uber. use app. get information on when your ride is coming and where it is now. There is no haggle over price, no need to have cash, and no decision on a tip amount. Overall experience: A
taxi. call. wait. no further information available. Some take credit cards, others not. There's always an issue of how much to tip. Many drivers spend the whole ride on the telephone even when asked not to. Overall experience: D-
In my area, taxi service is poor. I've waited up to 45 minutes for a cab. I've never waited more than 15 minutes for uber. Taxis could duplicate or better uber but they chose not to because they are protected (in my area) and have no incentive to spend any money on improving the customer's experience. (Recently it has taken a contentious law just to get taxis to accept credit cards.)
Photoshop Elements is a good choice. I have over 15,000 images. The windows version is good at organizing. You can tag, group, etc. Once you've collected the tags, etc, you can write the information to the actual images as exif metadata so that you are not dependent upon the embedded Microsoft Access db they use. You can also leave the images where they are in PSE and don't need to move them around or stick them in a proprietary db.
For comparison I've also tried Photoshop Lightroom, Apple's Apperture, and Iphoto (the latter two are os/x only). I found PSE to be superior to any of these and cheaper too. I've heard that Picasa is good too but I have no experience with it.
Neither Adobe nor Apple have any reason to compromise unless and until the Feds get involved and force the issue in which case the solution will be worse than the disease.
Let them both eat cake.
(Disclaimer: I love the closed environment of the iPhone and iPad. It keeps some of the junk out of my way.)
These CEO nuts must come from some place in outer space. Perhaps there is a nebula somewhere that births the likes of Verizon's CEO, CitiBank's CEO, etc. Certainly they never had a mother.
I hate Verizon. If they were the only carrier available to me I would do without. As bad as AT&T (my cell carrier) and Cox (my cable provider) are, they combined and squared could not approach the level of poor service I have experienced with Verizon.
Verizon. Never. Ever. One of the absolute worst companies.
I had a stint of several years without corporate insurance. The situation is grim and I can only tell you what I ended up doing.
I too had a family (3 kids and a wife). I found a private plan with Blue Cross that cost around $1200/month and considered it a steal. (Although I was not affected, I heard horror stories about individuals who were unable to get private insurance at any cost.) The coverage was similar to my prior corporate plan but with higher deductibles and more gate-keeping by our primary care physician.
After a year of this I looked around for an alternative and moved to a high-deductible plan with Aetna (deductibles were $5k/person; $15K/family) and opened an HSA. I contributed the maximum allowed to the HSA each year (note, this is not a FSA!). For the remaining years this was the approach I took and it worked well but no one got seriously ill, we didn't need any hospitalization, and only used a hospital once for my daughter's broken foot. For the duration I was with Aetna's high-deductible plan, they paid nothing, but my cost was only $612/month and I got the tax benefits of the HSA.
Absent a health plan you are paying retail for all medical services vs. the negotiated cost your insurer has obtained. You still end up paying a lot (all?) out-of-pocket but at a reduced rate. The same applies to prescription drugs. This negotiated cost business is the secret sauce of the industry. You go to your doctor and he charges you $100 for the office visit and $300 for an x-ray. But Aetna has negotiated these fees to be $65 and $125 respectively which is what you end up paying unless you've reached your $5K deductible. If you've got the money in your HSA you pay it from there using pre-tax dollars. If you don't have any insurance (or the doctor doesn't take your plan) then you pay the whole retail price ($400 in this example).
We had no dental nor eye care coverage for the duration but both can be paid using the HSA account.
In both policies a pregnancy was specifically excluded but we had finished our family by then so it was not an issue for us.
I love newegg. I concur with all the comments here. One more empirical case was newegg shipping me a new cpu, no questions asked, when the one I purchased fried on start-up. They even shipped the new cpu before I returned the bad one. Now that's what I call customer service. Also, in my dealings with them, they have never failed to beat their delivery estimates.
So if your system costs $2,000, you are quibbling about $190 in taxes vs. possible bad service. I'd take the $190 insurance policy anytime.
I faced a similar situation. After some research (I used extendbenefits.com but there are many) I settled on a high deductible hsa compatible plan from aetna. I use an hsa so it ends up being reasonably priced on a monthly basis, but getting to the $10K deductible hurts. Fortunately (?) my wife had a minor procedure this year so we got to the deductible sooner rather than later. But paying out that $10K is no fun. My HSA only earns 4% which is better than nothing but I'm holding out for Fidelity or some major brokerage to start offering an HSA where I could actually make some money. They (Fidelity) said 2006, but that looks unlikely now.
As others have pointed out, going without insurance isn't an option. The carriers all negotiate rates which you won't get if you are uninusred. So for instance a simple CAT scan will run you $1500 if you don't have insurance vs. $500 if you do. It's a scam, but in this case you can only fight city hall if you have lots of $$ in your pocket.
Good luck. Whatever you do, don't become uninsured. The rules change if you do.
Slashdot Mirror
pencil
paper
notebook
email
fork, knife, & spoon.
Once, rounding the corner during a mountain hike, there was a Lynx. Oh, you mean Linux. Nope, haven't seen one of those in the wild.
