Category Archives: *not* impressed

Kroger is at it again

Some years ago, I wrote a post on how Kroger’s have a nasty habit of putting yellow tags on items that are not being discounted. They’re still doing it, but now they have kicked things up a notch.

First of all, They have installed new card-readers on their POS terminals that do not give you a choice of credit or debit. When you swipe a card, they check if your card is a debit card. If so, they force you to process the transaction as a debit. This is almost understandable; debit has much lower transaction fees than credit, as well as having different legal ramifications. Personally, I would have liked to have been given a choice.

But Wait! There’s More!

That alone is not a major issue, more of a minor annoyance that I can live with. What really ticks me off is that they are now trying to con us out of a few pennies more by charging us transaction fees on Cash Back.

Stupid Tax

At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then I realized that they were actually trying to make a little money off of something that we have been getting for free. This flies in the face of Wizard Prangs Law of Freebies:

Once someone becomes used to getting something for free, they will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it.

Thanks but no thanks. None of the other stores are doing this; so in future I will remember to hit an ATM, or shop somewhere else that does not charge for this service.

When Health Insurers Practice Medicine

2019 was not the best year for me

In the middle of the year, I had to change employers, which meant new health insurance. I have a family member who has some health issues which require expensive medications, so we normally meet our deductible a few months in, finish up our copay a few months after that, and pay nothing at all during the last few  months of the year.

However, in 2019, getting new insurance meant that my deductible reset to zero in the middle of the year, and I had to start paying full price all over again, which cost me thousands of dollars in unanticipated costs. As if that was not bad enough, the new health insurance was not only about twice as costly as the old one.

This new insurer was truly horrible. To save money, they kept refusing to cover the brand-name medications that has been prescribed , and replaced them with cheap generics that were often ineffective. One such medication is Singulair, a Brand-name asthma medication that is seriously expensive. The generic did not work, so I had to pay full price for the brand-name medication. This had never been a problem with the old insurance company, but the new one kept refusing to cover medications that we had been using for years, and generally giving us the run-around. To add insult to injury, they insisted switching to three-month prescriptions in the middle of December, knowing that we would be on a new plan on January 1st. And they wanted $600 for a three -month supply of Singulair. It was cheaper for me to pay out about $250 for a one-month supply of Singulair that was not covered by Insurance at all. As they say in England, “Merry Bleedin’ Christmas”.

On one of the many occasions that I was forced to call them, I was told that several different generic versions were available and that we should try them and find one that works. I am reluctant to do this; my family is not a beta-testing lab for an insurance company looking for ways to save money. If they want us to do their quality assurance testing for them, they should be paying us for the privilege, or at the least, providing us with free samples. For those who believe that generics are just as good as brand-name medications, I recommend that you do some research; at the very least, check out a book called: “Bottle of Lies”

I keep getting phone calls and junk mail informing me about various telemedicine and telehealth services, in which I can get in touch with Doctors and nurses via the telephone or Internet 24/7. While this is a wonderful idea that will become more and more prevalent over time, I am not comforted by the fact that this service is provided, not by healthcare providers, but by my Health Insurance company. In my opinion, this is a conflict of interest, as their primary goal is not to provide better healthcare service (which is not their job; they are an an insurance company, remember?), but to reduce, minimize and eliminate claims.

Bottom line: Health Insurance Companies should not be practicing medicine; they should stick to paying claims.

No Good Deed…

Here’s a story from the Land Down Under.

Kenan Basic, a 36-year-old carpenter, stopped to help a nineteen-year-old woman by the name of Caitlyn Gray, whose car had broken down. He repaired her car, they hugged each other, and she went on her way.

She then went to the police and swore out a complaint accusing him of stalking her, asking her for sex, and groping her.

Mr Basic was then arrested and and charged with indecent assault, and jailed. He was denied bail. He was in jail for a week. He lost his job, and his wife filed for divorce.

Who is this paragon of pulchritude that Mr Basic risked his very liberty to proposition and grope? What does she look like?

When the police could not find any surveillance video or any other corroborating evidence to support her story, they became skeptical. Finally, she admitted that she had made the whole story up.

He was vindicated and released. She was found guilty of “knowingly making a false statement.

She has been jailed for nine months, five of which are mandatory before parole… but unlike him, she was immediately granted bail.

Apparently the presumption of innocence only applies if you are female.

He plans to sue. And he should.

