Prose and Kaa

Some friends and I met tonight at a new-to-us restaurant called Honey Pig. Honey Pig is a Korean BBQ. Only one person of the six of us had ever been to a Korean BBQ before. The rest of us were just in it for the adventure.

We ordered the Honey Pig Sam-Gyup-Sal (I mean, ya gotta order the thing named after the restaurant (or vice versa)), Spicy Sam-Gyup-Sal, Bulgogi, and Duck. And of course Kim Chi, some sort of spicy bean sprout dish I never heard the name of, and mushrooms. And rice wraps and lettuce wraps and marinated onions and these other wraps that were clearly some sort of vegetable, but none of us could figure out what it could be based on the shape, texture, or flavor. And hot chili sauce and bean paste and what might have been some sort of fish sauce. And something else none of us knew what it was.

There were six of us, and none of us knew what the hell to do with any of the little dishes they set before us, but we figured it out as we went along, with a small amount of help from the waiter.

I had never tried kim chi and was surprised how much I liked it, but it's definitely something you don't eat a lot of by itself. Not because it was spicy, but because it was so strong. Wow. I didn't know cabbage could have that dominant a flavor. :) The spicy bean sprouts seemed to have been the biggest hit.

It was all so good, and we talked about writing (this was a writers group) and reading and books and music and such.

Then it was time for the bill.

It was $83.21 for the six of us. Not bad. So we added a 20% tip and rounded it up to $100 split 6 ways, or $17 each. Four of the others gave me their $17, and I paid with my Discover card. The sixth person had no cash, so she put in her card. We told the waiter, "Put $17 on this card, and the rest on the Discover."

We talked for a while more and then the waiter brought everything back. Handed me the two trays with the cards, and I handed the other person their card and took a look at the damage.

$6,621.00.

I blinked. I tore my cornea yesterday, after all, so maybe my eyes were playing tricks. I tried to make it $6.621.00, but that made even less sense. It definitely said $6,621.00.

So we waited a few more minutes until the waiter once again came to collect the signed receipts and I said, "There's been a mistake. This is for six thousand dollars."

He took it and looked at it. His eyes got wide. He ran off.

A few minutes later, the waiter came back. With the manager. Who both apologized profusely, explaining that a table of a lot of people had just checked out and had them divide it up individually, and they got a little flustered and missed a decimal point. The new bill was for $66.21.

Much better. :)

So, yeah. Dinner was great, as was the company. But the price was a bit steep. :)

 Episode 12: Biotechnology Ethics by Desiree Schell from Skeptically Speaking (Rating: 0)

This morning I got up at the ass-crack of dawn (6:00) and was ready to leave my house by 7:30 for the drive to Anniston, Alabama, to pick up my car from the Ford Dealership¹, where it has been held hostage for 26 days.

I arrived at 8:30 and the dealership wasn't open, but on the off chance that someone was there, I tried the door. There was one guy inside. I asked him if my contact was there and he said "not yet," but when I mentioned why I was there, he said he had my paperwork, key, and the check from Geico for me to endorse.

I did all that, then went out to transfer all my crap from the rental car to my own car, then drove the rental back to Enterprise. They brought me back to the Ford dealership and, for the first time in 26 days, I was once again behind the wheel of my own car.

I cranked it and pulled out onto the road, headed back toward the Interstate. And noticed that the gas was so low, it was quivering below the "E."

That was when I also noticed that the "Check Engine" light was on. I turned on the radio to plug in my iPod so I could listen to some podcasts...and the radio demanded that I enter my code.

I won't share what I actually said. There might be tender readers. I did, however, suggest that the body shop guys were involved in incestuous—nay, Œdipal—relationships; that the entirety of their cranial tissue consisted solely of fecal matter; and that their collective parents were never married. I may also have let slip that I wished for them to consume fecal matter immediately prior to termination of their lives. And after said termination of life processes, I may have expressed a strong desire for these same people to be condemned for eternity to experience extreme thermal discomfort.

Afterward, I turned around and, instead of going back to the Ford dealership—the body shop is closed on weekends—I went to the Honda dealership.

The guy who helped me there immediately knew how to fix the radio, which he did, while rolling his eyes that the guys at the body shop just left it that way and let me drive it off the lot.²

"We'll have to get a mechanic to hook it up to the computer to see what's wrong with the engine, though."

So I went into the waiting room and sat down.

Approximately 45 minutes later, they called me out to the car.

