Chalkie
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Posts posted by Chalkie
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Depends on what the plug on your RV looks like. The yellow plug is 30 amp and the black is 50 amp.
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22 hours ago, Kirk W said:
You are right. I got the ones we have from Amazon, buy I think that I grabbed the wrong link. I don't have the package but this one looks more like it and it is .39". They are tight but will go.
Frienda 40 x 16 Inch Air Conditioner Filter Reusable RV Conditioner Replacement
Other than the slightly tacky appearance, I have considered fashioning a bracket out of aluminum channel that would let me slide in a residential filter. The wife is not in favor of that, however.
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7 minutes ago, Kirk W said:
Those would be far too thick to fit in air vents on our AC, I have a hard enough time getting the 0.25" filter material in there,
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1 hour ago, Second Chance said:
. i.e. not part of the Google or Microsoft ecosystem and tracking.
That alone probably makes it worth it. I have tried Edge, Chrome, Brave, Opera and not recently Firefox. I think it is more because I am used to Chrome than anything else. Perhaps I should download Firefox again and give it another look.
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Chrome, for me anyhow, normally updates automatically but it wouldn't hurt to check if you are a Chrome user. Article is from Malwarebytes.
Update now! Chrome fixes actively exploited zero-day vulnerability
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13 hours ago, kb0zke said:
"There's an app for that." Even the BLM is getting into the act. CarryMap is their app that will let you find interesting places to visit.
I looked at this app after you mentioned it and I don't see that it is a BLM specific app. It also is from a Russian company.
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11 hours ago, 2gypsies said:
His mapping app said it was open so he went around the barricades and eventually got marooned and had to have a helicopter rescue!
Who ya gonna believe? An app or your lyin' eyes?
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5 hours ago, Kirk W said:
That sounds a lot like the primary doctor in an HMO, where you must see the PCM for referral to any type of specialist?
That is exactly what this is, an HMO. However, our doctor is pretty easy. If we think we want or need a specialist he is more than willing to provide the referral.
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PCP and PCM I think are the same, although I think the PCM tag may fit slightly better. Our PCM is not only the general/family practice doctor that we see for routine or non-urgent visits, he also is the "collection" point for the data from the various specialists we see. He makes sure we are seeing the right ones with the right skills, he is also the one that manages medications even if the original Rx was written by a specialist. All the doctors are tied together with a computer system that lets them see all the post visit notes of each other. The group we are with is very good compared to what I have read about others.As to ranking of countries' quality of healthcare, I think it is all about the source of data. US News & World Report will have a different listing from the WHO which will have a different listing than the one that Kirk referenced.
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3 hours ago, lappir said:
This is such a can of worms and I really shouldn't be helping anyone open it up. But here I go.
Maybe you have read this before, but Health Care is not what it used to be. Drs. also are not what the used to be. Patients are not people any more in the greatest sense of the word, but are a product. They are an item that generates income for many, many people now. It used to be the Dr. would treat the ill and be paid for his services, and yes I just used the male pronoun, because in the beginning only Men were allowed for the most part to be Drs. If you were a female and wanted to work in health care you could be a Nurse.
Thankfully that has changed and either sex or pronoun can be what ever they want to be as long as they follow the rules the insurance companies set forth for appropriate billing and accept the payments they decide are best.
Chalkie listed off several costs associated with a medical practice. Most of them are now taken care of by Hospitals and Clinics where many, many physicians are employed by such and they all receive a different Annual Salary no matter how many patients they see or the level of their expertise in the real sense of the word. An individual practitioner is a very rare being and most likely is only a specialist and often times does not accept insurance payments. He or She will give you a bill to turn into an insurance company, Medicare and maybe Medicaid, but it's on the patient to follow up on any reimbursements. At least that's how I see it with some Drs.
So I'm thinking about a Poll of how may of the participants on this forum have a:
"Personal Physician (PP)" currently?
Have any had a "PP" in the past?
