One reason for inflated medical costs in the US. Abuse of CPT codes. Read on and save a bunch.

This article is specific to the US.

Summary: Over charging is very common by doctors and hospitals. Almost 80% of the bills are over charged. Pay attention to time spent with doctor, tests ordered and services performed. Check against the bill.
CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes.

Details:

In the US, we have many reasons for medical costs and therefore insurance to go up lot more than inflation.

Most people know the few reasons:

Frivolous mal-practice lawsuits people and ambulance chasing lawyers which can cause mal-practice insurance to be as much as 30% of an individual physician. It alone contributes to about 2.5% of the US medical cost.

Supply of doctors is artificially kept low by American Medical Association's control over the number of graduates per year. Very self-serving.

Price gouging by drug and equipment makers and hospitals charging 100 times the cost of medication like Tyelenol they give inpatients for example.

So called non-profit hospitals where the profits are pretty much divided as salaries and bonuses to the administrators and top brass to show no profit.

An insurance company provided the following breakup.

Let us take the above graphic for granted for now. Just note than 50% of the cost is hospitals and physicians. Why is that?

Here is what Aetna Insurance said in 2010.

Per Aetna:

Mergers of hospitals were followed by 20% price increase due to monopoly.

About half the spending increase per year is on Medical technology. Doctors are therefore encouraged to order tests which use this equipment.

"The biggest area of excess is defensive medicine, including redundant, inappropriate or unnecessary tests and procedures. Other factors that contribute to wasteful spending include non-adherence to medical advice and prescriptions, alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity."

So, what we can do as consumers of medical care? Do not assume that just because we have medical insurance paid for by the employer, it is cheap to go to doctor or emergency room. Do what we can to stay fit and eat healthy but go get the physical exam and flu shots as a minimum. When we do go to the doctor, have a family member or a friend to take notes of how much time was spent by your doctor with you and what procedures and services were performed. When you get the bill pay attention to CPT codes in the statement.

CPT codes are developed by the American Medical Association to identify codes most often used by physicians rendering services in the medical office. The most frequently used codes are medical Evaluation and Management (E/M) codes.

1. 99201-05: New Patient Office Visit
2. 99211-15: Established Patient Office Visit
3. 99221-23: Initial Hospital Care for New or Established Patient
4. 99231-23: Subsequent Hospital Care
5. 99281-85: Emergency Department Visits
6. 99241-45: Office Consultations

Most of what we need is 99213 a 15 min visit with established patient.

Office or other outpatient visit for the evaluation and management of an established patient, which requires at least 2 of these 3 key components: An expanded problem focused history; An expanded problem focused examination; Medical decision making of low complexity. Counseling and coordination of care with other physicians, other qualified health care professionals, or agencies are provided consistent with the nature of the problem(s) and the patient's and/or family's needs. Usually, the presenting problem(s) are of low to moderate severity. Typically, 15 minutes are spent face-to-face with the patient and/or family.

You can plug in the code and see what it means here.

Doctors think that 61% of the time they are using 99213 wrongly instead of 99214 for 30min.

I beg to differ. Most of the time we go to the doc office for a 30min appointment, we are waiting in the exam room for 10min, nurse 5 min before 5 min after doctor and perhaps 10min with the doctor. It should be 99212 most of the time.

Then pay attention to the tests ordered and other services which can inflate the bill. Insurance companies cannot challenge it. Only consumers can.



 

Interesting failure with SmartThings coincided with Hub v2 and App update. Android App 2.0.3 brought back Hello Home under Routines.

If you browse my blogs you will see very glowing articles about SmartThings.

You need to know the not so good too.

Summary:
One of the GE Z-wave dimmer switches (made by Jasco) stopped responding to the SmartThings Hub to turn ON and OFF. I eventually got it to work without help from support. I called it Entry Light.

Solution was to remove the switch forcibly using the Android App, remove the bulb, screw the same bulb into the same socket, add new device and call it Entry Light. When I removed the device, I had to remove it from 2 Apps which were controlling this switch. One of the Apps was Smart App called Hello Home from Smartthings.

I luckily had one Android phone rinning version 1.7.6 of the App which still has Hello Home and all the things I automated.

Interesting thing is after the Android App update to newer App version 2.02 and the Hub update the App Hello Home was replaced by something else Market Place -> SmartThings Recommends -> Smart Lights -> Automations. I was able to add a new App to shut off the light called Entry Light.

However, the old Hello Home App still runs on the devices it was supposed to. Now if I want to add back the Z-Wave switch which I was forced to remove and add back, I cannot even see the App. Unbelievable!

I also had a SmartApp called Clothes Dryer stopped. I still use it to detect end of cycle by sensing vibration on washer and dryer and they work. It is an App called Laundry Monitor which was moved into a new section. Market Place -> More -> Laundry Monitor. They could have moved Hello Home also under More.

