[spdrun]

You should be having checkups about once a year anyway. A lot of current doctors will refill over the phone anyway, assuming a non-controlled med, or just give enough refills to last a year.

Basically, find a doctor who’s not a gonif, and this functionality already exists. If you’re typically waiting half a day for an appointment, you have other problems, and maybe you should seek a GP with better time management skills.

[spdrun]

Fuck disruption. I for one actually LIKE human contact with service providers, especially if the cost of them fucking up might be my life, not loss of Internet access for a day. Having to video conference with some pathetic excuse for a doctor in India behind a screen would make me want to jam a smartphone with app up the anus of the CEO of my insurance company with a 5# sledge.

Believe me, some “millenial targeted” in$urance companie$ are experimenting with shitty service of that type. OSCAR in NYC being one of them. Apparently, people really love them. Takes some serious effort to win a 2* average review on Yelp..

http://www.yelp.com/biz/oscar-insurance-corporation-new-york.

“Millenial” is just code speak for “gullible naive youngster that we can take advantage of.”

[spdrun]

No we don’t. We have a shortage of doctors. Increase availability of medical education, lower doctors’ wages (higher supply pushes prices down) to approximate developed-world standards, and there will be no need for rationing. People who clamor for rationing don’t know how fucked up the pricing structure (including that for procedures) is in the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/15/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/

We already use LESS services than other developed countries, yet we pay more. Fix the system before introducing tech-weenie Band-Aid solutions that limit personal interaction even more.

[spdrun]

Dive into individual stocks when hypersensitive folks sell slight bad news. I did well with Republic (parent company of Frontier), buying after the news that a suspected Ebola patient flew on their airline. Same as NFLX diving 25% in a day was a great opportunity to buy. Remember that chaos and irrational fear are your friends in this market.

[spdrun]

If I’m having a conversation, I don’t want to have it in a store or on the street where I have to shout like a deranged maniac for all to hear.

As far as moving around one’s home, there’s always speaker phone.

[spdrun]

But there should always be an option of seeing a real doctor. In person. Inexpensively. A good, experienced doctor can use many more senses to tell what’s wrong with a person than just sight and sound. Smell of ketone on breath to name a common example.

Sometimes, progress isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

[spdrun]

I don’t actually need one more cluttersome crAPPlet. The Google Voice web interface works fine for calling to/from abroad and it’s reasonably cheap to use: $0.02 to $0.10/min, depending where and when.

Sorry, but I’ll take a good Bell 2500 phone (with mechanical ringer) over any cell, with or without headgear any day. They got the design right as far as ergonomics and sound quality circa 1960 and very few modern phones are more comfy to use.

[spdrun]

There’s no need to save time and money. US doctors are just overpaid by world standards. European-type socialized medicine systems work quite well. Doctors are paid a bit less, but are very accessible in the well-run systems. An in-person appointment can tell a lot more about a patient’s state of health than some fucking impersonal teleconference.

[spdrun]

Disagree about milk delivery, as well as land-line service. Grocery delivery is actually becoming MORE popular than it was a few years ago, what with online services. Unlike a cell phone, a land-line phone is actually comfortable to talk on and doesn’t sound like a drunken Scandinavian at the bottom of a well.

[spdrun]

Older people just have higher expectations than a place to crash, maybe. Or maybe they’ve been burnt more than the young people so they do their due diligence.

I’m somewhat A.D.D., so I prefer a call where I can concentrate and be done with it, vs bouncing my focus in and out of a string of texts.

[spdrun]

An audible beep tone is legally sufficient, I believe. You hear it when talking to some banks or stockbrokers. Advantage of this approach is that it covers your butt, but hopefully the customer service droid won’t be hip to what it means.

1500hz every 15 sec.

Interesting other question: does a “this call may be recorded…” message at their end imply consent to recording of the call by you as well as them?

[spdrun]

Millenial is the most overused bit of marketese ever. Sort of like “gen X” was sometime in the late 90s.

[spdrun]

Do you get stoned to death if you win?

[spdrun]

You’d be wrong. That dubious honor goes to Comcast (aka Comcrap), which of course is in talks to acquire Time Warner Cable.

BTW – I thought we were mainly talking about ISPs. I’ve never had a cable account in my life. What little TV I watch is either over-the-air HD (actually rebroadcast via my building’s cable right now, but free) or streaming via Netflix, or in some cases, downloaded via BitTorrent.

[spdrun]

When dealing with those clowns, record all conversations, and play them back to the rep (or their manager) if you have a problem.

It’s a shame that SD doesn’t have alternative ISPs like Monkeybrains in SF.

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