OK, so Friday night my father in law was headed over to go out with us to dinner. He then called and said that wasn’t happening. He was having chest pains and shortness of breath. He needed to go to the ER.
We flipped a coin and headed to Forbes Regional. You may remember, my wife had a bad experience at Westmoreland Regional when she was dealing with pneumonia. Then again, I had a bad experience with West Penn Allegheny Health System when they neglected to honor a wellness visit for my wife and instead charged us for a service which led to a huge debacle over charges, collections, and general failure of the healthcare billing system. However, seeing as how Excela basically wasted precious time when my mother in law was dying from a brain hemorrhage, I was more comfortable going to Forbes.
Now, for four months the man has been complaining of his leg hurting. He has an artificial hip and is 73 years old. However, no one could figure out what the hell was going on. He has arthritis in his back which was causing issues with his leg. He wears a foot brace because of a drop foot and that was broken for the last four years. As soon as he replaced it and got new shoes, it all went to shit for him. So, he sat and sat. He wasn’t playing golf or doing anything else. In the end, the diagnosis was that he had three blood clots. One in his leg and one in each lung. As I called it, “Two in the chamber and one in the clip.”
After he finally got a room, we noticed two things. One, his roommate sounded like he needed a coughalator and two, the bed had blood on it. So, needless to say, we got him moved. He was fine down at the other end of the hall, but the lady in the room next to him has the same issue as the other guy. So, it’s never quiet. He’s been laid up now, going on day five. He’s ready to come home. Hopefully, he’ll be home today.
However, last night as we were leaving, we got the most unusual request. An elderly lady was sitting at the entrance to the hospital. She was sitting in a wheelchair and asked if we could take her home.
I was flabbergasted.
I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t have a chance. My kid got in the automatic revolving door and I had to follow her.
Apparently, she had been discharged and didn’t have a ride. She had been waiting for a cab but it hadn’t come after two hours. We were just about to say, “Yes”, when her ride showed up. A friend was coming to pick her up but fell asleep in the car out in the parking lot.
She was a trusting soul. We could have been psychos. Though, I could imagine her getting in the car and saying, “Thanks for giving me a ride. Do you mind if I stop at the bank and get some money to give you for your trouble?” Then she pulls out a gun and ski mask.
“Granny’s packing! She’s got one in the chamber and two in the clip.”
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Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The Final Chapter in the Medical Billing Saga
At long last there is closure… maybe.
If you’ve been reading on a regular basis, you’ve heard me gripe about my medical billing woes. The recap is this:
My wife went in for a routine exam last July. Lab work was sent by Provider A, West Penn Allegheny Health System. The next day she had another appointment for something else. Scans were done by Provider B, Excela Health.
The breakdown:
Provider A billed us $71.50 but never filed a claim.
Provider B billed us $250.00 and filed a claim.
We have an individual $250 deductible.
The result:
I paid Provider A for the full amount of $71.50.
I paid Provider B for the difference of $178.50, the difference of our deductible.
I went to collections over $71.50 with Provider B.
A couple weeks ago I called Provider A to get an explanation of which there was none. I called the Insurance company, of which we are no longer policy holders, and got no explanation. I called the collection agent and told them I had nothing to offer them as an explanation as that I didn’t know who should have been owed the money. They provided me proof of the debt owed to Provider B, but since the insurance company had no record of a claim from Provider A, I could not be sure that Provider B should have been owed anything.
I finally got through to someone at Provider A and they said, “Oh yeah, our bad.” They filed the claim which had been languishing in some limbo for who knows how long. I know it was more than six months, because I called them last year and said, "Hey, the insurance company never saw a claim." And they said, "Oh yeah, we'll file one."
Seven days later I called the Insurer to see if they received anything. They had not. I spoke to a supervisor who followed up with Provider A, which had done nothing yet. The Insurer got some traction and the claim was finally filed.
And the conclusion is…
I should never had been charged the $71.50 by Provider A. It was part of a wellness visit and they screwed up the billing. I guess they figured, "We got paid. Who cares if it was from the insurance company or the member?"
So, now I owe $71.50 to Provider B. Unfortunately, I have to wait ANOTHER WEEK to get reimbursed. Why can’t they just issue the check to the collector. It won’t take as long. I sure as hell am not cutting a check to them without the reimbursement in my hand.
There are some of you just shaking your heads, I get that. Here’s the thing. Even though $71.50 is not the end of my world, it impacts my finances a hell of a lot more than it impacts Excela Health or this collector. The principle of the matter is that I didn’t screw up. Provider A did when they billed me for something they never should have. I am simply acting the way any other business does when it comes to appeals and reimbursements.
How long does it usually take for you to get a rebate… if you get one? Something along the lines of four to six weeks, right? Why is that? Volume? Maybe.
So, I should just jump right in and pay because someone claims that I owe them something. A business has to sign a form, provide proof of being owed and wait for the payment to be processed, just like individuals.
If we are going to live in a world where we recognize corporations as people, then they can be treated just as shitty way we are. Therefore, I am a corporation. I’ve just decided. I am a corporation of me and I employ my wife and child. I provide them health care and I pay for it from my own pocket. I pay taxes on their existence in my corporation.
Don’t hate the player. Change the game.
If you’ve been reading on a regular basis, you’ve heard me gripe about my medical billing woes. The recap is this:
My wife went in for a routine exam last July. Lab work was sent by Provider A, West Penn Allegheny Health System. The next day she had another appointment for something else. Scans were done by Provider B, Excela Health.
The breakdown:
Provider A billed us $71.50 but never filed a claim.
Provider B billed us $250.00 and filed a claim.
We have an individual $250 deductible.
The result:
I paid Provider A for the full amount of $71.50.
I paid Provider B for the difference of $178.50, the difference of our deductible.
I went to collections over $71.50 with Provider B.
A couple weeks ago I called Provider A to get an explanation of which there was none. I called the Insurance company, of which we are no longer policy holders, and got no explanation. I called the collection agent and told them I had nothing to offer them as an explanation as that I didn’t know who should have been owed the money. They provided me proof of the debt owed to Provider B, but since the insurance company had no record of a claim from Provider A, I could not be sure that Provider B should have been owed anything.