That App Laundry Monitor is the only one listed under My Apps. Hello Home disappeared but still the App works and I cannot modify and device or the features. I am in touch with support about this strange problem. I will update it when I am done. BTW, it took me 5 days to get a response from support but one day after I posted on Twitter. Apparently they are busy with the v2 Hub. BTW, migrating to the new v2 hub requires all the devices and Smart Apps to be deleted and re-installed.

What they say about the new hub v2 is
" SmartThings Hub will come equipped with “AppEngine” functionality. This means that much of the processing that has previously existed in the cloud (ie: SmartApps and device types) can now automatically occur locally in the Hub. Circumventing the cloud will result in a much faster response time with automations. It will also mean that certain automations (SmartApps; Hello, Home actions, etc.) driven by ZigBee, Z-Wave, or LAN-connected devices will continue to work even if you lose your Internet connection. And because the new Hub contains battery backup capability, certain automations can continue to work for awhile even without power."

Well for the Smart App called Hello to work you first have to find it...

I think it was the missing Menu in the Android 2.0.2 update all they had to do was put it back under routine for existing users. Looks like this was fixed in 2.0.3. I was asked to look under Routines and there they were.

I was told that there would be a migration process for upgrading from hub v1 from hub v2 by the end of this year. I look forward to it. Compared other IoT hubs, I surely recommend new users to try the new v2 hub by SmartThings and look forward to an easy upgrade for existing hub v1 users so that all the devices will disconnect from the hub, the new hub connects to servers and then connects to all the devices using the device ID.

How I was cheated in India.

Rented a Toyota corolla in Hyderabad for 8hrs. He was actually there for 6hrs. Yet demanded 20% more than he orally quoted for 8hrs.

Rented a Toyota corolla for 4 hrs. He dropped us in a place and said that he needs to return a ledger to his office and will come back in 30min. He came 90 min later and made us wait for 30min. We went to 2 other places. In the 3^rd place he said he needs petrol and was gone for 1hr. He asked us to pay for the entire 4hrs. I have a feeling that he made money on the side.

Wanted to recharge airtel phone at a local place my in-laws knew in Madras. We paid money upfront. He said 15 min. After 20 min, we said that we will do little shopping and come back in 30 min. After we went back in 30 min and waited 15 more min, we asked for money back. He made us wait for another 15 min to give money back. Went directly to Airtel retail location and got recharged in 5 minutes. No idea what this guy was doing. May be he gets a cut and so he is a lower priority for Airtel.

Wanted to get DSL service from Airtel in Hyderabad. The guy asked if I want wireless and asked about $40 equivalent for a DSL wireless router which he said I would own. It did not work. They did not take back the router. I had no real service, wasted several hours of my time. I was stuck with the router and I was forced to pay for 10 days of service I did not get plus I was stuck with a useless DSL modem.

My cousin wanted my help to invest in Indian stock market. A citi bank guy approached him and I was there. He was pitching very high risk mutual funds for a 2% fee on an investment of 200,000 which was Rs. 4000. We decided to open account at ICICI brokerage. The commission per trade was about Rs. 50. We did not plan to do more than 1 trade per week. When we bought NIFTY ETF, I noticed that the volume of trading was low because the difference between ask and bid was lot more. For example if ask was 100, bid was 101 1%. When we bought we had to pay 101. 2 weeks later, we saw ask was 101 and bid was 102. Since we are selling we bid 102. Not sold. After a while we had to sell at market price. What we got was 99. So, instead of gaining 1% in 2 weeks, we lost 1%. That means brokers made money. We closed the account and opened an account in the US. It did just fine. In the US, if the ask in 100, bid would be 100.02 and market price may be 100.01. Huge difference.

Summary:

Big difference in what is promised and what is delivered. Clearly, they do not care about customer satisfaction. Goal is to say anything to get your money.

 

Interesting experience with Automatic car driving assistant 2 cars 2 phones.

Automatic

It attaches to OBD2 port in the car and for now only gives MPG per trip and has apps for expense reports where you need to submit logs. For a non business user, it might make you a better driver by warning you on hard acceleration, hard braking or going above certain speed limit you get to set which is really on the highway. It connected with my phone using my email account, phone number and bluetooth and connected with my wife's email account, phone number and bluetooth. When both were in the car, I never really checked if both recorded the same but when I was driving either car, I surely saw the record.

I was an early adapter and got the first gen unit in 2 cars and both my sons also got it for their cars.

First of all I do understand that a bluetooth slave can be paired only with one bluetooth master. So, it is reasonable that if there are 2 phones in the same car with Automatic, only one of them will actually connect with Automatic first and both phones will not see real time status such as Driving. I know that Automatic suggests that the passenger to disable bluetooth so that the driver's phone will link with the Automatic and later on the passenger can enable bluetooth later. That is rather inconvenient. As a minimum, allow a setting to indicate primary phone for each car at the time of set up. If both phones are present, the primary will connect.

