Menu

IMK

Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance

Home » Kevin Knauss » Page 24

Kevin Knauss

Posts by Kevin Knauss not related to health insurance or other categories, usually editorials, travel essays, food, pictures and maps.

post

Starbucks turns drought water into big cash flow

By 2 Comments

How much is water worth? For Starbucks, they are able to take $0.66 worth of Folsom Lake water and convert it into $11,668.80 dollars. The San Juan Water District, who treats and delivers drought depleted Folsom Lake water to residential and commercial customers, is asking homeowners to use less water and pay more for it while company’s like Starbucks generate handsome revenues from residential conservation. The current and proposed Stage 3 Water Warning rate structure continues to have residential customers pay more per unit than Starbucks and other commercial uses who use the water to create revenue and profits.

post

Wonderful diversity at UC Davis Picnic Day and Parade

By Leave a Comment

For years the UC Davis Picnic Day parade name has belied the truth of the event. Far from a mid-western farm festival, the Picnic Day parade has consistently had the most diverse participants of any celebration I’ve attended. The parade is a spectrometer of the local area showing the variety of community and religious groups, liberal protests, conservative causes, campus groups and parade music from different bands. All of these folks from different races, cultures, religions and political philosophies walking together down the parade route. This is America. This why I keep coming back to Picnic Day. This renews my faith and hope for the future of humanity.

post

A visit to Blue Shield to fix the billing issues

By 13 Comments

To be honest, I was fully prepared to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the Blue Shield of California corporate offices in El Dorado Hills. Numerous phone calls and emails on behalf of a client who had made his monthly premiums like clockwork, only to have his health insurance cancel, resulted in hollow promises and no action by Blue Shield to resolve the billing and cancellation nightmare. My last hope to help restore the health insurance for my long distance truck driving client was to rattle the corporate cage of the carrier.

post

Home brew citrus flavored water

By Leave a Comment

I’ll admit that I’m addicted to flavored water. For years I have been buying Aquafina Flavor Splash and recently started purchasing Mio Orange Tangerine Liquid Enhancer concentrate. When I looked at the ingredients of these two products I realized that I could make a similar concentrated to flavor water at home. While my home brew chemical mixture isn’t quite as perfect as the store bought products, it tastes good and it’s fun to tinker with the ingredients.

post

Sony Vaio Fit 15E fails at wi-fi

By Leave a Comment

I was visited by everyone’s worst nightmare; a computer that crashes in the middle of a vital project. As I browsed the local computer store, I decided to lean on the old adage of “you get what you pay for” and decided to pay the extra money for a Sony Vaio Fit 15E. Much to my surprise, I got less than what I paid for as this Sony notebook computer fails at the critical task of maintaining a wireless or wi-fi connection for more than a couple of minutes.

post

Roasted roots in olive oil

By 1 Comment

Several years ago I discovered that roasting vegetables was relatively easy and quite flavorful. While I roast roots as part of a vegetarian main dish, they can easily be a side accompaniment with a meat selection. Roasting root and stalk vegetables really concentrates the flavors and the fiber provides for a filling meal. Best of all for this old man, the hardest part is just cutting up all the roots.

post

Blogging for entertainment and information

By Leave a Comment

People turn to the Internet for two things: entertainment and information. If you’re not producing content focused on one of those two areas, you may not be getting that much traffic to your website. If you want to get visitors to your blog or website you need to create content that is either entertainment or information oriented.

post

Salyer – Swanson hydraulic mine suspension bridge and history

By 1 Comment

When I picked up the old photo in an Antique shop in Albany I was immediate struck by hpw the suspension bridge supporting a water pipe across a river could be the one across the American River to the Zantgraf mine built in 1899. But upon closer inspection, and studying a companion photo, this suspension bridge was at another site in California. My research indicates that the suspension bridge was built to deliver water to a 1930’s hydraulic mining operations on the east side of the South Fork of the Trinity river, just south of the confluence of the South Fork and main Trinity River in Salyer, CA.

post

Blue Shield exposes Social Security numbers on public web page

By 2 Comments

Blue Shield of California sent notices to their appointed insurance agents that the agent’s Social Security number had been displayed during the course of member’s online payment. The letter from Blue Shield, dated February 18, notifying agents of the breach to their private personal information does not mention how many agents had their Social Security number’s compromised. While I was not shocked to receive the letter informing me that my personal information was displayed, I was angry that Blue Shield let this happen.

post

Hiking down to Knickerbocker Creek, Canyon and waterfalls

By 1 Comment

The Knickerbocker creek and waterfalls are pretty spectacular, if, you can get to them. These seasonal waterfalls through Knickerbocker Canyon are fairly inaccessible because of the steep terrain. Located in the Auburn State Recreational Area Park in Cool, Ca, Knickerbocker waterfalls in the rock lined canyon make for a challenging hike/climb to an area few people ever visit.

Spam prevention powered by Akismet