I finally got through to someone at Provider A and they said, “Oh yeah, our bad.” They filed the claim which had been languishing in some limbo for who knows how long. I know it was more than six months, because I called them last year and said, "Hey, the insurance company never saw a claim." And they said, "Oh yeah, we'll file one."
Seven days later I called the Insurer to see if they received anything. They had not. I spoke to a supervisor who followed up with Provider A, which had done nothing yet. The Insurer got some traction and the claim was finally filed.
And the conclusion is…
I should never had been charged the $71.50 by Provider A. It was part of a wellness visit and they screwed up the billing. I guess they figured, "We got paid. Who cares if it was from the insurance company or the member?"
So, now I owe $71.50 to Provider B. Unfortunately, I have to wait ANOTHER WEEK to get reimbursed. Why can’t they just issue the check to the collector. It won’t take as long. I sure as hell am not cutting a check to them without the reimbursement in my hand.
There are some of you just shaking your heads, I get that. Here’s the thing. Even though $71.50 is not the end of my world, it impacts my finances a hell of a lot more than it impacts Excela Health or this collector. The principle of the matter is that I didn’t screw up. Provider A did when they billed me for something they never should have. I am simply acting the way any other business does when it comes to appeals and reimbursements.
How long does it usually take for you to get a rebate… if you get one? Something along the lines of four to six weeks, right? Why is that? Volume? Maybe.
So, I should just jump right in and pay because someone claims that I owe them something. A business has to sign a form, provide proof of being owed and wait for the payment to be processed, just like individuals.
If we are going to live in a world where we recognize corporations as people, then they can be treated just as shitty way we are. Therefore, I am a corporation. I’ve just decided. I am a corporation of me and I employ my wife and child. I provide them health care and I pay for it from my own pocket. I pay taxes on their existence in my corporation.
Don’t hate the player. Change the game.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
I Hope You'll Be Seeing Less Of Me
I’ve never been the skinny kid. From an early age, probably around seven or eight, I was the pudgy one on the playground wearing Huskies. You know, the big boy jeans. But I never let it really get to me. My parents would tell me, “You don’t want to deal with the extra weight when you’re older because it’s tougher to lose it.” I just kind of shined it on.
I figured there would always be time. There would always be time. I’m going to live forever, right? OK, maybe a couple hundred years. In any case, I never worried about it the way I probably should have. I never played organized sports, never ran for any reason other than being chased, and I really didn’t have a concern over what I was eating. By high school, I was 186 pounds. I’m 5’ 9” / 5’ 10”, depending on which police report you read. By the usual standards, I was considered obese. I never felt it. In fact, for the most part, I felt completely healthy.
In my sophomore year of college, I had moved up to 214 pounds. Still didn’t feel “fat” but definitely noticed the difference. By the summer of 1996 I was working at Cedar Point and had come down with walking pneumonia. I came down with it in May and didn’t notice it until July. I also didn’t notice that I had dropped to 177. That was almost 40 pounds. Don’t ask me how that happened. I was 214 in February. That’s all I remember and it’s not like anything really changed between then and May, so I have no clue if I had already dropped some weight before I got sick. The point being, I wish I could do that, again. LOL. Actually, having walking pneumonia sucked. I had trouble doing anything strenuous and got tired very easily.
After college and around the end of the decade I was hovering at about 200 pounds. I was working for a hotel banquet department and oddly enough, the food did not contribute to any additional weight gain. I was constantly moving and it was probably the best job I could have had at the time to keep me active. It’s just too bad I was putting in 14 hour days on the weekends and had no energy to do anything but sleep and work.
Then, in 2001, I got hired in an office and it’s been downhill ever since. Over the last nine years, I’ve gained 80 pounds. I still claim I haven’t lost all the weight from my daughter being born but for some reason, no one wants to believe me. I know exactly what the problem is. I SIT ON MY DEAD ASS ALL DAY LONG! The only exercise I get is going to get another cup of coffee. On the weekends I would do yard work but that was just a pain. And, it’s not exactly a consistent workout as there are weekends the yard doesn’t need cut, although those leaves are mocking me, right now. With my wife working on the weekends, I haven’t been outside. I could take our daughter out but multitasking yard work while watching her is hard for me and I don’t want even think about what could happen.
My knees hurt, my back hurts, my stomach hurts from having my belt buckle dig into it all day. I’ve stopped wearing a belt and hope to God my pants don’t decide to test the laws of gravity. I suffer from the “Too much gut, not enough butt” syndrome where the pants won’t sit at my waist because of the slope downward and my butt isn’t round enough to hold them up. If I hike them up around my navel I look like Tweedledum.
I’ve got asthma and have developed OSA in the last six years. I wear a mask at night that pretty much just blows air into my throat to keep it open so that I don’t stop breathing. That’s ironic if you knew me and where I worked. However, those are the worst problems I’ve faced with my health.
Yes, there are times when I get a little shaky and scattered if I don’t eat lunch. And sometimes when I do eat my lunch, I’m struggling to stay awake. Sounds like diabetes, huh? According to a multiphasic blood test I took a few months back, I’m fine. All my numbers are good. I don’t even have high cholesterol. My blood pressure is normal and has been practically the same the last three years I’ve had it taken. For all intents and purposes, I’m healthy, just fat.
It’s my own fault. I sit at my desk all day long. I eat my lunch there. When I go home, I sit in a recliner and watch television or work on my laptop. I don’t have a lot of activity. Because of the shirt gig, I devote a lot of time to being online and designing or blogging or whatever. If I could do it all while walking, I would.
Diet is semi good, semi bad. I usually eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast around 6:15 AM. My lunch, around noon, consists of leftovers that fit into a small container or a sandwich, a Diet Pepsi, and a Lite Yogurt. My ride home at 4pm consists of an apple. Dinner is where I get into trouble. We usually eat around 7pm because daughter usually naps and my wife is teaching piano until then. We will either eat at home a couple nights a week or will go out. She doesn’t like to cook. Now, when her mom was alive, we’d eat at their house probably four nights a week. The problem with that was always portion. They were always making sure we had plenty to fill us up and it takes a lot to fill me up. When we do go out, I’m usually eating half of whatever I order, saving half for lunch. If I do snack, it’s usually at five. Sometimes I’d make myself a cup of raisins, peanuts, and chocolate chips. Maybe I’d have a cookie or a glass of chocolate milk. Besides all that, I drink about eight glasses of water a day, maybe three cups of coffee with Splenda and Powdered Creamer, and Diet Soda at meals.
