Something Random

[Mercutio]

So India is very much in the model of overly commercialized health policy, much like the USA. I'm somewhat surprised, given its close ties to Great Britain, though I suppose implementing an equivalent to the NHS would be problematic in a country where access to modern plumbing still can't be taken for granted.

My thinking, had my teeth truly been a problem, would have been a trip to visit to see my brother in the Czech Republic or perhaps a trip to Mexico.

 

[mubs]

So India is very much in the model of overly commercialized health policy, much like the USA. I'm somewhat surprised, given its close ties to Great Britain, though I suppose implementing an equivalent to the NHS would be problematic in a country where access to modern plumbing still can't be taken for granted.

Like in the US, there is much cry here for the govt. to back off since it inevitably screws up things and is 99% inefficient. So no public health stuff en masse. It does exist in the form of primary health care and govt. hospitals for the poor etc.

You can certainly take modern plumbing for granted in all "cities", however small they are and whatever tier they are categorized into.

 

[mubs]

Soviets keylogged Selctric typewriters!

 

[Bozo]

Better save some money for doctors when you retire. Medicare does not cover eyes, ears or teeth. Medicare supplements offer extremely limited coverage for extremely outrageous premiums.
Obamacare is even worse. The deductibles are so high that you end up giving the insurance companies money for nothing.
I spent a week checking out my options when I retired. Spent hours at the office of aging and other so-called help centers. Bottom line; I am paying eyes, ears, and teeth out of pocket. It's cheaper.

 

[jtr1962]

Most insurance plans don't give you much money for teeth. At best they cover annual cleanings and maybe a few cavities. Anything more extensive than that, you're on your own. The good thing is dental work is still relatively affordable. Even a lot of dental work still only costs single digit thousands, not 5, 6, or 7 figures like many medical procedures.

 

[mubs]

Wasn't dental and vision insurance always a separate thing you had to have? All of the companies I worked at in the US offered general health insurance + dental + vision insurance as additional options. AFAIR, ears were covered by general insurance. Of course all this was 1.5 decades ago.

 

[Mercutio]

I've not had a job that offered insurance since I was an intern with Honeywell in 1996. What are these companies that offer insurance?

WRT Ears are a serious issue because hearing aids are astonishingly expensive in a way that's really unjustifiable given the underlying technology. I can see dropping them out of the coverage because past a certain point, having to spend $10k on a very common medical device plus all the fittings would be a good way to save some dough.

 

[mubs]

What are these companies that offer insurance?

Sheesh Merc, you must be kidding. My doc bro's medical practice in S. CA has about 8 employees, and he provides them all insurance! Every company I worked for in the US, from a small sw firm to an internet startup to a $400M one provided insurance. Of all the gazillion companies out there, you seem to pick the very few that don't.:dunno:

 

[ddrueding]

Having health insurance tied to a particular employer is a stupid way to do things. That said, most places do. The crazy part is that nearly all of the plans (plus administration fees) cost considerably more per employee than the private insurance through the ACA.

 

[Mercutio]

Sheesh Merc, you must be kidding.

I've either been a contractor or worked places too small to offer plans. My current employer is exempt from subsidizing my coverage or offering a plan of its own and I make too much money to get a subsidy of my own. My $300 - $450/month plan choices under the ACA basically amount to either 40% coverage and a $2500 deductible and no cap on payment, a $6350 deductible with no cap on payment but also no other benefit or 60% coverage with a maximum annual coverage amount (that's the expensive one).
None of those options make any sense to me. My health spending in most years is $0 and the one year it wasn't, I still didn't hit my deductible to make the insurance worth the purchase price.

Indiana has a deliberately poor ACA implementation (it's almost like the people in charge of my state didn't want it to succeed!) but I can't justify that expenditure for such dubious benefit.

 

[Clocker]

Heath insurance through my employer, for a family or individual, is $99 per month. I pay 100% of everything except for preventive car (basically a physical) until I hit the $3,500 deductible (for a family). At that point I have a 10% copay up to my $5,600 out of pocket maximum. If I were an individual, my deductible would be $1,500 with a $2,300 out of pocket maximum.

