Each quarter I receive half a dozen or more proposals from writers for feature articles they’d like to write for Airstream Life magazine.   Usually, these proposals sit in my email Inbox for several weeks, while I do other things.   As I’m conducting the day-to-day business of the magazine, there’s a little part of my brain that is considering the possible use of the article proposals:   Do they fit in the magazine?   How could they be better, or more complete? Can it be part of a theme?

After a few weeks, clarity usually arrives and I write back to the author to tell them whether the article is something we can use.   Many apply; few are chosen.   Mostly this is because I get repeats of the same article suggestions perennially (“my first Airstream experience,”   “my Airstream of Consciousness,” “safety tips,” etc.)   Those are easy to weed out, as are the occasional screwball suggestions.   Those that make the cut will get a detailed and lengthy email from me, outlining specifically what I want, what the article needs to include, style & research tips, a word count guideline, and comments on photography.

But there are a few that really stump me, and I’ve got one such proposal on my desk right now.   The author is someone known to me, a proven writer, and that makes it harder for me to reject his proposal without careful consideration.   He wants to write about medical issues.   Normally I’d toss such a suggestion out with hardly a second thought — Airstream Life is not about such things.   But in this case the author makes an impassioned case for   the need to address the topic of medical care and how an Airstream can be an essential tool when you find yourself supporting a loved one (or yourself) who is spending a lot of time in the hospital.

This recently happened to some friends of mine, an Airstream couple who suddenly discovered that one of them needed some fairly serious surgery. This meant two weeks of diagnostic procedures, consults, and pre-operative examinations — and then the surgery itself, followed by another four days in the hospital.   Where’s a spouse to stay when you need to do all of this at a specialty care center far from home?   The Airstream, parked nearby, provides an ideal solution.

My good friend Bert Gildart also wrote in his blog a couple of years ago about how he parked his Airstream right in the heart of Washington DC at a care facility, to stay near his father when he was dying.   Other friends have used their Airstreams to visit the Mayo Clinic.   It’s done all the time.   What a comfort it must   be to have “home” and family right there outside the doors of the monolithic concrete building where you’re being poked and prodded.

Health is a big topic in my mind right now.   We are all generally fine, but nonetheless we have relocated to Tucson and that means we have all new doctors.   Being new patients, we’ve been subjected to a raft of examinations and tests, and between the three of us, we’ve managed to flunk a few.   My cholesterol is “slightly” elevated.   There’s a slight lump here, an odd mole there, a bit of anemia, etc.   Nobody’s perfect, and of course every little thing needs to be checked out.

Well, don’t worry about us.   We’re fine.   I mention this because it has opened my eyes to yet another element in our nation’s healthcare insurance crisis. Like a lot of small businesses, we’ve been forced by the high cost of health insurance to switch to a high-deductible health plan combined with a Health Spending Account.   In short, we now have a deductible of $3,850 per year, and we have to pay 100% of all our health care costs until we reach that deductible.   The Health Spending Account, financed by company contributions and tax-sheltered, pays the deductible.   This is cheaper overall than the type of coverage we used to have, which paid “first dollar” coverage on nearly every medical expense but cost a lot more each month in premiums.   If you don’t have this sort of plan, pay attention, because you probably will soon.

Having to pay for every doctor visit and prescription means you start to notice what healthcare costs.   That’s a good thing, if you don’t have a heart attack when you see the bill.   Several of our office visits were quoted as costing between $190 and $285.   We braced ourselves, then were pleasantly surprised to find that after the insurance company received the bills, they “repriced” the fees to much lower levels.   The $190 visit became just $70 after the insurance company waved its magic wand.   The $285 visit dropped to $120.   On average, we paid only about 1/3 of what the original bills stated.

This happens because the insurance companies all negotiate preferential rates with the doctors and hospitals.   Anyone covered by their insurance gets the cheaper rates.   Thus, we are discovering that the real value of having health insurance in the short term is not the elimination of financial risk, but the enormous discounts that come with it.   If we’d gone “bare” we’d be facing huge medical bills — and we’re healthy.   No wonder millions of Americans are forced into bankruptcy by their medical expenses.   If you don’t have insurance, you’re going to pay two or three times more than you really should for medical services.

So here I am, a relatively healthy guy with a relatively healthy family.   We try to take care of ourselves in our diet and our activities.   And yet, I am thinking a lot about healthcare these days.   It’s a sign of the times, I think, more than it is a sign that I’m in my mid-forties.   And I wonder: Is this indeed something Airstream Life needs to discuss?

This is why I hesitate to reject the article proposal.   It still sits in my Inbox, awaiting an answer.   The little part of my brain that considers proposals is still spinning, thinking, working on the problem of how to make this kernel of an idea into something that we can publish in the context of Airstream Life.   It feels like a social obligation — to somehow address this critical issue.