The mechanic showed me something he said was the throttle...something (I didn't write it down; I'm sorry to be completely non-mechanical). At any rate, it had a tiny little piece of the corner missing, probably—according to the mechanic—because when I hit the dog, it drove the fan blades back and one of them clipped the corner of this...thing. He said it's very sensitive, and chances are it's not actually damaged, but on the other hand, it might signal the car that the throttle is wide open when I'm actually stopped and am trying to put the car into park, and it won't let me.

He recommended that I get Geico to pay for that part to be replaced, as well. And of course it can't just be replaced. The entire part of the engine it's located in has to be removed...

...to the tune of some $350 more dollars. He assured me that I could safely drive the car at least for a few days, and to ignore the light, because it would probably go on and off sporadically.³

He was right. It has been both on and off at various times during the rest of the day.

Also somewhat obnoxiously, they managed to drive my car down to where there was only .7 gallons of gas left in the tank. I know they had to drive it to test it, but couldn't they have put a gallon of gas in it? Yeesh. I had to put 14.3 gallons in a 15-gallon tank. It's a wonder I made it to a service station (not BP, not Exxon).^{4, 5}

Now, the total cost of me hitting a dog at Interstate speeds (I checked—the speed limit at the spot where it happened is 70 mph, so I was going within 2 mph of 70 when I hit the dog) on said Interstate is:

My Deductible: $500
Geico Paid: $3237
Rental Car: $843
Throttle...thingy: $350

Total: $4930

I called Geico and they told me how to go about getting the last $350 taken care of, so I guess I'll pursue that next week.

Oy. Just shy of $5000. For hitting a dog.

Stupid dog.

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1. Sunny King Honda is where I originally took it, but Sunny King is apparently the only car dealership in town: Sunny King Honda, SK Ford, SK Kia/Scion, etc. But they share a single body shop, which is located at Sunny King Ford. Hence it's not entirely weird that a Ford dealership had my Honda.
2. The manager of the service center at Sunny King Honda all but called the manager of the body shop at home to...express his disdain. I have a feeling that he will get an earful about allowing a customer to drive away a car with the Check Engine light lit and the radio disabled.
3. In Sunny King Honda/Ford/Kia/Scion/Etc.'s defense: It's entirely possible they did not know about the throttle...thingy. As I said, the damage is small, and unless you're looking for it—and why would you, unless the engine light came on and you hooked it up and the computer told you it was message P1121 (Throttle Position Lower than Expected)?—it's hard to spot. And since the light was only on some of the time, again, it's entirely possible that it never came on when they had the car started.
4. When I left the car, it had just over 300 miles on the tank. When I picked it up, it had 343.
5. I have not bought so much as a stick of gum from Exxon since the oil spill in Alaska years ago. BP has now been added to that list.

Back in October, interest rates for mortgages started to fall precipitously. They eventually reached a low of somewhere around 4.5%. It was at this point that, at the urging of a couple of friends of mine who are much more financially aware than I urged me to refinance my mortgage.

Back in 2001 when I got my mortgage, the rate was 6.875%. I did some calculations and found that I could nearly halve my monthly payment. Since my company did not give out merit pay increases last year but everything else went up in cost, saving any sort of money is a good thing.

I got a recommendation of a reputable financial institution with good rates from one of those two aforementioned friends and started the process of a mortgage refinance. I had the rate frozen at 4.625%, which is not too bad.

Then began the long process of proving to the bank that I had enough money, was employed, had a decent credit rating, etc.

One of the final steps was scheduling a home appraisal. My target value of the house was $173,000, because the amount I still owe on my current mortgage is approximately 80% of that number, which means I wouldn't have to pay PMI. Since I bought it in 2001 for $165,000 and it was worth more than that at the time (the sellers were highly motivated to sell), I thought it was a lead-pipe cinch, as the saying goes. <ominous chord> Whoa. Did you hear that? It sounded...ominous. And chordy.

Meanwhile, I had my roof repaired to fix the damage from the September Monsoon. We scheduled the appraisal for the Monday after the repairs would be done so that she (the appraiser) would see the house in a better state.

She came. She appraised. She took pictures. She measured. She promised I'd get the report in about a week. She left.

A week goes by. But in the meantime, I have become very ill and am taking medication that makes me a bit loopy, and on top of that, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, so it sort of slipped my mind that the report should have arrived on the Monday of Thanksgiving week.

Yesterday, I realized I'd heard nothing from her, and contacted my loan guy at the bank to see if he had, and I asked him if there was anything else he needed from me to proceed.

He forwarded me the email he got from her (I did not get it), apologizing since it was obvious I hadn't received his earlier email.

