Roseyland

Now that health care reform is done, settled, and assured to never be an issue again (#sarcasm), I’m writing one last health care reform post. This debate has taken a toll on me. There are a few people out there whom I thought I would always hold in highest regard, and well, now I don’t. They probably feel the same way about me. Oh well, that’s life.

This is my problem. I love systems. I love to analyze systems. I like to break them down into parts, understand how the parts interact, and look for potential improvements. Few things make me happier than a clean elegant design. Not so simple as to be ineffective, and not so complex as to be inefficient. I don’t care who comes up with it, when I see a well designed system, I get excited.

Nothing excites me about the United States health care system. It’s ridiculously complex. Look at the chart above. The U.S. spends 45% more on health care than any other country. Our health care is not 45% better. No, seriously, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, the U.S. has world class health care capabilities, but our distribution system sucks.

Most people in the U.S. get some form of group insurance from their employer. I contend that this is “socialized” health care, because everyone in the group pays the same rate regardless of their sex, age, or state of health. If you leave your job, you can continue your health care for up to 18 month under COBRA. If you are self employed or your employer doesn’t offer a group plan, you can buy an individual insurance plan. This will probably cost you more for less coverage, and if you have a pre-existing condition, you will likely be denied coverage. If you are over 65, you can get Medicare, which is a government run single payer system. If you are poor or have certain disabilities, you might be able to get Medicaid, which is a system run by individual state governments. There are a number of different insurance companies, and a number of different health care providers. Every employer negotiates it’s own rates with insurance companies, and every insurance company negotiates it’s own rates with health care providers. In addition, every state has a unique set of regulations that insurance plans must abide by. To summarize, in the United States, we have employer provided group insurance plans, individual insurance plans, COBRA, Medicare, Medicaid, and a big giant patchwork of regulations.

Do you know what the U.K. has? The National Health Service (NHS). None of this one plan for you, another plan for you, or one rate for this insurance company at this provider, and another for another. They have the NHS, and that’s it. It doesn’t matter how old you are, who you work for, or what health conditions you have, you are covered by the NHS. I am sure the U.K.’s system isn’t perfect, no system is, and I do not think the U.K.’s system would be a good model for the U.S., but…. You have to admit, the U.K.’s system is exponentially simpler than the U.S. system, and it essentially produces the same results. This is a big reason the U.K. bar on the chart above is nearly half the size of the U.S. bar.

If I were King of the World, and I should be, I would transition the U.S. away from employer provided health insurance. Employer provided group insurance plans are by far the best health care options in the U.S. I love the insurance my employer provides, and I feel very grateful to have a job I enjoy with an employer that can provide me with said insurance. Still, I would rather not have my health insurance tied to my employer, and I don’t think the fact that I work for a fairly large company means I deserve better insurance than someone who is self employed or works for a small business. We should work towards taking the structure and benefits of employer provided group insurance plans and extending them to the country as one big group. To me, this is by far the most rational and “common sense” approach. It keeps the best aspects of our current system and simplifies it at the same time.

The recently passed Health Care Reform Bill isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it’s a step in a direction, which is actually pretty amazing at this point. I can’t say that it does much to simplify the current system, but it does fix the pre-existing condition issue and I am hopeful that the national insurance exchange will lead to nation wide group insurance plans similar to what large employers provide today.

The thing that’s frustrating about all this is that I get the feeling nobody really cares about anything I just said. Few people want to analyze our system, compare it to other systems, think of potential improvements, and evaluate the pros and cons. Most people just want to agree with the people around them. People are tribal, they perceive themselves as being members of a particular team, and that membership comes with a whole host of emotional entanglements. People love drama. People don’t make decisions based on a sincere attempt to understand reality, they just do what feels good. I realize that ranting about irrational and imaginary fears brings about certain emotional rewards, but those rewards have very real costs. I’m tired of paying those costs.

Okay, end rant. I’m never discussing healthcare again.

I bought my car 7 years ago. It’s a 2003 Honda Accord. I know, pretty exciting huh? The Honda Accord fits me perfectly. It’s a quality reliable car, and it’s not overly flashy. There is nothing about my Honda Accord that suggest I want to impress you or that I have anything to compensate for, and that’s how I like it. One of my favorite features of my car is the steering wheel stereo controls. Here is a picture of them.

