HHS Edict Controversy

I have been inundated with friends and relatives posting on Facebook about how it is illegal for the US government to force Catholic institutions to "provide abortions and contraceptives" as it is a violation of the First Amendment. My reaction is that 90% of these people need to go back to school and relearn reading comprehension and civics. I have 3 main issues with these Facebook posts.

First issue: The HHS Edict States that Health Insurance Plans HAVE to offer coverage for contraceptives and abortions under preventive care. This means that the big Catholic Universities, Hospitals and Schools (ie businesses) must offer coverage for contraceptives and abortions. This does not mean that anyone is decreeing that people who object to these services HAVE to utilize them. The only must be included in the health insurance plan by law. Direct employees of the Catholic Church (think priests, nuns, rectory employees, groundskeepers, etc) are exempt from this requirement because the funding for their paychecks comes directly from a religious organization. Why are the Catholic Universities, Hospitals and Schools required to offer them? Well, because most of them accept at least some form of money from our government: research grants, Medicare payments, education subsidies, etc. If they don't want to offer contraceptives and abortion coverage then they do NOT have to. All they have to do is stop accepting government money for ANYTHING. Yet they are Businesses, so they don't want to do that.

Second Issue: I'm not sure WHERE people are getting this, but they seem to think that the Government is going to require Catholic Hospitals to offer contraceptives and abortions. In any case, my argument is the same as above- as long as they take Medicare, they have to have a contract with the Government. If the Government wants to stipulate that in order to get Medicare payments, they must offer certain services, well guess what, they can! This is called contract negotiation and it is part of the foundation of free commerce. Once again, the Catholic Church is under no obligation to enter this contract. However, without the Medicare contract, the Catholic Church has only two options. One is that they will have to turn patients away - thereby losing their status as Emergency and Trauma Centers as in order to earn these designations, you have to accept all patients regardless of insurance or ability to pay. The other options is that the church will have to shell out a LOT of extra money to finance the care of patients with Medicare. Either way, this hurts their profit margins.

Third Issue: The US Government is "attacking Catholicism." This isn't something "singling Catholics out." Catholics are just the only religion making themselves look like uneducated asses over it.

OK, end of my rant. Feel free to disagree - I do enjoy debating!

Absence from Blogging

As most people know, I've had a lot of changes in my life in the past year. I moved 1500 miles to take a new job in Mississippi. I love my job. As any scientist knows, when you take a new position, there is a lot of setting up new projects and grant/proposal writing. In my first 4 months, I spent so much time staring at a computer that I just can't come home and do it, hence the limited blogging. My husband and I also purchased our first home in July (which is a long story). As any homeowner knows, it takes some time (and lots and lots of trips to Home Depot) to get a new home the way you want it. While we're not done by any means (does it ever really end?), we've now limited ourselves to one project a month. So there is life after grad school. Not surprisingly, it's just as busy as life IN grad school. However, the paycheck is a lot better. :) I'll try to post more regularly from this point on.

"Every time I think about it, all I feel is angry!"

"Every time I think about it, all I feel is angry!" These words were spoken by a friend who is in the same shitty grad student situation I was in just a little over 2 years ago. Like me, she wrote her doctoral dissertation and has been put off by an advisor who doesn't give a damn. Unlike me, she doesn't get weekly emails with lame-ass excuses from her advisor, she actually had absolutely no contact with her advisor for 2 years. Her advisor even took a sabbatical to work with the Obama administration without even notifying her! Her university, unlike mine, DID step in -after 3 years when she refused to pay any more tuition without any progress on her degree! Although all her university has accomplished is re-establishing email contact between her and her advisor. She was supposed to have a defense date by now...she still hasn't received permission to distribute her thesis. Boy, do I know how that feels. I don't blame her at all for being angry. 2 years later and I can honestly say that whenever I think about how I was treated, I still get angry. Not just the "it really pissed me off" abstract angry but "I see red and I'm bound and determined to do whatever I can to 1. make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else and 2. make sure that no one I know even THINKS that attending that university is a good idea!

Revenge is a bitch and I'm really good at being a bitch. Yes, it would probably be healthier to forgive and forget. However, NOTHING would change. That is just NOT acceptable to me. If just thinking about the situation makes me angry 2 years later, then it is not some minor annoyance. I lost 3 years to Professor Sunshine's decision to not give a damn about my dissertation. That is 3 years of having to depend on others to support me. That is 3 years of canceling plans with friends because I just didn't have the money to go out. That is 3 years of depression and self-doubt for which there was no actual reason. I can't let it go. However, the ONLY things I can do is steer people away from that university and do whatever I can to get graduate education reformed in the US. Clearly, with the same thing happening to different students in different programs at different universities is an indication that something isn't right with our system and something needs to change. I think the best change would be for your advisor to NOT have a seat on your committee and NOT have a say in when you graduate, similar to the British system. Yes, the British system can be a bit harsh at times, but if you aren't going to get a degree, they flat out tell you. I haven't heard of anyone being strung along like I was in that system.

