Over-worry

Smacky

I was a bad political activist.

I was more concerned yesterday with my and my kittens’ personal health than exercising my free speech rights in protesting the current presidential administrations’ lack of ethics and accountability.

My apologies.

The good news is that I’m in pretty good health. Smacky, however, has been scratching himself horribly and has scabs on both of his shoulders. Apparently the fleas haven’t been quite as under control as I thought. Poor thing. I guess the one application of the flea stuff wasn’t enough. Or (this is my worry) he’s having some kind of reaction to the flea stuff… or he’s got some horrible cancer and is dying. Yeah, I’m worried and probably over-worrying. Remember, people, thinking too much is a bad thing. So I’m taking Smacky in on Monday (the earliest appointment I could get) to have him checked out.

I’ve felt so guilty that I’ve been letting him sleep in my bed again. At least until he starts attacking my toes at 1:27 AM and waking me up, and pissing me off, at which point the guilt turns into sleepy anger and I kick him out of the bedroorm.

Of course, the guilt returns when I wake up and open the door to find he has been sleeping against my door, and looks up at me and scratches himself and makes these piteous cries.

Is this what being a parent is like? Lurching from impatience and anger… to fear and guilt? Not sure I like it… But I will do whatever I can to make sure Smacky is OK.

Corporate confuser

General

I just love dealing with gianormous corporations.

Well, technically, I don’t deal with the corporations. Despite the fact that corporations have legal status as persons (psychotic persons, but persons nonetheless), what I, like the rest of y’all, deal with is the paid minions of the corporations.

I’ve been in the process of paying off my credit cards, and I had some questions about one in particular. It was one of the earliest cards I got, several years ago, when I realized that my years of not having credit had actually put me at a disadvantage. So, because a person with no credit history is worse off than someone with a bad credit history (take my word for this one), the interest rate and annual fee were fairly large and I wanted to negotiate with them to reduce both of those items.

My current balance is just $8.06, which is the interest accrued on last month’s balance, which I had just paid off. So, I had a simple question, to wit: since there’s a “grace period” of 25 days on new purchases before a finance charge begins accruing, does that grace period also apply to a balance that is entirely finance charge?

Basically, when is the “grace period” observed if we’re not talking about “purchases”? I could read in the contract that there is no grace period on things like cash advances or balance transfers, but it never specifically mentioned, y’know, finance charge.

So, time to contact the minions.

Since this bank has online banking, and by the time the question occurred to me it was after business hours, I decided to shoot them an email. Seemed simple enough. I made two attempts. So far I’ve received two responses. Here they are, edited slightly to remove all remaining accountability:

Response #1

From “Corporate Bank Customer Confuser”

Subject Re: Billing Questions (KMM19842426V5662L0KM)

Date Thu, January 20, 2005 3:08 am

To “Brian Moon”

Dear Brian Moon,

Thank you for your inquiry dated 1/19/2005.

Calculating when your payment is due each month is fairly simple. Your account billing cycle closes on or around the 19th of each month. Household Bank allows at least 20 days from the end of your previous billing cycle for you to make your payment due without penalty. Your current due date will be approximately 02/13/2005.

You are important to us and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

EmailMonkey

Corporate Bank Customer Confuser

Response #2

From “Corporate Bank Customer Confuser”

Subject Re: Billing Questions (KMM19842431V5687L0KM)

Date Fri, January 21, 2005 3:08 am

To “Brian Moon”

Dear Brian Moon,

We understand your concern regarding this matter.

Please be advised, finance charges on purchases will be assessed using the Average Daily Balance method during any billing period in which the previously billed balance was not paid in full by the due date. To obtain the average daily balance, take the beginning balance on your account each day, add any new purchases, previous days periodic finance charges, late charges, overlimit fees, and other administrative charges, subtracting any payments and credits. All of the daily balances for the billing cycle are then added together and divided by the total number of days in the billing cycle to obtain the Average Daily Balance. The Average Daily Balance is used in conjunction with your annual percentage rate to determine the monthly finance charge.

You are important to us and we appreciate your business.

Sincerely,

Corporo-Droid

Corporate Bank Customer Confuser

Now, read those carefully. The information in them is correct information. The English is proper and grammatically correct (OK, one typo that I see but it’s not a big deal).

But do they ever actually answer my question?

Ummm… no.

Does anyone think that they actually, y’know, comprehended the question in question?

Ummm… probably not.

*sigh*

Hook

General

As some kind of karmic payment (that I don’t really believe in) for my inadvertently linking a Blues Traveler song yesterday to some spam- and spyware-infested site, today I couldn’t stop hearing Blues Traveler songs wherever I went. In the mall, in the restaurant where I had lunch, in the doctor’s office waiting for the nurse to come in… Sometimes the actual songs, twice a bastardized Muzak version denuded of all percussion and depth and stripped of lyrics.

