Shortly after the 2017 total solar eclipse, I began developing a set of eclipse instrumentation that incorporated lessons learned from the 2017 eclipse. I started early because I did not want to be in a position where some last minute events complicated or prevented a 2024 eclipse expedition. Because I was (and am) disabled, I had to work slowly. Often, I only had few hours of stamina per week left over after my activities of daily living (ADL's) were out of the way. I also had to budget spending more than I had before, because I was entering "fixed income" territory as I aged. Even with these limitations, the 2024 eclipse setup was on track to be finished by mid to late 2021. Thrust Into Being Power of Attorney (POA) for an Incapacitated Friend and Veteran: However, in late 2020, an older friend (and Navy Veteran) became incapacitated. I was his designated Power of Attorney (POA), and seeing to his affairs became almost all I could handle for the next three years. This was mostly because many of the parties involved were contentious. He had assigned me as his POA because he had no surviving family. Even though the matter of being POA for a friend is not related to eclipses (beyond preventing preparations), certain aspects are covered below. This is covered because it is weightier than eclipses, and because it was eye opening to see the degree of opposition to him (and thus, his need for advocacy), and to encounter so many recurring life and death situations, including having to advocate for him against an HMO "death panel." The upshot of this was that my time was not my own for the next three years, and it was extremely high stress in the last year. Among numerous other things (most of which were more important than eclipses), this delayed preparations for the 2024 eclipse by the same amount of time. But with much effort (given my condition), this time was made up in early 2024. However, less than a month before the 2024 eclipse, a LONG outage of both Phone AND Internet by Frontier Communications (lasting well over a week) prevented arranging group transportation by road. (I was then unable to drive any distance due to still being exhausted from managing the affairs of, and advocating for, my incapacitated friend; and my own chronic disability also prevented negotiating an airport with so much equipment.) Therefore, after all of the eclipse preparation over a number of years, it was not possible to get to the path of totality. Everything else was ready. The eclipse equipment had all been tested and packed, and I had reservations in Texas for a motel, and arrangements for an observing site. The ONLY thing missing was a way to get there. And Frontier prevented connecting with people who WOULD CERTAINLY have been able to drive me there. (To get time off work in time for the eclipse, the driver, who also wanted to go to the eclipse with his mother, would have had to give his employer more notice than what was possible after the long Frontier outage.) Nonetheless, this web page includes photos and descriptions the full set of eclipse instrumentation that was comprised of 16 cameras and several instruments (including two Entaniya 250 degree HAL fisheye lenses, a multi channel camera controller, light meters, and a thermometer, etc.) All of this equipment had been designed, procured, built, and otherwise assembled to make the 2024 eclipse setup a reality. Because all of the work on the total eclipse setup had been done anyway (with the full expectation I would be able to get to the path of totality), the "Eclipse Instrumentation" chapter in this web page includes photos of the full setup, with descriptions. Meanwhile, back to the more important background story, in which the final nine months were a roller coaster of recurring HMO-imposed circumstances where life and death literally hung in the balance on numerous occasions: A Myriad of New Things to Do as My Friend's POA, Starting in Late 2020: In late 2020, last time I had spoken by phone with my elderly friend was on about 11 December. Almost all contact with him was by phone because he lived nearly 70 miles away. On 18 December, I had restored and sold one of his telescopes for him, and was going to inform him of this on my next call. He had told me that I could have the telescope, but I knew his saying that was his dementia talking. So I sold it for him, which is the way it had been discussed previously. When I called him on about 21 December, 2020, I could not reach him. After some time being unable to reach him, I asked for a welfare check on him, but I did not hear back. I also continued to call his phone number, but to no avail. A few days later, I called again for a welfare check, but also did not hear back right away. However, when I called yet again on the day after Christmas, someone at the Fire Department remembered that he had been taken to a hospital. Further checking showed that this had happened on 16 December. It took a while to find out which hospital they had taken him to, then to find out where he was in that hospital. He was in an HMO hospital that was in the general area (distant from me) around where he lived. By then, he was stable and in the hospital overflow area, but he could not be seen in person due to COVID precautions. They had begun to set up a conservatorship for him, but dropped that when they learned I was his POA. The Social Worker there indicated that he was incapacitated, and that the hospital would only release him to a 24 hour care situation. She said his incapacity was almost certainly permanent. This meant that he could not go back to living in his condo. I briefly spoke with him on the phone, and he sounded fine. However, he said he thought he was in a restaurant, rather than a hospital. They had fed him shortly before the call. As had been the case on other calls in recent months, he did not remember where I lived, and he seemed to forget my related answer within a few minutes. As was the case for many elderly people in 2020, the California COVID lockdowns played a significant role in his becoming incapacitated. He had depended on restaurants for getting proper meals, and for much of his social life. When these closed during the 2020 lockdowns, he neither ate properly or had a normal social life. Later investigation showed that he had declined somewhat rapidly in certain ways, starting in the spring of 2020. This had progressed throughout the summer, to a point where he was not refilling his prescriptions by late August. In fact, the August 2020 page was still open on the calendar in his dining area. His December 2020 incapacity had happened at a very bad time, because I had been exposed to COVID at the grocery store on 15 December, and had begun to develop symptoms by the 19th. These symptoms got worse, and I was ultimately quite ill from COVID for almost a month, and (to comply with COVID guidelines of the day) I had to self-quarantine for what ended up being 32 days. Nonetheless, many things had to be done for my friend. This included providing the documents and information necessary to be recognized as his POA by multiple institutions, utilities, etc., and to get POA access to his funds at his bank so I could pay his bills, etc. The latter was extremely important, because the hospital said it would not discharge him until his 24-hour care could be paid for entirely from his own funds. Almost everything had to be initiated by phone or Fax, due to my quarantine situation. In addition to this, I had to determine what type of 24 hour care was a good fit for him, and find a care facility for him. A board and care home (which has very few residents in comparison to a nursing home) seemed like the best option for him. Even with the assistance of a Placement Coordinator, finding a suitable place for him took days of work (my days are short owing to my own disability). But when the right place was found, it was almost a perfect fit for him. He liked to walk outdoors, and very few board and care homes had the space to accommodate this, but this one did. There were also other features that made that home the best one for him. There was also the matter of looking into his VA benefits, but I was told that he did not qualify for assistance in housing or care, because his time in the Navy had not been during either the Korean or Vietnam wars. Then there were also the matters of his bills, his reverse mortgage, his previously scheduled medical appointments, informing his other friends, and many other things. What follows describes only a fraction of the major challenges associated with being his POA, MPOA, and Successor Trustee, etc. Uncooperative Parties: (Bank won't honor his documents, HMO later wants to end him.) Being POA for him was severely complicated by his bank (Bank of America), reverse mortgage company (Ceink), credit card company (Synchrony), wireless phone company (Verizon), and HMO, all being uncooperative on a long term basis. Difficulties with his credit card company and phone company were initiated by his bank's refusal to timely honor his POA documents, and this was the direct cause of many of his bills becoming delinquent before his funds at his bank could be accessed to pay his bills. Synchrony was so hard to deal with on his behalf (they contradicted themselves, would not accept payments for months, and would not connect me to anyone in the USA) that I also canceled my own Synchrony card. (I would not want my POA to have to deal with them if I later became incapacitated