Month: July 2011

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Manic Saturday

We have a neighbor that’s prone to go off her meds on a regular basis.

The poor dear will start speaking to the voices in her head in one of three languages usually at the top of her lungs.

The ironic thing is that the voices in her head are apparently deaf as a stone!

Tonight it’s Italian.

Ya feel sorry for her because you know it can’t be any fun for her, but at the same time it’s late and some of us are trying to go to sleep.

Thankfully she hasn’t had a really bad episode in a long time. The last one of those she had resulted in her being hospitalized for several weeks.

Oooops, looks like some one has called the cops so they’ll calm the situation down or they’ll have the EMTS here in a short time.

We try to be good neighbors and stay out of other folks business but we always wonder if she’s ok or going to hurt herself.

The question we always wrestle with is, should we  call the police when she first winds herself up or do we take a wait & see attitude?

Tonight we didn’t have to make the decision but other night’s or days we face the conundrum.
Looks like all is quiet on the Eastern front at least until the cops leave.

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A potential EPIC Fail??

Got a letter from California Employment Development today.

Looks like they’re going to pay me my unemployment via a debit card.

It’s only slightly more convenient than if they were paying me in gold nuggets.

For those of us that actually have a bank account and who pay our bills via that account, a debit card is problematic.

For example

My Mortgage, Car payment, credit cards, and utilities are all paid out of my credit union account. Without a constant flow of REAL money going through that account in short order I’m going to be in default on a lot of my financial obligations.

I suppose that I can reroute the payment to the California issued Debit card but there’s since I don’t know how much is going to be available from week to week on the debit card that doesn’t really work either.

Especially since I was planning to use my unemployment check to supplement my savings and thereby be a responsible if unemployed person. In that  I WOULDN’T DEFAULT on my obligations.

Now what do I do?

Cash out the debit card each week and then deposit the cash into the account I need to have it in?

I thought about trying to phone in payments to my various debts but I know that at least a couple of those businesses charge a hefty fee to do that. (One organization charge me $25 bucks once to process a payment from a debit card.)

All of this leads me to wonder what were they thinking?

Direct deposit or a check makes much more sense from the perspective of someone with bank accounts, and a regular payment schedule.

California claims this is to save them money in postage, but they’re still sending me  the little form to fill out and sign (which used to contain the check for the previous 2 weeks) So what are they really saving?

Then there’s the Bank of America who administers the card. They’re making a ton of money on short term interbank loans, and they’re also getting a % on each and every transaction. What a racket!

Well, I’m hoping that more information is forthcoming when I get the damn card.

I see the potential for another complication that I wasn’t expecting.

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Well whatever it was it’s going away…

After being a lazy slug yesterday and sleeping a large portion of the day, Feeling MUCH better.

So, today it’s off to a photographic show and other FUN running around.

Just found out that the new phone can post blog entires directly to this blog… VERY COOL!

The automatic word choices the phone makes… may leave something to be desired.

All in all life is going pretty nicely.

Now If I can just find a job….

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Spent the day on the run yesterday

Today, planning a quiet day.

My furlough has been extended by another 30 days. Not really sure I like that but it’s a process.

As the day has progressed I’ve been feeling poorly.

Wondering if I’m coming down with something. Sinuses are blocked and I’ve developed a slight cough, so it’s nap time.

Everyone have a great weekend!

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Old Cell Phone is… Outta Here!

My old phone died and terminal phone-itus set in.

I picked up the new puppy yesterday and wow, I’m impressed!

It’s a very smart machine. The new baby is an Android based HTC Sensation. It’s thin, fast, 4G, and very smart… also it was expensive as hell.

But it works, and my old phone had gotten just too dang flakey for words.

So new phone and learning all the new features there are a lot of those.

One of the funniest things about it is that I can share pictures, or videos directly with my DLNA enabled TV.

I can also print to my existing 3 year old printer.

These features are not available on my iPad. If I want to put a video up on the big screen, I need an apple TV. If I want to print, well I can but only to select printers. I can purchase an application that does an ok job but it’s a bit kludgey in it’s operation.

In short I’m more and more convinced that Android is the way to go for my phones, and future tablets.

Sorry Apple…. as much as I like your sense of design, you’re just too dang fussy about what devices you’ll interface with, and how your products communicate with those devices. Why the hell did you cripple bluetooth in the iPad 1? Oh well it doesn’t matter… my next tablet is going to be Android.

Uhh Apple, you should probably remember that when a company no longer listens to the customer… the customer will move on to a company that is listening.