Oddball Update

Back in the day I was often found carrying a portable cassette recorder, making tapes for no discernable reason. There usually was a reason, although it may have been known only to me — usually, it was to burn off steam about the lousy day I’d had, or the crap I was dealing with at school, or some other such thing. Playing back those tapes today is not only entertaining, it’s a way to link myself to my past, relive years gone by, and refresh my memory about things I once spent a great deal of time thinking about but now can no longer recall.

Having already digitized almost every cassette in the house, I’ve come to realize that there’s a handful of tapes which I’m sure I recorded, but which I can no longer find. After thinking about it for a while, I concluded where these tapes are now: They’re in the basement of my parents’ home. Fortunately, I’m going to be there next week, so I intend to salvage whatever last vestiges of the collection I can find.

In truth, I got a bit of a scare this morning when my mom mentioned she had cleaned out the basement and thrown away a bunch of stuff — old computers, video tapes, etc. For a few moments I had a horrific vision of those cassettes getting chomped down by a garbage truck, after I had come so close to finally retrieving them. I called home and got a hold of my dad, who went downstairs and verified that, yes, the tapes were still there. Okay, heart rate returning to normal.

In the process of this verification, my dad mentioned that there were a whole bunch of tapes in a particular green plastic bin I could quite clearly see in my mind’s eye. I vaguely remembered tossing a bunch of tapes in there at one point, but honestly couldn’t remember if they were really there or not. Turns out they are, so now I’m excited to sift through them and see what kind of treasures I’ll find. I seem to recall putting those tapes there because I’d listened to them enough times to make me sick of them, but that was at least ten years ago now. This geeks me out because the longer it’s been since I’ve heard something, the less familiar it is — and infinitely more fun — to finally hear again.

So I’m planning to take along my extremely old Sony Walkman (yes, a cassette Walkman) and some batteries so I can play back whatever’s on these old tapes when I get there. I can’t really even begin to speculate what’s on them; while I’ve long since realized I don’t have the complete collection here at home, I can’t seem to name the specific volumes that I’m missing. I suppose it will come to me when I see them.

In other news, I think I’m finally about to get my banking situation straightened out. It’s been a comedy of errors, actually. Ever since I opened a business checking account and started having my paychecks auto-deposited there, I’ve needed a way to electronically transfer funds from the biz account to my personal account. You know, keeping expenses separated for tax reporting purposes. Well, my bank has always been extremely uncooperative about that. For months now, they’ve insisted that wasn’t possible due to federal banking regs.

So a couple weeks back, my boss suggests using Online Bill Pay to set myself up as a biller and then send payments to myself that way. Sounds worth a try. So, I contacted the bank and asked them to add Online Bill Pay to my online banking profile. That began two solid weeks of phone tag, because the Online Bill Pay did not work, and I had to call them three or four times begging them to fix it before anything was done. (Apparently the entire Online Bill Pay system was malfunctioning, and the bank had only one man — an outside contractor — working on the problem, one account at a time!)

Today the Online Bill Pay finally starts working, so I give it a try…and quickly realize that if I set myself up as a biller, the bank’s just going to cut me a paper check and drop it in the mail. They’re not going to do an electronic deposit into my checking account. An electronic deposit is the whole point, because I want to be able to transfer these funds while I’m out of town. Right now I have to write myself a check every two weeks and then either Apple or I has to physically drive there and deposit it.

So I call the bank’s hotline to complain, and they tell me to go to my local branch and have them submit paperwork that’ll link my personal and business checking accounts! By this point my head was totally ready to explode, as I had already conducted several phone calls with the bank only to be told that wasn’t possible. So I called again, and this time, they said “Sure, come on down and fill out the paperwork, and we’ll get those accounts linked up in a few days!” Jeeeeeeze. Why couldn’t you guys have told me that before? So after a lot of stress and dorking around, this issue is finally going to be resolved…I THINK!

Automotive news: Next week I’m participating in an online focus group conducted by Pontiac Motor Division. The point is for Pontiac to gain some perspective on what makes online automotive message forums (like LS1GTO.com) so popular, how we forum users feel about Pontiac, and what Pontiac could do to improve their online presence. I think Pontiac is trying to start a new marketing initiative aimed at the younger, tech-savvy crowd and looking to us as expert users to see what we find appealing about online forums and clubs.

I was selected as a “qualified participant” in the focus group after filling out a short survey which revealed I’ve owned scads of Pontiacs and love Firebirds to death, and oh yeah, I’ve joined forums releated to every Pontiac I’ve ever owned (except the Grand Prix, ’cause that was before there were online forums). As a bonus, they’re paying me $75 to participate, so you can’t go wrong there.

But as an aside, do you know what blows? Telemarketers. But then, you already knew that. A couple days ago, I was out running errands, and when I got home Apple told me that “General Motors” had called. I figured it was something to do with the focus group, so I kept my eye out for that number on the caller ID. It appeared again this afternoon, so I picked up — and it wasn’t really GM, it was the GM Card, as in credit card, of which I am an account holder. They were trying to sell me some kind of payment protection features, wherein the credit card company will pay all my bills for a year in the event that I’m injured and can’t work or whatever.

I just got rid of a similar service on one of our other credit cards, because I was sick of paying for it. So I told the GM Card guy, who had such a heavy Hispanic accent that I could barely understand him, that I wasn’t interested. Okay, fine. So I hang up, and then a few hours later, this very evening, the phone rings — and it’s them again! What; my saying “no” earlier wasn’t good enough? Do I need to put it in writing and have it notarized, now? Christ. Sometimes I think I should actually pick up the phone when these telemarketers call, just so I can tell them I’m not interested and they’ll quit calling. I guess it doesn’t matter, because they keep calling anyway, so why bother wasting the oxygen.

And now, I’ll leave you with an image I found on a message board tonight, which made me laugh harder than anything else so far today. A rude guy on the GTO forum was pissing people off, so another member posted this:

Categorized as Life, Randomness