myself.) His neighbor had paid some of his bills before I was able to access his funds or get to his condo (owing to my quarantine and lingering weakness from Long COVID), but it was not practical for either of us to continue that after long delays by his bank dragged on for weeks, and then months. (Why anyone would use the bank he used is beyond me. They caused much stress and hardship.) A Bank that Back Dates Notarized Documents, even when a Customer Challenges It: His bank was the first big problem, because the hospital would not discharge him until I could arrange to pay for his mandated 24-hour care with HIS funds. His bank was made fully aware of this from the beginning. But his bank held up access to even one of his accounts by TWO MONTHS. They did this by refusing to honor his POA documents (which had been drafted by his attorney), even after many contacts with them by phone and in person. I filed complaints against his bank during this delay, including with the CFPB. However, when the bank did partially honor his POA documents (for only ONE of his accounts) they BACK DATED the NOTARIZED documents that were associated with the signature card (this can be proven), including back dating the notary log book. (They even wrote in the date for my signature.) And then they represented the BACK DATED date as being the actual date to the CFPB, to dispose of my complaint against them. Solely because of his bank, he was not discharged to 24 hour care from hospital overflow until the end of March, 2021. He had been in the hospital for about 100 days, with the last 60 days of this being solely because of his bank. Those actions by his bank complicated his other affairs, and led to two month delays in his cancer surgeries, and that appears to have played a role in his ultimate demise, two and a half years later. During the bank's two month delay, the bank had repeatedly been made aware of his urgent situation, but they didn't care. (So, far from being useful, his bank may have irreparably harmed him. They certainly harmed me in terms of health, but I won't go into that here.) Also, because the bank did not allow POA access to his savings even by the summer (even though they had told the CFPB that they would timely allow access), his condo had to be sold for him FOUR MONTHS sooner than would have otherwise been necessary, in order to pay his bills. This needlessly rushed the process. (His condo had to eventually be sold because he'd long had a reverse mortgage, and he could not live there while getting 24-hour care. But the sale date required by this was a year after he ceased to live there for medical reasons, or at least four months later.) In their 2021 response to the CFPB, the bank had said that they would timely cooperate on providing access to the other account. But as of when this was written, after three years and over 20 contacts with the bank, they never did honor his POA documents for his other account. When this was written in 2024, it was obvious that official channels and conventional complaints were not going to get his bank to cooperate. And numerous contacts with the bank (both in person and by phone) had not helped either. So immortalizing what the bank did (to both of us thus far) on this web page was/is a last resort. There are no plans to make this record disappear if the bank later cooperates. I lost numerous hours to this bank, and as will be seen below, repercussions of the bank's initial two month delay may have caused irreparable harm to my friend. Other vulnerable people who could be similarly be impacted by a bank may benefit from this cautionary tale. A State level complaint against the bank, for back dating notarized documents (which is perjury according to wording on the documents), is still open. An HMO where Patients Experience a "Natural Dying Process", Even if They Want to Live: His HMO was also a problem, especially in 2023. It took them a year and a half to even provide his medical records. And when these were provided, all information about his most recent two hospitalizations (and related rehab) were missing. His name obviously is not mentioned, both for his privacy and due to HIPAA. Precursors: Previously, up through late 2022: Due to delays caused by SOLELY by my friend's BANK, his skin cancer got worse throughout early 2021. An appointment could not be made for him while the bank situation (and thus, his discharge date from hospital overflow) was unresolved. After that, there was nearly another two to three month backlog in appointments at his HMO. But his doctor was able to pull some strings and arrange an appointment a month sooner than what I had been able to come up with (June vs July). Playing "Catch Up" with His Cancer: From then on, it was a matter of playing catch up on his skin cancer. One lesion went from the size of a dime to almost silver dollar size because of the bank's delay. Another went from smaller than a dime to the size of a quarter. And that was just what was visible on the surface. After this, every cancer surgery had to be more invasive than it would have been if it could have been done two months earlier (without the bank-imposed delay). And, there had to be more total surgery appointments, because the more invasive surgeries could not be grouped together like the lesser surgeries could have been without the bank delay. One of the surgeries was even disfiguring to an extent. In October of 2022, one of his incisions would not heal, and it ultimately became infected. This was from a surgery that probably would not have been done as late, or have been as invasive, if his bank had not imposed a two month delay over a year and a half earlier. Sent Home Twice, Apparently without Adequate Treatment: He went to his HMO ER twice for this, but he was sent home twice without anything significant being done about it. But then, only four hours after he was sent home the second time, a hospital case manager called and said that two tests had just come back, and both showed that he had considerable bacteria in bis blood (sepsis). She said he had to be brought back to the hospital on an emergency basis. However, she said the HMO would not do anything about arranging transport, so there was no choice (with my being 70 miles away) but to call 911, and get transferred to where I could arrange an ambulance for him. (I had the distinct impression that this case manager had sent him home too early, and that she would not help arrange transport to obscure that. This impression was reinforced by her attempts to discharge him too early on two subsequent occasions that year, and the fact that she seemed to want to provoke, and repeatedly did provoke, his board and care home manager. Very amateurish.) As soon as he was brought to the hospital by ambulance, he was admitted to the hospital and put on IV antibiotics via a PICC central line. However, after only a few days in the hospital, and before the course of IV antibiotics was finished, he was discharged to a rehab facility in Pomona. Scabies, a Possible Incomplete Course of Antibiotics, and COVID: While at the rehab facility, he got scabies, and in the scratching that accompanied that, he pulled out his PICC IV. After this, the same case manager (who was for some reason also involved with the rehab facility) repeatedly dodged questions about if they re-established his IV and finished his antibiotics. Before long, the rehab facility tried to discharge him back to his board and care home - before his treatment for Scabies was complete. (They had previously volunteered that they would keep him until that was complete.) So I filed (and won) an appeal, and they kept him until that treatment was completed. But he tested positive for COVID about when he would have been discharged, so they kept him a while longer. But upon his proposed discharge, it was found that the facility had not isolated him in a different room from other COVID patients, and they would not do a PCR test. The care home (understandably) refused to take him under these conditions, so I appealed again. This second appeal was lost, but it bought enough time (private pay) to iron things out so he could be safely discharged. This HMO rehab facility never provided his records, even when my requests for records were backed up by the hospital. A Longer Term Hospitalization, with Recurring Life and Death Implications: In February, 2023, he had a crisis and had to be hospitalized longer term. He had sepsis again (this time, an antibiotic resistant variety), pneumonia, and congestive heart failure. Many things pointed back to the rehab facility (the same one that did not provide records), and the possibility that they had not finished his antibiotics after he had pulled out his IV. Some of the HMO doctors later even concurred with this opinion as to possibly why his sepsis was resistant. Also, his heart had been fine in tests from only a few days before he was sent to the rehab facilty, but now, his E.F. was almost 20 percent lower. After he had been in the hospital a couple of weeks, it appeared that the pulmonary staff had made an error in administration of his oxygen (using a nose cannula, when he breathes through his mouth) and his O2 saturation had frequently been down in the mid to low 80's for days by the time I was finally able to get to the hospital, which was 70 miles away. His kidneys had begun to fail during this period of low saturation, and it appeared that dialysis would be necessary. Careless Hospital Staff Panics My