First the bank is retarded….

On the 21’st I logged on to my bank account only to discover that we mis-calculated about an automatic payment, and were overdrawn. So My husband, went down to the bank and deposited $100.00, he verified with the teller that this amount covered both the charge and the overdraft fee. The teller told him it did and in fact the deposit put the account $44.00 To the positive.

Well the next day I log on the account only be horrified to find that we had two more Overdraft charges. So My Husband (whose very very good at not taking crap from people) gets on the phone to the branch and tries to figure out what happened. The lady he’s speaking with tells him that there we’re two charges which went through One for Xbox Live $7.99 (the overdraft fee was $32.00) and another from Taco Bell For $6.93 (The Fee was $37.00), He said yes but how did I get charged overdraft fee’s for these items when I had money in the account to cover it? This girl didn’t know so she asked him to hold while she got the manager. A Few minutes later she comes back on and takes our number and says the manager is in a meeting she’ll call you back. So he gives her the phone number and we wait 45 minutes still no phone call, so My husband calls back. Finally he gets the Manager on the phone.

The Manager Says the charges where on the account the day he made the deposit, and teller could see this and would have told him this, and then she

informs him there are two more charges coming through that we’ll be charged fees for as well. He said Well the teller never informed me of that I have her name right here and she only told me that I the $100.00 I deposited covered the charges, and that I was $44.00 to the positive. She said “So we should pay for your mistake?” He said “Your Damn Right, when your teller is telling me one thing but the truth is something else”. She said “Sir there is no need to cuss if you continue to talk to me like this Then this conversation is over”. He said “I didn’t cuss at you besides Lady you have heard cussing yet”. She said well I can reverse one of the charges but not both. This went on a few more minutes with her using every excuse in the book and trying to blame him for their mistake. Then she said “We give courtesy calls to let you know your account is going over” he said “really because We never got one, the only reason we found out was because my wife logged on to the website”. Well then she basically called him a liar. This was the last straw, he hung up on her.

I got a 1-800 Number from the website and we proceeded to call them. My husband explained the situation to the lady on the other end who in turn put her supervisor on the phone because she didn’t have the authority to make reversals. The supervisor, refunded both overdraft fees and informed my husband that after doing so it only put our account at $10.00. So he said “So If I go put $90.00 in the account right now that will cover the pending charges as well and we’ll be good no more fees?” twice he asked her this and twice she said yes. So my husband went and made the deposit and that covered us finally our account was in good standing again.

The bank we use is Key Bank, and that was the worst customer service I had ever had. I mean it’s not like we were disputing the original charge we new we screwed up and we’re trying to fix it but that manager made us feel like we we’re criminals. This was our first overdraft charge since opening that account, we had been in good standing since the beginning prior to this incident, wouldn’t you want to keep a customer like that? Apparently this lady didn’t care.

Well that was just the beginning of my bad day….

Guild Wars which Mark & I play all the time, is celebrating it’s 4 year anniversary, as part of the celebration, they are giving a free storage pane to all players. Well the way you have to get the storage is to log on to the NCsoft website and enter a coupon code for it. Well I can’t remember my password but the website is soo overloaded with traffic I can’t use the forgot password feature because it keeps telling me the security image has expired by the time the page loads. So I’ve written them asking for help getting my account info hopefully I’ll here back before the promotion ends on the 31st.

Next up Being dissed on your own website…

A Website I run has been experiencing some issues and needs severely upgraded. From the old version of joomla to the new version. The problem is I can’t upgrade it without risking some form of data loss. To that end I have been completely honest with the websites members, actually I’ve always been honest with them. Well because of these issues I opened a ning community for them to use while I figure things out. It was supposed to be a gradual transition, from one website to the other. While I worked up an alternative to our website in the background. Today I discovered that some of the members had decided to start up and new forum, than began copying and pasting threads from one place to the other leaving links in my websites forum to the new forum.

I don’t mind them wanting to create their own forums It doesn’t bother me in the least what bothers me is that the way it was went about left me feeling like it was sort of an “Screw You and Your Stuff Move” If they didn’t like the alternative ning setup they could have let me know I would have worked with them on making things better. I’m not a communist dictator at my websites I like a community effort. But this all had the feeling of well being completely shirked. I don’t know maybe I’m being whiny, but I guess I just thought I had a better relationship with these people then I do.

In the end it left me feeling glad to to have The UN I love the feeling this community has going for it. It feels more like a community than any other project I’ve worked on. So thanks guys for helping make The UN feel so great.

For some reason I had a hell of a time getting comfortable and falling asleep last night. It sucked. I ended up getting up for a bit a posting On the Ubuntu forums for a while, just sort of sifting through some of the endless posts on there. I’m supposed to be going to the doctors today, but wouldn’t you know it they called and apparently the doctor is in an unscheduled surgery and has had to reschedule all his appointments for today, so now I won’t be seeing him until the 4th of may. Anyway I’m still trying to wake up (Yawn)…hope everyone else is having a great day!

It has recently come to my attention that Linux operating systems are being completely ignored by the major T.V. networks of ABC, NBC, and FOX. They are using a player for their online shows called Move Media Player. This player does not work on Linux, therefore completely alienating us as a user base.

