Our Media Addiction God Dammit

China

God dammit. Google said someone in China accessed my Gmail account. Access Type was unknown. No email forwarding changes. No accounts changed. No emails sent. Credit cards are safe. I'm guessing it was a fluke. Changed passwords and double-upped security anyway.

Google Reader

99% of my action online is on Google Reader.

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/ChrisG

For those unfamiliar with it, it's an online RSS feed reader. Instead of visiting countless sites, like Joystiq, the Onion and... Zombo.com, I simply add their RSS feed, so when it updates I get just that story. And from Google Reader, I can share it with friends, add comments and post it to that page.

I go through a few hundred items a day and post anything notable. I'd make it post here, but it'd flood out my normal posts.

Also, bonus points if you can figure out why I chose my Facebook username. It's eboot.pbp.

Cookies

My wife is upset because she made cookies and they didn't turn out so well. It's cute to see her so worked up over it. (She's a woman who LOVES her cookies)

New format

Obviously I can't simply bring it over, so I need to streamline the widgets on the right... and that takes time.

I imported all the old stuff. I'm going to try to tag and sort better from now one.

The webcams will come back and be updated in due time.

Wordpress

Fuck Blogger. Getting rid of FTP publishing means you either redirect to them or host on blogspot. I want neither.

Fuck Chase Update

Well, I still don't have the money. Chaz in Washington is helpful. Sadly faxing the stub to him wasn't enough for the research department. The EDD got back to me. Their response took 10 days and said the check was cashed and asked if I wanted a photocopy of it. I said yes. That was December 11th. I've sent two more emails AND WROTE A LETTER since then with no response.

That money was needed to get my wife her green card. The fees total $1010, so the $1170 out of my account basically covers that. I got paid last week, so I mailed it. We need her to get this ASAP so she can start working. We can't delay it anymore, so my wages are pretty much nil until this whole issue is sorted out.

I know which bank I'm going with once we sort it out. I'll open an account with them soon, move over my online bill pay and work deposit and wait until I get the debit card in the mail. Then my wife and I are closing both of our Chase accounts.

Media Monkey

I love Media Monkey. It's a great way to organize files. Anyways, the auto-organize is the best feature, but of course we all have our own tweaks.

H:\MEDIA\MUSIC\$if(,$if(mp3,$if(=Christmas,iTunes Xmas Music\,iTunes\),$if(=Christmas,Xmas Music\,Albums\))$if(,#,)\\$if(,$if($len()<2,,) - ,)$if(,$if(=Over100,,) - ,),No Album\)$if(, feat. ) -

That, my friends, is my sorting script. It's made to filter out Christmas music, iTunes files and any special sorting tags. I also have rules for leading zeroes on albums over 100 tracks (Well, 100 OR over, but I'll tweak that later). I also strip out 'featuring' in the title or artist, because it pollutes the artist list with unneeded duplicates, so I put those into their own tab, but I want those to show up in the filenames, so I have to output those if they are there. There's a few things I wish it could do, but it's not smart enough yet to do it right from that line. I'd need to actually write a REAL script.

This works well enough for now.

Fuck Chase

So, yeah, fuck Chase. I was laid off back in August and quickly signed up for unemployment. Getting a grand total for $450 a week, plus some $25 stimulus. Checks are sent in two week chunks, so $950 is a normal full check.

Obviously being unemployed means cash is limited, so these checks get cashed right quick. My Washington Mutual account was opened IN Washington. Redmond, Washington. But because Chase bought them out, their computer system somehow decided Chase bankers were more important than WaMu customers in states THEY NEVER HAD OFFICES IN, like California and Washington.

What this means is that every time I depoisted a check for the last 9 months, I had to wait nearly a week before it was in my account, because they had to mail it to Washington. It was fucking embarrassing going to into a bank I have an account with and being treated like a second class citizen.

Anyways, on one fateful day, I popped in the bank with a check, ironically the only full $950 check I ever got. It was about 10 minutes before they were closing on Saturday, October 3rd. I basically got the mail and rushed over to the bank. This money needed to be in ASAP. There was no line, so I was out quickly and I felt good.

Come 3 days later, no sign of it in my account. I call up Chase. They give me the runaround. Eventually I get put on the phone with the bank where I opened my account. Chaz was there and was the only helpful person in this entire charade. From my understanding, my closest Chase bank here in California HAS A RECORD OF ME DEPOSITING A $950 CHECK, but in mailing it to my original bank, it never arrived.

A few more phone calls over the next 3 days, and eventually Chaz gets me the money credited to my account while they research it and try to find it. I'm happy. Sure there's screw ups, but at least they can credit me while they look around.

Flash forward to this morning.

I wake up and grab my phone to check my emails. Thirteen? That's a bit more than usual. Five of them are overdraft fees and one is a low-balance reminder. "Greeeeaat," I think. "Someone stole my account info." I leap over to my computer to log on and see my transactions.

Subway
Target
Playstation

"Uhh, this is my stuff..."

Oh, look, a $950 charge. A reversal of my credit. Along with 5 $34 overdraft fees that somehow came AFTER my charges which cleared last night, where I withdrew $400 cash to pay a doctor. (Don't ask. That's another story)

I try calling the bank and their phone systems fail at connecting me. Realizing I need help, I call EDD, but their OPERATOR-DRIVEN Phone lines aren't connecting me to operators. I go to the bank, explain the whole situation, they say I need my receipt. I don't have it. It got thrown away. I go home and got the check stub, though, which Timothy at the bank said was better than the receipt.

I sit down and they start to get things ordered, or so I thought. Over the next few minutes, the woman, Lisa, was half on the phone and half talking to me, but never made it a point to indicate who she was talking to, so I had no clue if I needed to respond.

She questioned why my deposit was for $950 if the check amounts of $450 and $450 add to $900. She didn't even recognize it was an unemployment stub. Idiot. And you work at a bank? I explained it was a stimulus program and if you look at the photocopies of my other deposited checks, they are actually $475 and have a written bit of text saying $950 is the max amount written for these checks.

She makes a few comments about going to wait in line at the unemployment office to prove something or other. I explain the stub is IN MY HAND and YOUR COMPUTER RECORDS SHOW I DEPOSITED THE CHECK AT THIS VERY BRANCH. Apparently she doesn't give a shit. Then I get chastised for not keeping the receipt. Sadly, it's the only one I couldn't find. (I even dug through the trash originally to find it)

No receipt means no proof to her, so I can't get credited or anything. I also find out the date I got credited originally, October 5th, was the day Chase was researching my claim, not the actual date I made the deposit. (But who knows? Apparently Saturday deposits are processed on the Monday after, so it's a clusterfuck of idiocy) That doesn't phase her. She says I should have spent the last two months doing my OWN research.

Keep in mind, when I got the original credit I was promised it was taken care of and the problem WAS ON THEIR END. I had already dug up my apartment to get the stub and your records are just as reliable as my piece of paper. I explain to her it was never communicated to me that the 'research' credit meant I needed to do my own researching and she acts like a condescending cunt, explaining I should always cover my bases.

Unemployment's hotline is still busy as fuck, so I guess I have to actually go stand in the unemployment line, even though I have a job, BECAUSE OF CHASE. Fuck Chase.

In Summary:
I deposit check
Bank loses check
I inquire
I get credited after 3 days of phone calls
Bank takes back credit, plus $170 in fees in December
Teller blames me for not researching while Chase did a research for 2 months on the wrong transaction day.
I make angry blog post.