There's a 2nd plan offered for $270 per month with a $3,800 deductible & 0% copay (for family) but you need to have a lot of expenses for that one to make sense. For an individual, the deductible is $1,700. I don't know of anyone who uses that option.

My employer also kicks in $1000 (for me) and $500 (for my wife) into my HSA if we do some paperwork to document that we went to the doctor to have a preventive exam/consultation each year.

 

[Clocker]

I plan on using my HSA as an 'Ultimate Retirement Account' so I don't touch anything in there at this time: http://www.madfientist.com/ultimate-retirement-account/

 

[Handruin]

Heath insurance through my employer, for a family or individual, is $99 per month. I pay 100% of everything except for preventive car (basically a physical) until I hit the $3,500 deductible (for a family). At that point I have a 10% copay up to my $5,600 out of pocket maximum. If I were an individual, my deductible would be $1,500 with a $2,300 out of pocket maximum.

There's a 2nd plan offered for $270 per month with a $3,800 deductible & 0% copay (for family) but you need to have a lot of expenses for that one to make sense. For an individual, the deductible is $1,700. I don't know of anyone who uses that option.

My employer also kicks in $1000 (for me) and $500 (for my wife) into my HSA if we do some paperwork to document that we went to the doctor to have a preventive exam/consultation each year.

We get two offerings at my current place. The PPO plan which I select is $290/month for family plan or $108 for individual (and we have copays for dr visits). We now have a deductible of $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for families. Last year we also had this but the deductible was covered by another company so we didn't have to pay it. Premiums went up for the company this year so they no longer offer covering the deductible. Dental is $10/individual or $30/family per month and vision is about $3/individual or $8/family per month.

I spend about $4000/year on the plan costs and I have no idea how much of the deductible I'll need to cover this year. I feel fortunate to have the coverage and not need it much if at all but it is expensive.

 

[ddrueding]

Mine is completely covered by my company. Currently paying $800/mo for the wife and kid through an unsubsidized Blue Cross "Platinum 90" plan. The benefits are really remarkable, and considering how frequently my wife takes the kid in (having hypochondria and being a doc is a nasty combo), I'm pretty confident it is saving us money.

 

[jtr1962]

I've not had a job that offered insurance since I was an intern with Honeywell in 1996. What are these companies that offer insurance?

Same here. Only job where I had insurance was as a taximeter technician for 2 years. What was offered was next to worthless. Basically, it was catastrophic coverage. If you landed in a hospital you had decent coverage. Otherwise, it was pretty much out of pocket.

Since then I've been an independent contractor. Insurance is unaffordable on what I've earned most years. 12 years and 1 month to go until I'm eligible for Medicare.

Don't know why we haven't gone to a single payer system. This crazy quilt system of a gazillion insurers does nothing but drive up medical costs.

 

[Clocker]

Mine is completely covered by my company. Currently paying $800/mo for the wife and kid through a subsidized Blue Cross "Platinum 90" plan. The benefits are really remarkable, and considering how frequently my wife takes the kid in (having hypochondria and being a doc is a nasty combo), I'm pretty confident it is saving us money.

Wow, you're employer is making me feel lucky! In the rare instance where I may hit my deductible, I'll average $266 per month. In my worst possible year, I'll average $566 per month, assuming I accumulate ~$24K+ in medical expenses.

No need to mess with primary care physicans etc. either...if I want to go to a specialist, I just go, which I like. It saves me time. I actually like my plan better than what I had in the past (many years ago) with an HMO, complicated co-pays etc. I'd rather pay a smaller monthly amount and bank on our ability to stay healthy rather than pay a high monthly premium to subsidize others.

Dental coverage is a separate $54 per month item for me. Seems overpriced for what we get out of it currently (the only reason we go right is for cleanings every 6 months).

 

[ddrueding]

Sorry, my post above should have said "unsubsidized". It is completely independent of any employer. Curse you spellcheck.

 

[Clocker]

Sorry, my post above should have said "unsubsidized". It is completely independent of any employer. Curse you spellcheck.

Yeah...if you are subsidized I think you'd have found the ultimate loophole.

 

[snowhiker]

Medical: Blue Cross/Blue Shield - $60/month.
Dental: Delta Dental - $7/month.
Vision: VSP - $2/month.

