Not trusting the idiots

When my wallet was lost I took a chance that it would not be found and the credit and debit cards used. Financial institutions want those cards shut down immediately. Those same financial institutions cannot mail replacement cards to me down to Florida. Rather than trust them not to screw up I delayed reporting.

Once safely in New Hampshire I walked into my local credit union and reported my cards missing. Since my wife's cards have different numbers they should have been able to keep her's active while replacing mine. It took three employees working together to “figure it out.” Yesterday we learned that a bill my lovely wife tried to pay denied the card. Yep, the credit union shut her cards down.

The next day I got my replacement debit card in the mail but there's no sign of the credit card from the same institution. I suspect the local credit union is now staffed by folks who couldn't make the grade at the local Dunkin Donuts.

My checkbook checks have all finally dried out. They are the type of checks that make a carbon copy when you write and the checks are stuck to the carbons. They can be separated using a sharp knife and almost all the checks are now usable. No one has refused to cash a salty, slightly wrinkled check.

Then there's the post office. The local branch did not know how to stop forwarding my mail. The larger branch in town said they would take care of it. They did, sorta. All my junk mail and magazines made it to my house. All the first class mail kept getting forwarded. Only took one more trip to the post office in town to sort that out.

On a positive note, my permanent driver's license arrived about a month earlier than the state said it would.

My computer and printer are now shaking hands and playing nicely together. All it took was throwing out the Window's program, installing Ubuntu and letting that connect with the printer. It was faster than trying to sort out why the Windows drivers weren't working the way they were supposed to. With the printer and scanner working properly, I can now print out forms and scan documents needed to replace other things lost in the shipwreck.

I got a scare when my cloud storage showed there were only three photos in storage and nothing else. Hundreds of photos and documents were missing, including the most recent draft of a book I'm working on. Fortunately, later in the day it was all there, so I downloaded copies of everything. Cloud storage saved me when my computer went for a salt water swim, but now I don't trust that completely either. In fact, I'm almost at the point where I'm going to print everything out, to heck with the inconvenience and cost.

My lovely wife and I are sticking close to home. There was enough fresh snow on the ground that the town plow came through. Later in the day it turned to freezing rain. We decided there wasn't really any place we needed to be. Good weather to sort out paperwork. I am so hoping for sunshine.

-Sixbears