Don't get me wrong. I think web site owners deserve to be paid for the value that they afford me. If I find a site particularly useful, I'll click an ad or two to say thanks. But there are some ads that I despise. Particularly ads that move. So I usually have the AdBlock extension installed in FireFox. I happened to miss it when building up my new Mac Mini, but installed it recently, and soon after started noticing an odd bug. Occasionally, flash objects would flicker, then disappear when I scrolled a page. They would reappear as soon as the top edge crossed out of the view port. As long as the entire object was within the view port, it would disappear. It made no difference if the object was an ad or not. I decided to hunt down the bug and found that it was AdBlock's "Show Tabs on Flash and Java" option that was the culprit. Disabling this option removes the cluttering translucent tabs, and preserves the page content.

You're on a website doing something. They've given you the tools to do it, and you're stepping through the workflow (let's call it A). In order to finish it, you need to take a side trip through a separate workflow (B). You follow the link provided on the A page to do B. You complete workflow B and are returned to ...the B workflow. Wrong answer. I recently encountered this scenario and it was maddening. For bonus points, workflow B had no link back to workflow A. I've decided to call this a "lollipop workflow". You're going from point A to point C, and have to cross through point B to get there. Trouble is, all roads from B lead to B.

It's called context

It's up to developers to understand the user experience they're creating. Respect what your users are doing beyond the current page and beyond the current workflow. It's called context, and it can work very much like code blocks. while (the user is doing A) { if (they want to do B) { // They're still doing A while (they're doing B) { // They're doing B within the context of doing A } // They've finished B, but they're still doing A } // That's right. Still doing A! } Savvy?

The rising cost and decreasing convenience of health benefits has been a staple of the political pulpit schpiel for years. Until recently, I hadn't paid much mind to the growing outrage. I'm a healthy guy that hasn't been to see a doctor in probably over a decade. I even went a couple years without medical coverage on purpose because it seemed like a waste of money. Sure it seems that every year the cost goes up, and Heidi and I are irritated that my employer couldn't secure more reasonable rates, but after a while, we always get used to the living conditions, and forget about it. I've recently had the pleasure of joining the outraged party. I switched employers and the new company doesn't offer a group plan. Instead, they just let you do your thing, and give you a set monthly amount to offset costs. My previous employer had a group plan and as such, I was offered COBRA extension of benefits. In the past, this never seemed like a good plan, just one that was available to prevent a break in coverage.

Insert fetus into the equation

It's been a painful learning process, but in the end, I was basically forced to extend COBRA through the pregnancy. Here's my story of discovery regarding why the medical insurance situation in the US sucks: Not having a group plan available to me, I needed to research individual plans for myself and Heidi, so I poked around on Anthem BCBS's website and was thoroughly confused. So I called. Here's where things started to go south. It turns out both Heidi and I would be denied coverage should we have applied for individual coverage. Because she was pregnant. In fact, if I applied for an individual policy and didn't even include her on my policy, I would be declined. Reason being, once the baby was born, coverage rules mandate that either of us could add the child to the plan regardless of how healthy or unhealthy they were. Since nothing is known about this new client, naturally BCBS assumes they will be born with every medical malady in the book—and probably some that hadn't made it into the book yet. It would therefore be a risk for them to extend coverage to the baby. They're not in the risk business. They're in the insurance business. Another option available to us was to "transfer" the former employer's group policy to an individual policy. But why would someone do this when they could just apply for an individual policy for likely less than the group policy fees? Simple. Because their application would be declined. Why? Most likely because they were injured, or had every medical malady in the book. So out of the kindness of their hearts, and possibly a law or two, BCBS offers this transfer system to the people who have no other means to secure medical coverage...for the low low price of $1200-$1500 a month. Oh, and did I mention that the resulting policy coverage is crap? And the gem I learned yesterday, after spending way too much time talking to too many people? BCBS individual plans don't include maternity coverage, anyway! BCBS only offers maternity coverage through group plans. So I could either create a company and offer a group plan to myself as a self employer or stick with COBRA. Lucky for me COBRA is available for 18 months, and it's pretty likely my child won't gestate for quite that long. Once the baby is born, and proves to be healthy, we could apply for an individual plan that includes the baby, which should be less expensive. However, should we decide to get pregnant again, that plan wouldn't cover the maternity. Nice. I'll be paying a little more attention to the political ramblings regarding the medical insurance industry from now on.

I just finished moving my web server, mail, and dns from my old and busted virtual colo, hosted at vcolo.com to the new hotness at vpsland.com, and what a hassle. The service at vcolo was spotty and slow, and their web site atrocious. For example, I've never been able to log into their site using their login form. I have to go through the forgot password workflow every time, and when I log out, I can't log in with the new password. That's not exactly what I would call professional grade. Vcolo served its purpose fairly well, since I didn't need much, but the frustration finally drove me to endure the nuisance of switching services. On a tip from a friend, I decided to give Google Apps For Your Domain a go to host mail. Since I use POP, the mailbox size limit shouldn't be an issue. The spam had become an issue for Heidi, and I'm no expert at configuring such filters, so I'm expecting Google to do a much better job than I ever did. The GAFYD documentation could use some humanizing, but my mail is now working again, so I must have understood it well enough. So after getting the blog content and and other miscellaneous goodies moved over, now all I need to do is get through to the vcolo people that our relationship has ended. I used their Contact Us form on Thursday, but (not surprisingly) saw no indication that they received it. It would make me notably unhappy should they insist I pay for a month of service due to their sub-par site functionality. At some point, maybe I'll need honest to goodness dedicated hardware. Here's hoping vpsland's service can adequately delay that. [ UPDATE ] I caught them on IRC and confirmed they got my submission via the Contact Us form. I asked them to compile a final invoice for me, considering I haven't received an invoice for a couple months. The site has a billing status page that seems to indicate that I have a balance due of $0, but cannot access any other account pages until I pay my overdue balance. Oh, and it only has records running through December 2006. They said the account would be closed around the 15th. I'm still waiting on the final invoice.