Hey now, don't ruin the guy's buzz with facts. That'll only confuse him.:)
But yes, he should research drug use and abuse through history, and the economics of drug cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. It's very complicated, and actually has very little to do with prohibition.
Opium is a great pain killer, and slightly addictive.
Process it, and you have morphine, an even better pain killer, and even more addictive, and more expensive.
Process it more, and you have heroin. Well, way overkill on the painkiller scale. It's hugely addictive, and even more expensive.
And lets not forget some of the dirty dealing that has happened, where particular governmental organizations world wide have put their fingers in the dealing to turn a profit themselves. Governments don't like competition.
If I had an opium farm (which I don't), and if I was a drug manufacturer or dealer (which I'm not), I'd want to sell my opium as heroin, bring in more money, *AND* have a really solid recurring customer base. Well, until they OD'd. I hate that we've taken a natural resource (opium) and tainted it so horribly.
I had thought, it would be nice to have a few opium plants growing. If I had a bad pain, I would have a natural, not horribly addictive, pain killer on hand. Instead, my options are combinations of chemicals produced in labs, that ensure the continued profits of pharmaceutical companies. And these drugs are *known* to have severely toxic side effects. Due to chronic pain, I'll probably die of liver failure by the time I'm 50. Why? Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and if it gets really really bad, some prescription only drugs. I'm confident my pains could be managed well with opium and marijuana. But hey, there's no good profit in a drug that I can grow at home.
Since I have a severe dislike of the idea of being in prison, I go with the legal options. The government has too many employees with guns and bad attitudes to argue the finer points of the current drug wars with.
The difference is, his product *has* been used in the production of illegal drugs. He won't provide for any sort of accountability to where his product goes. He could say "I sent 10k units to Camping World", and that's it. Now, if Camping World has someone buy up every single one of them for "personal use" that would be suspicious, and would warrant investigation.
From his records, the DEA would be able to identify wholesalers who are putting in purchase requests for unusual quantities. It gives them somewhere to look. They don't care that he's making these water bottles.
If his product hadn't been used in the illegal drug trade, and if he had cooperated with them, this would be a non-issue.
Sure it is, and as the article stated, it would be pretty easy. He sells to camping stores, and camping supply wholesalers. It's not up to him to provide the list of end users, and that's not what they were asking for.
The DEA cut off his supplier, because his product was already found being used in the manufacture of illegal drugs. It's not any sort of vengeful act against him. The problem has come about where he refused to cooperate with some simple requests.
As I understand it, the DEA can go after any precursor of drugs. Besides your example of ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine, they were also watching for large purchases of lithium batteries. And of course, anhydrous ammonia, which was usually stolen from farmers or pipelines.
It goes along the same lines as possession of "burglary tools". That can be anything, including your average hand tools. Yup, everyone here, who's had a screwdriver in their car, could be arrested if they were caught. Luckily, that's rarely enforced without other supporting evidence. A crow bar, ski mask, and bag full of cash with dollar signs on it will probably do.:)
So back to the drug cooking, they could go after ether, water, distilled water, reverse osmosis water systems, gasoline, diesel fuel, etc... Those are for some various drugs, but all are used in making at least something that's popular on the street. But lets not forget the most popular illicit American pasttime, marijuana... High pressure sodium lights, fluorescent lights (cool white and soft white bulbs), sprinkler timers, drip irrigation hose, air filtration systems, supplemental air conditioning (portable air conditioners, or requests to have additional air conditioners installed in a residence).
So, why would the DEA want to block this innocent inventor? Well, easy.. There are alternative solutions for cheap. He doesn't *have* to sell crystalline iodine. He'd still have a viable product with another solution that couldn't be used to make drugs or explosives. Then again, a substantial part of his customer base may be those who aren't looking to purify water.
Because, dear god, no one knows how to use a search engine. If they did, they wouldn't see the abundance of links that reference nitrogen triiodide. And forbid the thought that they could figure out where to source the other ingredient. (hint: anywhere that sells cleaning supplies.)
If I remember right, it's in the Anarchists Cookbook, when I read it about 20 years ago.
But, I seriously doubt the guy would be selling it as an explosive. If he made any quantity, he'd most likely blow himself up trying to transport it.
The war on drugs... The war on kids blowing their fingers off trying to make explosives... I guess the later is a better reason than the former.
I never made it When I was a kid (like around 12-ish), a friend got a hold of crystalline iodine, and we *were* going to do it. It sat around for a while, while I contemplated the fun of *not* blowing myself up. Then I discovered something. Girls are pretty, and nice to touch.. Yippie! Hormones saved the day!
Thinking about it, and reflecting on two divorces, maybe I should have stuck with making unstable compounds. It would have probably been safer than unstable women.
8,500 people took the offer. the story says £2.50 to £3.00 per dozen loss. That's £21,250 to £25,500 loss. She had to hire on extra staff at £12,500.
Her ad was: "Twelve Cupcakes with a Choice of Flavours and Designs for £6.50 from Need a Cake (Value £26)" I won't try to guess her profit margin, as that would be total guess work. We can calculate that she would have expected £221,000, but only was paid £55,250. That doesn't include any charges that Groupon may have charged her to run the ad.
I've seen other stories on the topic. Groupon pushes for unreasonably low prices, to be a loss leader. It does drive business, but does not usually result in other sales. It's dirty marketing that ends up hurting the businesses that they are servicing.
Sure, she should have stuck with £1 over cost (including staff and utilities). They hard sell to get you to drop your price as low as possible. It's inexperienced business people falling for a great sales pitch and promises of huge returns. It does Groupon good, where they will keep membership interested. For the cupcake shop, they may end up closing the doors.
I live in Florida. Actually, the greater Tampa area. The area is known as the lightning capital of the US. Some say world, but apparently NASA found that Rwanda currently beats us. In either case, we have to be very aware of lightning, and its dangers. Even in areas with less frequent lightning strikes, they should still be a concern.
I don't know of any homes or structures, mobile or otherwise, that have burned down because of a lightning strike. The only people that I've known of who have suffered health issues due to lightning were standing outside. You know, folks playing golf in a thunderstorm.
Over the years, I've had to repair and diagnose lightning strikes. I know electricity wants to go to ground, and if it were a chain link fence with steel posts, it should have gone to ground immediately. But after some of the things I've seen, it doesn't always.
The most convoluted trail I followed was an overhead coax cable, that lead to a video digitizer. The lightning jumped to the network card, over the ethernet cable, through the switch, out another cable, and to its victim. You could see the burn marks on the network card, video card, and motherboard. There were two network ports damaged. The overheard cable, and the first machine it passed through were fine. The people on the other end of the overhead cable stated they heard an explosion, and saw a shower of sparks from the camera it was attached to. Oddly enough, the camera was fine.
