Do It Scared!

In April 2009, I had jaw surgery to correct an underbite (a type of malocclusion), which involved breaking both my jaws and moving them to new positions. It was my first major surgery and first overnight stay in a hospital as an adult. I ended up in the hospital for two nights. I thought I was prepared for the hospital, having researched what other jaw surgery patients went through and even talking to my friend, a nurse; but the reality was more horrific than the bad scenarios I had anticipated. Four years later, I feel comfortable enough to write about my experience. I wanted to share what happened and hopefully, to provide useful advice for those who might be facing an overnight hospital stay.

The Good Samaritan Hospital is located in Los Gatos, California, an upscale community. The hospital costs were toward the high end so I assumed that the care provided would be excellent. I believed in the principle that you get what you pay for. In this case, it was the wrong assumption to make.

The Pain Scale

My nurse friend told me that the most important thing to know for a hospital stay after surgery is the pain scale. The pain scale is a subjective rating from 1 to 10 by the patient regarding the intensity of pain being felt. It serves as a means of communicating to the nurse how much and how soon pain medication is needed. He stressed that, at pain level 5 (still tolerable), I should be asking for pain medication because it may take up to 30 minutes before the medicine is provided. During that time, the pain level will rise to 6 or 7; at which point, the pain will be at the threshold of being bearable. His advice was spot on. Unfortunately, at this hospital, 30 minutes is extremely optimistic.

I noticed that the hospital hired a lot of nurse assistants, who served as first responders to a patient’s call. Unfortunately, most of them did not speak English well and worse, they did not seem to be trained because most didn’t know about the pain scale. After pushing the call button, I had to overcome these obstacles:

1. Someone will ask over the telecom, “What do you want?” Because my jaw was wired shut, I couldn’t answer. I kept pushing the button. Sometimes, my roommate would shout, “He can’t speak!”
2. Eventually, after 10 to 30 and sometimes up to 45 minutes, a nurse assistant is sent to check up on me.
3. The nurse assistant would look at me cluelessly while I tried to pantomime the pain level with my fingers. I only recalled one nurse assistant who understood my hand signals about the pain level. The rest acted as if they had no concept of the pain system. Later on, after I managed to get a piece of paper and pen, most of them couldn’t understand because besides not speaking English well, they couldn’t read it either. I tried underscoring and circling the pain number vehemently but again, because most of them had no knowledge of the pain system, they couldn’t understand.
4. Once the nurse assistant gave up and left for help (I hoped), or was scared off by my roommate who would shout, “He’s in pain!” Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t understand what he said either. In two instances, the same nurse assistant guy came, left, and basically ignored my requests, and I had to suffer to the next nurse assistant on duty for relief.
5. After another 10 to 20 minutes, an English speaking nurse practitioner or a registered nurse would show up. The first words were “What do you want?” And because I could not respond, that phrase was repeated in a louder voice with more irritation. Eventually my roommate would come to the rescue and say, “He can’t talk!” Near the end, after having to intervene on my behavior for more than half a dozen times throughout the night, he asked, “God damn it, what the hell is going on?”
6. After the nurse understood that I needed pain medicine, if she was nice, she would tell me that she needed to get the one nurse in the entire hospital that was able or allowed to give pain medicine (my educated guess). If she was not so nice, she would just leave without saying anything. This would entail waiting another 10-20 minutes (in the hopes that they understood my need) and in one case, a long one hour wait; toward the end of which time I was in total agony.
7. Finally, a nurse would come and give me the pain medicine. She was invariably the nicest sounding nurse, but maybe that’s because she dispenses the narcotics directly into my bloodstream. Miserably, it takes about another 5-10 minutes before the pain relief occurs after the injection.

So, the 30 minutes delay is the most optimistic and the best wait time. The longest was almost one and a half hours. The average was around 45 minutes to 1 hour. Within an hour, my pain level has increased by one or two levels. Over an hour and I was writhing in pain. I now understand what it feels like when pain gets to the level that you basically live in and for pain. Your own consciousness wraps around pain and the pain consumes your very being. That’s all you can feel and all you can think about. It’s hell.

