My Musings

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Got this e-mail this morning and it was too delicious not to share.

Dear Facebook user,

Due to Facebook policy changes, all Facebook users must submit a new, updated account agreement, regardless of their original account start date.
Accounts that do not submit the updated account agreement by the deadline will have restricted.

Please unzip the attached file and run “agreement.exe” by double-clicking it.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

The mail appears to come from Facebook <update+ogqlkohachj@facebookmail.com>. Facebookbmail.com? really? And you want me to execute an EXE file?

I thought we were past this, guys. We live in an age of drive-by malware infections from legitimate websites and botnets 10,000+ strong. And you’re sending executables in zip files?

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Dear Parent,

In reference to your request for the return of your childcare deposit, I am afraid we must decline. I know that this comes at a particularly difficult time, in light of your tragedy, and we genuinely do not wish to add to your pain. I must regretfully remind you that your letter of intent is a binding agreement, and it clearly states that the deposit is 100% non-refundable. I know this may come across as a heartless policy, but unfortunately if we returned the deposit or childcare tuition of every child stolen from its cradle by a witch, lured into the land of Faerie by traveling musicians, or turned into animals for naughty behavior–well, you can imagine how quickly we would be left near-destitute. As difficult as this may seem, I hope you will take this rejection as a sign to strengthen your resolve and reaffirm your hope. Surely if your precious child is as clever as you led us to believe during the interview, he will find a way to trick the witch into pouring a circle of salt around herself or perhaps push her into an oven. If this is the case, then rest assured that your unrefunded deposit continues to guarantee him a spot here in daycare.

Regards,

MG

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I and a lot of other people were caught off guard by the recent changes to how Facebook is showing us our news. What’s the difference between the News Feed and the Live feed. It would have been nice if there had been some sort of news update or instructions or something. Instead, it just appeared and we had to figure it out on our own. A few days later word started traveling through the grapevine that you could rearrange the list on the left, putting Status Updates at the top, and things would go back to the way they were.

Only, that’s not really true. Moving Status Updates to the top of the list does (sometimes) change your default view, but as the name suggests, you only see status updates. You don’t get the photos of your nieces and nephews or all the other miscellaneous stuff that is posted on Facebook. It just seemed wrong that there would be a change like this with no explanation, so I started looking for one. It took me all of about 30 seconds. This public service announcement is for all of you who have been complaining about Facebook but haven’t bothered to look into why it’s doing what it’s doing.

For starters, you can go to Settings->Help and read most of what I’m about to tell you.

Now, there are two views of News Feed: a summary view of the most interesting activity that’s happened in the last day and a real-time view that shows you what is happening right now. Learn more about News Feed and how to edit the views here.

That is followed with a link that takes you to an FAQ. The money quote is the very first question and answer.

What is the difference between News Feed and Live Feed?
News Feed aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting, while Live Feed shows you all the actions your friends are making in real-time.

I don’t know about you, but I have a ridiculous number of “friends” on Facebook. I put friends in quote because it’s really a mixture of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, people whom I’ve never met in person but nevertheless are fans of 12 to Midnight and seem great. I’ve got less than 200 Facebook friends, and I know quite a few people who have in excess of 500. Every time I log in, it’s with the knowledge that I’m missing dozen of posts because of all the noise. I’ve even created some custom friends lists to use to narrow down groups and try to catch everything, but honestly it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I think the Facebook team has recognized this trend and is trying to do something about it. Thus we’ve got the News view, which tries to summarize the most interesting stuff, and the Live view, which is every post from every friend in date order.

How does News Feed determine which content is most interesting?
The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).

This is pretty cool, in my opinion, because if I were designing it that’s exactly how I would do it. I’d look at the number of views and comments on a post, content type (ranking user generated higher than app-generated), and how frequently I’ve interacted with the poster in the past.

Where are my Highlights?

Highlights and News Feed have been merged into one single stream in order to provide you with more control over what you see on your home page. Now when you load Facebook for the first time in a while, you’ll land on your News Feed, which contains a summary of the best content that you missed. After you’ve caught up on what you’ve missed, you can switch to the Live Feed. The Live Feed is a real-time stream that allows you to connect and share with friends’ updates immediately as they are occurring.