What sucks is that 10 years ago I would go to The Olive Garden and eat an entire plate of pasta. Now, I’ll take half home and I’m 80 pounds heavier. That’s cruel. I eat less than I did a decade ago and weigh almost 50% more.
I’ve had it. I’m tired of it. I’m sick of knocking shit over as I walk past it and I’m tired of clothes not fitting, in a good way. Being fat is more expensive because the bigger size clothes cost more. So, this morning, when I got up, I weighed myself. 280. That’s where we go from here. I’m not going to start dieting because I don’t believe in it. Dieting implies that at some point you go back to eating like you did before. Well, I can’t do that. I’m just going to change.
I’m not going to go crazy and eat bread and water. I’m still going to eat the foods I like. I’m just going to eat less of them, for a start. Last night, I skipped my usual 5pm snack. At dinner, I skipped the fries and/or onion rings I would usually get with my Italian Hoagie and just had a couple from my daughter’s plate. She won’t eat them. I also had one Diet Pepsi, not two or three like I usually do. This morning I had one measured cup of Life cereal. We had a meeting at work and there was Quakers Oats Bars and Special K Bars and I chips. I skipped them and grabbed a small plate with some grapes, pineapple, and watermelon. I had my left over quarter of Italian Sub, without Italian dressing and a Lite Yogurt. And you know what? I’ve felt pretty good today.
I figure on trying to drop a few pounds just by changing how much I eat and then start working on being more active. I don't plan on being some health guru or fitness nut because I'll just have to take the bridge. And don't plan on me entering a marathon. I'm not doing any intensive training, because like a diet, you have to keep it up. I don't want a shock to my system. I just want to lose weight and get my life back inside a pair of size 36 jeans. I'm not going on Biggest Loser or joining a gym. This has to be normal, routine kind of stuff or I won't stick to it. I'll walk, I'll play with my kid, I'll do more physical labor, but if I have to start a regimen to lose the weight it will be pointless because I'll just gain it back. And I'm not trying pharmaceuticals, either. Too many other problems can be caused by that. I take a multi-vitamin, fiber supplement, B Complex and Gingko Biloba. Besides allergy medicine and Advair, that's all I want to take.
Of course, if I start becoming more active, it might mean less time devoted to my online presence, you'd be better for it, too. LOL. I'm not going away that easy, though. I would like to start chronicling how I’m doing. If for no other reason than to maybe help somebody out there. I’m biggest lazy bastard I know and if I can pull this off, than anyone can. I’m going to start figuring out how to put a widget up on the blog to track this kind of stuff. This is going to be an experiment and I hope I can drop the weight. Ultimately, I’d love to be back down to, at most, 200 pounds. The pie in the sky hope is I can get back to what I weighed in high school. Although, if I pull that off, I’ll probably look like a sharpie and that’s really unattractive.
Stay tuned. I’m hoping you see less of me.
I figured there would always be time. There would always be time. I’m going to live forever, right? OK, maybe a couple hundred years. In any case, I never worried about it the way I probably should have. I never played organized sports, never ran for any reason other than being chased, and I really didn’t have a concern over what I was eating. By high school, I was 186 pounds. I’m 5’ 9” / 5’ 10”, depending on which police report you read. By the usual standards, I was considered obese. I never felt it. In fact, for the most part, I felt completely healthy.
In my sophomore year of college, I had moved up to 214 pounds. Still didn’t feel “fat” but definitely noticed the difference. By the summer of 1996 I was working at Cedar Point and had come down with walking pneumonia. I came down with it in May and didn’t notice it until July. I also didn’t notice that I had dropped to 177. That was almost 40 pounds. Don’t ask me how that happened. I was 214 in February. That’s all I remember and it’s not like anything really changed between then and May, so I have no clue if I had already dropped some weight before I got sick. The point being, I wish I could do that, again. LOL. Actually, having walking pneumonia sucked. I had trouble doing anything strenuous and got tired very easily.
After college and around the end of the decade I was hovering at about 200 pounds. I was working for a hotel banquet department and oddly enough, the food did not contribute to any additional weight gain. I was constantly moving and it was probably the best job I could have had at the time to keep me active. It’s just too bad I was putting in 14 hour days on the weekends and had no energy to do anything but sleep and work.
Then, in 2001, I got hired in an office and it’s been downhill ever since. Over the last nine years, I’ve gained 80 pounds. I still claim I haven’t lost all the weight from my daughter being born but for some reason, no one wants to believe me. I know exactly what the problem is. I SIT ON MY DEAD ASS ALL DAY LONG! The only exercise I get is going to get another cup of coffee. On the weekends I would do yard work but that was just a pain. And, it’s not exactly a consistent workout as there are weekends the yard doesn’t need cut, although those leaves are mocking me, right now. With my wife working on the weekends, I haven’t been outside. I could take our daughter out but multitasking yard work while watching her is hard for me and I don’t want even think about what could happen.
My knees hurt, my back hurts, my stomach hurts from having my belt buckle dig into it all day. I’ve stopped wearing a belt and hope to God my pants don’t decide to test the laws of gravity. I suffer from the “Too much gut, not enough butt” syndrome where the pants won’t sit at my waist because of the slope downward and my butt isn’t round enough to hold them up. If I hike them up around my navel I look like Tweedledum.
I’ve got asthma and have developed OSA in the last six years. I wear a mask at night that pretty much just blows air into my throat to keep it open so that I don’t stop breathing. That’s ironic if you knew me and where I worked. However, those are the worst problems I’ve faced with my health.
Yes, there are times when I get a little shaky and scattered if I don’t eat lunch. And sometimes when I do eat my lunch, I’m struggling to stay awake. Sounds like diabetes, huh? According to a multiphasic blood test I took a few months back, I’m fine. All my numbers are good. I don’t even have high cholesterol. My blood pressure is normal and has been practically the same the last three years I’ve had it taken. For all intents and purposes, I’m healthy, just fat.
It’s my own fault. I sit at my desk all day long. I eat my lunch there. When I go home, I sit in a recliner and watch television or work on my laptop. I don’t have a lot of activity. Because of the shirt gig, I devote a lot of time to being online and designing or blogging or whatever. If I could do it all while walking, I would.
