Patrick’s Rants

John Walsh, the host of America’s Most Wanted brought us a story a few weeks ago of a mother killed over her purse and her car outside of a convenient store. John tells us, in his always dramatic voice, that we have to get this murderer off the streets. He killed this mother while her baby sat strapped in its car seat in the car so he could steal the car. She left the baby in the car seat while she ran into the store. What kind of mother was this? I never, ever, ever left my infant in my car without me standing next to it (filling up gas) and if I had to go inside I unstrapped them and carried them in with me. Awake or asleep I did not leave an unattended child in an unattended car. Had this woman followed such a simple rule she would still be alive. Instead she “bravely fought off her attacker” in an effort to save her child’s life. If she had her child in one arm and her purse on the other she could have let this guy run off with her car. Your car/purse or your life is an easy decision to make. Your child’s life or yours, most people choose for their child to live.

What happened to her should not have happened. The guy who stabbed her causing her death needs to be found and imprisoned. But the decision to leave her child in her car is just as bad as the grandmother who leaves her grandkids in the car in the casino parking lot or the parent who gets home and “forgets” their child in the car to suffer a slow painful death on a Phoenix July day.

It has been one of those weeks at work. Last Wednesday, the phone was ringing at the rate of two to three calls per minute. This is the day before school started and people were only getting around to find out about their children’s bus stop information. Now that would have been fine if there were only a few parents doing this. It would not be that big of a deal. But that’s hundreds of phone calls. Add the special needs route problems (written about in the Arizona Daily Sun) and the phone was pretty much non-stop. For nearly a week.

Now. This is not the official position of the school district, yada yada yada. This is my position, my opinion. I am the afternoon dispatcher. I had literally hundreds of calls per hour – four per minute is 240 per hour. My phone lines were flooded. Our new phone system will send me as many calls as I can take – I think. It’s an internal Cisco VOIP phone system, there could be a limit on the number of incoming lines on my extension, I don’t know. I do know that every other phone in the building – with the exception of the reception station – handles one, one phone call at a time; additional calls go to voice mail. Dispatch gets to answer every incoming call. And that’s the way it should be. If you have an immediate dispatch problem, I and the morning dispatcher, need to be able to answer the phone, not shunt you to voice mail after three rings. But here’s the thing. We don’t have a receptionist so your question about your kid’s lunch box – as important as it is to you – only ties up my phone line. When you call I need you to get to the point. I don’t need the story about how you called and talked to so-and-so, and then you called and talked to such-and-such. Or tried to. Get to the point immediately; no rambling dissertations. And when you call, don’t yell at the first person you get to talk to because, “I tried all the other extensions and only got voice mail.” Well, if it’s not a current near emergency, I’m not the one to talk to and guess what? I’m transferring you to the extension for the person you really want. And if that means voice mail, then suck it up, buck, and deal with it. Leave your message and wait for your return phone call. Don’t call me back and yell at me. I have three other lines on hold wanting to do the same thing, and a fourth call coming in with – what? gasp! – a missing child. That’s the real emergency. That’s the real thing that I need to deal with right now. If you really need to let someone know how you feel about only getting through on one extension, call the Administrative building. They have literally hundreds of extensions. (more…)

Love it or hate it, this look at Windows Registry problems is as they say, “spot on”.

As I stood in line at the Diablo Burger in just off Heritage Square in downtown Flagstaff, I listened to a woman order her burger well done. The clerk tried to talk her out of a burger zapped of all the delicious juices that drip from a just right piece of lean meat, but she wouldn’t even let him talk. I didn’t get any burgers that day. Instead it was a giant bag of fries, delectably and delightfully seasoned, served in a paper bag like a sack lunch. I’m not sure all of the spices and herbs so liberally applied to the tubers, but they were fantastic. I had them with their Hatch chili mayo. The mayo could have been a bit spicier, it didn’t have as much tang as I thought it would but I wouldn’t throw it out.

Of course the next time I ordered from Diablo Burger it included burgers. There are a number of different styles – including the surprise special that includes whatever was in the box of locally grown and harvested vegetables. All burgers come served on an English muffin branded with the db logo and this time I ordered the Blake. While I was waiting for the burger to cook – the counter attendant in true bartender style – asks,

“Patrick, would you like something to drink while you’re waiting?”