The controls are a little dirty. That’s what happens when you touch something for 7 years. These controls let me adjust the volume, change the station/CD, and switch between FM/AM/CD all without taking my hands off the steering wheel or my eyes off the road. Awesome. In my old car, I didn’t have steering wheel stereo controls. Those were dark days.

A couple years after I bought my car, I got my first iPod. I didn’t think I would like an iPod that much, but like most new technologies, you don’t know you need it until you have it. It wasn’t long before I wanted my iPod to work with my car stereo. I did some research, but it seamed like the only option was an FM transmitter. I tried this on a few road trips, and FM transmitters work okay in the middle of nowhere, but not in cities. I also wanted a more permanent and clean solution that would let me store my iPod out of sight.

Eventually I found the Denison Ice Link. This was an adapter that connected to my iPod to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Basically, it made my iPod act like a CD changer. When I hit the +/- Disc buttons on my stereo, the iPod would switch playlist, and the steering wheel controls would let me move up and down tracks and adjust the volume. It was wonderful. I now had an almost endless supply of music in my car at my fingertips. Not only that, this opened up the world of podcast to me. I love podcast. They are like talk radio, only not stupid. Currently my favorite podcast are The K&K podcast, The 404, and This American Life.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After 5 years of faithful service, my iPod died. It had been acting a little weird for a few months, and then I think the extreme cold weather in St. Louis this January finished it off. I did some research, and the Denison Ice Link adapter in my car did not work with the newer iPods. Denison had newer adapters, but they no longer sold their products in the USA. Interesting. I tried to listen to the radio, but after a few days I couldn’t take it anymore. There is hardly any music on the music stations, and those 97.1 people, nuts, completely nuts (except the Dave Glover show, I like the Dave Glover show).

I did some more digging, and I found the USA SPEC PA15-HON2. This adapter makes iPods appear as a CD changer to my stereo like the Denison Ice Link, but it works with all of the new iPods and even the iPhone. It got good reviews on Amazon, so I bought the PA15-HON2 along with a new iPod nano (purple, I like purple). This cost me over $300 total, but I was desperate for my old life back.

Getting to the back of my car stereo is a little tricky. The first time I did this, I was fortunate to find a great post with pictures of a very similar install that somebody did. I couldn’t find the post again though, so this time I had to go from memory. I figured I’d post pictures of the process, in case somebody else out there wants to try something similar. The standard disclaimer applies: follow my instructions/advice at your own risk. I don’t know what the “right” way to do any of this is.

First, here is the inside of my car. The stereo is in the center, and below the stereo is a storage compartment with a silver door that slides back. This is where I’d like to put my iPod.

Here is the storage compartment with the door open. The cable is the old cable that attached my old iPod to the old adapter.

The first step is to remove the rubber liner from the ashtray shaped compartment that is labeled “Not An Ashtray”. It is held in by sticky glue, and you can pull it out fairly easily.

He is the rubber liner removed.

Under the rubber liner there is a plastic liner that is held in by clips. I removed it by prying a couple small screw drivers under it, and popping it up. You don’t really have to worry about scratching it, because it is covered by the rubber liner.

Here is the plastic liner removed.

Next, you have to remove the trim around that stick that let’s you switch between Park-Neutral-Drive-Reverse. What is that thing called anyways. You have to be more careful here, because you probably don’t want to scratch this part. The trim is held in by six clips (three evenly spaced along each side). I slid a screwdriver under each side and popped the trim up near each clip. You can kind of tell where they are when you do this.

Here is the trim piece removed.

In the ashtray like compartment, you can see two screws. Remove these and try not to lose the screws. Once you remove the screws, you can pull out the piece containing the ashtray like compartment and cigarette lighter. I just let it hang over to the side and out of the way.

Now there are two more screws at the bottom of the storage compartment. Remove these, and now the compartment is only held in by two clips on each side near the top of the compartment. Removing the compartment is a little tricky. You don’t want to force it, but you do have to apply a little force and pull at just the right angle. Just keep playing with it, and it will come out. Don’t get frustrated at this point, or you’ll do something stupid and break something, and that would suck, because Honda probably charges an arm and a leg for these parts.