Consider the "Emergency Department" as their "Go To" health care. ?
Use the "Doc in the Box" Urgent Care facilities.?
And the big question is "If you were admitted to the Hospital, Would you expect to see your PP?"
That's all for today, but I will be following. PM me if you have specific questions.
Rod
It is indeed a can of worms. I have two cousins that are doctors and a brother-in-law that is the CEO of a hospital.
One cousin took the private practice route as a GP/Family doctor and still maintains that although they have grown to a group of 12 doctors. They are not affiliated with any particular hospital group, they do take most insurance and in some cases will still actually make house calls. He did quite taking OB patients several years ago as the malpractice insurance costs made it too costly.
The other cousin started out as a temporary/traveling doctor. He would fill in for doctors taking vacations or sabbaticals all over the country for 6 months and then would travel the world for 6 months. When he got the traveling out of his system he went back to school and got board certified as a trauma doctor and now works ER in a big city hospital with side gigs as a prison doctor.
Clearly their expenses are different but so is their income.
The hospital CEO sees the side of medicine that has to balance all the salaries of doctors and staff against the income the hospital makes whether from private pay, insurance or Medicare/Medicaid and have money left over for everything else. At least he is not tasked with making a profit per se as it is a county owned and operated hospital in a rural area but the balance sheet has to stay mostly in the black.
A poll would be interesting. If the definition of Primary Physician is the same PCM (Primary Care Manager) then yes, we have had one for a lot of years. It has not always been the same one as we were seen at a military facility for 30 years so obviously the doctors would rotate out. Now that we have moved we still have one in the medical organization that we patronize. In either case, we would not see that doctor if we were admitted to hospital as they had/have associated hospitalists that took over care in the hospital.
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OK, and.... what? To compare a doctor's salary to the general median wage is kind of an apples to oranges thing in my mind. The median wage accounts for wages across the entire spectrum of workers but how many of them require four years of college, preferably in a science heavy field, then have to pass a test to be considered for medical school, then spend four more years of college to earn a medical degree, and finally spend as many as seven years in a residency before you can go out on your own? Then when the doctor is out on his own he needs to rent office space, hire staff, pay insurance (this is a big one) all out of that salary. For what doctors do, I, personally, don't think they earn anywhere near enough.
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3 hours ago, lappir said:
If you have read this far and am wondering why I'm sharing, I'm trying to decide if I want to keep my prior Verizon number and just down grade to the least expensive service, since it appears the unlimited data plan isn't worth anything now to anyone else. I'm certainly not paying what they are asking for my next bill.
Questions, comments and suggestions appreciated.
If you are partial to your old number you could have ported it to your new service, however, it appears you did not do that, but you could always port it to Google Voice (there is a $20 charge for that) and then you would retain the number and any calls going to it. You can then link you Google Voice number to your new cell number and be able to get calls from either number on the same device.
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17 hours ago, Vladimir said:
I do have a forester friend that refuses to get a stand alone GPS unit relying on his phone instead. He has lived in a city for so long that he keeps forgetting their is not cell service everywhere.
I have used my cell phone lots of times for location without cell service but always in conjunction with paper maps. The GPS on the phone works just fine with no cell service. I use the lat/long/elevation with a USGS Topo or MVUM map when off-roading and have never gotten lost (yet, I suppose).
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30 minutes ago, Blues said:
A huge benefit of Tricare is that you can get the equivalent of a supplement for traditional Medicare plus a prescription drug plan for free. That's a hell of a deal, and takes out of the equation the only complaint about supplements--their cost.
And this is what I said about the plan we have - it has $0 cost to us and, in fact, pays $50/month to our Part B which takes our Part B cost to $114.90/month in 2023. Yes, there are co-pays, however, this is where Tricare comes into play as it covers all those. As said previously, it also covers things that regular Medicare does not, such as hearing, vision, fitness, home meals after a hospital discharge, transportation to medical appointments, OTC allowance, etc. Even without Tricare it is a pretty good deal and Tricare makes it all great IMO.