Friend, and His Subsequent Desire to Prolong Life: While I was visiting him at the hospital on 13 March, 2023, a female doctor at the hospital came into his room, and carelessly and aggressively pushed for a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate order) - IN HIS HEARING. When I did not agree to that, she became more aggressive, while still in his hearing. This obviously panicked him. And he had a look like the person in the 1971 movie "Andromeda Strain" had, when the seals in the laboratory failed, and the character thought the Andromeda Strain was going to kill him. His breathing rate also became unsustainably high. At that point, I decided to ask him if he wanted to be resuscitated (if necessary) or prolong life. His advance directive had said he did not want to prolong life, but his reaction of panic (to the doctor pushing a DNR in his hearing) seemed to indicate otherwise. So I asked him - 20 times. And he calmed down after I explained that I was going to ask about his preferences, then back him up on his wishes. He had to answer by squeezing my hand, so to rule out reflexes and such, I asked the question in different ways, sometimes asking him to respond if he did NOT want to prolong life, and other times to do so if he DID want to prolong. Some of the time, I also asked him to squeeze my hand to indicate "Yes" answer, and NOT to squeeze to indicate "Yes" at other times. After a matrix of asking the question 20 times (and in different ways) had been completed, there was more than 87 percent confidence that he DID want to prolong life, since he had indicated that he wanted to do so 17 out of the 20 times I asked him. Going on Life Support for Real: Unfortunately, the same doctor came back about four hours later, and began to push a DNR again. I told her to take it out in the hall, so we went out of the hospital room. However, when I again would not agree to a DNR, she got upset and started YELLING at me about it, increasingly acting like you might expect someone to act if they had lost it emotionally. Before long, everyone in the corridor was staring in her direction. But the worst part is that she had been loud enough, for long enough, that it panicked my friend again. And I could not calm him down this time. His breathing rate was in the high 40's for hours, which was unsustainable. When the shift changed, the night doctor said that he would not survive the night unless he was put on a ventilator, so he was put on one at about 1:30 a.m. About a week later, I was told that he had fluid around one of his lungs, and it was recommended that fluid be removed. I promptly approved this, especially given that the amount of fluid was significant. It was also proposed that he should get a PEG (abdominal wall) feeding tube instead of the one routed through his nose. I was in favor of this as well, because people I knew said that getting rid of the feeding tube in their nose was a big improvement in their quality of life, mainly because it eliminated a recurring sore throat. If all of these procedures had been done, I may have considered the hospital's preference that dialysis be done for a trial period. But all of the procedures had not been done. Visiting the HMO hospital was almost always extremely stressful. It was 70 miles from where I lived, and every time I went there, one or more doctors (etc.) would push a DNR, or even more than that. When I did not agree, the person pushing would get upset, and about half of the time, even start yelling at me. (The nurses usually did not have that bad of an attitude.) All of this wore me out, and I had to stay in a motel overnight to be up to making the drive back home. I usually came back to the hospital after checking out of the motel, to get in two visits on each trip. I also received numerous unsolicited calls from the hospital, with almost all of them pushing a DNR (or worse), often without providing any information about his condition. When I would not agree to a DNR, etc., the person calling would also get upset, and a portion of them would also start yelling over the phone. Some days, I got multiple unsolicited calls per day. On one occasion, I got four such unsolicited calls in one day, which used up almost an hour and a half in total. Bioethics Board Denies Important Procedures Without Informing Me: Because the above procedures were NOT done, all bets were off in regard to limiting dialysis to a trial period as far as I was concerned. Denial of some of the procedures was setting him up to fail. I did not find out until some time later that those procedures had been denied by the HMO Bioethics Board, yet I had not been informed of this as POA. It was not until the next November that I discovered (from a doctor with some candor) that they never had removed the fluid from around his lung, and that this was why. (That might also explain their failure to provide his records that included any of this time period.) After a while, by early April 2023, he began to tolerate being weaned off of the ventilator, and he began to be able to respond to questions by moving his legs on command. This provided two communication modes, and it looked like more may develop. I asked him one of the previous questions again a few times, and got a similar answer. I would have asked more, but one of the doctors said it could tax him too much. Yet at the same time, the doctor was saying he was not responsive. That begs the question of how a question can be taxing if a patient supposedly is not responsive? (But the fact is that he was responsive, and his response latency was improving.) Rescuing a Friend from an HMO "Death Panel" (And Yes, Death Panels are REAL!) Since the time that the term "Death Panel" was used during a 2009 debate about Obamacare legislation, there has been controversy about whether or not death panels became a reality. In the 2009 debate, the term was used in the context of bureaucrats deciding which disabled or critially ill patients would or would not receive adequate care. The death panel I encountered was not anyting like this. It was instead a function of the "Bioethics Board" in my friend's HMO. The Death Panel (unofficial name) I encountered was very real, and I have its written decree of death for my friend (via withheld care) as evidence. In my experience (summarized below), the death panel was a role that the "Bioethics Board" of a hospital or HMO took on; in this case, at a time when the organization did NOT want to expend a certain scope of resources on a patient. Once the panel had their sights on a patient (in this case, my friend in 2023), care was denied to him, often behind the scenes at first, in that withholing of care was not timely disclosed. In the case of my friend, I was not even informed that the Board was involved until weeks and months (8 months in the case of one procedure) later. If a patient survives this initial stage, as my friend did, the Board has a formal meeting and DECREES that certain aspects of care will openly be DENIED to the patient, with the STATED INTENT that this will result in the DEATH of the patient. (Thus, the term "Death Panel".) In mid April 2023, the HMO Bioethics Board ruled that they would OVERRULE me as POA, and UNILATERALLY deprive my friend of dialysis - with the expressed intent that this result in his DEATH. They ruled this way, even though I had explained to them that my friend had unambiguously indicated that he DID want to prolong life in March 2023. I even showed them the documentation for how he had been asked about it - twenty times. They allowed a brief time to try to transfer him to another hospital, but they provided NO assistance at all in this (when regulations appear to indicate that they should assist in this), and I later found that my efforts to get him transferred had been undermined. I had also tried to relocate him to various sub-acute skilled nursing facilities, but that was also undermined, usually by a hospital case manager calling the facilities to discourage them from taking him. (Some of facilities told me that this is what happened.) When it looked like I had something arranged, the hospital would move the goal posts, communicate things that discouraged people at the facilities, withdraw authorizations, and/or increasingly say more aspects had to be private pay. A private pay situation was an issue not so much for financial reasons (his money was HIS money), but it complicated things administratively, in that it was difficult or impossible to get my friend admitted to certain facilities, or scheduled for certain procedures, on a private pay basis. A couple of weeks later (ironically, on his birthday), the Bioethics board declared that his dialysis would end in two days, and that he would experience "a natural dying process." Specifically, low points of the written communication included the following: "...so that you will have written confirmation, the medical team intends for [patient's name] HD [hemodialysis] session on [date] to be his final session..." "..our intent will be to maintain patients's [imposed] DNR status, discontinue HD, and allow a natural dying process to occur..." "Death due to renal failure is not immediate, so it is expected that [patient name] will persist for several days or more once HD is discontinued." And over my written objection as his POA, they stopped his dialysis two days later. After several days without dialysis, he had to go on a ventilator AGAIN, and he was never able to get off of it after that. (However, the