[photos] Your Monday moment of zen
Your Monday moment of zen.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 4:09 am Mon April 26 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad is subterranean homesick
In the weekend reacharound, I comment on the customer service failings of the Apple Tunes Store and of US Bank — A hassle but not hard to switch banks. Awfully hard to get from under iTunes, given my hardware profiles.
B&N Searches Bring Up E-books First Today — Andrew Wheeler with things that make you go “hmmm.”
The View from The View, or: the Baobab Perspective — Strange Maps wtih a curious view of New York City.
Deciphering the Rising Sun — Language Log on military linguistics in WWII and in Mr. Bush’s War.
?otD: Do you need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows?
4/26/2010
Writing time yesterday: none (chemo brain)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 9.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.8 (
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 7/10 (fatigue, on the pump)
Currently (re)reading: Thud! by Terry Pratchett
Posted: 4:06 am Mon April 26 2010 | Comments(1) |
[cancer] Infusion session eight, day three
Four more to go. As usual, more photos at the Flickr set.
© 2010, Shannon Page and Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Shannon Page and Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 3:12 pm Sun April 25 2010 | Comments(1) |
[cancer] Infusion session 8, days 1 and 2
What
Plus I am still reading, through the “reread old favorites” plan suggested by several folks. Ghu, what a relief. Discworld right now, in case you were wondering.
Posted: 7:46 am Sun April 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Sunday moment of zen
Your Sunday moment of zen.
Beach flotsam, Long Beach Peninsula, WA. © 2006, 2010, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 7:33 am Sun April 25 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad moves slowly on a Sunday morning
A reader reacts to Green — Mixed, and largely negative.
Birtherism, socialism, and craziness — Language Log on what real socialism is, versus the Right wing American scare word. I do disagree with their conclusions about polysemy, since the repurposing of the term is a cynical propaganda ploy as opposed to a genuine shift in meaning, but I am probably in the wrong here.
Doonesbury on right wing hate speech — For those of you who foolishly persist in thinking there’s some kind of equivalency in left-right rhetoric in this country.
Priming Christian Religious Concepts Increases Racial Prejudice — Positive correlations have been found between several self-report measures of religiousness and racial prejudice; however, no experiment has yet examined the direct effect of religion on racial attitudes. Hmm. Is this a function of reinforcing one’s tribalism? In my observation most churches (and religions) are very heavily racially segregated. Or am I wrong?
“Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black” – Tim Wise — Yep, no racism here. Just good, honest Real Americans standing up for their rights.
?otD: What’s your favorite comfort (re)reading?
4/25/2010
Writing time yesterday: none (chemo brain)
Body movement: brief suburban walk later
Hours slept: 9.0 (interruoted)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (scale is out of batteries)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 7/10 (fatigue, on the pump)
Currently (re)reading: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Posted: 7:30 am Sun April 25 2010 | Comments(3) |
[personal] Apple iTunes fail, US Bank fail, the rain of crap continues in drizzle mode
So thanks to some recent credit card number changes, my iTunes account was no longer charging correctly. A day or two ago I put my US Bank debit card number in. iTunes rejected the card as having a zip code mismatch. I’ve had this zip code since 2000, and this debit card since 2004, without changing anything.
As it happens, this occurred twice around the beginning of April, with two small merchants. Both called me back, we retried several times, then I gave them a credit number, after which I sent money from my checking account to the credit card issuer to cover the cost. At the time I called US Bank, who said that the debit transactions had come through and been authorized, with holds on my checking account. They said it was a “temporary” problem with the authorization process. I could see the holds in my online banking, as today I can see the holds for two small iTunes charges. Yet Apple doesn’t show the charge in my purchase history, since they’ve been declined for the zip code error, which is evidence of fraud in a card-not-present transaction.
