A busy day: Deaths and Cars and such

First, RIP to Karl Malden a fine veteran actor who died today at 97. RIP to another from one of my all-time favourite shows, Mollie Sugden -- the legendary Mrs Slocombe -- who died today at 87: she was one of the highlights of the legendary Britcom Are You Being Served. A sad day and the number of celebrities dying in the past few weeks is phenomenal.

My car is back. I cannot say if they fixed the mechanical stuff but they did find some major computer errors. It was set in 'transportation mode' -- something that was supposed to be fixed before it left the dealer, apparently. This isn't something an owner can turn on or off. They claim it is responsible for my long litany of problems with the car. The basic premise that iDrive still sucks donkey balls even when it works remains unchanged. My car has 12007 miles on it and they feel the brakes (under warranty) will need to be replaced at 13671 miles. Um.... Why not just do it while it was there? So I have to come back. I am not impressed with South Motors.

Every car I've ever owned that was serviced by a dealer is cleaned thoroughly inside before being returned to its owner. Apparently BMW doesn't do this -- though they did offer to drive it through the car wash for me to clean the outside (as it was pouring rain, I declined politely.) Oh, and BTW, BMW corporate has never called me back. They suck too. [BTW, South Motors didn't open the repair ticket until 26 June 09 at 1026 am -- that's how long my car was "lost" while I was paying rental fees. I've not been in my car since around 9 June or thereabouts.]

The body work appears to be fine and everything seems to work well. Though it would have been nice if they body shop cleaned the blood stains from the inside of the rear tailgate where someone obviously cut himself while installing it. I cleaned it myself.

My XM on Sirius package never worked right. Still didn't when I got the car back. I thought it was one of the problems with the car. I called Sirius for the fifth time and got someone smart and we managed to get the damned thing working. She had to call her technical department to get a special reset code which we had to send while the car was running. Yes, smart people in foreign call centres do exist. Yay. Do I get a refund for the one month of missed extra channels? As if.

Eventually, I will send Enterprise as very nasty letter -- not sure if I complained about the rental from hell (two flat tires, faulty transmission, broken key, filthy car with lipstick all over the rear view mirror, and smelling like twin packs of cigarettes). Probably BMW too.

Oh, and my right knee is killing me and am wondering if it's accident related or not. It was hurting a bit before but now one spot is sore to the touch. ::mutter:: And the two teeth the dentist fixed have started hurting again. He warned me he wasn't sure if replacing the fillings was going to work and if it didn't I might need some root canals. Damn it all to hell.

I am trying to find fun stuff to do this weekend but so far Sunday AM skating is all that's up. Am looking to see Ice Age 3D. Maybe visit with some people. Etc. Fireworks don't interest me so much though.

More Identity Theft Stuff -- Personal Not Corporate

I am about to be sued. I got a call from Mr Trinidad at Wagner & Hunt, P.A, a collections attorney in Margate.

After a very bad start -- can you imagine any other kind? -- I come to find out I have supposedly co-signed for an American Express card with someone who owes Amex well over $8k. Obviously I have co-signed nothing for anyone ever. I just won't do that. Never have, never will.

So I go on to explain to him that I have been identity-thefted (Look, Binky, a new word!) and I've got a police report, there's a suspect in jail, and so-on and so-forth. So he's going to fax me affidavits to sign and swear to, and I'm going to send him a copy of my police report. So this will likely go away. So am I really going to be sued? Unlikely because it's stupid to sue an innocent person: harassment countersuits and such.

However, I did volunteer to be deposed and swear the debt isn't mine and the guy committed fraud. However, what is very, very, very disturbing is that he says that this dates to 2006. That was before my identity theft case started (though I was at BankAtlantic that far back, so it's not aunreasonable to assume it may be related). He did share with me the guy's name which I won't share just yet. I never heard of him but I think it might the same guy who was at AT&T the other day trying to obtain the wireless data card (see previous posts). Call it a hunch.

