Chandra K. Clarke

Don’t Bank On It

Tue, 02/17/2009 - 01:15 — Chandra K Clarke

In some parts of the world, the national postal system will distribute posters to its outlets with a picture of a hardened criminal and a caption that reads: “Avoid This Person. Dangerous.”

In this part of the world, the national banking system distributes posters to its outlets with a picture of me and a caption that reads: “Annoy, Frustrate, Harass and Irritate This Person. In Fact, Go out of Your Way to Drive this Person Absolutely Bonkers, So That She Runs Screaming from the Building.”

Okay, maybe banks aren’t out to get me quite that much. But there are days - and I suspect I’m not alone in thinking this - when I believe that going to the dentist would be less painful than a trip to the bank.

Take, for example, the simple act of making a deposit. First of all, this is the 21st century, a time of computers, cell phones and Palm Pilots. My car is stuffed with microchips. Refrigerators can talk to the Internet. What do banks give out for a deposit book? A wad of forms and a sheet of crinkly carbon paper.

It is also impossible to fill out this deposit book correctly. I know this because every time I take it in, I’m told that since my last visit, Bank Policy has changed, and my deposit book is now wrong. Bank Policy, you should know, is decided by a highly scientific practice which factors in inflation, socioeconomic conditions and the Dow Jones average through a process known as: Spin The Bottle.

Then there are the service charges. As nearly as I can tell, the bank charges people when they:

1) Take money out of their account.
2) Put money in their account.
3) Look at money in a wistful way.
4) Think about money
5) Walk into the bank.
6) Walk out of the bank.
7) Walk by the bank.

I’m not sure who first came up with the idea of bank service charges, but I’m sure the board meeting of it’s inception went like this:

BARTLEBY: Gentlemen, we need to make more money. Does anyone have any ideas?
JONES: I don’t know sir, but I tell you, if I had a nickle for every time a customer–
BARTLEBY: Jones! That’s brilliant! How would you like to be a senior vice-president?

Of course, service charges don’t include interest fees. In case you didn’t know, interest is applied to your loan through Front End Loading. It’s called this because when you get your loan statement and see how much interest you paid instead of principle, you feel like you’ve been hit by the Front End of a bus.

Banks have what I call “selective memory.” You can bank at the same institution, the same branch, even, for 20 years. Over this time, your bank will have recorded your every financial move: every cheque, every payment, every penny you ever stooped to pick up. Each week, you’ll get junk mail from them addressed to you, the Valued Customer. But when it’s time to actually request a loan, you will still have to fill out a 20 page application form, and be subjected to a credit check, a investigation of your entire family right down to your 53rd cousin, and possibly a body cavity search.

Banks are also the reason why I don’t believe conspiracy theories - you know, the ones where secret organizations wire money to operatives overseas. Why? Because banks “hold” foreign deposits. For instance, I can deposit a US cheque in my US dollar Canadian account, but I can’t touch the money until the cheque “clears.” The bank must query the US account by messenger pigeon, because this process can take up to 35 days.

My absolute worst banking experiences though, always involve currency exchange. Like the time I billed a British client of mine for $92.00 US, and was paid £63.00. I was expecting a direct conversion from pounds to dollars, but I forgot about Bank Policy.

The bank teller executed a complicated transaction which apparently involved converting from pounds to ... yen, then to drachmae and I’m pretty sure shekels came into it somewhere. And in the end, I was handed: 40 cents Canadian. I think that’s when I broke down and sobbed on the wicket. That’s also when the bank teller high-fived his boss and went to collect the reward listed on that poster I mentioned.

And now you know where the expression “And he laughed all the way to the bank” came from.

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A Window of Opportunity

Sat, 01/31/2009 - 01:38 — Chandra K Clarke

So, there I was Friday night, all set to go out for the evening. I threw my gear in the trunk, opened the driver side door and... discovered that I no longer had a passenger side window. Well, okay, I did have one, but it was no longer a one piece ensemble.

They say that when bad things happen, time seems to slows down, and that later you can clearly remember what your thoughts were at the time. I can attest that this is true. My exact thoughts were:

!!!

