Excess Deaths

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Kellemora
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Re: Excess Deaths

Post by Kellemora »

It's really no faster than Comcast was though.
But probably could be if I convert her computer to Cat6, but that won't help mine in the office.
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Re: Excess Deaths

Post by yogi »

The speed test from AT&T servers will tell you if they are providing faster service or not. Most likely you won't see those same speeds on other server tests, but that's not what AT&T is claiming in their specs.

About six months ago I changed all my LAN cables from CAT5 to CAT6 and saw absolutely no difference in network performance. That could be due to the fact that my wired devices are all within ten feet of each other. I'm pretty sure I had CAT%e cables which max out around 1GHz. That's what my router can do and the reason I suspect I used the enhanced cables. CAT6 maxes out at 10GHz. I doubt that you would notice any difference between 1 and 10 gigs. However, the big advantage of CAT6 is less crosstalk. This will decrease the faulty data packet count and in that sense could make a noticeable difference in throughput. Less error correction would be required.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I thought I had Cat5e running up to the garage. But perhaps, at the time, I couldn't see the much higher price for it.
I've been told by several people that I don't need Cat6 on my system here. Cat5e would be a great improvement though.
On a speed test, I only get 94 to 97 mbps, on Comcast cable I normally got 88 to 95 mbps, up here in my office.
It's 200 feet to my office. Which I understand can slow down the entire LAN.

It may become necessary to move my office down to the house, since I almost couldn't make it up here this morning.
I've done two doses of recovery inhaled albuterol since I've been up here and still having a lot of trouble breathing.
But I do love my climate controlled office, hi hi.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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CAT5 is made for 100MHz signals. 5e takes it up to 1GHz. CAT6 can handle 10GHz. Do you have any equipment that can go at that CAT6 rate? I don't think so. In fact CAT5 is probably all your equipment is designed to handle. You are right about a slow leg in a LAN affecting the entire network. That's because the router is working overtime on that slow part. I'm fairly certain that if you installed CAT5e cables everywhere you would have as fast a network as your current equipment can handle.

I assume you would have help moving your office. If you have a hard time just getting there it would likely be impossible for you to do the moving. The climate control is probably what keeps you going so that it might be necessary in the new office location too. If you don't use your outside office that means you can disconnect it from your LAN. It's possible that alone would improve the speed in your house. Perhaps even Oomla would work as intended. Who knows?
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I wish I had the money to have that little porch room edition finished. It's not hard work at all, but finding someone to do it is one thing, coming up with money to do it is something else entirely, hi hi.

If worst comes to worst, I'll move my computer down into Debi's office, and use a small desk for my monitor. It won't be near as comfortable is being here in my own office where everything is at my fingertips.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I dunno if you should be moving computers, but I do understand you might have to relocate to a more convenient office. I know exactly what you mean about convenience. Having access to a computer is only half the story. There are a zillion other things I use every day that are within arms reach or only a step or two away. Not having all those other things could be quite irritating. Then again, I think you are doing quite well all things considered. At least your office is still in your own home and not in some assisted living arrangement. I also empathize with you about hiring people to have work done. This year the property taxes will be at least 25% higher, and they are talking about drastic budget cuts to SSA benefits in congress. Hopefully none of that will happen.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Well, even if my taxes go up to over a thousand bucks a year, that's still cheaper than 1000 bucks a month for an apartment, which naturally I could not afford on my 89 bucks a month, hi hi.

When Trump gets back in, he will stop all the nonsense and keep us seniors safe.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Apartment rental prices in Tennessee are a bargain at $1,000 a month. I've not personally looked into the costs here in O'Fallon, but I have heard other people complain about high rents elsewhere. The cost of buying a new home is outrageous in the year 2023 which is why the market is depressed. Rentals seem to be keeping pace so that I have no idea where young people are living these days. I'm guessing they are reverting back to the old school thinking of living with their parents.

