A "Critical Mass" of updates

ya ya... the title is cheesy, so what. As always I've been incredibly busy. I'm still learning Mandarin Chinese, trying to plan my upcoming trip to China and also doing the five zillion other projects I have going on. What is life without projects, huh?

So.. what are these projects? I'll get to that but first a few things to get off my chest that I've been meaning to write about.

First Amex Gift Cards

Ok what the hell? huh? really! The other day I was in a Duane Reade (umm. a drug store for you west coasters) and I noticed that they were selling $25 gift cards for $28.95. Ok simple math.. you are getting ripped off. Who the hell buys these things? huh? Some Executive at Amex is a freakin' genius. pure mad scientist genius. Another way to rip people off and doing it right in front of their faces.

Why? Why? Give me one good reason why? Cash.. still works. Really it does.

Second Banks

Ok this one really deserves a blog entry of its own but I don't have the time, I have chinese to learn. ;) The other day I received an overdraft fee from the bank and they blamed it on me for not keeping a check registrar. Ok, for the record I do not and will not keep a check registrar. Lets review a quick simple history of the check registrar; 1) you write a check 2) the check must be deposited. This doesn't happen on the same day so.. bam you have a difference in time.

Ok.. but I do not write checks. Nope not a single check.. none, zip zero nadda. I use my bank card or online bill pay. I want the money to come out as quickly as possible. So because I use all electronic payments I rely on the bank to have accurate and up-to-date statements.

So this is what happened. I was in Oregon and I swiped my Visa Check card at a gas station. I returned to New York that same day. The next day I went to the bank, got a bank statement that showed I had over $20 in my account. I withdrew the $20. Later that day the Visa Check card (electronic) charge hit my account and it overdrew my account. Also at midnight (that same day) my automatic deposit hit my account and replenished all my funds.

Ok... now the bank contends that I was at fault for not keeping track of my balance. I content that it is their fault for having a crappy system that is not real-time. Of course I work in IT and I know that when I swiped my card my account information went to Visa, whom verified my credit and authorized payment. That look less than 1 second. Next Visa accepted the charge and paid the merchant. Visa then requested funds from the bank; in Oregon. Bank of America, however, BATCHED the jobs at noon almost 24 hours later.

Logically if Bank of America were to not batch theirs jobs I would have noticed that I did not actually have $20 in my account and I would not have overdrawn my account.

I spent an hour explaining this to the account reps at BofA. They didn't get it, they wanted me to take a pen and paper and write down all of my transactions.

Nobody does this anymore.. we rely on the banks and we "eyeball" our accounts every month or so.

Look it is simple. If you use all electronic forms of payments within a single country the transaction should be instantaneous. There is no technological reason that would prevent this. BofA's system analysts and engineers SUCK and need to move into this century.

Ok.. so after explaining the whole technology to them they still wanted to charge me the overdraft fee and I flat-out refused. It took a while but I eventually got them to not-charge me.

I'm sure I have some great notes on my account from that one.

Finally.... moving on..

Another video uploaded.. Whoo Hoo..

I rode in Critical Mass this past Friday. Wow! completely different than Portland or Seattle. Completely different. I shot about 45 minutes of footage and spent 1 1/2 hours with iMovie editting it. It is a little boring at times and the edits could be cleaner but... come'on I only spent an hour on it.