Turns out the house appraised at $150,000. Considerably less than my target of $173,000, and about $30,000 shy of where it should be.

This lowered the amount they were willing to loan me by $20,000, which means that I would now have to pay $20,000 down in order to get the refinance.

The whole purpose of this refinance was to save money, not blow my entire savings. It would take me > 5 years to save $20,000, and...well, it's just not worth it.

What caused the devaluation? In a word: neighbors.

I am a good mortgage-holder. I have paid every payment, never missing a single one, including during the time I was unemployed (Thanks to my mother!). I've been late a few times, but not by more than a few days. And once I was able to schedule the payments via online banking (several years ago), not a single payment has been late. This doesn't matter.

My house is in good shape (as far as you can tell by a cursory inspection; more on this in another post, perhaps) and I have added value by re-siding the house in HardiPlank and had the roof repaired. This doesn't matter.

I have a "very good" credit score. This doesn't matter.

I have no outstanding debt other than the mortgage, and a home equity line of credit that is currently paid off, and which I'm only keeping open because if I close it, it makes my credit score go down.¹ This doesn't matter.

I pay off my credit cards every month in full, carrying no debt from month to month. This doesn't matter.

I am gainfully employed and this situation is not likely to change in the near future. I have proven that I can pay $X/month for my mortgage for nine years even during the 21 months of that I was unemployed. This doesn't matter.

The only factor that made a difference is that 20% of the homes in my neighborhood have been foreclosed. When the bank forecloses a mortgage, they offload the property for a fraction of the actual value, thus causing the property to lose value by default. And since 20% of the homes in my subdivision have lost value, the others lose value by proxy.

To sum up: because my neighbors were unable to pay their mortgages², I got screwed over.

The irony, of course, is that I would obviously—to anyone with a single working brain cell—be able to make lower payments each month. But because the appraiser basically gave me the purple shaft, I get screwed over financially.

When I worked through all this in email with my loan agent at the bank and realized what it meant, I was pretty much beside myself with rage, frustration, and no small amount of moral outrage. None of this is my fault. I did nothing wrong. I made a post to Facebook³ that said

just received some very frustrating, infuriating financial news. And he is SO FAR BEYOND PISSED OFF that there isn't a word in English. More later. For now: silent fuming.

I composed a Facebook note that consisted largely of the F-bomb interspersed with epithets about my neighbors and their supposed incestuous origins. I'm not overly proud of it, and I'm glad I decided to wait until I cooled down to say any more.

Because under the light of a new day, I can calmly see that nothing has actually changed. I'll still be making the same mortgage payments I've been making for nine years. I'm still being paid and am gainfully employed. I'm not thinking of selling the house any time soon, so the fact that it's worth $30,000 less than I expected is, while not a pleasant thought, not the end of the world.

Granted, I won't have ~$500 more per month to use at my discretion like I've been planning. But that's all that has changed. That, and I know my credit score, the actual value of my house in this down market, and exactly what I need to go through when I try this again in a few years.

So, there you have it. I put this here to preserve it for posterity and to put a link to on Facebook to explain the extremely frustrated post I made yesterday evening.

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1. Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe the entire "credit" industry?
2. As much as I want to call them names and sling mud and curse and gnash my teeth, I realize that for most of them, it wasn't their fault any more than this was mine. Very few people choose foreclosure.
3. Generally speaking, if I can say what I want to say in 140 characters or less, it goes to Twitter. If I can say it in 420 characters or less, it goes to a Facebook status update. If it's a quick-and-dirty, straightforward message bigger than 420 characters that I can type, edit once, and press "send," I put it on Facebook in a note. If it's going to turn into a dissertation with footnotes or, for whatever reason, I feel the need to save it for posterity, I put it on LJ. Don't you feel privileged? :) (Or if I want only a subset of people to see it, I put it on LJ and change the security level to something other than "public.")

For my reference: parts I, II, and III.

Called Wachovia today to see what was going on because I haven't heard from them since they claimed that they received my fax (part III). I wanted to see if, possibly, they've resolved the situation.

I called at 5:00 and was on hold for about 12 minutes. I got "Jay" or "Jaye" or "Jaya" or some other feminine way to spell something that sounds an awful lot like "Jay." No, they show no record of my faxes. No, it is still not resolved. By the way, I need to get a new card. I inform her that I have done so, already. "Why don't you go fax it one more time, sir, and I'll wait on hold."

I print out the letter and fax it one more time. Granted, this takes about 10 minutes because I get behind someone printing 10 copies of a 22-page report (I counted). I get back. No signal. She hung up.

