dont you hate it when you sacrifice your principles to save a buck?

[mrmontie]

maybe none of you do that, but I did today. And it saddens me. WARNING: Rant below

I lost my glasses boogie boarding last week. Fine. My fault. I've been using a backup pair thats 2 prescriptions old and has terrible lens damage.

Go out today to get a new pair. Rant number one: requiring a prescription to get a pair of glasses. BZZZZZT! wrong answer. I don't know exactly when this passed into law or who voted on it, but it only serves eye doctors. Here is my prescription. Now make a pair of glasses that fits it.

I go to a local eye doc who essentially talked me into going to a different store to suit my needs since his frame selection was limited and his turnaround time was way longer. He also kept me for half an hour while explaining lots of good to know stuff about glasses and lenses. Super nice. Well informed. Honest and helpful.

So I run out to this place he mentioned. Takes a while to get there on the bus. Takes a while to find when I get off the bus. Its in a strip mall with lots of botique type things. I go in and start to examine and try frames. Anyone with glasses (surely nobody here!) knows this can take hours if you're picky.

20 or 30 minutes into my browsing I have not been greeted. I have not been approached by any of the 3 employees. I'm the only customer in a store the size of my livingroom. No excuse for this. None.

But the frames were cheap. The lenses were pretty cheap too. Certainly better than eyemasters and all that crap. I was highly pissed that they decided that chatting amongst themselves at full volume and sometimes about things that were in poor taste seemed to be more important than running their business. I almost walked out. But it took me some effort to get down there. and i knew they'd be at least 50% cheaper if not 100 than the docs office. So I took the cowardly miser way out and got a pair through them. And I feel like an ass for doing so since they don't deserve the business.

I need some contacts for scuba diving, so I think i'll go back to the nice doc and get them through him. Just have to wait until I actually have a paycheck coming in. Nice, honest and informative people are hard to find these days. They deserve my business or at least my good regard.

oh, on a sidenote, anyone have any experience with internet glasses? www.goggles4u.com always seems to come recommended. Hella cheap. but with the inherent problem of not being able to see the frames and try them on.

[Berin Kinsman]

I've allowed my financial situation override my principles a few times. I generally regret it. But you gotta do what you gotta do, and I make sure I don't go back it I can help it and give them a lot of negative word of mouth.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

Goggles & Google: both used to look for things.

I don't buy my contacts in the US for exactly that reason. It's an odd system that doesn't do me any good. It just greatly increases the cost & time involved. When I go to an eye doctor, it's for a proper examination, not just because my 6-month supply of disposables is almost out again. Everywhere else but the US, I can go into the store, and the clerk will either accept what I ask for on faith, or sit me in front of the little box that tells them exactly what the overpriced doctor's visit does.

[mrmontie]

Bear: Yeah, I'm going to wait until after I get my glasses to find as many sites to write scathing reviews as I can. Incase it helps. I know I scour for reviews for just about everything. Already wrote a great one for the doc that sent me along.

Also I should really wait to see how the rest of their service goes and the glasses turn out before tearing into them.

GK: I havent done contacts since i was in highschool. where i think i permanently damaged my eyes by leaving them in all the time. they were the sort that you can get away with sleeping a few times with them, and i took taht for an excuse to never remove them. stupid i know...

anyway, how and where do you do your contacts these days? is the prescription the same since they're obviously closer to your eyeball than glasses. My power is around a 4 and i'm nearsighted... what quantity comes and how much does it run you?

[Berin Kinsman]

I just can't picture you with contacts. Glasses are almost part of your character. Then again, I'm still getting used to you without fire engine red hair.

[mrmontie]

heh, yeah. i havent worn contacts since my junior year in highschool. I'm not necessarily looking forward to them, but i'd like to be able to see the sharks coming.

Ideally, like every vision challenged person, I'd love to get lasik. and while the idea of not having to wear glasses would be so totally sweet, it would take alot of getting used to.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

The military has (or at least used to have) small & flexible eyepieces designed to fit gasmasks. As an insert to a mask, they were designed for wear much closer to the eye than standard spectacles. I successfully added my old prescription NBC inserts to a pair of goggles, but sadly no longer have them. It may be possible to get, as a civilian, something similar to this without the expense of the goggle lenses themselves being prescription.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

I haven't gotten a pair of glasses since my initial training days in the Army. I have no idea what my glasses prescription is, nor how close it is to my contact one. I started wearing contacts for field problems in the Army when it was rumoured that wearing glasses made one more susceptible to Korean Haemorrhagic Fever (KHF) because of dust building up on the insides of the lenses while driving down dirt roads in tracked vehicles. Not having to deal with the fogging effect when going from a cold environment to a warm one, and being able to wear sunglasses (my eyes are very UV sensitive) are great bonuses.

I usually buy disposable extended wear contacts, & buy them in three-packs. I just go to whatever store is convenient. There's a nice little shop in Mainz, Germany where the clerk always has a joke for me, but it's not very feasible to travel there every time I need more lenses. If I am going to be in an area where getting replacements will be more difficult (such as an extended stay in the US) I try to get a 6-month supply. Cost varies widely, but it's often cheaper to buy contacts than cigarettes for the same duration.

Lasik worries me. It isn't the surgery itself, or concern for the quality of the work. It's that it reduces night vision. I'm a dark-oriented person who gets by just fine with the lights out, unless I'm needing to read something. It's rare that I am ever in a setting where it's truly dark for me, and I'm a bit afraid of what it would be like to deal with that every time I'm not directly in the radius of a light source.

[mrmontie]

did you get yourself a nice pair of BCG's in the army? man... hideous but effective.

as far as the night sight goes, my stepdad and at least one other person i know got the precursor to lasik being the radial caratotomy (sp?). and it ruined their night sight. they both got permanent starburst effect from the surgery. man what a bad deal.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

I still have my BCG's with the Airborne earpieces. As for them being a form of birth control, one of my buddies met his wife because he stood out from the crowd while wearing his.

[Vulcan Stev]

Going once and discovering they don't deserve your business is not sacrificing your principles. Returning to their establishment time and time again is.

[Xose Lucero]

So a glasses prescription isn't just a recipe for glasses makers, it's like a drug prescription? As in, it expires and you can't get glasses without a brand new one? What the hell? Were people abusing glasses? That's rantworthy in itself.

[mrmontie]

ah, so you havent gotten a pair of glasses in the last few years.

yeah. the prescription lasts 2 years. and you pretty much absolutely have to have one to get a pair of glasses made. and the average eye exam costs 80 bucks. and can be as much as 200 in some places.

I guess part of the "logic" would be that by that time most people should be reevaluated to see if their prescription has changed. and its somewhat sound logic. but the bottom line is that they are your eyes and its your vision. so if you dont want to be reevaluated then its nobody's business but your own.