AT&T Internet Service Saga

The second full day I was in MS, I discovered that I live on the wrong side of the street to get the MLB package AND NHL center ice (some services I could get one, but not both). So I decided to keep the TV packed up (it is an old 13 inch TV, so no big loss) and went to obtain internet service. First, there is no Fios and no broadband (well, no broadband without a multiple-year contract- something I don't want as I plan to move within 6 months) available here. So that means my choices are dial-up (haven't had to use dial-up since 1996!) or DSL. Of the DSL service providers, AT&T had the best service rating and actually the best prices. So I set out to acquire AT&T internet services.

Day 1- Struggled to locate AT&T store. Based on their address, they are at the local mall (if you can call a building with 5 military recruitment centers, a Radio Shack, a magic store and a movie theater a mall). However, they are not actually even located within the mall parking lot. They have a separate driveway next to the mall. You can't even get to said driveway from the mall parking lot! Finally find the store only to be told that without proof of residence, I can't set up internet service. Arrgh!

Day 3 - On the advice of an AT&T service rep at the store, I order internet service online (no proof of residence check!). No email confirming my order, which seems a bit odd.

Day 4- Call AT&T because still no email confirming my order. Am told that I need to call again the next day because it can take up to 24 hours for an order to be processed and the confirmation email to be sent.

Day 5 - Call AT&T again. Get Angela, the bitchy customer service rep. Angela tells me that my order was canceled because the telephone number I provided, my cell phone number, did not match the service area in which I wanted internet service. What an absolute crock. You can't tell me that in this day and age, this isn't something that AT&T doesn't deal with ALL THE TIME. I figure out pretty quickly that Angela just wants me to purchase more services. She gets very annoyed when I say slowly that I only want internet service. She then tries to sell me a landline. I ask her what good a landline would do when everyone would call my cell phone anyways. "Then you'd have a local number to establish internet service with" is her reply. She didn't like my reply of "that is the dumbest reason I have ever heard. Are you going to take my order for internet service or am I going to hang up, call back and give my order to a customer service rep that is going to listen to what I want?" Angela was very annoyed, but started processing my order- right up until the point where she told me how much it would cost- 3x what it would if I ordered service over the internet. I then told her that I wasn't interested in internet service at that price and asked her to match the internet offer. When Angela then informed me that she couldn't match the offer, I thanked her for her effort, told her I wasn't interested and hung up. I then spoke with my boss about using my office phone number as the reference number, got his OK, and placed yet another internet order.

Day 6 - Still no confirmation email.

Day 7 - Still no confirmation email, so I call AT&T and am informed that no such order exists. At this point, I have a signed copy of my lease, so I decide to go back to the AT&T store. I reach the AT&T store at 4:55pm and am turned away because they close at 5pm. What is with all these stores being open only from 9-5 on weekdays?

Day 10 - Go to AT&T store on my lunch break. They can't activate internet service because there is already service at my location. I'm going to have to get the previous tennant's service turned off before I can establish service. They call my landlady who does precisely nothing. Then Tamara, a supervisor at the AT&T store, pulls up the account information- and discovers that my INITIAL order, that Angela told me was canceled, has actually been processed! Tamara is then incredibly awesome as she worked to verify that my second order was never processed because there was already an active account. Tamara then gives me the UPS tracking number for my router. I call UPS, and discover that because AT&T didn't put my apartment number on the router box , they couldn't deliver it! I ask to have the package held and race to the UPS shipping center to pick it up. Follow the directions and set up internet access. FINALLY

Day 11 - My laptop has been on its last legs for 6 months- it finally dies. Massive hard drive failure, it would cost $800 to repair- decide to put that money towards a new computer.

Day 16- Receive my new Mac laptop (ordered online by my husband because I, of course, have no way of accessing the internet now). My Mac won't connect to the internet via ethernet. The wireless works no problem, but no ethernet. Damn. Is it my new computer, or this router?

Day 17 - Bring my new computer to work, it connects to the internet just fine via ethernet. Bring my work laptop home (PC) and it connects via ethernet, but not via wireless, Call AT&T tech support. Am treated like an idiot by Jed, who sounds like "Peggy" from the Discover commercial.... Work PC connects via wireless, but can't do anything on internet because I don't have permission for my computer to use wireless networks. Finally get the mac to connect to the internet via ethernet. Hang up the phone with Jed and 20 minutes later, the Mac can't connect via ethernet again.

