That’s good, but you should demand a really, really good explanation from Bay Medical about what happened and why it happened, and who they fired as a result. This is serious, life-threatening business.
Very glad to hear that!
If it’s any consolation, although yung’uns on this board may not understand how getting up off the floor can be challenging, believe me, I do. I can bend over to briefly deal with things down low, like getting something from the lowest fridge shelf or the bottom drawer below the oven or even picking things up off the floor, but once I’m down there, fuggetaboutit! Without some kind of support to raise myself up, I’m as helpless as a turtle on its back. It comes with the (ageing) territory!
What country are you from? Oh yeah. One that works.
There are no regulations. There are no standards. There is no government oversight at any level. Their contract explicitly disclaims that they have any responsibility to provide anything to any standard.
I just got off the phone from Bay Medical customer service. They had me reset the base unit and then use my alert button to call for help. This time I was promptly connected to someone, who I informed I was testing my unit.
I asked the customer service rep why there was no response to my 3am call but there was to my 3:45 call, and was told that there was no record of a 3am call. They had no explanation for why the base unit told me that help was being requested at 3am without actually connecting me to a live person. Hopefully, the reset resolved this.
From now on, however, I intend to do a check of the system every month (which I have not been doing).
As I repeatedly say (now more than ever): growing old ain’t for sissies! Regarding getting things off the floor, or off high shelves, I now have two sets of grabbers strategically placed where they’d be most useful.
You’d be surprised. I can get off the floor just fine, but I have problem with stuff where I have to go low while remaining on my feet. Very hard for me to get stuff off bottom shelves. Also, I’m short, so that just leaves… middle shelves. It’s something with my hips. I’m working on functional mobility with my fitness trainer.
I am requesting a ruling from the judges…Iffn I got Whamageddoned this morning is it the earliest I’ve ever gotten knocked out for the year (?) or does it still count towards, {ahem}, last Christmas since they were still playing carols?
I’m 43, and I popped my left ankle in the shower this morning. Not getting in, not getting out - just standing in the shower. Now my left knee is hurting from the way I’ve been walking on that foot all day.
(This isn’t a new thing; I’ve been having random joint pops since 1st grade.)
Christmas 2025–6 doesn’t end until Epiphany, which is January 6. Christmas carols are actually appropriate now, as opposed to in November when they are omnipresent.
All joking aside, @LurkMeister, I just want to wish you the most happiness in the the coming year and in all the years to come. You’ve been through so much.
Attended a funeral yesterday for my cousin’s 27 year old son. He had a rough life, mostly due to drugs.
Apparently he was attending a “bible study” just before he died, and his pastor was invited to the funeral to speak. This guy was a stereotypical Baptist preacher - perfect suit, perfect hair, and well-honed & authoritarian speaking voice. Reminded me of those Sunday morning preacher guys on TV. He spent a couple minutes talking about my cousin’s son, and then spent the next 45 minutes preaching the bible to us in fire & brimstone style. I was about ready to puke. What an asshole.
I posted a version of this in the AI forum but it really ticked me off so I am posting it here as well.
I had to call my Medicare Part D RX insurance today to ask a question and I swear when I finally reached a human I felt like I was talking to an AI imitating a human.
Whoever/whatever I started this conversation with announced his name as “Mercks”.
When I asked a question it exhibited an odd mechanical stuttering and then popped up with an answer as if it were tapping into a database.
The tone, the inflection, the weird “uhms” that were generated at inappropriate spots in the conversation were distracting.
And what annoyed me was it or he kept calling me “Ms. Ellecram” instead of using my last name.
At one point I even asked if he was an AI and he said no he was a real person.
But I would put some serious money down that I was talking to an AI “human in training”.
So bizarre.
If I want a conversation I want it to with an actual human.
The humans aren’t trained well enough to answer your questions. So they type whatever you say into an AI prompt and read back to you whatever the AI responds with. The human is just a speech-to-text-to-speech conversion device. One with probably a rather limited range of English skills.
And yes, once the customer “service” industry has adequately trained the general public, they’ll eliminate that job and we will all be talking directly to the AI.
I’m sure I’d feel the same. Then again, we aren’t the people they’re trying to please.
The customer “service” contractor is trying to please the insurer with the lowest possible cost of disposing of phone calls. The insurer’s middle & upper middle management is trying to please their C-suite by minimizing the cost of delivering benefits and maximizing the premiums collected.
Your and my interests really don’t matter to anyone but our individual selves.
Per my copy of the rulebook, one can only be Whammed from the start of November until December 24th, with the game ending on the 25th December. Any Wham incident from December 25th-October 31st is not part of play, and thus does not count any more than scoring a goal during training would.
Anyway, my mini rant. And mini it is in the scale of Google enshittification. Until recently, Google maps used to provide a useful function where it showed how busy businesses were compared to the normal level for the day. This was quite helpful in avoiding long queue and avoiding the need to maneouver through crowds when it wasn’t important when I went.
Over the last couple of months, it seems to be becoming increasingly inaccurate; I’ve repeatedly checked a location, been told it wasn’t busy, then arrived to find a seething horde of people.
Today I went to the recycling centre, which was showing around 1/3 of the norm for a Sunday afternoon (which I believed, as it is unusually cold), only to find the queue to get in was probably the longest I’ve ever seen it and it would have taken at the very least half an hour to get in, probably closer to an hour. I actually gave up and came home, my car still full of garden waste, as luckily my hours are flexible enough to allow me to drop it off tomorrow morning.
If I was an optimist, I would hope this would be because Google are tracking everyone less, but somehow I doubt that’s the case.
?) or does it still count towards, {ahem}, last Christmas since they were still playing carols? 