Just Believe

Just believe that Christine Ford was raped! sexually assaulted by Brett Cavanaugh. Even though:

  • She can’t remember where it was…
  • …or when it was…
  • …or how she got there…
  • …or how she got home afterwards…
  • …and she can’t produce one single witness to corroborate her account of what happened…
  • …or answer any of the above questions.

Just believe her.


Just believe Jussie Smollet when he says that he was set upon by white supremacists wearing MAGA hats who beat him, put a “noose” around his neck and poured bleach on him. Even though:

  • No surveillance video in the area showed the crime…
  • …or the perpetrators approaching or leaving…
  • …but they found a pair of Nigerian bodybuilders…
  • …who were associates of Mr Smollet…
  • …who were paid by him (by check) for “personal training”…
  • …and were caught on video buying bleach and rope.

Just believe him.


Just believe the authorities who say that that Jeffery Epstein committed suicide. Even though:

  • He was supposedly in a “suicide-proof” cell…
  • …while on suicide watch…
  • …which had been rescinded less than a week after he last attempted suicide…
  • …with no working cameras in the cell…
  • …and a pair of sleeping guards…
  • …who subsequently falsified the records…
  • …shortly after he agreed to a plea deal where he would agree to name prominent pedophiles.

Just believe them.


Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

Some Exclusions Apply

Got this in my email this morning:

 

Every “eligible” title was at least $9.99

To quote Dilbert: “Gaaaah

Why Jussie Smollett is a liar

I have been following this narrative for a while. Here are my initial thoughts when the story broke.

Initial Behavioral Inconsistencies

  • He claims to have fought off two attackers but does not have injuries consistent with a vicious attack. What happened?
  • He claims that the assailants said “This is MAGA country”. He subsequently denied saying this. In which universe is Chicago “MAGA Country”?
  • He claims to have fought off two attackers with tuna sandwich in one hand and a phone in the other. How did he do this?
  • He had his phone with him, but did not call the police until forty minutes later, after he got home. Why did he wait for so long to report a crime?
  • He finally called the police about twenty minutes later, after he got home. Why so long? Why didn’t he call the cops on the spot?
  • He claims that the attackers placed a “noose” around his neck, but was still “wearing” it when the police arrived. Why would he keep it on?

Meeting the police

  • Smollett claimed that he was on the phone with his manager when the attack occurred… at 2AM?
  • …but when asked for his phone, he didn’t turn it over immediately. When he finally did, some of the phone numbers had been “redacted”, ostensibly in order to protect the privacy of contacts and people who are not relevant to the attack. Why do you think that you get to decide what evidence is and is not “relevant”?

*Sigh*, first Cavanaugh, now this. Given the total lack of evidence and questionable behavior of the alleged victim, I am convinced that Jussie Smollet is a liar.

Time will tell.

When “Affordable” ain’t

Before Obamacare became law, my employer offered three plans: HMO, PPO and High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP). I opted for PPO, which had a combined deductible/copay/coinsurance of $1000/year per person.

The year the act became law, HMO and PPO options were taken off the table, and we were offered the option of HDHP, which had a combined deductible/copay/coinsurance of $5000/year per person. They took great care in repeatedly telling us that this decision had nothing to do with Obamacare, but was to do with “the higher costs of health insurance”, while ignoring the fact that the single biggest changes in the the cost of healthcare was the increased costs to health Insurance mandated by the new law.

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it”.


My lady has multiple allergies and several other health issues, which require several expensive (up to $300/month *each*) drugs. Before Obamacare, I had to find $1000/year to pay for these. At about the cost of a high-end cellphone plan, this was annoying, but bearable. Under HDHP, however, I paid the first $2500 of all medical costs which we usually burned through by March and then 20% of all subsequent costs until we had spent another $2500, which happened around September. For the last three months of the year, however, all health costs were covered at 100%.

This led to an interesting interlude a few years ago: I was picking up her drugs and when the pharmacist told me that there was no charge, the fellow behind me said “Free drugs? How do I get some of that?“. I riposted with: “Easy. Just spend five thousand dollars“, to which he replied “Forget I asked.”.

So for me, Obamacare translates directly to a four-thousand-dollar-per-year pay cut – and that’s just for her; if I get sick, that’s another five grand I’ll have to find. this is why I flatly refuse to refer to it as the “Affordable Care Act.” I think it’s the height of understatement to say that I’m not a fan.


