JUSTIFICATION

Thursday was a beautiful day in the high 40s and low 50s. The morning sun hits the front of my house so all the icicles melted and wonder of wonders by mid afternoon I could see that the gutters in front had no snow on top. In fact there was water running inside the down spouts. I did not go through the snow pack to see if the back had also improved.

The bad part about the day was that I ended up postponing writing the next instalment about the state of American health care. I am not focusing on the ACA or the actual delivery of care at this time but on factors that are transforming how we receive it. In part this has to do with changes in physician’s practices, the Hospital determinants in the cost and the actual “provider” input, as well as the third party payer’s molding the expenses and availability of care.

My excuse for postponing is placed directly onto the back of Microsoft. Although I had an anticipated pleasant luncheon appointment about 10:30 another person and I started to try to remedy a grievous decision I had made several month ago with my lap top.

I run Windows 7 on my desktop but the laptop had an earlier version and after Windows 8 came out since I was under the impression that I could always return to the previous operating system I succumbed to Microsoft’s seductive words and downloaded “8”. Despite their claim “8” not only was faulty but did not work well with a non-touch screen computer.

Never the less I was able to install as a bookmark ESPN3 which when I hooked the computer to my 40” TV was a great place to see UVA games which never made the mainline (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and a few other outlets). This was in pre Roku days.

At times there were quirks that interfered but then I compounded my folly; I took advantage of an offer to install a trial version of the updated Windows 8.1, and things went to pot. I would lose the link in the middle of a program and although I could now use a desktop shut off switch often it would vanish while I was moving the cursor to it.

Then I started to get a notice from Microsoft that my trial period had ended and until I reinstalled Windows (8.1?) the computer would shut off every 2 hours. How convenient!

Initially I could not find the NEXT button and I hoped I could go back to Windows 7. Today my MAVEN was over so we started to do what was supposed to be simple.

To begin with all of the sudden the computer would not recognize my password stating it had been recently changed.  I tried two other potential passwords including one from a tablet with no luck.

It turned out that the machine wanted my Microsoft password, which we had already tried. To reset the password required entering a Microsoft code, and since the one I had was rejected I requested a phone call from Microsoft with a new code. Within 30 seconds the phone rang and a computer twice recited a list of 7 numbers. Since neither of us was prepared with pen and paper we both did not get the info right. Another call to Microsoft and a new set of numbers,

We tried to reset the password with the same one I thought I was using bout that was rejected because the password which MS would not recognize already existed The problem was solved by adding two symbols to the password.

Finally I was able to start a two hour download of despised Windows 8.1 which seems to be working.

If you are confused; how do you think an elderly individual who finds his Galaxy III too smart for him feels about using a touch screen operating system on a mouse controlled computer?

Monday will be a new week and perhaps we can continue our saga about American health care.

.