This tank of a laptop is an Aluminum G4 I bought off Craigslist nine years ago to repair and use as a backup/utility machine for sunsetted software. It’s been stored carefully in a bin in the basement, and occasionally it gets dusted off to be pressed into service. The last time I used it for a big project was when I batch-processed all of our first and second-generation font files into OpenType format (modern Macs and most current software doesn’t play well with TrueType or Type1 fonts) with an ancient, unsupported specialty app, generate sample sheets for each folder, and compile them into PDF booklets.
I’ve got two big bins of legacy hardware down there, everything from original MS Word 3.5″ floppy drives to whole laptops, and every time I straighten up the basement I look at the bins and think about culling the whole collection, minus one or two machines. And every time a mixture of apathy and unease stops me. Hoarding situations always start with the words, “…I might need that someday,” so I have to be very careful about what constitutes being useful and having a serious problem. In my defense, I have lightened the collection a couple of times already, but there are still more machines that probably need to be dropped off at an e-cycling center.
Yesterday Jen was working on a file provided by a client with an embedded typeface that wouldn’t open on her machine. After looking it over for a few minutes, I went down to grab the G4, booted it up, and converted the old TrueType font they sent into OpenType and got the file working for her. The machine fired right up, and even though the spinning hard drive is making some kind of vibrating noise, it worked like a charm.
Is it hoarding if they still make you money (or save it in this case)?
I got an email this morning from Bank of America assuring me that they have ruled in my favor for the fraud claim I filed last Thanksgiving. I’m glad they made an actual human review the case instead of just letting the robots decide everything was legit, because I was ready to go nuclear on them.
Thursday morning at about 4AM, Hazel and I awoke to the odd sound of water dripping somewhere in the bedroom. I got up and followed the noise to the radiator, which was leaking at the relief valve onto the floor. I threw some old T-shirts over it and on the floor, and crawled back into bed until the alarm rang. After making some coffee I checked the basement to find water running freely from the relief valve on the top of the boiler, and on further inspection found that the other radiators were leaking the same way.
After shutting the boiler and main water valve off, a very nice plumber named Youssef came out and between us we got the boiler separated from the water line, the major leaks stopped, and the remainder of the water drained out of the system. I got an estimate to repair the existing boiler and one to replace it, and after picking my chin up off the floor, we opted to repair the unit we’ve got. It’s about 40 years old and will need to be replaced at some point soon, but I wasn’t budgeting for that this year. I had been stockpiling cash to pay for some other stuff, and had just paid off my credit card, so we’ve got enough left over to pay for this out of pocket. But it seems like every time we get some cash assembled to do something we want to do, some other thing breaks and the money goes to that thing.
Back in November somebody charged $370 to my debit card to a vendor I didn’t recognize, so I immediately disputed the charges with Bank of America. It disappeared into their system until this Friday, when I got a letter detailing the purchase: a Garmin watch bought from eBay and delivered to a rental house in Severn, MD, with an obviously fake Yahoo email address. Their automated robot decided the charges were legit based on eBay’s garbage information and told me they were going to debit my account.
I got on the phone this morning and spoke with a woman in the Fraud department, who listened to my explanation and reversed the charges again; given the details it’s pretty clear this is fraud. eBay is famously abysmal for customer service; there is no phone number to call or email address to contact, and their chatbot points to a page that throws a 500 Internal Server Error, so it makes total sense that some waiter double-swiped my card at a restaurant and used them to get himself a shiny new watch.
Meanwhile, I ordered a new set of safety glasses two weeks ago from a storefront I’d used successfully in 2021. I never got a confirmation email or tracking number in reply, but they sure as shit charged my card. This was two weeks ago and I still don’t have any glasses; their customer service options are as useful as eBay’s. I’ve sent them some nastygrams this morning promising a reversal of charges if I don’t hear anything by COB.
Update: my flurry of bitchy emails spurred a flurry of return emails and, suddenly, magically, a shipment notification!
I just learned that we are only 7 miles, as the crow flies, from a NIKE missile base that was active from 1954 until 1974, which protected the west side of Baltimore from incoming Soviet bombers within a 25-mile radius. Given the destructive range and potential of Soviet nuclear weapons in this time period, this was yet another expensive exercise in pissing in the wind. Apparently the local Civil Air Patrol has been slowly refurbishing the base, which sat abandoned for decades after the government shut it down.
When I was in college in the late 80’s, Baltimore was ignored in most musicians’ touring schedules. We usually had to drive down to DC to see anyone worthwhile, which made it difficult and expensive to see bands. One bright spot was the 8×10, a small privately-owned venue in Federal Hill with a stage the size of the name and a great sound system. I saw many up-and-coming bands there over the years and have a lot of great memories of the place (and there are some nights I can’t remember, honestly). The partners who have owned it for 20 years are retiring and looking for a new buyer. In this day and age of corporate consolidation of live music, it would be sad to see it shut down forever.
(previously, previously)
I wrote about the demise of Mint a couple of years ago, after Intuit killed it to force users to buy TurboTax or whatever bullshit system they want to charge for. We used it for several years off and on to get on top of our finances, with limited success, but that was mainly because we hadn’t set it up correctly. Recently we engaged the services of a financial planner to get on top of our retirement, and through the process of filling out his intake checklist and our initial meeting we realized we had several major blank spots in our spending. We left that meeting with some homework—mainly, figuring out what is going into those blank spots.
