Friday, January 25, 2008

Hospital Trip

I went to visit Grant at the hospital today. His blog has a lot more about the exact reasons for his hospital visit--suffice it to say that he's had major surgery, and the recovery has not gone very smoothly. I ended up staying for three hours, and mostly just shot the breeze about a bunch of things. Auntie Elaine was there too, and enjoyed chiming in when we were commiserating on how impossible dating seems to be around here (seriously, what is so messed up about Utah dating culture? I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there really is something strange about it, and it seems it's not just me. Maybe I'll rant about that another time).

Anyway, Grant's been playing a lot of Civilization IV, which looks incredibly addictive >_<. Now, there are several games that will keep me up late, but the building simulation games are the only kind that will keep me from making it to bed at all. Apparently Grant's had a similar experience. I no longer have Civilization installed on any of my machines, it's just too destructive, but boy has he got me tempted. Resist! Resist!

At any rate, his today was better than his yesterday, and yesterday was the worst day of his life. They're hoping he'll make it out of the hospital tomorrow, but he's going to need some pretty intense nursing at home for a while. He's got a lot of TV shows and movies downloaded, and he's probably going to be doing a lot of reading. If anyone has some brilliant ways for him to pass the time, feel free to contribute.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Random Event of the Day

Whenever you travel in another country, it's usually best to pay for everything by credit card. It's safer, it's got fraud protection, and it works at literally dozens of stores (I'm teasing ... most places I've been, you still need cash, but the cards still come in handy). Unfortunately, using a credit card with a foreign currency usually results in a small charge from the credit card company.

So, there's this fellow named Mike (his real name) who wanted to go to Costa Rica for about a month. His credit card had a charge for using foreign currency, and he wanted to avoid that charge, so he signed up for a Capital One Visa card. Unfortunately, because they're a suspicious bunch, they only gave him a $1000.00 credit limit. Mike needed a little more than that, so he asked if he could get the limit raised. "No," said CapitalOne. "You need to use it for about a year first." Okaaay, so what can he do? "Well, you could transfer a bunch of money into the account, which would effectively raise your limit." So that's what Mike did.

Oops, transaction rejected. Mike calls and ask what's wrong. "Oh, for amounts that big, you'll have to mail us a check," said Capital One. Greeeat, should have said that in the first place. By this time, Mike was getting a bit suspicious, and had them put notes on his account. Then he mailed them a check for $6000.00. And away they went to Costa Rica.

So, what happens? When he tries to use the card, he discovers the account has been frozen! Apparently, mailing them a check is a major breach of policy! "Read the notes on my account!" Well, the notes pretty clearly say that he was instructed to mail them a check. "So remove the hold!" No can do, that would be breaking the rules. "AAAAGGGGH!"

And so it ends, with him stranded in Costa Rica, selling pencils to tourists to try and get a boat ride home. Nah, just kidding, he went to his web site and posted the whole sordid tale. Within a few hours, the story had been posted to Reddit and made the front page. Maybe a few hundred thousand people read it. It also hit the online version of the Consumerist.

The guy in Costa Rica got a few calls offering support and money. And how they heard about it, I don't know, but Capital One pretty quickly removed the hold on the account and sent an explanatory email to the poor stranded traveler. He's being rather understanding, considering the circumstances. You can read a bit more detail here.

So there you go: the power of the Internet. Getting back at the big guys through flash mobs and all that. Actually, that's kind of the kicker of the whole thing: This happened today. Newspapers are getting rather thoroughly outpaced anymore. Fun, isn't it?

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy New Year

2007 is over and 2008 has begun. The world's a year older and so on. I guess it hasn't been a bad year -- some interesting things happened, I went some interesting places, and I possibly even learned something. Eh, maybe that's being too hopeful. Here's hoping that 2008 works out even better, hmm?