This is me, playing Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend on ukulele. I was left alone in the house for a few hours yesterday, so I busted out Garage Band and recorded. Vocals, background vocals, ukulele, bass, and drums (my chest and the bathroom counter top) are all me. It's sloppy. Next time I'll use the metronome, even though it distracts me and it's my least favorite kind of nome.
I'd really like to do more of these, except as multi-track videos like all the cool kids do on YouTube, except I can't figure out how to do that.I was reading an article on consumerist.com today about how various banks are introducing new fees and tighter restrictions. As I got in to the article, I noticed that most of the examples given were for store credit cards - you know, the type of credit card that you can only use at a particular store - like a Sears card or a Macy's card.
It amazes me that people still use these. Most of them have some kind of ridiculous rate, like 22%. There's no cash back, miles rewards, or any of that stuff. They often have low limits and, again, they can only be used at that one store. Why would you use that instead of a regular card like a Visa or Mastercard or something?
The only reason I can really think of that's somewhat justifiable is that you don't have good enough credit to get a regular card AND you're so broke that you're coming up with creative ways to get stuff done - like getting tires at Sears so you can put it on the card. Ignoring the fact that it's a really bad solution, sometimes it's the only solution and I get that.
So beyond the economic bottom of the barrel, is there another reason for having a store credit card that I'm missing?
Consumers are kind of dense.
By the way, if you're using a credit card that doesn't give you miles or points or dollars for your usage, then you need to switch now. If you do some research, you'll find that whatever your rate is on your current card, there's a probably a card out there that can match it and will give you some sort of incentive back in the form of miles or points. YOU ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR THIS STUFF, because the cost of it gets passed on to the merchants, who in turn adjust their prices accordingly. the only difference between you and me is that I'm closer to getting my money's worth.
For me, my favorite card is my American Express Blue card, which in about a year or so of use has gotten me around $700 in free travel (airline tickets, car rentals, etc..). I also have a Capital One card which has a really high limit and decent interest rate, for huge stuff.
2000: At a party at a friend's house. Drunk. Told Adam he should shut off all the electricity at midnight (remember, Y2K scare?). He did, but he broke one when he turned it back on, so most of the house was without electricity after that.
2001: I don't remember! I can't think of it. I'd have just moved to Seattle a few months earlier. It would have been two months before the earthquake, and before an epic road trip I took to Vegas with my friend Steve. What the fuck did I do for New Year's though? DAMMIT. I might not have done anything.
2002: In Orange County hanging out with a good friend who I also had a suuuuuuuuper-mega crush on AND who I had *ahem* relations *ahem* with at a scooter rally earlier in the year. We went to see Deke Dickerson, Big Sandy, and The Paladins at uh... some club in Hollywood. The rest of the evening is a blur.
2003: I had to dig in to my LiveJournal to jog my memory on this one. I was single this year. I went to karaoke at the Little Red Hen with a bunch of peeps that I'd worked with at Rivals.com. I met a girl who I was totally in to and she gave me her number! We went on one date a few days later and then she got back together with her old boyfriend.
2004: I had to go to LiveJournal for this one too, because I was so fucking wasted I've completely forgotten the evening. Apparently, though, Susie and I went to see Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys at the Tractor in Seattle, which is definitely something I'd have done. Anyway, we apparently drunk-dialed the dog (we had an answering machine and knew he'd be able to hear us), and some other peeps. Sorry, peeps. And dog.
2005: Poker night at Mike and Katie's in Sammamish with Otis, Kari, and Susie.
2006: Seeing David Cross and Zach Galifinaikis at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco with Otis, Kari, and Susie. David Cross came on way late so he only had 20 minutes, 15 of which he spent dealing with a heckler.
2007: Seeing Hepcat and the Aggrolites at Slim's in San Francisco with Susie, Paul, Janelle, and Dano.
2008: On a boat on the Nile River in Cairo with Kendal, Nadia, and some other friends. Even though Kendal and I had (fake, at the time) wedding rings on, the boat driver still wouldn't let us sit too close together. At midnight we politely shook hands.
2009: At a blackjack table with Kendal and a soldier that was about to deploy. Can't really articulate the glory of this night, but I know my wife gets it.
