Idiots to the left, morons to the right...

Once again I am amazed at the stupidity of the idiots working at one of my banks.

I closed an account there a month or so ago, or so I thought. I mean, when they say "OK, we closed your account" and it disappears from your online banking interface, you really have some excuse to think it was closed.

Imagine my surprise when I received a somewhat threatening card in the mail, saying it had been overdrawn, and please deposit enough to cover $----.-- that you owe us, or we'll close the account and file it on your credit report, etc.

So I called them to straighten it out.

Those idiots had essentially re-opened the account (i.e. they put it in a "pending closing" state) so they could credit the account $0.03 for an interest payment or something (I never kept more than $100 in it, so if it was an interest payment, it sounds about right). Then, because it was not actually closed (although they had explicitly told me it was), it began to accrue fees. Of course, there was no money in it to cover the fees, because they had transferred it all out when they originally told me they had closed it. That, for the short of memory, was when I had asked them to close the account. As in, "please close this account."

So the morons stopped the closing of my account (although they had certainly said it had been closed) to credit it $0.03---three bloody cents---and then slapped me with $12 or so of fees.

Then they had the audacity to send me a threatening letter for not paying the fees.

Here's an idea: when someone closes one of several accounts in your bank and you owe them some money (say, $0.03), why wouldn't you just credit it to another of the accounts they have with you? Or why not send them a cheque? Why would you postpone the closing (the one you told them had already been completed) and slap them with fees? In what universe is this a good idea? What possible customer profile does this appeal to? In what imagined reality is this good customer service? What sort of nincompoop would establish this as the correct workflow?

I mean really, how do these people remember to breathe?

Sheople

So I'm test-driving Flock: a web browser for Mac that appears to be much more like a client than a browser. I'm in minute 8 right now, and am frankly impressed by what it offers.

The basic idea is, the browser keeps you logged into things like Blogger and Facebook; and offers browser-based tools to interact with them. So rather than posting this from the little editor window in Blogger, I'm using the "Blog Editor" in Flock.

So far, an interesting idea.


In more personal news, we're moving on buying a house. Inspection is today. That's a lot of why I've been out of the loop: the house search has consumed a great deal of time and energy over the last couple months.

I've been intentionally limiting my personal computer time, trying to spend more time reading, pedalling, and paddling. I've found my laptop can be the most vicious time sink.

I owe several people phone calls and email. I'm working on it...



Finally, today is our 14th wedding anniversary.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Plural?

I've long thought it was weird that in English (at least the mixture of Canadian and American dialects I speak) it's fairly common to pluralize the word "one." As in, "these ones are my favourite." Do other people do this? It just seems really odd, but I hear it at least daily.

Busy, busy

I suddenly realized I hadn't posted in almost a month. Wow.

April has been busy, but not perhaps so productive. We'll see.

The kids and I have been carving out a canoe paddle for the eldest. Once we get a chance to try it out and test it, we can make paddles for the others based on how well this one works. We made it by laminating strips of cedar, poplar, and hemlock. This paddle's been made entirely by hand: we glued it with clamps; shaped it with a coping saw, chisels, a block plane, and a spokeshave; and are smoothing it with sandpaper and sanding blocks. No power tools at all. We'll see how it turns out: there have already been three mistakes, the worst of which is a split in the blade. It's a very thin split, but it's there. I think some epoxy will fix it, but we need to proceed with caution.

From April 2009

From April 2009

I turned 37 this month. Ames baked me a 12-layer chocolate cake. This is a traditional dessert in eastern North Carolina: it's made of very thin layers of a white cake (I like pound cake best), stacked with layers of chocolate icing. The result is a brutally sweet cake that's incredibly rich. These cakes are a lot of work, and it's traditional to count the layers before eating. The most I've ever had is 23, I think 12 or 15 is about right. There are very few things I prefer to one of these cakes.

From April 2009

From April 2009

I rode my bike to work 10 times in April: it was in the shop a couple days, and I had some business I had to take care of, so I drove to work more than I wanted to this month. On the other hand, Ames got me a bike computer for my birthday, so I was able to get a more-or-less accurate trip distance. So here it is: Google Maps says my trip is 11.5 miles; Map My Ride says 11.6 miles; my car's odometer figures it at 12 miles; and my bike computer says it's 12.07 miles. But my trip home is about 11.5 miles: it's easier to take a more direct route home, when it takes right turns instead of lefts across several lanes of traffic. So I'm going to figure my rides as 12 miles one-way, or 24 miles per day; on the theory that the actual clocked mileage in my car and bike is more accurate than online mapping software.

I've not been reading much recently, except my Bible.

So that's my month in review.

End of March Tallies

So I've ridden my new bike to work six times since I bought it on Pi Day (3/14). That's a total of 138 miles, not counting other rides to the store, etc. And I rode my old bike once, so the total for March is actually something like 161 miles.

That's a good start, but I have to admit to being a little disappointed. I thought I had spent more miles than that on the bike.

Here's to a more bike-intense April!

Maiden Voyage

So today was the first day I rode the new bike to work and back. It was everything I hoped it could be.

In particular:

1. I didn't time it too carefully, but I'm certain the trip took less than an hour. That's fantastic, as the bus ride takes about 1:15, and my previous bike commutes were something like 1:05 -- 1:10. So I'm going to give the new bike credit for 10 minutes. And that's with a couple red lights that seemed a little long to me.