However, I suggest an enhancement. Currently, each smart phone which pairs with the Automatic is required (suggested) to ave its own email account and password on Automatic's Server. I suggest a notion of family account that email accounts and passwords can be entered on the Automatic's server to "link" the multiple phones to the same account. When the car is moving allow the option of sending location to the server periodically and rather that say "driving", show speed on the map and show status "stopped" or "parked" based on the status of the engine. Also good to see other status in real time such as engine temperature, distance and avg mpg since last filled (Allow user to mark when tank was filled). Make remote tracking an optional feature with parental lock when a car is given to a new driver by a parent. Finally, after the trip was completed, allow linked accounts to see the complete status and history.

I used IFTTT on both email accounts to send email to a single address at the end of the trip. I also have the option of appending data to a shared .csv file in Dropbox of Google Drive using IFTTT. Automatic could allow sharing too and make it a social networking experience as well.

Once more suggestion I have for Automatic is to change the App to ask if there is another car nearby with Automatic installed in it or scan and inform the user to move away from the other one before set up of a new automatic. Lot of my issues would have gone away.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support I received for Craig Drake and Derrick S of Automatic. Together they helped me pair a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 running Kitkat and a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 running Lollipop to a gen 1 automatic and a gen 2 automatic in 2 cars which are parked in the same garage.
It took 2 weeks but bottom line is I got credit for a defective unit and the new one is working.

Visit to Atlantis Resort in Bahamas.

Summary: Atlantis is over priced but fun. Problem is 90F when went in Aug. Best to go Nov to April. I would look at other water parks. Hawaii was lot more relaxing when we went to Maui in April. Much cheaper too.

Details:
We went on Carnival Sensation cruise ship. Arrived at 8am. Park opens at 10am. Need to back at the ship at 4:30pm. So, had to leave at 4pm from the water park.

If bought from Carnival cost is $200 per person including bus and lunch. Bought it for $150 at Bahama Day Pass. Ferry is $4 per person and tip is expected making it about $5 per person. Pleasant when we went on the ferry but a 15min walk when we got off the ferry. Taxi is $4 per person for 2 or more people. Drop off is 1 minute from the day pass counter. So, we came back on the ferry. Be aware that Bahama Day Pass folks need you to carry a printout of the purchase to get a wrist band. I wasted 30min locating the business center and luckily my phone had the PDF file to connect to laptop and print almost $2 per page for 2 pages.

Food costs about $10 per person but drinks are $3.50 for water or Soda. So, cheaper than the $200 when bought from the ship. When we got on the Ferry they offered to sell us cold bottle of water for $1. No water fountains on the island resort. They really force you to waste time looking for water to buy and gouge you for it. Cheap.

We did almost all the rides in the inflatable tube. Very relaxing and easy. If you want a tube, you need to get in the water and walk up stream to see if there is vacant one floating and grab it. Some of them are not properly inflated. Now way to inflate it yourself.

Good to wear long sleeves wet suit with plastic zipper to keep cash and a credit card waterproof or you need lot of sun blocker and frequent long walks to a locker you can buy for about $10. If you buy water, keep it in a small cooler in the locker it more than pays for the locker though. If you carry water, it needs to be something attached to your front and not the back and a snug fit.

I had just a swimming shorts and nothing on the top. Had a pocket without zipper but a credit card may fall off. So, I wasted lot of time going to the locker to drink water and buy a drink.

You are better off flying and staying in the hotel to really enjoy this water park. Open till 7pm but people who come on ship have to leave at 4pm.

When I looked at Costco rooms for 2 people for 2 days it was around $610 without food. Flight adds about $600 per person from SFO. I would add at least $50 per person per day for food and drink if you use a taxi and buy in Nassau. That apparently includes:

Included Extras:

• Atlantis Kids Experience Pass
• One sushi and sake sampler platter at Nobu
• Two gingered bourbon lemonade cocktails at SeaFire Steakhouse
• One flatbread and two glasses of select wines at Olives
• Two daiquiris at the Daiquiri Shack in Marina Village
• Two draft beers and one plate of trash riblets at Virgil’s per room
• Airport to hotel shuttle
• $100 tour credit (per booking). (Not sure what this gets)

Not sure if you have to pay extra for the water park. They gouge on Wifi too it seems. No matter what you do you get ripped off...

"The free WiFi and water bottles you are paying are $45 a day resort fee that is not mentioned at check-in. A $5 a day gratuity is added to your bill for the maid whether she is doing her job or not. All restaurants add a 15% mandatory gratuity, so even if the service was terrible or you are eating at a fast food place you still have to tip"

BTW, there is a starbucks on the resort but they don't accept starbucks card from the US even though all payment is in USD.

My experience upgrading Toshiba Portege R835-P94 from Windows 8.1 to 10.

Computer:

Core i5 2.5GHz dual core 4GB RAM 64-bit

OS before upgrade:

Win 8.1Pro and Xubuntu 15.04 dual boot

Time taken from start: 2hrs 15min.

Steps taken:

1. Used Clonezilla to create disk image and verified that the image is restorable.
    Took about 12min to create image of about 45GB Win 8.1 and 15min to verify.
    Took about 4min to create image of about 18GB Xubuntu 15.04 and 6min to verify.