I mentioned that I had been thinking about trying an, “Old Rasputen” (the cases of available beers is on display in the small dining area) and I notice him make a face. Not sure what triggered his response I asked him what the look was for. His reply, “stop thinking about it, you won’t regret it.” I took the plunge and ordered one. I was not completely ready, although a beer named for a notoriously nasty Russian should not really surprise anyone with its stoutness and 9% alcohol content. If stout isn’t your style, there are a number of other flavors available all from the same small brewery in California.

The burgers were great, the fries still to die for and the beer, I’m working my way through the varieties.

If you go to Diablo Burger take your cash – part of their mission is to keep as much money in Flagstaff as possible and credit card fees to processors in Delaware don’t make the cut.

Ok, so I use the term debate loosely. What’s up with the people yelling and shouting down their congress critters over the cost of health care? They don’t want to “pay” for other peoples’ medical coverage? That already happens. It happens in the form of higher insurance premiums, in higher doctor’s visit expenses – what do you think the $20.00 aspirin is all about anyway? It covers the uninsured family that brought their sick child to the emergency room for an ear infection because they can’t pay for a Dr office visit and the hospital is required by law to treat the patient. A $120.00 office visit (man that price has soared!) and an antibiotic prescription could have sufficed, but a family without health care, without preventative care, without a $20.00 copay will rack up over $500.00 by visiting the ER. And if they can’t afford to pay the $120.00, they aren’t paying the $500.00 and your next MRI costs an additional $10.00. So give me a break. You’re already paying for it – the Government is already paying for it. The hospital, your insurance company and you are already paying for it. Wouldn’t it be better if $2.40 were added to your next MRI so that family can go to a private doctor? Wouldn’t it be better if the emergency rooms weren’t clogged with non-life threatening injuries?

I have heard the rhetoric about bureaucrats running the health care system. Usually it’s, “do you want a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor? The answer is no.” Really? Ever hear of insurance, HMOs and the medical review board at the hospital? Whether you call them corporate executives, hospital executives, and even – gasp! – doctors they are still bureaucrats. So do you really want someone doing what they are already doing? No! We can’t have that! Oh wait, we already do.

Now that Sarah Palin quit – yes quit – her job leading Alaska in the middle of the biggest financial crises since the Depression she has time to post on facebook. Her latest ramblings are about the “death panel”

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Really!? First, let me wipe the coffee from my computer screen. Next, let me remind you of all of the programs that support and pay for special needs. Point in fact – as a school district our first priority on transporting students is those with special needs. By law; end of discussion. Does anyone really think this calls for her one year old child to stand in front of a “death panel”? No. The rewrite calls for Medicare – only available to those retired under Social Security – to pay for the time a patient and doctor sit down to talk about end of life issues. Living wills, medical directives, etc. (Something Terri Schiavo’s family might wish they would have had.) It pays for the doctor’s time if they cover certain topics. NPR had a recent discussion on this very topic. Unfortunately, the attorney they had on skewed the issue saying that family members couldn’t be in the room when the doctor discusses all of these things with the patient due to HIPAA (of course, he did use the ambiguity of legalese, ie “doublespeak” to make his point). Since HIPAA protects the patient and the patient’s Personal Health Information (PHI) the patient can choose to include whomever they want. The doctor can only include medical personnel – and then only for medical purposes.

So to recap:

• You and I and the Federal Government are already paying for everyone else’s health care (you know, kind of like how we were paying for the Iraq war – it doesn’t matter if it’s “off the books” we’re still paying for it)
• there are already bureaucrats between you and your doctor – it takes nearly three office employees per doctor to process insurance claims – which bureaucrat are you most afraid of?
• death panel – um no. “When you can’t argue the law, argue the facts. When you can’t argue the facts, argue the law.” And when you have neither, you pound your fist on the desk or make something up. Oh, my poor widdle downs syndrome baby who can’t even talk has to justify his life to the scary black man in the White House.

I would love to hear your opinions –