Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Top Gun 2
posted by Marc on February 1, 2011 @ 11:38AM

Apparently the trailer for Top Gun 2 is out and the location is China:

3 comments | Tags: video, funny

NHLPA '94 Celebration
posted by Marc on January 28, 2011 @ 4:20PM

5 comments | Tags: hockey, video, funny

There are burnouts, and then...
posted by GJ on January 28, 2011 @ 3:49PM

...there is Mike Proctor's idea of a burnout.

2 comments | Tags: video, cars

Greatest Hits of Sarah Palin, Volume 2
posted by GJ on January 28, 2011 @ 12:49PM

Two nights ago on Fox, our one and only Less Than A Full Term Governor and Failed Vice-President Candidate Sarah "Books" Palin was interviewed by Greta VanSusteren and asked what she though about the Sputnik moment Obama had highlighted in the POTUS State of the Union Address. The actual quote:

GRETA: Governor, last night there was a lot of discussion about the Sputnik Moment the President wants us to have. Do you agree with him? Is this our moment?

PALIN: That was another one of those WTF moments, when he has so often repeated, the Sputnik Moment, that he would aspire Americans to celebrate, he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory and that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incured so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union so I listen to that Sputnik Moment talk over and over again and I think, no we don’t need one of those.

Uh, Ms. Palin? Did you hear something whistle past your head? No? That's 'cause the idea Obama was suggesting passed over your head by a freakin' mile, you dunderhead.

Full disclosure--I think Obama's Sputnik Moment was anything but. It's where he thinks we should be, but you can't lead a horse to water when he's standing in the unemployment line. Even if he's unemployed because he's thirsty. OK, even I didn't follow that. Palin probably did, though.

4 comments | Tags: political

Sweet Interactive Video
posted by Geoff on January 27, 2011 @ 11:23AM

Check out this 360 panoramic video...you can actually click and drag the view around in all directions. Pretty sweet!

3 comments | Tags: video

Looking for a job? Don't give up after the automatic rejection!
posted by GJ on January 25, 2011 @ 8:53AM

For anyone who's looking for a new job--especially if you find yourself unemployed--this article could be an eye-opener. Certainly, it's an approach that didn't make sense when I last looked for a job while unemployed eons ago, but it sure makes sense today. Give it a read!

2 comments | Tags: career

One more reason why our healthcare is screwed up
posted by Geoff on January 17, 2011 @ 9:07AM

So a few weeks ago our receptionist who is 8 months pregnant had a doctor visit. They noticed an elevated heartbeat for the baby so they wanted to admit her to the hospital. She drove to Rochester General Hospital where they decided she needed to go to Strong Memorial Hospital to see a pediatric cardiologist. Ok, all well and good. Strong sends an ambulance over to pick her up. She's there for a week admited in the hospital. Her and the baby are doing fine.

She gets a bill this past weekend for $880 for the 7 mile ambulance ride. $880!?!?!? They literally did nothing for her in the ambulance, she walked up, got into the ambulance and sat down. They strapped her in and drove her to the hospital. The ride took less than 15 minutes. $880?!?!?

I paid less for my flatbed tow from Rochester to Syracuse which involved loading, unloading my car, cleaning up oil, and 3 and half hours of driving, plus the time to load/unload. I paid around $300 I think. Can't remember, but I know it was far less than the ambulance bill. I'm sorry but there is no excuse for that kind of bill. They may have had a total of 30 minutes invested in that trip. You can't tell me 2 paramedics are billing at $1760/hr. She should have gotten a helicopter ride for that much.

Then they go on to say this was a non-emergency ambulance so she has to foot the bill. Um, what? The hospital called it in, not her...and she was admitted to the hospital for 7 DAYS. I'm sorry, but if that isn't considered an emergency, then the hospital can foot the bill for making the mistake of ordering an unneccessary ambulance ride.

And what really gets me...are the frequent ambulance trips I see to the halfway house across from work. I can tell you those bums aren't paying for anything. What a system we have here. Screw the worker AND make them pay to ship the low-lifes who get drunk in the middle of the day and collapse on the sidewalk. Gotta love it.

5 comments | Tags: healthcare

Marc said about 1 hour later

After seeing some of the bills Laura got for her sinus surgery, I can totally believe that $880 bill. For us, we ended up having to pay about $2,000 for her surgery and our insurance covered 80%. This was a supposedly simple 20 min surgery. Why was the final bill upwards of $20k? This was an outpatient surgery too! But hey weird, if we didn't have insurance, they told us the bill would be significantly less. We'd have to pay like $5k in full, but that would be the total bill.