I never got my roommate’s name but I am so thankful that he was present and able to voice my frustration. I never got to apologize for being the cause of his sleep interruptions. My frustration was captured by the phrase which he kept repeating at the end and which I repeated in my mind, “God damn it, what the hell is going on?”

Well, What the Hell Was Going On?

Why were there so many nurse assistants, why didn’t they at least speak English, and why did they seem so untrained? During the first night, I remember encountering six of them (if not more). Likewise, I would encounter the same number of nurses, never seeing the same one twice. Were their shifts so short? Why didn’t they leave a note for each other saying I couldn’t talk? Why did they treat me as if I was intruding and making inconvenience demands? Why is it that as a patient, besides fighting the pain, I needed to battle for my own care?

It wasn’t just the pain medicines. It also took a lot of effort to get the ice packs. I read that I needed to ice the first 24 hours to keep the swelling and inflammation down when the body is in overdrive to address the massive injury. Then later I can switch to a hot pack to encourage blood flow and faster healing once the body is settled down. Because of the communication barrier (I couldn’t talk and the nurse assistants couldn’t understand spoken or written English), it was a struggle to get ice packs. And when I did manage to successfully communicate my needs, I was given one or two small ice packs, totally inadequate, which I had to apply myself. I remember only one instance when a registered nurse got me the long, large ice packs and wrapped them around my jaw. Eventually, I gave up and stopped asking for ice… it took too much effort.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming the nurse and nurse assistants. After thinking about it, I realized that the problem is systemic and the nurses represent just the tip of a dysfunctional iceberg. It starts with the governmental regulations that are meant to protect the patient but create bureaucracies in the hospitals as a side effect; the health insurance industry, high health costs, and mandatory emergency care for the uninsured that force hospitals to cut costs by hiring a larger proportion of cheap, unskilled nurse assistants; the prevalence of malpractice lawsuits that increase insurance costs and adds additional bureaucratic paperwork; and the cost cutting that results in understaffed, overworked and burned out nurses. If we include office politics, drama, and the natural progression towards mediocrity that can be expected to exist in any human organization, we end up with quite a tangled mess.

I talked to my friend, the nurse, and he confirmed that the problem is systemic to the hospital, the administration, the hospital workers (including the nurses), and the bureaucracy necessary to meet all the regulations and to defend against lawsuits. He agrees that this applies to the government and health insurance companies and goes further to say that society itself is part of the problem. Everything results in a dysfunctional organization that barely meets the cares of its patients with of course, an often conflicting focus on making a profit.

Nurses are understaffed and thus, end up overwhelmed with work. As an example, he states that in one hospital, he had to do a mandatory round of all patients every 15 minutes, while having to do physical checkups, paperwork, and ensuring that the medication schedules were being met (the types of medication and schedule were different for each patient). Imagine doing this for a dozen or more patients and then having to do admission for a new patient (or even two). Most days, he can only spare 5 minutes to consume his lunch.

Worse, the nurses who start out caring about the patients and working hard are often rewarded with more work until they burned out or leave. Once they burned out, they just don’t care as much and just try to get by. My friend is efficient and uses his skills to find ways to do things faster in order to handle the load. As a reward at a previous hospital, he was asked regularly to take care of triple the number of patients per shift as other nurses, with the same pay. Adding to his workload, patients were waiting for him to begin his shift so they could report issues and injuries because they didn’t like dealing with the other nurses. His coworkers told him, “Don’t work so hard. You’re making us look bad.” Eventually, he had to quit.

It’s Not a New Problem!

I thought that my health care experience was a recent phenomenon, but it isn’t. I read a book titled “On Death and Dying” by Elisabeth Kuler-Ross M.D., and in that book, there was a patient referred to as “Sister I” who experienced the same problems. She said that the nurses seemed insensitive to pain; their response time was 30-45 minutes; and the nurses were cold and did not want to engage or do their job. So she set about forcing the nurses to do their job. Below are some quotes from Sister I.