Pretty much, don't give more ways than necessary for lightning to get to anything else. Surge suppressors are nice, but for as many as I've seen destroyed, I know that they're just a nice decoration.
I picked it for a few reasons. The biggest was the additional interior space. The cabin is larger than the MCI's. It doesn't have subfloor storage, as built at the factory, but it does have dead space in each section that measures about 5'x8'x2'. It just needs a floor and supports fabricated, and exterior doors built.
It's about 3' shorter vertically than the MCI's, which will help get down most streets without hitting tree limbs. Pretty much, if a school bus or UPS/FedEx truck can drive the road, so can I.
I also wanted a vehicle with a strong diesel motor. These come with a few options. Mine has a DD 6v92TA (552ci, turbocharged and supercharged), with an Allison 3 speed automatic transmission. Most of the city buses come with gearing that doesn't allow for a top sped over 60mph. It cost a few bucks, but I had it regeared for highway use.
Last time I moved it, I was driving down the interstate perfectly happily, with my car in tow on a flat trailer. (I had a trailer hitch welded on). I was perfectly happy cruising at 75mph in the right lane. Well, until one car decided the speed limit must be 45, and stayed parked in the right lane doing that. When I had a safe chance to pass, I did. The overall vehicle length was 65' because of the trailer, so I had to be very careful changing lanes. I passed 85mph when passing, and I could still accelerate. I only wanted to get around him, and back to my cruising at the speedlimit. Even with the car in tow, it felt like driving an average full size passenger van. Acceleration, braking, and handling were all there. Actually, I've driven full size vans that didn't handle as well.:)
Knowing I *can* do over 85 is nice. I don't really *want* to go fast in it though. It's pretty much an aerodynamic brick. Slightly sexier curves, but that doesn't help much.
At the moment, I have about $4,500 invested total. I bought it on eBay for cheap, did some mechanical things, and a bit of interior work. I have to finish the interior, and infrastructure work (power, water, sewer, LP). Some lifestyle things have changed, so I have to redraw the floorplan before continuing. I no longer have the wife, two kids, and two dogs. Now, I have a girlfriend, no kids, 4 cats, and the possibility of a half dozen or so friends wanting to go on weekend trips.:)
Fiber can be purchased rather cheaply. It's really worth it for outside runs. As someone else said, lightning strikes.. Even the extra equipment required (transceivers, fiber ready switches, etc) can be purchased fairly cheaply on eBay.
I did it to replace a mess of copper and wireless between offices in a complex once. If I remember right, it was something like 600' of fiber for about $200. I did it in segments, so if someone were to damage one segment, it could be easily replaced. For their end points, I picked up a lot of 6 Cisco Catalyst 2924's with 4-port 100baseFX cards. I think the total price on switches was $300, and that let me replace all kinds of consumer-grade crap switches.
His problem with fire pits and the like can be reduced by laying the fiber along the edge of the roads, and burying at a sufficient depth. Hell, they run power and water to each campsite already. Parallel runs to existing infrastructure would be fine. Fiber doesn't have that nasty tendency to pick up inductive signals.
There are plenty of people who's second home has wheels. For those who aren't familiar with the word "snowbird", it's where people from the northern US and Canada head down to the southern US states and Mexico during the winters. If you have the luxury of leaving your house for half the year, it lets you live in the areas with nicer climates year round.
I'd rather be in Florida all winter, where you'll never see a blizzard. For the summer, I'd rather be in a north where you'll never see triple-digit temperatures, or have states of emergencies declared because it's so hot you can die from heat stroke by taking a walk in the middle of the day.
These "campgrounds" offer the full range of service, so people can take their house, and live where they'd like. It's more flexible than having a brick and mortar house to go to, that you may find in any condition when you get to it. Was your house vandalized over the last 6 months? Did a window break in a thunderstorm, and there's been standing water inside for the last 6 months? Have homeless people broken in, and have been using corners of various rooms as bathrooms?
Most importantly, by living in an RV, "home" this winter can be somewhere different than last summer.
I bought a transit bus (40'x8.5'x11') to convert into an RV because of exactly this. For the 8 years preceeding that, I did all of my work remotely. I didn't live near most of our datacenters. Rather than spending the money on a plane ticket, it could go towards fuel to get me from point A to point B, and eliminate the cost of renting a car, hotel, etc. "Camping" would be getting to a location where I could set up camp. Park the bus, put the levelers down, hook up to facilities, and stay there for months at a time, with all the creature comforts intact.
Sadly, I was laid off shortly after buying the bus. It has been sitting in storage, waiting to be finished. I am now working in the same capacity at another company. I live 20 miles from one of our sites, and 1000 miles from the other. At our northern office, the low tonight will be 40F. Brrr.. At our southern office, the low tonight will be 65F. If I'm out late, I may need a light jacket.:)
This summer (like, just a few months ago), the people at the northern office were describing it being "hot". That was, a feels-like temperature of about 80. Our feels like temperature at same time at the southern office was over 100.
Nope, I like the idea of finishing up the RV, and following favorable climates. If for nothing else, so I don't sweat all summer, and freeze my nuts off all winter.
I do that all the time. When I get a new disk of anything, I make an ISO of it. That way, if it gets scratched, broken, lost, or whatever, I still have the image. Installing from an ISO mounted as a virtual drive is faster too.:)
At one office, we had to install a piece of software on a dozen machines (licensed for all of them). It was a breeze, using remote desktop to get to all of them, and mounting the ISO from a shared directory. It would have taken someone much longer to go to each desk, put in the CD, install it, and proceed to the next. Without fail, if I had someone do that, they'd be dragged off to fix every little problem the user had encountered with anything else too.
But don't worry, the guy you were replying to was just a troll.:)
We can understand misspellings and other small errors. You can even miss whole words, because we comprehend what we read by evaluating the context of it. The title "Skulled Riders" made no sense to me, because it had no context around it. Knowing what the post was saying allowed it to be clarified that it really said "Skilled Readers".
This is also why you can solve puzzles, like Wheel of Fortune type games, or crossword puzzles. You have some sort of clue for context.
Try this...
U _ _
Completely useless without contest. . Give it a little context though. "A country". Voila, you immediately guessed "UAE". Oh.. you didn't. Because in your context (you are always part of the context), assuming you are in North America, you would have thought of countries close to you, which would presumably be the USA.
I've seen that before. It has something to do with the satellites and the way they do their imagery.
I've seen buildings in areas where I lived, show that their roofs were bright blue or green. I believe it's something about the way the sun was hitting them, the angle of the camera, and the way the satellite does color separation.
