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Apparently missed one heck of a party on Saturday

This wasn’t a “normal” party it was an Adult kind of party.

I’ve been invited to the next one and I’m going to do my best to go.

It sounds like a good time was had by all, and I wish I’d been there to have a taste!

I’ve got an itch to get a little wild & crazy.

That’s one of those itches that needs to be scratched and damn soon. Otherwise the wildness just grows and next thing I know, I’m naked in a hotel wondering what the hell I was thinking.

In fact, usually I know exactly what I was thinking… it’s just that the little head was doing the thinking.

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Ahhhh Home alone AT LAST!

Now that the house is mine….

What to do?

On the one hand, Getting, and staying naked all day has a certain appeal. I do need to catch up on my reading, and practice techniques to move toward the multi-orgasmic goal.

On the other hand It’s a very nice day, and a cruise through the mountains with the top down sounds really nice. At this time of day I doubt I’ll get much in the way of interesting photos,but you never know.

Then, there are the inevitable chores around the house to be done…. Nah, I’m going to play hooky from being the responsible adult…

The practice I need to do, requires a quiet mind, I doubt I can come anywhere close to quieting my gadfly thoughts today. Right now if I was practicing, I’d blow a load without getting anywhere near the intended goal of simply pleasuring without ejaculation. 

Perhaps a nice mountain drive is the thing to do.

Maybe I can find a quiet place in the forest and get back to nature…

Hummmmm That’s an appealing idea!

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It’s about damn time!

Our leaders have to be out of their damn minds!

All their political posturing has completely screwed us.

The hell with the debt ceiling! Our leaders have damaged our credit worthiness, probably hindered any recovery from the recession, and have hurried us on our way toward being a 3rd world cesspool.

When the President of Russia describes our country as a parasite that is dragging the rest of the world toward an even deeper recession.

We need to recall ALL of our leaders then elect people that are interested in actually doing good things for the country instead of beating their chests to highlight how important they are. This debt ceiling discussion should NEVER have reached the level it did.

How about this? SPEND WHAT YOU HAVE!

Washington, like Sacramento seems to think it has limitless credit cards funded by the taxpayers. I say it’s time for the taxpayers to start rejecting the charges.

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Well, Practical Considerations must come first…

I was planning a couple of trips. 

These trips were contingent on my getting the unemployment / and issues surrounding the furlough sorted out so that I could be gone for extended periods of time.
Between my company demanding that I appear there at the drop of a hat. Not knowing if I’ll be called back or how much time I might have before I have to report. That the company is still having me fill out their damn time card and to do that I have to have internet access. The uncertainty of the unemployment payments and that I must be here at least once every 2 weeks to fill out and sign their paper forms. 
It looks like my dream of traveling is shot full of holes.
Part of the delay in traveling is because I was hanging around during Js vacation month. Every day I asked “What would you like to do?” Now we’re at the end of that vacation month, we’ve gone and had some fun but nothing like the longer trips that I’d envisioned.
Since funds are dwindling in the accounts, I’ve started the job search program. In all my plans I’d never once considered the furlough prospect. 
It’s something that I’ll not voluntarily participate in again. It bleeds your resources and leaves you in an indeterminate state, neither employed or unemployed…  It messes with your head because you’ve never quite got enough information to make decisions with and no matter how many questions you ask no-one ever has any answers.
In my case, the company had appeared to be operating in a chaotic mode. Even HR didn’t seem to have a clue about what information they were supposed to give employees. My faith in the company has been horribly shaken.
I’ve remarked privately to friends that I’ve thought the company was cruel. Over the years they’ve always created a panic situation just before the Summer vacation season. My management has always said it wasn’t intentional, I’ve always maintained that the timing spoke to either very poor planning & budgeting or intentional fear-mongering to insure that the employees were always grateful that they had a job.
Either way, the circumstances have had profound effects on all of us. There are many of my co-workers that have maxed out their vacation accrual because they didn’t want to leave for vacation during a “Crisis”.
Now as we wait and wonder, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand if we’re laid off we’ll have some pay. If we’re not laid off we’ll go to a new project and in all likelihood face the prospect of the annual panic and never spend our vacation time.
I’ve decided that I really don’t want to have to deal with that level of uncertainty all the time. To that end, I’m initiating a job search now. I’ve been answering inquiries from headhunters that have reached out to me. But now I think it’s time to ramp up the search and get proactive.
This of course means a few things.
Yet again, my dreams die, or at best are shoved to the background.
I’ll probably end up going back to technology. While technology has been very good to me financially it’s not what it once was.
I risk becoming bitter and angry that I once again have to step up and commute through the HELL that is Southern California traffic, while my other half essentially gets to work from home. A home by the way that I will rarely get to enjoy because I’ll be pissing my life away on the freeways.
Due to the fierce competition for limited jobs in Southern California, it’s very likely that I’ll have to make some serious compromises on salary, or health care & other benefits.
Maybe I’ll get away… but it’s looking less and less likely.
As to my dreams… well it’s looking like to follow those, I’m going to be making some hard choices. 
I’ve been putting off making those choices for a long time now… 
I guess I’m about out of runway…
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Alright Now I’m starting to get Annoyed.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the stupidity of the California Employment Development Department and their debit card as payment mechanism.