• “I think someday if I ever started bleeding or going into shock it would be the cleaning lady that finds me, not the staff.”
• “And part of my making rounds with the patients in the past years was really to find out how ill they were and then I would stand in front of that desk and say So-and-So needs something for her pain and just waited a half hour…”
• “I thought it was typical of certain floors because the same group of nurses is on. It’s something in us, that we just don’t seem to respect pain anymore.”
• “I think they are busy. I hope that’s what they are. But I have walked and seen them talking there and then see them go on breaks. And it makes me furious. When the nurse goes on a break and the aide comes back and tells you that the nurse is downstairs with the key [to the medicine cabinet] and you have to wait. When that person wanted to have her medication even before that nurse went down for her meal.”
• ”And I think there should be somebody in charge of that floor that could come and give you the pain medicine, that you shouldn’t have to sweat through another half hour before anybody comes up. And sometimes it’s forty-five minutes before they come up. And they certainly aren’t going to take care of you first. They are going to answer the phone and look at the new hours, and new orders that the doctors left. They are not going to do this the first thing, find if somebody asked for pain medication.”

That book was published in 1969. I think that if one is dying from a disease, the pain felt must be orders of magnitude greater that what I experienced. I can’t even begin to imagine how unbearable it could be. It’s depressing and horrible to think that this has been going on since at least 1969, before I was even born yet.

Thank God I’m Healthy

Thank goodness that morphine makes me very sleepy. I was able to sleep through most of my stay at the hospital and I think that sleep spared me a lot of problems by reducing my need for pain medication (and the trials of trying to get the medicine).

After that nightmare experience, I am so grateful every day that I am in good health, and that my family and friends are also in good health. Nowadays, I try to exercise regularly and eat healthy (everything in moderation). I avoid taking crazy risks that might result in major physical injuries. I realize that I don’t fear death at much as I used to; I just fear debilitating and painful long-term injuries.

If I should ever be in a hospital again, hopefully I can think clearly and speak so I can be my own patient advocate. And if I can’t, I hope to have someone beside me who can take that role for me and battle the system for the care that I would need. Ultimately, in and out of hospitals, you are the only one responsible for your own care.

Some might consider this post macabre. Some might consider it funny. For me, it is deadly serious. Not.

When I die, I don’t wish to be a burden to my love ones. So here are some suggestions on what to do:

1. No need for a showing. Folks can visit me later when I’m in a little jar or box. Or you can take me around to go visiting folks.
2. No need for embalming and expensive makeup. I’m dead so there’s no point in trying to make me look like I’m just sleeping. Just dress me in whatever clothes I have lying around, preferably clean clothes; I still have some minimal standards.
3. No need for a nice coffin, get the cheapest you can find. Even a pine box is fine. At that point, comfort is not a concern and I couldn’t care less about what others think. Also, that coffin will be destroyed momentarily.
4. Cremate me. I’ve already left the body and there is no need to purchase real estate (aka, a cemetery plot) for that body. So, just burn me.
5. Put my ashes into an empty jar or box, whatever you have on hand; for example, peanut jar, cigar box, etc. If you use a non-air-tight box, you might want to put me into a Ziploc bag to avoid accidental spillage.
6. Stick me on the mantle or in a cabinet until such time as you no longer require evidence of my past presence or are just doing spring cleaning.
7. Or bury my ashes in the backyard. Toss my ashes into a lake or the ocean. If you are pressed for time, the toilet is fine. Make sure to flush twice.

There, was that so bad?

