Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

from http://www.layeggistrue.com/

“Bletch Court” in Cuyahoga Heights, OH

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First I run into Pflugerville, now this?

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Before:

After:

From Jonas 6mo+

Before:

After:

Let me tell you something about the Something Store. Avid readers (*snerk*) may remember my previous post about the site. After reviewing my Google Checkout history, I’ve ordered 51 Somethings since November of last year. Wowzers! No wonder they were willing to help me with a slight problem regarding our office gift exchange.

I ordered 19 somethings for the 19 participants of the gift exchange this year. We each drew names of the others, and the plan was to pick a something to give to drawn person. I thought it’d be a little more interesting than handing $10 gift cards to each other. Another coworker and I peeked at each of the gifts to separate the girl gifts, boy gifts, and gender-neutral ones. We soon found out that we had more girl gifts than we had girls participating.

I immediately emailed the Something Store, and within twenty minutes I had a response: They were sending me three new somethings, free of charge.

Above and beyond customer service, all the time. I love shopping the Something Store.

From Jonas 6mo+

(oh and he’s starting to crawl.)

From Jonas 6mo+

Bite things!

One of my classmates for this online physics class from CSU sent out an email to all other online students that she thought the midterm exam was unfair because it focused on equations. “Especially Joules” she commented. 16 questions on the test. She brought in five pages of notes. The email from the professor said that there would be 16 questions, that they would be based on the homework, and a calculator would be useful. The homework was mostly equations. I was under the impression that physics is mostly equations. I don’t know where she got the idea that she needed notes on history ore the examples given in the book.

Along with the city of Soddy Daisy, TN, your name makes me giggle.

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I have a feeling that if service providers of any service hired better programmers, their automated systems wouldn’t screw up as much and they wouldn’t have to hire customer service reps to repair the problems caused by the automated systems dropping the ball.

A script checked off a few things on our healthcare and decided to reject all the claims for Jonas because he had a different insurance for his first visit to the pediatrician. A phone call corrected the issue without any hassle.

An online request form automatically approved us for a budget payment plan of $100 for our electric bill. I called their customer service today to inquire why my bill was more than that, and, according to the CSR, it shouldn’t even have allowed me to sign up due to us using NOPEC.

Maybe a throng of CSRs is cheaper than a skilled programmer on retainer.

I want to know who it is as United that decided to review the claims for Jonas and reject them on some fictitious claim that he has “another primary insurance.”

Six months of checkups all suddenly we’re billed for. We dropped James’s insurance in March and started using mine. My insurance is United. So was James’s. Jonas’s first checkup was on James’s insurance. Everything after that has been on mine. A few weeks after I started it, I didn’t yet have a card. I had to call to get the member/group numbers to give to the doctor’s office. At that time, they asked me which insurance on his SSN was supposed to be the primary. I explained that the old insurance was no longer in use and asked them to remove any mention of the old insurance covering him. I made it quite clear that only the Honeywell UHC was in use. The other one was cancelled, not paid for, non-existent.

Now someone seems to think it’s still there, still active, even though no one is paying the premiums and no one is making claims to it. What the hell, United Healthcare? W. T. H.

Last Saturday, my son woke up around eight at night with some goobers in his eyes. Turns out he had pinkeye. Got some eye drops for him and it cleared up. I warned my coworker who had come over that day with her daughter to watch out for it in case her kid got it.

Last Monday, I went to the doctor because my back was killing me. For my lower back, he cracked it and all was good. For my upper back, he wanted me to start taking my muscle relaxants again. I stopped taking them due to breastfeeding, so now I just get to live with the pain and hope Tylenol will work.

Last Tuesday, I woke up feeling as if I’d swallowed barbed wire. I called off work and slept in. Eventually this great glob of blood and mucus came out of my nose, ( gross) straight from my sinuses. It came out while I was breathing normally, no coughing or blowing. I felt better for a while.

Last Wednesday, I went to work feeling one hundred percent better than I had on Monday. I had to leave early, though, because my son had a fever.

Last Thursday, the guy who sits next to me at work called off. I started having coughing fits. My husband stayed home with our son since he couldn’t go to day care.

Last Friday, I was having coughing fits pretty regularly. I felt fine, except for the coughing.

Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep through the night due to the coughing. I waited until my husband got up and slept fitfully during the morning.

Today, I’m up again for the same reasons, except now I have pinkeye.

Woke up.
Backache+
Pills, back brace.
Backache-
Headache+
Drove to work. Bright lights at work.
Headache++
Removed back brace.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired+
Ingested pills.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired+
Consumed caffeinated beverage.
Headache+
Backache+
Tired-
Hyper+.

I am currently hyper with a photosensitive migraine and upper back pain.

ARGLE BLARGLE.

Citibank refunded the charge on 5/19 (it didn’t show on the online statement until 5/21). Even though this was resolved, I still received a new message from Valve’s support. They asked me for a screenshot of the fee. I obliged and gave also a screenshot of the Citi CSR stating which charges were considered foreign transactions.

Here’s the conversation through Steam’s support:

8 « Message by Thomas on Tue, 19th May 2009 5:11 pm »
Hello Amanda,
We are still working on this issue and have been talking to the bank, can you please confirm the dollar amount of the foreign transaction fee that they are charging?

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EDIT on 05/21/09: see bottom for more details

Update on the foreign transaction fee issue. After waiting a few days for a response to my previous call, I decided it would be better to call them. After explaining the situation to “Hugo,” I was transfered to a supervisor (“Mr. Thomas”). I explained the situation to him, and he stated that the foreign transaction fees are automatic and they do not watch for them. Since it is so common for US businesses to process through Canada (and warn their customers of possible fees) they don’t bother with alerting customers of foreign purchases. He waived the $1.92 and thanked me for being a customer. I’ll be checking my account online at the end of the business day to verify that it’s been taken off.

If Valve had at all stated that they process payments outside of the US (in plain text would have been nice, but they didn’t even have it in legalese), I would have made the purchase in a different manner.
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Plans today:

1. Possibly sleep before having to leave, or maybe just sleep in the car.

2. Pack up and go go go

3. Lunch at Jorenko’s side

4. Dinner at my side

5. Return home and locate the stealthmaster daggercat and hope he didn’t hide in some barely reachable place again

Roomba may have mastered the skill of not-falling-down-stairs, but it is still easily defeated by chairs.

Disco Kitty

Today’s update is a new theme.
Also, I’m not doing anything wacky for the day. Laaaaame day.

The following link has nothing to do with me:Schroe, H.

It links to SDO and has an old post as the company description. Are bots building careers now?

Because I’m lazy and don’t like to connect to more than one irc server, I’ve moved the SDO irc idlefest to efnet. irc.efnet.info / #SDO. There’s no nickserv or chanserv or anything, I need to get a bot on there.

I’m going to re-post some old stuff, be it art or writing or whatever, once a day. I’m probably going to just go alphabetically through my folders, but you might find something interesting (or crappy).