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19 minutes ago, lappir said:
I've changed plans and will keep my old number, but in a prepaid fashion only for emergencies unless someone can get some good use out of it.
You can sell or transfer a plan to someone else? I did not know this is possible.
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18 hours ago, lappir said:
The key is to stay away from the "Advantage Plans". I my mind the only person getting any advantage is the salesperson who convinced you to give them your money.
Not all advantage plans are created equal I think. In our case, we pay nothing for it and, in fact, get a rebate back to our Part B coverage costs. In turn, we deal with the provider, pretty much exclusively, for medical care and the plan covers many things that Medicare does not. My understanding is that because they act as a Medicare "aggregator" they are able to pass along the saving back to us as stipends for hearing aids, dental, vision, fitness programs and quarterly OTC medical purchases.
We have no complaints about the quality and scope of our medical care.
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45 minutes ago, Second Chance said:
Thank heaven for Tricare For Life!
Amen to that! I just had a "discussion" with my sister on how awful it was to have a Senior Advantage Medicare HMO plan because of this and that and how much the out-of-pocket expenses were. I told her that that Tricare for Life took care of all the expenses that were not covered. She did not understand how it was possible to have a supplement with an HMO plan. I told her I did not know and did not care as Tricare was processing all claims and it acts as my Part D coverage.
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Did you know that a foreign flag can flown on a US Navy ship? I didn't but there is one that is authorized and does. The USS Winston S. Churchill not only can fly the Royal Navy Ensign but also has a Royal Navy officer permanently assigned. I served with some members of the Royal Navy when stationed in Scotland. They were a good group of folks.
The Only US Navy Warship Authorized to Fly a Foreign Flag at Sea
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I'm posting this here although it could have gone in the medical forum I guess. This article is from military.com.
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On 11/8/2023 at 8:36 AM, Kirk W said:
The last time that we used E470(June 2021) they read my truck & trailer plates accurately but then sent the bill to the address that they had on file for my TX plates, not bothering to verify it and so see that the address had changed, so I didn't receive any bills.
I truthfully think that the E470 company will scam you anyway they think they legally can and then the burden of proof is on you, not them. At one time I had co-signed on a vehicle for my son. When it was paid of I signed full title to him. E470 tried to get me to pay a license read toll my son incurred well after the title was all his claiming I was a co-owner. I took a picture of the title, highlighted the date and emailed it to them. Never heard from them again. I do not know for sure how it works but the state does give them legal authority to collect tolls and levy fines if those tolls are not paid. However, I do not think they have direct access to state records and thus have to purchase them and do not keep them up to date.
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When we lived in Colorado I used E-470 as infrequently as possible. It was good to get to the airport from Colorado Springs. Once coming back from an RV trip they tried to charge me almost $70 for the loop around Denver from I-25 to I-25 because the truck had temp tags although I did have the transponder. I argued what was the point of the transponder if they were not going to use it and eventually got the charge reduced to the tag rate. From then on I just gritted my teeth and went through Denver in the center lane with the RV. Because E-470 is a private company and not a public entity they can charge pretty much what they want.
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22 minutes ago, SWharton said:
Maybe it worked. Would someone look. Thanks for al the help.
It worked, now there a way to contact you for additional pictures? Like of the interior?
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This is something I pulled out of Google Photos. I simply right clicked the image, choose Copy Image, then came here and used Control-V to paste the image in. Hope this helps.
Well, after I came back it did not work, so nevermind my way.
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WIth Veteran's Day 2023 coming on Saturday, November 11th the VA has posted an article on known freebies and discounts for veterans.
Update Chrome now!
in Computers and Software
Posted
Technically Chrome is a derivative itself of the open-source Chromium project. However, according to Statcounter the top Chromium based browsers that have a significant enough share to mention (Chrome, Edge, Opera) make 71.52% of the share, so I suspect you are totally correct in thinking that is why they push it.