Since they don't invite me to play with their satellites, I don't have details on how it works. I just know it happens from observing it happening to known locations that don't have blue or green roofs.:)
I just took another look. It appears that there are 4 "airports" there. And yes, I see the bomb damage on the tarmac. That makes sense for practice. it makes more sense to hit the planes on the ground, rather than hopefully damage the runway so they can't leave.:)
I'd guess they have multiple runway mockups, so they can practice hitting different arrangement airports. Or possibly they had drones of some sort arriving/departing, to practice more advanced stuff (hit 'em while they're taking off or landing). Possibly one could or would have been used for drone air traffic. None of them really seem to be set up to handle real aircraft. I didn't see any signs of support equipment, or even marks from heavier aircraft using them. An expendable target drone is just a big RC airplane, so it wouldn't necessarily leave much in the way of tire marks from landing.
Some of the features are overlaid by terrain. They're real. A friend sent me another link that included these and several more. Sorry, I don't have it to share.
One of the features on the other link was an airport. The runway and taxiway were bordered by the same white lines. They also had another airport right beside (but aligned differently) was newer. There were no actual paved runways, just the white lines representing where it should be.
The lines would be easily put down by a spray truck.
If you zoom in with Google Maps on the first image, you can see where dirt has washed across the lines to some degree in places. You'll also see the paint washed away from the lines.
There are plenty of vehicle tracks around the lines.
All in all, it looks like some economical setups for military exercises. It's a lot cheaper to set up a tent city with painted lines representing roads and runways, than to build a a practice city.
Some of the buildings look like they were blown up. Air strikes, or done by ground troops, who knows. Either one is a possibility.
For the most part, they look like they haven't been used in a while. And singe Google Maps images are delayed by years, we're looking at old training areas, that were old 5 years ago.
I actually agree with you, on not letting me then do the work. Some kid they don't know anything about says "I'll do it". They had much better choices though. There were computer stores in the area. There was one less than 1/4 mile away that would have loved to do it.
My problem is spending hundreds of dollars to replace a network card. They need a better system in place. Instead of outsourcing to some approved company, they should have shared in-house resources. It's like every agency and every department is in a race to see who can spend the most money. I know when the end of the budget year comes around, they do race. If there's a surplus, they hurry up and spend it on something to justify asking for the same amount or more for the following year. I personally knew of a department spending over $100k on anything they could think of, just so they would get the same money the following year. Everyone got new computers, chairs, and other assorted crap. It was all just slightly better than the ones they got at the end of the previous year. They actually had a hard time finding things to buy, because they were just a small department.
But back to the network card expense. Why can't a congressional field office get someone from a national guard facility to fix their computer? Oohh, we can't have that, they're different branches of the government. Who cares that it's all government, and they had a location just a few miles away that *did* have people trained to do it. (ha, training. insert card here..)
I guess I'd be complaining less if I was getting a huge paycheck as part of the system.:)
I was being recruited by a huge gov't contractor. Their sales pitch was that I'd be getting about $200k/yr if I was in the states, or over $400k/yr if I went overseas. While overseas, I'd have no expenses. I'd be provided everything. Food, housing, transportation. That would all be care of the military base I was at. I'd even be working side-by-side with soldiers making a small fraction of what I'd be making. The only significant difference in our responsibilities would be that if shooting started, they'd get guns, and I'd have to duck.
Why could anyone get a deal like that? Because the contractor had billion dollar deals to supply and support equipment. There are soldiers trained to support the same equipment. All of it was COTS. So the contractor orders it from Dell, Sun, Cisco, or whoever, marks up the price, and sends someone like me out with it.
I wouldn't *mind* making 8 times as much as the other guy. I could be pretty happy working 5 years, and having a couple million dollars in the bank. That's not financially responsible for any organization, government or not, to be doing.
The government buys from a GSA approved vendor. That vendor buys from whoever they damned well please.
Way way back in the day, I knew someone who worked in a gov't office. They had a token ring network. I happened to be there, and diagnosed the problem (bad network card). Don't worry, it wasn't a classified network of any sort.:) I wasn't suppose to diagnose anything, but they appreciated the help. They tried to get permission for me to install a network card. Just a single card in a single workstation. I even had a replacement card with me, that would give them at cost.
They sent the request up the chain. It came back down "denied'". It was instead contracted out to an approved vendor about 100 miles away. They paid about 10x as much for the card, and something like $100/hr labor (including drive time).
Where did the approved vendor get the network card? Probably the same place I did. It was identical. Do they have any knowledge of where it came from? Hell no.
So, why can't the government have it's own trained techs on staff, ready to do the work? Because it's "cheaper" to outsource it to 3rd parties. Oddly enough, they pay more to the 3rd party vendors for the labor, than they would to keep a staff in-house. Why does it happen? Because 3rd party vendors are also significant donors to political campaigns.
So when the 3rd party vendor buys a part from a distributor, who buys it from the manufacturer, is there ever a clear chain of custody? Hell no. The government is a large enough customer to buy everything, directly from manufacturers. For quite a bit of it, it would be cost effective for them to license and manufacture their own units.
I don't know how anyone can be surprised that substandard part are the norm, regardless of who the end user is. It's not cost effective for anyone to build the *better* part. If they do, it will cost more, and they won't sell.
I didn't say it was practical with a single stage solid rocket.:)
Consider the stages of a space shuttle flight.
T -6s, the main engines go to 90%.
T -0s, the main engines at 100%, and the SRBs are lit.
T +26s Max Q, the main engines are reduced to 72%. (at about 10k feet)
T +70s, the main engines go to 104% (at about 60k feet)
T +126s, the SRBs separate. (at about 150k feet)
T +480s, the main engines shut down.
They don't want to be going too fast at a low altitude. Well, they'd prefer to keep everything in one piece, and not... well... ripping pieces off on the way up.
According to the Qu8k site, their motor burnt out at right around 10 seconds, and ~18k feet.
If they had a first stage, that didn't build up as much speed, but pushed them into thinner air, a second stage burn could have reached a much higher altitude with less effort.
I'm not sure what requirements they were working under. Maybe a multi-stage rocket wasn't permissible. Maybe they just didn't want to.:) According to their response (above), the next one will be a two stage rocket.
I have seen smaller rockets (like the good ol' Estes variety) do a multi-stage burn in a single stage rocket. Well, it wasn't intended to be such. The stages didn't separate, so when the second stage lit, it blew out the first motor. As I recall, the body wasn't too much worse for the wear when it made it to the ground. We never found the first stage casing though.