Diet is semi good, semi bad. I usually eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast around 6:15 AM. My lunch, around noon, consists of leftovers that fit into a small container or a sandwich, a Diet Pepsi, and a Lite Yogurt. My ride home at 4pm consists of an apple. Dinner is where I get into trouble. We usually eat around 7pm because daughter usually naps and my wife is teaching piano until then. We will either eat at home a couple nights a week or will go out. She doesn’t like to cook. Now, when her mom was alive, we’d eat at their house probably four nights a week. The problem with that was always portion. They were always making sure we had plenty to fill us up and it takes a lot to fill me up. When we do go out, I’m usually eating half of whatever I order, saving half for lunch. If I do snack, it’s usually at five. Sometimes I’d make myself a cup of raisins, peanuts, and chocolate chips. Maybe I’d have a cookie or a glass of chocolate milk. Besides all that, I drink about eight glasses of water a day, maybe three cups of coffee with Splenda and Powdered Creamer, and Diet Soda at meals.
What sucks is that 10 years ago I would go to The Olive Garden and eat an entire plate of pasta. Now, I’ll take half home and I’m 80 pounds heavier. That’s cruel. I eat less than I did a decade ago and weigh almost 50% more.
I’ve had it. I’m tired of it. I’m sick of knocking shit over as I walk past it and I’m tired of clothes not fitting, in a good way. Being fat is more expensive because the bigger size clothes cost more. So, this morning, when I got up, I weighed myself. 280. That’s where we go from here. I’m not going to start dieting because I don’t believe in it. Dieting implies that at some point you go back to eating like you did before. Well, I can’t do that. I’m just going to change.
I’m not going to go crazy and eat bread and water. I’m still going to eat the foods I like. I’m just going to eat less of them, for a start. Last night, I skipped my usual 5pm snack. At dinner, I skipped the fries and/or onion rings I would usually get with my Italian Hoagie and just had a couple from my daughter’s plate. She won’t eat them. I also had one Diet Pepsi, not two or three like I usually do. This morning I had one measured cup of Life cereal. We had a meeting at work and there was Quakers Oats Bars and Special K Bars and I chips. I skipped them and grabbed a small plate with some grapes, pineapple, and watermelon. I had my left over quarter of Italian Sub, without Italian dressing and a Lite Yogurt. And you know what? I’ve felt pretty good today.
I figure on trying to drop a few pounds just by changing how much I eat and then start working on being more active. I don't plan on being some health guru or fitness nut because I'll just have to take the bridge. And don't plan on me entering a marathon. I'm not doing any intensive training, because like a diet, you have to keep it up. I don't want a shock to my system. I just want to lose weight and get my life back inside a pair of size 36 jeans. I'm not going on Biggest Loser or joining a gym. This has to be normal, routine kind of stuff or I won't stick to it. I'll walk, I'll play with my kid, I'll do more physical labor, but if I have to start a regimen to lose the weight it will be pointless because I'll just gain it back. And I'm not trying pharmaceuticals, either. Too many other problems can be caused by that. I take a multi-vitamin, fiber supplement, B Complex and Gingko Biloba. Besides allergy medicine and Advair, that's all I want to take.
Of course, if I start becoming more active, it might mean less time devoted to my online presence, you'd be better for it, too. LOL. I'm not going away that easy, though. I would like to start chronicling how I’m doing. If for no other reason than to maybe help somebody out there. I’m biggest lazy bastard I know and if I can pull this off, than anyone can. I’m going to start figuring out how to put a widget up on the blog to track this kind of stuff. This is going to be an experiment and I hope I can drop the weight. Ultimately, I’d love to be back down to, at most, 200 pounds. The pie in the sky hope is I can get back to what I weighed in high school. Although, if I pull that off, I’ll probably look like a sharpie and that’s really unattractive.
Stay tuned. I’m hoping you see less of me.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
A Chicken In Every Pot And An iPad in Every Room
Back in January I laughed off Apple’s iPad by comparing it to those oversized button remote controls that you buy for Nana and Peepop. Lord knows how many times I’ve had to fix the settings on my father-in-law’s television because he mistakenly pushed the SAP button on his remote, changing the sound settings to secondary audio program ones. “Why is Law & Order in Spanish?!?!” LOL.
Like I said, don’t get me wrong, mobile phones already have the ability to do what I would like them to do. My brother showed me live images from security cameras where he worked on his phone. He could run an office from his phone, if given the chance. But one would think that, with the introduction of a device that is built on the technology introduced in the iPhone, it would be able to do that much and more.
So, I invite you into my fantasy world. Not that one… The other one, the Mongo Sandbox, where I have a disposable income and a blank slate on which to build anything I want. And for this sand castle I am using the “Mongo” brand smart tablet to run everything.
Back in my June post about the iPad I mentioned that it would be nice if you could come home from work and prop your feet up in front of a small screen to catch up on the news or sports. I’m not talking about a 50” LCD HDTV. I’m talking about a sleek and stylish thin screen sitting on a small stand hooked, via USB cable to a digital tuner. Once you are done watching Sports Center, you decide you want to read a book. You stand up and walk over to the screen you’ve been watching, unhook the USB cable and take the device from its stand. You turn it 90 degrees and now you have an eBook reader. That was my original idea. But in the sandbox of my mind that was only the beginning.
What if you decide that the lights are too bright in the room for you to read the eBook. You simply minimize your reader and open the app HOME which runs your home. You can then navigate a path to something like Systems\Utilities\Lighting which shows a wireframe map of your home by floor. You choose the room and, with your finger, adjust a slider which controls the level of lighting in the room, much like volume control on your computer. You then close that app and restore your reader app and continue reading your ebook.
Let’s say you get a phone call. Simply minimize your reader again and use the Phone App to answer the phone. Either through a blue tooth handset attached to the tablet or even by using the speaker on the tablet you can chat with your friend who wants to go catch a movie. Without ending the call you can open up the Web Browser and look up show times and purchase tickets which can then be printed via WiFi to your printer. All while you are still talking. I know phones can already do this, but this is a bigger interface that is tied to more systems and works with several other devices.
