Modern Vespa

Can we talk numbers here? How much is it? I love running the numbers!

What I got was an average of around $2,500 a year for me (65m) and this is for the cheap policy where the high co-pay and deductible. This is with the free Medicare part A hospitilization.

And this is in 2024. Among the things leading the way that have recently risen in price is health care and I think it would be unreasonable not to expect that to continue. Also most of the policies have limits. I think it not unreasonable to exceed those limits when one is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at 83 years old.

I think the one that really gets you though is when you need some sort of long term care and can no longer live alone. And even if you can stay in your house and have to have home visits exceeding your insurance limits then the Medicaid Estate recovery plan for your state kicks in...

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/nevadas-medicaid-estate-recovery-program.html

And then just inflation. Even if you do not have big expenses with medical issues in older age I think the only way out of the financial debt in the developed world is to pay it back with inflated dollars.

They will try to control inflation and not let it run rampant but they need inflation to some degree just because of a huge amount of debt.

Then finally there is a great deal of insecurity with whatever your retirement might come from for the average Joe. I am not talking about people with high net worth I am talking about people relying on meager 401K, some sort of pension, and social security. All of the above mentioned are subject to the next downturn in the stock market. 2008 happened because of collateralized debt obligations on residential mortgages. What will the super genius's on Wall st think of next?

AWS is pissing me off today.

Sane, rational programmers: Amazon AWS "programmers": If you can't spot the difference, don't feel bad -- I couldn't either, and it cost me about a day of hair-pulling.

Jeebus.

AWS is pissing me off today.

Sane, rational programmers: Amazon AWS "programmers": If you can't spot the difference, don't feel bad -- I couldn't either, and it cost me about a day of hair-pulling.

Jeebus.

But I don't understand OOP

It's not OOP, it's YAML.

My eyes just glazed over.

I had to lookup YAML. YAML ain't Markup Language. Gnu-ish, I see. And yet, I don't.

There's an AC vent that blast cold air right on me.

A strategically placed piece of cardboard, some string, and some tape would redirect the flow away from you.

A strategically placed piece of cardboard, some string, and some tape would redirect the flow away from you.

This is your chance at creative thinking.

YAML is an alternative to JSON.

(I'm not even being funny here -- tech is littered with TLAs [Three Letter Acronyms] and non-conforming TLAs [four-letter acronyms] and has been as long as I can remember.)

Both JSON and YAML are used for data interchange -- data structures -- in a human-readable form. But where JSON is mostly used to communicate data structures from one machine to another, YAML is useful for communicating data structures from a human to a computer.

Put another way, writing JSON by hand is fiddly, whereas writing YAML by hand is... well, slightly less fiddly. But only a little bit.

I'm using YAML to specify exactly how I want the server to be built -- what hardware, what architecture, what OS, how much memory, how much storage (and what kind of storage), what configuration, the IP addresses and security settings, what packages I want installed, how I want those packages arranged, every single detail. Right down to what color I want the command prompt to be when I log in via SSH.

That YAML is literally just a single text file (albeit a very long one). I feed that into Amazon AWS's gaping maw and it builds a server based on that YAML specification. I log in, inspect it, find something I forgot or still haven't specified yet, tear down that server, and start again.

A strategically placed piece of cardboard, some string, and some tape would redirect the flow away from you.

This is your chance at creative thinking.

I'm sorry to report that's it's your former employer's desire to own the territory that causes this problem.

Reviews For Everything

Anything and everything you do online nowadays is followed by being pestered for reviews!

I recently used the NHS (National Health Service) app to change my address, and at the end was asked to review the app, so I just wrote Good

So now they've replied Fab! We like to hear that, thank you.

Where the hell did Fab! come from? I never said it was Fab! (it wasn't Fab! by the way).

I mean, how about if I die and they put He thought the NHS app was Fab! on my headstone!

aaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

I no longer have kids

Well technically I have two daughters but the youngest one is going to her 1st party where she will be drinking alcohol rather than pop.

I can't see her drinking the 4 cans of cider her mother bought for her as I don't think she has had a full alcoholic drink in her life, but her days as a child looks to be over.

Phone stores.

I personally never deal with them. I've been fortunate (careful) and have never broken a phone. I had a Nokia 5110 that was indestructible, a Motorola Razr and then iPhones. I've never had a phone fail to work. The only time I've upgraded was when the previous iPhone was simply un-updatable. Most of them I still have, and they still power up. This isn't braggadocio, it's just to show how little I deal with cell phone stores.

Now the gripe. I have an old friend who is of very little means. She doesn't own a car, but she's worked hard, paid off her house and been able to retire. The phone she's had for several years is an LG Trac Phone. I find it ironic that the message that pops up on the startup screen is "Life's Good", when you are clearly using a $30 Trac Phone. Anyway, recently the phone crapped out on her. She took the phone to "a phone store" and they evaluated it, told her there was nothing they could do and sold her another phone with a new number.

I'm beyond chastising her for not backing things up, but she didn't have anything backed up. So, she asked me for help. At work this morning, I popped the battery out of the phone and popped it back in and guess what. The phone is fine.

They could tell at the phone store that she needed help. They could have done as much. It wouldn't have taken ten minutes.

We'll get it sorted, and she has a new phone, but for Pete's sake.

I really think it would be better of you left work.

But the majority of your complaints emanate from work.

You don't think that you'd be a lot happier somewhere else ?

I get excellent benefits, the flexibility to set my own schedule, a generous defined benefit pension plan, an exceptional amount of paid vacation time (by North American standards at least), and I'm paid well enough that I can afford some serious enjoyment of my non-work hours.

But the majority of your complaints emanate from work.

You don't think that you'd be a lot happier somewhere else ?