Once I realized what the two pages were for, I saw that they did their jobs pretty well. Where Facebook fell down was in not explaining all of this to us as an item in our news streams. I’m sure there’s an essay about the sad irony in Facebook’s communication failure. In the meantime, give the two news views a fresh chance. You may come to like them.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Yes, I’m still here. I still have more to say about the whole health care reform thing. However, I also renewed my focus on finishing the writing/editing of a big project– ETU: Degrees of Horror. I have very little time for writing these days, so I have to make tough decisions about how I use it. That means Flametoad will be going on a planned hiatus for a few more weeks while I continue work on ETU. I will be back. In fact, when I return I’ll probably be devoting even more time to Flametoad than I had previously. I’ve got some ideas for short fiction in addition to my usual random essays and links to cool stuff. I hope you’ll hang in there with me. There’s still quite a bit of fire left in this old toad.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In Flametoad’s continuing series on health care, today I’d like to take a closer look at some of the costs that affect what we (or insurance companies) pay for health-care. Before I we get into those costs though, I did want to mention something that I meant to bring up in my first post. Has anyone else noticed that eighties are the new sixties? The average lifespan in America is now between 77.5 – 80 years old [PDF from the CDC]. Long term disability insurance is more important than ever because, as Mrs. Flametoad has said “We’re really pretty good about keeping you going. We just can’t guarantee that we can put you back to the way you were before.” This ties in directly with what I said in that first post about people who are regularly admitted to the ICU today are the patients who simply would have been dead 30 years ago. We’re better at extending life, but not necessarily because we’re living more healthy.

Anyway, this post is about expenses. What drives the costs behind health-care? Why, when you go to a hospital, does aspirin cost $10? That goes back to one of the idiosyncrasies of medial billing. If you’re really persistent, you can get a nice, itemized bill for your hospital services. What that bill doesn’t show you are items like ”nursing care”, or “administrative costs”, or “floor waxing”. When we buy a shirt from a store, we all understand that the price of that shirt includes the overhead involved in running that store–from utilities to rent to the cashier’s hourly wage. But when we see $10 aspirin on a hospital bill, the very first thing we all think is “I can buy a whole bottle for $3! I’m getting robbed.” In a way, it would be better if they did add on a line item called “hospital overhead”.

Another driving cost behind health-care is what we’ll broadly call “bad debt”. A 1986 federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, requires emergency rooms to screen and stabilize all patients, before even asking if they can pay. I have heard that both hospitals in my city are stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid emergency room visits every year. Incidentally, this law has been interpreted to apply to all persons, regardless of immigration status. That means that on boarder states like mine, hospitals get quite a few poor, illegal immigrants who go to the emergency room with no intention of paying. One source report linked from this Wikipedia article on EMTALA estimates that non-citizens make up more than 20% of uninsured (although I’m skeptical of their methodology).

On the subject of bad debt, the California Supreme Court has ruled that patients cannot be billed for services if their HMO fails to pay.

At issue in the case is a practice known as balance billing, a practice that typically occurs when a patient is treated for an emergency at a hospital that does not have a fee contract with the patient’s HMO.

In such cases, HMOs say, physicians and hospitals often submit inflated charges. But hospitals and physicians say that without minimum fee requirements, HMOs routinely underpay them.

Disputing such underpayments is impractical and costly, physicians say, so they bill patients for the balance, hoping the patients’ complaints will prompt the HMO to pay in full. 

Now let’s talk malpractice. Conventional wisdom points to growing abuse of the legal system that began in the 1980s. Patients racked up large jury awards, which bankrupted some physician groups and drove insurance premiums higher. That would account for high health care costs, right? Well, there’s an interesting new study out by Americans for Insurance Reform that paints a different picture. Their report indicates that malpractice premiums and claims make up less than 1% of the total cost of health-care, that premiums and claims have been fairly steady for well more than a decade when factored for inflation, and that premiums are roughly the same in states that have enacted tort reform over ones that haven’t. Now, this is a relatively new report, and I would have liked a little more time for someone with more intimate knowledge of the situation to check it for accuracy. You also have to be careful because sometimes these innocuous-sounding groups are really mouthpieces for a particular political party. In this case, we’ve got what we’ve got so we’ll make the best of it.