Well here’s the follow-up to that piece.

I got the pretty EDD card in the mail.

Like all credit cards you have to activate it.  There was an 800 number and a web address on the card. I typed in the web address, answered their questions and ended up having to create another online account so that I could figure out what the hell the balance on the card was.

I’m trying to simplify my life not complicate it. Yet another URL/Password combination is heading in the wrong direction.

Thus far, since I’ve begun dealing with EDD / Unemployment I’ve actually ADDED 3 new web addresses and passwords to the 90 or so that I already have.

After signing up with Bank of America & providing them with a lot of my personal information. By the way Bank of America is NOT my bank for a number of reasons which I will not get into right now. I was able to see the available balance on the card.

EDD withheld 1 week even though I’d been unpaid for three weeks, I’ve never understood that. Since it’s Unemployment insurance, shouldn’t they start paying on the date of loss? That’s the way other insurance companies pay.

In any case there was $450 available so now what do I do? In reading the supplied paper work and the instructions on the web, it appears that I have 3 choices.

I could PAY BofA  $15.00 for the privilege of being forced to use them and request and “Emergency” transfer of funds to another bank

I can set up a specified transfer of X amount to another institution.

I can set up a transfer of the available balance to another institution.

The “Normal” transfers require 2 days to process.

This got me to thinking

The reported California Population 37,000,000
The reported Unemployment rate is 11.8%
That says that the number of unemployed people on the EDD roles is something like 4,366,000

If the Payment per person is $450, (I know it’s not. The payment amount is variable dependent on how much you made, and how much you’ve contributed to the system. I’d imagine a standard deviation calculation would be more conservative. On the other hand in my entire career, I’ve never been paid less than the maximum payment per week so I’m going with the Max.)

That means that BofA is processing $1,964,700,000 Per week.

Since Unemployment is paid every 2 weeks BofA is getting a pretty hefty rolling influx of cash to play with.

I was thinking about the “Your funds transfer may take up to 2 days” and realized that if B of A was playing the short term interbank loan game with only half of that money they must be turning a pretty good profit.

My figures aren’t terribly accurate, and lord knows my math skills suck! But follow this line of reasoning, and remember that this profit is being made ON THE BACKS of desperate people trying to pay their bills and stay out of default.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that Half of the people who are unemployed elect to transfer their entire balance to their home financial institution.

That’s $982,350,000

Now apply the overnight interbank loan rate 0.7368 (Which appears to be the current rate. I wasn’t able to locate in a quick Google search what the ACTUAL rate is today. I suspect I wasn’t asking the right question.)

In any case if you take the $982,350,000 and charge an interest rate of 0.7368 you get $7,237,954

Not a bad return for 1 night… But since it takes BofA 2 days to complete the transfer you could double it to $14,475,908 in profit.

Then consider that California pays unemployment twice a month, and you’re looking a BofA making $28,951,816 per month.

Maybe a little more since I’m sure they let the interest earned “ride”. That’s a pretty good deal for BofA. I find it difficult to believe that it would cost them anywhere near that amount in overhead.

So does California get any part of the profit? Over the course of a year that would add up.

If California EDD got a small taste… IT MIGHT BE ENOUGH FOR THEM TO ANSWER THE PHONE!

Another item of interest is that EDD sent me via mail, another form to fill out for the next unemployment payment.  Before all this debit card bullshit, the form asking if you looked for work over the last 2 weeks contained the check for your previous claim.

Since EDD had to mail you a form to fill out, it made sense that the check was part of the form. After all they’re sending you paper anyway why not use the same envelope and get a two fer out of it?

The form still has the spot where they used to print the check, it’s blank now. You still have to detach it except now you throw it away instead of taking it to your bank and depositing it. If this is an example of how “Green” our state is, I’ll take wastefulness…

Trying to comply with the new system…

On July 25, I started the transfer. I got a confirmation email from BofA stating that they’d received the request.

Yesterday this notice appeared in my checking account.

 07-27-2011      Transaction COMMENT /  DEP PRENOTIFICATION FROM BANK OF AMERICA   0.00

Now I know that they have the right account number for the transfer.

It’s July 28… By my count July 25, to July 28 is Three days… Not two days… And you can be DAMN sure the bank would be charging me late fees if I pulled the same stunt.

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So EDD and Bank of America, 
I have this simple question for you…

WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY!?!?