*sigh* waste, if not fraud or abuse...

The CVS pharmacy that was filling my doctor's prescriptions for me insisted on refilling them automatically on their own schedule, nothing to do with how fast I used the medicine.

(This is the same place that, when I actually did want something filled--the blood-testing gear--put it back on the shelf after pulling it and calling to say it was available and then tried to sell me two refills I hadn't asked for when I turned up to collect the blood kit.)

I went into the store and asked them to stop the auto refills...and got a call the next day from their phone robot telling me that one refill was ready. I called and told them again to stop refilling them automatically and walked a very sympathetic young woman through the process of deleting the autofill from each prescription.

Then a few days later I got another call telling me a prescription had been refilled. By this point I was refusing to purchase them (having a double supply of everything I take), but I was so annoyed I called my doctor's office and asked them to take CVS off my record and add a different pharmacy (the one where I get the cat's prescriptions filled :-) They took down the information and promised to do it.

Today I called to get Busby's meds refilled and asked to make sure they had my record if I needed to get refills. They said no, they had no record of any meds for me. I called the doctor's office, and they said the only way they could actually send those records to the other pharmacy was if I had them refilled. I said, disbelieving, "You can't just send them the prescription and ask them to keep it on file?" "No, sir, we have no way of doing that."

So now I have to get another refill, even though I don't need it, if I want to have the prescription on file with the new pharmacy.

Stupid fucking waste of time and money.  Oh, and I got another call from CVS yesterday, and the doctor's office confirms that CVS refilled one of my prescriptions last week, even though it's been several weeks since I called the doctor's office and told them to stop authorizing refills at CVS. Morons.

I have a bad feeling about this...

So, I took my last couple of recorded books back to the library (I need to do a write up on each of them, and at least a mention of the other rubbish I've been reading :-) I wasn't sure what to take out next, so I got one book that recapitulates an NPR series about traveling across modern China and another that's a history of Ireland from the 12th century on. I had misgivings about the latter, as it's by Paul Johnson, a historian who, while eminent, I dislike. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is (though now having read his bio on Wikipedia I can see the fingerprints of many things that would cause me to dislike him), but I recall that I have tried several times to read his History of the Jews and foudn it so repellent that I couldn't get through it.

Well, I started his book on Ireland this morning on the way to work, and it's already getting under my skin. I think what stands out right away is that in discussing the Papal bull Laudabiliter (which authorised Henry II of England to invade and conquer Ireland and subjugate the Irish Church to Rome), he doesn't just describe the Papal assertions that the failure of the Irish Church to accept the authority of the Vatican was a source of moral corruption and degeneracy in Ireland, he agrees with it. He doesn't just report the English cliam that the Irish would be better off under English common law instead of under their own (advanced and in many ways more modern) legal system, he endorses it. He states that the Irish were to blame for the invasion and occupation by the English, because they did not develop a strong enough central government. He repeats the Annals of Ulster's condemnation of Edward de Brus as if it were fact without pointing out that the Earl of Ulster was one of the Anglo-Irish lords who fought against de Brus's alliance of Scots and Gaelic Irish lords that almost unseated the English dominion over Ireland.

I'd expect this sort of naked bias from a Victorian amateur historian. I find it distasteful in a modern professional one who has been so highly acclaimed.

(no subject)

Congratulations to the UHI--they have received the blessing of the Privy Council to operate formally as a university!