You probably never realized that this kind of thought goes into a quarterly travel magazine.   But this is what good editors really do.   It’s not about punctuation and grammar — it’s about feeling what the audience needs and what they are ready for.   Editors are like chefs, mixing up ideas to get just the right result.   Sure, it’s nice to keep your sleeves clean, but in the end you get judged on the flavors of the finished product.

In this case, I’m leaning toward shelving the proposal until we can find an opportunity to work it in logically, perhaps year or two down the road when another topic comes up that would be a good companion. But the internal debate isn’t over yet.   I’ll keep considering a while longer.

Most hackers are stupid.   (I’ll probably be hacked for writing that.)   They like to demonstrate how clever they are by stealing passwords from the gullible, breaking websites with out-of-date software, and putting up truly idiotic messages on the web.   This is like proving your cleverness by grabbing the purses of little old ladies, stealing 1973 Volkswagens, and spray-painting your name on people’s houses.   Stupid.

And like a mindless virus, they are persistent.   Whenever one matures enough to realize that messing up websites isn’t really a meaningful way to spend one’s life, another crop of teenage boys figure out how to visit hacker discussion groups, and the process continues.

Even though it’s not my job, I often find myself helping out folks who have been hacked and are trying to pick up the pieces.   Today’s minor episode started with an email I received:

Dear Customer,

This is a notice that an invoice has been generated on 02/03/2009.

Your payment method is: 2CheckOut

Invoice #763
Amount Due: $19.94 USD
Due Date: 01/15/2009

Invoice Items

Personal – appact11.com (02/02/2009 – 02/14/2009) $4.99 USD
Domain Registration – appact11.com – 1 Year/s $14.95 USD
——————————————————
Sub Total: $19.94 USD
Credit: $0.00 USD
Total: $19.94 USD
——————————————————

You can login to your client area to view and pay the invoice at http://www.webhosting.com/billing/viewinvoice.php?id=763

Hosting Team

This is a “phishing” attempt.   The email is bogus, invented simply to get people to click on the link and then enter their login information.   I knew it was bogus by several indications:

1. I never registered any such website (“appact11.com”).   The hackers know I know this, but they hope that I will click on the link anyway to “clear up the misunderstanding.”
2. The email didn’t come from any company that I recognize, and is deliberately vague (“Hosting Team,” “Dear Customer”).
3. Despite how it appears, the link for the invoice actually went to an entirely different website.   I could tell this without clicking on the link simply by pointing my mouse at it but not clicking.

The link was actually to a website of an innocent fellow in Canada who does weddings, but the hackers obscured that by creating a secret web address on his site which looked like a standard login page.   If you fell for this one, you’d probably enter your web host login and you’d get an error message that said you did it wrong.   Since this is a fake, no combination of username/password would ever work.   Eventually you might get tired of it, or realize your mistake, but by then it would be too late.   The hackers would take the usernames and passwords you so generously entered and use them to hack your website, too.

The first guy who thought up this approach was clever, but the millions of followers who are doing it today are just copycats. It takes no special skills.

Being a good netizen, I wrote to the legitimate owner of the website and told him:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it appears that your website at www.namewithheld.com has been hacked.   I received this email today (along with thousands of other people probably):     …

… and then explained to him what “phishing” was, and told him what to do:

You need to have this cleaned off your site, then change all passwords related to your site.   If you don’t know how, you should get someone experienced to help you.

I was a little trepidatious about reaching out in this way.   A lot of people would assume I was the hacker.   Others might respond with requests that I fix the problem, thinking that I was a higher level of good Samaritan than I am. I could get an angry email, or get sucked into a long series of explanatory emails.   I wanted to help, but I didn’t have tons of time to spend on this.

Fortunately, this contact worked out well.   Within a couple of hours, he wrote back:

I have contacted my web host and indeed my site was hacked.   They have removed the contaminated files.   I have reported the matter to Toronto Police Services and have also contacted the Ontario   Provincial Police.

They informed that this type of activity is very common.   As it originates off shore there is little they can do about it.   I am personally quite upset and feel somewhat victimized.   I am very embarrassed that my site and reputation have been brought into disfavour.   I am not sure what else I can do or say.

Thank you for being so watchful.   I do appreciate it.

Why am I writing about this?   Because hacks happen.   Phishing attempts succeed.   I hate to see it happen to innocent people and friends of mine.   Anyone who uses the Internet needs to be at least a little educated about the hazards of it.   A little mis-step in cyberspace can translate to an empty bank account in the real world.   Take care, folks. It’s happening every hour of every day.