Remember, in the sandbox, the possibilities are endless as well as the funds to make them happen. Now, you could say all this dependence on a tablet PC is bad, like Skynet bad or Wall-E bad. True, but what if you are elderly or confined to a wheel chair or have the inability maneuver around your space to achieve these tasks? This might make your quality of life a little better and, in an age where medical costs are rising or they are not being reimbursed as well as they used to, the ability to be more independent with this type of technology could be a welcome savings. So, that covers one application in a small capacity, but I’ve got bigger ideas and with multiple devices around the home, thanks to that sandbox income. The previous scenario covers perhaps a den setting. Let’s move this towards the whole house.
One of the greatest things about my car, which I miss, is the remote start feature. I went to change the battery in the key chain remote and one of the solders broke, severing the circuit. I’m just too lazy, and probably inept, to fix it, so I have to go out and not only start my car on a cold day, while inside it, I have to use the key to unlock it. Since the car only has one key hole, I have to use the driver’s side lock to unlock all of the doors and open the hatch. But what if GM had an app for that? Well, someone does.
So, now when it’s ten degrees out there and a foot of snow is on the ground, you can use the that same technology, along with a few others to get to work easier. Now, the simple solution would be to park your car in the garage, but what if you forgot too or some other reason prevented you from doing that. You’ve got to go outside and get in your car, which is cold, and there’s a foot of snow in the driveway. You just don’t have time to shovel or get out the snow blower before work. With the Mongo Smart Tablet, you don’t have to. From any Smart Tablet in the house, you can call up your automobile app, and remote start your car. But what about the snow? Easy, when you first get up in the morning and notice the snow, you use your smart tablet to turn on the radiant heating system that is installed underneath your driveway. While you shower, shave, and have your coffee, your driveway is clearing itself of all that snow. You simply walk out onto the empty driveway and get into your already warm vehicle. Warmquest is a company that can do that. This same company can also install under shingle roof deicing equipment which would have been perfect this past year with all the reports of collapsed roofs due to snow from Snowmageddon. Not to mention, icicles are dangerous and could be eliminated in this case.
Wasteful energy could be a thing of the past with your Mongo Smart Home because you could remember that you left the lights on upstairs or in another part of the house and the smart tablet could alert you and could be used to turn off the lighting in those empty rooms. You could check out noises outside the house by accessing the CCTV system, like my brother showed me, activating or deactivating flood lights to get a clearer picture, and call authorities if needed. CNN had an article about this, but it was only one of eight different money saving tips which was crudely advertised as an article devoted to running your home on an iPad.
The applications are limitless in the sandbox of my mind. I could be in the kitchen, getting ready for guests and be using the smart tablet there to follow a recipe online while setting the light levels in the house, deicing the driveway and starting up the fireplace for ambiance. It sucks when you are trying to do 15 things at once while watching a pot of sauce or soup. In the event that you have to leave the kitchen and attend to something that requires some time, you can use the smart tablet in any room to call up kitchen functions and shut off the stove to keep things from boiling over. One of the coolest amenities we had in the beach house we rented this year was the sound system. From a main receiver/tuner in the living room we could supply the entire house with audio. There were individual volume control knobs in each room wired for sound, but the source of the audio came from the living room. We discovered this by accident after setting up my Nintendo Wii and letting my father in law play Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 while we were outside on the deck one night. It was all peaceful and serene on the deck, overlooking the sound, when all of the sudden gun shots ripped through the air. We thought we were under attack. Hell, the neighborhood probably thought they were being invaded, Red Dawn style. We just didn’t know that all the volume knobs were left on by the previous renters and the surround sound of my father in law blasting away Bambi echoed outside and across the street. So, yeah, it would be nice if your smart tablet could control something like that, without having to go into every room of the house and adjust the volume.
All of these innovations are reminiscent of a Merry Melodies cartoon, called "Design For Leaving", where Daffy Duck retrofits Elmer Fudd’s house with buttons of all sorts. And to that end, all sorts of things could go wrong. As much as I would be a champion of this style of design, I understand chaos theory and Murphy’s Law very well. The power can go out, Blue Screen of Death types of failures, firmware issues, updates, and viruses could render your Mongo Smart Home inoperable. I would never dream of turning control of your home solely over to a computer. Everything would still function as it would without the smart tablet interface, but the addition of the interface is like a dimmer installed in a light circuit. You use a switch to supply power to the light but dimmers installed in certain places can adjust the settings to the already powered lights. The same here, it’s an added feature not a control over the functionality of the appliances and utilities.
Okay, perhaps the sandbox ideas are a dream for those who have the income and technical savvy to pull it off in the real world. But that’s the fun of imagining what a device like the iPad can do. There are plenty of real world, business applications for a smart tablet. Schools are beginning to adopt the iPad in the classroom. Teachers can conduct a lesson and students can interact with the lesson, adding notes and asking questions into a notepad style environment. Just think about huge lectures, with 400 students in them. If students had an iPhone app or smart tablet in the classroom, they could ask a question from the back row and the TA could capture all this for the professor to expound upon or address during the lecture, while it’s fresh. The student, at the back of the room does not have to shout or draw unwanted attention because the question could be anonymously asked, filtered by the TA, of course. The TA could even respond with an answer without having to disrupt the flow of the lecture.
As a Theatre Arts major in college, I have gone through tech rehearsal boot camp. You get up really early on a Sunday and come down to the space, ready to spend the next 12 hours doing mundane but very important work. You begin pulling together the important changes and cues that occur during a show with all of your tech heads like lighting, sound and such. With a smart tablet interface, you could run a sound board or light board remotely, while sitting next to the director or stage manager instead of up in the booth. The process could become more efficient without a lot of shouting back and forth or headset chatter. The director could simply lean over and talk to the designer or tech. No yelling, “Give me channel 4 up 10%.” Here is an article about the application.
Also, notes could be taken with a handwriting converter. I’ve done it and I’ve worked with directors who have stood there and tried to decipher scribbles into an important production note. Some of these innovations are already in place with iPhone apps but, again, broad spectrum, bigger interface and multiple applications running at once.
And let’s not forget the healthcare field. Doctors could see a patient, look at their charts, prescribe meds which could then be printed at the receptionist desk to be handed to the patient or even sent to the pharmacy, eliminating handwriting errors. Doctors could be linked into a database of information about symptoms and diseases. The CDC could help control an outbreak by recognizing these symptoms and posting to a board where providers could tag them and compare against diagnoses they have in their office, all during a patient’s appointment. Doctors could monitor patients’ vitals remotely and prioritize various patients from their tablet. Of course, there would have to be a huge amount of security attached because of HIPPA. Applications are endless.
