As a Federal retiree, I was pleased to hear the Congress finally (after years of trying) managed to pass a bill eliminating the WEP (Windfall Elimination Provision) and GPO (Government Pension Offset). The latter was what had prevented me from collecting widower’s benefits on my late wife’s Social Security Account. Supposedly, SSA was going to be automatically checking their records for anyone who was now eligible for payments. Recently I saw that SSA had announced that they were going to start making payments, and that notices had been sent out to inform people what they would be receiving.
Of course, I hadn’t gotten a notice. Thinking back, it occurred to me that while I had collected the one-time death benefit when Patti died, at the time I was too young to collect survivor benefits. When I turned 60 I was retired and collecting my Federal pension, and I remember calling to check on my entitlement. the SSA rep I spoke to confirmed that based on the amount of my pension any survivor benefit would be completely offset. Because of that, I don’t believe I bothered to file a claim. This may mean that SSA would not be processing any benefit payments for me.
So yesterday I called SSA, and after explaining my situation the rep was able to pull up Patti’s records, and it appeared that I was correct and there was no record of a claim on her account. (She had been collecting retirement benefits at the time of her death, so there was an account to check.) So I set up a telephone appointment to file a claim next month. I was assured that the claim could be processed by phone and mail so there shouldn’t be any reason for me to go the office. I got an email notice today confirming the appointment which included a list of documents I might need; fortunately I have copies of all of them to hand,
One of the provisions of the bill is that it was made retroactive to last year, meaning that back benefits would be payable. However, I suspect that this won’t apply to me, because while I might have been eligible for benefits for the past year I did not file an application until now. So I might not be getting a large lump sum retroactive payment.
I thought this was going to be the opposite. I heard that the Administration is ending ‘compassionate clawback’ where they only withhold 10% of your SSA overpayment, even if it was their fault so that now, if you have an overpayment you won’t get any SSA money. It’s only the people who need it the most who won’t have any money for food, rent, or medicine.
Look on the bright side, that’s one way to solve the housing crisis.
My rant - I’m going to sleep all night.
Tonight is the lunar eclipse; also going to be ‘mostly cloudy’ (on the optomistic forecast - ‘cloudy’ on the other) here so I guess there’s no point in trying to go out & see it.
This is the one thing I really dislike about living in the really urban sections of Philly. With all the street lights and buildings, you can barely see the stars. I considered getting up early tomorrow morning to see the lunar eclipse. But, odds are good I would not be able to see anyhing.
I think you’re referring to something else. The Social Security Fairness Act has nothing to do with SSA overpayments. It’s a repeal of two acts passed which limited the amount of Social Security benefits which could be paid. The WEP changed the way benefits were calculated for people who had less than 30 Years of Coverage (which was a minimum amount you had to pay FICA taxes on each year). The GOP was a provision that spousal benefits were not payable unless they were more than two-thirds of a pension being paid on non-SSA covered wages. So if you were receiving a $3000 monthly federal pension, you could only be paid the amount of a spousal SSA benefit that was over $2000.
It is something different but both are Social Security related & the other change was just made a few days ago & was a noteworthy news story; given this is the Pit that’s what I thought it was going to be about at first
I do not have a thermos or permanent lidded cup. For a long time, I did not keep a cup at my desk for fear it would spill and damage my laptops or something else. I eventually gave in and have kept a cup on my desk for over a month with no problem.
Today, the headset chord has been giving me problems. While trying to fix it, I spilled a cup of tapwater flavore with Mio on the desk and all over my work laptop. The work laptop belongs to my employer. Fortunately, I had the foresight to keep a roll of paper towels at the desk as well. I went off active status and did my best to clean things up. Every time I picked up the laptop to clean behind or under it, more liquid spilled out of it.
There does not seem to be any permanent damage. I am very worried. I am very angry at myself.
The saga of my much-loved Dell Optiplex business desktop continues. As I think I mentioned before, I replaced the original HDD with an SSD which has been working beautifully, and also added a 2 TB HDD for data, now up to almost 47,000 hours of power-on time.