Obamacare is not all bad news; two good things came out of it were The removal of coverage limits was a good thing, and Health Insurance companies could now no longer deny coverage on the basis of Pre-existing conditions. However, both of these changes increased the exposure of Insurance Companies, and those costs were passed on to the Customer – Mr. and Mrs. You-and-me. But the biggest insult about Obamacare was the ridiculous Supreme Court decision that effectively made purchasing healthcare mandatory; a mandate that has since been overturned by Executive Order, and rightly so, in my opinion.

The Healthcare system in the USA used to be a perfect example of capitalism in action; It takes about a million dollars and twelve years to train a doctor about the same as a fighter pilot. Unlike the Air Force, however, the Physicians train themselves at their own expense, so it makes sense that they should set the value of their services. As an aside, this is tempered by the fact that the AMA and licensing authorities effectively conspire to restrict the supply of doctors, which keeps prices high. This seems to be working; there are, for example, plenty of unemployed attorneys, but the unemployment rate of qualified and licensed physicians is effectively zero, and an M.D. is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a license to print money.


The problem with Obamacare is that it attempts to mix the worst of Capitalist and Socialized systems while getting the best of neither, and ends up being less than the less than the sum of its parts. The young were forced to pay for coverage that they did not want, in order to subsidize the unemployed, the itinerant, and the poor. The quasi-free-market Health Exchanges, while a good idea in theory, have not worked out well in practice; prices have spiraled in recent years, and many insurance providers have left the business or gone out of business.

I, for one, would like to see Obamacare repealed. But it will not be until something better is offered. And by “better”, I mean that “nobody loses any coverage that they currently have”, that simply won’t happen. This is in accordance with Prang’s Law of Freebies, which goes as follows:

Once someone has gotten used to free stuff, they will never voluntarily give it up, and will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it

A digital book-burning

I recently meandered across a story called “Alex Jones will never abandon deranged propaganda, that’s why Twitter needs to ban him“. As is often the case for opinion pieces, comments to the piece were neither requested nor required. So here we go…


If untruthfulness was the basis of censorship, half of the liberal media would be in jail. Sadly, there are no laws in this country against mendacious libel as there are in the United Kingdom

Every week the tabloids disgorge a fresh cargo of sex, lies and fanciful tales at supermarket checkouts throughout the land, and nobody seems to get upset. While I voted for Trump in the last election (and I called it five months out) I am not a fan of Alex Jones. I find him to be a blowhard. I have never been a fan of either Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, though I have agreed with some of their ideas, principles and positions. By the same token, I find Michael Moore to be a delusional blob of feel-good socialism. But they all have every right to speak, write, make movies, and do their thing. And I would oppose any attempt to censor or silence any of them.

Last time I looked, Ignorance wasn’t a crime. If it were, the Bernie-Sanders socialists would be up on charges for failure to understand basic mathematics.

Close but no Cigar, bucko. While you are absolutely correct in saying that Twitter/Google/FakesBook et al are private organizations who can do as they please, that is not the point. The point is that these organizations are blatantly practicing partisan politics while pretending to be politically neutral. To quote Judge Judy Scheindlin: “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining”

Another true-but-disingenuous statement. First up, the left increasingly uses “Hate” as a catch-all phrase for “criticism that I don’t like“, in the same way that they use Alt-Right to describe “someone I want to describe as a Nazi/Fascist/Racist/White supremacist, but can’t use those terms without looking like an intellectually dishonest idiot“. Most sensible people define “Hate speech” as something along the lines of “Any speech that calls for harm to another person”. By this definition, Maxine Waters’ call to harass Trump’s Staff in public is hate speech, as are the consistent calls to assassinate President Trump. Kathy Griffin’s infamous photo stunt may be a form of hate speech. No liberal media outrage in either case. Liberals, your political slip is showing.
Secondly, the NFL’s decision to ban players from any kind of political grandstanding is right and reasonable; the players are paid to play ball, and the League, who pays their salaries, can do as they please. If players want to play politics, they are more than welcome to do so on their own time. If I walk into a Starbucks wearing a MAGA hat, I should be treated the same way as anyone else. However, if I work there, my employers have the right to require me to remove it or leave. The bottom like here is the same: Don’t mix politics and business.

There’s the H-word again. Whenever you see that word, substitute “WAAAAH! SOMEBODY SAID SOMETHING I DIDN’T LIKE!” Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Let them speak, and let the chips fall where they may.