250 page, college ruled, spiral bound notebook. $5.00 per year.
uber. use app. get information on when your ride is coming and where it is now. There is no haggle over price, no need to have cash, and no decision on a tip amount. Overall experience: A
taxi. call. wait. no further information available. Some take credit cards, others not. There's always an issue of how much to tip. Many drivers spend the whole ride on the telephone even when asked not to. Overall experience: D-
In my area, taxi service is poor. I've waited up to 45 minutes for a cab. I've never waited more than 15 minutes for uber. Taxis could duplicate or better uber but they chose not to because they are protected (in my area) and have no incentive to spend any money on improving the customer's experience. (Recently it has taken a contentious law just to get taxis to accept credit cards.)
It's HIPAA
Put the eel back in the river or ocean. Shut down the aquarium. Turn off the lights. That would be green. This isn't.
go forth and explore.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21654883/The-Golden-Book-of-Chemistry-Experiments
I would definitely let my kids do this.
Photoshop Elements is a good choice. I have over 15,000 images. The windows version is good at organizing. You can tag, group, etc. Once you've collected the tags, etc, you can write the information to the actual images as exif metadata so that you are not dependent upon the embedded Microsoft Access db they use. You can also leave the images where they are in PSE and don't need to move them around or stick them in a proprietary db.
For comparison I've also tried Photoshop Lightroom, Apple's Apperture, and Iphoto (the latter two are os/x only). I found PSE to be superior to any of these and cheaper too.
I've heard that Picasa is good too but I have no experience with it.
Hope that helps.
Nice article.
A waste of time, ones, and zeros.
Neither Adobe nor Apple have any reason to compromise unless and until the Feds get involved and force the issue in which case the solution will be worse than the disease.
Let them both eat cake.
(Disclaimer: I love the closed environment of the iPhone and iPad. It keeps some of the junk out of my way.)
These CEO nuts must come from some place in outer space. Perhaps there is a nebula somewhere that births the likes of Verizon's CEO, CitiBank's CEO, etc. Certainly they never had a mother.
I hate Verizon. If they were the only carrier available to me I would do without. As bad as AT&T (my cell carrier) and Cox (my cable provider) are, they combined and squared could not approach the level of poor service I have experienced with Verizon.
Verizon. Never. Ever. One of the absolute worst companies.
I had a stint of several years without corporate insurance. The situation is grim and I can only tell you what I ended up doing.
I too had a family (3 kids and a wife). I found a private plan with Blue Cross that cost around $1200/month and considered it a steal. (Although I was not affected, I heard horror stories about individuals who were unable to get private insurance at any cost.) The coverage was similar to my prior corporate plan but with higher deductibles and more gate-keeping by our primary care physician.
After a year of this I looked around for an alternative and moved to a high-deductible plan with Aetna (deductibles were $5k/person; $15K/family) and opened an HSA. I contributed the maximum allowed to the HSA each year (note, this is not a FSA!). For the remaining years this was the approach I took and it worked well but no one got seriously ill, we didn't need any hospitalization, and only used a hospital once for my daughter's broken foot. For the duration I was with Aetna's high-deductible plan, they paid nothing, but my cost was only $612/month and I got the tax benefits of the HSA.
Absent a health plan you are paying retail for all medical services vs. the negotiated cost your insurer has obtained. You still end up paying a lot (all?) out-of-pocket but at a reduced rate. The same applies to prescription drugs. This negotiated cost business is the secret sauce of the industry. You go to your doctor and he charges you $100 for the office visit and $300 for an x-ray. But Aetna has negotiated these fees to be $65 and $125 respectively which is what you end up paying unless you've reached your $5K deductible. If you've got the money in your HSA you pay it from there using pre-tax dollars. If you don't have any insurance (or the doctor doesn't take your plan) then you pay the whole retail price ($400 in this example).
We had no dental nor eye care coverage for the duration but both can be paid using the HSA account.
In both policies a pregnancy was specifically excluded but we had finished our family by then so it was not an issue for us.
I hope this helps.
Oh, just noticed the rest of the post. I thought you wanted to play golf at the Masters tournament. Silly me.
Well, if you can't play golf, then keep going to school. It puts off the real work to some later day.
I love newegg. I concur with all the comments here. One more empirical case was newegg shipping me a new cpu, no questions asked, when the one I purchased fried on start-up. They even shipped the new cpu before I returned the bad one. Now that's what I call customer service. Also, in my dealings with them, they have never failed to beat their delivery estimates.
So if your system costs $2,000, you are quibbling about $190 in taxes vs. possible bad service. I'd take the $190 insurance policy anytime.
I faced a similar situation. After some research (I used extendbenefits.com but there are many) I settled on a high deductible hsa compatible plan from aetna. I use an hsa so it ends up being reasonably priced on a monthly basis, but getting to the $10K deductible hurts. Fortunately (?) my wife had a minor procedure this year so we got to the deductible sooner rather than later. But paying out that $10K is no fun. My HSA only earns 4% which is better than nothing but I'm holding out for Fidelity or some major brokerage to start offering an HSA where I could actually make some money. They (Fidelity) said 2006, but that looks unlikely now.
As others have pointed out, going without insurance isn't an option. The carriers all negotiate rates which you won't get if you are uninusred. So for instance a simple CAT scan will run you $1500 if you don't have insurance vs. $500 if you do. It's a scam, but in this case you can only fight city hall if you have lots of $$ in your pocket.
Good luck. Whatever you do, don't become uninsured. The rules change if you do.