Yesterday, as I was taking garbage out to the curb, a young man passed a flyer to me. The flyer announced that the house numbers on the curb were to be repainted and residents were being asked to contribute money towards that goal. The flyer had wording that falsely implied the following:

• With an official sounding headline “Advisory Notice To All Residents” and references to “911″ and “postal-mail”, the flyer suggests a relationship with the city government; perhaps they are hired by the city. This is false; I doubt they are a real company (there was no telephone or website listed on the flyer) and definitely, the city did not hire them. The real story is that several years ago, the city did hire a company to repaint certain neighborhoods. After that, the city never repeated that initiative again.
• The flyer asks for a contribution of $15 or “what is most comfortable for your budget”, implying that the city is asking for help to fund this initiative (if you believe they are affiliated with the city). This is false; you can bet that any money will go to their pockets, not the city’s.
• If you do not wish to have your house number repainted on the curb, you must tape the flyer to the curb. Otherwise, they assume that you have agreed to the repainting. Of course, they don’t state on what day they would paint so there’s no guarantee that the flyer will still be there when they come.

At first, I was very annoyed. I didn’t want to pay to have my house number repainted on the curb. Now, I had to go get some sturdy tape so I can tape that darn flyer to the curb. Then I thought, these guys are marketing geniuses! They took the opt-out marketing idea from the Internet and added a bit of local patriotism (donate to help the city) to make a lot of money. For about 50 cents worth of spray paint (and an initial investment in number stencils), they could potentially get $15 back. Even if they just got a dollar, they would still be profitable! Most likely, they will get between 5 and 15 dollars from each house.

For those who don’t know about opt-out, it was a strategy initially used on the Internet by companies to quickly create email lists of customers. The trick is to assume that any time a customer provides an email address, the customer has agreed to receive emails from the company; for example, when you purchase an item and provide your email address for order/shipping updates. In order to not receive emails, the customer would have to explicitly opt-out of the mailings. Of course, most customers considered these company advertising emails to be spam.

Soon after, many web order forms (purchasing forms, download forms, information request forms, etc.) started to display checkboxes already pre-checked to subscribe the customer to the company mailist and even worse, to subscribe the customer to paid services. The latter is especially heinous because I have fallen victim to it several times. Years ago, after I had signed up for a 3-month special with Match.com and allowed it to lapse, I was surprised to see a charge on my credit card for another 3 months at full price. Evidently, Match.com opted me into an automatic re-subscription service (I do not recall seeing that checkbox on the signup form). Worst, Match.com refused to reverse the charges because I had “agreed” to the charge; I had not manually changed my account settings to disallow automatic re-subscription. A recent example is when I purchased a game from BigFishGames.com and found myself subscribed to their $6.99/month Game Club membership service; I quickly unsubscribed by calling their customer service number.

You will also see the opt-out strategy when installing software, especially free software. One of the many installation screens would have pre-checked boxes to install other software (such as browser toolbars, Google Earth, and Yahoo Messenger). This additional software will fill up your hard drive space (best case), slow down your computer with automatically-launched programs (worse case), and/or install viruses and spyware (worst case). Whenever I am diagnosing a computer because it was “too slow” or “acting weird”, my first action is to find and remove this unwanted software. I’ve seen browsers start with 5-6 toolbars, each with its own search input field. When asked about these toolbars, the user would invariably say, “I don’t know where they came from.”

Unsolicited company email is a nuisance and thankfully, there are mechanisms (“mark as spam” on Google or Yahoo Mail) that will eventually get that company email blacklisted. Extraneous software installations are the “payment” you make for free software; to avoid, just look carefully at every checkbox during installation. But companies that pull the opt-out paid service ploy are evil because they cost you your hard-earned money and time (which you spend trying to get out of the paid service). These companies get on my boycott list and they lose me, my family, and friends as customers.

My advice to companies is to not use opt-out because in the long run, they will lose their existing and new customers (once word gets around). However, the curbside painters are still geniuses because their use of the opt-out technique has very little downside. There is no need to retain customers as a repainting is not necessary again for years (though they imply that it is a yearly event) and there are many new neighborhoods filled with unsuspecting marks, I mean customers.

I just saw the Fat Head movie on Hulu. It is a pretty good follow-up to and rebuttal of Super Size Me (also on Hulu). What I learned watching Fat Head was that my brain is made out of saturated fat and thus, needs saturated fat. Saturated fat is actually necessary and good for me!