2. Logged on to Win 8.1 and followed Microsoft directions to download 64-bit version of Windows 10.

3. Selected the option to install Windows 10 (not the one to create .ISO). I was warned by a friend that authenticating keys may be tricky with .ISO. This quickly downloaded a small executable file.

4. Clicked on the executable to begin the upgrade. It took 25min download about 3GB on my cable internet with about 50Mbps download speed typical. Took about 5 min to "create windows 10 media". Once I accepted the license, it took about 9 min to download updates, 3 minutes "Making sure you're ready to install", 13 min "Installing Windows 10", 34 min "Copying files", After 3 min "Installing Drivers and features" it almost died "Attempting to recover installation.." but in 2 more minutes started "Getting devices ready" which was done in 2 more minutes. 11 minutes later it asked me for password to login.

5. I did not accept Express settings. I selected customize settings and unchecked almost everything. 3 minutes later, fully running.

Conclusion:

Entire process took about 4hrs from creating disk image to fully operational. If I made Windows the default OS on starting dual boot, I may have saved a bit of trouble. Overall computer did not seem to be running much faster with Win 10 but not enough use to comment. That will be another blog perhaps...

Microsoft windows 8.1 updates on Toshiba Portege R835-P94 took for ever and even failed fatally.

Computer:

Problem update: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3000850

About 710MB.

Download time was about 15min on my Comacast  Internet. Then after I chose restart, it took 20min to actually restart, another 20 min after restart, another 10min and 92% after I typed my password to login and then a message

It then took another 10 min for me to get back to windows. Absolutely no info on what happened.
Total time spent was over 1hour. There was one "important" Atheros wireless driver update which so messed up the PC that I needed to go to a restore point.

As a contrast in 1 hr, I updated Xubuntu 14.10 t0 15.04 distribution upgrade. The terrible failures in updates and the virus headaches are the reason I started using Ubuntu/Xubuntu since 2006. Not a single OS update issue or virus issue. In fact I have a 6yr old Asus laptop running Xubuntu perfectly and used to run Windows 7 and stopped working for windows entirely. I have been using Windows only once a year just to us H & R Block Tax software. At some point all the features I need will be available in H & R Block Tax software online edition and that will eliminate the need for Windows.
All my data is either on Dropbox or Google Drive. Both work from Linux. Libre Office is good enough for 99.99% of the users particularly at home. Can read and write Microsft office docs just fine. Powerpoint which most home users do not care for may have some features not so compatible but can be easily modified if required.

Moral of the story:

If you have to use MS Windows 8.1 do create a system before doing any updates. You may need a safe fallback as I needed with Atheros driver update. KB3000850 did not need me to restore luckily.

I am waiting for Windows 10 and that may lead to another blog...

How technology for Drones can help cars too.

For drones to be safe, they need to be aware of other drones. To navigate, they anyway need GPS without line of sight operator control.

First, let us look at drones. Even operator controlled line of sight drones need to obey air traffic rules. If all drones are mandated to have internet connectivity at least when not flying above certain altitude, one could download the GPS co-ordinates and altitude limitations at a given GPS co-ordinates. In addition, enforcement authorities can have the ability to send real time GPS no-fly co-ordinates in peer to peer network to a flying drone. So, in case of a fire or an accident or the need to protect VIPs such as our President from drones, it can be done by the authorities.

What if the same technology is in cars? GPS in cars can help avoid congestion or accidents as cars communicate with each other in a mesh network even without internet. Under normal conditions, cars can be sent the speed limit signal to limit the speed automatically and give new meaning to dynamic or adaptive cruise control. That said, there is danger of hacking....

Who said technology is always great?

Home food for 4 yr old Female German Shepherd.

We came to know that a German Shepherd lived 19yrs on home food of raw meat, veggies. So, we dumped the factory processed dry food. Ziva weighs 73lb. Our target weight for her is 70 to 71lb.

Our Ziva's diet:

Morning: 7:30am

Half cup mix of cooked brown rice, frozen peas, beans, corn and some fresh carrots. about 8oz of raw boneless skinless Chicken thighs bought at Costco, 1 boiled egg, 3 squirts of Fish oil, 2 tablets of Glucosamine Chondroitin for Dogs, 1 capsule of Vit E.

Evening: 7:30pm

Half cup mix of cooked brown rice, frozen peas, beans, corn and some fresh carrots. about 8oz of raw boneless skinless Chicken thighs, 3 squirts of Fish oil.

Afternoon: 3pm

A dozen peanuts roasted in the shell or a piece of Chicken jerkey.

Exercise:

Equivalent of 4 miles, elevation gain 500ft at least 4 times a week and walk on surface streets for about 10 miles a week.

She loves to run after a squeaky ball about 25 times a day or more.

If she gets less exercise, we cut out the egg and afternoon snack.

Her coat is lot more shiny. She is not scratching as much as before. Very athletic when she jumps on all fours to catch a ball in the air.

My vision of IoT (Internet of Things) applied to home automation, security, Personal health and Auto

This is best done in a presentation.

Be warned that this is a bit technical.

PDF Presentation.

Phone getting hot and draining battery? May be you should try disabling GPS when not in use.