The idea of cutting social security, or eliminating it, has been a topic of discussion since the days of Ronald Reagan. At least the Republican party was still credible back in his day, something that cannot be said for most Republicans representing us now and days. Your memory isn't what it could be and perhaps that is why you don't recall Donald Trump pushing to eliminate FICA deductions from the workingman's wages. That was being sold as a benefit. When you think about it for five seconds or more, cutting out FICA would eliminate funding for Social Security. That's what Trump wanted to do when he had a chance. Today the entire Republican party is trying to sell the same trick with it's privatization of Medicare.

Can you say Medicare Advantage Plans ...
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Most of the two-story all brick homes I had rented out, were at 325 bucks a month, and included water and sewer.
I did have a couple of ranch style homes for 375 and 425 a month, while the same style houses in that block were renting for 550 to 700 a month. This was in the '90s.

Stopping FICA is how they will end SS for those who never paid into it.
But all of those who did before that, things are supposed to remain unchanged.
If you are working and paying into FICA, that will continue until you retire, or so the report stated.

SS didn't need any more funding to cover all those who paid in and who would live out there lives on SS.

Advantage Plans are one of the biggest rip-offs out there right now.
They make them look glorious, but they don't cover diddly squat.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I can't imagine what a house rental would be these days. I'd expect to shell out 2-3 grand a month if I had to rent this place. Considering all the taxes and insurance and maintenance I currently put out, $2500/mo might barely cover the costs. It's hard to believe a house could be rented for $750 a month just 25 years ago.

Medicare subsidizes Advantage Plans, but every one of those plans is a non-government operation. They are private or publicly owned companies trying to replace what Medicare does. The reason for being short changed in Advantage Plans is the result of Medicare not paying the private companies enough. Thus those private companies have to cut corners in order to stay in business. Once Medicare is killed off entirely, then the deficient subsidies will not be a problem. The buyer of the insurance will be paying for it all at that point, if they can afford to buy insurance at all.

Your summary of what the Republican party is proposing in the current congressional session is close to accurate from what I can tell. That is not what Donald Trump was thinking however.

Doesn't really matter what happens. You and I won't be in a position to do anything about it anyway.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I had one house that HUD asked to rent, they offered 375 a month rent, when on that house I was only getting 325 at the time. One thing about HUD is they pay on schedule every month, as long as the tenant remains in compliance. The tenant I had even made sure to keep things HUD checks in good repair too, so I wasn't bothered with much to do there. So, in this one case, it was a win/win situation. Not like the second house HUD asked to rent from me. Those two literally tore the place apart, so HUD kicked them out and told me to fix the place back up for another tenant.

Medicare isn't really subsidizing the Advantage Plan, those selling it just make it look like they are.
Medicare already goes to pay for your coverage, so it is just shifted from Medicare to the Advantage insurer.
That's the gimmick behind showing you zero payment plans, if you qualify.
What that basically means is your existing Medicare package is high enough you don't have to pay for Advantage.
But you also have a whole lot less coverage as well.

At the rate I'm declining, I'll be pushing daisies before you know it!
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Medicare Advantage plans are funded by Medicare and by the people signing up for the specific plan. Medicare pays the company offering the Medicare Advantage plan a monthly fixed amount for your care, which covers the costs of Medicare parts A and B for each beneficiary. The company offering the Medicare Advantage plan charges you out-of-pocket costs1.
That is how Advantage Plans work and Medicare does indeed subsidize them. The problem is that the reimbursements from Medicare are based on risk factors associated with various demographic groups. I don't recall now who calculates the risks but the bottom line is that Medicare does not pay their full share in many cases. The process of denying claims is performed by the Advantage Plan provider, and they are the ones burdened with the task of informing you that you are not covered for certain things. It's exactly like the tiers of drug pricing wherein certain drugs simply are not covered well, if at all.

The offer of "free" insurance is based on that Medicare reimbursement. Any costs above that minimum is "out of pocket" and billed to the insured.

All the claim processing is done by the Advantage Plan people and must meet CMS standards. This is how Medicare eventually will be replaced entirely by what we now call Advantage Plans. Once enough people turn over their health care to Advantage Plan providers, Medicare will be history.

