Cards Mess

Just got a Discover Card replacement. Had it activated and asked why in the world did they send it to me. The customer care dude told me that's "security update". Total nonsense. Either they wanted to promote new features, or they messed or lost their records, or got hacked. Well, that's one expensive way to promote new features, could just send a letter, so that's two left.

The funny part is, this card has a different design. Discover takes pride in offering lots of different card images, and having me select a layout and then in a year send me a different, lame and generic card "update" really does not sound like a good marketing move.

On a completely unrelated note, US Bank is completely down and does not even allow internet payments. They are only left with web page standing. Customer care says they are "on maintenance".

This brings up an old issue. If large banks actually do screw up, will we ever know about it?

Funny Things

Here's the winner for the most idiotic product name ever. I just wonder what were they thinking. And yes, that's toilet paper.

Stoozing Update: Money Transfer

The check from the credit card has cleared, and the funds were available today, just one day after the deposit. Since I had transfer scheduled with Emigrant Direct, which is my favorite online savings account, the money are already in New York. Emigrant Direct blocks funds for a while, obviously as a security measure. They are earning money already, but I cannot yet buy into a CD. Yeah, and I kept fifty bucks in my checking to pay the first minimum payment. This should be one percent, and that's $35. I will be paying a bit over the minimum and will later look how did that show up on my credit history.

$toozing

Stoozing is turning a buck by loading zero-APR-low-transfer-fee credit cards and tucking the money into a good savings account. So you get free credit, use it to earn some interest and then pay the card when introductory period is about to expire. I am about to try this out.

The idea has been around for a while, and a couple years ago you could get really good deals with hefty credit limits and no transfer fees at all. I was then still in debt and nobody wanted to give me good limits anyways. Now I got out, and have this card that actually makes it possible.

Is stoozing cheating? Well, in finance lingo this is called arbitrage, and financial institutions do this day in and day out to each other, whenever they can. Arbitrage implies that certain actions can be taken to make profit without risk at all, and signifies an imbalance in the economy. When such conditions arise, scavenging on them restores the balance, and so this is essentially a healthy process.

Cheap credit card balance transfers from the days when the federal interest rate was non-existent and higher savings interest rates reflecting on new conditions in the economy are precisely in this sort of profit-promising imbalance. People are abusing these transfers en masse, and I actually have a friend who earned over half a grand on this last year alone. The result is that the cards are now coming with a much higher transfer fees.

It used to be that the transfer fee is something like 3% of the balance, capped at hundred dollars of so. These caps are now going up quite quickly, and often there's none at all. Sometimes the percentage for the fee is as high as 5%. But if you get an offer with the transfer fee capped at a good level, you can still play the game!

That's exactly what I got, an HSBC MasterCard with 3% of transfer fee, but no more then $100. Minimum payments are just 1% of the balance. The person at the activation really wanted me to transfer some stuff to them, even if to my checking account. So there, they got it.

I have a low limit - $3600, and I am taking nearly all of it to my Emigrant Direct account, making about 5% a year. This means at my best I will net $75 or so, but hey, I got to start with something!

Tommorow Comes Today

So back to last Wednesday when I had my first coffee in a month. It did not feel too strong, neither did it feel tasty. It was my office coffee machine after all. I later went to Starbucks, but that did not taste too good either.

I did not seem to get much "high". Except later that day I could not hold it any longer, went ahead and bought self this scooter I was going to buy for a while now. Then in the evening I was so overwhelmed I went bicycling downtown and found this trail, going under the highways that cut off poor folks up north, all the way south to the lakes that I could smell but not see 'cuz it got so darn dark. Quite freaky experience. I managed to get out into some strange neighborhood. Ten in the evening, similarly looking raws of houses, and not a single sole in the streets. Barely any cars, too. I am still to dig out the map and find out how I got there.

So I guess that was a bit too big a coffee jolt for one time there. I used to just down these with no visible consequences. Anyways, my lovely new scooter is exactly the reason I was not posting recently. I was taking it everywhere around town, and I am really enjoying it.