That's a pretty solid set! Three states, two countries, many bands... Not bad at all. Tonight's looking good too. We're going to just walk down to Waikiki and drop in on one of our favorite bars. It's right across from the beach so we'll be able to watch the fireworks at midnight. Then, we're coming home to party with the dog and watch Jersey Shore.
It's been a pretty great year for us. We moved to Hawaii!
Today, a set of phone books was delivered to us for the THIRD TIME since we moved in to this apartment, which was about five months ago. It's no longer one book like when I was a kid. It's THREE.
There's the O‘ahu Yellow Pages, the O‘ahu White Pages, and something that I've never heard of called the O‘ahu Mobile Companion. You can tell which one is the Mobile Companion because instead of being 8x10x1, this one is about 7x8x1.5 which, if my math is right, makes it BIGGER. Together, they're about eight inches thick, and I estimate you can probably get around 20 sets of them from one small tree.
The books themselves are a marvel of marketing overload. They come in a nice big plastic non-biodegradable bag which advertises various things, including an insurance company that carries one car, two motorcycle, and one renters policy for me, which is all the things I can possibly insure. Each book is full of the regular type of phone book ads, but these also have little detachable fridge magnets stuck to the covers with ads on them. There are ads stamped on the sides of the pages, so when the book is closed and the pages are stacked neatly, there's an ad. There are ads printed on the spines of the books. The backs are full-page ads. The fronts have little ads too.
The bag touts "environmental responsibility" and tells me to recycle my old phone books. That'd be a good idea, except Hawaii does not have recycling as part of its waste management services. There is a recycling center on our block, but I think they only take cans and bottles. So, in order to do the environmentally responsible thing, I need to throw these things in the car and drive them somewhere, burning probably the same amount of fossil fuel that was used to get them to me in the first place.
I haven't used a phone book since, I estimate, 1997. That's when I first got a dedicated internet connection in my home and could look up stuff more easily. Now, I know not everyone is on the cutting edge of technology, but for fuck's sake it's almost 2010. Just about everyone I know has the ability to look up anything that you'd find in the phone book, in a third of the time, on their phone. They can then have the phone dial the number for them, and in some cases have the phone hold a conversation with the person who answers.
Also - and here's the sweet part - I DON'T HAVE A FUCKING PHONE LINE from the phone company. I have a cell phone and I have a number on Skype which rings to my laptop. I don't even know if this apartment has a phone jack in it anywhere.
This is like junk mail times 10,000. So annoying.
This isn't over, Hawaii Telecom. If I have to drive these things anywhere, it's going to be to your office, and they're going to be on fire.
Lately, I've been paying close attention to the day-to-day activities on my debit card. I use a two-account system where all of the money that's used to pay bills and rent and stuff like that is in one account and whatever is left over goes in to another. The latter account is the one I use for stuff like food, gas, toys, and whatever else is not a recurring or billed expense. This system has worked well for me for years. It keeps me from bouncing checks or not having enough money to pay bills on time, and it also has some forced saving built in to it. The mad money account is great because at any time I can check my balance and know that that's how much money I need to live on until I get paid again. The sort of object of the game is to have that account end up at about $0 the day I get paid, so I check it several times a day when I get close to the end of a pay period.
Lately, I've noticed that there are times where there is not nearly as much in that account as there should be. I'll check later, and the available balance will have increased. The reason for this is HOLDS.
For those of you not familiar with the credit card processing industry (I did tech support for credit card software for a few years early in my career, and I remember a thing or two), the transactions work like this:
If, for some reason, the merchant doesn't settle up with the bank for a few days, the hold will often "drop" and the funds will again be available in your account. The merchant can also in some cases change the amount to something lower than what was held, and when they settle that will get rectified properly.
It is common, in some cases, for a merchant to authorize a higher amount than the purchase price. For example, your bill at a restaurant might be $100, but they will authorize for $120, to account for a tip. If you then sign for $110 (you cheap bastard), then that is the amount that will be charged, and the extra $10 will just be magically available again.
