(Phaysis)

I went out for a high-speed drive across town for a sense of perspective. Needed to get myself outside of myself for a while because I’m really, really in the middle of it. Right now, I’m a dog in a corner, and I’m ready to bite.

Today, I got a bomb dropped on me in the form of two envelopes from my health insurance carrier. Inside is a pair of Explanation of Benefits (EOB). Remember back in March and April when I saw the chiropractor because my back was messed up and I needed help in a bad way? Well, I finally got the insurance statements from all those visits. The end result is that my insurance carrier won’t pay for a single thing; their rejection reason is that the chiropractor isn’t in network. That’s Bullshit with a capital B.

When I was looking for help, I called the clinic; I’ve been to this clinic for 7 years…my general practitioner is there. And, for a while, so was the chiropractor. So I called the office to check, to see if I would be covered if I saw her for my back. The operator said she’d have to pass on the question to the billing department. They called me back and confirmed to the positive that I would have coverage, so I made the first of a series of appointments.

The first visit was nothing but a consultation on Monday. She then sent me for X-rays which I took that day. Then, since she didn’t show up to the office for my appointment on Wednesday, I had to come in Thursday to look over the X-rays and come up with a treatment plan. THEN, finally, had a visit Friday to pop my back into shape…two weeks after injury. She wanted me to visit three times the next week (office visits are $30 copay each time), but I whittled it down to two visits. By the end of that week, it was revealed that she was no longer a member of the clinic and that she would start her own practice elsewhere. So, I didn’t visit her again.

I had been waiting on the EOBs from the visit, but suspected something was dreadfully wrong. All my other EOBs from all the other visits to the various doctors I see produce an EOB from my insurer in short time. Something had to be wrong, and fucking hell, it was very wrong. I tallied up the charges from those five visits and the X-rays: $1270. You read that correctly.

My blood is boiling; I haven’t felt this level of rage in years. It’s an impotent rage because in the wash of corporate displacement and beaurocratic process, I have no target. No one is to blame. Nobody is at fault, and my only recourse is to play the game. I was provided an address to submit a written appeal; you can damn-well believe I’ll appeal. This is Bullshit. If I had known that the chiropractor was out of network, I would not have fucking gone for the first visit, let alone all five. I was lied to. I believed the lie. The one who lied to me didn’t know they were lying. Misinformation happened.

My teeth are grinding. Whatever it was I was doing in my life, whatever I had planned for the weekend, it’s fucked. My teeth are grinding. I’m in a corner, and I am ready to bite.

So, I’ve been negligent to this journal in the past month. Not unusual, but so much has happened and I haven’t shared. I know I should document at least some of the exciting and mundane things just to keep you people coming back. So negligent. For that, I’m sorry…but not that sorry.

Eh, five or six weeks back I quit IRC for good. I’m done. When I think of all the time I’ve wasted on that chat medium, I weep. That’s time I will never get back. Well, it wasn’t a total waste; there are some really awesome people on there. I mean IRC is just a tool for communication and nothing more, but the ratio of awesome people to absolute dicks (who are dicks just for the joy of it) makes the medium not worth the effort. I met some good people, and I really miss them. But the rest of the people, fuck ‘em.

I now have a lot of quality time available. I don’t have to expend so much mental energy constantly defending myself with wit and face-saving antics that I’m too fatigued and demoralized to be productive. Now I feel better about myself. It’s like turning up the squelch control on a noisy receiver; click, and it’s no more noise. It’s amazing. And oddly enough, I don’t feel lonely anymore since I’m now paying attention to the here-and-now. I’ve always felt like I was staring at the horizon on a long, dark, starless night trying to communicate with people just beyond, but now I’m looking at the campfire in front of me and finally connecting with the people who’ve been sitting next to me for so many years.

Case in point: I met a girl. Ok, actually, it’s more complicated than that. We’ve known each other for eight years back when she was in a shitty marriage. Saw each other for the first time in a while at a coffeeshop and decided to chat face-to-face; that evening, my laptop stayed in its bag. We’ve been hanging out quite a bit, nothing serious. Just good times and lots of laughs. Bringing some levity and sanity to things. People need more of that. IRC never gave me any of that.

