This week I'm scheduled to work 22 hours total. Soon I will be working 40-hour weeks. That will be good for my pocketbook.
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Shortage of doctors! Being in general practice is not lucrative, not like being an oncologist or an obstetrician or a radiologist or a psychiatrist or-or-or. You still make a lot of money, of course, but you don't make as much as your buddy the plastic surgeon does. That gets a little embarassing at conferences: "Yeah, I bought a Lambo last year. It's pretty cool. What're you driving these days, Bill?"
"I just bought a new Corvette two weeks ago."
"A 'Vette, okay, that's pretty cool!" But you know the truth: your brand-new Corvette just isn't as cool as a freaking Lamborghini.
...slightly exaggerated.
And to make things even more entertaining, for your lower income you deal with a lot more unpleasant bodily fluids than anyone else save possibly your buddy the gastroenterologist--but every colonoscopy he does gets billed at three grand. What did you get paid when that kid threw up on your shoes last week? A $200 office visit that the insurance company paid $95 on.
Your office hours are longer and you don't rack up the procedures that a specialist does, yet you had to go to medical school, and do your residency, for just as long as your specialist classmates did. And they make a lot more than you do.
Who would take that deal? Just having your student loan debt forgiven? That's maybe two hundred grand once, and (I'd bet) you still have to pay taxes on it.
...supply shortages, doctor shortages--when did we get socialized medicine?
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There's an article up on AoSHQ about EPA stupidity about people in Africa who burn wood to cook.
I can't deal with it right now. I just can't.
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I just want to relax, but I have so many things that need to be attended to. *sigh*
Major storms went through last night. I slept pretty well, even so. We needed the rain, considering that it hardly rained during July at all. That, after June was practically Deluge 2.0. WTF.
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Today I told a client that he could go to the computer section and get an enclosure for a 3.5" disk. One of the people from there came up and told me "we only have 3.0, not 3.5". I had to go back there and get one myself, then point out to her the medium print on the box which said that it's for 3.5" hard drives. (We have enclosures for 3.5" and 2.5" drives, like most electronics stores that deal with computer hardware. You'd think someone whose job it is to sell computer hardware would know that desktop drives are 3.5" and laptop drives are 2.5", but NOOOOOOO....)
ADDENDUM: The box says that it's a USB 3.0 enclosure in "large, friendly letters". That's what she meant when she said "we only have 3.0." But of course under that, in smaller print, it says "For 3.5" hard drives". END ADDENDUM.
Fucking idiots. I'm not going to miss that kind of shit.
* * *
Today I actually sought--and was granted--permission to duck out of work half an hour early. It was pretty slow after the opening rush was through, and I wanted to go get the pee test dealt with. I was able to do that, with the result that I managed to get home about the time I would have if I had just gone right home from work at the scheduled quitting time. Can't beat that.