2. The ride home took 1:08, rather than 1:30 (the ride home is a net climb, end-to-end). That's much better: I can justify times like that for a workout, but I have trouble justifying 1:15 each way just sitting on the bus, when I can drive it in less than half an hour.



3. The old bike has front shocks, and I didn't really realize how much effort that added. Without those shocks, there is a noticeable change in the effort to move the bike. But then, I discovered just how rough my bike route is this morning. My arms were a little numb from shaking over one stretch.



4. I love disk brakes. All the hype is deserved. They let you control the stopping so much better. I can ride down a hill at a controlled pace now: not just either ridiculously slowly are all-out fast. This might be one of those things from which there's no going back.



5. The handlebars need some work. I've been contemplating switching out my bars for something more ergonomic, but I might just add some bar extenders. At any rate, the short T-bars are rough. After about 6 miles, I was getting pretty numb in the hands. I like the bar extenders on my old bike, although the vertical angle is wrong: the variety of hand positions makes riding just a little more comfortable. This could take some research: extenders make me feel like I'm going to get caught on something, but bare T-bars are just too Spartan.



6. The trunk and built-in panniers are a nice shift of weight from my back to the bike. The weight doesn't actually change---I need to haul the same number of pounds up the hills---but it seems to be better situated than in a backpack. A friend has offered me a used messenger bag, so I'm looking forward to trying that too. I've been riding with a really heavy laptop bag, but now that I have a company-owned workstation, I'm not hauling that laptop anymore. This is a good thing. So maybe the messenger bag will be even better than the trunk, or maybe I'll find they compliment one another well enough I use them both at different times: there are advantages to both methods, and strong proponents of each.



7. I already moved my tail-light up from the rack to the back of the trunk bag. I might need to move my water-bottle cage too. I think I prefer it on the lower tube, rather than on the seat tube. I'll probably need to just add one, rather than moving what's already there: I might be really dry come summer time.



8. I don't like the grip-shifts on this bike. I like grip-shifts in general, but the ones on this bike are distracting. They have a little indicator needle that moves, and always makes me shift the wrong direction. This is difficult to describe in words, but maybe a picture helps:
   

   From Bikes New and Old

   
   The problem is, the needle moves with the grip, but it's in the wrong place: it looks like it should move against the grip, rather than with it. It's counter-intuitive enough I keep shifting up rather than down, etc. A little electrical tape could be the perfect solution to this problem.



9. I like the smoother, narrower, higher-pressure tires.

So yeah, this bike is great. I'm really excited to get back on it tomorrow morning.

New Bike

So I bought a new bike yesterday. I had agonized over whether to buy a new one or keep the old one for quite some time, but there were some unexpected developments that finally convinced me to go ahead. So we headed over to REI and took a look at their offerings.

I'll be honest, I've been to their stores a couple times and totally scoured their website in the last couple weeks. I've been a little bike-obsessed.

My old bike:

From Bikes New and Old

I was actually torn between two fairly spendy bikes: the Big Buzz and the Safari. I wanted a couple "extras" that come stock on the Safari but not on the Big Buzz, so the $50 price difference was a non-issue. After the add-ons, they'd cost about the same.

But after a few questions about me and my ride, one of the sales guys suggested the Buzz. It's about $200 cheaper than the two I was looking at, and it's really a great fit for what I want. That $200 was basically enough to put some add-ons on the bike and still get me out of the store cheaper than the list price on the other bikes.

My new bike:

From Bikes New and Old

One problem I have in my ride is, it's a 12 mile commute (one way). That's a long way to go on a mountain bike, but the roads here are kinda rough, and I frequently hit significant gravel and so forth. That effectively eliminates a high-efficiency road bike.

The Buzz seems to be a good compromise: it's noticeably lighter than my mountain bike, and rides a lot easier. Just on my short test drive last night (before it started to snow) and this afternoon (between amazing intermittent wind and hail storms), I found the bike is a lot faster and a lot easier to pedal.

This is my first bike with disk brakes, and I'm really interested to see how well they measure up to the hype. My short ride around the block gave me a little taste, but not enough to really get a feel for how they work in "real life." My longer ride out of the neighbourhood today gave me a better taste, but I really want to try them on a real ride.

From Bikes New and Old

One thing about my commute: the two worst hills are within two miles. And since I live on a hill, the end of my ride home is always uphill. And although every ride from home starts out downhill, they generally include a brutal uphill struggle in the first couple miles.

The good news is, I can test the new bike on the worst hills without going more than ten minutes. And so far, this bike is wowing me on the hills. The disk brakes give great control on the downhill stretches, and the narrower tires and lighter frame make the uphills a lot more friendly. I have to admit, I was loathe to part with my mountain bike, as I relied on the low mountain bike gears to beat those hills. But now I wonder whether they were more necessary because of the heavy frame and bulky tires than because of the actual roads. Time will tell.

So the add-ons... I bought a rack for the rear and a trunk:

From Bikes New and Old

the trunk contains some light-weight fold-out panniers:

From Bikes New and Old

and I moved my lights and water-bottle from the old bike to the new

From Bikes New and Old

So I'm admittedly enamoured of this bicycle, but the initial response is that the new bike is much better in every way than what I've been riding, and I'm extremely excited to ride it to work.