Apple’s AirDrop supposedly uses Bluetooth to transmit data from one item to another. But I found out that if both devices are not connected to the same WiFi network it won’t work. So what is the point of it!?!? 
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Trying to look into the possibility of getting the new Shingles vaccine in the states during my next visit. To fully understand my options, I’m also looking into getting it in China. I had a friend (not in the medical field) ask around and here is his report:
I got the info. The vaccine available for you is developed for chicken pox. There is no vaccine exclusively made for shingles. The doctor said that you didn’t need to have it since you already had chicken pox once. If you insist that you have the vaccine，the price would be around 200 rmb at your own cost.
Supposedly they only give vaccines at “epidemic stations” now, so this may not even really have been a real doctor.
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Uh, having had chickenpox is the thing that puts you at risk for shingles, not protecting you.
If it was what they described, no one pre-Millenial would have gotten shingles and it would be a rare disease.
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It’s amazing how many half-assed excuses the docs and insurance companies use to deny basic care like booster shots. It’s almost like a concerted PR campaign is being used to destroy the health and resiliency of wage workers as well as the rest of the poor.
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The amount of medical disinformation apparently spread around in China is distressing. I once had a student give me a soda from the nearby fast food place. He’d bought a value meal which came with a soda, but according to doctor’s orders, he couldn’t drink it. Why, I asked. Well, not because of the sugar or the caffeine, but because he’d recently badly cut his hand and therefore shouldn’t drink anything cold.
I was trying to buy aspirin at a drugstore and the pharmacist wouldn’t sell it to me. He kept trying to upsell me ibuprofen. Aspirin is over the counter, so one would think it should be no problem, but no dice. Thinking it may be a communication problem I got a friend to purchase it for me later (presumably at a different drug store), but he had the same trouble. To get the drug, he had to invent a story about a sick relative who couldn’t come in to pick it up himself. But here’s the part that really bugs me. He had to assure the “pharmacist” that this relative did not have high blood pressure. Apparently, aspirin is bad for people with high blood pressure.
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oblig:wut
I’m all for investigating, exposing, and improving the problems with “Western” medicine, but crap like this is why I cannot take “traditional” medicine seriously. Western “traditional” medicine is just as quacky, and the battle to apply science to medicine is what caused “Western” medicine to come about in the first place. Can we just call it medicine?
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Do you know what they call “alternative medicine” that works?
Medicine.
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Willow bark, for example.
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It may not be fair to bring Chinese traditional medicine into this. The drugstore I went to was (at least mostly) dedicated to Western-style medicine. The problem with the aspirin is “pharmacists” who are either poorly educated, idiots, or just lying to make a more profitable sale.
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Ah. Quacks of ignorance. Kind of describes the whole situation I guess.
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Restaurants with only high top seating.
I mean, how do they get around ADA?
Nothing like scrapping Anniversary plans and finding another restaurant last minute.
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Our favorite deli just got a liquor license and replaced low tables with hi-tops. And a TV. 
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Sounds like a plan. Give three rings.
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Comcast is capping “data usage” now, at 1024 GB per customer per month
Seems reasonable, but I live with five other people and we hit the limit last month, so I have started paying attention to my network activity for the first time in a while
A few minutes ago, something, some program, or website, or background process, used about 80 megabytes in the space of four minutes, and I have no idea what it was
EDIT: pretty sure it’s Discourse 
Just got hit with another 50 MB and it seemed to be triggered by a Discourse “endless scroll” action
Apparently when somebody links to a video, it’s getting pushed to the client machines whether or not we even scroll so that post is visible, much less play it
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do not, in fact, open walnuts by karate chopping it. everyone at dinner wound up slicing their palms, myself included.
consoled myself with a heavily rum laden eggnog, augmented with chocolate syrup and mint, topped with a splash of Bailey’s.
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This explains why my data skyrocketed recently.
I have videos and autoplay blocked in my browser, but if Discourse is loading them anyway…
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I usually drink the rum before I start karate chopping things, but whatever works. 
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People don’t post a lot of mp4 links, but it’s an example of how the web is bloated and wasteful now
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Predictive caching (is that the term?) is one thing, but that’s ridiculous.
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One of my live morning news shows turned into … an afternoon show recorded the day before
without telling anybody
or at least without telling me 
Maybe I can get it from a different podcast link that’s updated on the correct day …
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