Matt McDonald’s Website

Lisa has been having trouble with her ankle for over a year now. She’s been going to a specialist, and a couple of months ago, the specialist ordered an MRI to be taken. So Lisa goes to the hospital. At the front desk, the receptionist does some research, and tells her our coinsurance amount (10%) is going to be $180. A small price to pay if we find the problem, so we pay it and have it done.

A month later the hospital turns around and says sorry, now you owe us $300. When asked why they first told us $180, they say “oh, that was just an estimate.” Would have been nice if we had known that from the start. So what can we do about this?

Nothing.

Perhaps we could have called our insurance and found out the actual amount beforehand.

Nope.

I just got off the phone with our insurance company, apparently the insurance company cannot tell the patient how much a procedure will cost them. The patient has to get that information from the hospital. Apparently the hospital only gives “estimates.”

Can you imagine if this is how other industries worked? Lets say I walk into a restaurant and order a hamburger, menu price $7. At the end of the meal, the waiter brings me a bill for $15. Sorry sir, that menu was just an estimation of prices. We really didn’t know how much work it was going to take to prepare the meal till we had already done it, now you owe us $15.

Fantastic system we’ve got here.

I can’t take it anymore. Programs crash every 5 minutes. I still can’t listen to music. Back to Gentoo.  Yes, it takes a full day to install, but at least everything works.

I installed Kubutu today to try it out, so far, my experience has been very mixed. First, I had trouble with the download - and I made a dumb mistake of burning the CD without checking the md5. So the 1st CD was trash. I finally got a good CD, then got the system running off of it. Next, I simply tried the install. As it was installing, I started messing around, playing with programs on the live CD, when everything froze. Installation was stuck at 42%, and nothing would work, so I rebooted.

The next time, I didn’t touch anything, and it still got stuck at 42%. About an hour later, it finally started up again. Finally, the install was complete. The first thing I noticed - almost everything seemed to work right away. Sound, wireless, it even configured my grub so I could boot into either kubutu or windows. I was a little sad I didn’t get a chance to choose which packages I wanted to not install, but I could always uninstall later. The only problem I had was none of the windows were able to resize or move around, but a quick apt-get dist-upgrade fixed that problem.

I started playing with some of the apps and ran into trouble right away. The amarok crashed the second I tried to open it, it still won’t work. The control center worked for a while, then crashed. Mplayer runs, but as soon as I try to open a DVD, it freezes. VLC runs, but crashes when I try to open a DVD. The Gimp crashes as soon as I try to do anything. At least Firefox works - no crashes yet at least. But I can’t see troubleshooting every other application I use.

First, Borne Ultimatum was a great movie. I still don’t particularly like the fighting scenes, though I think they were a bit better than in previous attempts. Instead of speeding up the action, they just used close shots and lots of cuts. I also think this series had a large effect on the direction the new Bond films are going - less cheese, which is great.

Second, I picked up some poison ivy over the weekend. It sucks.

Third, I just wanted to make a list of linux apps I use the most. I’m going to try installing Kubuntu, and I need to install these first:

Internet Apps
• firefox - web browser
• konqurer - alternate web browser
• azureus - torrents
• gaim - instant messanger

Office Apps
• OpenOffice - word proccessor,etc
• k/xpdf - pdf viewer
• vi - text editor
• kate - alternate text editor
• kcalc - calculator

Graphics
• gimp - photoshop replacement
• kuickshow - image viewer
• ksnapshot - screenshot taker

Multimedia
• amarok - Music Player (BEST music player you’ll find on any OS
• mplayer - Movie Player
• k3b - CD/DVD Burner

Games
• wesnoth - real time strategy game
• slash’em - dungeon crawl, nethack + lots of added stuff

Software Development
• zend studio - PHP IDE
• kdiff3 - File comparer
• xdebug - php debugger
• kcachegrind - visual output from xdebug
• APC - php cache
• subversion - version control

Server Software
• ssh - ssh
• postfix - mail server
• apache - webserver
• php - duh
• postgres - database
• mysql - database
• vixie-cron - cron tool
• cups - print manager

Desktop Apps
• ksmoothdock - emulates mac docking panel
• vmware workstation - run other OS
• krdc - remote desktop
• konsole - command line
• ksysguard - see what apps are running
• kcolorchooser - pick a color off the screen to use in something else

I should probobly just setup my K menu with these apps, where appropriate, since they are all I ever use.

As side note, I also need to install these Firefox Extensions:

• Adblock Plus
• del.icio.us Bookmarks (the one from Yahoo!)
• FasterFox
• Firebug
• QuickRestart
• SwitchTool Proxy
• YSlow

It’s been a very busy week.  I’ve played tennis every day, twice on Sunday, watched a bunch of movies - Sunshine, Hot Fuzz, The Contract, Infernal Affairs, spent time reading, visited the doctor, played a bit of WoW, and worked in a bit of practice for PC Indy.  On top of that, work was extremely busy this week, several bug fixes, and doing lots of testing for the new version of the software we will be installing shortly.  As a final note, I’ve gone back to low-carb/low-sugar for the next couple weeks in an attempt to shed another 15 pounds or so.  That leaves me with no energy.

It’s not looking good for the weekend, either.  I’ve got some chores to do around the house, some maintenance to do on Lisa’s car, and a bbq to attend for work.  I’m sure we’ll be playing plenty of tennis.

Hopefully next week will be a bit slower.  If so, I plan on trying out Ubuntu on my laptop.  I’m getting sick of Gentoo’s packages being way behind.