Dial a shot, and watch out for that T-Rex!

Posted on April 21, 2009

“Dial-a-shot”/”dial-a-drink” is a tradition I started when I lived in Reno, and it’s caught on with a few friends. I picked up on it from some bartenders there. They’d call other bars and toast the bartender on the other end with a shot. I’ve adopted dial-a-shot as a way to keep in touch with friends in far off places. It’s a good way to quickly touch base with friends, and share a moment without necessarily having a huge long conversation (though many times it does turn into that anyway). With Jerry, the dial-a-shot call is usually preceeded by a warning text, letting the other know that a dial-a-drink is on its way. Apparently I left my phone in the car last night and missed a dial-a-shot from Jer. But the cascade of texts he had sent was priceless. I laughed my butt off reading these this morning. Keep in mind, all these were sent between 10:05 and 10:24 pm last night:

10:05 Nothing like doing homework till 3 in the morning, working for 9 hours, skipping lunch to do hw, class for 3 hours, and coming home to a nice Wendy’s meal.

10:05 Want to take a shot?

10:14 Well, fine. I don’t need you to take a shot with me. I can take a shot all by my lonesome. I don’t need social interaction to take a shot.

10:15 Aww. Who am I kidding? I have no idea how to take a shot without you, Chris! Call me! Take a shot with me! The b.a.c. of my night depends on you!

10:18 Okay, I’ve thought it over. What if I die tomorrow and never get to take a shot again? That would be sad.

10:20 You’d be all “why, oh why didn’t I take a shot with Jerry?! I didn’t know that cloned T-rex was going to escape and kill him!”

10:22 Wow. You must really be out of earshot of your phone. Even Gandhi would have taken a shot with me by now to shut me up.

10:23 Wait. Maybe the T-rex got you!

10:24 Why! Why didn’t I take a shot with you during class? I didn’t know the T-rex would kill you!

To add to it, I found out today that Jer initially wanted to use “velociraptor” instead of “t-rex,” but velociraptor was too hard to spell and too long for a text message. Though I’d have loved to partake in a dial-a-shot with him last night, I’m almost glad I didn’t because this was just too funny!

annualcreditreport.$#@%

Posted on April 21, 2009

Before moving to Portland, I worked at UC@#. Apparently, payroll overpaid me by $85 on my last paycheck. Keep in mind that I was on salary and never filled out time sheets, so if I was overpaid, it wasn’t my doing. Many months after I moved, I got word that UC@# was trying to recoup the $85. They started sending mail to my old address. Luckily, I still knew the person at that address, or I would have never known. (Of course, to this day I still have the same cell number as I did back then…but no one from payroll ever tried just calling it.) OK, now that I’ve given that background information, I give you this timeline:

02/06/08 Check for $85 stamped by (name omitted) at UC@# central cashier’s office
02/08/08 Check stamped by Bank of America
02/11/08 Check cleared and deduction of $85 posted to my checking account
04/08/09 (Yes, ‘09) I do my thrice-yearly credit check from annualcreditreport.com and discover a “potentially negative item” on my credit report…UC@# had sent a collections agency after me for $85!

OK, I was upset. And that’s putting it lightly. The last time I was even 1 day late paying a bill was in 2001, and that solitary mark on my credit is slated to expire this July. The thought of having a seven year blight on my credit report because my old employer screwed up and overpaid me by a measly $85 was infuriating. Especially because of what transpired. I had paid this bill back on 02/06/08 but letters still came in the mail from UC@# requesting the $85. I called UC@#, explained that I had already paid, and got confirmation that the money had been received in the central cashier’s office. I even called back a few days later to confirm. The letters stopped coming, so I assumed everything had been taken care of. Wrong. 14 months after paying the bill I discovered that I had been reported to a collections agency. Now add this date to the timeline:

06/19/08 Date my account is sent to collections

Yes, that’s June, a full 4+ months after my check had been cashed! I immediately filed a dispute with Experian, the credit reporting agency I got my report from. And then, you guessed it, I called up UC@# to raise some hell. I spoke to the very person who stamped my check on 02/06/08 and whom I had confirmed things with after paying the “bill.” She was useless, and could only tell me what I already knew…that they received the check on 02/06/08. Then I called the actual collections agency, and to my surprise I spoke with a remarkably helpful woman. She gave me the date my account was sent to her, and the phone number of the department that had sent it. It didn’t match the number for (name omitted) that I had been calling, and it was in a different department than the central cashier who handled the original check. I called it, and got some more information. Add this to the timeline:

11/23/08 Date that money was transferred from the general fund (aka central cashier) to my account to finally reach a $0 balance.