After doing some very basic searching, I was pointed at a service called Monarch through some glowing reviews. Basically, it’s a paid online version of Mint, and from all I’ve seen so far, I’d wager the key brains from Mint went out on their own and re-created that service. I signed up for a trial, started plugging my accounts in, and within about 20 mintes had a rough picture of my accounts and those I share with Jen; after she adds hers in we’ll have a much clearer picture of what’s going in and what’s coming out. I’m glad this exists—I was not looking forward to going through my statements line by line.
Renie gave us her old Apple Watch when I was up there a few weeks ago, as she upgraded to the newest and latest. She figured Finn might like one, but we decided (based on our daughter’s spotty record with expensive electronics) that we should hold off. So I decided I’d swap Renie’s Series 4 for my Series 3. What her watch adds are a bunch of biometric features the Series 3 didn’t have, like comprehensive sleep data and better heart and health monitoring. I’ve been wearing it pretty regularly since I came back, and it’s given me some insights into how much good sleep I’m getting (not as much as I need) and where my heart rate (still lower than a snake’s belly) and exercise numbers (definitely not as good as they should be) are. So I cut my nightly beer out this week to see if that helps with my sleep, and even though it’s getting colder in the mornings, I’m re-committing to walking Hazel as much as possible. Thanks Ren!
Well, that’s just great. United Healthcare, our family insurer, has ended negotiations with Johns Hopkins to renew their contract, which means that Hopkins is now considered out-of-network. According to an email from Hopkins this morning,
This is not about money or small administrative issues. United’s frequent use of pre-authorizations and care denials delays critical treatments, takes away time that Johns Hopkins doctors and nurses should be spending on patient care, and puts patients’ health at risk. We will not sign a contract that allows an insurance company to prioritize their profits over our patients’ health.
I’m much more willing to take Hopkins’ word on this than UH’s, given the stellar reputation insurance companies have these days. However, I would estimate 3/4 of our family’s current doctors are within the Hopkins system, including my cancer team. And my final checkup is scheduled for next April.
We’ve been buying renewable energy for over fifteen years through a program Maryland’s legislature put together, which allows for consumers to choose who their provider is (as long as that provider is part of the program). I just got a letter from our longtime supplier saying they’re withdrawing from the program based on Maryland Senate Bill 1, which imposes stricter regulations on retail energy suppliers to protect consumers from misleading practices in the competitive energy market. So I have to go shopping to see if there’s someone else we can buy clean energy from.
We’ve also gotten several notices from the Johns Hopkins Medicine group, which informed us that as of today they are no longer in UnitedHealthcare’s network, because they “have been unable to get United to agree to a contract that puts patients ahead of profits.” Johns Hopkins took absolutely world-class care of my family and I when I had cancer, and UnitedHealthcare’s coverage came through for us. But that was almost eight years ago, and the world has changed a lot since then. I’ve only got one more checkup scheduled with Hopkins before they cut me loose, but now I’m considering skipping that because I don’t have the money to pay for all of those tests out of pocket. Greatest healthcare in the world, etc. etc.
Tired of dealing with a pair of wired headphones for my work computer, and unwilling to use my AirPods with that machine, I bought a pair of Anker Soundcore P20i headphones from Amazon for $20 a few weeks ago, and I’ve been very happy with their performance. I’ve got a handful of Anker products here, and I have to say I haven’t been disappointed with any of them. As far as inexpensive Chinese brands go, they have had the highest consistent quality.
Richard Benjamin, who now lives in a memory care unit at an assisted living facility, would look forward to the emails and texts, and especially to the ones thanking him for being a true American and patriot when he donated his money. This eventually led him to give about $80,000, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in debt and his children angry at the campaigns who they say tricked their dad and took advantage of his compromised state of mind.
From CNN: Elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns. I can confirm this practice firsthand. The day after Election Day, Jen and I are going to work the phones and shut the spigot off for her father.
I’ve been reading a couple of stories about large American companies over the last couple of weeks and seeing some broad similarities repeating themselves.
Boeing, a successful company, merged with McDonnell-Douglas, a failing company, in 1997—and somehow the MDD leadership wound up running Boeing. They immediately changed from an engineering-led manufacturer to a company run by financiers chasing stock prices. They started outsourcing everything, quality dropped, and now their decades-old reputation has been torpedoed.
There’s a new article about Google out this week, in which the author pins down the exact day they decided to make their search worse in order to increase their ad revenue. The similarity: a guy formerly from Yahoo, who ran their search division into the ground for seven years, forced out the guy who built Google’s search into the powerhouse we remember, and kicked down the wall between search and ads. Have you enjoyed using Google search for the last five years? It’s a piece of shit.
Meanwhile, roughly half the country is primed to re-elect a grifter who uses inflated stock prices to prop up failing businesses and avoid paying taxes, because he’s “good at business” or something.
Apparently Goldman Sachs is rethinking their banking partnership with Apple; apparently they didn’t understand that consumer banking was hard, and stuff. There’s no telling how they’re going to exit the partnership, or who is going to take it over from here, but all of the executives who were originally in charge of it have bailed out, according to the WSJ. I’ve been nothing but happy with my Apple Card, and paying it is easier than checking Instagram. My savings account keyed to this card is earning 4.15% APR, which is better than any other bank account I’ve had in my life. I really hope they’re able to keep it running smoothly; as of August they had over $10B in deposits.