When Laura was off insurance for a short period of time we went to an urgent care with similar results. We paid a higher bill than a normal co-pay, but it was the full bill. We went in again for the same exact problem when she was on insurance and suddenly the bill skyrocketed, but our co-pay was small, so it had less effect on us.

I'm sure the lowered total bill to uninsured people is not the hospitals being nice, it's more the insurance companies getting blasted by huge bills because they have the money to pay it. Obviously this comes back to us in many ways so we still have to pay large bills like the one you mentioned.

I know there's lots of problems with the way insurance is handled and I feel like there should be some regulation on the price of medical care, but I know things like research and coverage for life threatening diseases are why we pay some of these huge bills.
GJ said about 7 hours later

Darcy was admitted to a hospital about four months pregnant BEFORE we had insurance. The bill was just north of $20k.

If that was the discounted non-insurance price, I would be shocked. Often times, the uninsured pay MORE. The money goes to far more than just coverage for research--and as far a coverage for life-threatening diseases, that's the insurance companies' thing to worry about. What hospitals are on the hook for is the emergency room. They end up picking up the tab for uninsured folks who show up there--or at least, up until recently they did. Many hospitals starting turning those folks away when money became real scarce.
Geoff said about 11 hours later

I concur GJ, the uninsured do pay more, for prescriptions anyway. We looked into dropping prescription coverage entirely and just reimburse employees (since we are all young and prescription coverage is expensive). Found out they charge uninsured folks far more for prescriptions vs insured.

Still, with all the equipment and research costs, $880 for a 7 mile ambulance ride with ZERO medical attention is robbery. Like I said, maybe for a helicopter ride or if they had to perform actual life-saving medical attention. I guarantee firefighters don't get that kind of cash for their short trips...and they have to run into a blazing building!

And to boot, these clerical insurance folks are some of the most incompetent people I've ever had to deal with. You'd think switching insurance companies for a small business (aka 5 employees) wouldn't be too difficult. We've switched twice since I started at Bush and they have completely screwed up both times (both Excellus Blue and MVP). Lost forms (which we faxed), wrong plan enrollment, etc...this is what these people do for a living right? I don't have this problem with car insurance companies, and I've gone through more changes with those folks without any issue.

The greed and incompetence needs to stop.
GJ said about 23 hours later

Easy was to stop it. Force competitive pricing. However, when people see what happens to care once we turn it over to capitalism, they'll freak. Death panels all over again--except in this case, it could definitely occur. Not that I think that's necessarily a bad thing, either. (evil grin)
Geoff said 1 day later

me either :P

Followup on the whole rhetoric thing
posted by GJ on January 11, 2011 @ 12:48PM

Definitely watch past the John Oliver part--Stewart yet again gives probably the best view of the tragedy in Tuscon this past weekend.

No comments | Tags: video, political

The Inevitable Evolution of Violent Political Rhetoric Into (Surprise!) Violence
posted by GJ on January 10, 2011 @ 12:14PM

Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a long rant. I'll simply post a comment I came across this morning online. Take what you will from it.

I'll say this, if your first instinct after hearing about a tragedy is to scrub yr websites, you have a problem as a political movement. - digby56

4 comments | Tags: politics

Geoff said about 21 hours later

I need some help with this one. I've got a few ideas but my brain still resides in Monday.
Geoff said about 22 hours later

I thought this was a good article today. In response to the recent assignation attempt.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110111/pl_yblog_exclusive/analysis-how-free-can-a-society-be-when-elected-officials-are-walled-off
Marc said about 22 hours later

I assume this relates to Palin taking her website down regarding the gun targets on specific political people including the one who was SHOT last week.

Regardless, Palin was an idiot for posting something like that, I don't think she should be receiving as much flack for what the crazy gunman did, but perhaps it'll be an eye opener for some of these political pundits that all that crazy crap you say, many idiots take seriously. Although it is getting harder and harder to find the difference between the pundits and the idiots.
GJ said about 24 hours later

Yes, it's referring to Palin and her staff first changing the Take Back the 20 website to modify the graphic and some other choice words (Don't Retreat...Reload!), but the site appears offline now. Whether they gave up trying to find references to scrub, or the crush of people trying to see for themselves what her site said, the site is toast now.

One of her staff tried to explain that the gun sights on the map were actually surveyor's marks. Really? Palin herself referred to them as bullseyes when tweeting about how they'd won 18 of 20 of those districts.

It's not just Palin, however. This problem has been rampant all over the political spectrum, but far more on the right wing than the left.

In all likelihood, however, the suspect was mentally ill and appears to have had a personal vendetta with Giffords for a perceived slight of him by not answering a screwball question he managed to get in front of her back in 2007...the hallmark of a paranoid delusion.

That said--the scrubbing of that website should tell you something, regardless of whether the shooter was influenced by it at all.

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