Facilities management could be streamlined. Systems could be monitored for changes or failures. Lighting levels and schedules for automatic lighting could be adjusted on the fly. Sensors could pickup issues like security or climate controls. The ability to pinpoint a problem could correct it faster. And with that built in webcam, missing from the iPad, you could snap a picture and send it to the tech who will be correcting the issue in the case of building and grounds issues.
So, my mind isn’t too far into the clouds when it comes to technology. When I started writing this post, did the bare minimum of research to see if what I had thought of was already in use. Some things were there for the iPhone and some were there for the iPad but not everything as far as I can tell, although Smart Homes are a reality in regards to mobile devices. For now, I have little interest in buying an iPad because of the missing features I feel would be important. Also, as much as I tout being a geek, I don’t even have a data package for my phone. I don’t text and I use my phone to um… make calls. Whenever Apple or another company comes up with the smart tablet that I would want I’ll think about crossing that bridge. Until then, there’s always room in the sandbox.
But for all my chagrin and snark over the iPad I’ve had a change of heart. Well, I’ve had a change of mind. I still believe the iPad was a fundamentally flawed concept due to its limited capabilities. A USB port would be nice. The ability to run more than one App at one time would be, too. "The iPad is meant to be an easy-to-use appliance, not an all-purpose computer. A USB port would mean installing drivers for printers, scanners and anything else you might hook up." Steve Jobs says in an article from Wired. (NOTE: Multi-tasking should be available this fall.)
Appliance? Appliance for what? It’s a digital device. It’s THE digital device, the one we’ve supposedly been waiting for to revolutionize hand held mobile devices. Could it be that Apple couldn’t get to do all the nifty things we, as tech-geek consumers, wanted it to do but had to release something in order to stay ahead of the curve? Maybe. After all, if we’ve learned anything in the computer and digital age, the early bird gets the worm. If Apple can hook everyone on the concept of the iPad, they can go back and work out all the wrinkles in time for the second generation. It worked for the iPod. Other portable media devices have tried to knock the iPod off the top of the market share hill but with every iteration or next gen iPod more features continue to draw in customers, including ones who had bought the previous version.
However, the iPad makes a leap, in terms of technology, and in this case, Jobs better start listening to the masses and add some of those features quickly, because while the early bird gets the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese. If someone figures out a way to emulate what Apple has done with additional features that please the consumer, Apple may be stuck in the trap.
An appliance? That makes me laugh. I do not pretend to be the geekiest geek that ever geeked but from a user standpoint I can see so many more uses for a tablet PC than to just read a book or run goofy apps, one at a time. I think in terms of outside the box application. Finding ways to use technology in areas that it was never originally intended to be introduced to. The iPad or a tablet PC by any company gives freedom. Yes, you can do a lot of things with a mobile device like an iPhone or Blackberry, but the tablet gives you greater ease of interface and visual aesthetics. Some people, like me, have fatter fingers or aren’t as good at fine manipulation of objects. Those of us suffering from banana hand syndrome or have all the dexterity of an oven mitt need a larger area in which to work. Case in point, I don’t text. I use a laptop but would much rather have a standard keyboard to type on and a mouse in my hand instead of a pad on the laptop to run my finger around. In that instance, a tablet PC would give me more workable area to maneuver my flippers around.
Like I said, don’t get me wrong, mobile phones already have the ability to do what I would like them to do. My brother showed me live images from security cameras where he worked on his phone. He could run an office from his phone, if given the chance. But one would think that, with the introduction of a device that is built on the technology introduced in the iPhone, it would be able to do that much and more.
So, I invite you into my fantasy world. Not that one… The other one, the Mongo Sandbox, where I have a disposable income and a blank slate on which to build anything I want. And for this sand castle I am using the “Mongo” brand smart tablet to run everything.
Back in my June post about the iPad I mentioned that it would be nice if you could come home from work and prop your feet up in front of a small screen to catch up on the news or sports. I’m not talking about a 50” LCD HDTV. I’m talking about a sleek and stylish thin screen sitting on a small stand hooked, via USB cable to a digital tuner. Once you are done watching Sports Center, you decide you want to read a book. You stand up and walk over to the screen you’ve been watching, unhook the USB cable and take the device from its stand. You turn it 90 degrees and now you have an eBook reader. That was my original idea. But in the sandbox of my mind that was only the beginning.
What if you decide that the lights are too bright in the room for you to read the eBook. You simply minimize your reader and open the app HOME which runs your home. You can then navigate a path to something like Systems\Utilities\Lighting which shows a wireframe map of your home by floor. You choose the room and, with your finger, adjust a slider which controls the level of lighting in the room, much like volume control on your computer. You then close that app and restore your reader app and continue reading your ebook.
Let’s say you get a phone call. Simply minimize your reader again and use the Phone App to answer the phone. Either through a blue tooth handset attached to the tablet or even by using the speaker on the tablet you can chat with your friend who wants to go catch a movie. Without ending the call you can open up the Web Browser and look up show times and purchase tickets which can then be printed via WiFi to your printer. All while you are still talking. I know phones can already do this, but this is a bigger interface that is tied to more systems and works with several other devices.
Remember, in the sandbox, the possibilities are endless as well as the funds to make them happen. Now, you could say all this dependence on a tablet PC is bad, like Skynet bad or Wall-E bad. True, but what if you are elderly or confined to a wheel chair or have the inability maneuver around your space to achieve these tasks? This might make your quality of life a little better and, in an age where medical costs are rising or they are not being reimbursed as well as they used to, the ability to be more independent with this type of technology could be a welcome savings. So, that covers one application in a small capacity, but I’ve got bigger ideas and with multiple devices around the home, thanks to that sandbox income. The previous scenario covers perhaps a den setting. Let’s move this towards the whole house.
One of the greatest things about my car, which I miss, is the remote start feature. I went to change the battery in the key chain remote and one of the solders broke, severing the circuit. I’m just too lazy, and probably inept, to fix it, so I have to go out and not only start my car on a cold day, while inside it, I have to use the key to unlock it. Since the car only has one key hole, I have to use the driver’s side lock to unlock all of the doors and open the hatch. But what if GM had an app for that? Well, someone does.