I never had to deal with HUD, and they probably do perform a useful service in some cases. All I know for certain is that they housed the people in Chicago's worst ghetto. The police and firemen would hesitate to respond in those places.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Every Advantage Plan I looked into, would end up costing me much more than paying for my Supplemental Plan for what Medicare don't cover. I have Plan N, but still have my annual premium, and then some co-pays.

There were several HUD sponsored houses in St. Louis County, but most were down in the cities lower rent districts.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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I've not investigated it thoroughly but the premiums for Advantage Plans tend to be low. That's not the problem. Coverage and use of their specified network of healthcare providers are not counted as premiums but do in fact add to the out of pocket costs. My supplemental insurance is currently around $1000 a month. I think I could buy a wonderful Advantage Plan for that price if I didn't mind putting up with their nonsense.

Most of the HUD houses were on the perimeter of downtown Chicago. It took quite a few years for them to realize that those HUD skyscrapers were doing more harm than good for the residence, so, HUD pulled out. They tore down the skyscrapers and replaced them with condos that are owned by the Yuppies of Chicago. Ironically, many thousands of low income people were displaced by those upwardly mobile folks.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Are you kidding me? Your supplemental is THAT HIGH. Ouch! I couldn't afford it mine got that high.
It is already up to around 400 bucks a month now. Double when I turned 75. I hope it don't double again when I turn 76.

In St. Louis they built Pruett-Igoe, cost a fortune, and the tenants gutted the place within a couple of years.
If it was copper or aluminum, they stole it, meaning all the plumbing and wiring, and anything else they could trade for drugs.
It was a bad place with the highest crime rate in the city too.

I've told you about the low derelict areas the yuppies bought the entire blocks of and renovated until they could keep upping the prices way beyond what they should have ever been. I worked in a few of those for hire of course, as I wasn't involved in their scheme of things. I was trying to do things right and as well as I could, and they wanted them done fast and cheap, to the point of cutting corners on a lot of things. One example was the great room after tearing out wall, they had the ceiling which I normally did using the decorative tin squares gleaned from historical commercial buildings. But no, they had these super cheap plastic ones made of a low grade soft plastic, almost like the plastic over foam board, yeah that cheap.
Tin is put up normally with ten to twelve 6-D nails, depending on where they are punched. These plastic ones were put up with only knurled wire brad, similar to but smaller than paneling nails. They did fit together like fiber ceiling panels, and they did have places for three brads, but I was told to only use 1 brad in the center or leading edge of each square. Ironically, they looked good once they were up. They needed no paint, although they should have been painted in my opinion.
Bump one with anything and it will make a hole in them, but then the ceilings were 15 feet high in the great room.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Perhaps I should clarify my insurance costs. :mrgreen: Mine is $550/mo and wife's is $450/mo which is how I came up with the $1000 figure. We've had this Aetna insurance as far back as I can remember and have not paid an out of pocket bill that I can recall. If I did it was for something Medicare didn't cover, so the supplemental didn't either. Initially, shortly after age 65, my portion of the premium was around $150. I recall complaining about the high cost at that time. As we grow older the risk factors increase, and so do the insurance premiums. About the only good thing associated with supplemental insurance is that the State of Missouri gives me a tax write off based on the supplemental premiums. Illinois did not do that.

Cabrini Green was the infamous HUD ghetto built around Chicago. It came about shortly after JFK was president and Civil RIghts became a big issue. A lot of southern black people were encouraged to move north back then, and Chicago was a prime target city. Thus HUD got involved. But, as you say, the residents were not proud of their new homes and it all deteriorated within a few years. The replacement condos look good, but I have no idea how they were build as far as quality goes. Generally big projects like that are very cost conscious so that I have no doubt corners were cut. I love those knurled wire brads, but even on a foam ceiling tile more than one would seem to be required. I can't see why that builder was so concerned about nails unless he was using around a million of them. In that case every fraction of a cent adds up quickly.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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Sounds about like mine, from age 65 when Medicare kicked in, it was around 150 bucks also, but slowly went up a tiny bit each year, then it doubled when I turned 75.