To be honest, I was pretty surprised when I came across this report. It does certainly seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. More than that, it flies in the face of anecdotes by Mrs. Flametoad. However, upon further study and reflection, I found a pattern. The report quotes a New Yorker article about McAllen, Texas “the most expensive town in the country for health care” with regard to Medicare claims. The article quotes local doctors who claim that aggressive lawyers seeking malpractice suits are to blame. Yet, at the same time  they admit that state tort reform has dramatically reduced the actual number of malpractice cases. So what gives? I think to reconcile what’s happening, we should imagine a cornered gunfighter facing a dozen grisled henchmen.

 ”You only got six bullets in that side-iron! You can’t shoot us all!”

“You’re right,” the gunfighter replied. So you six who want to get shot, just step forward.”

The direct impact of malpractice suits on “the health-care industry” may be small, but to the guy getting shot, it’s deadly. Nobody wants to be the target of a malpractice suit. Even if awards are capped, there are still the legal fees for the doctor’s defense. Consequently, doctors run more tests than their patients’ immediate symptoms would indicate, just as a CYA. Our bodies are all different, and despite all the medical advances we’ve made a lot of medicine is still trial and error. When it comes to our health, it’s nice to know that every avenue is being pursued, right? Yet, when it comes to assessing the cost of health-care though, how would you feel about being told that half the tests on your statement were unnecessary? And if that happens over and over again, what does that do to the cost of health-care?

In an interesting bit of timing, this hit the news.

It seems like the biggest winner in the health care system is the insurance industry. They make money from health care providers in the form of malpractice premiums. They make money from consumers in the form of health-care premiums. They even find ways to drop those bad bets to which I referred in my post on insurance.

So where do we go from here? That’ll be the next post. Stay tuned.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Worked on ETU tonight instead of my series of posts on health care reform. However, I believe this news report article on medicare fraud is relevant to the discussion. Stay tuned!

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Today marks the second part in my series examining “health care reform”. If you couldn’t tell from the title, today’s post focuses on how insurance works.

The best way to understand insurance is to think of it as institutionalized gambling. When you buy health insurance, you’re saying “I bet that I’m going to get sick or need health care this month,” and a company says “I’ll bet you won’t.” Based on what may as well be Vegas odds and the payout, the company determines a monthly premium, which is your bet. If you’re wrong, the company keeps the money. If you’re right, you get the payout in terms of health care spending. Depending on your policy, it probably still doesn’t pay 100%, but something closer to 80/20. Regardless, that’s insurance in a nutshell. The company needs to make sure that it wins its bets more often than the consumer, or it’ll go bust.

Health insurance companies have various strategies for making sure they don’t go bust. For starters, they like safe bets. A young non-smoker in his 20s or 30s is a much safer bet than a smoker in his 50s or 60s. Based on the odds, the companies can afford to offer lower rates for young, healthy people. It takes a lot of young, healthy people (safe bets) to cover the people almost guaranteed to lose the insurance company money.

We’ve all heard stories of insurance companies that drop a policy as soon as they have to pay out for the first major illness. For a consumer who has already suffered a costly (and likely serious) health problem, it definitely feels like being kicked while you’re down. It’s hardly fair, and various legislation has been tried over the years to prevent it, but it seems to happen anyway. Remember, the insurance carrier is a gambler. Why would a gambler make a bet he knows he’s going to lose?

Another strategy of insurance companies is to minimize their loss when they do actually lose a bet. They do this by using the strength of their numbers to leverage better rates from health care providers. Basically they say “If you want access to our network of 1,000,000 customers, we want a reduced rate on your services. You say that test costs $60? We’ll give you $40.” The problem is that sometimes that test really costs $50. That gets into medical billing, which is almost a post in and of itself.

I should also note that Medicare and Medicaid works the same way. Medicare is government insurance for the elderly. (Incidentally, in FY 2007 Medicare was 16% of all federal spending.)  Medicaid is government insurance for the poor. There’s a standard table of what each insurance company will pay for a medical “incident”. This is a flat rate that is supposed to discourage health care providers from prolonging hospital stays or heaping on unnecessary treatment. If you get the same money whether you keep a patient for 10 days or 2, there is a certain incentive to get your patients in and out. This is another one of those changes in medicine compared to 30 years ago. Stays are shorter because there is financial incentive to have high turnover. Five patients staying one day are more profitable than one patient staying 5 days.

Now that we’ve looked at health care (Part 1) and insurance, the next part will take a closer look at the costs of providing health care. Stay tuned!