And now, something that isn’t related to IRC: a month ago I noticed my eyeglasses were starting to break and it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came apart, so I went to the optometrist. Got a wild hare and decided to get contacts; it’d been ’93 since I wore them last, so I wanted to try again. Well, after the first 10 days, my eyes were so dry and irritated I had to stop wearing the contacts. Eyes got seriously bloodshot; looked as if I had pinkeye. Had to start wearing my new glasses.

Well, two nights ago I decided to try the contacts again; my eyes were finally clear, no redness. I put them on before going out for the evening; returned home four hours later and promptly removed them. Eyes were so dry that I scratched them while removing the contacts…I’m so out of practice. Woke up Saturday morning to the brightest red eyes I’d ever seen this side of the movies. They’re still embarrassingly red two days later. That’s all the evidence I need to tell me that I can’t wear contacts, which is a shitty realization considering how much I’d invested in those fuckers. I’m not sure if the contacts themselves are carrying a bacterial load or if their surface is rough from wearing them or if I’m allergic to the cleaning solution or whatever. All I know is that I can’t wear them, and I should probably consult my optodoc before trying anything else. Hmph.

In other news, my job lately is quite stressful. I don’t want to dwell too much on it considering this is Sunday night, the calm before the storm. My workload has been building up on me faster than I can process it, and I feel I’m on the verge of collapse. It’s not worth the 10% pay reduction I got (everybody got a paycut, thanks to the economy…whatever). It’s a job, and it supports the lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed, but the Depression-era rearing I had beaten into me tells me to not knock it because “I could be flipping burgers”. But c’mon. I’m getting new assignments and “side projects” every time I receive an email. And everybody wants their numbers in the early part of this week. Well I’m here to say that shit ain’t happening.

I went in for a few hours today (a Sunday!) to get a head start on the week. Hopefully I got the last part of the data collection for one of the tasks; spent three hours on it in the lab by myself with no distractions. I’ll crunch the numbers tomorrow after I kick off some benchmark runs for another task. Hopefully everything will have been for good. At the least, I got three of my required 40 hours done; everybody (on top of the paycuts) also has time limits if they’re hourly. Yeah, awesome. My checks are shitty; everybody’s is. Probably why my workload’s building up: nobody else has time left to do them. Feh.

Dammit. I’ve dwelt too much. Moving on.

The Ruby On Rails project I’m building for my site is progressing well. I have basic user functionality written and now I’m moving along into file uploads, doing all the groundwork for everything that stacks on top of it. Once I had my user and login admin code mostly finished, I decided — just for fun — to write a test harness to check it (I can’t check everything by clicking in a browser). Wouldn’t you know it, there were holes and flaws and errors and problems aplenty in my code. Who the hell put those there? I am so damned glad I worked up the testcases. Rails has a pretty powerful facility for writing tests. Now, since I’m starting work on the file upload feature, I think I’ll follow this programming methodology (some call it “extreme programming”) by sketching out an idea of what I want to the software to do, composing the tests to check for that functionality, and then writing the project code to make those tests pass. It’s a goal-oriented approach, and thankfully it’s keeping me on track.

And all this because of the free time I have available after I ditched IRC. Can you believe that? I certainly can.

IRC is the worst place to go if you have something to say.

No matter the message, no matter if you’re pontificating, ranting, trying to convince someone, convey your viewpoint, or call out for other people who agree, it’s the worst place to do it. There’s always going to be one motherfucker who has it out for you. He will issue the smallest number of words to completely derail you and reduce everything you’ve just said to the level of worthlessness.

“Why don’t you just blog about it?”

I’ve had enough. I’m not in with those people. Haven’t been for years. Trying to hold on to some shred of respect and fight for my own relevance. As in real life, so in IRC. This morning was a cascade of insults and issuances that pushed the thorns in a little deeper, and I’ve had enough. I cannot grow a thicker skin; I lack that ability.