I call at 5:22 and was on hold for 12 more minutes. I got "Kia" or some other feminine way to spell something that sounds an awful lot like "Kia." Why, yes, my faxes from February arrived fine, but there was another problem, and they have sent me another letter, requesting further information. By the way, I need to get a new card. I inform her that I have done so, already. "Please hold, sir, and let me check something." <5 minutes of hold music> I'm thanked for my patience, and here is Tasha (or some other feminine way to spell something that sounds an awful lot like "Tasha") to tell me what I've won what's going on. The first thing she says? That I need to get a new card. I inform her—somewhat impatiently, at this point—that I have done so. They mailed the new letter to me today because...

It seems that in all the faxes I've sent, I neglected to actually state that the charge was unauthorized.

I'm going to say that one more time, because I'm still having a really hard time coming to grips with the words that I heard.

I called the disputes line on 1/31 and reported a fraudulent use of my card on 1/29 which resulted in $200 being removed from my account on 1/30. I received a provisional deposit of $200, but had to call T-Mobile myself to try to dispute the fraudulent charge. I couldn't, so I faxed them four times saying that T-Mobile wouldn't give me any information, and that I don't have an account with them, and that the card was used fraudulently. I used the word "fraudulent" more than once.

And yet I never indicated that the charge was unauthorized.

I have to reconsider my choice of banks, at this point.

So I have just faxed them a signed affidavit stating exactly and precisely what "Tasha" told me to state: my name, today's date, the card number, the date of the transaction, the amount of the transaction, who the transaction was with...and that it was unauthorized. I repeated everything three times and tried my level best not to show the amount of anger and frustration that I feel. I also included a print-out from their own website showing the disputed, unauthorized, fraudulent charge. I signed everything. I faxed it.

Yes, I know that T-Mobile is probably the one requiring the "unauthorized" bullshit, because they get to hold onto that $200 for another month. Meanwhile, the person who committed the crime has undoubtedly committed others and is long gone and cannot be located. And if they contact the person whose account received the payment, they'll be told some bullshit story which will be accepted (if not actually believed) without reservation, while I am having to jump through hoops.

I'm in a foul mood, now. I was going to go home and enjoy an evening of installing Ubuntu on my laptop and possibly getting some reading done. But now I'm too angry to get behind the wheel of a car. I'll just stay here at work for a while and write really compact C++ code as a way to take out my frustrations. Because beating random people to death with desktop office supplies is considered bad form, and could likely get me written up by HR.

Who wants to take bets on whether this is actually over, now? Will I ever convince anyone that I am the victim? Will T-Mobile ever actually cough up the dough? Will the person who committed the crime go unpunished? Will I spend another half-hour of my life on hold to wait for <slurred recital of feminine-sounding name> to spectacularly not help me again? Stay tuned to find out.

My friend !Evil Phil¹ and I have a long-standing running joke.² I am, often without any conscious action on my part to precipitate it, able to, as craftsman would so colorfully put it, "fuck up an anvil."³ I've had computer problems that persist for weeks or months, and then !Evil Phil comes over and lays his hand on the computer and it works. Until he leaves, at which point the computer reverts to being possessed by whatever evil spirit it had been inhabited by until he laid hands upon it. The last such occurrence involved getting my Internet router to link up and be friends with my phone router. My problem is so persistent and pervasive and perfectly perplexing that I decided it had to be one of my superpowers (as you'll read if you follow that link).

Before I left work last night, I was trying to think of ways to further reduce the amount of my hard-earned filthy lucre that never sees the insides of my bank account. It dawned on me that, although I have and need my cell phone, I am paying $44/month for a plan that gives me more minutes than I have ever or will ever use. To give you some clue, I had⁴ nearly 80 hours of roll-over time. I talk on the cell phone for maybe 15 minutes per month, and that's usually calling my mother to say I'm on my way home or am halfway there or whatever. Paying $44/month for this is...well, "clinically insane" is the only phrase that leapt to mind.

I dropped by my friendly neighborhood AT&T store last night and had my account switched to the Go-Phone. I signed up for the $0.25/minute plan with no contract and no other features. Just a straight $0.25/minute no matter what. The lowest amount you can put on the account per "refill" is $15, so that should give me approximately 60 minutes of cell-phone use per 30 days. That should be more than adequate. The other plan is $.10/minute with free mobile-to-mobile and a $1/day connection fee. In other words, if I make 1 call per day, I can't even talk for 15 minutes over that same 30-day period. The math (is hard!) worked out to favor the $0.25/minute thing when I worked it out. I figured I could switch if it became too problematic.