Day 18 - Have the work IT people enable my work laptop to use wireless networks. Initially, they are very pissy about this, but when I point out that I'm not going to travel for work with a computer that can't use wireless networks, they do the job and enable the settings at my request. Bring work laptop home- still won't connect to internet via wireless (although it connects to the wireless network at the local coffee shop). Mac still won't connect to internet via ethernet. Call AT&T and get someone that knows Macs (finally!). I am given new settings to type in and everything appears to work by the time I hang up. Never addressed the problem with the PC.

Day 17 - Receive bill for internet service (with my apartment number on it!), that states my service start date is one week before I even received the router. Call AT&T billing. Daniella is initially resistant to my complaint, but warms up and gives me a credit for that week that I didn't have the router after I offer to scan and email the slip from UPS saying when I picked up the package (I did think ahead to ask for one!). I am a bit disgruntled to find out that my internet promotion rate won't kick in for 1-3 billing cycles, something I was never informed of!

Day 18- Mac can't connect to internet via ethernet again. This means that I can't watch the Red Sox-Yankee game online. Call AT&T tech support again. I get Andrea. Andrea stays on the line with me for 45 minutes trying to trouble shoot my problems. She is a bit annoyed that I don't have the PC home with me so she can check that issue, but she gets over it quickly. After 45 minutes, Andrea concludes that I need a new router. She orders one for me and nicely double checks that the address contains my apartment number so that I will get the new router in a timely manner.

Day 20- Receive the new router. Can't get the Mac to connect at all. Call AT&T tech support and get John, who initially treats me like an idiot. After 15 minutes, John realizes that the issue is that my passwords don't match- the new router isn't configured to use MY passwords yet, but my account is already set up, so I can't use the passwords that came with the router. John resets the passwords and I breeze through the set-up just in time to watch my first playoff hockey game that night!

Day 30 - Get my second bill from AT&T charging me for the new router, even though I had already mailed the old one back to them. Call AT&T billing and spend 30 minutes going up levels of management until they finally waive the fee for the second router because I can give them the tracking number of the one I mailed back to them.

Day 31- Lose internet connection intermittently throughout a playoff hockey game. After game is over, I call AT&T tech support. They have no explanation, so they transfer me to the billing office, where I get absolutely no where. Have now written a letter to AT&T with my complaints as well as contacted the better business bureau. I'm sorry, but if I'm paying for a service and not receiving that service, then I should get a refund for the service I didn't receive!



and so the saga continues.....

Proof of residence

I've lived outside New England before. In fact, I lived outside of NE for 10 years. Never have I encountered a utility situation quite like that here in MS. However, my Dad informs me that the system here is common in several parts of the US. Here in MS, you can not just pick up the phone, call the utility company and have your utilities turned on. Oh no. Here, they want you to show up in person with a government-issued photo ID, a check for a deposit AND proof of residence. This last requirement is what caused me all sorts of headaches. I knew about the requirement for proof of residence prior to moving down. My landlord had told me that she expected me to have the utilities transferred to my name on or before the day I moved in. How I was supposed to do this before, I'm not sure. In any case, we had 2 phone conversations and an email about the need for her to provide me with a signed copy of the lease so that I could take care of this. I suggested that she either scan and email the lease BEFORE I moved (when I had access to a printer) or leave a signed copy of the lease in the apartment (I knew prior to the move that she was having someone else meet me with the key). No copy of the lease was left in the apartment. Therefore, I called her and told her that because she didn't hold up her end of the bargain (getting me a copy of the signed lease), the utilities would have to stay in her name until she provided me with a copy of the lease AND I could get sufficient time off of work to go to the utility companies and take care of it. She then responded by emailing me a copy of the lease. This did me precisely no good because my printer was on a moving truck and wasn't scheduled to be delivered till the following week. So I called her again asking what she though I could do with an emailed copy of a lease and no way to print it. She then arranged for "friends" at the utility company to overlook the proof of residence requirement. So I got my utilities turned on. However, without a copy of the lease, I couldn't get internet service, couldn't transfer my plates to MS plates or obtain a MS drivers license. Oh, and I couldn't even rent a PO Box without proof of residence either. Needless to say, my first day in MS had me in tears of anger and frustration more than once.