I know exactly what’s going on here. In my Day Jobbe, I deal from time to time with merchant processors, which are the companies such as Chase Paymentech, who take the credit card numbers from business, validate available funds, and authorize the transactions. I actually understand something of the nuts and bolts of credit card processing, debit card processing, ACH processing, NACHA and CISP certifications, etc. Clearly whatever processor Apple’s iTunes store is using, as well as the two small merchants I dealt with, has a data mismatch with US Bank’s records. BN.com had no trouble with my debit card last week in an identical situation, so it’s only one of the merchant processors, though of course I don’t know which one since that part of the transactional process is transparent to consumers.
So I call US Bank for help, who tells me there’s nothing they can do since the charges show as authorized. Fail. All they can do is “talk to the merchant.” In fairness, they have launched a research request into the problem.
I tried to call Apple for help, per this note on the iTunes help Web site:
Guess what, they tell you phone support is available, but they don’t provide any phone numbers. If you call the Apple Store phone number, it refers you back to the Web site. If you stay on the line insisting to talk to a person, it transfers you to eternal hold. (Slightly over 30 minutes as I write this.) Fail again. Though frankly, if I did get someone at Apple, I’m fairly sure there’s nothing they could do about a merchant processor decline.
So I have a transaction that fails at the retail end, ties up my money at the banking end, and neither the retailer nor the bank can help me. Apple provides me with bogus help information on their Web site, something they really need to deal with as that is shit-poor customer service. Meanwhile, US Bank says it’s out of their control.
Guess what, guys? I can’t solve this problem. Even if I could identify which merchant processor is being used, they wouldn’t take my call. I’m not a contracting party to the transaction between Apple and US Bank.
So my choices are not use my debit card for such transactions, which is retarded, or move all my banking to another institution, which is a hassle. But how the hell do I solve this?
Apple: fix your customer service info on the iTunes help site. It’s not just misleading, it’s flat wrong, and that tends to, you know, piss off your customers. Also, the transfer to eternal hold is deeply customer unfriendly.
US Bank: fix your merchant processor relationship or lose my business. I shouldn’t have to chase something like this.
Universe: Please stop sending me shit, even in small packages like this one.
Posted: 1:34 pm Sat April 24 2010 | Comments(10) |
[language] Angina and vagina
In my idiolect, “angina” and “vagina” have always rhymed. However, the cardiology team that’s been working on my mother (who presumably know of what they speak) pronounced “angina” with a short, unstressed /i/ in the middle, so instead of “an-j-eye-nah” they say “an-j-in-uh”.
(In case you were wondering about yesterday’s QOTD.)
Posted: 11:39 am Sat April 24 2010 | Comments(5) |
[personal|cancer] Medical updates from several quarters
After much further fire drilling and sheer confusion,
At this point, I wouldn’t send a dog to Kaiser Sunnyside for cardiac care, or anything else, really. Even their patient relations people were pretty hopeless. The fact is my mom did get the care she needed, but the dreadfully bad medical communications policies, rank unprofessionalism of the hospitalists, and the financial impacts of their poor decisionmaking (which will cost my fixed-income mother an additional $800 out of pocket) add up to a piss poor healthcare experience. The actual medical care, when they could find their arses with both hands, was fine. But the wrapper around it was somewhere between Keystone Kops and nigh-criminal neglect.
Meanwhile, Mother of the Child’s misadventures due to an OHSU procedural error have racked up about $30,000 in bills, of which about $2,000 is flowing to me as patient responsibility. Discussions will be underway shortly with their business, and doubtless legal, team.
I am in day two of infusion session eight, and so far am much less miserable than the past few sessions. Knock on wood. More to come as time and energy permits, but this going fairly smoothly thus far. As I write, I have about 26 more hours on the pump.
We are trying for the third time to have a family celebration of
Me, laying low.
Posted: 11:35 am Sat April 24 2010 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Beach bouquet, Long Beach Peninsula, WA. © 2006, 2010, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Posted: 8:35 am Sat April 24 2010 | Comments(0) |