Coping: The Dog Ate My Contacts

by

Oh, my.  Reader Kirk caught Mr. Ure’s half-blind, 3/4 stupid math error Monday.  The correct answer is the market Aggregate is up 3.3367% from the all-time highs set (and this time I looked up the date:) Week of April 10, 2015.

About here, had I been elected Divine Ruler of the Planet, one of my briefers (probably Guido) would come over and explain “What’s the Divine whozzits is trying to say is we’re all working our asses off for nuttin.”  Guido, trained in the fine art of night-sticking, can be mighty convincing.

The error, as it turns out, was likely due to not having enough coffee and writing a column without putting my contacts in.

(Continues below)

 

I don’t think I’ve ever described the “back end” of what makes Urban and Peoplenomics tick.  I’ve got a yuge collection of data.  Each with a point, or so we hope.

The Global Index, from which the errant number was pulled, is 18 sheets and charts, and the largest worksheet is 1056 cells, each representing only a closing weekly number.  Then come 24-columns of internal calculation.  And that’s just the weekly and just the Global.

The U.S. Aggregate is a little different: 26 sheets and charts.  The tallest is probably the 1896 to January 1950 Dow numbers. 16,287 cells tall.

The U.S. Aggregate will turn 1,000 cells tall next week by 19 cells wide.

Not all of it gets published, but I will, for example, use some of the historical data to compare what seem like similar market periods.

The Daily Aggregate is only 11 sheets and charts, but very small in comparison.  193 cells tall by only four columns wide.  Except it’s really wider because there are certain moving averages that are calculated (and updated) and there’s also an automatic “George Check” that looks like this between columns:

“LONG.”

Which I am presently ignoring. Delusion runs deep.  The market rally suggests “buy the rumor, sell the news” as the Fed gavels in today.

But I wanted to apologize for getting a number wrong.  We don’t do that often and feel badly when we do.  In this case, it was not a tradable number, but we do our dead-level best.

Next week, I plan to put the (miserable, scratchy) contacts back in.  Yes, I can see better with them, but it’s like walking about with sand in your eye, even scaling into their use gently.

I wish I could say “The Dog ate my contacts.”  But that would be a lie.

It was the cat.

A Report from the Front

I have mentioned on many occasions my respect for my brother-in-law’s work with the Mormon Church (LDS).  Especially this past weekend when he went down with a group from the local “stake” to work in Port Arthur helping the poorest part of the Houston area in recovery efforts.

There was no shortage of heartbreak, he reported.  People literally lost everything they had, save the clothes on their backs.

But that’s not the worst of it.  Apparently, there are some sleazy insurance companies who have sold “flood” insurance that are telling the poor “We won’t pay because this is just a rain, not a flood…”

What the double-victims are being told is that their polices would have paid IF there had been WIND driven water.  But this was rain, so the ways the (sleazy rot-in-hell) lawyers are reading their own finely crafted insertions, they can skate.

I asked him if there was anyone looking out for the poor on this, but his answer was, sadly, the expected.  No one cares for the poor.

There’s another part of Post-Harvey madness that people don’t seem to realize.  Before FEMA will come and look over a home for damage, you have to move EVERTHING in the house out into the yard.  Yeah, right.  Where it can be stolen, vandalized, and broken…and then just hope the FEMA people come that day.

The worst of it, though, reserved for the poor people who have inhabited their family homes for perhaps have a century, but now don’t have clear title to the property.  You didn’t know?  One of the greatest scams on the poor is to find people who are not financially able to fight and place a lien on their home.  Over time, you see, the sleazeballs who do this can “hold up” people when comes time to sell a home.

Sure, people like you and me?  Get my lawyer on the phone.  But when you don’t have money, and you’re not a racial majority, and it’s a disaster?  You take what you get.

That ain’t right, but as my brother-in-law reports, its the front-line religious groups (and LDS had 200 semi’s in OKC pointed south and staged to roll even before the storm hit).  Disaster relief is what they do…superbly. FEMA should work so well.

The BiL will probably be by later this week, and maybe I can pass on more.

But for now,  the main thing to understand is that the jerks and slime of the world are still busily screwing over the poor, even those freshly beggared by disaster.

If you still believe the quaint notion that “all men and women are inherently good”?  Sign up for frontline disaster work where the real victims are:  The ones without the where-with-all to check into a hotel and wait for checks. Or to call a lawyer and rip someone to shreds for even thinking of screwing with you.

Curious to me how the mainstream media revolutionaries can bash the President every day of his term. But to use the power of the press for good?  To haul insurance companies into the Court of Public Opinion?

Then again, maybe they know who really runs the world.

Money. Big Money.  The kind neither one of us has.

OK, speaking of which, of to play Fed-Spotting.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net

10 thoughts on “Coping: The Dog Ate My Contacts”

  1. “We won’t pay because this is just a rain, not a flood…”

    Yup.. what can I say I have just as high of an opinion of insurance companies as I do our congress..

