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Gateway to Adventure(land)

We took the kid to Disneyland this weekend. It’s been a few years since I’d been to the park, and with NYCC happening at the same time, I couldn’t help but compare the experience to San Diego Comic-Con.

  • It’s expensive to get in, but once you’re there, most of the events are free.
  • It’s hideously crowded.
  • Everywhere you go, people are stopping for photos with people wearing costumes.
  • You spend a lot of time waiting in line. (But at Disneyland, you can usually be sure you’ll get in!)
  • Food is overpriced and mediocre, unless you leave and come back.
  • You can’t possibly do everything in one visit.

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Wow. A study finds that only 54% of patients experiencing an anaphylactic episode requiring an ER visit or hospitalization get an epinephrine prescription within a year, and only 22% visit an allergist or immunologist in that time. (via this week’s FARE newsletter)

The article treats this as an education/compliance issue, but I have two big questions:

  1. How many of these patients discussed the incident with their regular doctor? It’s possible that more than 22% followed up with a doctor, just not with a specialist.
  2. How does insurance coverage correlate? If you don’t have insurance, it’s expensive to see a specialist, and expensive to get an Epi-pen (though there are generics now that are a bit cheaper)…especially after you’ve just received a bill for thousands of dollars for the emergency room.

Regarding #2, the study looked at “healthcare claims,” so if I’m reading that correctly, they may have only looked at people who do have insurance. If that’s the case, I wonder if it would be possible to break it down by type of insurance: HMO vs. PPO, do they charge a higher co-pay for specialists, etc. Our current system could do a lot more to encourage preventative care.

For the record: The first thing I did when I got home from that San Diego trip was to order a replacement Epi-Pen, and Monday morning, I called up my allergist to schedule an appointment. But then, I already had an allergist, a prescription, and insurance.

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Have you ever abandoned an email address? Did you make sure everyone switched to your new one? If your old provider has reissued the address to someone new, your old contacts could still be sending mail to someone else with your personal information.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, but InformationWeek reports that Yahoo! users who’ve picked up recycled addresses are getting important mail meant for the previous owner of the email address.

It started off with some stuff from catalogs and clothing companies and I thought, ‘That’s fine, I’ll just unsubscribe.’…But then I started getting emails with court information, airline confirmations, a funeral announcement…

Update: Yahoo! is introducing a “not my email” button to report mistaken deliveries.

Well, that’s an interesting approach to the misdirected email problem. This might even be useful as a general solution beyond recycled addresses. I once ended up receiving someone else’s Sears receipt and promotions, I assume because of a sales clerk’s typo.

But I find myself wondering about the potential for backscatter, collateral loss of mail, and just how people will actually use it in relation to the report spam button.

And that’s just with the honest people who get the reused mailbox!

Update 2: For commercial email especially, XKCD points out the importance of actually verifying that the email address someone gave you is theirs, and not someone else’s address written as a typo, and Word to the Wise highlights some real-world cases they’ve written about in the past.

Originally posted as two link posts on Facebook and one on LinkedIn.

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Buildings reflecting the setting sun Reflected sunset in the lobby

Monday afternoon I noticed the sun was still shining into my office window. This was a bit odd since my window looks out at another building, and the sun had already sunk behind it.

I looked, and it was reflecting off the building I was in, then reflecting off the building across the way.

Later that evening, I stepped out of the elevator to the sight of sunlight streaming into the lobby from the east.

Wait, east? At sunset?

You guessed it. Once again, it was reflecting off another building.

This part of Los Angeles is built on a North/South and East/West grid, and with the autumnal equinox approaching, it’s lining up just about perfectly with the shiny reflective buildings.

It also aligns perfectly with the mirrors in my car when I’m driving east at sunset. The triple sun is almost worse than driving straight at it.

It’s no Manhattanhenge, but it’s still interesting. One of these days I’ll look up the grid alignment for downtown LA (it’s diagonal) and try to recapture a moment from a few years ago, when I was in exactly the right spot for the sunset to light up all the towers bright orange. That was awesome