I wrote a review on Android My Tracks App:

This is for Samsung Galaxy Note 3 SM-N900T T Mobile current version
experiencing "waiting for gps"
Andriod 5.0
Google Play Services 7.5.74
My Tracks 2.0.10
Kernel version 3.4.0-4086253

See https://code.google.com/p/mytracks/issues/detail?id=1579

Based on suggestions by others, I did the following before opening My Tracks.
1. Close all Apps which use GPS.
2. Open App GPS Status.
3. Background Behavior is set to Use GPS when screen is off.
4. Leave GPS Staus App running after ensuring that all satellites are green and error is lowest.
5. Open My Tracks.
6. Touch he GPS button and wait till it is blue.
7. Touch the Record button..

Open Maps tab and ensure that there is no message "waiting for GPS"
The App should work as you expect. Problem is that by itself My Tracks App is not enabling GPS but looking for GPS signal. It is ridiculous that Google cannot fix its own App. It used to work fine in Android 4.3, started acting up in Android 4.4 and needs this work around to work in Android 5.0.

There is one other thing I found. The battery was draining faster without this because My Tracks was looking for signal constantly. I disabled GPS after I no longer needed it. After using GPS for 1hr15min and using the phone as usual battery life is now 59%. Projected battery life is 13hrs. Phone is not getting hot now.

Mixed bag of experience with Bluetooth devices. Some need persistent connection to internet to work.

Like most people, I first tried bluetooth keyboard and mouse. They worked on Windows and Mac but since I prefer to use Ubuntu linux primarily (that is whole another topic) I had to get a logitech 2.4GHz usb stick and it worked great.

Then I tried using garmin GPS with bluetooth to send addresses to Garmin for Navigation. That worked until I paired a 2nd phone to it. Then it got confused. Garmin was relevant when Google Maps could not navigate when offline. Now that is changing. Also, that is whole another topic.

My wife tried bluetooth headphones for the car. Battery drain on the phone and the need to remember to charge the bluetooth headset killed off that use case. To be fair to bluetooth, one of my sons swears by his bluetooth headset but I to have to strain to hear him when he calls. May be it is just a not so sensitive microphone.

Then I tried a device called Automatic connected to obd2 port of my minivan. It pairs with the phone and reports fuel economy, speed warning (you can set it) and in future may report more info about the car. It worked well in the minivan. The app automatically runs in the back ground and connects when in the car. However, in a different car, when the speed reached the set limit, the 2 or three beeps became a continuous beep and I had to disconnect it. Sad thing is I now lost it. $100 wasted.

I funded a kickstarter company called Pebblebee which uses bluetooth low energy device attached to the keychain with a button on it. Push the button and an app on the phone is supposed to sound an alarm tone for you to find it. Use the app on the phone and you could beep the keys or flash to find them. First they said that Android 4.3 or better is required. Then they said Android 4.4 or better is required. Now even with Android 5.0 on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 running the standard T Mobile version of Android, the app stops running in the back ground and therefore you can never find the phone using keys but you can find keys using phone. I wanted this company to do well but they are small and may be they will get it right...

Update June 27th: The support team and tech lead worked hard with me to get to the bottom of the issue why Pebblebee Hive App on Android cannot stay running so that it can interact with the Pebblebee bluetooth device. The heart of the problem was that the App seems to require persistent connection to internet rather than use Internet to authenticate and when connected to the server, send status. I think this is a classic example of how IoT (Internet of Things) has gone too far to need connection to internet. Even the cheapest phones has enough compute power to handle connection to a bluetooth device. Requiring connection to internet to function seems too extreme. I had a couple of hubs which connect to my router for connection to internet while they interact with devices in the home. Initially they were looking for the server too often and failed. Now they do not connect as often. I think they still do connect more often than they need to. If there is internet outage, home security and automation must still work over Wifi. Even if there is power outage and the router is connect to UPS WIFI can work.

Having said all this I am told that most of Pebblebee's users are always connected to internet and so offline feature is a plan for the future. Until then, if you want to find your phone just use the method offered by Google or Apple.

I look forward to updating this review when the offline feature is implemented by Pebblebee and it works.

California drought is the worst perhaps but we will recover.

Just look at the history of California and the way people reacted to a crisis.

1989 Loma Prieta earth quake caused damage but very few people died. Building construction standards and codes were improved.

1994 Northridge earthquake most people died in the collapse of a single apartment building.

California responded.

"Advances in the technology associated with testing systems, design and seismic modeling software, structural connections, structural forms, and seismic force resisting systems have accelerated dramatically since Northridge."

California had energy crisis in 2000-2001.

What did we do? Replaced halogen and incandescent bulbs in a big way. Deployed solar power. In fact utility companies really do not want residential customers to install solar. They try to discourage but people are smarter. I paid $14k for solar and got back my money in 5.5yrs of a 25yr life of the solar system. No one talks about energy crisis anymore.

Forget about natural disasters. Think about the dot com bust back in 2001.

