Day of weirdness
Weirdness comes in threes as well.

Finally finished off the latest QA fix on courseware. One of those typical 'jelly on a tree' programming things. You start to fix what looks like a simple missing button, and it turns out to be a deeply rooted bad assumption compounded by a Windows 7 oddity. Had to find the bad assumption that I made in 2008, then find a new way of making the same thing happen without bumping into the W7 oddity. I suspect this small section of the program doesn't get used much, because we hadn't heard any complaints about the problem from real users. Anyway, it's fixed now. Maybe. Knock on silicon.

Then I had to deal with another jellytree. For unknown reasons probably related to Obama/Romneycare, Group Health has switched its coverage to something called Molina. Again for unknown reasons, this automatic change did not automatically transfer existing prescriptions. I've been emailing with the Group Health people, and they've been calling the Molina people. Today, for unknown reasons, I had to call a toll-free number to talk about it: an impenetrable jungle of menus to reach a human, then a nearly incomprehensible conversation with a jungle-human who barely understood English. It appears that the ball has now passed back into Group Health's court for unknown reasons. Maybe. [Later: Found the exit from the bureaucratic maze! Persuaded Group Health to mail me a hardcopy of the prescription so I can take it to Walgreens and pay for it the old-fashioned way. Just in time, too. Dealing with this mess was raising my blood pressure, thus defeating the purpose of the pills.]

Then a mysterious hand-addressed letter comes in snailmail. Feels like a greeting card; it's addressed TO a house a few blocks from here, and the return address (without a name) is MY address. Apparently the intended recipient isn't at the nearby address, so USPS "returned" it to my address, which was not the actual source of the mail. The penmanship is elderly, which makes me think the sender is confused.

Later: Google tends to verify that assumption. The recipient has an ordinary-sounding name, but Google shows exactly one person with that exact spelling. She grew up in this part of Spokane and her 1966 Shadle High class hasn't located her for reunions. She's in Michigan now. I'd guess the sender is mentally back in the '60s, sending a card from her own '60s address (this house) to the recipient's '60s address a few blocks away. Maybe congrats on graduating, maybe Happy Birthday. The reality is probably less interesting, but I like this story.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 10:38 AM