HMO's undisclosed failure to remove fluid from around his lung was also a factor in this. Their failure to remove the fluid was not disclosed until November.) The Rescue: At this point, there were few options left. Ultimately, when the head of the Bioethics Board was on vacation, my friend was physically "rescued" from the HMO hospital, by having an ambulance (private pay to the tune of $4k) move him 70 miles - to a sub-acute care congregate home in another county. (The HMO may have been in the wrong in insisting that this transfer be private pay, since they later had to pay for it.) This new location was closer to where I lived (making it more practical to visit my friend), and it was in another jurisdiction, where his rights as a resident of the new county could presumably be asserted in order to keep the HMO from clawing him back to their hospital in the other county. The literal recurring life and death nature of all of this caused unbearable stress, since it seemed that failing to rescue my friend from his HMO, even if I did everything I could, would be the same as letting him down or violating his trust. A Lot of Damage Had Been Done Before His Rescue Once my friend was in the congregate home (and thus closer), I visited him there almost every day. However, things were about to get worse before they got better. The first problem was that the congregate home had failed to get him to his first (private pay) dialysis session in time, and then the clininc could not work him in. The home did not tell the attending physician about this, so I told him, and he went ballistic, since he knew how long the HMO had deprived my friend of dialysis. (Once a transfer from the HMO had been arranged a couple of days earlier, the HMO had provided one brief dialysis session to stabilize him for transport, but it wasn't enough dialysis to normalize his tests, or to even partially correct for all that went wrong during a whole week without dialysis.) Next, on the evening before he was to have what would have been his second dialysis session, he pulled the feeding tube out of his nose. He was then sent to the nearest HMO hospital to get another one put in, but they kept him almost all night before getting around to it. Then, even though the HMO hospital knew that his (private pay) dialysis appointment was early in the morning, their transport did not even pick him up to take him back to the congregate home until after the time of his dialysis appointment. That made two missed dialysis sessions. Worse, the HMO hospital would not do dialysis to compensate for keeping him so long that he missed his dialysis appointment. And worse still, the HMO had sent him back to the congregate home in questionable condition, and he was unstable by later that morning. It began to appear that all had been lost. My Own Health Crashes from the Stress of Recurring Imposed Life and Death Situations: Ultimately, my own health failed dramatically over a period of only a couple of hours, just as it appeared that all had been lost on the morning of 16 May, 2023. My doctor said that I had completely depleted my reserves, and had become exhausted in the fullest sense of the word. The potential outcomes my doctor warned about (for failing to get enough rest from then on) were, and still are, scary. (This is part of why I could not push with the vigor I normally would when trying to get to the 2024 eclipse after the Frontier Internet and phone outage.) The Most Important Parts of His Rescue Happened While I was too Ill to Act: I have mentioned prayer in previous eclipse journals, and it applies here as well. This is because, just as I became temporarily incapacitated myself from all of the stress and short notice sleep deprivation, and while I was so spent that I could do nothing but lay in bed - that was the time that the most important aspects of my friend's rescue happened. One of the most important aspects was his admission to a NON-HMO hospital, which I had not even considered as a possibility. At the very time when I had no power to do anything at all, and during the very hours I was in this helpless state, many beneficial things that were beyond my control happened: By this time, a lot of damage had been done to my friend by his HMO depriving him of dialysis for a week. And when a medical transport came to the congregate home to take him to a private pay ($600 per session) dialysis clinic, they found that he was too unstable to go to a dialysis clinic, and said that he had to instead be taken to the NEAREST hospital. This was less than four hours after the HMO hospital had sent him back to the congregate home. As it turned out, the nearest hospital was NOT with his HMO, and they had a completely different attitude. This non-HMO hospital was success oriented. His HMO mildly tried to claw him back, but I asserted his rights as a new resident of Los Angeles County (by virtue of his being in the Northridge Congregate home prior to the current hospitalization), and the HMO relented. And after a close call over the first two days at this new success oriented, non-HMO hospital, his condition turned around within two weeks. When I recovered enough to be able to take a taxi to the new hospital, and they learned of the circumstances that brought him there, they said he was the first patient they ever had there who had been saved from the decree of a Bioethics Board (or, in non-medical terms, a death panel). Meanwhile, his condition improved at this new success oriented hospital. The hospital was a more positive environment than the HMO hospital had been, and it was closer. For this reason, I visited once or twice a week, though I had to take a taxi due to the exhaustion that had set in on 16 May. My friend started mouthing words within two more weeks, and he was discharged to a sub-acute skilled nursing facility another couple of weeks after that. He was intermittently and audibly speaking by not much more than two weeks after he was admitted to the skilled nursing facility. Because he was talking past his ventilator, he could not speak very loud, and it did not sound like his usual voice. The facility tried a speech enabled ventilator attachment a couple of times, but he seemed to do better without it. This was a radical improvement over the previous situation where the HMO had said he was not even responsive, when in fact he was responsive even then. But now, after success oriented treatment, he was responsive in more conventional ways. However, one of the remaining issues, which could possibly be expected under the circumstances, was that he was not wakeful for very long on any given day. He had begun to exhibit this trend shortly before he was hospitalized. Over the rest of the summer, he remained at the sub-acute skilled nursilng facility, and was safely out of his HMO's clutches. Bureaucracy Puts Him in Harm's Way Again Due to the situation with his HMO, I sought to get him out of his HMO well before the normal Medicare Open Enrollment period. He qualified for Medicare "Special Help", which should make it possible to switch providers by the next quarter. This could make it possible to get him out of his HMO, and into regular Medicare with a supplement, as soon as 1 October. However, in late July, the State level services fouled up and enrolled him in the same HMO, when I had specified something entirely different for him. I had made the selection within a week of when the State provided the forms, so I was timely. But the worker for the State had apparently lost the POA, etc., documents that were provided with his application, and she refused to recognize me as his representative so I could reverse their error. The worker offered no timely solution. This ultimately contributed to his death, by overloading me and making it impossible to get him out of his HMO in time. I normally would not mention such details, but there were many irregularities in the HMO and in this State matter, and there was no official mechanism to address it. I wondered how many other patients or advocates went through something similar, or how many other patients didn't survive something similar. The only agency I thought was really good was Medicare. They were amazing (in a good way) by comparison. And the success oriented hospital in the northwest part of L.A. was amazing as well. But I can't mention its name because I have to keep things vague for HIPAA reasons. The HMO Gets Their Hooks in My Friend Again, with Fatal Results In mid September 2023, my friend had a crisis and was taken from the skilled nursing facility to the nearest hospital, which was a non-HMO hospital. I visited him there and spoke with the doctors and other personnel. When I saw him, he again indicated that he wanted to prolong life, though in a less convincing way than he had the previous March. He was in decline, and did not have much quality of life to look forward to. But if he wanted to prolong, I would back him up for as long as doing so was feasible for him. But behind the scenes, the HMO was pressuring the hospital to transfer him to one of their hospitals. (The pressure they brought to bear, as related by the non-HMO hospital, was quite dramatic.) But it wasn't all out in the open. When people from the non-HMO hospital called me, they said he was being taken back to the nursing facility (and I think they really thought that this was the case), but it turned out that his HMO had instead had the ambulance take him to their own hospital. At this point, his