If there’s one thing that the last few Administrations have taught us, it is that a power that is given to one president is inherited by the next one. That which is created by the stroke of a pen can be destroyed by the stroke of a pen. The use of censorship to silence your opposition may one day blow up in your face.


He’s hitting all the buzzwords here. These people use cellphones and Postal serviced to communicate. Want to ban those as well? And what about the ISIS Recruiters on Social Media, are they being shut down with the same alacrity? Why is “Kill all white men” perfectly acceptable speech, but substituting the word “Black” is somehow racist?

This is just plain dishonest. Is the Post Office answerable for letter-bombs? Is the phone system legally responsible for wire fraud? Of course not. Is Facebook responsible for every DuckFace Selfie? So why is Twitter being held responsible for every tweet? And what, pray tell, is “real fake news”?


I am a firm believer in free speech, as long as it does not infringe upon anyone else’s rights. But that includes speech that I may disagree with. No one has a right to not be offended or outraged. If I don’t like it, I can spend my time, attention, and dollars elsewhere. Twitter has a competitor — Gab.Ai — and a lot of Conservatives, both reasonable and crazy – have moved there.

Bottom Line: The author is trying to suggest that Twitter can and should be some kind of digital safe space. Even if that were feasible, it would be an extremely bad idea.

Truth and Consequences

Henry Cavill is an actor who recently got himself into a spot of bother with a horde of yammering harpies. In an interview with GQ, he said the following:

“Stuff has to change, absolutely,” he adds, addressing men’s behavior. “It’s important to also retain the good things, which were a quality of the past, and get rid of the bad things.

“There’s something wonderful about a man chasing a woman. There’s a traditional approach to that, which is nice. I think a woman should be wooed and chased, but maybe I’m old-fashioned for thinking that.

“It’s very difficult to do that if there are certain rules in place. Because then it’s like: ‘Well, I don’t want to go up and talk to her, because I’m going to be called a rapist or something’. So you’re like, ‘Forget it, I’m going to call an ex-girlfriend instead, and then just go back to a relationship, which never really worked’. But it’s way safer than casting myself into the fires of hell, because I’m someone in the public eye, and if I go and flirt with someone, then who knows what’s going to happen?
“Now? Now you really can’t pursue someone further than, ‘No’. It’s like, ‘OK, cool’. But then there’s the, ‘Oh why’d you give up?’ And it’s like, ‘Well, because I didn’t want to go to jail?’”

Unsurprisingly, the girlies went nuts. Here are a couple of their offerings

It’s not about rape, sweetheart, and you know it. And it is not about men trying to “position themselves as “victims”” either. This is an example of a female trying to move the goalposts by changing the subject.

You wish. His exact words were “wooed and chased”, which clearly shows romantic, rather then terroristic, intentions. Oh, and I’ve seen your picture; you have little to worry about.

Everything he said was 100% true. The irony is that a man talking to a magazine that is ostensibly aimed at other men (GQ, if you didn’t know it, stands for Gentleman’s Quarterly) can cause such ire among a bunch of women. This is not about rape or sexual harassment, it is about perceptions, accusations, trial-by-media and witch-hunts. We now live in an age where a man’s life can be ruined over one accusation without any proof; Google “Brian Banks” if you don’t believe me.

For men in the twenty-first century, the ground is shifting under their feet. First it was rape; a serious crime that is committed by about 5% of men, but for which the other 95% are somehow guilty by association and are therefore responsible for policing and fixing.

Then it was Sexual Assault, which, while also a crime, is often far less serious; touching a woman inappropriately — and the term is often loosely defined — is most often solved by confronting, either with words or a good old-fashioned slap, and requires jail time only in the most extreme cases.

Having made men aware that inappropriate touching is bad, they them moved on to the next target; Sexual Harassment. Once upon a time, powerful men hired pretty young secretaries to look pretty, fondle, and occasionally sleep with. If truth be told, many of today’s powerful men probably miss those days, but they are gone. And I suspect that at least a few pretty young girls are probably upset that the powerful big-shots in the corner offices are forever beyond their reach, thanks to the advent of the Pence Rule, an entirely rational reaction to the specter of Sexual Harassment.

Almost all employers are now bending over backwards to make sure that we are aware of (i.e., they can’t be sued over) sexual harassment. Which will kill any chances of a young woman finding a husband in the workplace, cos all of the high-value guys are either Gay, already taken, or understandably gun-shy.