With the storage compartment removed, we can get to the CD changer connection on the bottom of the stereo. This is also where the XM radio would attach if I had XM. The CD changer connection is the white female connector in the picture below.

Here is another view of the underside of the stereo and the CD changer connection from farther back.

I’d like the PA15-HON2 and my iPod to go inside the storage compartment, so I need a way run cables from the stereo into the storage compartment. It’s just a plastic box, so I drilled a hole into the top of it. The hole in the picture below was for the old adapter cable, and it was a little too small for the new cable.

I took the storage compartment up to my condo and drilled a bigger hole. I didn’t have a drill bit big enough for a nice round hole, so I just drilled a few small holes and then pulled it apart with some pliers. The result wasn’t pretty, but it’s out of sight, so I didn’t care. The cat loves to help.

Back in the car, I attached the new adapter cable to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Like so.

Then I ran the cable into the storage compartment, connected it to the PA15-HON2 adapter, and then connected the adapter to my new iPod nano. I also tested it at this point, because it would suck to put everything back together and find out that it doesn’t work.

Once I knew everything was working, I put it all back together. Basically you just reverse everything you did to take it all apart. The only tricky part is getting the storage compartment back in place. You have to slide it in at just the right angle. I lined up the screw holes at the bottom of the compartment, and then pushed on the upper part until the clips slid into place. It took a few minutes to get the storage compartment back in it’s proper place. Also, the door of the compartment probably won’t open and close right until you reattach the screws, but once you reattach the screws, make sure you test the door. If you put everything back into place and the door isn’t right, you’ll have to remove it all again to get the door right. The picture below shows everything back together with the adapter and iPod neatly tucked inside the storage compartment.

Here it is after the install with the storage compartment closed. See, you can’t even tell I have an iPod in there. I love it this way, nice, clean, and simple.

I love the new adapter. I set up 6 playlist named HONDA1-6 on my iPod, and I can switch between them using the Disc +/- buttons on my stereo. “Disc 7″ lets me flip though all of the music on my iPod, and “Disc 8″ is a direct mode where I can use the iPod controls to select music. The adapter also charges my iPod. The only problem I have had is that once direct mode locked up my iPod and I had to reset it. This only happened once though, and I don’t plan on using direct mode very often.

As a bonus, the adapter even works with my iPhone. When you connect the iPhone, the iPhone says that the accessory is not compatible with the iPhone, but if you just click OK, it works. You can access playlist on the iPhone just like the iPod, and you can even listen to internet radio using the WunderRadio iPhone app. I tested it, and I listened to BBC Radio 1 and Le Mouv’ Radio (France) in my car. That’s so cool.

I’m going to finish this off with a video of my current favorite song. It’s Fireflies by Owl City. If you don’t love this song, something is wrong with you. Enjoy.

Yeah, so I blogged every day in November and not once in December. I have a number of excuses, but none of them are very good. In order to get back into the swing of things, let me try an easy blog post to update you on all things Roseyland. God bless the bulleted list:

• I put up a Christmas tree for the first time this year. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It felt like Christmas lasted for the whole month of December rather than just a day or two. Plus, it became a project where I had to make measurements, comparison shop, and then buy accessories. These are the things I truly love.
• I travelled to Florida to visit family for New Year’s. It was fun, but it should have been warmer. I think the state of Florida owes me a refund.
• I’m on a diet. I weighed myself after New Year’s and discovered that I weighed more than I have ever weighed. Go me! My BMI is about 28. Last year it was 24. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at losing weight. I watch my calories, work out, and magically I’m thinner. This time I’m using myfitnesspal.com. This is a website that let’s you track your daily calorie intake and calories burned from exercise. They have a large database of foods and exercises, and even an iPhone app. The website calculates how many calories you should eat to lose a certain amount of weight, and then as you enter food or exercise during the day, it lets you know how many calories you have left. I think the technical term is “Easy-Peasy”. I’m going for a loss of 2 pounds per week. I’ve lost 5 pounds in the first week, that never keeps up though. You can follow my progress by checking out the badge over on the right.
• I’m reading SuperFreakonomics. The book Freakonomics is the closest thing I have to a bible, and SuperFreakonomics is just as good, if not better. Freakonomics is basically an economist analysis of the world. I love these books because they show how many of our preconceived notions are just plain wrong. I think these books should be required reading for anyone who wants to have an opinion. I also recommend anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
• I’m pretty sure that I’m going to Italy in June with my Mom, Aunt, and maybe a cousin or two. After going to London and Paris last summer, I’m afraid that I want to see the whole World, and by the whole World I mean Europe and Australia. My plan is to fly to Rome and stay in a vacation rental apartment. We will have 5 full days in which I would like to see: The Vatican, Ancient Rome, Ostia Antica, Tivoli, and maybe even a day in Florence. I’ve also been learning Italian on livemocha.com.
• I need you to watch Chuck. It’s one of the best shows on TV and if it get’s canceled, I’ll cry. You don’t want that do you? It’s on NBC, Monday night, 7C/8E. You can watch previous episodes on Hulu. I’m also watching Big Love on HBO, which is another one of my favorite shows.
• My Mom and Grandpa had an interesting discussion about healthcare over New Year’s. I stayed out of it, but it did make me think of a couple things. One being that we are all part of a system, and every “personal freedom” you take affects the “personal freedoms” available to others. The other thought I had was about complexity. There are a million different ways you can analyze our heath care issues, but the ultimate problem is that our health care system has grown into a very very complex system. The only way we will get out of this mess is to transition to a significantly less complex system. I can’t say that the current health care reform bill accomplishes this, but it still has my support. Partly because it does fix some significant flaws in our current system (pre-existing conditions, benefit caps), and partly because I think this is the best first step we are going to get at this point. This would be a good topic for a whole blog post, maybe I’ll write one.

That is all. I’ll write a real blog post soon. I promise.

Image Credit : Elizabeth

Well, it looks like I have successfully survived NaBloPoMo 2009. I hope you didn’t enjoy my blog too much, because I don’t think I’ll be posting again for at least a couple weeks. All in all, it wasn’t that bad, and I’m glad I did it, but it was definitely a challenge to make sure I left time for blogging every day. Here is what I learned:

• When I’m in a time crunch, the first thing I cut out is sleep. This is not a terrific strategy.
• If you are looking to buy an artificial Christmas tree, you should do so before Thanksgiving, they seem to be popular this time of year.
• The same goes for those miniature Starbucks cup Christmas tree ornaments.
• The previous two list items have very little to do with NaBloPoMo.
• Onedadslife’s experimental physics skills are somewhat lacking.
• I can blog from my iPhone.
• Epcot needs an India pavilion. Yeah, um, I didn’t get around to blogging about this, but I wanted too.
• The best way to save time blogging is to write shorter post, and lots of times they are better that way.

That’s it. I learned nothing else. I wish I could say that my writing has improved significantly, but it hasn’t. I also wish I could say that my writing speed has increased, and actually, it has a little. Probably the best thing that came out of NaBloPoMo is that now I have a fairly long list of potential blogging topics. If only I could find someone to write post on these topics. I really wish I could think of something profound to say to end this whole NaBloPoMo experiment, but mostly I just want to be done. So I guess I’m done. If I don’t talk to you before then, have a Merry Christmas!!! (or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or Winter Festival of Lights). The End.

Image Credit: Patrick Edwin Moran - Wikimedia Commons

I’m sure you are familiar with Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment. I mean, who isn’t? In case you missed that day of modern physics in college, you can watch the video below to review.

Basically, if you shine light through one slit, the light acts like a particle, but if you shine light through two slits, it acts like a wave. What’s even stranger, is that if you shine one photon at a time towards two slits, it still acts like a wave. Even though it’s just one particle. But wait, there’s more! If you shine light at two slits, but you set up a detector to see which slit the light travels through, the light goes back to acting like a particle. It appears that light changes it’s behavior depending on how you observe it. Weird.

I want you to do a new experiment for me. Create two screens where when a photon hits the screen, a blip appears so that you know where the photon hit the screen. In one of these screens, cut out two slits. Then put the screen with the double slit in front of the other screen and shine a light, one photon at a time, towards the double slit. If the photon does not go through one of the slits, you will see a blip on the first screen. If it does go through one of the slits on the first screen, you will not see a blip on the first screen, but you will see a blip on the second screen. Repeat this experiment many times keeping track of the location of the blips on the second screen, then let me know what pattern appears. Will it be a wave interference pattern, or single particle created bands? My guess is an interference pattern. For bonus points, make the first double slit screen some type of powered detector that only detects photons when it’s on. Then turn it on and off to see if it changes the pattern on the second screen.