HMO had their hooks in him again, and they again deprived him of dialysis, using the antiquated Bioethics Board ruling of the previous April as their justification. His dialysis catheter was being changed by the non-HMO hospital at the time the HMO transferred him, and the HMO refused to put in a catheter as a way to enforce their dialysis ban. And they again stated INTENT to end his life via withheld care, regardless of my position on the matter as his POA. Because his transfer to the HMO hospital had happened without my consent (and apparently without the knowledge of some at the non-HMO hospital), I refused to sign the admission papers for the HMO hospital. I also refused to provide consent on the phone, telling them that I did not authorize the transfer. (Not sure how the HMO planned to bill Medicare for that, when there was no consent for admission.) And so, at a time when he was nearly weaned off of dialysis, his HMO deprived him of dialysis yet again, and he began to succumb to this (and to the undisclosed fluid that was still around his lung) over the next two and a half months. They soon transferred him back to the subacute skilled nursing facility - but without a dialysis catheter. In late November, he was admitted to a different HMO hospital, mainly for high BUN and other abnormal tests. I approved his November admission by phone, CONTINGENT on his getting dialysis if he needed it. But they deprived him of dialysis anyway. Inconsistencies at the HMO Hospital: On 25 November, the HMO hospital called and claimed that he was in complete kidney failure, that he was "not making any urine.", and that his veins and arteries were leaking blood. What they said informed my decisions of that day, mainly in regard to escalation of certain types of care. However, I later found that the statement about complete kidney failure was not true at all. The HMO had exaggerated his condition, possibly to create the impression that this was his last rodeo. And, since the HMO had long withheld certain types of care, it could very well become just that. Duting this hospitalization, the HMO wanted to take him off the ventilator, but since they had refused to remove the recently disclosed (yet preexising) fluid from around his lung, I would not let them take him off of it. Pulmonary issues had been a sore point with him ever since the careless doctor had panicked him the previous March. A day or two later, one of the more aggressive palliative care people (who I had not even engaged beyond a preliminary consulting role) misrepresented part of a conversation, and told a doctor to reduce his oxygen without the doctor discussing it first. (This palliative person was expressing a lot of medical opinions, when it was obvious that her medical knowlege was very limited.) I did not learn of the change in his oxygen until I spoke with a doctor about 24 hours later, on 29 November. At that time, the doctor thought that he was terminal, but did not think that he would pass away very soon, indicating that it could be several days to a week or more. She said that he was only then beginning to have kidney failure, as opposed to (supposedly) having been in complete kidney failure since the previous Saturday. His Last Rodeo: However, he unexpectedly passed away from heart failure less than eight hours later. This was an unexpected but better and faster way to go, assuming that he was not experiencing air hunger. But the palliative people dropped the ball concerning having someone with him, and he died alone. (Regarding being alone, I can only hope that he was in a fog where he could not perceive his surroundings, nor care if he could, much like the fog I was in when I almost bought the farm in September 2019.) My friend passed away in the late night of 29 November, 2023. The fact that he lived 2.5 months without any dialysis at all shows how close he had come to being successfully weaned off of it. The bottom line: DON'T use an HMO if you want to SURVIVE such a situation! Blindsided by More Problems, Postmortem: After my elderly friend passed away in November 2023, the problems continued. For example, the previously purchased "prearranged" funeral plan he had was not so prearranged. It turned out that the burial plots he had were incompatible with the full casket burial that had been arranged. When his arrangements were made and paid for the previous April, the cemetery had represented, in writing, that the plots were compatible with the full casket burial arrangements that were being made. But they did not even disclose that there was a problem until NINE DAYS Postmortem. And they would not work toward a reasonable solution after they belatedly disclosed the problem. It was either cremate him or buy a larger plot for a small fortune. Since it was a little late to ask him about cremation, and because his funds could be inaccessible for some time after he passed away (and because I did not then know if Medi-Cal would have a claim on said funds), I had to file a complaint against the cemetery with the State. (I also prayed, as with other difficulties.) The solution was that the cemetery provided a full size burial plot at THEIR expense. Unfortunately, all of this led to a long delay in his burial (and his death certificate). And he was not interred until 23 January, 2024. Almost two months after he passed away. The cemetery is not named here because the solution was acceptable in terms of what I thought he would have wanted, even though (for me) the matter still resulted in stress, anguish, and a lot of lost time. Over the previous three years, it had been necessary to file more complaints on behalf of my friend than the sum of all complaints that I'd had to file on my own behalf in my entire lifetime. Some of the organizations involved seemed to act the way they did because of his age. Others seemed to just enjoy pushing people around. Others seemed motivated by money or control issues. In other words: Willful acts. Only rarely did problems seem to arise from simple incompetence. Relative Priorities: Eclipses don't care if you see them, but friends do. All of this obviously has nothing to do with eclipses, but it shows that I had responsibilities that were far more important than a total solar eclipse. In the end, my friend had at least 6 months and 13 days (perhaps as much as 8 months and 15 days) more life than he would have had if his HMO had been allowed to have their way without resistance. A total solar eclipse does not hold a candle to that. An eclipse does not care if anyone is there to see it. But a friend cares if you are there for them. Also, I had become acquainted with a few other patient advocates along the way, and the fellowship of patient advocates is a sweet one, possibly because there are so few of them. When this journey began, I had no idea that I would end up being a patient advocate, or how grueling, yet rewarding, being an advocate can be. And it was a way to make a difference, even if just for one person. On my 1994 eclipse trip to Bolivia, I had met Willma Alcocer. She was then a director at a primary school in Cochabamba. She was person who made a difference in many people's lives. And knowing her, even briefly, made me want to make a difference too. A difference far beyond anything to do with eclipses. In addition to the above, many difficult things had been happening concurrently. One of these difficult things was that Willma Alcocer passed away in 2023, only two weeks before she was going to legally relocate to the USA - and to a place only 20 miles from where I live. Several Other Friends Pass Away: On 22 August, 2023, Willma Alcocer, one of the most remarkable people I had ever met, and one of the parties to whom I had dedicated my 1994 eclipse journal (and my 1997 story "Syzygy"), passed away in Bolivia. We first met in Bolivia during my solo expedition to the 3 Nov. 1994 total solar eclipse. She was then a director at a primary school in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In more recent times, she had retired, and had been trying to legally relocate to the USA for years, but encountered red tape. Then her health became an issue, in that she became too weak to travel. She had heart surgery in 2018 to become strong enough to make the trip, but had a long recovery. But then came COVID, and with it, overreaction and power grabs by many liberal governments. The 2021 administration in the USA imposed a Vaccine Mandate (only for legal immigrants) that was not lifted until May of 2023. She was not going to get the COVID vaccine because her elder sister had apparently died from a large amount of clotting - only a week after being vaccinated. Willma was finally going to move to the USA in early September, 2023, and her sister had gone down to Bolivia to prepare her for the move and accompany her to the USA. But she died only two weeks before she was going to move to the USA, to her sister's home, which was only 20 miles from me. AND, it was found that one of the same political people who was a problem for both of us in 1994 (see my 1994 total solar eclipse journal for details) allegedly contributed to her death by doing things that stressed her for a prolonged period of time. I was a basket case for months after Willma died, at a time so close to when she was going to move here. Apathy was one of the things that accompanied the grief, and this made it harder to stand up for my friend against his HMO, or do anything else. Dealing with the HMO was particularly difficult