There are rules around how and when merchants can do something like this, but they vary from processor to processor (when I worked in this industry, there were well over 100 processors), and also from merchant type to merchant type (a restaurant may be able to do this while a retail establishment probably can not). It's not very transparent, but the important thing to remember as a consumer is this: You have no knowledge of, and no control over, what a merchant can do with your credit card once you hand it to them. Certainly you can resolve any conflicts or shady behavior with many long Muzak-laden calls to your bank, credit card company, the merchant themselves, etc.., but that's all retro-active and usually by the time you're aware that there's a problem you need to address, you've bounced some other transactions or your budget has been shot.
This is what's been happening to me lately. As I mentioned above, I keep close tabs on what's in my account and how many days left until it is replenished. One day I may look at it and see there's $500 and five days until pay day, and that tells me I can spend $100 per day on average until I get paid. If I then go out to eat with my wife and spend $100, then mentally, I know I'm cashed for the day or I have to dip in to tomorrow's budget. Whatever the case, I know that I've got $400 left until pay day.
This would be all well and good, except for holds; specifically holds for much more than the amount I agreed to, and this has been the root of my problems lately.
It started the week of Thanksgiving, which was a particularly long pay period for me. I get paid on the 15th and last day of each month. If the pay day falls on a weekend or holiday, it gets done the last business day before. That means that sometimes I get paid on the 13th, and then not again until the 31st of a month. That's what happened in November (the 30th, actually), so the card was a little tight toward the end.
We'd gone out to dinner at an awesome Japanese Kobe steakhouse/hibachi place in Waikiki. The bill before tip was around $110. Afterward, we stopped for ice cream at a Haagen-Dazs, and all was right with the world.
A few days later, we were getting ready to go out to dinner again, and because it was near the end of the pay period, I checked my balance and found that it was way, waaaaaaay lower than I expected. It was low enough that I became really concerned that my card number had been stolen or otherwise abused. I called my bank, E*Trade (who, by the way, have the best customer service that I have ever gotten from an India-based service center), and asked them to tell me what was held on the account. To my surprise, both the steakhouse and Haagen-Dazs had each put holds on my card for DOUBLE the amount of the pre-tip bill. Actually, each place had put two individual holds - that is, the steakhouse put two holds of $110 each, and Haagen-Dazs had put two holds of like $12 each. I thought this was a little weird to be human error, but what pissed me off more was that here I was still a couple of days from getting paid and instead of having $150 in my account, I had $26.
I'd done everything right as far as managing my account and budgeting, but I still got screwed. Sure, the money would eventually settle up, but what about in the meantime? What if I had to put some gas in my car? What if I was a single mom and I had to feed my kids? What if I was counting on that money being there on that day so I could purchase medicine or something? How in the fuck can someone hold MY MONEY that I haven't authorized them to hold, without any sort of compensation?
I originally chalked it up to the Holidays and maybe inexperienced clerks/wait staff or whatever, but I noticed today that it's happened again. We went to Bucca di Beppo on Christmas before going to the movies. The pre-tax bill was $80 and I wrote it up with tip for $100. Yesterday, the balance in the account was around $150 (lower than I was expecting) and the Beppo transaction was not showing up yet. Today, it's $230 and Beppo does show up there, with the correct amount charged. Like the others, they'd double-authorized and my money was tied up there until they settled.
This is fucking bullshit.
First of all, I have to question what's changed in credit card processing that made this practice start becoming more common. I've never noticed double holds before. Sure, I'm used to a restaurant or a gas pump authorizing a little bit more than the check until everything is settled, but double is fucking nuts. It makes me wonder if the credit card companies have started cracking down on the practice of authorizing more than the check and this is the way the restaurants can be sure that there will be enough in your account to cover the tip?
Another possibility I wonder about is if this is a Hawaii/bad economy thing. A waitress at one of our favorite Waikiki places recently told me about how they often get stiffed by foreign tourists who are bad at figuring out exchange rates or how our currency works. They'll leave what they think is the right amount on the table, but in reality it's not even enough to cover the check. I suppose similar mistakes could occur when a card comes in to play. I know that in a lot of cases, whenever something goes wrong with a credit card transaction in a restaurant (forgot to sign, wrong copy left, etc...), then the credit card company will absolutely not pay more than the amount of the actual check, so the tip is gone. Perhaps it is the servers that are doing the double-authorization, to make sure their tips are safe?