I kind of want to get back into doing rockets. Unfortunately, where I am (Florida), if it doesn't come straight back down to you (ha!), and you managed that kind of altitude, it's most likely to land in water somewhere. If it doesn't land in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, or in any of the numerous swamps, rivers, ponds, or lakes, it'd probably land on an old person.:)
Honestly, I do have 2 other cards. The limits are too low to do much of anything with. Like I said, I was out of work for a long time, so my credit went down the shitter, and my cards went with it. These two are the cards for low/no credit people who are trying to rebuild their credit, but are typically used by someone with low income to get a few hundred bucks and let it go to collections.
I couldn't use the other cards together to rent the car, pay for the hotel, or.. well.. much of anything else. I could buy food and gas on them. At least the one fill-up it takes for the typical week long trip.
Since I'm still recovering, I'm not a horribly cash positive person. I plan for every expense, and taking $100 out to leave sitting in my pocket just isn't feasible these days.
In the past, I didn't leave town with anything less than $500 on me. That didn't make a significant impact on my bank accounts, and it didn't matter if I kept it in my pocket til it was gone, or redeposited it when I got home. Those days are gone, and will be for quite a while.
Hey twat, who the hell are you replying to? That quote doesn't come from anywhere in this thread. Or are you assuming that someone will say it, so you can bitch about it?
But to try to stay on topic.
I really hate these threads. By the time I turn to Google to find the answer to a problem, it usually means I've exhausted my vast knowledge, and that of my friends. More often than not, I find plenty of these threads saying "go figure it out yourself" and "don't you know how to work a search engine?" Sometimes they'll post links back to their own page on the subject, but the page will have been gone for years, and it wouldn't have attracted the attention of archive.org. So, no answers.
If you have an answer for someone, say what the fucking answer is. Don't pretend that you're so much smarter, and they can go figure it out themselves. As I've learned, most of the people who play that game, don't know the answer themselves.
I'm not replying to the OP, because I don't have an answer. I do have some rather complicated ones, but those don't seem to be the ones that he wants. That would be something like, make another account on a Linux machine. Forward messages he wants bounced to that account. That account should have.forward pointing to a script (Perl would be my choice), which removes the forwarding information, and crafts a nice legitimate looking bounce message.
Ya, but well over a year of no work, no cooperation from the larger debt holders (I couldn't sell my house, I couldn't get them to renegotiate for anything). I sincerely looked for work. I contacted thousands of places. I receive dozens of responses, most of which were insulting. No, I won't move to a higher cost of living area, for 30/hrs week, minimum wage, to be your senior level programmer.
I did finally get good work, and I have paid back everyone that hasn't been satisfied with other arrangements. Yup, foreclosing on my house, because they wouldn't even begin negotiating with me, means that reclaiming the property satisfies the debt.
The awful part now is, there are several companies who are trying to collect on debts that have been satisfied. As it turns out, there are quite a few companies who have acquired information (i.e., using compromised data), to make fraudulent claims on "outstanding" debts. Being that they acquired your credit reports through whatever means, they know your name, address, SSN, DOB, debts, owed amounts, etc..
I got a call from one of them just a few days ago. It was from a blocked number. The first thing I said was that they've broken the law by blocking their identity. They asked me to confirm that my SSN ends in 1234 (not really, but they had the right one). I wouldn't, but I continued to ask what it was regarding. They gave up on getting me to confirm it, and continued on with the rest of the con. They gave me the last few digits of an account number, and told me I owed an incorrect amount that they were willing to reduce to another incorrect amount, as long as I provided payment information immediately.
What kind of idiot would give checking information, or credit card, to anyone from an unknown company (but clearly a call center in India), who says you owe them something.
I'm really loving the Mr Number app for Android now. I have a log of their repeated calls, and I never have to hear the phone ring, or listen to their voicemails. Calls twice a day, every day...
Really, if scams like that work, I'm in the wrong line of business. If I can just call random people, tell them they owe something, and get their bank info, I could make a freakin' fortune. I won't those. I'm allergic to prison.:)
Ya. Don't hold onto that dream too tight. I have a little story to tell you...
I was a Wells Fargo customer. I was moderately satisfied with them, except when they screwed with me..
I had to take a trip up to Boston.. Fly up, rent a car, drive an hour, and spend a week working. No problem. When I got there, I caught the shuttle bus to the rental car parking lot. When I got there, they said "Sure, we'd rent you a car, but your card has been declined." I had plenty of money *in* the account, so I figured a quick call to the bank would fix it... Business account, business traveler, they'll get it fixed right up, right?
I spent the following hour on the phone, where they explained to me that there was possible fraudulent activity relating to my card. They couldn't tell me *what* the activity was, just that they had cancelled my card.
They did kindly tell me that I could go to any Wells Fargo branch, and get a temporary credit card. I asked which one was walking distance from Boston's Logan airport, as I had $20 in my pocket, and no car to drive anywhere, because I *couldn't* rent a car, because they cancelled my card. They didn't answer.
A few more phone calls, and becoming gradually pissed off, I managed to arrange for a ride. A coworker drove the hour *to* the airport, so we could drive the hour *back* to work. (Sorry B'). He also spotted me some cash, so I'd have more than $20 to my name for the week while I was there.
I am one of the many who had financial problems for an extended period. As it turns out, credit card companies really don't like it if you don't pay them for over a year. That bank card, and the cash in my pocket, was all I had.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of flying across the country to work on site for a week, they kind of appreciate it if you are there to work. Telling them, "Sorry, I need to spend about 5 hours of the 8 hour work day, driving to a bank in *the next state*, to fix some mental deficiency they're having, just won't go over very well..
I managed on the borrowed cash, and finally made it home, late Friday night.
So, I had the opportunity to get more pissed off until bright and sunshiny Monday morning. I went straight down to the closest branch, and asked for details on the fraud. They told me, "Oh, there was no fraud. We mailed you a new bank card. Since you never activated the new one, we cancelled the old one."
I tried to explain the absolute failure of logic in that one. Did they not see airplane reservations, rental car reservations, hotel reservations? They finally told me where they mailed the card to. Not my residence, where I get my statements, and the only address they claim to have on file for me. Not my previous residence. They mailed it to a place I hadn't lived for years.
It then took them about an hour to figure out how to issue the temporary card. They issued it, but it didn't work. So they tried again. and again. They told me I would have my new card, with my name on it and all, in 7 to 14 days.
14 days later.
I opened a new account at a local credit union.
21 days later....
I got the bank card and checks for the credit union.
24 days later...
I got my new card from Wells Fargo. I couldn't activate it.
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Hey now, don't ruin the guy's buzz with facts. That'll only confuse him. :)
But yes, he should research drug use and abuse through history, and the economics of drug cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. It's very complicated, and actually has very little to do with prohibition.
Opium is a great pain killer, and slightly addictive.
Process it, and you have morphine, an even better pain killer, and even more addictive, and more expensive.