This could be bad news for any new linux user, and add to the number preinstalled systems being returned, Lot’s of new users may not have the patience to try and install say firefox in wine, or look up other ways to get their programs, which seem to have played fine on their old windows system. If Linux is to grow it’s presence in the market this behaviour needs to be addressed.

There is currently a petition to ask them to use another player as well all Linux users should write The Networks asking them to choose another player. Here are the links below.

• Petition
• ABC
• NBC
• FOX

I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted , so I figured I would share what I’ve been doing with Ubuntu since the last time.

First off I finally decided to try out KDE and have installed KDE 4.3 along side gnome. It took a bit of getting used to but once I figured out how to get it set up the way I wanted it’s not been bad at all. The widgets are nice, and I enjoy having them there. I’ve also grown to like Amarok 2, it’s been a while since I used the older version, so I can’t make a comparison, but this Amarok has been working quite nicely for me.

I have always preferred Kopete’s Layout over pidgins, it just seems a bit cleaner to me, though I still use pidgin for facebook, myspace, and IRC.

Once I got into investigating how to configure Kmail it’s quite lovely, I have also been using akregator for my news feeds and it’s working out quite well.

I Still prefer Tomboy for my notes, and I still use firefox for my default browser. I have konqueror set up as a guild wars browser, which I use only while playing Guild wars for quick wiki checks or price checks. Firefox running with Guild Wars seems to push the CPU up.

I still feel that KDE runs best on Ubuntu, where to me Kubuntu feels like there is still a lot of back end work to be done to get it right.

So Anyway that’s what I’ve been up to these past few months.

I spent years and I mean years using only Paint shop pro On windows, I had tried photoshop but never really got the hang of it or liked it. Also I think by the time I used it it was CS2 or CS3 and a major memory hog. Just painfully slow to load and run. So when I was switching to Ubuntu I was disappointed to find I couldn’t get PSP to run in wine, and so began my journey of Learning Gimp. Now I’m glad I learned to use it It’s a much more powerful editor in my opinion, and the more I use it the more I realize in some ways easier than psp.

I’ve also been using dreamweaver for years, but now I’m starting to experiment with Quanta Plus It just makes more sense to me to use native linux apps. Though I think the dreamweaver to Quanta transition is going to be a much tougher one than the PSP to Gimp one. One thing I really miss in Quanta is the wysiwyg ability. It really helps me being able to see the outcome as I go. So for now I’m still switching back and forth between Quanta Plus and Dreamweaver 8 in wine.

Other than that the transition to Ubuntu from windows has been quite painless for me. I’m generally a quick learner so switching to something new is normally not a problem for me. Though I can see where for others it might be difficult, as not everyone adopts quickly

I’ve been looking into Linux Games lately I did demo Knights and Merchants from http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com But it just didn’t have zing you hope to see in a video game. The graphics weren’t that great and the game seemed a bit difficult to learn. It would be great to find some good Linux games, but as of yet I’m at a loss. though I’m still enjoying my Guild Wars 😀

Well a few weeks ago I was messing around on the web and discovered ning . Having seen soo many threads shut down or closed in the ubuntu forums cafe because they strayed to far from the forums main agenda, I decided to give a try at creating a social networking site for Ubuntu Users. The first day a few members signed up. One person named Gary and I began chit chatting, and we really hit it off about where our interests lie in ubuntu. So together we decided we would undertake this project. That was the beginning of the Ubuntu Network . Now a few weeks later we have grown to 30 members and are still growing. It’s quite amazing the feeling the whole community has. Just a bunch of people who share a common interest who want to hang out. The website allows us to blog, discuss topics of interest in the forum, share videos, photo’s and create even smaller groups who want to discuss particular items. If anyone out there is intersted in being social with some fellow Ubuntu users feel free to come on over and join us!

So I woke this morning to find that my pain in my legs is finally gone. I’m thinking that stuff has finally worked it way out of my system, of course that doesn’t fix my back yet but hey that’s what the doctors appointment is for.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars this weekend as they are dropping special treats for Easter. We’re getting chocolate bunnies, and golden eggs…lol.

We don’t celebrate Easter here as My family is pagan. We will be celebrating Beltane though on the 1st of May. We’ll be decorating the house with flowers, and having a nice Meal. Then We pick something new to plant, either a flower, plant or tree. Anyway I hope everyone else has a good Easter Sunday.

So I stopped the prednisone as per doctors orders, and let me tell you the withdrawals are horrible. I woke up about 5:00 A.M. with horrible pain from my knee’s to my ankles. I’ve been dealing with it all day. I called the doc and he told me to take a percocete and possibly some aleave for the pain, I don’t have any aleave but I used advil liqu-gels and they seemed to do the trick, now I’ve got the numb feeling….. Hopefully soon I can begin to get this crap all worked out I’m so sick of pills….a

I don’t know if it’s the Prednisone the doctor had me on or If I just picked up some cold, but I have a horrible headache and my throat is killing me. Just to be on the safe side I stopped the prednisone, he said if I was having any side effects to just not take it. But my gods if I didn’t know any better I would swear it’s the flu…..