Cavill’s biggest mistake, in my opinion, was apologizing. To be fair, his apology was actually for the confusion that his remarks may have caused, but to the horde of yammering Social Justice Harpies yapping at his heels, it was a victory and another male scalp to add to their collection. My take on this is to never apologize for being right, Misunderstandings should be cleared up, but not from a position of submission. If I had a say in the matter, I would have advised Mr. Cavill to call a press conference and say the following:

“There are some in the media who would chide me for my use of words. They would say that the word “chase” makes some women feel uncomfortable. However, it should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense that the word was used correctly in context. Most men understand that #MeToo is in danger of morphing from a genuine grievance, to something that looks a lot like trial-by-media and punishment without due process. If you are one of those who is that easily offended by a misunderstanding, you just made my point for me. Thank you.”

Ladies, changing society to make you feel more comfortable is all well and good, but don’t think for a minute that such change comes without consequences. And one of those consequences is that in the age of #MeToo, the only men who can effortlessly approach women are men who have nothing to lose.

Good luck to you

Why ebay does not care about security

The Past

I have been on eBay since 1997.

For the past ten years, I have been using two-factor authentication to protect my eBay, Paypal and other accounts.

It started with the Paypal Security Key, also affectionately known as the “Paypal Football” because of its shape.

Introduced in 2007, the football is a $5 hardware device that displays a quasi-random six-digit number when the button is pressed. The code changes every thirty seconds and makes it impossible to get into your Paypal account without the “Football”, which lived on my Key-ring and went everywhere with me. When eBay bought Paypal, the football could be used to protect access to my eBay account as well.

Four years went by. The battery in the football ran down, and the device fell to pieces when I tried to replace it. Alarmingly, eBay no longer offered the “Football”, offering instead A Credit-Card device that fulfilled the same function at the somewhat higher price of $30.Getting the feeling that eBay was trying to turn a profit out of (in)security, I looked elsewhere… and found the Yubikey VIP.

I had been using a Yubikey in the past to protect, among other things, my Gmail account (The epic Hack of the famous Wired Journalist Mat Honen, could have been thwarted, by his own admission, had he done the same). Now the good folks at Yubico were offing a Yubikey that also doubled as a Verisign VIP key (the technology that PayPal used in the football). I purchased one and have used it ever since. I am still using it to this day.

The Present

I got the following email from them yesterday.

Let me be clear: This is a really, really bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons. Let me enumerate a few:

  1. Texting is insecure. SMS is not encrypted, and SMS messages can be readily intercepted with the right equipment. Using SMS as a one-off mechanism to sign up for something is not too bad, but sending out a text every time you want to log in is a really bad idea.
  2. Not everybody has a texting plan. I am on Verizon’s ancient (not offered since 2012) un-capped, un-throttled, un-limited data plan. Verizon charges extra for text messages, so I have disabled text messaging.
  3. My phone is not always available. I may be able to take a call. I may be in a meeting. I may be in a basement or out of coverage. I may be overseas.
  4. I purposefully purchased serious securityand now eBay are replacing it with something that is less secure.

In an age where websites are becoming more and more secure, this is a retrograde step. So why did eBay do this astoundingly bone-headed thing?

  1. Money. It is my understanding that eBay have to pay Verisign to use this system, while a text message/voice system would be far cheaper.
  2. Support: Security, it is said, is the enemy of convenience. The previous system had some potential shortcomings that allowed users to easily revert to less secure options (“secret questions”, etc) if they didn’t have their hardware token with them. A properly-designed secure system would make it impossible to turn off two-factor authentication without extended vetting… which means hiring Customer Service people to establish the identity of the customer. Given the choice between “good” security and “CHEAP” security, it is hardly surprising that eBay went with the “less-good-but-dirt-cheap” option.

So what *should* ebay be doing?

  • If it ain’t broke… offer the $5 footballs again, or admit that you don’t know or care about security.
  • Use a known and trusted out-of-band key-generation system: If you don’t want to pay Verisign, use the Google Authenticator system, which runs in software, and is already trusted with Google, WordPress, DropBox and others who apparently care about security more than you do.
  • Roll your own like Blizzard and others. The technology is tried and trusted. Just do it.

But what if…What if the user cannot, for one reason or another, use the second factor? In addition, it should be possible to allow the users print out a set of recovery codes to use when the second factor is unavailable. Talk to Google about this; they obviously know something you don’t.