Process it more, and you have heroin. Well, way overkill on the painkiller scale. It's hugely addictive, and even more expensive.
And lets not forget some of the dirty dealing that has happened, where particular governmental organizations world wide have put their fingers in the dealing to turn a profit themselves. Governments don't like competition.
If I had an opium farm (which I don't), and if I was a drug manufacturer or dealer (which I'm not), I'd want to sell my opium as heroin, bring in more money, *AND* have a really solid recurring customer base. Well, until they OD'd. I hate that we've taken a natural resource (opium) and tainted it so horribly.
I had thought, it would be nice to have a few opium plants growing. If I had a bad pain, I would have a natural, not horribly addictive, pain killer on hand. Instead, my options are combinations of chemicals produced in labs, that ensure the continued profits of pharmaceutical companies. And these drugs are *known* to have severely toxic side effects. Due to chronic pain, I'll probably die of liver failure by the time I'm 50. Why? Ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and if it gets really really bad, some prescription only drugs. I'm confident my pains could be managed well with opium and marijuana. But hey, there's no good profit in a drug that I can grow at home.
Since I have a severe dislike of the idea of being in prison, I go with the legal options. The government has too many employees with guns and bad attitudes to argue the finer points of the current drug wars with.
The difference is, his product *has* been used in the production of illegal drugs. He won't provide for any sort of accountability to where his product goes. He could say "I sent 10k units to Camping World", and that's it. Now, if Camping World has someone buy up every single one of them for "personal use" that would be suspicious, and would warrant investigation.
From his records, the DEA would be able to identify wholesalers who are putting in purchase requests for unusual quantities. It gives them somewhere to look. They don't care that he's making these water bottles.
If his product hadn't been used in the illegal drug trade, and if he had cooperated with them, this would be a non-issue.
Sure it is, and as the article stated, it would be pretty easy. He sells to camping stores, and camping supply wholesalers. It's not up to him to provide the list of end users, and that's not what they were asking for.
The DEA cut off his supplier, because his product was already found being used in the manufacture of illegal drugs. It's not any sort of vengeful act against him. The problem has come about where he refused to cooperate with some simple requests.
As I understand it, the DEA can go after any precursor of drugs. Besides your example of ephedrine, then pseudoephedrine, they were also watching for large purchases of lithium batteries. And of course, anhydrous ammonia, which was usually stolen from farmers or pipelines.
It goes along the same lines as possession of "burglary tools". That can be anything, including your average hand tools. Yup, everyone here, who's had a screwdriver in their car, could be arrested if they were caught. Luckily, that's rarely enforced without other supporting evidence. A crow bar, ski mask, and bag full of cash with dollar signs on it will probably do. :)
So back to the drug cooking, they could go after ether, water, distilled water, reverse osmosis water systems, gasoline, diesel fuel, etc... Those are for some various drugs, but all are used in making at least something that's popular on the street. But lets not forget the most popular illicit American pasttime, marijuana... High pressure sodium lights, fluorescent lights (cool white and soft white bulbs), sprinkler timers, drip irrigation hose, air filtration systems, supplemental air conditioning (portable air conditioners, or requests to have additional air conditioners installed in a residence).
So, why would the DEA want to block this innocent inventor? Well, easy.. There are alternative solutions for cheap. He doesn't *have* to sell crystalline iodine. He'd still have a viable product with another solution that couldn't be used to make drugs or explosives. Then again, a substantial part of his customer base may be those who aren't looking to purify water.
Because, dear god, no one knows how to use a search engine. If they did, they wouldn't see the abundance of links that reference nitrogen triiodide. And forbid the thought that they could figure out where to source the other ingredient. (hint: anywhere that sells cleaning supplies.)
If I remember right, it's in the Anarchists Cookbook, when I read it about 20 years ago.
But, I seriously doubt the guy would be selling it as an explosive. If he made any quantity, he'd most likely blow himself up trying to transport it.
The war on drugs... The war on kids blowing their fingers off trying to make explosives... I guess the later is a better reason than the former.
I never made it When I was a kid (like around 12-ish), a friend got a hold of crystalline iodine, and we *were* going to do it. It sat around for a while, while I contemplated the fun of *not* blowing myself up. Then I discovered something. Girls are pretty, and nice to touch.. Yippie! Hormones saved the day!
Thinking about it, and reflecting on two divorces, maybe I should have stuck with making unstable compounds. It would have probably been safer than unstable women.
8,500 people took the offer. the story says £2.50 to £3.00 per dozen loss. That's £21,250 to £25,500 loss. She had to hire on extra staff at £12,500.
Her ad was: "Twelve Cupcakes with a Choice of Flavours and Designs for £6.50 from Need a Cake (Value £26)" I won't try to guess her profit margin, as that would be total guess work. We can calculate that she would have expected £221,000, but only was paid £55,250. That doesn't include any charges that Groupon may have charged her to run the ad.
I've seen other stories on the topic. Groupon pushes for unreasonably low prices, to be a loss leader. It does drive business, but does not usually result in other sales. It's dirty marketing that ends up hurting the businesses that they are servicing.
Sure, she should have stuck with £1 over cost (including staff and utilities). They hard sell to get you to drop your price as low as possible. It's inexperienced business people falling for a great sales pitch and promises of huge returns. It does Groupon good, where they will keep membership interested. For the cupcake shop, they may end up closing the doors.
Divorces are a bitch. I don't have my kids around, but I sure see more than half my paycheck being sucked up for someone.
I live in Florida. Actually, the greater Tampa area. The area is known as the lightning capital of the US. Some say world, but apparently NASA found that Rwanda currently beats us. In either case, we have to be very aware of lightning, and its dangers. Even in areas with less frequent lightning strikes, they should still be a concern.
I don't know of any homes or structures, mobile or otherwise, that have burned down because of a lightning strike. The only people that I've known of who have suffered health issues due to lightning were standing outside. You know, folks playing golf in a thunderstorm.
Over the years, I've had to repair and diagnose lightning strikes. I know electricity wants to go to ground, and if it were a chain link fence with steel posts, it should have gone to ground immediately. But after some of the things I've seen, it doesn't always.
The most convoluted trail I followed was an overhead coax cable, that lead to a video digitizer. The lightning jumped to the network card, over the ethernet cable, through the switch, out another cable, and to its victim. You could see the burn marks on the network card, video card, and motherboard. There were two network ports damaged. The overheard cable, and the first machine it passed through were fine. The people on the other end of the overhead cable stated they heard an explosion, and saw a shower of sparks from the camera it was attached to. Oddly enough, the camera was fine.
Pretty much, don't give more ways than necessary for lightning to get to anything else. Surge suppressors are nice, but for as many as I've seen destroyed, I know that they're just a nice decoration.