Nasdaq Index which exploded from 2500 to 5000 collapsed to about 1100 and there was lot of unemployment. Real estate slowed down as well. Every state wanted to claim that they can do better than CA. Look what happened. Companies re-tooled. Innovations like iPhone, Android, Tesla, Facebook, Google happened. Nasdaq Index is now 4500 in 2015. Real estate tripled since 1996.

Just how bad is the drought?


 

So what is California going to do about it?

People found that lawns really do not need that much watering to keep them alive. They cut lawn watering 30 to 50% in 2015 compared to 2014. All toilets are lot more efficient. Lot of people have replaced their landscape to use much less water. Gray water is used lot more. You can expect a lot more innovation in agriculture and in residential use. Moisture sensors and water use monitors will come to identify when and if to water and how much. Eventually the drought will end but just like we replaced incandescent and halogen bulbs with CFL and now switching to LEDs, we will continue the conservation and we will overcome. That is the spirit of people who live in California. People here accept and respond to change much faster even by US standards. 

First phone, then cable TV, sat TV and finally Internet brought the world together. Not really...

Just think about the days before phones came. Before there was a refrigerator.

Each village, town and city in the world had a unique character and charm. A new comer had to physically meet the local people in daily life. They needed milk and newspaper to be delivered. Cook breakfast, carry lunch and come home in the evening for early dinner and socialize with the locals. Be a Roman in Rome really applied. People kept in touch with letters.

Then came the phone and refrigerator. Both kept people at home and talk to people far away. Phone took away the need for letters which people treasured and read and re-read. People did not care to know their neighbors anymore. Just used the phone to talk to people far away.

Then came cable TV. Obesity began and diseases like heart attack, diabetes exploded due to inactivity and eating bad food. Then came international TV on cable. The people who came to a foreign country tuned out the place around them and watched only the images of the country they came from. The US stopped being a melting pot it was in the early 80s.

Satellite TV increased the availability of foreign TV and made it bad.

Then came internet and cheap or free international video calls. Final nail in the coffin of being Roman in Rome.

Today one can live anywhere in the world physically but live virtually anywhere in the world or for that matter anytime in the past. One could choose to live in 1960s and watch only video and read articles about that time frame in that place in the world. Social networking created huge generation gap.

So, I believe that we have many more virtual countries in every country and people are more distant than they ever were.

I am not so sure if this is progress.

Food for thought from a retired techie who has seen the changes and can guess what is coming.



 

Easy vegetable garden without using extra water is doing just fine.

How did I do it? The beauty is any one with just 12 sq. ft of open space can do it.

Material: Plastic pots with about 12 to 16" diameter on the top, 6 to 8" diameter at the bottom, potting mix (not potting soil) and peat moss combination with a touch of miracle gro powder (No need to pay premium for potting mix with Miracle gro). Pay the price for a well grown plant to start with. Do not even think of starting this when the night time temperature is below 50 unless you have indoor sun room.

Put a basin in the kitchen sink to collect water as you use normally. A basin full can water 3 plants easily. I am sure you use 3 to 4 basin fulls of water very easily per day. That is about 12 plants.

I planted in early may in Fremont, CA about 3 weeks ago. I have 2 large tomato plants, 3 small ones struggling to grow in clay soil transplanted, 2 celantro, 4 egg plants, 2 bell peppers. Just 1 week after planting we started using celantro in the kitchen and it is more than keeping up.

Even elderly folks can water them because they are raised above ground level.
You can put them on a plastic stoll if you wish for more height.

I am also saving Laundry water in a 33 gallon trash container and using it for watering fruit trees, roses, grasses, planted in the back yard. May be fine even for lawn. Top soil absorbs any soap and good enough water seeps down to roots. Big difference in growth of grapes and roses.

Happy and low water gardening to you...

How easy it is to conserve water even with a large lawn.

I have about 8000 sq ft of lawn and a German Shepherd enjoys it a lot and it keeps the house much cooler along with trees. When I moved in to this home almost 20years, the previous watering schedule was total 60min 10 min per one set of sprinklers every day, total 420minutes. I immediately cut it to 15min * 6 *3 times a week to 270 minutes and lawn was fine. I answered the recent call to cut water use by 20% due to drought and reduced it to 17min * 6 * 2 times a week to 204 minutes and the lawn survived. The we had rain for 1hr and I shut off water for 10 days and had another 1hr of rain. I shut off water for total 4 weeks that way. Now we have no rain forecast anytime soon. So, I thought if 1hr of rain can sustain the lawn for 10 days, I will try 20min * 6 * once a week to 120min.

Then I started looking at what else we can do to be green and still maintain a sample of flowers and vegetables we have. Re-landscaping so much space can be several thousand dollars and also heat up the place in the coming summer. Not ready to do that.

I already have efficient toilets and appliances.

I came to know that one of our friends stopped using dish washer which uses 7 gallons a day. They were hand washing. Running water continuously for 2 min is about a a gallon at low flow rate for washing dishes. They were collecting the water and using it for the garden. Another friend told me that they were collecting water when they are in the shower using a bucket just to gather the water instead letting it flow as they wash off. When I did that, I found it was about 4 gallons a day for 2 people having 1 or 2 showers a day.