“Fat Head” explained why my HDL level was still low, even though I’ve been exercising regularly (3 times a week) and avoiding all saturated fats. I needed to eat saturated fats to increase my HDL. And it explained why my LDL level was high. I was eating a lot of white rice which increased my LDL.

Surprisingly, the solution is to eat more saturated fats and less white rice. For those who love white rice, switching to brown rice should do the trick, I think.

Some useful Fat Head facts:

• Diets based on calories in/out is myth.
• Fat storage is determined by insulin (high insulin means more fat storage in fat cell).
• Carbohydrates (sugar and starch) raises insulin!
• Saturated fat does not increase cholesterol!
• Cholesterol does not cause heart disease; inflammation (due to stress, high blood sugar, smoking) is the cause! Inflammation asks for more cholesterol to repair artery walls and oxidation damages cholesterol to create plaque on walls.
• Saturated fat increases HDL.
• Carbohydrates increase LDL. (Not all LDL is bad; type B LDL is bad.)
• Saturated fat increases testosterone!
• Increasing saturated fat intake can cure attention deficit disorder because the brain, especial for kids, needs fat!

After watching Super Size Me, I had a great urge to buy a Big Mac from McDonald’s (something I hadn’t eaten for years). After watching Fat Head, I got an urge to just eat, well, a lot fat; especially the layers of fat on top of a stewed piece of pork… hmm, bacon-like. Base on this, I would say Fat Head is the more evil of the two movies because it gives me license to stuff myself with saturated fat.

Because I don’t want to take the time to examine the scientific validity of the information above, I’m gonna just say, don’t worry about it. I’ll just eat whatever I want in moderation. As my Russian coworker would say, “I’ve been eating everything I want and I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Reason enough for me.

I have a very good friend who had problems controlling his spending. Anything that caught his interest, he would buy. He would end up buying things which he would never use… mostly because he had purchased something else which he thought would be better. But then he ended up not using that at all or much because it just wasn’t good or something else was better. And so on.

A couple years ago, he expressed interest in learning how to be frugal like me. I replied that I didn’t think he wanted to be as frugal as me because I was using him to learn how not to be so frugal with myself. I didn’t have a problem spending on family and close friends, but couldn’t bring myself to spend much on me. My friend definitely didn’t have a problem spending on himself. I concluded that between our two extremes of spendthrift and frugality, there was a healthy middle ground.

My first suggestion was to apply some discipline to his habit of what to me was impulse buying. First, he should ask himself if the item was something he just wanted or if it was something he really needed? Second, once he determines that he needs it, he should take time to research which brand/option was the best bang-for-the-buck. As a simple rule of thumb, I suggested waiting a day before buying. Waiting a day would allow time for research and, more importantly, for the feelings of “want” to fade and for a more practical mindset to come into play. I was hopeful that this would naturally limit his purchases to well-researched products which are what he needs or really, really wants.

The “really, really wants” is the exception to the frugality rule and the lesson I picked up from my friend. I learned that it was okay to treat myself to things that I don’t necessarily need, but just want. And that I should treat myself as a reward for achieving a goal, doing good work, etc. Since then, I have “forced” myself to buy an expensive present that I don’t really need, but just want, for my birthday each year.

Since then, my friend has improved tremendously (for math heads, we are talking an order of magnitude improvement) in reducing his spending habits. However, he was still spending more than he wanted to. During a recent conversation, we realized that his relationship with money was different from mine’s. While I treated the majority of my money as hard-earned, he treated the majority of his money as easy. So while I was keeping a tight fist around my bills, he was holding his up to the wind with open palms.

The hints were there through the years but I had missed them. Even when I finally realized it, I had to talk to my friend a bit to make it clear. During this recent conversation, my friend was contemplating an expensive software purchase, say $500, which he had researched and believed he needed. The cost was prohibitive though and then, from my point of view, he attempted to reduce the impact of the cost. To do so, he indicated that he had gotten a rebate check of $100 and that he had returned some items to the store for $200… so that made the software just $200 ($500 – $100 – $200). That is a steal and he should totally buy it.