1982 GMC RTS-04.
I picked it for a few reasons. The biggest was the additional interior space. The cabin is larger than the MCI's. It doesn't have subfloor storage, as built at the factory, but it does have dead space in each section that measures about 5'x8'x2'. It just needs a floor and supports fabricated, and exterior doors built.
It's about 3' shorter vertically than the MCI's, which will help get down most streets without hitting tree limbs. Pretty much, if a school bus or UPS/FedEx truck can drive the road, so can I.
I also wanted a vehicle with a strong diesel motor. These come with a few options. Mine has a DD 6v92TA (552ci, turbocharged and supercharged), with an Allison 3 speed automatic transmission. Most of the city buses come with gearing that doesn't allow for a top sped over 60mph. It cost a few bucks, but I had it regeared for highway use.
Last time I moved it, I was driving down the interstate perfectly happily, with my car in tow on a flat trailer. (I had a trailer hitch welded on). I was perfectly happy cruising at 75mph in the right lane. Well, until one car decided the speed limit must be 45, and stayed parked in the right lane doing that. When I had a safe chance to pass, I did. The overall vehicle length was 65' because of the trailer, so I had to be very careful changing lanes. I passed 85mph when passing, and I could still accelerate. I only wanted to get around him, and back to my cruising at the speedlimit. Even with the car in tow, it felt like driving an average full size passenger van. Acceleration, braking, and handling were all there. Actually, I've driven full size vans that didn't handle as well. :)
Knowing I *can* do over 85 is nice. I don't really *want* to go fast in it though. It's pretty much an aerodynamic brick. Slightly sexier curves, but that doesn't help much.
At the moment, I have about $4,500 invested total. I bought it on eBay for cheap, did some mechanical things, and a bit of interior work. I have to finish the interior, and infrastructure work (power, water, sewer, LP). Some lifestyle things have changed, so I have to redraw the floorplan before continuing. I no longer have the wife, two kids, and two dogs. Now, I have a girlfriend, no kids, 4 cats, and the possibility of a half dozen or so friends wanting to go on weekend trips. :)
Fiber can be purchased rather cheaply. It's really worth it for outside runs. As someone else said, lightning strikes.. Even the extra equipment required (transceivers, fiber ready switches, etc) can be purchased fairly cheaply on eBay.
I did it to replace a mess of copper and wireless between offices in a complex once. If I remember right, it was something like 600' of fiber for about $200. I did it in segments, so if someone were to damage one segment, it could be easily replaced. For their end points, I picked up a lot of 6 Cisco Catalyst 2924's with 4-port 100baseFX cards. I think the total price on switches was $300, and that let me replace all kinds of consumer-grade crap switches.
His problem with fire pits and the like can be reduced by laying the fiber along the edge of the roads, and burying at a sufficient depth. Hell, they run power and water to each campsite already. Parallel runs to existing infrastructure would be fine. Fiber doesn't have that nasty tendency to pick up inductive signals.
Well, not all "campgrounds" are for roughing it.
There are plenty of people who's second home has wheels. For those who aren't familiar with the word "snowbird", it's where people from the northern US and Canada head down to the southern US states and Mexico during the winters. If you have the luxury of leaving your house for half the year, it lets you live in the areas with nicer climates year round.
I'd rather be in Florida all winter, where you'll never see a blizzard. For the summer, I'd rather be in a north where you'll never see triple-digit temperatures, or have states of emergencies declared because it's so hot you can die from heat stroke by taking a walk in the middle of the day.
These "campgrounds" offer the full range of service, so people can take their house, and live where they'd like. It's more flexible than having a brick and mortar house to go to, that you may find in any condition when you get to it. Was your house vandalized over the last 6 months? Did a window break in a thunderstorm, and there's been standing water inside for the last 6 months? Have homeless people broken in, and have been using corners of various rooms as bathrooms?
Most importantly, by living in an RV, "home" this winter can be somewhere different than last summer.
I bought a transit bus (40'x8.5'x11') to convert into an RV because of exactly this. For the 8 years preceeding that, I did all of my work remotely. I didn't live near most of our datacenters. Rather than spending the money on a plane ticket, it could go towards fuel to get me from point A to point B, and eliminate the cost of renting a car, hotel, etc. "Camping" would be getting to a location where I could set up camp. Park the bus, put the levelers down, hook up to facilities, and stay there for months at a time, with all the creature comforts intact.
Sadly, I was laid off shortly after buying the bus. It has been sitting in storage, waiting to be finished. I am now working in the same capacity at another company. I live 20 miles from one of our sites, and 1000 miles from the other. At our northern office, the low tonight will be 40F. Brrr.. At our southern office, the low tonight will be 65F. If I'm out late, I may need a light jacket. :)
This summer (like, just a few months ago), the people at the northern office were describing it being "hot". That was, a feels-like temperature of about 80. Our feels like temperature at same time at the southern office was over 100.
Nope, I like the idea of finishing up the RV, and following favorable climates. If for nothing else, so I don't sweat all summer, and freeze my nuts off all winter.
Ya, that one didn't play that way.. It was very determined that you *will* babysit it through the install.
I do that all the time. When I get a new disk of anything, I make an ISO of it. That way, if it gets scratched, broken, lost, or whatever, I still have the image. Installing from an ISO mounted as a virtual drive is faster too. :)
At one office, we had to install a piece of software on a dozen machines (licensed for all of them). It was a breeze, using remote desktop to get to all of them, and mounting the ISO from a shared directory. It would have taken someone much longer to go to each desk, put in the CD, install it, and proceed to the next. Without fail, if I had someone do that, they'd be dragged off to fix every little problem the user had encountered with anything else too.
But don't worry, the guy you were replying to was just a troll. :)
That's probably not what you were encountering.
We can understand misspellings and other small errors. You can even miss whole words, because we comprehend what we read by evaluating the context of it. The title "Skulled Riders" made no sense to me, because it had no context around it. Knowing what the post was saying allowed it to be clarified that it really said "Skilled Readers".
This is also why you can solve puzzles, like Wheel of Fortune type games, or crossword puzzles. You have some sort of clue for context.
Try this...
U _ _
Completely useless without contest. . Give it a little context though. "A country". Voila, you immediately guessed "UAE". Oh.. you didn't. Because in your context (you are always part of the context), assuming you are in North America, you would have thought of countries close to you, which would presumably be the USA.
I've seen that before. It has something to do with the satellites and the way they do their imagery.
I've seen buildings in areas where I lived, show that their roofs were bright blue or green. I believe it's something about the way the sun was hitting them, the angle of the camera, and the way the satellite does color separation.