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In the grand Flametoad tradition of eschewing any sort of predictable theme, today’s post marks the first in a weeklong series of essays on health care and health care reform in the US. What can I say? Sometimes you get Duke Nuk’em Disease, sometimes you get health care reform. For this series I’ll be drawing heavily upon Mrs. Flametoad’s knowledge of the health care system. Mrs. Flametoad is employed in a hospital lab. As you’ll read, I’ll also draw upon other sources that have engaged in the national conversation on health care, which I’ll try to cite with links as much as possible. Be warned that I’ll be breaking it down in a way that plain folks (like me) can understand, which in some cases will mean simplifying very complex processes and systems.

Today’s post focuses on the health care as it stands today.

First, even as we talk about health care “reform”, I want to point out that most people aren’t really talking about reforming health care itself. Our advances in medicine are nothing short of miraculous and the envy of much of the world. What people want to reform is how we access that health care. That’s an important distinction, because as we work on improving the system we don’t want the science of medicine or health care to suffer.

In the interest of helping demystify health care and the hospital system in particular, I’ll share an interesting bit of trivia with you. Hospitals don’t employ doctors. (Okay, some hospitals employ a very few, but it’s not all that common.) Doctors employed by a doctor’s group and keep their own offices. Hospitals are merely places that provide facilities, staff, equipment, and support services such as laboratories. It’s like renting office space to work. THAT is why when you have to go to a hospital you get one bill from the hospital and another from each doctor. You’ll get one from your doctor, one from an anesthesiologist, the specialist, and so on. From the outside, it might look like all these people are working together like clockwork, but from the inside it’s like random cogs mashed into a watch casing with the expectation that they all work together to tell time. The amazing thing is that they usually do.

A week or two ago I was fortunate enough to catch part of a one-hour radio show in which two nurses were being interviewed. These particular nurses were instructors in a nursing school and had been in the nursing profession since the 1970s. This provided them, and we listeners, with a very interesting perspective on how the medical profession has changed. One comment that really grabbed my attention was the assertion that patients who were in the ICU 30 years ago are just regular admitted patients these days. The types of patients who are admitted to the ICU today would simply have been dead 30 years ago. So generally speaking, people who end up in a hospital stay today are more sick and need more care than ones 30 years ago.

As a corollary, people who would have been admitted for a two or three day hospital stay 30 years ago are instead treated to outpatient care today. This is actually win-win for both hospitals and patients. From the hospital side, they can bill for procedures without the overhead* associated a room stay. (More on that in a bit.) From the patient side, it’s usually safer to get home as soon as possible. With the rise of hospital “super-bugs” that are immune to all but the most aggressive (and expensive) of antibiotics, if you’re in a position where your immune system is already low or you have a wound that could serve as an entry point you really don’t want to hang out in a hospital any longer than necessary.

Patient expectations have also changed over the last 30 years. In the 1970s, people questioned their doctors much less. Generally speaking, they were less educated about medical procedures and had much less access to information. Today, patients are more proactive about getting treatment. Here’s an example.

Joe: Hey doc. I hurt my knee playing football in my back yard with my brother and our kids. Now it’s all swollen and I can barely stand on it.
Doc: Let’s see… yeah, that looks swollen alright. Hmm, I don’t see any indication of a break. I’d say it’s just sprained. Keep ice on it to reduce the swelling and keep weight off it for a few days. If you’re not better in three days, com back and we’ll take another look at it.
Joe: But if something really is wrong, wouldn’t it be better to get a MRI now?
Doc: …Well… it could. But if it’s just sprained then it’s a waste.
Joe: That’s alright. I’ve got pretty good insurance. This thing hurts like hell. I don’t think it’s just a sprain. Let’s do the MRI.

So those are just a few data points on health care today. There could certainly be more. Much more. A blog’s entire purpose could be devoted to demystifying the health care system. However, we have more important things to do. Tuesday, we talk about insurance.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In followup to Stop Helping Me, I thought you’d be interested to know that I got another update to Chase’s terms for my Visa card. There were 8 updates altogether, but the one that got me was the last one.

The Default Rates section of your Agreement is amended to add the following reason to impose the default APR on your account.

-You are in default under any other agreement for any other account or loan with us or any of our related companies, such as you fail to make a payment when due.

