Plinky.com: “Before the Internet”

Today’s Plinky.com prompt was, “Remember the days before you got the Internet at home?” Here’s my response and the Flickr.com pic I selected to illustrate it. ;o)

Old computers

Getting to access the world-wide anything was a game changer. I grew up in rural Mississippi in the ’60s and ’70s, with just four channels on TV (two of them “snowy” … and you can tell someone’s age by whether he/she knows what I mean). The TV was supplemented by a set of encyclopedias for researching school projects, a library card, and a mother who was generous at the bookstore and comic book store cash registers. Those were the days when it struck fear into your soul to remember at 5:05 p.m. (after the library had closed) that there was a school project due tomorrow. That’s why Mom bought the Encylopedia Brittanica, which kept “current” by issuing updates in an annual yearbook edition. Fancy!

That was just how things worked. Not everyone had even those limited resources. And I just didn’t know how much more of a world was out there. There was school, church, home, relatives’ houses, and not a lot else. A small but okay world.

The first personal computer in my house was a Tandy my first husband had, which loaded from a cassette tape and had just 16K in memory. My first was a hand-me-down gigantic word processor my father-in-law phased out of his office. It seemed like SUCH an improvement over my typewriter though.

The first real computer that was ALL MINE and new was a Macintosh Plus with the wee little 9-inch screen, and it took me online for the first time. I would spend hours on bulletin boards long after my first child was tucked in for the night. And that was all she wrote; I was hooked. My next was a custom-built PC. I’ve waffled back and forth between the PC and Apple worlds ever since.

Today, I’m totally devoted to the online culture — Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Google Reader, and so much more. They will have to pry my laptop from my liver-spotted arms some day. I just hope my nursing home has WiFi.

 

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A Common Gal Looks at ObamaCare: Part 1 — Were They Paid By the Word?

A Common Gal Looks at ObamaCareThe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) is almost 1,000 pages long — about the size of two Stephen King novels. Yikes. So I’ll wager that most people are like me and haven’t read it yet. But I’m tired of posers insisting that their “ObamaScare” view of the law is correct, so I’m reading the whole thing. I am not a lawyer or a healthcare professional, just a common college-educated person who is willing to put in the time to learn more. I will be posting my notes here periodically when I find interesting tidbits, confusing sections, and comforting or alarming parts. Join me! Find the law here and the recent Supreme Court opinion upholding it here. If you see me getting it wrong, or if you have answers to my questions, please let me know!

Here’s what I have learned so far:

  • This is one helluva daunting document. The index alone is 12 pages long. *sigh*
  • None of the pages are numbered. (Seriously? That’s idiotic. But maybe that is typical for legislation?) You can see what page you’re on if you read it in Adobe Acrobat Reader.
  • We’ve all heard many times that dependents can be covered through age 26. Actually, it is “UNTIL” the child reaches age 26. So to me it sounds like they’re covered “through” age 25. See Section 2714 (a).
  • I assumed this, but it’s also spelled out that the covered is extended just to your UNMARRIED children. See Section 2714 (a).
  • It covers your dependents up to age 26, but not their children. That’s a subtlety I hadn’t picked up on previously, but it makes sense. So if your adult children are covered, your grandchildren are not. See Section 2714 (a).
  • Section 2711’s intro is pretty confusing to me. This section is about “No lifetime or annual limits.” Subsections (a), (1), and (2) refer to that. But then Subsection (b) says that can’t be construed to “prevent a group health plan or health insurance coverage THAT IS NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS UNDER SECTION 1302(B) OF THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT from placing annual or lifetime per beneficiary limits on specific covered benefits to the extent that such limits are otherwise permitted under Federal or State law.” The capitalization is mine to point out the part that seems kind of slippery to me. So I looked at Section 1302 (B) – it is several pages long. Going to skip ahead and read that now so I read all the rest in context. But it’s a pain in the butt that the document is not hyperlinked to that. Does anyone know of a copy of the law that is generated in a MODERN format, not just PDF?

Other Posts on ObamaCare:

  • Part 2: Types of coverage, no discrimination
  • Part 3: Exchanges and what they do
  • Part 4: Your cost limits and adjustments
  • Part 5: Deductibles and preventive care
  • Part 6: Four levels of coverage
  • Part 7: Limits on losing coverage

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Advice on Life, from Ms. Doris

A lovely lady I know is retiring, and she sent out a slideshow of pretty pictures and advice as a parting gift to colleagues. I wanted to share with friends on Facebook, but they don’t allow uploads — only links — of PowerPoint presentations. Drat it. So I’m posting here and linking to it there! It has some nice calming music in the background too.

And the grammar noodge in me has to say I’d love to have the original file to do a little editing here and tweaking there — but it’s still a worthwhile experience to see this!

 

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