during the worst of the grief over Willma's death. If my voice broke while speaking with the HMO, they seemed to see it as weakness, and then would aggressively pile on pressure and try to get me flustered. The people at the HMO who did that (especially those who acted as though they had been in the CCP), were absolutely heartless. To counter this, I had to be "cried out" over Willma shortly before I contacted the HMO on a given day. So, I found combinations of music and pictures of Willma that would set off rain, and would go through that anguish before contacting the HMO. This probably led to more rain than would otherwise have fallen, but the nature of the HMO made it necessary. Sometimes, it is OK to be broken when one so precious as Willma has left this earth, especially under the circumstances she endured. And even though it hurts. - It is then easier to acknowledge our helplessness, and just do what a helpless person can do, which is next to nothing. And to grieve and pray. And to leave any recompense to Him. - Because when God puts together what is broken, it can become better than before it was broken. - He is the ONLY cure for sorrow, pain, and brokenness from such loss. - Confiando en Dios. Anque la vida duela. Solo Dios es fiel. - The words in the Roberto Orellana song "La Paz de Dios" include the phrase: "Busca la paz y olvida el enojo" (Seek peace and forget anger). When broken and submissive before the Lord, this seems more reasonable, and can help lead to at least some restoration of inner peace. I also didn't care at all about eclipses for almost six months after her death. In fact, since I had met her on an eclipse trip, and eclipses reminded me of her, I almost DID NOT WANT to see another eclipse during the worst months of the grief. However, this had no effect on whether or not I could go to an eclipse, or even prepare for one, since I could then do neither because of responsibility for my friend, plus the two months of problems with the cemetery that followed his passing. Besides Willma, three other people I knew, including this friend for whom I was POA, and my late mom's best friend since her school days - had also died in the span of only a few months. During the same period of time, I also belatedly learned that my friend German Morales (of ASO in Bolivia) had died. Return to Local Table of Contents Picking Up Where I Left Off in Late 2020 on Eclipse Prep - 3 Years Later, in Early 2024: By early February 2024, the grief had become less debilitating, in large part due to the kind support of one of Willma's nieces. One prescription I was on had also held me back in terms of initiative, but it was discontinued after my pulse rate went too low for an extended time. After this, I began to have some initiative again, and I half-heartedly resumed preparing for the 2024 total solar eclipse. When it became apparent that I WOULD be able to finish the eclipse experiment and imaging setup in time, I pursued it with more purpose. At that point, I DID want to go to the 2024 eclipse. This is because each total solar eclipse I observed after 1994 had helped dilute bad memories of the impositions of rich and political men, the illness (requiring increased surgery to correct) that resulted, and their limiting the time that Willma and I had together. However, the state of exhaustion that had begun in May 2023 was still an issue, in that I lacked stamina to drive even a fraction of the distance required to get to the total solar eclipse path. The symptoms were remarkably similar to those that resulted from the impositions of rich men in Bolivia some 30 years earlier, and one of my doctors said that it could take at least a month of bed rest, followed by appropriate exercise, to regain much stamina. Also, the eclipse setup was too large to take on an airplane, being the equivalent of eight large carry on bags. And I had a medical lifting restriction that prevented handling more than one small carry on myself. I usually had to put such items on the seat of a 4-wheel rollator walker to move them very far. This made flying alone impossible. In the End, it All Came Down to the Unreliability of a Telecommunications Company: The search was on for a ride to Texas to see the eclipse. By 18 March, I had composed messages (in text files) to ask several people I knew if they, or someone they knew, could either take me and my eclipse setup to the eclipse, or be a driver to get my car there. I was only hours from sending these messages out when my Phone AND Internet (BOTH by Frontier) went down. And these stayed down for NINE DAYS. I had no way to communicate with anyone except via a Tracfone I had acquired for the trip, but its number was unfamiliar to people I could reach by phone. I also did not know the phone numbers of most of my other friends and contacts, and only had their email. The excuses Frontier provided for not being "able" to timely restore service were way out there, and are covered below. In the end, it became CERTAIN that I WOULD HAVE made it to the eclipse if the Frontier outage had been only 2-3 days shorter (that is, a week or less of continuous outage, as opposed to nine days). It all came down to the amount of lead time one of the otherwise available drivers would have had to give his employer in order to get time off work to go to the eclipse. Also, the hours of time required on my Tracfone, to try to get Frontier to act - was time that could have otherwise been spent resting and physically getting ready for the eclipse trip. If that time had not been lost, it would have also been possible to go with a BACKUP plan for a ride. In order for the backup to work, I would have had to be ready to go a full day earlier than I was. It certainly would have been possible to be ready one day earlier if so much time had not been lost to Frontier. But Frontier had NO sense of urgency in restoring service, even for a disabled person. And because they apparently have a MONOPOLY on the lines here, they would restore service when they felt like it. And when they felt like it was a few days TOO LATE to make it possible to arrange a ride (with my equipment) to the 2024 eclipse. For this reason, Frontier's excuses (and the implications this could have if there was a natural disaster that caused widespread outages) are immortalized below. The harm was irreparable, in that I will be older when other total solar eclipses occur, and those likely to occur in my lifetime are only observable from other countries. It could cost up to tens of thousands of dollars (that I can't responsibly spend) to get myself and my equipment to a suitable foreign eclipse site, since that would require funding assistants to register all of the instrumentation with U.S. Customs, then get it all to a future foreign eclipse of sufficient duration. On a foreign trip, it would also be difficult (though not impossible) to fully black out rooms I sleep in, and limit sunlight exposure to the extent advisable for my condition. Had I been able to get to the domestic 2024 total solar eclipse, I could have handled all of the equipment myself (using my rollator walker to move each box or case), but this scenario is not possible at a foreign eclipse. Assistants would be required to get myself, eclipse instruments, and a rollator walker to a foreign total solar eclipse. (Of course, if Frontier wants to fund all that is needed for me to use the instrumentation at a foreign eclipse of sufficient duration, to partially compensate for their long outage...) After all the catching up following more than three years of lost time, it all came down to the unreliability of a telecommunications company in the weeks before the eclipse. All I have to show for all of my efforts in planning, etc., and motel reservations, etc., is a $229.98 charge on my credit card for having to cancel my 3-day reservations of two rooms, on the day before I would have otherwise arrived in Waco, TX, plus a similar penalty for late property taxes. It WAS Adequately Clear at the Site I Selected in Waco, TX. My brother in Colorado was able to go to the path of totality, and he stayed at the same motel where I had reservations. He and my 94 year old Dad both observed the eclipse from there, as I would have. The motel grounds were better for my applications than the McLane Stadium grounds (for which I had written the eclipse procedure) would have been. And, it was adequately CLEAR there during the entire duration of totality! There were high, thin clouds, but they were very thin. Almost a full solar diameter of corona (with a lot of structure) was visible all the way around the moon, with more than a solar diameter of corona being visible in two directions. The boundary of the lunar umbra was not visible from there during mid totality due to low clouds near the horizon, but the corona was visible. So, it is almost certain that I would have obtained good results from all six corona cameras in the setup (including extreme close up video of second and third contact) if I had been there. Those who would have wanted to see such material have Frontier Communications to thank for the lack of it. Photos and descriptions of equipment (for the total eclipse) is included in this web page, as are visible and H-Alpha photos of the partial eclipse, as seen from L.A. It is hoped that the good performance I got from the equipment (and surprisingly, from myself) during test runs (for the total eclipse) will be added as an Appendix within a few weeks of the eclipse date.