I’m done with the oneupmanship. Done with the wit. Done with the insults. Done. I’ve parted all but one of the channels I’m on. It’s been a long time coming, but today was just too much. I don’t IRC from work anymore because I find it destroys any of the concentration I desperately require there. I only IRC in my free time now, and even that time is better spent doing something else. When my IRC window is open, I can do fuckall with any of my projects. Somebody speaks, the window scrolls, and there’s my attention running away.

Hi. My name is Shawn. I’m a recovering IRC addict.

So if I can speak my mind in a monologue on my blog, and if I can have realtime chat on one of many instant-messenger platforms, and if I can debate and argue on untold thousands of web boards and forums, and if I can share files with people in a lot of ways, then what use is IRC? What relevance does IRC have? It is obsolete, then. A ghost town. The domain of oldschool curmudgeons who do little more than idle unless it is to put some else down.

So I’ve done the one thing I do best: leave. I’m voting with my feet. You can say I’m “emoparting”. You’d be correct. You are always correct.

It’s been a long, unproductive ride.

So last night / this morning someone stole the right two wheels off of my car.

You read that right.

I came home at 2am, parked. Nothing out of the ordinary. I woke up around noon and looked out to check the weather; I noticed that the nose of my car was leaning forward more than usual and figured maybe I ran over a bolt or something. When I grabbed my laundry and attempted to leave around 5pm, I checked the tire to see if it was flat…and both were gone. Instead, the right side of the car is chocked up on top of a granite block. Even the lug nuts were gone.

Shock, despair, anger.

Called the cops, made my report, got a case number. They dispatched an officer to dust for prints. There were no prints. However, a neighbor saw that I was at the car with a cop, and came over to offer an eyewitness account. Apparently, at 7:30 to 8am, she had her apartment door open to let in the breeze. She stepped out onto the balcony and noticed a man at the car; he saw her, looked nervous, and then carried a tire in each hand to his car and drove off. She thought he was my car’s owner and didn’t think anything of it. The description she offered was rather generic: light-skinned black male, bald, medium height and stocky build. She got no description of the car.

I have no hope of getting my wheels back. By my estimate, it’s $150 out of my pocket to replace them. The wheels were nothing special: cheap stock rims, cheap tires that were nearing a replacement. Why my car was targeted, I don’t know. If it was at 7:30am, then yeah, I don’t know. If it was during the night, then the lighting in the lot, the shadow on the right side of the car, the right side facing the street and away from the apartment building, would all make sense.

I’ll need a ride to pick up some spare lug nuts, get a set of locking lug nuts, and top off the air in my full-sized spare and my donut spare so I can limp around tomorrow to get new wheels. Until then, I’m stranded, deflated, defeated.

I should have left when I felt it. But, no, I hung around just five more minutes. Just enough time for me to get suddenly hit with an egg thrown from a passing car.
FUCKERS!
There is nothing you can do about people who drive by and throw eggs when you’re sitting in front of a coffee shop. NOTHING. And that’s what angers me the most. By the time you realize what just happened to you and every single bit of clothing you’re wearing, the car is at the next intersection and speeding away.
F U C K E R S !
My freshly washed shirt and shorts, fresh socks, even my laptop bag and my hair, were trashed by running, slimy egg. No telling how old the egg itself was. All I know is that I’m sitting there, I feel a smack! on my right shoulder (which felt like someone came up behind me and smacked me really hard), I turn around and find no one there, my friend Collin looks at me to see what happened, assesses the situation, stands up to get a look at the car, and notes its make and model (BMW 3-series, or something like that), and I look to see what hit me then realize it was a fucking egg. A FUCKING EGG! Even Collin’s pants got the shrapnel. I tell you, that shit gets everywhere.

I cannot put forward how much anger I feel right now. That angers me even more.

FUCK OFF AND DIE, BORED YUPPIE FUCKERS! FUCK OFF AND DIE!

Thankfully, some guys, a bunch of badasses a few tables over, offered to help should those fuckers swing back by for another pass.

And so this summer’s round of chickenshit attacks begins. Time to take a shower and soak my clothes.

Fuck. Fuck this all to Hell. Fuck.