Then I looked at another big consumer of water. Clothes washing machine. It consumes 25 gallons per load. I spent $8 and got an extra drain hose to extend the drain to a container just outside on the patio. Actually collected 25 gallons.

What is all this adding up to?

Kitchen 6 gallons, bath 4 gallons, 2 loads of laundry per week imply 7 gallons a day. Total 17 gallons. More than enough to water all my plants. I essentially cut a whopping 500 gallons a month on top of lowering the lawn watering from what used to be 420minutes a week to 120minutes a week. Not sure exactly but perhaps this chart can help in calculating sprinkler water and water use in general.

My garden sprinker system uses 1/2" pipe. In 120 minutes, I am using perhaps 1260 gallons per week or 5000 gallons per month. So, in spite of 8000 sq ft of lawn, my total consumption per person given 2 people in the house is probably under 10000 gallons a month which is about 150 gal per person per day.

Before the drought, each Californian on the average was using 180 gallons a day! So, even with the lawn I am down to average having reduced consumption by 60% compared to what this house used 20 yrs ago when I moved in.

Sad thing is even if every household does this in California they only account for 10 to 20% of all water use. The biggest use is agriculture.

Water Use in California

"Approximately nine million acres of farmland in California are irrigated, representing roughly 80% of all human water use."

What else can California do?

In no particular order of my thoughts.

Ask the farmers to switch to water efficient crops. Every one now knows that it takes 1 gallon of water to grow one almond.

May be something like container gardening is required to use less water.

May be all the industries should be mandated to recycle water much like power plants do.

All the major public gardens, golf courses huge landscapes should use only recycled gray water.

All new construction must have gray water systems builtin for landscape and toilets.

Perhaps at home we can use some of the methods used while camping. Wipe and re-use the plate and re-use the glass of drinking water. Wipe the pans cleans instead of washing. In the short term that means we use more paper towels but then we can always use cloth rags, wash and recycle the washing machine water.

In the short term, import food and let tax payers chip in to provide living income to farmers as they change their methods to use less water. Probably much cheaper to do that than lot of other ways.

Educate others around us in what we are doing and hope to make the water saving a way of life.

I am not in favor of more desalination. Too much potential harm.

Use tools to calculate your water use. You can identify the big uses and do something about them.

Is this typical of air travel these days?

Having flown many times on United airlines, I have seen the flights getting more crowded and late and here is a perfect example. In fact, this was the first time that there were so many updates. I decided this is worth a blog.

Click here for details of my experience.

Conclusion:

One could easily tell just by looking at the incoming flight that the projections are way off and cause lot of people to come much sooner and wait for hours at the gate. Not enough seating space and power outlets. People stand in lines so much ahead of time because they may not have space to put the carry-on bag in the overhead and forced to check-in and take even longer when they land.

Finally

I hope more people post blogs to get the airlines to re-think how they operate. The focus is on cutting their cost

filling the planes by cutting the number of flights

smaller planes

lesser leg room, charging for some leg  room, some more leg room

charging for even 1 check-in bag

not even peanuts with the drink

charging for head phones

not offering even a can of a drink…

What comes next?

Charge for blanket, pillow, water and drinks, using toilet, air inlet, reading light, charging port, charge for carry-on and what you put under your feet…

A look at what can make the US S & P 500 Index change. 2015 Part 1

Date	S & P 500 % change	S & P 500	YTD % Change	Hari's comment
12/31/14	-1	2058		Year end profit taking. 52 week high was 2093
01/15/15	-0.9	1992	-3.2%	Swiss Bank lifted cap on Franc, lower bank earnings, economic data, retail less than expected.
01/16/15	1	2019	-1.9%	Took just one day to get over the “Swiss shock” and rally in energy after price of crude oil fell to 50% of peak and recovered.
01/21/15	0.7	2032	-1.3%	Oil Rally.
01/22/15	1.5	2063	0.2%	Swiss Bank lifted cap on Franc, lower bank earnings, economic data, retail less than expected.
01/27/15	-1.4	2024	-1.7%	Disappointing earnings from Microsoft, Caterpillar and drop in durable-goods.
01/28/15	1	2030	-1.4%	Crude oil rally and some bargain shopping.
02/03/15	1.4	2050	-0.4%	Crude oil rally and some bargain shopping.
02/04/15	-0.6	2041	-0.8%	ECB lifted waiver on Greek debt as collateral.
02/05/15	1	2062	0.2%	Crude oil rally Pfizer buying Hospira.

My view on investing in the US stock market.

I usually avoid recommending any specific investments and do not write financial blogs. I felt compelled to write this as I see many people around me jumping into stocks with all their savings just because 2013 and 2014 were good in the US stock market.

Also, be aware that gambling in stock market can be worse than gambling in Las Vegas. No limits at all. You can have a high flyer and a dud to more than wipe it out.