I’m glad I did a full backup recently because it appears that the bad sector count is growing, just as ChatGPT predicted it would in a recent consultation with said robot. The ex-wife, bless her little heart, gave me a 2 TB Samsung SSD that she had bought to upgrade her old laptop but decided to get a new computer instead. I tried to clone the HDD to the new SSD in a docking station, but the cloning operation quit on a read error from the source drive. Clearly this thing is on its last legs. After doing yet another full scan and adding another sector to the “bad block” list, I’ll try again. If it still fails, I’ll clone from the backup.
Well, the clone attempt failed again, so now I’m doing a restore from backup to the SSD. Not sure why the clone failed, but maybe it’s somehow ignoring the bad sector reallocation.
Anyway, the restore from backup is going along fine, much further than the clone attempt. No big deal, the 2 TB disk is mainly just an archive of a lot of stuff and doesn’t change that often. But clearly, the HDD with 47,000 hours is very sick.
So now my rant is that I have to unplug 28,483 different cables, get the computer case on the floor, perform surgery on it to replace the HDD with the new SSD, vacuum out the undoubtedly accumulated dust, reverse the whole process, and hope to hell it still works. I’m too old for this shit!
On a different topic, while my massive disk restore continues – which is going to take many hours even with USB 3 – in addition to a few more vats of Havana Club I picked up some Canadian Captain Morgan rum yesterday. The latter turned out to be a pleasant light-coloured thing, lighter than the now-shunned American product Bacardi, which is sort of halfway between the two. On balance, patriot though I am, I prefer the Cuban stuff to Captain Morgan because of its depth of flavour. But for a mixed drink it hardly matters.
A local liquor store chain has a house vodka. Red flags should go up, because it is super-cheap, but if you adulterate it with tomato juice, Worcestershire, Tabasco, celery salt, horseradish, and ground black pepper, it works. In other words, it’s got the kick without the cost.
My BIL has died. He worked as a truck driver for 40 years; he loaded/helped load his truck, drove it all through the boroughs, unloaded/helped unload his truck for 6 days a week.
He formally retired last summer.
He lived alone and stopped calling in January; we checked on him in Feb and found him at deaths door with severe flu and a huge cancer mass in his throat (smoking related).
Hospital had him intubated and when he got a little better he was breathing through a tracheotomy (?) hole. He was miserable and suffering; and last night his suffering ended. He was incredibly strong, but in the end that didn’t matter.
It was a Miserable retirement and a Miserable way to die.
The best cinematic representation of him was the truck driver in Superman 2.
except, he never started fights. And he wasn’t an aggressive Ahole.
( I’m not going to lie… he was flawed. He was a racist and a Rump supporter.
But he died in agony from cancer, with a trach tube in his throat so he couldn’t scream.
Maybe some of his sins were payed for. )
I live on a small lake that most winters freezes solid edge to edge. Yesterday the ice was just beginning to thin out and recede. Usually there are a few days where the ice sheet dramatically shrinks as it gets pushed and pulled by wind.
Not this year, as of this morning the lake is completely free from ice, any second now some twit will fire up their boat and go blasting about making noise and wakes.
No I’m not ready for spring, another couple of wet snowstorms would be welcome.
Oh, please Og No! Fellow Poster… I would not wish that on anyone in this world!
Hide his lighter… cut the heads off of his books of matches… pick-pocket his cig packs and throw them out in neighbors trash cans.
I know that no one can stop anyone from smoking… but you aren’t just anyone and you have a very strong will.
I know that you probably can’t “win the Super Bowl”… But you can show up, play the game, and try.
Most every time the evil cancer sticks win. My mom died of old age and with lung cancer and at the end was weak could barely see or walk, started to refuse food and drink. Except chocolate she ate chocolate. And smoked Marlboro reds. Still had the strength to flick her bic. It was the last activity she engaged in.
She tried to quit dozens of times. Could never shake the habit.