Similarities Between the 1994 and 2024 Eclipses (and related trips) The 1994 and 2024 eclipses had several similarities. The paths of the of totality with respect to the solar azimuth were similar. But differences included the solar elevation angle and the direction the umbra moved. Motion of the 2024 umbra with respect to the solar azimuth was similar that of 1994, except that the relative direction of motion for the umbra is reversed in 2024. This caused the most impressive views of the 2024 umbra to occur during and after totality. There were other similarities between 1994 and 2024, but these were more down to earth. The eclipse expeditions planned for both years were preceded by highly disruptive problems with telecommunication companies (Excel in 1994 and Frontier in 2024) - to such an extent that it impacted each expedition. The Telecommunications Debacle of October 1994 (Excel): Shortly before my 1994 eclipse trip to Bolivia, my MCI phone service was "slammed" to a different carrier without my consent - TWICE! I did not learn of the change until I got the bill (with exorbitant phone rates) from the new and unfamiliar carrier in October. This meant that the unauthorized carrier change had happened in September or perhaps earlier. After some investigation, it was found that an unethical sales person, whom I had never even spoken to (and at a company I had never spoken to), unilaterally changed my phone service from MCI to AT&T. Then, almost immediately, it was changed again from AT&T to a company I had never even heard of called Excel. It was barely possible to change my phone service back to MCI before I left for Bolivia. However, all of this required a LOT of time that had been set aside for rest and final preparations. Further, all of this rendered my MCI International calling card unusable. And it was not possible to get a new MCI International calling card in time for the trip. This increased per-minute phone call cost from Bolivia by a factor of three or four over what it would have been otherwise. Worse, the considerable time lost to this 1994 telecommunications debacle prevented getting enough rest immediately before the expedition, which in turn made my health susceptible to the unexpected political nonsense (from the brother of a 1993 Bolivian Presidential candidate and his rich cronies) that was unexpectedly encountered - starting on my first day in Bolivia. Following the 1994 eclipse expedition, I sought to settle the Excel bill in a way that had a per-minute charge that was equivalent to MCI's rates. (There was ZERO chance that I was going to pay the full (high) amount of the bill for service I had not authorized.) After discussions with Excel, they were going to charge only what MCI would have charged, but only if I documented what the MCI charges would have been for every call on the phone bill, and that was a LOT of phone calls. That was a ridiculous amount of documentation, given that I did not make or authorize the switch from MCI to their company. And I didn't have time for all of that. Ultimately, they relented and said that I didn't have to pay the bill at all. This may have been partly because they acknowledged that the unethical sales person who slammed my phone service to their company worked for them. More detail on this (and the 1994 eclipse itself, plus Bolivian political intrigue I was involuntarily exposed to back then) is in Section 1 of my "Eclipse Chaser's Journal, Part 3, The Wild One: Total Solar Eclipse of November 3, 1994." The Telecommunications Debacle of March 2024 (Frontier): In 2024, a sudden and LONG outage of my Phone AND Internet service, BOTH by Frontier Communications, began late on the night of 18 March 2024 - only about two weeks before I needed to leave for the 2024 eclipse, if traveling by road. This was a BIG problem, because, I was then temporarily not strong enough to be comfortable driving myself to Texas, or even across town for that matter. Therefore, I was communicating online to see if a combined trip could be arranged with another observer in my area. However, the sudden and complete failure of Frontier's Internet service pulled the rug right out from under this, just as as I had almost finished composing messages to a number of people. The long outage of BOTH Phone AND Internet service by Frontier Communications, and the fact that they would not even provide an estimate for when service may be restored, poses an extreme risk to the 2024 eclipse expedition. An expedition that required hundreds of hours to prepare for over a period of years, not to mention funds required. In addition to eclipse related matters, it was not possible to communicate with my doctors on their patient portals during a fairly critical time. The long Frontier outage also resulted in my property taxes (which I pay online) being late for the FIRST time ever, and penalties for that cost as much as what two months of Frontier's (non) service would cost. As of when this was written (offline) after close to a week of the Frontier outage, Frontier has shown no concern for the difficulty their LONG outage (described below) is causing, even though they had repeatedly been made aware of the importance and urgency of the situation. In fact, they would not even provide an estimate for when service would be restored. (Other than a promised time of restored service that they failed to meet three days into the outage.) Therefore, if the long March 2024 outage by Frontier (which was still ongoing at the time this was composed offline), contributes significantly to not being able to physically get myself and the eclipse equipment to the 2024 total solar eclipse, it will have obviously prevented getting photos, video, and experiment results at the total eclipse. In that situation, a description of Frontier's actions will be a permanent part of this 2024 eclipse web page. This material is also included here because posting it is the only practical way to timely provide information for a consumer complaint that I can steer authorities toward, when the only way of communicating with them is by speaking on a Tracfone. (Ironically, filing complaints often requires Internet access, but part of the complaint is about a long outage of Internet access!) Nine Consecutive Days without Frontier Internet OR Land Line Phone: It was only possible to upload this web page shortly after the Frontier outage because it was written offline. It was possible to upload it shortly after service was at long last restored, several hours short of NINE DAYS of outage. Internet service resumed just as I was about to briefly have limited Internet access through a third party. The Frontier outage did not end until 27 March. My medical situation did not do well during the outage, possibly due to effects of a prescription. However, I could not communicate with a doctor's office about it via their online patient portal due to the Frontier Internet service outage. (Phone calls to them did not get a response.) Therefore, I eventually had to unilaterally stop taking the blood pressure prescription that I suspected was making my symptoms worse. (It appears that the prescription was causing weakness, but I am not back to where I was before I was put on it prior to the Frontier outage. I might have been able to go off of it sooner if I'd been able to reach my doctors via patient portals during the outage.) A long outage of both Internet AND phone was and is a big deal for a disabled person who was not even up to driving to a nearby store during the outage. Details About the LONG Frontier Outage, and its Consequences: Details about the LONG Frontier Outage and the hardship it has caused, and the complexity it continued to cause, follows. It will remain a part of this journal because it DID prevent my being able to get to the eclipse. And it is known with near certainty that I COULD have made it to the path of totality if the long Frontier outage had been at least two days shorter. The extended Frontier outage also prevented ordering last minute items that my equipment tests had shown would be beneficial, and it prevented the above mentioned important matter of follow up on arranging transportation. More importantly, the Frontier outage has held up specifying the final details on a grave marker for a late friend, as well as the above noted communicating with my own doctors via their patient portals, etc. There were a myriad of other things that the long Frontier outage also interfered with. Due to years of being Power of Attorney for an incapacitated elderly friend, and having to deal with many contentious parties in the process, it had not been possible to complete preparations for the 2024 eclipse equipment very far in advance. And other aspects of the planned expedition were similarly affected. In addition to this, my health was temporarily in a state where I was not expecting that I would be able to make the three day drive to the eclipse myself (as noted above). I had not by then found a way to travel with someone else, though I had begun communications related to that just before the Frontier outage. Also, it was almost impossible to find and book a plane ticket without being able to go online or physically travel somewhere to arrange it (which I also could not do at the time). Also, I was not sure I was even physically up to traveling solo on a plane. And the eclipse setup was too large to take on a plane in carry on bags, and I lacked large bags that could allow adequate space padding, not to mention that I could not ferry that many bags around myself, being handicapped and all. Lack of Internet service also meant lack of email. And because I did not then have phone numbers or street addresses for the people I had communicated with by email, there was no way to look into a joint trip after Frontier's service for BOTH Frontier phone and Internet stopped working. The fact that telecommunications company has "an outage" isn't the problem. However, the fact that Frontier Communications had such a LONG outage of MULTIPLE services for MORE than a WEEK, and that they had no sense of urgency in disclosing or correcting the outage (even for a disabled customer), which was due to their lines, WAS a problem. Complacency of an Apparent Monopoly: Verizon/Frontier appear to more or less have a MONOPOLY on the lines in my area, so they have tended to do what they please, without regard to customer needs (including the need to use online portals with my doctors, and the urgency of the eclipse), which they were repeatedly informed of. When, after about four days of outage, Frontier was pressed on the matter of even estimating a date of restored service, the excuses they came up with defied even the imagination. Their nonsensical excuses are included below partly for the entertainment value. When Frontier was first contacted (via my old Trac flip phone) on Tuesday, 19 March (right after I became aware that BOTH the phone and Internet had ceased working, which was about 12 hours after I found that Internet service stopped), they said they would have to send a person to my house. However, they said that it would be two more days before that person would arrive. I had not contacted Frontier in the few hours after I noticed that the Internet service had