I got home shortly thereafter with the printout in my hands that clearly shows the flat-rate plan I signed up for.

I logged in. I went to my account. It showed the other plan. The $0.10/minute + $1/day plan. The one I specifically didn't want to try.

So I went through the lengthy process of calling the number and going through the extremely annoying voice-recognition thing to change it. And it said it was changed.

Only...when I checked online again, it wasn't. So I called and did it again. And again. And again.

After the fourth time, I realized this was my superpower at work. I needed a dose of hero power.

This "morning"⁵ I called GoPhone and had them look at it. She was very confident that I had just not followed directions. I could hear it in her (smug) voice. Until...it didn't work for her. Twice.

So it was she that called in the Big Guns™. I got transferred to GoPhone's Technical Support Department. <insert Hero theme here> What he basically had to do was delete my account and add it back.

Yes, my superpower had so fucked up my account that there was no way to salvage it.

Grant was also one of the funniest Tech Support people I've ever talked to because he kept up a constant narration about what he was doing and the results of his actions. "Okay, now I put '1' and then...no, that's not right, it should be a '2'...and then this...and now that...and...Okay, that didn't work, so we'll try this other screen...." :)

The upshot is: I have the service I signed up for. I have the same cell phone and number that I had, for those of you who have it, so there's no need to reprogram anything. Believe me, you don't want to. We have proof now that my superpower can affect things at a great distance from me connected by only the most tenuous of threads. Don't blame me if your cell phone suddenly goes haywire when you try to call mine.

Well, uh, yeah. Okay, you probably can blame me. Or my superpower. KaZot. But just remember that I have no actual control over KaZot, so I'm not doing it on purpose. :)

<mumbling> Note to self: I should really learn some way to control KaZot for the good of Humanity....

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1. The exclamation means "not" in some flavors of programming language, for those of you not in on that particular loop. Heh, "loop." Get it? "Loop"! Oh, I slay me!
2. How can it be standing and running at the same time? English is weird.
3. Think about it.
4. Keep reading....
5. Any time I get up is technically morning. So what if the sun had risen a good 8 hours earlier?

I get balance alerts from Wachovia every morning (sometimes afternoon) telling me what my daily balance is. I have some sort of innate "feeling" when things aren't quite adding up, and today that spidey-sense tingled.

I checked my checking account balance, and there was a $200.00 charge on the 29th (that went through yesterday) to T-Mobile.

I'm not with T-Mobile anymore. Haven't been in about 2 years. So you can imagine my confusion.

I called both Wachovia and T-Mobile and got the same (bullshit) theory.

Since the payment said "IVR," they said that means that someone paid their T-Mobile bill over the phone. When they dialed in or spoke their credit card number aloud, they either deliberately used my number, accidentally transposed or misspoke a digit and it just happened to line up with my ATM card, or—and this is the kicker, and why I'm making this post—Wachovia said that if the person spoke their card number wrong, it would take the next valid number, which just happened to be mine.

BZZZZZT! No. It does not work that way.

I wrote an e-commerce page at CareerBuilder. The algorithm is one I remember quite well because I had to incorporate it into the page. Trust me when I say that a transposition is unlikely in the extreme to result in another valid number. Because the MOD10 algorithm is designed so that transposed digits and one-off errors result in invalid card numbers.¹ When you dial in your credit card number, all that happens is that the computer on the other end does a quick MOD10 algorithm and spits out a "VALID" or "INVALID." There is no rolling to the next valid number. That's beyond ludicrous and into the realm of "what kind of moron do you take me for?" territory.

So I guess today is the day I get a new ATM card. At least maybe this time I can get them to spell my name correctly. I'm tired of people saying, "Thank you Mr. Henderso!" as they hand me my card back.

Is anyone reading this with T-Mobile? Have you ever paid over the phone using a credit card? Do you know if they require you to give the 3- or 4-digit CVV/CVC number? I'm just curious. If they do, then it means this was a deliberate act of identity theft. If not, then it could still be an honest mistake, although a very unlikely one.

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1. As far as I can tell, most people never think much about this, but when they do, they assume that the quick "invalid" response is because they've looked the card number up in some database of valid numbers. That is not the case. It's a simple algorithm that the computer does before it ever sends the number to the credit card people. But because it is still possible (but unlikely) for a person to mistype a few digits and come up with a valid number, the 3- or 4-digit CVV/CVC code on the back of your card is included as an added measure of security on the assumption that an honest mistake in keying the number will still fail when the CVC codes don't match. Now, if only every place that takes credit card numbers over the phone required the CVV/CVC code. :-/