OK, putting the timelines together that’s:

02/06/08 Check for $85 stamped by (name omitted) at UC@# central cashier’s office
02/08/08 Check stamped by Bank of America
02/11/08 Check cleared and deduction of $85 posted to my checking account
06/19/08 Date my account is sent to collections
11/23/08 Date that money was transferred from the general fund (aka central cashier) to my account to finally reach a $0 balance.
04/08/09 (Yes, ‘09) I do my thrice-yearly credit check from annualcreditreport.com and discover a “potentially negative item” on my credit report…UC@# had sent a collections agency after me for $85!

So, it took some genius at UC@# over 9 months to transfer money from one account at UC@#, to another account at UC@#. To reiterate, it took someone 9+ months to apply funds I had paid to my account balance. Out of curiosity, I made (yet another call) to the UC@# central cashier, this time anonymously and to a different person. I pretended I was mailing a check to pay off an account balance and asked how long it should take for the payment to be applied to my account. Answer: “About a week.”

Bull !%*$

I requested copies of the cleared check from my bank, letters from the collection agency specifying when UC@# sent my account to them, and memos from UC@$ with demonstrating the >9 month lag time. I sent everything I had to Experian to try to dispute this mar on my credit. Thankfully, this (part of the) story has a happy ending. I got a letter from Experian today claiming that, after investigating, this mark has been deleted from my credit report. Damn good thing too, someone’s head was going to roll if this didn’t get resolved soon, or satisfactorily.

Unfortunately, I still need to go through this with the two other credit reporting agencies. The issue is that you are allowed to get 1 credit report a year for free from each of the three agencies. I need to access my credit reports with those companies in order to make disputes about them, but I don’t want to use up my free reports so soon in the year. Now I have to find ways to dispute items on those companies’ credit reports without officially requesting my credit report from them. Argh…what a PIA!

Lesson: Go to annualcreditreport.com and check your credit report every few months. It won’t stop stupid crap from happening, but it’s better to catch these things yourself and fix them before you try applying for credit somewhere.

The bear is finished!

Posted on April 19, 2009

My friend Lynell had a baby last month. I’ve been working on a crocheted baby blanket and teddy bear for the “wee one” just about as long as she was pregnant. They are finally finished, and I packaged them up Friday. They should be in the mail by Monday. I figured the venture would be a success if the kid got these by the time he turned 18, so I figure I’m way ahead of myself by getting the package to him at 1 month old. Yes, the eyes are a bit creepy, but I didn’t know what to do for them. The bear is for a baby, so I couldn’t use buttons. Maybe black instead of green would have made him look less crazed, but oh well. At least his psycho eyes match his scarf. (And because I know someone out there is wondering, yes, I gave the bear a tail.)

“Free”…for only $9.95!

Posted on April 11, 2009

Today was tax filing day. Oregon’s tax office provides links to three services that will allow you to file your OR state taxes for “free.” One of them is Taxslayer.com, another TurboTax, and then one I can’t remember. I chose Taxslayer.com, and went through the entire process of entering all the information and W2s and such. At the end of the process, I was congratulated for using the free tax preparation service, and prompted to file the return. At this point, I was asked to enter my credit card information to pay the $9.95 “e-filing fee.” ****! I was misled in thinking this was a free way to file. Sure, the online tax prep service was free, so Taxslayer.com can claim it offers free tax prep services. But it then charges $9.95 to actually e-file the return, and doesn’t give you the option to file it any other way. Grr…I scrapped the whole Taxslayer operation and switched to TurboTax Free Edition, which actually WAS free, just as advertised.

Early Harvest!

Posted on April 8, 2009

Ryan was doing some yardwork today, and while he was mowing the lawn, I poked around in a garden bed I planted last Fall, but then never tended to. There was all this greenery popping up, and I reached down and picked one of the plants. Turns out, it was a carrot! I planted these seeds last Fall, they’ve survived the winter, and have started growing. These were “little finger carrots” and aren’t supposed to get very big. This one was about 3-4 inches, and about the thichness of my thumb-before we ate it. I pulled it before its prime, but it was orange and sweet. Looks like we’ll have carrots before we planned! Woo hoo!

© Copyright 2009 Chris Brow • Powered by Wordpress • Using Detour Wordpress Theme created by Brian Gardner.