Here is the summary of how S & P 500 Index did since 1957. I picked 1957 because that was when I found the oldest data on S & P 500 index. 58 years is long enough for this blog.

See the spreadsheet and feel free to download but for those who are not so much into analyzing spreadsheets, here are my thoughts:

S & P 500 Index 1/1/1958 to 1/1/2015

1. Historical average was 7.66%
2. Down 15 years which is 25% of the time.
3. When the market fell it took 13 years to regain (see 1999-01-01 vs 2012-01-01)
4. Max down side was 23% in 1974 but most recently 22.3% in 2008 as seen on 2009-01-01
5. Max upside was 34% in 1983 but most recently 24.9% in 2013 as seen on 2014-01-01 but 11.9% in 2014.
6. Long term investors who can wait for 10 to 13 years were rewarded.

Caution:
In the short term market may swing up or down double digits.

Those close to retirement needing the money should be aware that it took as much as 13yrs to recover assuming someone invested in 1999.

If it went down 22.3% in 2009 it may happen again in the next 5 yrs.

Major run up of 24.9% in 2013, 11.9% in 2014 could mean below 7.66% average in 2015

Stock market investment is for long haul. Do not expect double digits every year!

A tech blog on Internet of Things (IoT)

The growth in IoT is more at the end user sensors, actuators

Samsung bought Smartthings because they see growth in the end user devices. Those are the sensors for open/close, light, motion, vibration, temperature, 3-axis motion, humidity, smoke, Carbon monoxide, sensors, personal health monitors for heart, pulse, blood pressure, exercise and actuators for lighting, power outlets, relays like garage door openers, tiny motors top lock and unlock doors. Unlike the expensive approach by Belkin to add WIFI in these devices, ultra low power 900MHz Zigbee, z-wave devices with very small memory and nearly zero CPU/software will dominate.

So, all these sensors and actuators (Things) need to communicate back to the end user through Internet (when available) or directly when there is no Internet. Think of an exercise band talking to smart phone without data connection and later send info to the cloud when connected.

I said earlier that the hub to which all the local devices connect is where the intelligence lies. The hub needs to filter out and compact the data and communication from the end user devices like the sensors and actuators and the cloud. The hub needs to minimize communications with the Internet. The hub currently connects to Internet through the router which connects to cable/DSL modem currently. If done well, a SIM card in the hub with tiny data use bypasses the router in case of cable/DSL outage and adds reliability.

Samsung recognized all this and the next gen smart hub will connect also to the cellular data. It also does allow operation of all the local devices if there is a battery backup power to the hub and WIFI router. This way the smart phones stay connected to the local devices in the even of power and/or Internet outage.

So, what next?

There is so much in common between the hardware in the smart hub and the router that beefing up the router a bit in CPU, RAM, local storage (SD card slot), adding ZigBee, Zwave radios will eliminate the need for a separate hub. By doing this, it is possible to centralize the use of flash memory in one place and allow automatic backup of video from several security cameras for example and lower the system cost, add reliability. Lots of room for creativity and innovation in software and hardware in the smart hub plus router.

Why I think can Samsung do this?

A wild idea: Samsung partners with Asus the current leader in routers. Asus is more dominant in the PC business and Samsung needs to add innovation to Mobile business. Samsung has some PC business and Asus has some Mobile business. Asus has cheaper and efficient manufacturing infrastructure which Samsung needs. Samsung is dominant in consumer electronics and major force in home appliances which IoT wants to connect. Samsung can suck in the functionality of Chromecast into this smart hub, router combo and stream or add HDMI output to give a better UI than just a blinking LED. All this can be done for a retail price less than that of a router and smart hub. That is food for thought.

Google?

They have smart phones, Nest thermostat, Dropcam, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and expanding the program. They can easily add 900MHz radios to either their media player and they too can buy a router company if they wish but that is not their forte. Google can gain from the need for cloud storage. But so can Microsoft and Dropbox. Amazon could get in the cloud storage too.

Apple?

Apple is very well positioned and they are already making inroads. They could just add the 900Mhz and low power Bluetooth low energy radios to their router and make it a smart hub. They could integrate their media player into it. They have cloud servers as well. They could add more sensors to the phones and do very well in the personal health and fitness devices. They could easily create an API to talk to the 900MHz devices already existing. They could just take the top 10% of the market and make 30% of the profit dollars.

Intel?

I do not see Intel's chips in the router or smart hub. I do see Intel in the phablets and tablets in addition to the PCs but that has nothing to do with IoT and the end user. The only play is the cloud servers which already exist. The bandwidth is driven not by sensors and actuators but by video from security cameras. Google could use Intel in the servers for example.

Cisco?

Sure. But in the cloud networking and not at the high growth device level.

Oracle?

One could argue that more devices implies database management at the cloud but then, end users concerned about security may not want too much personal info in the cloud. They may want it on a flash memory locally and stream over Internet securely.

In fact I see lot of room for database management and server software in the smart hub. This is not really the core competence of Samsung and here in lies an opportunity. Not the domain of Google or any cloud service.

I am sure that I will be having more thoughts on this topic.