I am getting so tired of this. I'm getting it on all sides. (And I still get the occaisonal call from a bank saying someone's trying to open a credit card with my name.) I haven't reported all of it so far because it's getting boring to me and probably you. But it does drive to distraction.

Shout outs to John and Liz who are still moving, Erin who is still in pain and sick of the rain, and Bryce who is bored. And I'm hungry -- no lunch for me :(

Corporate Identity Theft Continues

So there's so much more now.

This morning at 850am I received a call from Kathy at the AT&T Fraud department who said our lines were still being forwarded (which didn't seem right because I can call myself and it rings at the office). She refused to call to fix it saying that she wasn't authorized. (If she's the fraud center how the hell isn't she authorized to fix it? That's like calling someone and saying their house is being robbed and asking them if they want to call the police because you aren't authorized to do it.)

I am on the phone at the Business Center with Katie who informs me on 6-29-2007 someone named George forwarded or lines to "786-290-2893" and this was "Call Forward Busy" and "Call Forwarding No Answer" -- so this is more interesting. Also, I called this from a private number using *67 and it rings to mobile phone with no message.

Apparently when we fixed it the first time (see first post), this original and VERY OLD issue didn't get fixed. So now we need to find out who, exactly, this number above belongs to. I think this our crook.

This would be an interesting crime. If both of our lines were busy, then and ONLY then the call would forward to that number so we might not even notice that some calls were being hijacked. I am beginning to suspect new crime and old crime are not related. But I won't post that bit here for the time being.

Also, I am mystified that AT&T's position is that they'll notify you that there is illegal activity on the account and then do absolutely nothing about it. Seriously. That's like a security guard at the bank calling the bank president and say "Someone's robbing us. Should we do something about it?" and then when the bank president says "Yes" having the guard say "Ok, you deal with it. I'm not authorized."

I called and spoke to Katie who was very helpful and checked all the work orders and gave me the 786 number above and the details. She said she didn’t understand why the fraud people didn’t call directly instead of leaving it all weekend. I subsequently received a call from Tina Kelly (Team Leader) who also said this was very unusual and they aren’t sure what’s going on.

The fraud department said there is ‘unusual activity’ on our bill but we don’t have the bill and nobody outside the fraud department can seem to see any ‘unusual activity’ but when we get it, it will be scrutinized.

Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Tenth Grade Bleeds

I bought and read the third tome in this excellent series today. Each book is better than the one before it and this book makes author Heather Brewer three for three. The new book has my least favourite cover but it's the best of the three, so I'll forgive the irritatingly pouty cover.

We have the same cast of characters as before. Nelly falls into the background and we focus primarily on Vlad, Otis, and Henry. Henry becomes, finally, a more complex person, Vlad grows a bit. Otis, well he's just Otis, but that's not a bad things. Meredith still doesn't develop as a character and the surprise ending with her and Vlad makes you feel only for Vlad and not Meredith.

I'll also say I just kept waiting for Vlad to hug Henry. I'm not sure why, but it just felt like they were a little closer than the words on the page were ready to reveal. Eddie Poe appears but is reduced to a mere caricature, which is too bad because he's potentially interesting. We've also got some Goth kids who, in spite of their Gothness, are likeable even though they really don't play prominently in this book; I do suspect we'll see more of them in Eleventh Grade. Vlad still cries more than any other male character I've ever met. I just don't think fifteen year old guys cry so much. Then again he's a vampire, so maybe that's what they do? I really like Vlad -- if he were real, he's the sort of person I'd get along with and be friends with. Not enough Vlads in the world.

Happily, my biggest complaints about the first two novels is resolved. Ms Brewer tells her story and she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to do so. The story gets where it's going and doesn't feel like large gobs of story are left out. It pleases me because a good story -- and hers are good -- shouldn't be rushed.

Good book. Buy it. Read it.

Transformers II Revenge of the Fallen, The Michael Bay Vision Returns

Wow. I was figuring this would at least be as entertaining as the first one. I knew it wouldn't be good because it is, after all, a Michael Bay film. But he does entertaining (mindless) pretty well and he does explosions great. This film had lots of explosions and toys. I think there was a plot but it was sort of hard to tell. Shia LaBeouf Did a fine job as did the always smokin' hot Megan Fox. Josh Duhamel Did his very small part well but John Turturro wasn't very good and Ramon Rodriguez was so irritating I can't explain it.