I know what you are thinking. Isn’t this like that experiment that has already been done where they put detectors in front of both slits of a double slit? NO!!!! The key to my experiment is that we detect whether or not a photon goes through a slit, but we have no information as to which slit it went through. If we knew which slit it went through, it would obviously act like a particle. Duh!

It is possible that this experiment, or an equivalent experiment, has already been performed. If so, please send me the results. If not, please perform the experiment and let me know what the pattern on the second screen is. The first person to provide me with results that are to my satisfaction wins a $10 gift card to either Runza or Sonny’s BBQ. Your choice.

Today consisted of pizza and a movie. The movie was 2012, which was pretty good, but an hour too long. I might be biases though, because I drank a medium pop during the movie, and towards the end I think I came dangerously close to rupturing my bladder. TMI?

The pizza was Valentino’s. If you have never been fortuanate enough to travel to the great state of Nebraska and have a slice of Valentino’s hamburger pizza with a garlic roll, your life is incomplete, sorry. I also had runza and Spaghetti Works on this trip. Could it get any better? Oh yeah, the Turkey was good too.

I should be back to blogging on my computer tomorrow. I guess that means I won’t have an excuse for the short post filled with spelling and grammatical errors anymore. That sucks. Oh, the dog below is Bebe, he likes to jump and chase squirrels.

The Nebraska Cornhuskers beat the Colorado Buffalos today. Yay. They could have played better, but a wins a win. I think they have a shot of making the Big12 Championship a good game. I doubt they’ll win, but I’m glad to have one more game of Husker football to watch this year.

The pictures below are from a store in Omaha called Husker Hounds. It is packed with husker gear. I ended up buying two t-shirts and a fleece, when I originally had no plans to buy anything.

I hope you got some good Black Friday deals. Hopefully you found the perfect gift for me. I love gifts.

All of us here at Roseyland hope that you had a truly wonderful Thanksgiving. We had the standard Thanksgiving fare, you can see a picture of my plate below. A game of password was also played today. I’m surprisingly good at password. A head full of useless knowledge comes in handy from time to time. I’m watching a mythbusters marathon right now, so much better than pro football. I’m looking forward to watching the Husker game tomorrow. It will be nice to see a Nebraska game in Nebraska. You know, away from all the non-believers. If you are going shopping tomorrow, you are insane and need help, but good luck and have fun!

I’m in Omaha today for Thanksgiving. This is my first test of blogging from my phone. Hopefully some pictures show up at the end of this post. One is of my favorite meal from one of my two favorite restuarants. It’s spaghetti with white clam and beer cheese sauce from Spaghetti Works. My other favorite restuarant is Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ, which is in the south, mostly Florida. I’d say this looks pretty good for a post from my phone. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

I have absolutely no time to be writing a blog post right now, so let’s make this quick. Time to break out the bulleted list.

• I’m headed to the great state of Nebraska tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I know it will be fun once I get there, but right now I would kill to just spend the long weekend laying around my condo.
• The bags above are what I take on most trips. Actually, I usually go with a smaller roller bag, but it looks exactly the same. I love that backpack, it has an easy access slot for my MacBook. I always use a backpack as my carry on. I can’t fathom lugging around a bag that I can’t throw over my shoulder. I like to spend my time walking around airports when I’m waiting for my flight. I get bored just sitting around.
• I watched V tonight even though I had no time. My brain needed a break. I had to do some hard math coordinate system timing thinking today. I’m ticked that V isn’t coming back until March. Why do networks do this? This will probably kill V, because nobody will remember what it was by the time it comes back. I understand taking a break over the holidays when people are too distracted to watch TV, but March? Ugh.
• I’m not sure what I’m going to do about blogging when I’m gone. I don’t think I’ll have internet access other than my phone. I also won’t have much time. Either that or I’ll have a ton of time. You never know. I actually can blog from my phone, so I’m thinking that I’ll post a picture every day with a few sentences. We’ll see.
• Have a happy Thanksgiving!