While I did agree that he should buy the software because he needed it, I was thinking “What the heck? The software costs $500, not $200!” After a few back and forth, my friend indicated that he treated money which he didn’t expect (income tax returns, rebates, product returns to stores, cash gifts, etc.) as “free” or “easy” money. This easy money then is used to offset the cost of any purchase that occurs after getting the easy money.

My reply was along the lines of “What? That’s your damn hard-earned money. It’s not easy and it’s definitely not free.” With the exception of the cash gift from others, the rest were his hard-earned money. The income tax return is part of his salary which he loaned interest-free to the government. The rebate is a return of the extra money which came from him in the first place. The money he got back from returning products to stores is his own precious money. My friend pointed out that I seem to keep track of the origin of the money (if it is originally my money, I will remember); whereas, he didn’t track the origin at all. So for my friend, any money which he received which didn’t come directly from a salary check was easy money. And the problem was that spending easy money was well, pretty easy.

I am not sure whether the above will help my friend control his spending more. My friend assures me that it is a huge revelation for him and that he is looking at his past purchases with a new viewpoint and understanding. My friend suggested that I write a blog about the realization above to help others who might benefit. My first thought was that there couldn’t be many others with the same money issues as him, but then another friend called.

She wanted my opinion on whether she should refinance her mortgage. She was afraid that if she refinance to a lower interest rate, her mortgage tax deduction would be smaller. I am like, “Say what? You want to pay more so you can deduct more on your income tax form?” That’s like offering to give someone more money so they will give you a little bit more back. Or more concretely, if I give you $10, you will give me $1 back. So if I give you $20, you will give me $2 back. Gee, what a great deal! I better give you $200, then I will get $20 back. That’s easy money!

I’m being silly and dramatic. My conversations weren’t as bad as that. But it gave me extra incentive to write this blog. Please, everyone, it’s your hard-earned money that you are spending!

I went hiking with a friend in the Walnut Creek area. She had hiked at the park before but didn’t usually take the lead so was not certain about the trails. I had never been there before. Together, we were clueless.

It was a nice, sunny day. As we walked deeper into the park, she commented that there was no shade and that it wasn’t as pretty as she remembered. We kept going and finally found another entrance to the park with a feeder street, small parking lot, and a trail map. Unfortunately, the trail map didn’t have any spot saying “You are here!”

We asked one of the friendly hikers there if he knew where we were (well, he looked friendly and was the nearest person… I’m lazy that way). Surprisingly, he didn’t know where we were or even what the nearby street name was. So we spent 5 to 10 mins figuring out where we were; finally, the friendly but no longer clueless hiker said, “I got it!” Once we located ourselves on the map, we realized that my friend’s usual hiking path was along the creek. It made sense because we had crossed the creek earlier and there were shade from trees and wooden benches along the water.

After thanking the hiker, we plotted a path back. As we were well on our way back, my friend commented that she hoped we were on the right trail.

“Don’t worry”, I reassured her, “I have short-term photographic memory.”

“So, you have the trail map in your head, right?”, she asked.

“Not really”, I admitted, “It’s very short. Maybe ten seconds max.”

We did find the creek and managed to get safely back to our parking lot.

My friend sent me this and I thought, wow, I would love to visit this tea house. But to get there, I have to take a mountain trail in China; specifically, Hua Shan mountain near Xi’an, ShanXi Province.

Update: It turns out that this trail is the popular Mount Hua Pilgrimage. Supposedly, the Chinese government has made the pilgrimage much safer by adding wider and less dangerous paths.

First, we’ll need to take a tram to the start of the trail.
Now take the plank path.
Make sure you have a solid grip on the chain.
Look ahead now and then.
Careful when passing people coming back down.
A few steps to help you now and then.
Dig your foot into that hole.
Almost there… just a couple of steps left.
Finally, made it. Sit, relax, have some tea, and contemplate the trip back.