@#$%^&*!

Apparently, a would-be car thief had stopped by the night before and attempted to make off with my little Tiburon. Little did he know that all Tiburons come equipped with a unique theft deterrent called Exploding Windows 2000 (not to be confused with the computer productivity deterrent, Crashing Windows 2000).

The EW2K, which activates as soon as someone tries to jimmy open your door, will immediately cause the door window to shatter into no less than 2,487,985 pieces. The most amazing feature of this system is that one meter squared of glass will redistribute itself over a 45 meter area, with some stray pieces traveling as far as the corner variety store.

How does this deter thieves you ask? The glass pieces travel at a high enough speed to embed themselves in the car seats, the steering wheel, the paint job, and with any luck, the thief himself. Indeed, there were so many bits of glass in the driver’s seat that the only way anyone could drive away with the car was if they’d come equipped with steel undershorts and butt plate armor.

My neighbours and friends were all very sympathetic, and, being Canadians, unanimously recommended the same solution: duct tape. I’m not sure whether that was recommended as a temporary car fix, or as something to apply to the thief once he’s been caught. Personally, I’d like to try the latter, as I’ve heard duct tape is good for removing body hair quickly and painfully. I’m sure that the other four families on my street that were vandalized that same night would like to help.

In any case, in situations like this, you often wonder why people - and in particular the teenager suspected of this crime - do this sort of thing. I live in a nice town, with good families. There are no bad neighbourhoods and these kinds of crimes are rare. I know many of you will immediately point to the video game industry as a bad influence. But I disagree: if this guy had actually played something like Grand Theft Auto III, he’d be a much better car thief.

You also wonder, as you’re picking glass bits out of your cup holder, just what you’d say to the thief if you had a chance to confront them. Several things come to mind:

1. Didn’t your mother ever teach you to clean up after an attempted car theft?
2. You never made it past the second level of car theft game, did you?
3. Are you even old enough to reach the pedals?
4. Isn’t there a uniform at a burger joint with your name on it?
5. Where would you like to try the duct tape first?
6. Never mind. Let’s try the ‘bikini area’ first.

Sadly though, the next person I’ll be talking to is the insurance adjuster and the body shop. Because they will have to do things like open up the door frame and clear glass bits out of the air vents, I know the bill will come to roughly: $35,000. I do have insurance of course, but since my premiums will go up, all that means is that I’ll pay off the damage over the long term.

With that in mind, I’m tempted to just leave the glass bits in the air vents, put the car back in the driveway, and crank the air conditioning controls on full. This is so the thief can actually steal the car, but not without receiving another blast of glass bits in his bikini area. Meanwhile, I could go upgrade to the 2009 Tiburon.

It’s got tinted Exploding Windows.

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Is There A Doctor In The House?

Tue, 01/20/2009 - 21:31 — Chandra K Clarke

A story on my news web page featured a picture of a 73 year old woman strapping herself to the wing of a plane. Apparently she was both completely sane and perfectly happy: she’d just always wanted to try wing walking.

Personally, I’ve never had the slightest desire to try wing walking. Or wing crawling. In fact, any scenarios involving me and wings had better also include a comfy reclining chair, a cold drink, and an in-flight movie.

But I digress. The point of the article was that, after years of telling us that the human life span could get no better than 72.5 years, doctors have discovered: the US Senate. There, the average age of officials must hover around 93, thanks to people like Strom Thurmond, who was born in 1902 and was still Senating as late as 2002.

Strom was a spring chicken compared to people like Jean Calmet, who lived until she was 122, or Elizabeth Israel, who is said to be 127. If you read the histories of these people, you’ll find that all of them smoked and drank and enjoyed (woohoo!) chocolate cake daily, so I can only conclude that the reason they lived so long was because... they avoided doctors.

Think of it: if you feel ill, your first step is to try and get an appointment with your physician. Where I live, there’s one doctor for every 52,000 people. In other areas, the ratio is much better - there are three doctors for every 1000 people, but they all go golfing on the same day. Either way, it can take anywhere from a week to 10 years before you actually get an appointment. By that time you will have either a) died or b) cured yourself.

