On this day of thanks giving here in the US I am truly thankful. I am healthy, happy, and glad to be alive. While the past year has been filled with challenges it has also been filled with good.
I hope that all of you are with family, friends, or the people who are most important in your life. Further that you can tell them, one and all, that they are important to you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
This year for Thanksgiving we’ll be traveling to Illinois to see my father. Dad had knee replacement surgery just a week ago, and by all accounts is recovering very quickly. His home health care agreement restricts his ability to travel so rather than going to my brother’s house, as has become the tradition in recent years, we’ll be staying close to his home for the holiday.
I’m not sure we’ll be having traditional fare, but I am certain there will be plenty of good food over a long relaxing day. The rest of the weekend will likely be spent sightseeing, with maybe a visit to my brother and his family.
Yesterday I set out to pay some bills online. Most of the creditors I have sport payment pages on their web site making it easy to point, click, and pay. One loan, however, proved to be the exception. Several years ago, when purchasing the two Apple computers I own, a line of credit was established at MBNA. The old MBNA site had a mildly complicated but still navigable online payment process that I used to make payments. Recently however, MBNA has been merged into Bank of America, and the online payment experience just isn’t working anymore.
Directing my browser to mbna.com resulted in my being redirected to Bank of America branded page that explained the merger. In the left side navigation there is a link to sign into your account. Click that link results in a textbox for your online ID and a drop down list cryptically labeled: “Account In”. Turns out they want to know what state your account is “in”. Is that the state where I live now? The state where I lived when the account was established several years ago? Or the state where the payment stub gets mailed when I pay by check? Or a fourth state unknown to me? Taking a wild guess that it was the state I lived in I selected Kansas. No dice. Adding insult to this process, once a state is selected you cannot select another one. A cookie is set and you are now forever trapped in the wrong state.
Subsequent tries with different browsers using Illinois and Delaware also failed to gain me access. Searching the payment stub revealed a different online address to try. This site asked for my account number - all fourteen digits of it, my zip code, and the last four digits of my social security number. After typing all of this in and hitting the enter key I got an error message stating “There was a problem accessing your account. Please call 1-800-XXX-XXXX.” Typing the numbers in a second time just in case I’d finger-fumbled the first time resulted in the same error.
The helpful customer service drone at the other end of the 800 number asked what the due date on my account was. “December 12” I replied, only to have him explain that since the account wasn’t delinquent I could not pay online. Huh? “You mean I have to wait until December 13 to pay online?” More or less the answer was yes. He did offer to take my payment over the phone but then his computer started having trouble so he transferred me to his manager.
After identifying myself to the manager (name, birthday, last four of social security number, and address), she said she could take my payment but there would be a $15 fee.
Excuse me?
A fifteen dollar fee.
I said you want me to pay you $15 because your web site won’t let me make a payment online until my account is delinquent? Without batting an eye or any trace of embarrassment she said “Yes.” I said, “You are certainly making it very hard for me to give you my money. I’ll waste a stamp and mail the check to you instead.
Unbelievable.
Recently I have started to pick up a few words in another language. Except for a disaster called “Latin I” in high school, and a smattering of dojo Japanese, I don’t speak any language except my cradle language. Perhaps it’s a failing of being an American, but I haven’t ever had the need to speak a second language.
What I have come to realize is that learning another language isn’t about the words per se, but rather about the concepts and constructs they describe. My language, American English, allows me to describe the concepts of my life and my world in a manner that makes sense to me. Learning German or French or Swahili isn’t just about the words, it is about learning to describe those concepts using new thought patterns. Speaking a second language isn’t about just saying the words; it isn’t about translating them in your head, word for word, as you go along. It is about actually thinking in that other language.
On Friday, after work, I stopped by the tire store and had a conversation with the manager there. Armed with information about the speed rating of the tires Lexus recommends for my car I hoped to talk them in to switching the tires from “H” to “V”. The manager proved to be very easy to work with and we were able to negotiate a solution.
This morning I took the car in at 9:00 and they put new “V” rated tires on the car, only charging me the difference in price between the original tire and the new one. As I had managed to put just over four thousand miles on the tires since they were put on, I thought this was a very generous deal for me. The store was surprisingly busy for a Sunday, and he didn’t call to let me know the car was ready until nearly 3:00 this afternoon.
The ride home was smooth and without wobble. Of course the highest speed limit between the store and my apartment is 45 MPH, the speed at with the problem only started. After dinner this evening a brief ride in the car demonstrated that there is no more wobble, even at highway speeds. While I am sorry about all the frustration and stress the first set of tires caused in just a month’s time, I am glad that I finally have the proper set of tires on my car once again.
Here in Kansas City a new trend in McTastlessness. Several of the local burger chain are now sporting spotlights on their roofs. At night when you are driving you’ll see a searchlight panning back and forth across the night sky, and if you follow it, you will end up and Ronald’s place.
How on earth did McDonald’s convince various local municipalities to allow them to further pollute the night sky with searchlights just so wayward teenagers will know where they can “get some fries with that?”
I’ve updated my resume page, and I’ve cleaned up some trackback spam from some of the older links.
Keeping ahead of the trackback spam is particularly annoying. My email spam filter grabs the notifications of new trackbacks and throws them in the spam folder when the trackback itself tastes like spam. Since there are some 700 new messages in that folder every day I rarely cull through it looking for false positives. So trackback spam can go unnoticed for several days. I’ve switched the notification email address to my Gmail account, hopefully I’ll see them sooner that way.
Recently I put new tires on the Lexus, and then when it immediately developed a wobble in the steering wheel at any speed over 50 MPH, took it back once for balancing and once more for a front end alignment. Today my car is in the dealer’s service department for some schedule maintenance and I asked them to investigate the continuing wobble.
The verdict is that the tire store installed the WRONG tires on the car. In addition to the size of the tire there is a speed rating. The tires that were installed on my car have a speed rating of 95H. The Lexus recommended tires are 97H. Same maximum speed, but a slightly softer rubber compound. The dealer (who has always treated me respectfully and whom I trust) feels that this is the source of my wobble. He said they could try to re-balance the front wheels but he doesn’t expect that to help. As he put it, “rather then spend your money we thing you should take it back to the tire store.”
I am not looking forward to the conversation with the tire store manager. Even though I have had the car back to his shop twice in the past four weeks for problems resulting from the tires they installed, I am fearful that they’ll want a brand new pile of money for a brand new set of tires. Something I frankly can’t afford right now.
Stay tuned…
When The Hunt For Red October was first released my best friend from high school, who was in the Navy, serving on a nuclear fast attack boat, told me about it and said I should read it. Based on his recommendation I bought a hard back copy that I still have today. The politics and world situation are different today, so the story line doesn’t have the same impact as it did in the early 1980s, but it is still a very good book.
Rating: Worth re-reading if only to see how things once were
Tonight I had occasion to visit a Best Buy. I had previously been dimly aware that the console gaming world is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Wii system. Rounding the corner into the parking lot I was presented with a line of tents. And warmly clad nerds huddled together in the frigid 37 degree air.
Camping. On a sidewalk. Concrete. For a game. One that you’ll be able to buy any old time soon. Somehow having it first is important.
I don’t get it.
Perhaps I am not as nerdy as I thought.