Since they don't invite me to play with their satellites, I don't have details on how it works. I just know it happens from observing it happening to known locations that don't have blue or green roofs. :)
I just took another look. It appears that there are 4 "airports" there. And yes, I see the bomb damage on the tarmac. That makes sense for practice. it makes more sense to hit the planes on the ground, rather than hopefully damage the runway so they can't leave. :)
I'd guess they have multiple runway mockups, so they can practice hitting different arrangement airports. Or possibly they had drones of some sort arriving/departing, to practice more advanced stuff (hit 'em while they're taking off or landing). Possibly one could or would have been used for drone air traffic. None of them really seem to be set up to handle real aircraft. I didn't see any signs of support equipment, or even marks from heavier aircraft using them. An expendable target drone is just a big RC airplane, so it wouldn't necessarily leave much in the way of tire marks from landing.
For those who didn't see it, here's a link.
Some of the features are overlaid by terrain. They're real. A friend sent me another link that included these and several more. Sorry, I don't have it to share.
One of the features on the other link was an airport. The runway and taxiway were bordered by the same white lines. They also had another airport right beside (but aligned differently) was newer. There were no actual paved runways, just the white lines representing where it should be.
The lines would be easily put down by a spray truck.
If you zoom in with Google Maps on the first image, you can see where dirt has washed across the lines to some degree in places. You'll also see the paint washed away from the lines.
There are plenty of vehicle tracks around the lines.
All in all, it looks like some economical setups for military exercises. It's a lot cheaper to set up a tent city with painted lines representing roads and runways, than to build a a practice city.
Some of the buildings look like they were blown up. Air strikes, or done by ground troops, who knows. Either one is a possibility.
For the most part, they look like they haven't been used in a while. And singe Google Maps images are delayed by years, we're looking at old training areas, that were old 5 years ago.
I actually agree with you, on not letting me then do the work. Some kid they don't know anything about says "I'll do it". They had much better choices though. There were computer stores in the area. There was one less than 1/4 mile away that would have loved to do it.
My problem is spending hundreds of dollars to replace a network card. They need a better system in place. Instead of outsourcing to some approved company, they should have shared in-house resources. It's like every agency and every department is in a race to see who can spend the most money. I know when the end of the budget year comes around, they do race. If there's a surplus, they hurry up and spend it on something to justify asking for the same amount or more for the following year. I personally knew of a department spending over $100k on anything they could think of, just so they would get the same money the following year. Everyone got new computers, chairs, and other assorted crap. It was all just slightly better than the ones they got at the end of the previous year. They actually had a hard time finding things to buy, because they were just a small department.
But back to the network card expense. Why can't a congressional field office get someone from a national guard facility to fix their computer? Oohh, we can't have that, they're different branches of the government. Who cares that it's all government, and they had a location just a few miles away that *did* have people trained to do it. (ha, training. insert card here..)
I guess I'd be complaining less if I was getting a huge paycheck as part of the system. :)
I was being recruited by a huge gov't contractor. Their sales pitch was that I'd be getting about $200k/yr if I was in the states, or over $400k/yr if I went overseas. While overseas, I'd have no expenses. I'd be provided everything. Food, housing, transportation. That would all be care of the military base I was at. I'd even be working side-by-side with soldiers making a small fraction of what I'd be making. The only significant difference in our responsibilities would be that if shooting started, they'd get guns, and I'd have to duck.
Why could anyone get a deal like that? Because the contractor had billion dollar deals to supply and support equipment. There are soldiers trained to support the same equipment. All of it was COTS. So the contractor orders it from Dell, Sun, Cisco, or whoever, marks up the price, and sends someone like me out with it.
I wouldn't *mind* making 8 times as much as the other guy. I could be pretty happy working 5 years, and having a couple million dollars in the bank. That's not financially responsible for any organization, government or not, to be doing.
That's not the way the government works.
The government buys from a GSA approved vendor. That vendor buys from whoever they damned well please.
Way way back in the day, I knew someone who worked in a gov't office. They had a token ring network. I happened to be there, and diagnosed the problem (bad network card). Don't worry, it wasn't a classified network of any sort. :) I wasn't suppose to diagnose anything, but they appreciated the help. They tried to get permission for me to install a network card. Just a single card in a single workstation. I even had a replacement card with me, that would give them at cost.
They sent the request up the chain. It came back down "denied'". It was instead contracted out to an approved vendor about 100 miles away. They paid about 10x as much for the card, and something like $100/hr labor (including drive time).
Where did the approved vendor get the network card? Probably the same place I did. It was identical. Do they have any knowledge of where it came from? Hell no.
So, why can't the government have it's own trained techs on staff, ready to do the work? Because it's "cheaper" to outsource it to 3rd parties. Oddly enough, they pay more to the 3rd party vendors for the labor, than they would to keep a staff in-house. Why does it happen? Because 3rd party vendors are also significant donors to political campaigns.
So when the 3rd party vendor buys a part from a distributor, who buys it from the manufacturer, is there ever a clear chain of custody? Hell no. The government is a large enough customer to buy everything, directly from manufacturers. For quite a bit of it, it would be cost effective for them to license and manufacture their own units.
I don't know how anyone can be surprised that substandard part are the norm, regardless of who the end user is. It's not cost effective for anyone to build the *better* part. If they do, it will cost more, and they won't sell.
I didn't say it was practical with a single stage solid rocket. :)
Consider the stages of a space shuttle flight.
T -6s, the main engines go to 90%.
T -0s, the main engines at 100%, and the SRBs are lit.
T +26s Max Q, the main engines are reduced to 72%. (at about 10k feet)
T +70s, the main engines go to 104% (at about 60k feet)
T +126s, the SRBs separate. (at about 150k feet)
T +480s, the main engines shut down.
They don't want to be going too fast at a low altitude. Well, they'd prefer to keep everything in one piece, and not ... well ... ripping pieces off on the way up.
According to the Qu8k site, their motor burnt out at right around 10 seconds, and ~18k feet.
If they had a first stage, that didn't build up as much speed, but pushed them into thinner air, a second stage burn could have reached a much higher altitude with less effort.
I'm not sure what requirements they were working under. Maybe a multi-stage rocket wasn't permissible. Maybe they just didn't want to. :) According to their response (above), the next one will be a two stage rocket.
I have seen smaller rockets (like the good ol' Estes variety) do a multi-stage burn in a single stage rocket. Well, it wasn't intended to be such. The stages didn't separate, so when the second stage lit, it blew out the first motor. As I recall, the body wasn't too much worse for the wear when it made it to the ground. We never found the first stage casing though.