A Month Without Coffee

It has been about a month that I did not drink coffee, or any caffeine per se. The withdrawal was pretty tough, but given that I was dumping this stuff down my body for years without a break, it was much milder then expected. Everything was over in less then four days of sluggishness and a couple bad headaches. I don't even remember it now as something hard.

There were no special effects waiting for on the other side. It simply felt OK, nothing special. I am prone to headaches and the first couple weeks I often had a mild headache with a feeling that a 'bad one' is about to start, but a Tylenol was always enough to quench this, to quite a surprise. Even these headaches went away after about two weeks.

By the end of the month I started to get a sense on my caffeine-free self. The biggest surprise was to find that I can breathe, actually. Breathing through your nose is a wonderful feeling, but it was something becoming ever more impossible for quite a few years now. This was April, the top allergy time, and I went around with perfectly unclogged pathways, feeling great and quite happy about it. I have no clue why this has happened and never heard of any connection between coffee and allergies. Add to this that I usually have my coffee completely bare, so no link to say creamer.

I also noticed a better "pump" at the gym, something that is reported in medical studies and something that I was looking for. Not big of a deal, then. What is a bid deal is that I am going to the gym again, after quite a long break.

I did not lose energy, in fact I think I was more steady, motivated and also more strategic about what I am doing, choosing my priorities, avoiding getting stuck with some stupid little perfectionism. You get a good view on the things, instead of digging yourself all the way in. That, and the absence of coffee "crushes" certainly makes the days much more enjoyable!

I have decided that I will come back to drinking coffee, perhaps as a social or rare activity, and today was the first time. I will write about the nuclear consequences of that decision tomorrow.

CNN: College student shoots roommate, kills self

Another dude shoots somebody on a college campus, kills himself. The learning from this - don't throw your roommate over the edge - is already known to any surviving college graduate. Another learning - vote republican if you don't want this ever to stop - hasn't even started to sink in.

You cannot rent a car from most places till you turn 25. You cannot get a large credit if you are too young, and the insurance really stings. Kids are immature and therefore not reliable, the truth that American capitalists have learned long time ago, and it's time for this to soak into publics minds.

If you think this is something connected with the modern age, consider that Romans did not consider a person fully adult till the age of 24, in fact discouraging alcohol consumption under that age. Diluted wine that was, and they could not even drink and drive. It you want to seem hip and think that this is an age-old misconception, NMR studies reveal that certain regions of the brain, those in fact responsible for judgment and decision making, stop forming by about the age of 25, about the last stage in the chain of brain development. So you can have a smart, caring and compassionate smooth talker who is utterly immature, as any happy parent will confirm you.

People live much longer these days, and so the premise of the second amendment - to have enough armed people to possibly form militia in case of a military coup - can still be satisfied if the gun-legal age is upped. You'll still have enough citizens able to bear arms even if the age is set at 25. That seems like a golden number, after all these years. I would also hope that those truly crazy like that Korean dude, will by that age have had enough incidents and have been diagnosed or got police records, preventing them from getting firearms anyways.

In Minnesota, "Children 13 years old and younger must be supervised when handling a firearm". That's fucking right. After 14 they can hunt on their own, given a certificate. OK, I went hunting with my dad when I was younger than that, and in fact learned a whole lot about firearm safety from those days. Then again my dad was not an abusive alcoholic. I would never imagined wandering around with a rifle on my own. Are you aware of the age in your state for children to kill without supervision?

A juvenile, that is a kid, in Minnesota can posses a hunting rifle starting age of 16, before he has a chance to legally smoke a cigarette, and can have a gun or assault rifle at 18, before she had her first bear. Hunting is a tradition, and a way for middle-aged parent to look cool in his kid's eyes, a family value. But c'mon, what's the deal with assault rifles at eighteen? You cannot buy them, but you can still inherit them. When was the last time you talked to eighteen-years old? Oh did they even unplug their earphones?

