On new specs

I (finally) had/made the opportunity to get a long overdue eye exam this past Tuesday. For those who do not live in the United States of America, I'd like to offer a bit of a background on healthcare in the good old U.S. of A. before getting into my new spectacles.

For starters, you may be familiar with or at least have heard of the debate that has been going on for the past several years about the atrocious state of the "health care system" here. Well, in a rare occurrence for this blog, I'm dipping a toe into political waters and voicing my opinion on a political topic. There's an old saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." To which I would add, "You can't fix what doesn't exist."

So in short, there is NO such thing as "the U.S. Health Care System". Really? Yup. Truth is, excellent, best in class health care is available in the United States if one can afford it- I guess the Shah of Iran could.

In any event, medical care here in the USA can be both high tech AND high touch. Over the years I've had a number of good experiences with the medical community. Where we (patients in the USA) run into problems is when the medical community, the insurance industry and various levels of government bureaucracy intersect. All of these intersections add complexity and cost to one's healthcare bill. My recent eye exam and glasses purchase are a typical example of this.

For starters, unless your particular healthcare provider consults feathers twirling in a boiling pot of river water for your diagnosis, its likely that he or she has been vetted through some sort of residency program, accredited by a school of higher learning, and then licensed by some sort of governmental agency. I'm personally all for some sort of vetting or certification process.

Likewise, your insurer probably wants to keep costs down, and over time has developed a table of reasonable and customary charges and procedures for any given diagnosis or course of treatment. This is also reasonable- in theory, these cost savings should be passed along to the insured.

And, government entities, in their stated best interest of the people, have put reasonable restraints on the insurers so that the consumers' (patients') rights are protected.

Which brings me back to my particular situation with a relatively simple durable healthcare appliance, namely eyeglasses.

The last time I had a vision exam was approximately four years ago. For some, this may be unremarkable, and for others it may be shocking. There's one thing I can say about vision and the patient:  the patient pretty much has 24/7 feedback and is constantly observing (if not actively monitoring) key aspects of their eye health.

Four years ago, I knew I needed new glasses. I'd been wearing reading glasses since I was eighteen (I was my fifties then and now). We searched through our insurer's in-network list of providers and found one. We drove out and he was actually quite good. The lab that made our lenses, though, stank. As I understand it, reading glasses are a more simple prescription, but I had to have mine redone twice; Jennifer has a more complicated prescription and hers were redone three times. This is important. Why?

Mostly because the lab totally goofed up and really should be out of business because of their incompetence and shoddy manufacturing techniques.. The real complaint I have, though, is that there is an eye doctor within walking distance of our house. Four years ago, they were not in our insurance network. This year, they were. I'm not certain that four years ago we would have had any different results with the lenses, but we would have not have had to waste an hour driving to get the glasses. In the end, though, the glasses were fixed, and they lasted me for four years.

Fast forward to today.  My employer has changed vision insurance providers, and the folks that are within walking distance are now in our provider network. We visited them this past Tuesday for my exam. We actually stopped by and made the appointment on Monday, and I actually could have been seen that same day, but we had "stuff" to do, so the exam was scheduled for Tuesday.

I found the exam to be interesting. They did the routine "looking" tests with the letters on the wall, and then many of the standard optometry tests. There were one or two which I was not acquainted with- especially the one with the blue light that apparently touches the surface of your eye.... BLAARGH! Blech! Yuck!

In the end, though, my eye health was deemed pretty good.  We then got to the tough part: choosing frames and lenses.

I've been wearing specs for thirty + years, so this part of the process is familiar. However, in each of the past three exams, I had thought each time it might be the time to take the step from readers to "seeing" glasses. The first two times I was wrong. This time, my distance vision was still very much in the "doesn't need correction" range, but would benefit in certain circumstances- specifically in night driving and artificial lighting (pretty much night driving). So, as I work at night,  I opted for the new and improved gradient lenses, which are essentially trifocal lenses: the top half of the lens is for distance; there will be an area in the middle for "computer" vision", and and an area near the bottom for reading. I want to make a small side comment here, because we don't typically note our own eccentricities: the lady that fitted my frames seemed to be very good at her job, and noted that I typically wear my glasses a bit lower than most folks. I suppose I might, and it would certainly not surprise me if this was the case.

In any event, I selected a frame that had sunglasses included as a magnetically attached sunglasses element- they look pretty cool, and eliminate the need to purchase a separate pair of prescription sunglasses or clip on shades.

So that's my week in a nutshell. I should have my glasses in another week or so, and to be honest I'm kinda excited: these lenses should allow me to see everything in and around the car with equal clarity!

Data  news: I have to keep on reminding myself (and my readers) that the unifying theme of this blog is DATA! I finally configured my new pedometer last night. Its the same model Omron pedometer; the previous one died after ~ two years of use. I did a test of it, and it downloads data without a hitch.

Stay tuned for the SUL upgrade, which will be covered in painful detail in the next edition of this blog.

Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Tables and chairs

In my previous post, The Elusive Balance, I had mentioned that my goal was to enter twenty-three CDs into the Media_Title table. I am happy to report that this goal was reached, and the rack they were destined to fill is now completely occupied. After doing the updates to this table, however, I discovered some flaws in my "main" media table, which has caused me to reconsider the design of my database.

I wish I could remember where I had read this, but someone once wrote that the best way to start a database is to design it with pencil and paper. Although I've always agreed in principle that this was a great idea, in all of the databases which I've designed, I've rarely heeded this sage advice. This is partly because planning things often results in frustration and headaches for me, but also partly because I can "see" with my mind's eye what the database will look like and what it will do prior to a single keystroke being executed (note to the faint of heart and the true database newbs: semi-professional DBA on a closed course. Do not attempt at home or work. Especially at work).

One other caveat is necessary when discussing database design: don't be too afraid of change.

When the idea of Forty-Two first came into my mind is hard to say- it predates this blog by a few years at the very least. The concept was fairly modest, at first, and didn't even actually have music or media as its primary focus. It was actually my Lego collection. This was another project that grew by fits, false starts, and occasional bursts of inspiration and diligence. And it was done entirely in Excel. Over time, though, I saw the possibility of building something more powerful (and consequently more useful) in Access.

The earliest Access versions- starting in Access 2003, then moving to 2007 and finally 2010- were not grand by any stretch of the imagination, and were at first only intended to catalog music CDs. Eventually, movies seemed to be a natural addition and were incorporated, followed by books, software, console games and finally books in the latest iteration. And all of it goes back to Lego.

One of the problems I have with Lego elements is that although I do not have a large collection by many AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) collectors' standards, I have enough to necessitate them being stored in different containers and in different locations in our home. As I was working in Excel, I found that I didn't have a really good way of taking this into account. When I realized that Access could handle this particular problem, another thought occurred to me: I could do this with media as well, and eventually incorporate things that were totally unrelated, and this could be useful in insurance planning.

That's the short version of the history of Forty-Two. The immediate future, as alluded to in the first paragraph, will see the end of what I often refer to as the "primary" table. It will be replaced by several (relatively) smaller tables, each being tasked with holding a specific type of media: music, videos, books, etc. Other tables will host data on Legos and electronics, for starters. And lastly there will be the helper table which exist primarily to normalize the database.

Whew! A whole blog post devoted to data and nothing but data. At this point some may be wondering what is up with the chairs in the title? Well, "Tables" alone sounded boring; "chairs" is pretty much an attempt at a hook to draw a potential reader in.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.