    I spent thousands on policies. policies on credit cards..and home loans, and at work I even had a couple of my own.. they got you with the what if..this or that happens.. well for a one day illness no problem but if something serious happens..
    then you get.. oh we didn’t get it please resubmit.. we need to have it sent certified mail please resubmit.. a nightmare scenario.. during andrew I think the insurance company just went bankrupt on the policy holders.. katrina they paid penny’s on the dollar.. so like legislators that we keep voting in no matter how rotten a job they perform or the fact that they aren’t affective in their position of getting anything done or even to compromise and do some negotiation.. would you affect any less from any insurance company.. like my friend for him to get the medical treatment he needs he has to die twice in a twenty four hour period to qualify for the insurance company to give the ok.. a friend of the daughter who was discovered to have cancer that has a high success rate of survival with treatments. when she asked when do we start the treatments.. the answer was when you bring by fifty grand.. her sister had to get a mortgage on her home to pay them.. the swarm of elderly that flock to southern texas yearly just so they can buy their medications over the border..
    insurance companies in my opinion are a gamble and the vast majority of us have to gamble by law.. Home insurance.. 250.00 roughly, car 60.00 per auto, health under an employer 840.00 without 1800.00 .. these are rough figures but damn close..

    • the one I liked was when I worked a govt job.. after health insurance I took home 307.00 a month.. anyway I had to work a second full time and a part time job other than that position one day a week was pretty slow and during lunch I would take a short half hour nap but I was tired the previous two days was non stop work with just enough travel time to get from one to the other.. those jobs no longer offered health insurance anyway my boss wanted a plus day off and he was upset because that day of the week there wasn’t any lunch period. I explained I didn’t have any choice that what I made there barely covered my auto insurance not to mention all the other expenses that the health insurance was killing me financially so the hunt for a different policy was on. I found one I liked it was in my budget that would allow me to give up the second full time position. I paid for the physical and tests and the first and last months premiums that was required the agent told me there was a thirty day period for the underwriters to determine eligibility. it was just after thanksgiving and on the twentieth of december I called the agent told him I had to know the pay came out on the 24th of the month and I had to know by the twenty third. the agent assured me he was going to talk to the underwriters that day or the next.. the next day about noon he gave me a call and said that he visited with the underwriters and no problem I was covered that I could drop my other policy but not to expect papers till after january because of the hollidays. I went in and told them in the office that I had a different policy.. the middle of january still no papers no deduction from the bank so I called the insurance agent.. OH I was planning on calling you your uninsurable for your height of six foot you should weigh 164 lbs and you weigh 200 I am over the limit and considered obese.. I rushed to the office told them to quick put me back on the policy they said Oh I am sorry you have an uninsurable determinations….a couple years later my wife had to have a gall bladder surgery.. same day.. our pastor same day same surgeon same day same doctor just two hours difference in time in the surgery .the difference of cost was almost five to one he had insurance.. and we went to the free clinic.. while the wife was under the knife I was asked to go to the business office they asked how I proposed to pay for the surgery.. I said I was planning on making payments.. what do we look like a bank.. anyway after the surgery work became a nightmare.. they literally called every hour.. the surgeon I walked in and told him I didn’t have the funds to pay his bill in full but I had two strong arms and a strong back.. and would work it off.. he loved the idea but what he wanted was his parking lot resurfaced.. so I resurfaced his parking lot by hand.. I had to build equipment that would let me do it.. but I did it.. hundred degree heat.. it was miserable.. the hospital I went in and asked them to let me work it off.. not on your life.. it became the nightmare of nightmares.. they even called my bosses mother in law .. I was feeling pretty low one day and was at the gas station and there was a lady in a wheel chair crying.. I asked her what was the matter. she explained she worked at the hospital as a housekeeper.. on new years eve she had gotten off of the swing shift and was on her way home when a drunk driver hit her. the kid didn’t make it.. she was sent to the hospital via flight for life and was in a coma for a long time.. she survived but will forever be in a wheel chair. the reason she was crying.. even though she had health insurance at the hospital that wasn’t a health issue but an accident issue.. the kid wasn’t insured they had just tapped into her checking account and took every dime of her disability pay lefter with like ten dollars..I had been feeling sorry for myself till that point then realized. I was very lucky. I eventually wrote down the mission statement of the hospital as you go in the front door and begged forgiveness.. they let me work it off.. so for a year I worked three full time jobs and one part time job it about killed me. Then they allowed me to get the insurance at the hospital and offered me the option to keep my full time position after the debt was paid.
      so for the insurance company to say they won’t pay because it was a rain storm.. technically they are correct..I personally didn’t expect anything more from them than that kind of reaction on the claims.

    • imho – insurance companies are in the business of MAKING money, not paying out money – in spite of all the warm and fuzzy tv commercials. It certainly is a sad statement of our world today.

  2. Well George, 50 lashes with a wet noodle for you and the cat (the noodle to served later with a nice marinara) As to the slime buckets in the insurance scam business (and that includes ALL of them) rat them off to the news media, they don’t like that kind PR!

  3. You need to get yourself some moisture rich eyedrops like Sooth etc. Invaluable if you have to wear contacts. Goes beyond comfort, you can damage your eyes if you don’t use them several times a day. Dry eyes increase rapidly when we get older but a small price to pay considering all the additional wisdom and experience.

  4. George
    Don’t feel alone! The universe gives and also takes. Yesterday I finished an electronic project that is a gift for a friend. I set up my Tek 2430A scope to do final checkout. As soon as I turned on the scope the display showed what looked like a spider in it’s death throws followed by the sound of frying electrical parts and that distinctive smell of the magic smoke being let out of something very hot! My guess is that a capacitor on the high voltage circuit board bit the dust. With a bit of luck I can fix it myself. The point is that you never know what small or large event will affect you. Just keep on rolling.
    Who knows maybe my cat peed on the scope!!

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