Credit update

[muckefuck]

When I got back to my lonely little garret last night (it was only 4:40, but already dark--FREAKIN' NORTHERN HEMISPHERE!), I found a letter from CapitalOne, a letter from Discover®, and a phone message from Providian. CapitalOne was telling me they had closed my account--good riddance, fuckers! Discover® just gave me fifteen times the credit limit I had with you! Providian's anti-fraud department had called to "verify recent charges to your account". I thought, I wonder if this has anything to with my shopping binge two days ago. Sure enough! I asked the operator if it was the amount of the purchases that had tripped their suspicions, the fact that they were out-of-state, or both and she couldn't tell me. I suppose I'll find out if I ever LOSE ALL SENSE OF RESTRAINT some weekend in Chicago.

I had turned off ceiling fan while I was away and ended up staring at the ungodly amount of lint that had collected on it all through my evening phone calls until I could grab a towel and a trashbag and clean it off. At least it was true lint and not that slimy stuff that cannot be named that I know is lurking around for me to stumble upon in a barefoot moment. Upshot of the calls was that I confirmed my sister's Good News and made plans to see Monshu. He turned down ottr4bear's offer to meet us at Buddies tonight so that, hopefully, I can rest up and get over this sore throat in time to sip coffee at Meinl tomorrow and check out Bear Night next weekend. Are you coming this time, spookyfruit, you big pansy?

Comments

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

Speaking of anti-fraud departments, a word of warning about Discover. We've been pretty happy with Discover overall, since getting money back is always nice, but whatever anti-fraud algorithm they're using seems to be very sensitive to on-line purchases. Almost every time we've bought anything substantial on-line, we've gotten a call from Discover, which is annoying but understandable. Unfortunately, it's apparently their policy to lock your account until they're able to reach you to confirm the suspicious transactions, which is a potential problem if you're only carrying one credit card. Luckily, this has only happened a few times, and we always had another card to use while we straightened things out with Discover.

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

My only experience with Discover is that they called me every day for 2 weeks trying to reach some entirely unrelated person about their account. My answering machine says my full name twice, but I guess they can't just take it at face value. Since the number they left was not toll-free I did not waste my money calling them. Finally they called when I was home, I explained the issue and they promised to stop calling. They called again the next morning (it was a weekend, I think) and I much-less-coolly explained the problem again.

I do wonder what happened to the poor lady they were trying to reach and whether she was rendered temporarily insolvent by their incompetence.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

(it was only 4:40, but already dark--FREAKIN' NORTHERN HEMISPHERE!)

You mean FREAKIN' EASTERN EDGE OF THE TIME ZONE! One thing I miss about Michigan-- the sun stayed out till something definable as "evening" even in the depth of winter, and till nice and late in the summer. (It's rumored that it rose proportionately later in the morning-- which I suppose would matter, if there were some reason to be awake early in the morning.)

If anyone wants to get Chicago shifted to EST, I'd sign the petition. Who cares that the EST is already artificially overextended? (As I understand it, Chicago is actually pretty close to the center of the "natural" Central Time Zone, where the sun hits its high point at noon.) Are we Slaves of Nature or Masters of Our Destiny?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I was happy to grow up on CST. If it'd been EST, I would've missed so much good television! I used to see the commercials saying "11:30/10:30 Central & Mountain" and wonder how people on the coasts ever got any sleep.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

True enough, in our childhood. (Though, conversely, 10:30 just isn't "late night", no matter how many late night shows go into that time slot here. In EST, watching something like Saturday Night Live was like the final frontier.) But no longer a big deal these days, IMHO-- even pre-TiVo, I time-shifted whatever I watched via VCR anyway.

I wonder if my niece and nephews will even be able to understand what it was like when missing a show meant missing it, for anything from months to forever. Not "catch it on the western feed in a few hours", not "does anyone have a tape?", not "pick up the DVD when it comes out" (and certainly not "download it from Kazaa"), but "hope that it not only gets shown again, but that you notice in the TV listings when it does". Ditto for movies, of course-- miss it in the theaters, and your best hope was to see it, cut to pieces for time and language, when it showed up on network TV (a Big Event). For classic films, make that Sunday afternoon cut even more thoroughly to pieces. (Though I may be the only person of my generation to have gotten to watch "Citizen Kane" without knowing in advance what Rosebud was, thanks to such a showing back in the 70's.)