Individual. PPO plan. Pre-tax deductions. Never used the medical, don't even have a PCP. I should find one, but I haven't.

I've used the dental which has a $50 deductible. If I did two cleanings/year the second one would be "free." Fillings/crown, etc are 50% covered. But like JTR mentioned dental work is downright CHEAP (NOT orthodontics/surgery) compared to regular medical care.

I went to the optometrist a few years ago for a "annual checkup" which I thought was covered but I was billed $99. I didn't want to spend time/hassle figuring it out so I just sent in a check.

 

[Mercutio]

Individual. PPO plan. Pre-tax deductions. Never used the medical, don't even have a PCP. I should find one, but I haven't.

Where is this? Is that an employer plan?

 

[sedrosken]

I currently have no insurance. The state keeps sending my "Passport" applications back for no reason other than they can. Passport in this instance is the name of a state insurance plan for minors.

 

[ddrueding]

Some builds are less professional than others. My own computers least of all.

 

[mubs]

Tsk tsk. Exposed stuff with the little one running around.

What is that tall black thing in the back? A radiator / heat exchanger? But the stuff going into and out of it don't look like tubes carrying fluid. And what is that single ram-stick like thing standing vertically in the foreground?

 

[ddrueding]

Tsk tsk. Exposed stuff with the little one running around.

What is that tall black thing in the back? A radiator / heat exchanger? But the stuff going into and out of it don't look like tubes carrying fluid. And what is that single ram-stick like thing standing vertically in the foreground?

The kid has learned not to put her fingers into fans, and not to pull cables that dangle from my desk. The computer has been sitting like this for over a week in the middle of her play area without issue. Pretty stoked that we've made it to that level of development.

The big thing in the back is a radiator. Thermaltake makes an all-in-one water cooler with a 3x 120mm radiator built-in. Those tubes are carrying fluid.

The single vertical ram stick is an SSD of the M.2 form factor (Samsung XP941). Usually these are mounted parallel to the board, but this board is pretty cramped.

Current spec of this system: i7-5930K@4.57Ghz, 64GB, 512GB Samsung XP941, 2x XFX 290X, ASUS X99-Deluxe, Corsair AX1200i

 

[mubs]

Smart kid (and smart parents!). Cool rig too.

 

[jtr1962]

Probably already tried the finger in the fan thing. It hurt, so she won't be trying it again any time soon.

 

[ddrueding]

Probably already tried the finger in the fan thing. It hurt, so she won't be trying it again any time soon.

Exactly this. Now any time I get near the thing she stops me and makes sure that I know the fan is a "big owchie".

 

[sedrosken]

Exactly this. Now any time I get near the thing she stops me and makes sure that I know the fan is a "big owchie".

Positively adorable.

 

[snowhiker]

Where is this? Is that an employer plan?

Yes, it's an employee plan. Huge company. Don't know if the medical is any good as I've never used it. $27.69 pre-tax deduction every pay period. $27.69 * 26 = $720/year.

 

[Stereodude]

Here's a new toy for DD:

 

[ddrueding]

Looks cool. All of that footage was shot within 30 miles of my house; I wonder where they are based?

They seem to want ~$1k for that, for a little more money I feel there are better units out there.

 

[Stereodude]

Looks cool. All of that footage was shot within 30 miles of my house; I wonder where they are based?

They seem to want ~$1k for that, for a little more money I feel there are better units out there.

The 4k model is $1200. AFAIK, it's pretty similarly priced to a DJI Phantom. The big things that caught my eye is an apparent lack of rolling shutter and no fisheye distortion. Of course those have more to do with the camera than the quadcopter it's mounted to.

What are the better units that are a little more money? I haven't really looked into these sorts of rigs.

 

[ddrueding]

DJI is the big dog in this market, but the 3DR Solo is tempting as well. All the components I have for my larger fixed-wing drones are from 3D Robotics, and I was really impressed with the build quality and software interface.

For me to consider one of these it needs to have very good "hands off" performance. I'm not good enough (even after years of on-and-off flying a dozen or so units) to safely and cleanly manage all the flights I'd like.

