HIPPA matters, does it not?

OK, so there's this thing called HIPPA, the Health Information Privacy Protection Act. It means that if you're a medical provider, and you receive information from a patient, that you have to keep it CONFIDENTIAL. And yet, the other day I saw a practitioner that was covered by my insurance -- she had managed to "lose" my insurance card copy, and needed it again. And, she acted like it wasn't a big deal... but to me, it was! My insurance card holds info on my entire family -- and "losing" that breaks all the rules.

I think I need to let my insurance company know.

Sick violation

What do you do when a person you thought was a good person, turns out to be a soul-less sociopath? How do you cope with that? I'm struggling with it, and it still just stuns me that someone I thought was a normal, decent, responsible person was instead a criminal. And that that person decided to steal my signature as "their own" to get money. It's just... difficult to believe, but it's true.

What will happen to this person? Prison looms, it will be a life-changing experience for them. PRISON. Federal prison! YEARS behind bars, all for... money.

Sigh. Money is NOT the most important thing in life!!!!! It just makes me sad to think that someone I saw day-to-day, face-to-face, could be such a crook, and all for... money.

I am so thankful that I am not that kind of person. And I look forward to seeing that person get their just deserts.

Live out loud, because there's no such thing as privacy any more

(And if you think there IS, you're probably old, or a tribal nomad.)

I had a conversation with a coworker today, who gleefully told me about an issue that's cropped up at his alma mater, Univ. of Northern Colorado. Seems one of his UNC profs has been charged with some sort of "sexual misconduct" -- and he said that within about 24 hours, it was all over Facebook, and all his old buds from college who knew the prof were hooting about it. The story's here.

So, what's the point? Simple: that no matter who you are or what you do, nowadays you have to just assume that if you do something assinine, it WILL get out, and it will probably get our like wildfire once it hits Facebook. Especially if you have people anywhere in your "seven levels of connection" who are regular Facebook users.

So, if you do something stupid, or something illegal -- it WILL catch up with you. There is no stopping it.

Makes you wonder how "image managers" of the next century are going to work!

I am waiting and hoping to see a story break on Facebook, and I will watch with joy when it does.

Weird dreams about work

Given that things have just been WEIRD and UNSETTLING recently, I guess it's no wonder that I'm having trouble sleeping. My dreams have morphed with people from my current life, to scenarios from my previous life... putting, say, people I work with now into the situation where I was working or living ten or more years ago. THAT's strange. I'm sure a lot of this is simply because I spend so much time with coworkers, that they'd naturally appear in my dreams (and at least they're not nightmares!)