So, now when it’s ten degrees out there and a foot of snow is on the ground, you can use the that same technology, along with a few others to get to work easier. Now, the simple solution would be to park your car in the garage, but what if you forgot too or some other reason prevented you from doing that. You’ve got to go outside and get in your car, which is cold, and there’s a foot of snow in the driveway. You just don’t have time to shovel or get out the snow blower before work. With the Mongo Smart Tablet, you don’t have to. From any Smart Tablet in the house, you can call up your automobile app, and remote start your car. But what about the snow? Easy, when you first get up in the morning and notice the snow, you use your smart tablet to turn on the radiant heating system that is installed underneath your driveway. While you shower, shave, and have your coffee, your driveway is clearing itself of all that snow. You simply walk out onto the empty driveway and get into your already warm vehicle. Warmquest is a company that can do that. This same company can also install under shingle roof deicing equipment which would have been perfect this past year with all the reports of collapsed roofs due to snow from Snowmageddon. Not to mention, icicles are dangerous and could be eliminated in this case.
Wasteful energy could be a thing of the past with your Mongo Smart Home because you could remember that you left the lights on upstairs or in another part of the house and the smart tablet could alert you and could be used to turn off the lighting in those empty rooms. You could check out noises outside the house by accessing the CCTV system, like my brother showed me, activating or deactivating flood lights to get a clearer picture, and call authorities if needed. CNN had an article about this, but it was only one of eight different money saving tips which was crudely advertised as an article devoted to running your home on an iPad.
The applications are limitless in the sandbox of my mind. I could be in the kitchen, getting ready for guests and be using the smart tablet there to follow a recipe online while setting the light levels in the house, deicing the driveway and starting up the fireplace for ambiance. It sucks when you are trying to do 15 things at once while watching a pot of sauce or soup. In the event that you have to leave the kitchen and attend to something that requires some time, you can use the smart tablet in any room to call up kitchen functions and shut off the stove to keep things from boiling over. One of the coolest amenities we had in the beach house we rented this year was the sound system. From a main receiver/tuner in the living room we could supply the entire house with audio. There were individual volume control knobs in each room wired for sound, but the source of the audio came from the living room. We discovered this by accident after setting up my Nintendo Wii and letting my father in law play Cabela’s Big Game Hunter 2010 while we were outside on the deck one night. It was all peaceful and serene on the deck, overlooking the sound, when all of the sudden gun shots ripped through the air. We thought we were under attack. Hell, the neighborhood probably thought they were being invaded, Red Dawn style. We just didn’t know that all the volume knobs were left on by the previous renters and the surround sound of my father in law blasting away Bambi echoed outside and across the street. So, yeah, it would be nice if your smart tablet could control something like that, without having to go into every room of the house and adjust the volume.
All of these innovations are reminiscent of a Merry Melodies cartoon, called "Design For Leaving", where Daffy Duck retrofits Elmer Fudd’s house with buttons of all sorts. And to that end, all sorts of things could go wrong. As much as I would be a champion of this style of design, I understand chaos theory and Murphy’s Law very well. The power can go out, Blue Screen of Death types of failures, firmware issues, updates, and viruses could render your Mongo Smart Home inoperable. I would never dream of turning control of your home solely over to a computer. Everything would still function as it would without the smart tablet interface, but the addition of the interface is like a dimmer installed in a light circuit. You use a switch to supply power to the light but dimmers installed in certain places can adjust the settings to the already powered lights. The same here, it’s an added feature not a control over the functionality of the appliances and utilities.
Okay, perhaps the sandbox ideas are a dream for those who have the income and technical savvy to pull it off in the real world. But that’s the fun of imagining what a device like the iPad can do. There are plenty of real world, business applications for a smart tablet. Schools are beginning to adopt the iPad in the classroom. Teachers can conduct a lesson and students can interact with the lesson, adding notes and asking questions into a notepad style environment. Just think about huge lectures, with 400 students in them. If students had an iPhone app or smart tablet in the classroom, they could ask a question from the back row and the TA could capture all this for the professor to expound upon or address during the lecture, while it’s fresh. The student, at the back of the room does not have to shout or draw unwanted attention because the question could be anonymously asked, filtered by the TA, of course. The TA could even respond with an answer without having to disrupt the flow of the lecture.
As a Theatre Arts major in college, I have gone through tech rehearsal boot camp. You get up really early on a Sunday and come down to the space, ready to spend the next 12 hours doing mundane but very important work. You begin pulling together the important changes and cues that occur during a show with all of your tech heads like lighting, sound and such. With a smart tablet interface, you could run a sound board or light board remotely, while sitting next to the director or stage manager instead of up in the booth. The process could become more efficient without a lot of shouting back and forth or headset chatter. The director could simply lean over and talk to the designer or tech. No yelling, “Give me channel 4 up 10%.” Here is an article about the application.
Also, notes could be taken with a handwriting converter. I’ve done it and I’ve worked with directors who have stood there and tried to decipher scribbles into an important production note. Some of these innovations are already in place with iPhone apps but, again, broad spectrum, bigger interface and multiple applications running at once.
And let’s not forget the healthcare field. Doctors could see a patient, look at their charts, prescribe meds which could then be printed at the receptionist desk to be handed to the patient or even sent to the pharmacy, eliminating handwriting errors. Doctors could be linked into a database of information about symptoms and diseases. The CDC could help control an outbreak by recognizing these symptoms and posting to a board where providers could tag them and compare against diagnoses they have in their office, all during a patient’s appointment. Doctors could monitor patients’ vitals remotely and prioritize various patients from their tablet. Of course, there would have to be a huge amount of security attached because of HIPPA. Applications are endless.
Facilities management could be streamlined. Systems could be monitored for changes or failures. Lighting levels and schedules for automatic lighting could be adjusted on the fly. Sensors could pickup issues like security or climate controls. The ability to pinpoint a problem could correct it faster. And with that built in webcam, missing from the iPad, you could snap a picture and send it to the tech who will be correcting the issue in the case of building and grounds issues.
