I wrote a mock obituary for myself yesterday.
No, I’m not going through a depressive episode; and no, it’s not out of any macabre of doom. Rather, it was meant to help me figure out what I want my life to have looked like when it comes to its end. Writing one’s own obituary can actually be an exercise in self-reflection, one that can help a person take the first few steps toward a more intentional life.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you do realize you’re using data center resources every time you stream a movie or music, right?
To answer a recent meme, you also use a bottle of water every time you stream a two-hour movie. Do a marathon of eight episodes of your favorite show? Four bottles of water. Put Spotify on in your office for a workday? Two or three bottles of water. I can go on, but you get the idea.
Now, I’m not saying the concerns about data centers are misguided. They aren’t, and the advent of AI will demand the building of a lot more of them.
But here’s the deal. Some are already experimenting with ways to keep water consumption to a minimum. To possibly generate at least some of their own power. To be as light on the local environment as possible.
Been messing with my electronic stack lately and I miss 7-inch tablets. I have a Lenovo Tab M7 that I use as an e-reader on steroids (it also lets me read from places like FanFiction and AO3) but, of course, the OS is deprecated and unsupported at this point.
My Z Fold 6 just does not give me the same experience. The dimensions are wrong, it’s hard to hold in tablet mode, and it keeps trying to put text either on lines that are too long, or in two columns that jump around too much. I find that I keep reaching for the M7 anyway.
May was certainly an…interesting month. While I had specific plans, they’re not at all what happened. At the same time, I can’t say that May was a bust either, especially since I did hit my word count goal for the month: 21,373 words written against a goal of 19,000 words.
But while I did get the outline of Headwaters done, as assigned, every time I started drafting I found myself making excuses. I needed to update a web site. I had a random idea about Legends Lost. I did a scaled-down relaunch of the professional blog. I even reorganized the writing file folders on my computer. Bottom line, even though I kept opening the Scrivener project, I only wrote three scenes.
By mid-month, I’d figured out that my subconscious was probably trying to tell me something.
All right! I finally shouted at my muse. I’ll go ahead and work on A New Horizon since you want me to so badly! But then we’re doing something original. You hear me? We are not only writing fan fiction this year!
Folks, it is your health insurance plan’s job to negotiate the lowest possible reimbursement rates with your health care providers. I get that you think they’re wonderful, but that doesn’t mean they deserve a blank check with your signature at the bottom!
And yes — that is your signature on that check. Because those reimbursements are funded through the premiums that you (and in many cases your employer) pay. Higher reimbursements equal higher premiums. The math on that is actually pretty simple.
By Federal Law, your health insurer has a restricted profit margin. They are not allowed to set rates for unlimited profits. And they don’t, not from altruism, but because the fines and penalties are high enough to get their attention. (That’s the part of the ACA you don’t hear about very often.)