There is also a minimum image quality that is just coming into affordability now. Image stabilization, rolling shutter, DR, all of these are challenges to making it worth it. I only had the nerve to fly my DSLR in my flying wing once, and didn't dare fly it long enough to get good video.

 

[mubs]

New toys for DD!

Drones that auto-follow and auto video shoot you. Links go to Youtube.

Lily ($799)

AirDog ($1599 but without a camera)

 

[ddrueding]

I've always been interested in Peltier coolers, but never played with them. Tempted to get this monster and build a mini-fridge for the office. Putting an AIO water cooler on the hot side and a tower cooler (with fan) on the cold side would do it I suppose. Temperature control would be the challenge.

 

[CougTek]

Tempted to get this monster and build a mini-fridge for the office.

That link opens an about:blank page for me. You've catch the Lunarmist disease.

 

[snowhiker]

That link opens an about:blank page for me. You've catch the Lunarmist disease.

For some goffy reason his link code is: "{URL="http://Link: http://amzn.com/B00EQ1X5EC"}this monster{/URL}"

I've replaced [ with { so it wouldn't create a link. Maybe a bbs hiccup or just DD copy/pasting too fast.

Maybe this?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EQ1X5EC?

 

[jtr1962]

I've always been interested in Peltier coolers, but never played with them. Tempted to get this monster and build a mini-fridge for the office. Putting an AIO water cooler on the hot side and a tower cooler (with fan) on the cold side would do it I suppose. Temperature control would be the challenge.

Unless you want to tinker just for the sake of tinkering, it's probably more cost effective to just buy a Peltier fridge. Maybe about 20 years ago I spent a serious amount of time building a Peltier-based temperature chamber for electronic testing. Now of course I could downsize the electronics considerably (I needed to put them in an old AT computer case at the time and water cool them) but it still requires a fair amount of expertise to use these things well. You need a PID temperature control if you want real accuracy. Here's as good a read as any on the subject. The devil is in the details, basically customizing the component values for your particular system. The idea here is to get accurate settling at the desired temperature without any oscillations. After a lot of testing I was ultimately able to get my chamber to hold its setpoint to within a few hundreths of a degree. For a fridge probably 1 degree is sufficient.

The temperature chamber I made still works but I need to run a new water line to my workroom. I posted a bunch of pictures and description on CPF back in 2008.

If I were to redo it now I might consider aerogel panels for insulation if they were available and not too costly. That might allow me to reach slightly lower temperature, or just reduce the wall thickness. As previously mentioned, the electronics would be considerably smaller. Now I could control all the peltiers with 4 boards I designed for another project which are only 1"x 2" in size, plus a controller board not much larger than the physical size of the LED displays. I would still need a raw power supply of ~700 watts, but something like this would do fine.

Unfortunately, Peltiers really haven't improved since I've built the chamber. If they had, I might now be able to build something similar using air cooling and less than 100 watts of power.

 

[jtr1962]

Here's a copy and paste of the entire post. The pictures are from 2004. I've since added white LED interior lighting (which is made with early 2000s LEDs which I will eventually update).

Overview of the entire chamber:

Here's the chamber part in case anyone is curious (inside measures 10"x10'x14"):

Multipaned plastic viewing window:

Cold sink (note temperature sensor IC on chamber ceiling):

These are copper heat sinks that I made. Altogether at full load they dissipate over 500W of TEC power plus up to 200W of pumped heat (much less as the temperature drops), for a total of over 700W. And they do so while keeping the hot side of the TEC only about 3° C higher than the tap water temperature. Since this is intermittantly used, I don't recirculate the water via an external air-to-air heat exchanger. Rather, I just throw it away, or send it to the garden in the warmer months. I only use about 30 gph, so it is more cost effective to do so.

Here's a picture of the control panel with unit in operation (note -55.63°F actual chamber temperature). The auxiliary display shows 47.6°F, which is the heat sink temperature (tap water in February is around 41°F). I use a two stage setup. 6 modules in the first stage cool the hot side of 3 modules running at lower current in the second stage. I had problems with condensation at one point, and some of my modules are performing a little less than optimally. Still, I can reach under -55°F in the winter months. I'm thinking of replacing the 70W first stage modules with 85W ones. This will probably let me reach roughly -65°F.