Landlord

Ah, yes, my landlord. First off, I pretty much decided to rent this apartment because it was the only apartment the relocation expert found that would take Darwin. Then I got down here and discovered that the relocation expert is my landlord's sister. I would have no problem with the relocation expert throwing business to her sister if my landlord wasn't such a fruitcake. Seriously. First, how could she not know that my apartment wasn't ready? Either she's a space cadet or a really poor businesswoman. Second, when I moved into the apartment, the heat did not work because the fan did not work. I called my landlord each and every day asking when it would be fixed. After 2 weeks of this, I sent her an email saying I wasn't paying rent until she had the heat fixed. I then received a pissy email about how she couldn't let anyone into my apartment to fix the heat because of my dog (before signing the lease, I stressed that I was not going to be responsible for my dog biting someone if they entered the apartment without me being there). So I informed her (by voicemail and email) that I had meetings Monday afternoon, but could rearrange my work schedule the rest of the week to accommodate a repairman IF I had 2 days notice. She then left me a voice mail saying she'd schedule the repair for Monday morning. I then stressed (voicemail and email again), that I had to leave my apartment by 12:45 to attend my meetings and that I would like to know what time the repairman was coming. I repeated the voicemail/email combo again on Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning. I actually woke her up Monday morning because I called at 7:30AM. She still had no idea what time the repairman was coming as he hadn't even confirmed that he was coming with her. I informed her that I was going to work and that she should call me when she knew what time the repairman was arriving. I stressed once again that I had meetings that I HAD to attend that afternoon. Therefore, I was a little irate when she called me at 12:30 and said the repairman would be there in 10 minutes. Ummm....he could be there, but I couldn't meet him. She actually demanded that I cancel my meetings! However, when I informed her that if I canceled my meetings, I'd better cancel my lease because there was no reason for me to stay in MS without a job, she miraculously rescheduled the repairman to after my meetings. At this point, I was getting the definite impression that the only way to get through to this woman is by threatening to withhold rent or cancel the lease. While my heating was being repaired, the repairman noticed that I did not have any sort of filter on the air intake. He told my landlord, who decided that she'd drop one off. Luckily she called me first to make sure that Darwin was confined. Confined? He isn't a puppy and his house manners have been impeccable since he was 10 weeks old. She was shocked that I let my dog "roam free" in my absence. Seriously? what does she think he does in the apartment? In any case, she was then pissy because I told her to leave the filter in the door. What part of the "you will not enter the apartment unless I am present" does she not understand?

Oh, and the kicker to all this? Crazy landlord lady wanted me to talk DH into using HER as our real estate agent when we bought a home. Yeah, like that would ever happen. All I have to say is that I'm warning all new hires here away from renting from this crazy lady. And the relocation expert? Yeah, I've been refusing her calls because I don't think I could say anything nice.

Move to MS

I hadn't mentioned it on my blog, but since last September, I've been working on obtaining a job as a government scientist. This job is truly my dream job- no teaching, about 2 months of grant writing per year and the rest of the time in the lab. Oh- and I only have to work on a particular project for 3-5 years. No studying a random protein on a random virus for the rest of my career. Only downside is that the job is in MS.

2 days after my grandfather's funeral, I set out for MS with my Great Dane, Darwin. 90% of the items in the Jeep were for Darwin- I had a single suitcase and a backpack with my electronics. We made it to the half-way point in VA without any issues. The following day, we took longer rest stops - mostly because Darwin insisted on spending an hour rolling in the grass in the beautiful warm TN sunshine. Can't say I blame him, 70F felt very nice considering it was 20F when we set out the previous day! After we left the TN rest stop, I got a call from my landlord. My apartment was not going to be available to me upon my arrival in MS (despite the fact the landlord had already cashed my rent check AND had an additional week to get the apartment ready as I moved a week later than initially planned due to my grandfather's death). However, the landlord offered to put me up in a corporate apartment until my apartment was ready. OK. Not happy about this as I wanted to get Darwin settled in my new apartment before I started work, but what can I do? I show up at the corporate apartment at 10PM- only to discover that the previous tenant smoked menthols. I have always had a severe asthmatic reaction to menthols- there is no way I can stay in this apartment even for a single night! Of course, I can't get ahold of the landlord, so I left a pissy message and frantically called my husband. DH located a pet friendly motel for me, so I called and verified that they had a room. I was expecting some sort of sleazy place, but the motel was actually nicer than the more expensive hotel we'd stayed at the previous night. Darwin especially enjoyed the king-sized bed.


The next day, I got a call from the landlord saying that she is very sensitive to cigarette smoke and never had a problem with the corporate apartment. I responded that sensitivities come in different strengths- and mine was likely greater than hers as I'd been reacting for 30+ years. The landlord then informed me that she'd inspected the apartment and it was ready for me to move in. She couldn't meet me with the key as she had a meeting, but she had a friend bring the key over. I went to the apartment and was appalled at how filthy it was. There was a layer of plaster dust all the way up the hall (I don't think that even a token attempt was made to clean it), the kitchen counters (white) were covered in stains and I don't even want to think about how nasty the bathroom and oven were. Needless to say $400 in cleaning supplies (including 2 boxes of disposable gloves), and the apartment is at least clean....