To me, this reads as if they’ll apply the default APR (which is something like 11% at the moment) to my card account if I were to be late on a house or auto loan payment through Chase. Am I reading this wrong? Does this sound to anyone else like kicking someone when they’re down?

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Last week I took my first trip to the West Coast. I had a training and certification exam in San Francisco. I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than temperatures 40 degrees cooler than what we were experiencing in Texas. I knew it was going to be a busy trip, but I thought I’d like to check out Alcatraz and maybe a few other sights. Unfortunately, this ended up not being the trip for sightseeing.

I got to my hotel at around 7 pm the night before my first class, but my body was still telling me that it was 9 pm. Jet lag really hurt on this trip. I awoke at 5 am after a very restless night, and enjoyed what would turn out to be my last few hours of leisure.

The class and exam were for certification in payment card security, which is one of my daytime job functions. By mid-day it was clear that I was in deep. Going into it, I really didn’t know what to expect with the class or exam. I realized that I was in a room with a bunch of people who had been involved in payment security longer than I and had more knowledge. There appeared to be a lot of rote memorization that I hadn’t done leading up to the class, and I was expected to do it on my own. So after nearly 8 hours of instruction, I went to my room and studied for another 3 hours. The next morning I got up at 5 am and immediately started studying until the class began at 9 am. Another 8 hours of instruction, then back to my room for another four hours of memorization. Then Friday morning, up at 4 am (awake at 3, truth be told) for another four hours of studying/memorization right up until the exam.

Fortunately, all that cramming paid off to some degree. I won’t know if I passed the certification for another two weeks, but at least I don’t feel like I embarrassed myself. I feel like I did pretty fair. Between studying my brains out and praying for peace and perspective, I made it through the stress, jet lag, and sleep deprivation without cracking.

Oh, and two hours after the exam I checked out of the hotel and headed back to the airport. My only first hand impression of San Francisco comes from the airport and the hotel. The airport is too small for the amount of foot traffic going through it. It was very crowded. People were lined up in the halls sitting against the walls because there was nowhere to sit. My hotel, Staybridge Suites, was something of a disappointment. It was an older facility, and somewhat frayed around the edges. The mattresses weren’t terribly comfortable and the shower was a sad little thing. All in all, it was a lonely room. What it wasn’t was small. Because these were suites for long-term stay, I had a kitchen, living room, and separate bedroom.

San Francisco seemed like it might have been pretty. I come from a part of Texas that’s green (when we’re not in drought), but relatively flat. It was a nice change of pace to actually see hills and mountains. Maybe one of these days I’ll be back, hopefully for something less stressful and with more time for sightseeing.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

So, you know the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act that the president just signed? The one that’s supposed to give all of us common people relief from the tyranny of the card companies by letting us go longer before we’re charged late fees? The one in which card companies have to give 60 days notice before they raise your rates? What a great thing for consumers! Way to stick it to those greedy banks!

Except…it’s not quite that easy. Card banks aren’t able to apply the cost of riskier transactions onto the people who are making those risky transactions–those with bad credit, who pay late, or who don’t pay at all. That was the idea behind the law. But the card banks aren’t just shrugging their shoulders and giving up. Someone has to cover those risky transactions. Since the card banks can’t make those people pay, they’re starting to look at other places to shift that cost. But how?

Fees

Remember when card banks charged annual fees ranging anywhere from $40-$100 for the privilege of using their card? Market competition has mostly driven those fees away. Look for some banks to start charging annual fees again. But hey, they have to give you 60 days notice before they do it so it’s a victory for consumers, right?

Goodnight, Grace

Here’s one even better. Keep an eye out for this letter from your card companies. Chase, one of my card banks, already sent me notification that in 60 days they’re setting my rates to x%–on all charges from the time of purchase.

Card banks (or at least mine) are eliminating the 30 day grace period cardholders have traditionally been given to pay back purchases without interest. All the Obama administration’s law has done is allow the card banks to shift the costs of all the people who are defaulting on their credit card payments to those of us who faithfully pay off our balances every month on time.

What’s a person to do?

