travis' brain dump

I can honestly say I thought this weekend would never get here. This has been one long week and I’m sure next week promises to be an even longer one! Thankfully though we’re on 8-hour days all next week so it’s heading home at 3:45 every day for me! yay!

I’ve got this huge project to get completed for our backup and disaster recovery revamp we have going on. So much to do and so little time. They’re pushing for a March 31st implementation! >.< I’m just glad I was given a way to drop down the amount of pages in the proposal. LOL It’s amazing what the words loosely quoted “I think a high-level overview will work better, don’t waste your time on something upper mangement isn’t going to read,” can change. I seriously have the best boss ever! Still, Myke and I definitely have our work cut out for us next week… Thankfully most of the research is all done. 🙂

I’m hoping Mike and I will get a chance to go up boarding tomorrow… it’s supposed to be dumping in the mountains constantly over the next 24 hours so we should definitely see some nice powder to play in… *crossing fingers* I just hope the roads will be drivable in the morning!

Well, it’s time to get ready to leave… woohooo! Weekend here I come!

I have to say this past weekend was probably one of the best I’ve had in a long time. I actually didn’t mind getting up this morning. I hurt from snowboarding for two days, but it’s a good hurt. 🙂

For the record, I love 4-day weekends. Especially those with lots of activity and lots of uselessness packed into them. LOL Between shutting out the world except my family, playing FFXI for stupid amounts of time, two days of snowboarding, catching a movie and eating some incredibly good food it’s been amazing.

We got a lot of time in getting Amanda’s character up on FFXI… I need to get in there and get mine going again. I’ve been so focused on getting her up to speed I’ve neglected my own character greatly. It’s good though, she’s doing great and has a ton of key components to start moving forward. I was also able to get a couple things done for myself as well in-game so I did get *some* progress.

Aside from being lazy and playing FFXI and getting some much needed mountain time in Amanda and I went to go see Jumper this weekend. Pretty good flick but the ending kinda left off to abruptly for my taste… they left it open but it just felt like you didn’t get any kind of closure from it. Maybe they will make another one, who knows. After the movie though was the highlight of the weekend… we hit up Rodizio Grill here in downtown Denver. WOW is all I have to say about the food *and* the deserts in that place. You get there, you get seated, get a bowl full of appetizers (the Pao de Queijo and Bolinho de Arroz rock!) brought out and you’re turned loose on the salad bar… By the time you come back there are a couple plates on your table for the meat and oh man is that some good stuff… They constantly come around with meat on skewers cutting you off pieces at your request. You have a little device on your table that you either have with Green up (for them to keep coming to your table) or Red up (so they know to skip you while you’re taking a break)… Needless to say our’s stayed Green up for quite some time, lol. If you’re ever in the mood for some serious beef, chicken, buffalo, fish, etc… that is definitely the place to get your fill. I definitely recommend the Rabanada for a desert personally. 🙂

Well… it’s back to the craziness of work so I need to end this here… I’ve got to get a ton of stuff done today so I can drive up to Rock Springs, Wyoming tomorrow to fix some problems we’re having up there… oh the fun.

You would think we were gone for a couple days or something. LOL 🙂

For anyone who hasn’t heard me rant about this … here it comes… for those that have… here it comes again so just tune me out…

I’m talking about Strategic Resource Company… go ahead, click the link and give them a ring… read them my blog… I don’t care.

These people are personally responsible for just about 98% of the inappropriate language that has left my mouth in the last few months. They are liars, cheats and thieves that I hope burn for eternity in the fires of hell. (think i could be more clear on how I feel?)

During my stint as a contractor for TEK Systems from August until the end of December in 2007, SRC was the option for medical and prescription drug insurance. It cost you $103.27 of your hard earned money a week which during my tenure at Tek came out to a grand total of $1858.86. What did that get my family? *NEXT TO NOTHING* 

What started all this? Well Amanda has to get diabetic supplies such as test strips and such. The way the plan works, we pay for the stuff upfront and send in the receipts for a 70% reimbursement. Sounds pretty straight forward right? WRONG! These guys get the reciepts then send us a letter stating that in order to cover these charges we needed to provide a statement of prior coverage for a pre-existing condition. Not a problem. We had that. 🙂 They wanted from 2/28/2007 to the beginning of our switch to them which was 9/1/2007. We provided a coverage letter from 02/01/2007-09/01/2007 and waited… nothing… we called and they stated the claims were still denied/on hold because they needed further information. So I asked what more did they need? The letter said send information for x date to x date which we provided. The woman on the phone stated that ‘ oh no sir, sorry the letter we sent out had the wrong date on it, we need information for at least a year back ‘ … I paused for a second so as not to say something I would later regret… “ok, i replied – then why doesn’t your letter ask for it? I got two of them with the same dates on it… you know what? I don’t care, I’ll fax you over further coverage… ‘ she then gives me the fax number and I go about locating further documentation for Amanda. So we find documentation that covered all the way back to 01/01/2006. Two years oughtta do it right!? Apparently, all three times I faxed the information over, it mysteriously “DISAPPEARED!” riiiiight…. sure it did. Three fax confirmation pages and three different people at the facility and you *ALL* lose it? uh huh… sure…