I kind of want to get back into doing rockets. Unfortunately, where I am (Florida), if it doesn't come straight back down to you (ha!), and you managed that kind of altitude, it's most likely to land in water somewhere. If it doesn't land in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, or in any of the numerous swamps, rivers, ponds, or lakes, it'd probably land on an old person. :)
Oh, those deserts do have a distinct advantage.
They had too much air. They should have saved the supersonic flight for a much higher altitude. :)
Well, we do what we have to do..
Honestly, I do have 2 other cards. The limits are too low to do much of anything with. Like I said, I was out of work for a long time, so my credit went down the shitter, and my cards went with it. These two are the cards for low/no credit people who are trying to rebuild their credit, but are typically used by someone with low income to get a few hundred bucks and let it go to collections.
I couldn't use the other cards together to rent the car, pay for the hotel, or .. well .. much of anything else. I could buy food and gas on them. At least the one fill-up it takes for the typical week long trip.
Since I'm still recovering, I'm not a horribly cash positive person. I plan for every expense, and taking $100 out to leave sitting in my pocket just isn't feasible these days.
In the past, I didn't leave town with anything less than $500 on me. That didn't make a significant impact on my bank accounts, and it didn't matter if I kept it in my pocket til it was gone, or redeposited it when I got home. Those days are gone, and will be for quite a while.
Hey twat, who the hell are you replying to? That quote doesn't come from anywhere in this thread. Or are you assuming that someone will say it, so you can bitch about it?
But to try to stay on topic.
I really hate these threads. By the time I turn to Google to find the answer to a problem, it usually means I've exhausted my vast knowledge, and that of my friends. More often than not, I find plenty of these threads saying "go figure it out yourself" and "don't you know how to work a search engine?" Sometimes they'll post links back to their own page on the subject, but the page will have been gone for years, and it wouldn't have attracted the attention of archive.org. So, no answers.
If you have an answer for someone, say what the fucking answer is. Don't pretend that you're so much smarter, and they can go figure it out themselves. As I've learned, most of the people who play that game, don't know the answer themselves.
I'm not replying to the OP, because I don't have an answer. I do have some rather complicated ones, but those don't seem to be the ones that he wants. That would be something like, make another account on a Linux machine. Forward messages he wants bounced to that account. That account should have .forward pointing to a script (Perl would be my choice), which removes the forwarding information, and crafts a nice legitimate looking bounce message.
Ya, but well over a year of no work, no cooperation from the larger debt holders (I couldn't sell my house, I couldn't get them to renegotiate for anything). I sincerely looked for work. I contacted thousands of places. I receive dozens of responses, most of which were insulting. No, I won't move to a higher cost of living area, for 30/hrs week, minimum wage, to be your senior level programmer.
I did finally get good work, and I have paid back everyone that hasn't been satisfied with other arrangements. Yup, foreclosing on my house, because they wouldn't even begin negotiating with me, means that reclaiming the property satisfies the debt.
The awful part now is, there are several companies who are trying to collect on debts that have been satisfied. As it turns out, there are quite a few companies who have acquired information (i.e., using compromised data), to make fraudulent claims on "outstanding" debts. Being that they acquired your credit reports through whatever means, they know your name, address, SSN, DOB, debts, owed amounts, etc..
I got a call from one of them just a few days ago. It was from a blocked number. The first thing I said was that they've broken the law by blocking their identity. They asked me to confirm that my SSN ends in 1234 (not really, but they had the right one). I wouldn't, but I continued to ask what it was regarding. They gave up on getting me to confirm it, and continued on with the rest of the con. They gave me the last few digits of an account number, and told me I owed an incorrect amount that they were willing to reduce to another incorrect amount, as long as I provided payment information immediately.
What kind of idiot would give checking information, or credit card, to anyone from an unknown company (but clearly a call center in India), who says you owe them something.
I'm really loving the Mr Number app for Android now. I have a log of their repeated calls, and I never have to hear the phone ring, or listen to their voicemails. Calls twice a day, every day...
Really, if scams like that work, I'm in the wrong line of business. If I can just call random people, tell them they owe something, and get their bank info, I could make a freakin' fortune. I won't those. I'm allergic to prison. :)
Ya. Don't hold onto that dream too tight. I have a little story to tell you...
I was a Wells Fargo customer. I was moderately satisfied with them, except when they screwed with me..
I had to take a trip up to Boston.. Fly up, rent a car, drive an hour, and spend a week working. No problem. When I got there, I caught the shuttle bus to the rental car parking lot. When I got there, they said "Sure, we'd rent you a car, but your card has been declined." I had plenty of money *in* the account, so I figured a quick call to the bank would fix it... Business account, business traveler, they'll get it fixed right up, right?
I spent the following hour on the phone, where they explained to me that there was possible fraudulent activity relating to my card. They couldn't tell me *what* the activity was, just that they had cancelled my card.
They did kindly tell me that I could go to any Wells Fargo branch, and get a temporary credit card. I asked which one was walking distance from Boston's Logan airport, as I had $20 in my pocket, and no car to drive anywhere, because I *couldn't* rent a car, because they cancelled my card. They didn't answer.
A few more phone calls, and becoming gradually pissed off, I managed to arrange for a ride. A coworker drove the hour *to* the airport, so we could drive the hour *back* to work. (Sorry B'). He also spotted me some cash, so I'd have more than $20 to my name for the week while I was there.
I am one of the many who had financial problems for an extended period. As it turns out, credit card companies really don't like it if you don't pay them for over a year. That bank card, and the cash in my pocket, was all I had.
I finally did find out where the closest branch is. 106 miles, or 2 hours, each way.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of flying across the country to work on site for a week, they kind of appreciate it if you are there to work. Telling them, "Sorry, I need to spend about 5 hours of the 8 hour work day, driving to a bank in *the next state*, to fix some mental deficiency they're having, just won't go over very well..
I managed on the borrowed cash, and finally made it home, late Friday night.
So, I had the opportunity to get more pissed off until bright and sunshiny Monday morning. I went straight down to the closest branch, and asked for details on the fraud. They told me, "Oh, there was no fraud. We mailed you a new bank card. Since you never activated the new one, we cancelled the old one."
I tried to explain the absolute failure of logic in that one. Did they not see airplane reservations, rental car reservations, hotel reservations? They finally told me where they mailed the card to. Not my residence, where I get my statements, and the only address they claim to have on file for me. Not my previous residence. They mailed it to a place I hadn't lived for years.
It then took them about an hour to figure out how to issue the temporary card. They issued it, but it didn't work. So they tried again. and again. They told me I would have my new card, with my name on it and all, in 7 to 14 days.
14 days later.
I opened a new account at a local credit union.
21 days later....
I got the bank card and checks for the credit union.
24 days later...
I got my new card from Wells Fargo. I couldn't activate it.