Stephen Bolen's Internet Awesomesauce

I slammed them earlier today, so it’s only fair that I post that Cigna came through and we just had Jane RSV vaccinated.

For free.

Cooler heads – and lots of red tape later – prevailed.

I’ve got a big fat bone to pick with Cigna, the health insurance oligarch who recently bought out Great West, my company’s PPO of choice.

Y’see, my wife and I just had a very complicated pregnancy, where our daughter, Jane, was born at 28 weeks. Prior to all of this happening, we had enrolled in Great West’s Great Beginnings program, which, in a nutshell, waived our $250 deductible and sent us some neato pregnancy and child development books.

Well, we’re currently fighting with Cigna over the matter of Jane’s monthly RSV vaccination – a vaccination that’s absolutely 100% without-a-doubt necessary for her long-term health and general well-being.

If you want to know more about how frackin’ expensive the RSV vaccine is, check out this great About.com article (did I just type that?!) about it:

One of my forum readers posted a great question today. Synagis, the vaccine for RSV (respiratory synctial virus) is very expensive. The cost varies depending on the dosage, but each shot for this reader’s baby costs $2600! That’s $2600 per month for the entire RSV season.

Well, thankfully Cigna doesn’t want to do more than play a financial game of just the tip. Cigna has mercifully negotiated with Synagis and has a provider cost of $414.00, which, compared to the $2,600.00 cited above, is a freakin’ bargain (84% off list price).

Now, here’s where this little tale gets interesting: Cigna doesn’t recognize the Great West Great Beginnings program, so we’re on the hook for all $414.00, due every month, OR OUR DAUGHTER COULD CATCH RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS.

Fine. Great West/Cigna don’t recognize the enrollment in the Great Beginnings program. Surely, then, we’ve met our $250 deductible and our $1,000 maximum out-of-pocket expenses, right? We shouldn’t have to pay a dime, right?

Well, they don’t have records of that.

So we’re paying the full amount until those asshats at Cigna can figure out how not to fail at a Merger/Acquisition of another company.

It’s an amazingly warm November day in St. Louis – in fact, RIGHT NOW we’re looking at 75 degrees. No joke.

Blues City Deli

So what do you do when it’s this nice in the front end of November? Well, we went to Blues City Deli for lunch and ate outside (with all of the other parents & babies). Later, we’re meeting some friends at Art Hill to hang out & maybe drink some wine or something. Who knows.

All in all, it’s a great day to be in St. Louis!

Does your cat make too much noise?!

Honestly, this was one of the most entertaining episodes of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to date.

See also: DickTowel.com

… and I’m already tired of hearing about NaNoWriMo.

It took Michael Crichton eight years to write Jurassic Park – a book that was pretty boss when I read it in grade school (but not so much now that I’ve read, you know, actual literature) – so these month-long masterpieces being cranked out can’t be that good, can they?

The rise of social media only makes NaNoWriMo worse. Now instead of the Novel Writing Month being a private affair that you share with friends over a cold glass of milk, you end up being blasted with NaNoWriMo word counts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera. – there’s even a hashtag, #NaNoWriMo (presumably so you can locate other narcissistic attention whores).

Eric at Wet Asphalt pretty much sums up my thoughts. Read his excellent post, “National Novel Writing Month Redux” here.

While I understand Major League Baseball’s excitement over the use of Twitter during the second half of the 2009 season and all of post-season play, I find myself taking issue with the aggrandizement and bravado the MLB Advanced Media Twitter operators showed during Game 6 of the World Series.

I may be making a mountain out of a molehill, but please, stay with me.

Last night, @MLB declared that all 10 of the trending topics were about baseball. Only, they weren’t. It was crammed down our throats by @MLB that #losemynumber and Glee were somehow relevant, but in reality, had aboslutely nothing to do with the World Series or MLB. #losemynumber was defined by Twitter’s trending topics results page as “People are tweeting reasons they would like other people to refrain from calling them.” – hardly relevant/related to baseball, no matter how hard they tried, and Glee wasn’t about how Glee sang the National Anthem in Game 3 of the World Series (as @MLB would have you believe), but rather about how the World Series game had preempted that night’s new episode of Glee. So, while technically about baseball (a very tenuious connection, mind you), it had more of a negative connotation than something positive.

So now, completely obsessed and drunk with the idea of having all 10 trendings topics baseball-related, MLB is running a promotion based on owning the trending topics list — all centered around selling Yankees World Series merchandise, natch.

This smacks of a marketing meeting where someone said “I bet we get enough people tweeting about the World Series to shape a promotion around taking over Twitter for the evening” or “We’re so cool, I bet everyone talks about us tonight or tomorrow if there’s a game 7 — let’s run a promotion about how great we are!”  The major flaw in this plan is that it’s not very organic and it shows. When you have to declare yourself the first-ever 10 of 10 trending topics winner in Twitter histories(!!!!!!!11), you _ just _ don’t _ get _ it.

Besides, everyone knows the NFL will take over Twitter talk for the Super Bowl.

That’s a given.

Looks like I’ll be heading down to Music City for SocialFresh Nashville.

Social Fresh Nashville is our first event of 2010 and we are very excited to be in Music City.
 
The content will reflect all Social Fresh flagship events with big brands and real social media success stories, all specifically for marketing professionals.

(Via)

I’m really looking forward to the panel discussions, case studies, speakers, networking, happy hour and, of course, the Beer Sellar:

99 Flavors on tap. I love the Beer Sellar!

Every once in a while, you stumble on some YouTube gold. This is one of those times.

From the HBO Series “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, here’s a video mashup of the Best of Leon. Needless to say, this clip is most definitely NSFW (language, subject matter).

I promised myself I wouldn’t turn this into a family blog, but I remembered I had this on YouTube and wanted to share.

I’ve been married for 2 years today.

Kissing on Washington Ave.

Damn, time flies.

Our wedding album is on Flickr. And our Honeymoon in Vegas album is, too!