Something else I wonder about, if this is tip-related, is why Haagen-Dasz, a stand at the counter and order ice cream place, would do this. As I recall, they don't even provide a space on their credit card receipt to write in a tip.
Whatever the reason for this, it blows. I hate having to check my balance every single time we get the idea to go out to eat or do something fun. I also hate being really careful about my spending only to have to eat Ramen for two days at the end of my pay period just because some restaurant needs to hang on to my money for a while.
The answer, I guess, is cash. Fortunately, my bank allows me to withdraw cash from any ATM without ever paying ATM fees (on my type of account, E*Trade actually refunds any ATM fees that I incur, usually within hours). Most places have an ATM in or near them, so that's not a problem. It sucks for the economy, though, because I don't usually take the cash in my wallet in to consideration when figuring out if I have enough money to go out. I also tend to be a lot more generous when I tip on my credit card because I like nice round numbers and it's easy to do the math when I have a pen and piece of paper with half of it already done. With cash, I'm less predictable. The amount I tip (if I go out at all), can be affected by how much I have left in my wallet, or what denominations of bills I get as change from the bill (a good server knows to give you enough ones small bills to leave 20%, instead of just giving you the fewest bills possible).
I want to be a good consumer. I want to put money in to the local economy by going out to eat and enjoying this beautiful place where I live. I want to support people who work hard in these places by giving them generous tips. But, when doing these things inconveniences me as it has, I question whether it's at all worth it. It's so much easier and safer to just buy some groceries from a retail store that will allow me to do so without an excessive ransom.
So, because we're so fancy and high class and all that jive, and because it's the little details that keep one who works from home from going a little crazy, we have water delivery service at our house. It's from a lovely local company called Menehune Water. We get four five-gallon bottles delivered on every 10th business day, which currently means every other Friday.
Now, normally, four bottles is juuuuust enough so that we run out some time on Thursday, put the last empty out, and start with a fresh four bottles when the guy comes on Friday. This past week, however was a little different. We'd been out of town for a few days, so the rhythm was off. I, of course, noticed this immediately when we returned and began keeping mental tabs on the supply.
Thursday afternoon, we were about 4/5 of the way through the third bottle, and so I stepped up my consumption. My hope was that we'd kill it Thursday close to bedtime, put the new one on, and start Friday with four full bottles as usual. We ended up killing it a little quickly though, so when I put the new one on I mentioned to K that we either needed to go easy until Friday morning, or drink this entire bottle before the delivery gets here, if we're to stay on budget.
It was at that point that things went terribly wrong.
You just can't say something like this without it sounding to my wife like a challenge is being issued. I'm sure my words were similar to what I wrote above, along the lines of "Let's not kill ourselves trying to drain this bottle; let's just take it easy and it'll all work out somehow". What she heard was "I know your pussy bitch ass can't drink your share of this jug, so because of that we'll have to go with the inferior plan, and I will blame you for the rest of our lives for this horrible night."
She threw down the gauntlet.
"Let's do this thing."
So that's how it started. We had roughly 12 hours to drink five gallons of water between us, and also manage to get a good night's sleep.
We hit it hard for the rest of the evening. I made sure to eat some heavily salted macadamia nuts and I tried to be as thirsty as possible. Every time I took a sip of water, I made sure it was a giant gulp equivalent to roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of what was in my pint glass. We tried to make the dog run around a lot so he'd be thirsty. He's such a tiny fellow, though. He really wasn't much help. Here's a chart that shows how much of the five gallons each person drank:
As you can see, he barely made a dent.
We peed a LOT, and I actually started to get sick of the taste of water. Yes, I actually got sick of something that has no taste, color, or smell. It physically sickened me.
By the time we went to bed, we still had over a gallon to go, by my estimate. We made sure to get up early and hit it hard and I'm proud to announce that we were successful! We drank the last drop and put the empty bottle out less than an hour before the delivery service showed up. Once again, we are number one!

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