God Wants Your Ass Dead

Genetic signature found for heart disease, and yes, white kids are overwhelmingly likely to have the mutation, while the African Americans mostly don't have it. Even when they do, they don't get the heart disease. This unambiguously proves that God is black.

Looking at it the other way, nobody is looking into genetic signatures for black people's health problems, and come tomorrow, there will be no research findings laying the grounds for new medications.

French Get Real

Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-leaning presidential candidate wins over empty-headed socialist Segolene Royal in presidential race. The right-leaning in France means somebody willing to allow people to work over 35 hours a week without extra-taxing them. Not like he will be able to do a lot, presidents in European states range from ceremonial puppets to a max of foreign-policy setters.

Really, this is all because he got some hot daughers, while Segonlene just got some dildo son. Much like in America, you must have decently looking blonde daughters to get elected. Hmmm. Come back for the analysis of the presidential-hopefuls based on this solid criterion.

PC Dominos

They have a point, actually :) Nobody seems to have made any lasting conclusions.

Iraqi Mined School

A mined school was discovered in Iraq. The building was still under construction, and the bombs were apparently planted as this place was being built (story). The official explanation now is that some assholes planned to blow the entire girl's school once the classes started. Bombs were well hidden between the walls and mined into the floors, really meant to sit there until one wants it up in the air.

What they are missing is that a new school's opening in Iraq is such a wonderful photo op! Both for Iraqi and American officials. Would make nice pics in conservative media showing "the true progress in Iraq", as they like to put it. The place was set up to blow the whole thing at once. I would not be surprised if this was really a mouse trap set for the likes of John McCain visiting for a little publicity.

So maybe what we are dealing with are not some crazy psychopathic nutcases, but rather thinking and calculating psychopathic nutcases, which is exactly what psychopathic nutcases tent to be. They should be treated as such, promptly and in an efficient manner. This is a problem for the White House, because they would have to depart from their one-bomb-fits-all strategy and start thinking, but hey that's a prohibited word. It is now becoming ever more evident that Iraq is America's single largest hope-based initiative ever.

Debt Free, For A Week

I am just about to write a check for fifteen hundred and eight dollars, add 95 cents. This is what remains of my credit card debt. I had it under control for more then a year now, in zero percent accounts, opening new cards when the old ones were about to expire from the intro period. I paid big if I could, otherwise just dollar a day, in a kind of a calendar ritual. My credit ranking grew quite a bit, but I almost got burned again this winter when I went abroad and got stuck for two month. You know the drill.

It wasn't always this easy on me. I never had too huge a debt, perhaps because I missed my first payments even before I had a chance to get big credit lines. It was about three and a half grands at its peak, and stayed there for long time while I struggled to catch up with payments and all sort of fees, periodically forgetting to send a check, causing another avalanche of penalties. I dived on my checking account and got three hundred of them, on small purchases totaling less then a hundred. I didn't even open the letters, waiting for the next paycheck to come. Well the bank didn't wait and closed my checking account. I was maxed on my cards, nobody would issue me another, and the rent was due. I borrowed from my roommate and had about six hundred outstanding on my closed bank account. Add the bills and my split-the-bill balance with my roommate and the total would be about five grands.

It is now about five years since I first didn't pay the full balance on a credit card, and I never got out of it. Living with an out-control debt is quite different then normal, and living happily is quite impossible. I plan to write about this, but at this point I'll just write down the check and go mail it before it's midnight. These are the tax money I am sending. Wish me good luck.

Let The Nutjobz Die

This dude is the Kansas City mall shooter. He was nuts and an alcoholic. He had minor violations and certainly little respect in his community. He also was forcefully hospitalized after reported suicidal. Precisely the same way as the VTech shooter. He was older and recently quite his job at that mall's Target, similar to NASA shooter.
One has to wonder if they were on pills. What about the kids from high schools? Should the medical records be made public in case of felonies? Wait for big pharma to go nutz to protect their turf.