with Stores and Websites that might be of interest to Pagans living in and around Pasco County Florida.

The rules are simple.  Anyone, or any group that wishes to be listed is welcome, as long as I have express permission from the leader or owner.  I have come across several groups that I have contacted that did not wish to be publicized for one reason or another.  That is why I am very careful to get permission before I publish each edition.

Today Twenty groups are listed in the Guide, and about half that many sit on another list, that is not published.  Some of these unlisted groups are covens who have reached the number of people that they feel is appropriate, and do not wish to have anyone new.  A few of these do keep in contact with me to make sure they are aware of community events.

Some groups have no desire to be a part of the “community” and have told me politely they want no further contact.  Some have not been so polite.

As a part of my research for the Guide I attend as many public events as I possibly can.  I also try to meet and talk to as many people at these events as I can.  I try to be polite and encourage any activities and ideas.  I try to let people know when they might be scheduling something on the same day as another group so they can make appropriate decision.

Sometimes these conversations involve future speculative ideas or past failures.  I often offer my experiences and try to encourage anything that might work.  I deal with many people, and because I suck at remembering names, I try to keep an up to date database of all I have met.  That database lists over 150 people who I have met locally at different events.

I also try to help out with the various activities as I can.  This doesn’t mean I prefer one group over another, I just like to go where I”m needed. 

I am also a member of about 40 different groups, as a courtesy, so I can try to make sure I catch upcoming events.  I also ask that each group have at least one of their members join the Resource Guide Yahoo group to help keep the Calendar updated, and make announcements.  So far, not so much.

Some people have come to me at these gatherings to discuss new ideas, dreams of the future, or to vent their frustrations about one thing or another.  I often throw in a joke or two to keep the conversation light.  I tend to consider these conversations private even though someone else might overhear a portion of them. 

This has happened several times over the last few years and caused problems for me on more than one occasion.  I hope you will all understand that sometimes I am put in a precarious situation where I know something, yet do not have the speakers permission to pass it along.

 

580 words –25 in a quote =555

More on my life in Ham Radio

When I throw myself into anything, hobby ,job , etc.  I tend to go whole hog or nothing.  Any new interest sends me quickly to gather books, magazines, internet research, and most especially local groups of people who share my newfound interest.  I have done this since I joined the Atari Computer users group in NY.  Now that was an amazing computer for it’s time.  64K of ram and a clock speed of something like 1.5k.  Many programs could be purchased on cartridges and plugged into the top.  Startup time was almost 0, you could turn it on and start typing in a word processor immediately.  The only thing that was slow was the cassette tape drive.  Saving a 2 page letter could take ten of fifteen minutes.  But then you had it available to edit if you wanted.

The same thing happened when I threw myself into HAM radio.  When I became emergency coordinator, I was handed notes, policies and everything that had happened since the first coordinator had started in the early 70’s.  Everything that had been tried whether it failed or succeeded was in that notebook.  Handwritten or typed on a manual typewriter. 

I quickly used the computer to update information, checking to make sure everything was correct and proper when I got another call from the Weather Service.  They were closing the surrounding area offices and making Binghamton responsible for two and a half times more counties.  We would now be responsible for giving them storm data from anywhere within the 240 nautical mile range of our brand new radar system.

We now covered two states, several emergency districts and nobody was happy.  Least of all us! We were used to going up to the office and manning the radio for two to four hours, now a slow moving storm system could take eight to sixteen hours to pass through. 

We had to toss out the old manuals, get new equipment to increase our range an create a whole new way of passing the reports along   Our short range radios were good for about 60 miles , so outlying counties had to relay their information.  We often had to relay information twice to get it back to Binghamton.

Like Pagans, Ham radio operators are decentralized, usually operating at a county level, So many people were upset with the plan that I put forth.  Eventually they accepted the plan, helped smooth out the bugs, most of them anyway. And Binghamton’s plan became a model for many other Skywarn systems in the nation.  The manual I wrote nearly twenty years ago is still in use today, only the names and frequencies have been updated.