So eventually I gave in, pulled out the iPod, and dialed up some more Blues Traveler. Might as well seep in it if karma is going to club me over the head with it.

Counter-inaugural

General

If you follow Geeks Against Bush, the political blog that I also contribute to, you are probably aware that my friends Caleb and Gus are in Washington D.C. today, joining in the counter-inaugural events taking place today.

I got an email and a text from Caleb during the night telling his friends that he made it there safe. I haven’t yet hit any news sites so I don’t know what has been happening as I write this. I’ll do that as soon as I publish this post.

I save my political opinions (mostly) for GAB, but here I just want to say that I hope Caleb and Gus are effective in voicing their opinion, and also hope that they return home safe.

Freedom isn’t free, you know.

It’s not my fault

Tech

Update:

My previous post originally contained a link to a lyrics website. I found the site through a quick Google search and it seemed inoffensive enough.

However, I have been informed by one of the six or seven readers of my site that the link led to a bunch of nasty spyware-installing and popup-producing windows.

Since I use a Mac as my primary machine, and use Firefox when I’m forced to use a Windows machine, I didn’t even notice that my browser had blocked a bunch of nasty probably-virus-installing-but-definitely-deserving-of-hyphentation malware from ever appearing.

I tested the link by loading it up in Insecure Exploiter (a.k.a. Internet Explorer), and, sure enough, managed to get infected with lots of stuff that my virus scanning software didn’t like.

So I have changed the link in the original post to Blues Traveler’s official lyrics page. I would have linked there originally but this morning the Blues Traveler site was tremendously sloooooooooooow and I had better things to surf for.

My apologies to the other readers of my site who are stuck using insecure operating systems and haven’t seen the light. My sincere apologies. I’ll be more careful next time. Probably. But if I’m not, it’s not my fault.

Accidentally ran

exercise

Oops. I accidentally went to the gym and fell onto a treadmill and ran 2 miles before I could stop myself.

Even though, technically, I was supposed to wait until after my follow-up visit with Nurse Cindy on Thursday.

I think I did pretty well, waiting this long. I’ve done a lot of walking in the past two weeks, though, and went back to taking the stairs. And even so, I could, when I sat down and stopped moving and was forced to feel this body I was living in, I could feel the lack of running just like it was a cold compress on me. Or maybe a hot damp blanket. Something constricting, at any rate. And smothering. Like any attention from your mom would be when you were thirteen. Wait… that’s not a lack of something, is it?

Oh, hell, you know what I mean.

My run tonight was good, even though I kept a fairly slow pace. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything. And I also specifically didn’t keep track of the time. Just wanted to move and run and feel fast again. My breathing afterward was fine, too, so hopefully that almost-like-asthma-but-not-really thing was temporary. Getting the fleas under control on Smacky helped a tonne, I think, too. And, sadly, I no longer let him sleep in my bed. Well, sometimes. But not on nights before I plan to run. Mostly.

The weather’s been strange. We had freezing rain this weekend, but today it was in the 60s and almost spring-like. Crazy (only one ‘a’-crazy, though).

I need to archive my 2004 trophy page and my running log, and set one up for this year. For the record, I participated in 8 official races last year, six 5K runs and two 10Ks. Not bad for a first year runner. I look forward to this coming season to see how much I can improve.

There’s so much in this post that I should link to but damn if I’m not too tired. Check back Wednesday and I might have come back and updated with links ‘n’ stuff. But don’t hold me to it. ‘Cause I’m like the wind, baby.

Clever, original, and inventive

General

I’m tired of carrying around a thick wallet.

Mind you, I wouldn’t mind so much if the wallet was busting open with twenty-, fifty-, and hundred-dollar bills. Sadly, that’s not the case. Instead it’s full of credit cards that, more often than not, are maxed out, multiplying “customer appreciation cards” of the sort where you collect stamps or punches in order to earn a freebie, and various other “membership” cards that I use from time to time for discounts or just basic access. Add on top of that all the receipts from debit card transactions and ATM uses, and my wallet bulges like some bulge-y thing.

I’m sure sitting on that thing is killing my back and neck. Sure of it.

This weekend I adopted a solution. I’m carrying two wallets now.

In the first wallet I put just the bare minimum; my debit card, my bus pass, my FlexCar card, my driver’s license, and most of the “customer appreciation cards”. Much much thinner that way. Oh, and any cash I may be carrying, although thanks to my debit card (and the fact that I earn miles on Alaska Airlines for using my debit card) I rarely carry any cash these days. That’s thin enough to sit on, although I still tend to put it in a front pocket out of habit.

Into the other wallet goes everything else. And that wallet goes in my jacket, or my backpack if I’m carrying that. And if I forget it? Not a big deal; I can get by with the primary wallet most of the time.

I’ll try it for a while and see how it goes.