Dan East

I know, this sounds like spam, but it’s not. I’m a software developer, and on occasion I take on some side jobs outside my normal work. One of these little jobs was porting a pharmacy card website from ASP to PHP so it could be moved to a new server. The guys in Colorado I did the work for are a great bunch of people who are extremely benevolent in nature. They arranged a prescription card for people who don’t have health insurance or any other type of prescription benefits, and set up a website to make obtaining the card extremely easy. This card is the exact same type of card that businesses pay for as part of their employee benefits package. There are no strings attached – you don’t even have to enter your name if you don’t want to (if you do enter your name it will be printed on the card, which simply looks more professional). The website will generate a PDF document that you view and print from your home computer. Just cut out the card (it actually prints two – one with your name if provided, and a blank one you can give away or use as a spare), and show it the next time you get a prescription filled.

I’ve used the card a few times, and on an antibiotic it saved around 50% at Wal-Mart. On another prescription it saved around 35% at CVS. So it was definitely worth the slight effort it took to print the thing out.

Again, this is not spam. There are no strings attached. You do not have to register, provide a mailing address, enter an email address or even enter your name.

If you’re interested, click here and follow the instructions: RxSaver Pharmacy Card.

Also, if you are part of a non-profit organization that would like to issue these cards, there is information on the website concerning custom branding, allowing you to issue cards with your own logo. It is also possible to obtain your own “Rx Bin”, which allows your organization to track how often your cards are utilized, just like a large business that issues prescription cards for its employees.

Unfortunately, since the venerable Dave Thomas passed away back in 2002, his fast-food restaurant chain Wendy’s has been going down hill. The 99¢ menu is gone (I guess it is now the 129¢ menu), and today they’ve reached the final straw. Check out the butter my wife got with her baked potato!

Are they trying to save money? Or trying to force people to eat healthy? Okay, I know, I know. Somewhere in some packaging plant a machine screwed up. Still, for someone who loves butter with their baked potato, it sure was a let-down!

I just made a quick grocery run to the local Wal-Mart and noticed they have made some substantial changes to save electricity. The modification was immediately apparent as I strolled down the frozen isle and the freezers sprang to life, triggered by new motion sensors that switch on the lights when customers are near. The lights stay on for around one minute when triggered, and there are 6 sensors down the entire length of the isle per side.

These sensors save electricity doubly – first, less electricity is used to power the lights themselves, second (and possibly more importantly) the heat the fluorescent bulbs emit by staying on continuously is no longer warming the interior of the freezers, causing the power-hungry compressors to do extra work to remove that waste heat.

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Do you have a bank card that moonlights as a Credit Card, Debit Card and ATM card all in one? If so a fierce battle is raging to try and coax you into using your card in a specific way, and you probably don’t even know it. The event that prompted me to write this article was my last fast food purchase at a restaurant called Sonic. Sonic is a drive-up restaurant, which has separate menus and ordering terminals for each parked car. You push a button, place your order, and pay via Credit Card or Debit Card at the integrated Point Of Sale (known as POS) terminal. Of course you can also pay the car-hop cash if you are so inclined. Sonic must have recently updated the software on their POS terminals, because the process of paying is drastically different. With the previous software, a menu appeared on an LCD display with options for “Credit”, “Debit” and “Gift Card”. Customers would select the payment method, then swipe the card. The “new and improved” version simply asks you to swipe your card, without providing any options. After swiping my card the POS then asked “Do you know your PIN? YES / NO” What? Do I know my PIN? Yes, I do, thank you very much. I promptly pressed “NO”, the terminal said “Authorizing”, and my food arrived shortly (pretty dang fast, actually). So why wasn’t I fooled into demonstrating my bank card prowess, and that yes, I do indeed know my PIN? Because my bank beat Sonic to the punch, and has already bribed me into using my card as a Credit Card. Each time I use my card as a Credit Card I earn points – wonderful points that I can redeem on cheap Made in China junk from a catalog I receive once a month.

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I use Wikipedia quite a bit. When I search the internet for information on a topic, I click on the Wikipedia results first, because typically I’ll find everything I need to know on that single web page. Granted, most of the information I seek is for my personal curiosity – I am not researching for a paper, I do not require reliable, quotable sources, and if I consume inaccurate or blatantly false information the results are negligible. The success of Wikipedia in some areas is what makes its dismal failure in others so bitter. As an editor who has contributed nearly 2,000 edits since 2004, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the reality of Wikipedia.

Before I continue, you do know what Wikipedia is, don’t you? It is an encyclopedia containing over 2 million articles written completely by volunteers – and that’s just the English version. Anyone can edit any article – that’s the whole novelty to Wikipedia. You don’t even need to create an account or register (unless an article has been protected, in which case new users cannot edit it). Since Wikipedia is written by any and every one, there are a few things you can count on:

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This blog entry is basically nothing more than me nitpicking at Rowling’s Harry Potter. If you’re a die-hard Potter fan that can’t stand to hear anything negative about the series, or if you simply don’t want Rowling’s illusion ruined, then you may not want to keep reading. I also discuss various things that are spoilers. So if you haven’t read the books, I may reveal more details than you’d like.

So let my whining begin…

A primary restriction Rowling has placed upon herself, one that is responsible for many inconsistencies throughout the books, is that she wants the magical world to be as different from the real world as possible. Thus she supplants our (typically electronic-based) technology with magical technology. However it simply would not suite to merely substitute one of our devices for a magically powered one. Instead Rowling must invent something entirely unique, otherwise it would not capture the imagination of the reader. For example, if we want to deliver a good old fashioned letter in our world, we place it in a mailbox, where it is eventually collected by a human and delivered to the recipient. In the Harry Potter world, the letter is attached to an owl, which magically determines the location of the recipient, and flies the letter to them. While the owls use magic to know where to go, the actual delivery is purely physical, and may take days to accomplish. That’s quite romantic, isn’t it? The imagery of majestic owls flying around delivering letters, newspapers and even packages is very satisfying, and isn’t remotely like anything we see in the real world. However the raw truth of the matter is that if such a magical world existed, they would simply have magical mail boxes, and as soon as an item was placed in a mailbox and the door was closed, it would immediately appear in the recipient’s mailbox. There isn’t an iota of romance to that, and thus that’s not how things work in Rowling’s world. It is a balance that Rowling never comes close to in the Harry Potter books – the true realization of how things would really be in a magical world verses her freedom to let her imagination run without hindrance.

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