Keep an eye on your mail, and read notices carefully. Don’t be afraid to call up your card bank and cancel your card. Getting screwed with 60 days notice is still getting screwed. Even though I’ll be forgoing the rewards points, I’ll probably be shifting most of my purchases to a debit/check card. Most of all, please tell the government to stop “helping” us. I can’t afford it.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

There’s an interesting, short editorial on the Britannica blog about where the economic policies of the last decade will leave us when China shifts some of its export economy to consumption. The premise is that they don’t need us to buy as much of their goods, they won’t need to prop up the US economy by buying up our debt. It’s short. Read it.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I know talking about the budget is passe now that the zombie apocalypse swine flu outbreak is selling newspapers (or, you know, air time or whatever), but this video about the president’s pledge to trim the budget was amusing enough that it was worth sharing anyway. It’s only a minute and a half.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I got on the scale the other day and was shocked to discover just how much weight I’d gained. I mean, I knew the pants were fitting tight, but damn. In your mind there’s a magic number that you always consider the upper limit. I’m 3 pounds above that. So yesterday I started back on the South Beach diet, which works pretty well for me. Well, that is, except for the maddening carb-cravings. Days one and two aren’t too bad, but later this week I recommend you stand back. If I think you’ve been snacking on sweets I might just decide you’re looking a bit too tasty.

In other news, 12 to Midnight is working on a fun, new project related to ETU. We’ll be releasing it later this week. Best of all? It’s free.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

Even though I stopped blogging for several weeks in March and April, I’ve been saving blogworthy links the whole time. Consequently, I have a pretty good backlog. For your edutainment:

• As a kid I was careful to spit out the watermelon seeds because I didn’t want one growing inside me. You laughed, but I was right!
• News Flash! Americans are still choosing comfort over gas milage! I have nothing against hybrid vehicles. Just put a hybrid engine in my Tacoma and you’ve sold me.
• Shriners Hospitals provide 100% free health care to thousands of children. Unfortunately, the number of members in the fraternity are shrinking and the hospital endowment is dwindling. This is forcing them to consider closing 6 hopitals across the US. If you’ve ever complained about health care for children (remember; I read your blogs too!), put your money where your mouth is. Make a donation to the Shriners Hospitals.
• Speaking of hypocrisy, the Big Hollywood blog has something to say about about Hollywood’s selective support of the First Amendment.
• And just so we end things on a positive note, here’s a field of light sabers. (Okay, they’re actually fluorescent bulbs, but it’s still really cool.)

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

When I get busy, Flametoad.com is usually the first to suffer. I had two major deadlines in the last week, so unfortunately that meant you readers were neglected. The good news is that with those two deadlines are behind me, I should be back in the saddle.

I have quite a lot to talk about. So much, in fact, that I’m not sure where to begin. I suppose those aforementioned deadlines would probably be a good start. As I’ve written in the past, the print edition of Last Rites of the Black Guard is being released next month. I had expected to be done with layout by the end of January, but illness and various other things put me about two weeks behind where I expected to be. It got down to crunch time though, and I finally finished layout on Tuesday. This was then followed by a few more days or wrangling with our printer to finalize our contract. All of that stuff should have been done in January, but I’m not the only one who has been terribly busy. At any rate, I was finally able to place the order for our proof copy on Friday, so that particular hurdle has been cleared. We should have information on the advance orders right around the time the proof comes in. Hopefully we won’t have to make any changes and we’ll be able to place the order right away. As it stands right now, we’re still in good shape for our March release.

The deadline for getting our proof ordered was followed immediately by a deadline to submit info on 12 to Midnight’s June release. Now that the info has finally been submitted, I am free to spill the beans on this super-secret project. We are publishing an anthology of horror fiction called Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX. We were fortunate enough to get Matt McElroy of Flames Rising as the editor, and we have several excellent writers who graciously agreed to contribute stories.  The pressure was in having to produce a book cover the same week as the final layout for Last Rites. I feel like the cover I came up with was fine, but given more time I could do better. I’ll be talking a LOT about Buried Tales over the next few months, so I don’t feel compelled to go into too much detail right now. It’s a labor of love, a dream come true, and a nerve-wracking experience all at the same time.

In other news, on Friday I finally broke down and bought a refurbished e-book reader. I went with the Sony 505. It was way cheaper than the Kindle, uses pretty much the same screen technology, and is compatible with the “universal” e-book format “ePub”. Honestly, I hope to upgrade to the new Plastic Logic e-reader when it’s released around this time next year, so I didn’t want to spend a fortunate on a device that I would be selling on eBay next year. Of course, all of this is dependent on my actually getting the thing. When I checked my order status later it said “waiting for inventory”. Apparently the online store in question had a rush of orders and sold out. Razzle frazzle! I’m really excited about getting my first real e-book reader. I hope it comes through!