So, my mind isn’t too far into the clouds when it comes to technology. When I started writing this post, did the bare minimum of research to see if what I had thought of was already in use. Some things were there for the iPhone and some were there for the iPad but not everything as far as I can tell, although Smart Homes are a reality in regards to mobile devices. For now, I have little interest in buying an iPad because of the missing features I feel would be important. Also, as much as I tout being a geek, I don’t even have a data package for my phone. I don’t text and I use my phone to um… make calls. Whenever Apple or another company comes up with the smart tablet that I would want I’ll think about crossing that bridge. Until then, there’s always room in the sandbox.
Got any ideas on how to use an iPad for something it wasn’t designed to do?
Thursday, February 12, 2009
iRenaissance
We’re due. I know we are. If not, it’s time somebody started the wheels turning on the next Renaissance. The world has been plunged into war and recession. The need for renewable resources is at a fever pitch. People are finally beginning to understand the dire need to turn this sinking ship, called Earth, around. We have so many bright people in this world working on innovations, but who really cares how small my iPod is or whether or not I can watch en entire season of The Office online? It’s time to start working on the infrastructure of our societies and reshape our destiny. We’ve become so cut off from the community, hiding behind our technology. It’s time to collaborate as a world to solve our most threatening problems.
It’s so close if you think about it. Across the globe, little movements towards a greater existence are occurring without even making us aware of their total impact. Tiny discoveries in gadgetry should be thought of as possible components for larger use application. Style should be mixed with function in our designs for buildings and roadways. However, let us not builds Towers of Babel but a Rocks of Gibraltar. Let us draw on the successes of our predecessors without ignoring their foibles lest we repeat their mistakes. As we move forward in innovation, let us not ignore where we have been. We have to be cognizant of disaster recovery and business continuance on a global scale. Preventative steps should be taken to guard against destruction of agricultural farms, not just server farms. Let us use our knowledge of the micro to enhance the macro.
It’s all around us. Grab a copy of Time or any other publication that puts out a best of list for inventions and you can see the pieces start to fall together like a Sudoku puzzle. Why are we not getting it? There is a need for a harmony of cognitive dissonance. The idea that people all over the world have conflicting thoughts and perceptions should not be a reason for them to not share a common goal. There has to be a way to share our toys in the global sandbox. We need to stop selling ourselves short. We need to take stock of our existence and find that common ground that makes us similar.
There needs to be substantial advances in the following categories; architecture, energy, health, communication, and economics. One category is not isolated from the other. Each feeds into an overall cohesive attitude that says we have all the tools we need to solve the world’s problems, what we lack is the blueprint.
Solar, wind, and other types of renewable resources are great but the application is still far from perfect as is the development. We still need fossil fuels to run the factories that make the cars or components. Although, I do like the plants that are using methane from landfills for power.
We also need to get a handle on health care. There are way too many mistakes being made and reimbursement is a hot button issue. We have an extended lifespan, now, and we need to realize that our baby boomers are going to be around longer and so are we. I’ve personally seen a mother and daughter both living in the same assisted care facility. There needs to be some consideration for costs of supporting the elderly and technology to keep everything running smoothly.
We have an aging infrastructure in our cities and we need to look at innovative ways to improve construction without increasing our carbon footprint. Green technology being used in new construction is a start but there is also added effects on the climate. If you subscribe to the theory of global warning consider that green house gases aren’t necessarily the biggest culprit for overall temperature increase. Yeah, it doesn’t help. In fact, it exacerbates the problem. However, look at our population and use of available space. We generate a lot of energy. Energy to power all those buildings we build. Those buildings throw off energy from all the activity inside. Our cars, while expelling gases that contribute to poor air quality, expend heat and energy. Every single person is a thermal unit. With over 300 million people in the United States alone, the amount of body heat we expel has to count for something. Not to mention, when you add the rest of the world’s population. To use a horrible analogy. I keep my house around 70 degrees, year round. The heater and air conditioning work fairly well to keep this temperature. If I have family over and we are cooking dinner. I turn off the heat. Why? Because the added body heat coupled with the oven running at 350 degrees raises the temperature in the house by at least five degrees. If it’s the summertime, my air conditioning works harder than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
As far as communication goes, the Internet, wireless devices, 3G networks and the like are fine, but what happens if all that fails? There’s a great book by Richard A. Clarke called Breakpoint. Yes, it’s science fiction but it was written by former Counter Terrorism advisor under President’s Clinton and Bush the lesser. He’s been highly critical of his previous employer’s administration but then again, who hasn’t? In short the novel describes terrorists who don’t blow up buildings with planes, but isolate The United States from the rest of the world by systematically blowing up the transatlantic cables, severing our network connections. Think Live Free or Die Hard on a global scale. We need a system of business continuance in place in the event that we lose connectivity to city services, utilities, and basically anything that runs on computers connected to a network.
Perhaps there are MIT and John Hopkins’ graduates locked away in a lab somewhere with Will Hunting tinkering away on these ideas but how come we don’t know about it? We need good solutions now, while we wait for perfect solutions to be bench tested. But where are they? I know I can’t be the only one who has this thought. In fact, this whole rant is based on a combination of reading Time’s list of the 50 Greatest Inventions of 2008 mixed with a huge plate of carb-heavy pasta inducing me into a hyperglycemia induced state of Jerry Maguire preachy-ness. Now, I don’t want us to tip the scales in favor of all out catastrophe. All this talk of innovation and technology can ultimately lead to a robot uprising lead by Nexi, the Mobile, dexterous, social robot, but you’ve seen what happens when we let the financial sector get out of hand. What if the techno geeks more advanced and better funded than the ones who hacked Paris Hilton’s cell phone were able to get into the Obamaberry?
Now as I ramble on I get further away from my point and head towards the town of Luddite. I’m all for technology as a companion, but not an overall solution. I think we can return to a more classical style which will promote better acceptance utilizing what we know we can do and how we can make it more solid in design. While, I think flying cars are highly overrated in films, it cannot hurt to make them more solid and run better without having to give up quality of construction. Instead of hurtling off towards the future in one direction, maybe we need to bring the rest of our knowledge and genius with us.
OK, the pasta is wearing off and I’m coming back into focus. Actually, just take a look at that list and take note of these items. A lot of the list was fluff, in fact some weren’t even inventions, but there is good reading there. We just need something to bring it all together.
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