Aggravation

I’m just aggravated in general today. I wasn’t earlier, I think the whole trying to donate blood thing is what set me down the path to grumpiness. I showed up at 1130, figuring they had started already but wouldn’t be overwhelmed yet so I wouldn’t have to wait too long. They were still setting up. No big, I’m allowed to sign in and told "when I come back" they’ll get me all set up. Taking this as a dismissal, I drove down the road a bit so I can get on the public Wi-Fi and check some stuff on Facebook and MySpace. Twenty minutes later I return, expecting them to be almost ready (I was told it would be half an hour) and find not only are they ready, but there are eleven or twelve people in front of me. Oh yay. I was there for another twenty minutes before I was finally taken to a workstation for the pre-donation questionnaire and vitals check. They lucked out, I was only going to give them another five minutes, and one guy actually left before donating because they were so disorganized. They are trying this new system where they have fewer ARC volunteers at the site and we have to answer al those questions they normally ask on a computer while the person that normally asks them is wandering around trying to find an open workstation to put the person who’s number they just called in, or running to another workstation where someone just put the "I"M DONE" flag up to have them come and continue the process.

Once I finally made it through all that (and honestly, if the ARC volunteers have to go back and check your answers wouldn’t it be easier for them to ask them in the first place?) I was taken to a couch, and it was another ten or fifteen minutes before anyone started prepping my arm for donations. And the couches were not laid out in the giant circle they normally use. Oh no, some idiot "efficiency" expert had a hand in this, I can tell. The couches were arranged in interlocking mini-circles of four each. I cannot even tell you the number of times someone bumped my couch or I had to move my feet so a volunteer could get to the next couch. So all in all, not a very pleasant experience this time, and I have made my concerns known. I also told them that if it became inconvenient or annoying for me to donate I would cease doing so.

Been playing on Facebook for a while. Checked on Critter’s status on MySpace. I can’t convince her to run Facebook parallel to MySpace, she doesn’t like the FB layout. I guess actually being able to read the information on someone’s profile page is a turnoff… Seriously, I’m thinking MySpace should have a feature to "un-pimp" a profile, just on the browser side mind you, so I can read it. Done correctly it wouldn’t affect the actual page layout the user designed or anyone else’s view of the page.

I’ve got to get basic cable hooked up at my parent’s place before they get back into town. They’ve asked my to do that for them. Of course why they couldn’t have asked more than two weeks away I don’t understand. It’s not like I’m trying to have a life or anything.

I’ve got to start walking again. My pulse and BP were elevated (for me) during the vitals check at the blood drive and it was more than just their silliness. I’ll also start to lose weight a little faster as well.

I’m really getting tired of work. I think it’s just because we have two senior managers again now and we are receiving more oversight than we have been accustomed to for the past six months. I’ve also heard nasty rumors that the Facility Manager was asked for a list of managers at my level that could be promoted to Senior Manager when the new structure rolls out sometime next year and he told the district HR staff that he didn’t have anyone that was going to be promotable in less than eighteen months. There are several of us who have heard this, and we’re a little pissed.

So the whole health care thing. I disagree with it. I think that stupid government regulations are the reason health care is in the state it’s in. Why are women who cannot have children being forced to pay for pre-natal care coverage? There are several other silly things like that covered in the current regulations imposed on insurance companies by the Imperial Federal Government. Why not let us pick and choose, line item by line item, what we want coverage for? Would some people make bad choices? Yes, they would. Too bad, by the time you are allowed to sign contracts and make these sorts of decisions you are presumed to be able to make informed choices. We let these people vote after all. Are we seriously saying that people that can’t make their own health care decisions are capable of electing this country’s leaders?

If all the extraneous government regulations were removed I’m pretty certain that it wold not take long for the marketplace to come up with a basic "oh my god I’ve had an accident with a power tool" insurance package that would cover a good portion of the ER costs. Seriously folks, the free market will work if it’s actually free. There would probably still be some people who could not afford even this basic level of insurance, but their numbers would be far fewer, and if people would take their insurance money out of their check before they took their cable television money out of their check the numbers would drop even more.

Seriously.