gone out (when Internet was the only outage I was aware of) because Frontier's Internet service had always been unreliable. It has frequently cut out for several seconds to a few minutes at a time, several times each day, and outages lasting an hour or more had happened every now and then. So, initially, I thought it was just another (brief, but all too typical) Frontier Internet outage. While on the subject of performance, the speed of Frontier Internet service was only a fraction of the speed they charged for, and it often struggled to stream even 720p video, with the video all too often pausing while "circle of death" spun in the middle of the screen. (I had been waiting for Starlink to become available in my area before making a switch away from Frontier.) Frontier did some sort of remote check where they had me unplug both the phone and the router, and they then said that they thought it was their line. But they also emphasized that the issue might be with wiring in the house. However, they would not schedule a technician visit until two days later. (The box that Frontier had installed outside the house lacked an accessible phone connector (as older phone boxes used to have). If it had not lacked this connector, I could have connected phone to where their box connects to the house, to determine whether lines in the house were involved.) When I arranged the tech appointment, I repeatedly informed Frontier that I could see a text on my simple Trac flip phone, but that I could NOT SEND a text, due to the nature of the phone verses my condition. So what do they do? They sent a text that seemed to anticipate a text response. So I called Frontier on my Tracfone to confirm the appointment, but it took FIVE attempts, each going in the same loop over and over, to get to where I could even address a service appointment. But then their system showed a different appointment time, so I said "No" to confirming the new time. What did the Frontier system do? It thanked me for CONFIRMING the less appropriate appointment time - a time that I had NOT confirmed! So I had to repeat the procedure - to cancel the unwanted imposed appointment time - and reschedule the original appointment time. It took over an HOUR to do this via their quirky system - a system with no available people. Then, later in the week, and a few MINUTES before the end of the time window for when the Frontier technician was supposed to come (and the close of business for their office) they sent a text saying that the problem is with their lines, that there is an OUTAGE in my area, and that there is no need for a technician to show up. But they provided no estimate for when it would be fixed. Thus, it took Frontier THREE DAYS - just to figure out that they had an outage. An outage that I had informed them of over two days earlier. So I called Frontier again to try and get an ETA on restored service. It took the better part of an hour (of Tracfone minutes I was paying for) to reach a real person. They then said that both the phone and Internet would be restored in 12 to 18 hours, which would correspond to no later than 9:00 on Friday morning, 22 March. On Friday, 10:00 a.m. came and went, and there is still no phone or Internet service. Then noon came and went. And it is here that the plot thickens. And the nonsense that followed made me hope that my none of my pension funds were invested in Frontier: On Friday afternoon, after almost FOUR days of outage, Frontier said that they had NO IDEA of when service would be restored. I reminded them of my disability, the doctor portal situation, the eclipse, and the travel difficulty situations that all made the matter more urgent, but they obviously did NOT care. I demanded to talk to a supervisor or someone else in authority would have some answers, but the Frontier person REFUSED to connect me with anyone else for several minutes. Finally, I was connected with someone who said they were a supervisor having a different name than the person I had just spoken with - but the voice sounded almost identical to the person I first spoke with. And, the same people at Frontier (NONE of them appeared to be in the USA) REFUSED to connect me to anyone in the USA concerning the Frontier outage. (Frontier uses these people in other countries, so the fact that they did not connect me with anyone in the USA is on Frontier.) There was no viable way to report this to Frontier (since these are the people you get when calling Frontier), so this web page may be the only way that the matter can be reported. I only spoke with one person at Frontier who seemed to care at all (on 23 or 24 March), but he had no authority to do anything. He was in India, and he or those he knew remembered the 1995 total solar eclipse in India, so he seemed to understand the rarity of a total solar eclipse in a given country. He may have also been the first person to actually type in that I was disabled. Frontier eventually claimed that the outage was caused by someone "stealing" a length of cable that had 13 twisted pairs of wire in it. (Possible, since it is Los Angeles, where theft has all but been decriminalized.) And here, things got more interesting: Frontier Excuses - NOT Results! (They have to "Order" Equipment to Splice a Cable!) Frontier said that they had to "order" the cable to be able to fix the problem, apparently meaning that Frontier did NOT have cable like this in any of their local facilities. (A telecom company that has NO appropriate spare cable on hand! Fancy that.) AND, Frontier said that they had to "ORDER" the EQUIPMENT required to SPLICE the cable, meaning that they did NOT even have equipment to splice the WIRE cable! (I recorded this nonsense from Frontier. They say they record the calls, so because that makes it 2-party knowledge, is is legal to record them.) And they said it multiple times on multiple days. I don't know if what Frontier said above is true, but my first impressions are that such excuses (having to "order" equipment to splice a cable, for example) were way out there. To top it off, Frontier had NO estimate on when they might restore service. They would not even bound the time by saying it would be less than WEEKS (plural). So, all I could do was periodically pick up my phone to see if it had a dial tone. At the time, I did not even have a way to get to a nearby store to acquire a hotspot with related service to fill in the gap. And Frontier repeatedly refused to provide a hotspot when asked. (Also, given the apparent monopoly, they said my area was not eligible for Frontier fiber service.) One would think that a PHONE / INTERNET COMPANY would have the equipment needed to SPLICE a wire cable. We're talking about multiple conductor wire cable, not a fiber optic cable. Given the above, I pity the poor soul who has Frontier as their only service for phone and Internet in the event of a natural disaster. If Frontier had to "order" the equipment to splice a WIRE cable, I can only imagine how much stuff they would have to "order" (and the related delays) in the event of widespread outages of either wired or fiber service that could follow a natural disaster. Since California has earthquakes, I don't want to be one of those poor souls, so I will be looking for an alternative once the 2024 eclipse date passes, whether I make it there or not. Because of the apparent monopoly, there is no alternative for a land line, so the solution will have to be wireless. Maybe they are not a true phone or telecommunication company? Maybe they sold off resources required to perform basic repair on phone lines, to make stocks perform better in the short term? (Sacrificing long term performance for short term gains seems increasingly common with publicly traded companies.) It is my impression that they may be little more than a line leaser, only re-selling use of existing phone lines, and adding their overhead and institutional inefficiency to the mix - while bringing nothing to the table that benefits the customer. Of Monopolies, and the False Notion that Capitalism is the Same as Freedom: Before Frontier provided phone and Internet service in this area, it was provided by Verizon. I was not a fan of Verizon, but at least Verizon's service (which presumably used the same lines, as Verizon then owned the lines) was more reliable than Frontier - in the years before Frontier took over here. (I did not choose Frontier. They just took over service in this area several years ago.) When Verizon provided service here (essentially as a monopoly, since any other carrrier had to lease their lines), they did not honor their price for the first two years. (Their "reasons" were quite amusing: That their "Revenue Assurance Department" mandated that they violate their 2-year customer agreements in terms of pricing.) Verizon had the same brief (seconds to minutes) outages that happened several times every day (which prevented downloading my webmail archive to a local email client). But the speed was occasionally a little better (could handle 720p video more often), and outages lasting for hours were less common. And they didn't have any outages that lasted entire days or weeks. Either way, it is an argument against monopolies. And if even a regional company has a local monopoly and fails to perform, it should be broken up just like AT&T was in the 1980's. After a few years, lower prices and better service followed that breakup. Either that, or Internet service should not be privatized at all. No essential service should be privatized as the only customer option. At the very least, non-privatized Internet service should be available to everyone, then those who want more bandwidth can go with private alternatives. Had this been the case, Internet service would be more reliable, and I would have both made it to the path of totality and been able to interact with my doctors at a critical time, etc. Not to mention the greater benefit that increased Internet reliability would have for everyone else. Even without the above telecommunications debacle: As noted earlier in this journal, it was the "Ethics Board" of a corporation (an HMO) that presumed to act as a death panel in regard to my late friend. They acted in a brazen manner, with an attitude that implied: "This is what we are going to do, and there is nothing that you, even as POA, can do about it!" If that doesn't reveal an attitude that there will be no corporate accountability, I don't know what does. Unfettered capitalism that allows monopolies is not the same as freedom. We need only look at the censorship that corporations imposed in recent years to see the truth of this. Unfettered capitalism may even be a threat to freedom. Any case of power without accountability is a threat to freedom. And at the current time, there seems to be less accountability in corporations than in government. Rant complete! Now, on to the 2024 eclipse goals and instrumentation!

Goals of the 2024 Eclipse Expedition:

2024 Total Partial Solar Eclipse Images: Partial Phases, H-Alpha, etc.:

2024 Total Partial Solar Eclipse Images: Partial Phases, H-Alpha, etc. (Sequence)

Appendix E: 2024 Total Eclipse Image, Video, Data Acquisition Procedure (Timeline):

Appendix F: Comparisons of My Eclipse Instrumentation and Results (1979 to 2024):