Alfred’s Brain

Word-for-word:

My order has been “shipping soon” for nearly 24 hours. If it wasn’t going to ship until today, why would you change the status to “shipping soon” so I can’t cancel and buy it in a store? I know I only have to wait a day or two, but I feel as though I was trapped into sticking with my amazon.com purchase instead of going elsewhere. If it was “shipping soon” as of 12:30 pm yesterday, why didn’t it ship yesterday? Why wouldn’t you update it today, when you have the item in hand and ready to ship? You have not lost me as a customer, but I’m pretty disappointed in your behavior and performance. Totally inexcusable.

Update (2:40 pm):
Tracking

If you know me, you may know that I have been a victim of identity theft - twice by the same guy. Somehow *cough* Stevens *cough* my SSN fell into the hands of a criminal. Long story short, my identity was hax0red and two fraudulent cell phone accounts were opened in my name. The first on (on Sprint) came to my attention when a collection agencey tried to get money from my dad. That got straightened out and eventually expunged from my credit file. The second one (on Verizon) came as a shock to me considering I already have an account under my name and social security number. After a bit of an ordeal, I got them to realize that the other account was fraudulent and they sent in the paperwork to the appropriate credit agencies.

Five months later, I’m checking my credit report on a regular basis now, and nothings changed. Long story short (too late), I had been checking my six-month-old credit report over and over again, instead of getting my monthly updates. So after making a huge deal about this crap, it turns out that I was just an idiot (except the getting my identity stolen part - couldn’t quite help that).

If you’ve been reading up, then you know about my credit card problem. I feel inclined to write them a letter to let them know exactly how I feel. I know it won’t do any good, but I’d be curious to find out what they would say. They really are doing things ass-backwards. I’m sure they only piss people off. Ahhh, I dunno… Whatever…

Ahhh, taxes. What fun. I purchased H & R Block’s TaxCut Premium last week, and I was finally able to give it a go last night. It was very simple and clear to follow; it’s was almost fun - but I won’t go that far. Anyways, everything went smoothly until the e-file portion of the program. It asks for 2005 AGI to verify my identity. I accidentally entered my 2004 AGI. I was kind of pissed and worried, cuz I didn’t know what was going to happen. I called the IRS and got my actual 2005 AGI (since I couldn’t find mine anywhere). They said it would take 24 to 48 hours for the initial rejection, but it was actually rejected when I checked at 9:30 this morning. I resubmitted with my correct 2005 AGI, and by lunchtime, the return had been filed with the IRS. Now all I have to do is wait for them to process it. Overall, it was a pleasant experience, and I was able to gather all the information I needed from TaxCut with their inline help functions. I’ll definitely be spending the $54.99 next year on TaxCut’s software.

My computer has been on for over 30 days…

…what to do…what to do…

Rebooted.

I was driving to work this morning when an unusual car passed me by, then another, and another - all the same. Five minutes later, another passed me by. Let me describe to you what these vehicles were like.

The were all black Chevys (I think). They all had the white protective plastic on the front and rear bumpers. One, I noticed, had a dealership description sheet in the rear right window. And last but not least, all of them had tacked-on Michigan license plates at such an angle that they were basically parallel to the ground. To me, these vehicle were clearly stolen from a dealership, and how they got this far, I’ll never know.

I wanted to call the cops or somebody. I wanted to let someone know, but I don’t even know who to call. Calling 911 would have been inappropriate since there was no emergency. Now, my information is old and useless. I also tried to take a picture with my cell, but I was too slow. Oh, well. There are usually so many cops on Route 17; too bad there were none out to catch those thieves.

So I get this offer in the mail for 0% APR on transfers on one of my cards. I think to myself, Great! Maybe I can use this…. I log into the account and I notice my available credit is low. After a few clicks I also notice that my APR was hiked from 10.15% to 24.99% and I never defaulted!!!! So now I’m fuming. The long and short of it is that even though I pay on time every month, but only pay about 20 bucks over the minimum, they hiked the interest as a penalty. Plus, my overall credit to debt ratio is too darn high. I grudgingly accepted a 19.99% APR compromise.

Here are some highly angering realizations I came to:

• They sent me a damn offer to put more money on the card after they hiked the standard APR to 24.99%.
• They want me to make more than the minimum payment, so they make it more difficult for me to make the minimum payment by raising it from about 80 bucks to 120 bucks!
• If they really wanted me to pay it off, they wouldn’t have made it overall a harder time to pay!

So now I’m transferring off like $1000 and paying another $200. I’m on a full on assault against this card. I’m gonna transfer the shit out of it and make payments to the other credit cards. I know they still get their money in the end, but they won’t be getting their precious interest from me! F@#kers.

I will keep this brief. On Saturday, I went home to replace the four sets of brakes and rotors on my car. The whole excursion took about from 10 to 6 with some breaks and lunch. The whole process was not without its hitches, but in the end everything turned out okay.

The rear rotors were tricky because Dad had never done rear rotors before. We almost gave up after the first one because we couldn’t get the damn caliper off the rotor after taking the mounting bolts out. Well, we muscled it off eventually and did the one side. Dad went inside to rest his back, and I tackled the other side. It’s complicated to explain over the blog, but I finally figured out how the damn thing worked. It was like a puzzle. I had to keep the mount bolted in in order to take off the brakes, then I had to unbolt the mount to take off the rotor, then I swapped in the new rotor and bolted in the mount, put on the new pads, bolted in the caliper and bam…done. It was weird that the rotor wouldn’t spin without the brake mount on, but Dad and I had a good laugh and it was surprisingly fun overall.

My thighs are sore from squatting all day, but what can you do, right? I’m proud of the work I did, and it felt good to do it on my own (or at least 80% of the work). Later!

Well, I’m pretty sure I should be doing work about now, but I just need to take a moment to rant again. When Mike dropped me off to pick up my car (thanks, Mike), I was expecting at the very least a solidly jammed window (as promised). Well, I’m not quite sure what he did, but the gap is about one or two centimeters now. Sure, maybe he did jam the window, but you know what? This sucks donkey balls. I don’t feel like complaining to the dealer, cuz I want my car with me, so I think my likely next step is to go to Home Depot and try and find something to shove in there. I certainly don’t want a wet car seat after it rains. Completely unacceptable. Ugh… I’m done. Time to work.

Oh my goodness. I finally found a car dealer to service my ‘94 Oldsmobile. I wanted to get the window fixed so it will actually go up and down. Well, it turns out that that job would end up costing 750 bucks. Awesome. That wasn’t the end of it, though. Of course, there was more wrong with it. The intake manifold was going (700 or 800 dollar job), so I’m going to have to be careful and watch my oil levels. Also, my brakes are shot. They need to replace the rear rotors and everything. They wanted to charge 800 bucks for that job. Now, having some experience with this stuff, I knew it was way too much, but I was considering biting the proverbial bullet — I’m glad I didn’t.

I called my father and asked him about the job. He said he can do the brakes/rotors for 240 bucks, no problem. As for the window, well, we’ll get to that later, but for now, the dealership mechanic is going to jam it in the up position for me. Watch: he’s gonna charge me like a hundred bucks for that. I guess I’ll find out tonight.

I think it’s time to start looking for a new car…