I believe this post is the original. There is also a video of the plank path.

Three years ago, I went on vacation. I left my Volkswagen Jetta, not yet one year old at the time, at my parents for a week. During that time, there were heavy rains. When I came back, the left-front driver foot well was under three inches of water. I was sure that I had locked the doors securely before leaving… and all the windows, including sunroof, were closed tightly. What could be the matter? Maybe it was a leak somewhere on the driver side?

A wet vac, a lot of effort, and the problem was mostly solved, except for the unpleasant wet carpet smell which lingered before disappearing. Being a procrastinator, I never did take the car to the dealer to find the leak.

Since then, rains have come and gone. Unless the rains were heavy, I didn’t see any moisture in the cabin. But when the heavy rains came, the water appeared in the front driver foot well. I checked the driver-side door but didn’t see any wet trail. I couldn’t figure it out.

Recently, during some heavy rains, I noticed that the front right passenger foot well was also accumulating water. What the heck? Did my Jetta just spring another leak? I resolved to get down to the root of the problem; I went to the Internet and found complaints about the sunroofs from all cars including Acura, Mercedes, and Volkswagen (bingo!).

Evidently, the sunroofs are not water-tight. Water does get into and accumulate in the well of the sunroof. The water is usually drained away by tubes. If the tubes get clogged or disconnected, then the water builds up, eventually floods into the roof structure, and appears in the main cabin in several places. Supposedly once a year, you should check that sunroof drainage tubes and clear any blockage.

I cracked open the trusty Jetta owner’s manual; it didn’t mentioned anything about the above. What the heck? How many drivers out there are wondering why their brand new car with sunroof starts leaking after a year or two?

On the Jetta, there are four drainage tubes, one at each corner of the sunroof. The front two tubes come out in the middle of both sides, near the front door hinges. The rear two tubes comes out underneath both sides near the rear bumper. Now, why the front two doesn’t come out underneath, I have no idea. Worse, there are nipples at the end of each of the four tubes… I guess to promote clogging?

Others recommend cutting the nipples off, but I took the less severe method of squeezing the nipples to make them open wide. Pouring water into the sunroof and then squeezing the nipples caused all sorts of particles, some big and some small, to come out, followed by a torrent of freed water. Yippee! Now, I just need to remember to do this once or twice a year.

If you don’t have time to do the above, another quick fix is to use painter’s tape (aka masking tape) to seal all four edges of the sunroof.

Update: A couple of years later, Volkswagen issued a safety recall concerning this issue. The solution was to cut the rubber nipples off.

This email came from a certain large German software company that I once worked at. At the beginning of 2000, we were losing about one person per day; i.e., in three months, 90 employees left. That’s quit, not layoff. Suffice to say, getting a good-bye email almost every day did not do much for employee morale.

From: Operations
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2000 6:34 PM
To: Employees
Subject: Copiers/Printers

Dear Colleagues,

Recently we have been having problems with the Savin Color Copier/Printer (DCBK) located in the copy room of Bldg. B. The problems are a direct result of employee misuse & abuse; specifically, jamming the paper trays into the machine, slamming the door & repeated kicking of the machine. We are in danger of losing our service contract with Savin due to the excessive service calls brought on by this physical violence. Please do not, jam the paper trays into the machine, do not slam the door to the copier/printer, & above all do not KICK the copier/printer.

Thank you for your cooperation!

Operations

If you haven’t seen the movie “Office Space”, you should.

Taking a biking tour of Martha’s Vineyard on the Sunday of the July 4th weekend was not such a good idea. It was a great idea!

100 degrees. 100% humidity. 100 miles… uh, 30 miles. The shirt on my back all sweaty. Members of the group staggered across several miles because some were not as fit as others. Stopping at beaches to take a cool dip and then continuing on around the island. Eating burgers at a convenient food shack on the way. Racing back to catch the last ferry. Legs all sore but I’m feeling great.

Best darn trip. Ever.