They obviously cut corners but not even using a continuity guy here. It was sunny, it was dark, and sometimes not in the right order. The same problem was in the first film. In the Deli, Sam removes his hat twice. JetFire walks out of the Smithsonian into the Arizona desert. WTF? That's huge. Also the car chases change locales unexpectedly -- and we get a cameo by an Oompah-Loompah. And they use boats launched in the ocean to land in Cairo to see the pyramids? HELLO -- LOOK AT A MAP! Not possible. The Air Force base in "New Jersey" shows mountains in the distance? Apparently Jersey has new geography. I could mention the Paris Police have blue-only sirens and not red but that's almost nit-picky. And was I the only one who noticed that when the pyramid eating robot is tearing down the pyramid in the foreground shot, there is a pigeon on the nose of the sphinx that takes up the entire nose? The world's largest pigeon.

The dialog was stilted and so bad I was bored. Karen and I mocked the film. It was a painfully long and I kept checking my watch. We did have a nice (company not food) dinner at Friday's after the movie with SWMBO and William.

MRI Results -- Unofficial

I got the films and CD today along with the report to take to my doctor. (One scan is posted on my Flickr Page for friend/family contacts only.)

I've read the report and it appears there is no major change in C3-C4 and C5-C6 which still show about the same mild disc bulge. There is still mild degenerative stuff. The new thing is "Small root sleeve meningocele on the right T1" -- a Google of that shows it's never damage -- a trauma injury often called "traumatic meningocele." I think the closest I could find is that it's a brachial plexus traction injury. I'm not a doctor so I can't be sure that's a proper diagnosis. Depending on what you read this will either get better, won't get better, is treatable, or is not treatable. In other words: no idea at all. Any of my doctor readers who wish to comment may do so. We really won't know until my doctor compares this MRI to the last one, but reading the report it made it seem this is the only 'new' thing.

I copied the MRI image files from the CD to my hard drive for future use. They're interesting to look at though I have no idea what they mean. They're in some unknown format but GraphicConverter on my Mac can open and display them.

Anyway, that's really all the news until 6 July 2009 when I see the doctor for an interpretation.

Page Ranking in Alexa: Breaking The Top Million

Page Rank (the busiest site in the world by all counts is of course: Google) And there are about 11 billion pages, so getting in the top is harder and harder, though about 10 billion of those pages, are not for public use -- internal pages for companies, educational institutions, and such. Or if you just go by active domains there's around 100 million of them. Either way, if you're in the top 1% of popular pages, you'd have to be in the top million. My three primary pages are ranked as follows:

RANK	SITE	Alexa Data
11,714,172	interstate-screw.com	ALEXA DATA
756,747	darsys.com	ALEXA DATA
2,904,133	darsys.net	ALEXA DATA

I was actually pretty impressed at where my sites rank, though. Feel free to link to any of my sites if it makes you happy -- it'll make me happy. Though I'd much rather everyone link to my blog if you're going to link. I've linked to both the site and the Alexa data to prove it.

Virtual domains such as panthershockey.net are not tracked. While most may not realize it, that domain is really just www.darsys.com/panth/ so it's not a real domain but a pointer to a place in an existing web structure. I've got quite a few of those.

Considering how many web pages there are in the world, breaking the top million sites is pretty cool. Anyway, I was impressed I'd moved up in the world. Now if I could get my visitors to click on some of those damned ads, I'd be happier. But it does give me perspective as to why it's getting harder and harder to make money on the web.

Also I have sent to BMW's US corporate office and eviscerating letter that is sure to have left blood on the floor. Sadly, it won't do much good since they're closed all weekend. They did find my car. They have done nothing so far. They aren't even communicate. South Motors sucks ass.

Shout out to J and L in congratulations for their new house.