Teleidoscope

Thu, Aug 09, 2007

Costco Pharmacy

Posted at 9:52 pm MDT to Miscellaneous

I get my prescription medicines at Costco. Their prices are good, their hours are reasonable, they are the closest pharmacy to my house (by a few hundred feet: the SuperTarget in the same complex also has a pharmacy) and they have a nationwide network, so when I get stuck in corporate housing somewhere I can get my prescriptions forwarded easily.

Today they did something I found really impressive.

I've been taking a brand-name thyroid replacement called Synthroid at various dosages since 1986, when I had half my thyroid removed. For the past year I've been taking the same, fairly high, dosage I used before 2001. The doctor's office kind of wanted to push me back down last fall, but I kind of ignored them until I used up the prescription because I felt less depressed and stopped gaining weight at the higher dosage. (I didn't lose weight, but I stopped gaining weight without making a particular effort.)

This week I was coming to the end of the old prescription, so I got my thyroid levels tested, and, as I expected, they are lowering my dosage again to the dose I took from 2001 to 2006.

However, when the nurse called to tell me about the dosage change she asked whether I wanted to try the 'generic' version of the drug (levothyroxine). I knew from on-line thyroid support forums that (unlike most drugs) people often react a bit differently to the brand name and generic versions of thyroid medicine. They are not exactly chemically identical. That is one reason my prescription has always specified brandname-only.

I decided that it would make sense to see if I feel better with the generic at the lower dosage (since I know I feel about a quarter dead on the lower dose of the brandname drug). I told the nurse to send in the prescription for the generic. I'm supposed to be retested 6 weeks after the dosage change in either case, so if the generic isn't working out we can make a change.

An hour or so after I spoke to my doctor's office, I got a call from the Costco pharmacy. They had received the new prescription and wanted to make sure I knew about the change from brand-name only to generic, and agreed with it. I told them yes.

I'm very pleased that they noticed the change and bothered to call me instead of just filling the prescription as sent over by the doctor's office. It gives me a good feeling that if I ever get multiple prescriptions that have conflicts, they might notice and warn me about them.

I should probably read the little booklets about my prescription drugs that they print out and give me (every time I refill a prescription) more often. Something may have changed since the last time I read them.

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No Broadband, Working Print Server

Posted at 8:00 pm MDT to Technology

Yesterday about 2PM my broadband died. Qwest promised to call when it came back up. But, being the phone company, they didn't.

This morning the connection was back up.

I need to figure out how to get the Sprint cellular modem working: being cut off from the internet is very disorienting.

I got my second print server (a D-Link DPR-1260), working while I was disconnected from the net and finished the setup today with aid from the internet. (The instructions ignored all OSs not manufactured by Microsoft, and Ubuntu does something weird to the CUPS admin). So I can now use both the color printer and the BW laser from the laptop in the livingroom.

This server is multiport, while the older one is single-port, so if I run low on network ports on my router I can put both printers on the new router and free up a line. And I'll need to make sure that any future printers I buy are on the supported list.

The new server has WiFi (with a profoundly stupid default configuration) but I turned that off. I really prefer hard-wired connections when they are available.

The HP Photosmart C3100 has a scanner function, but I've never used that even in Boston when it was directly attached to the laptop. It is handy to have a working copier in the house, though.

If I had it to do over again, I would pay the extra price for a machine with builtin fax capabilities, besides the scanner/copier/printer. I may invest in one anyway if the 3100 gets cranky (or starts eating ink: HP ink is expensive).

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