Month: July 2005

Feeling the financial squeeze from competition and burgeoning interest rates, credit card companies are now looking for ways to squeeze you even more.

Christy and I received this attention first-hand from one of our credit card companies. Bank One was recently purchased by Chase Manhattan Bank, which sports far more draconian policies on accounts, including a penalty rate which scales up depending on your balance. If you have more than $1200 on your credit card balance with Chase, you’re facing a minimum $35.00 late fee with any late payment (plus additional penalties per $1000 in credit), and an immediate rate hike to twenty-five percent interest.

We recently went on vacation, and were late on a payment. We saw the new 25% rate reflected on our next statement from our “new” credit-card company.

Christy called to complain, informing them that if they didn’t lower theinterest rate, we’d switch banks.

They refused to budge. Looking at our high balance, and our minimum-payment activity on that account (we have other bills we’ve been paying down on), they wouldn’t deal. At all.

We opened a new credit line with a new bank from one of the many offers we receive every week, and will be closing our Chase account on Monday.

Caveat Emptor applies to your credit, as with anything else. I’d rather deal with a slightly-diminished credit score for a few months due to opening a new charge account than deal with the pain of a 25% interest rate on our credit balance.

Buyer, beware. Watch your own bills to make sure they don’t sock it to you!

Its been pretty quiet around here lately…

Is everyone feeling ok?

Yes, I have come out of hiding.. for like 30 seconds..

I finally have my internet up and running after the big move. I’ve moved to another part of montgomery county and its been fun but exhausting.

Special thanks to “Rowan” for doing a lions share of the work moving my stuff into a moving van – will poset more later. I’ve been reading.. chack out the Harry potter spoiler link… it may indeed catch up to my SITH post.. eek!

Just found a new site today: it compares the number of web hits for any two topics. I decided to figure out who is more popular: Harry Potter or the Bible?

The results:

Googlefight: Bible vs. “Harry Potter”

As of today, the Bible edges out Harry Potter, with 22.6 million vs. 18.6 million pages mentioning the word or phrase. With Potter approaching Lord of the Rings numbers of sales (227 million copies sold worldwide now, 11 million of number 6 sold in just the first 3 days of release, vs. Tolkien’s 300 million individual copies (100 million copies of the complete trilogy, roughly)), I wonder who’ll win in the long-term?

Though if you do the math, it means Rowling has averaged some 40-million-ish sales per book. So she’s got a long way to go to 100 million, but by now, she has way more fortune than Tolkien ever amassed in his lifetime… most of his sales were posthumous.

Rowling… You go, girl!

All right, first I gotta fill a paragraph with some drivel that will go on the main page so no one sees something inadvertently. I’m so livid right now at Opie And Anthony… they dropped a MAJOR bomb about this book yesterday before I could change the channel. It was if someone had walked up to you before Empire Strikes Back and said “Dude, Vader’s Luke father.” So aside from my seething anger and rage at that…

SPOILER AREA You’ve been warned.

“There is still good in him… I can feel it.”

That’s all I can manage right now. Sorry…

Jen Gagne posted a link to a nifty little psychological quiz to tell you about yourself. The sad thing is, as negative as mine came out, I’m not at all surprised by the results. “Tell me something I don’t know” is my overall reaction…

If you try to post your own results, you may be a little disappointed. My blog strips possibly dangerous HTML from comments, which includes the table formatting used by this quiz. You might have better luck posting just your summary paragraphs. Mine read:

Stability results were moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Orderliness results were low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun-seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.

Extraversion results were high which suggests you are overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense too often of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

trait snapshot:
craves attention, messy, open, rash, irritable, likes large parties, low self control, weird, fragile, does not like to be alone, emotionally sensitive, worrying, depressed, heart over mind, does not respect authority, dependent, not rule-conscious, not good at saving money, more interested in relationships than intellectual pursuits, likes to fit in, very social, frequently second guesses self, phobic, suspicious, not careful, outgoing, vain, compassionate, aggressive, likes to make fun, hates to lose

Well, it’s official: there will be no such thing as “regular TV” as of January, 2009. The only way to get traditional analog signals after that day will be to have a cable to your house, or be on satellite TV.

While a part of me mourns for the death of the primitive manipulation of carrier waves which have brought entertainment to our houses for a century, a bigger part is happy with the decision. When you carry a signal digitally, you can use nifty techniques like compression which allow you to fit a great deal more channels into a very limited amount of frequency. Today, the portion of the broadband spectrum sucked up by television signals is enormous. That’s the signal band which best penetrates solid objects; that’s part of the reason it was chosen in the first place. The day the last analog signal dies may mark the beginning of an era of ubiquitous wireless networks, true competition in mobile phone networks (right now you can only have two carriers in any given area, period), and more spectrum availability for personal use (home wireless networks and phones, etc.)

But gone will be the day that the home hobbyist can purchase a cathode-ray tube and a crystal to pick up television signals, unless he has also purchased a subscription to a satellite or cable provider. You’ll need to add a digital decryption device which honors the “broadcast flag” (http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/)to the mix in order to do so legally.

I can’t help but wonder if FM and AM spectrums may be the next to go? I have fond memories of building my first crystal radio. I wonder if my kids’ kids will.

Spammers have shut me down. My mail server cannot cope with a million and a half “Joe Job” bounce messages. I’ve temporarily shut down my mail server, and I may yet have to turn off the web server.

Somebody out there is really ramping this pain up. I can’t handle 100,000 emails an hour.

Desparately yours, Matt

So does anyone have any guesses or comments about the new book?

Who’s the half-blood prince? My guess is it’s not a character we’ve really met yet. Someone from the past.

Who dies? Albus? My personal guess will be the Weasley Twins.

Do Harry and Snape throw down this book? Any hook-ups? What about Grawp?

Whaddya think?

My $.02 Weed

<!–start rant–>
Does anyone else here dislike the new Amoco Ultimate commercials? The ones that go something like this:
You’re merging onto a busy highway. You know you need to go fast to merge, but will your gasoline help you or hurt you. If you have Amoco Ultimate, you’re golden. (boring product info) If you don’t have Amoco Ultimate, hopefully the people stuck behind you as you stop on the exit ramp waiting for the opening won’t get too mad.

I HATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATHEATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATE THAT COMMERCIAL.

Now let me tell you how I really feel…
Now if you’re using shine from the hills to run your car, MAYBE then Amoco Ultimate might help your car, but no more than Shell’s 87-octane gas would. Maybe I’ll go buy an old Pinto, put some Amoco Ultimate in it, and then go drag race some 911s?
<!– end rant–> Weed