There's a guy on UTube who is a pre-sale inspector banks use before closing on the sale of a house.
You would not believe the number of shoddy construction problems he finds and makes them correct to sell the house.
In some cases, they cannot be corrected, they are just that bad, hi hi. So the banks won't approve a mortgage on those houses.
I've seen houses where they notched a door so it didn't hit the toilet. Had sliding glass doors with a gap of over 2 inches.
I've also seen 34 inch doors hung on a 36 inch doorway and left that way.
You wouldn't believe the number of mistakes the cabinet company who made my kitchen cabinets made.
One even had a turntable mounted to the ceiling instead of the floor of that shelving unit.
And the microwave cabinet had it's doors upside down. Another the doors swing the wrong way, or did.
One house I worked in, their overhead garage door could not open all the way up, because it hit a drop down area of the garage ceiling. A room above it had a seating pit with couches, and a hallway to a room with an offset door. Crazy stuff.

I met a roofer who only used two staples per shingle on shingles that called for a minimum of four.
And a hardwood floor contractor who put their T-bladed nails two feet apart instead of the usual 16 inches or less.
The hardwood floors in my old house used the T-bladed nails every 8 inches.
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Re: Excess Deaths

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When we had our previous house built every contractor was given a set of prints. They gave estimates based on what they saw on the prints, obviously. The cabinet maker did some good looking kitchen cabinets for us, but the dimensions were off. He built them per the print, but the prints did not show dimensions with the wallboard in place. The cabinet maker didn't realize that and thus they were made the wrong size. The kitchen was U-shaped and the wrong sized cabinets only caused a problem on the short wall. The builder decided not to have them remade because that would set back the project many weeks. He got them to fit but they never looked right.

I don't know what they did to the flooring in this house but there are a few squeaky spots that obviously were not nailed in properly. Given that they took several other shortcuts I would not doubt if they skimped on nails for the floor boards too. Some day I will find out why the subflooring under my carpeting in this room is lumpy. It seems as if some of the panels are not solidly in place. When we get around to new carpeting I have a feeling we will be needing new subflooring too. I can't see anything amiss from the basement, but I sure can feel something lumpy at certain joints.
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Re: Excess Deaths

Post by Kellemora »

It seems everyone has some problem with getting kitchen cabinets done properly.

If you can see the subfloor from the basement, and have someone walk around until you find a squeak, often you can just shoot a shot of silicone in where they are squeaking and stop it.
I wound up caulking an entire flight of stairs for a lady because every tread squeaked, but ironically it wasn't the actual treads doing the squeaking. The framework for the steps was rubbing against a wall in the basement. I added a few screws through the stringers into the wall framing, and caulked the entire run with silicone caulk. That sucker never squeaked again.

One other trick we used to do, where you could not get to the underside of the floor. Find the squeak and drill a tiny 1/64th inch hole between the hardwood slats and inject that with light silicone, and or gap filling super glue. No more squeaks!
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Re: Excess Deaths

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We have three bedrooms that are carpeted. The rest of the house is hardwood flooring. The two baths, of course, have linoleum on the floor. My office, one of the three bedrooms, is the only one that has uneven subflooring under the carpet. While it is uneven and there is some "give" to it, there are no squeaks or any other noises associated with it. It's just lumpy and something under the rug does not match. If it was plywood, I could understand what is happening. But it's not. It's that particle board molded with some kind of resin. There are no layers to peel back as could happen with plywood.

Now that I think about it, there might be lumpy subflooring under the oak wood floors. Certain spots make noise when stepped upon, but it's not the traditional squeak I have heard in other places. This is something between a crunch and a squeak. That could be the subflooring compressing. I really don't know. The joints of the slats seem snug but stepping in certain places makes a noise. I like the idea of injecting caulking. If I could locate the noisy floor from the basement side, it would be easy enough to drill a hole and inject. Hopefully the caulking would not come up through the floor board joints. I presume you are talking about silicon caulking. That stuff should last longer than me.
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