Those two large main power supply transformers are cooled by the copper plates with water tubes. You can see some large filter caps right under the transformers.

Here's a top view:

The large toroids on top are inductors for the power supply. The tubes you barely see in the middle of the picture cool the power supply MOSFETs.

The fan is just to ensure a slight airflow over the large black voltage regulator heat sink and the aforementioned inductors. It only comes on when the chamber runs at or near full power. With these two exceptions, everything is water cooled. The MOSFET cooling tubes are more visible here.

Here's the display boards shown from a front view (sorry about the blurring):

Closeup of the control panel:

The chamber can also heat by running the second stage modules in reverse. I need to limit my temps in heating mode to about 200°F because the chamber fans and some of the plastics used to line the chamber can't take much more than that. BTW, when under no load the second stage cold plates get down to about -80°F, and that numbs your fingers in a few seconds (yes, I touched it). Just for kicks once when I was testing I put a TEC on the second stage cold plate, and a temperature probe on the TEC's cold side. I covered it with insulation and let the whole thing cool down to -80°F or so. I then powered the TEC. Of course, the aluminum cold plate it was sitting on heated up pretty fast (a relative term since it likely never got above -20°F during this whole procedure), so any temps I reached wouldn't be maintainable, but I did see the temperature probe reach about -110°F before it started creeping up again.

Besides testing electronics, I did this simply as a fun, long term project. I started the chamber in 1995. It took me over three years to get everything working right. It started out as air-cooled but I couldn't get much under 0°F. By small increments I made refinements and got lower temperatures. This included changes in both the heat sinks and also in making the chamber leak heat less. My first attempt at liquid cooling didn't go well-I used aluminum plates instead of copper. This meant using epoxy instead of solder to hold everything together. Epoxy and water don't mix long term. Hence, water-damaged TECs. Also, scaling developed inside the channels which compromised the efficiency of the heat sinks.

Besides changes in the physical setup I tried two makes of TECs. The second make was much better in terms of lower temperatures and durability. I also redid the power supply to get the efficiency up to about 95%. And then there was the problem of maintaining the set temperature. You can't get stable temperatures by just turning the TECs on and off. I designed a PID (proportional-integral-differential) controller which cut TEC power just enough to maintain temperature as the set point was reached. The unit can maintain stable temperatures within about 0.02°F of setpoint. While the chamber uses well over 500 watts at minimum temperature, it uses much less when set to maintain higher values. For example, to maintain 0°F I only need about 40 watts. To hold -20°F will use maybe 100 watts. Operating as a refrigerator (32°F) uses just a few watts. Of course at higher settings I can cut my water flow from 30 gph to 1 or 2 gph since I'm removing far less heat.

BTW, commercial temperature range is -40°C to 85°C (-40°F to 185°F). That's what I usually need to test over. I'd like to be able to get the chamber extemes to match the military range eventually, which is -55°C to 125°C (-67°F to 257°F).

It's a shame that no better thermoelectric materials than bismuth telluride have been commercialized in the 40+ years TECs have existed. I've heard researchers have found a few promising candidates. Since my chamber only requires about 25 watts of cooling power to maintain -67°F in theory if a TEC operating at Carnot efficiency existed I would only need about 10 watts of input power. I could make such a chamber using simple air cooling as the heatsink would only need to deal with 35 watts. I'd even be happy with TECs running at half the Carnot efficiency. I could hold -67°F with ~20 watts, and approach -200°F with less than 200 watts. There is plenty of incentive to make better TECs to eventually replace compressor-based cooling. I think we'll see a major breakthrough within the next decade

 

[ddrueding]

For some goffy reason his link code is: "{URL="http://Link: http://amzn.com/B00EQ1X5EC"}this monster{/URL}"

I've replaced [ with { so it wouldn't create a link. Maybe a bbs hiccup or just DD copy/pasting too fast.

Maybe this?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EQ1X5EC?

Exactly that for exactly that reason. Thanks.

JTR, I remembered you had done the project. Might be fun, but I just don't have the time for anything at the moment. Just finished work for the night and I'll be starting again at 2:30AM. Been working a bunch of 14-18 hour days lately plus the kid.