Assuming you do get a quick appointment though, your next step is to sit in the waiting room. Depending on where you live, your waiting room might be known locally as Joe Germ’s Bar and Grill, or Billy Bacteria’s Be Bop: in other words, a great place for viruses to hang out and pick up a human. With everyone around you hacking, sneezing, wheezing and coughing, if you weren’t sick when you went in, you certainly will be when you come out.

When you finally get to see your doctor, he or she will immediately do something like examine your nether region, even if there’s nothing wrong with your nether. This is because the secretary will have given him the wrong file. Once you explain to him that you’re there to see if you have an ear infection, he will pick up his ear-look-into thingy and proceed to take a call from his broker.

Twenty minutes later, he will actually look into your ear, and scribble “sona si latine loqueris” on your file. Loosely translated, this means “Call Dr. Bob about Friday’s game.” He will then tell you that yes, it probably is an ear infection, but that he’s going to order up a series of (highly billable) tests just to rule out other possibilities, like, say, liver disease.

At this point, you will be handed over to the tender mercies of the nurse, who will take samples of you from various locations, including your nether. You will then be sent home and promptly come down with the worst case of the ‘flu you’ve ever had.

Six weeks later, after you’ve made a full recovery, you will get a call from your doctor’s office telling you that “Your test results are in, you need to come see us.” The human mind being what it is, you will be immediately convinced that you really do have liver disease, as well as yellow fever. Or possibly chronic heart failure. Or all three.

When you finally get to see the doctor a second time, he will give you a kindly smile, pat you on the hand and cheerfully tell you all your tests came up negative. He will then scribble “Latine loqui coactus sum” on your file, which means “Bill for second consultation.” Because you just spent another three hours marinating in his germ-ridden waiting room, while highly stressed out over the possibility of chronic yellow liver fever, you will then come down with a case of ‘flu that will make your last bout seem like a mild run of the sniffles.

My prescription for long life? Avoid doctors. Laugh a lot. And eat plenty of chocolate cake. Hey, it worked for Jean Calmet, didn’t it?

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What we have here is a failure to communicate

Mon, 01/12/2009 - 22:35 — Chandra K Clarke

There was a joke that was popular a few years ago when Bill Gates made it big, and it went something like this:

Q: What do you call that geek from your high school class after graduation?
A: Boss.

That’s a funny line and it probably makes high school much easier to bear for a lot of geeks. However, I’m here today to tell you that it is only true for three out of every 10 geeks. For the other seven, the joke should be:

Q: What do you call that geek from your high school class after graduation?
A: That @#$^%&! person in tech support.

I say this because I administer a couple of web sites and I spend a lot of time on the Internet. This means that I qualify for the Frequent Mousing Plan, and that I am developing a bad case of Computer Butt. It also means that I occasionally need to report problems to tech support departments. I have dealt with several companies in half a dozen countries, and I can safely say that I have yet to actually receive technical assistance. I think this is because all tech support personnel are put through a rigorous training program that teaches them to use the following methods to deal with a support query:

STEP 1 - Assume the person requesting assistance is a moron.
STEP 2 - Tell them to check if their computer is plugged in.
STEP 3 - Tell them that the problem was due to “system maintenance” and that they should try again. Say, in a week or so.
STEP 4 - Give them a really long, complicated and technical sounding explanation that has nothing to do with the problem they’re asking about. The section marked “Warp Drive Plasma Injection Manifold Repair” from the Star Trek Encyclopedia is very useful here.
STEP 5 - Blame their computer.
STEP 6 - Stop answering their emails.

You think I’m joking, but sadly, I am not. Consider the following transcript from one of my recent bouts with the tech department of my web host:

ME: My web site is experiencing intermittent read timeout failures. They appear to be random. Sometime the site will be unreachable for five minutes, sometimes for five hours. My customers are complaining. What’s the problem?

TECH: Thanks for your feedback. We were able to bring up your website. Try typing http://www.ChandraKClarke.com into your browser.

ME: Hi, listen, I know what my website address is. I’m trying to tell you that it’s experiencing *random* failures. Yesterday it was unavailable from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. EST. What’s going on?