So anyway… I finally get the insurance commisioner involved here in Colorado who gets all over their case and says ‘ provide proper reason why you’re not paying these claims ‘ and today… I get that confirmation… They claim now the claims are denied for ‘ This amount exceeds the annual maximum in plan… ‘ WHAT?! They *NEVER* paid a single prescription claim and let’s not forget that they didn’t pay jack of any other claim that went in either. When I added everything up they paid right at about 12% of all the total medical bills that were charged while we were with them. Gotta love it. I’m *STILL* paying for stuff that was billed during that period of time… Definitely don’t see that happening with the existing insurance we have through the company I work for now. They’ve already paid a bunch of money out and I’ve still got millions left on the plan maximum. (seriously, millions).

So the moral of the story here? SRC/Aetna is a scam! I’m not sure about Aetna as a whole, I’ve had great success in the past with them when I had them as insurance while I worked at Fast Data. Sure they were pricey but when a $16,000 birth of a child only costs $350 and your copays for doctor visits never exceeded $20 with no problems in the claim process who could complain!? Personally I think it’s just SRC… A bunch of uneducated southern hick trash is what they are. Now before you get all upset you southerners remember I was born there and lived there and I happen to know for a fact there are some intelligent people there… Think of these people that are just the ones you roll your eyes at when they cut you off on somewhere like Washington Road in Augusta and then yell at you like you were the one that cut them off…

*shrug* Ok, so I just had to vent a bit. I’m a little livid. I was counting on at least getting some money back for the $200/mo spent on these supplies but I guess that’s even too much to ask. FYI… I submitted a claim in to our new carrier in the same fashion as the old for the same items… No Issues… fun huh? *rolls eyes*

round one and two definitely went to the respiratory system… I got owned. Anyone who came in contact with me Monday-Tuesday of last week… I apologize for more than likely passing this thing onto you. The way we’ve figured out the math on this thing, you don’t even know you’ve got it when you’re spreading it… nice huh? It’s a sneaky one for sure. From what we can gather is…  you pick it up. It sits for 2-3 days and starts it’s going public with itself. At about day 4 or 5 you start off with a little cough then within 12 hours it drops on you like a ton of bricks… fever, aches, headache, cough that makes you feel like a lung is coming up… what a fun time, let me tell ya. Reminds you of something out of one of those Stephen King novels except thankfully this one doesn’t lead to Mother Abigail or Randall Flagg showing up in your dreams. (reference: The Stand if you’re lost) LOL

So far Amanda is the only one who has  been *knocks-on-wood* spared… Andy and Arwen got theirs Friday night. 🙁

This thing packed a punch let me tell ya. After my blog post on Thursday is when it all went downhill. By 2:30pm I could feel the fever ramping up and I ached, all over. I bailed out of work and by the time I made it home I could barely stand. I literally came right in and went to bed. I woke up around 6 when Andy got here and decided I’d hang out with the family downstairs for a little while. I literally turned into a veggie on the couch… I just laid there until around 10 and went back to bed. I pretty much slept on and off until I got up to go to the doctor around 11:30 Friday.

Dragging myself to the doctor’s office was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life… At least I found out it wasn’t the flu… Highest reading on the thermometer was recorded at this point… 103.1 I got some drugs to make me feel comfortable and went home… I continued to sleep. Around 5:30 I forced myself upstairs (I had quarantined myself to the guest room downstairs, lol) and tried to watch some TV… 7pm and my fever finally began to break… I’ve sweat less doing an intense workout. If I wasn’t on the road to dehydration before, I was now.

Saturday and today I’ve been steady improving although I’m still a little washed out today and it looks like Arwen is at least coming to the end of her fever phase so she should start feeling better shortly too. I should be good to go by tomorrow though which is a good thing. Way to waste a weekend! Especially one with absolutely perfect temperatures and tons of new snow in the mountains… (i’m quite upset) I definitely wouldn’t wish this one on anyone… it was a rough one for sure.

Well, onto more relaxation/recovery… we got Amanda’s RDM up to lvl 11 last night so we’re going to duo today and see if we can’t go for completion of her subjob quest by the end of the day. 🙂 The good thing with the duo will be I’ll get to level my NIN today too. 🙂 Where are ya Mike? She’s catchin up to you bad bro!