In other, other news, I got pretty an amazing Valentine’s Day present from my wife– a new truck! Okay, yes we’ve been shopping for a new truck for the last month. But Saturday was the day we actually found one. Mrs. Flametoad wanted to keep her car, so that means I get the shiny, new (to me) pickup. It’s a 2007 Toyota Tundra double cab with the big 5.7 Liter V8 engine. It’s more truck than I need, but it gets better gas milage than my 10 year old F150, even though I’m going up from the smallest of the V6 engines they put in F150s that year to the biggest of the v8s they put in the Tundra. It’s also kinda nice having anti-lock brakes for a change. Needless to say, I’m really excited about my new wheels!

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I lost my cell phone yesterday evening, and it’s already driving me crazy. I had it on the way to pick up Tadpole 1 from kindergarten, and noticed it missing once I’d been home for a couple hours. It’s not in the truck and we can’t hear it ring in the house when we call it. I probably either sat it down when I was signing out the tadpole, or it fell off my belt in the parking lot.

It’s funny how much you take things for granted, but that phone is my lifeline to the world. It’s like my external telepathy device. I instantly know when I get an e-mail or a text message. It lets me communicate with people across town or across the country. I frequently use it to check weather conditions. It’s also my interface for music and tv. Oh, and sometimes I make calls on it too. In fact, Mrs. Flametoad and I don’t have land lines to the house anymore. Our cell phones are our only phones.

I really hope it turns up in the lost and found box this afternoon. If not, I guess I’ll be out another $300 I can’t really afford. (If I could, I’d own an X-box 360.) In the meantime though, don’t bother calling.

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

In lieu of actual content today, here are some cool things I’ve been meaning to share lately:

Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell take on Edar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars. The result is beautiful. (After following the link, click on the thumbnail image for a bigger version.) I had the whole series of books in junior high, so John Carter has a special place in my heart.

Orson Bean (IMDB ref)  has interesting things to say about being blacklisted in Hollywood.

A petroleum geologist weighs in on the oft-repeated statement that new drilling takes 10 or more years to reach production. I’m a big supporter of alternative energy, but it’s important to know the facts.

Io9 came up with a list of the best sci-fi books of 2008. Unfortunately I’m just now getting around to books I picked up in 2006, so my spending on new fiction is limited to certain favorite authors. However, I’m curious if any of you have read the books on this list.

Awesome animated concept art of airships. I’d watch this movie!

Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

I had a bad day today thanks to a setback at 12 to Midnight, my publishing company. I had some stress to release, so I took off a little early from work, stopped by the house for my Glock, and hit the local indoor range.

These shots are from 20 and 25 feet. Oddly all the center ring hits were at 25 feet. You may also notice I’m pulling low and to the left a lot. I need to work on that.

I do feel better though.

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Originally published at Flametoad. You can comment here or there.

The title of my post is a pretty good description of government in general, but today I submit a new example.

A new federal regulation set to go into effect February 10 will prohibit or severely restrict the resale of children’s goods, including clothes and toys. Think about that for a few moments. No toy resale. No childrens clothing resale. No Goodwill.  How many families depend on resale shops to keep their kids clothed? How many wouldn’t get toys at Christmas or their birthdays?

I first became aware of the law through a local news article. A few moments with a search engine brought up a few other articles, although not nearly as many as one would expect considering the impact. The LA Times explains that the law is in response to the lead scare, and requires that all items sold for those aged 12 and younger, including clothing, be tested for lead and phthalates. If untested, the product can not be sold. “Those that haven’t been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.” Testing can cost upwards of $1,000 per item.

This regulation, designed to protect children, will have the side effect of creating a new, huge mountain of waste in our landfills. It’s about as “anti-green” as you can get. It’s being called “National Bankrupcy Day” by the Wall Street Journal because it will force hundreds (okay, probably thousands) of thrift stores out of business. It’s going to add a new, significant expense to manufacturers of new items but it’s going to practically overnight it’s going to end an industry that serves the poor or those who just want to be thrifty.

Nobody wants to inadvertantly poison their children, but this step seems like amputating an arm to treat a papercut. If you’re still politically fired up after the election, how about putting some of that energy to use by telling your elected official to rethink the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.