Bank of America Executive Customer Service does indeed come through as I finally got my check card this morning which was overnighted via FedEx. I finally have my check card after almost 3 full months since I lost it. If you missed my previous blog entry, you can read it here: Bank of America Incompetence.
Cursive A?
There’s been a big debate at work recently and that is how do you write a cursive capital A. The split is pretty much half half.
This first spawned as a discussion about different cultures and it lead to languages and finally until the fact that everyone at Microsoft likes to write in print more than write in cursive. Cursive to me has always been a note-taking/fast writing skill. For something final, I always thought print is easier to read and nicer as a final product. I also prefer print. I’d learnt cursive back in 3rd grade and only seldom use it. Ruchi says that cursive was the first thing she learnt when taught how to write English, so that’s why she was shocked that so few Americans she’s met actually use cursive.
Anyway, she started drawing the cursive letters on my whiteboard, both upper and lower case. I said there’s a few differences between our cursive vs their cursive and the 1st thing I pointed out was that our capital A looked like this:
Instead of this:
Both Dan and Ruchi started cracking up and couldn’t believe it. They said that the capital cursive ‘A’ could never be just an enlargement of the lower case cursive ‘a’. I didn’t find it particularly funny and even pointed out the fact that her capital ‘C’, ‘P’, and ‘M’ were also just enlargements of lower case ‘c’, ‘p’, and ‘m’. They seemingly ignored that fact and continue to argue that capital cursive is suppose to be beautification process and my capital ‘A’ was had nothing beautiful about it.
So we brought up Wikipedia’s entry on Cursive and of course I was right. They still deny that fact and said Wikipedia is mainly Americans, which I don’t deny. I did find an entry on Russian Cursive, and their A does indeed look like what Ruchi and Dan had drawn.
Anyway, I started asking around, especially people from different countries, to see how they were taught their cursive A and so far as noted before, it’s pretty much split.
Both Bo and Jan Lyk (Australian) remembers learning the American cursive ‘A’.
This was even brought up during one of our team meetings once and the disagreement gets even further. Luke agrees with me and says the A that Ruchi and Dan drew is actually script, and not cursive. I even got both Brazilians on our team to agree with my A. I forget if it was Mark, but I believe we got a Canadian to agree with my ‘A’ too.
However, apparently not all American’s learnt ‘A’ like we did as John also agrees with Ruchi and Dan.
Here’s the current tally:
My ‘A’:
- Toland
- Jan Lyk
- Bo
- Brian
- Caleb
- Luke
- Robert
- Rafael
- Airam
- Mark
Ruchi and Dan’s ‘A’:
- Ruchi
- Dan
- John
- Tariq
- Brent
- Vijay
- Shan
- Jaideep
So far we have what I believe Canada, Australia, Brazil, and a majority of U.S.A against Russia and India. If you’re from a different country, I’d like to know how you write your cursive capital A.
Jan Lyk’s Halloween Party
A few weeks ago, I get an evite from Jan Lyk for his Halloween Party. I wasn’t sure if I was going or not at first, since I’m not a big fan of getting dressed up in a costume. The last time I got dressed up was probably back in elementary school. I’ve never really been a big fan of Halloween. And after I found out I could buy my own candy, there was even less reason so. I remember when I was small, my mom would throw away about half my candies I got from Trick-or-Treating as she deemed them “poisonable.”
Anyway, back to the story. Not sure to accept or reject the invite yet, we got into a discussion of Xyon’s costume one day and somehow I verbally agreed to going to the party. The reason I provided for not accepting the invite yet was I wasn’t sure how many guests I’ll bring and pulled a Mechy/Horacio reason saying I wasn’t sure how many of my 10 different “female” friends were going to be available that night.
Now a verbal agreement is not binding, but neither is an evite confirmation, but since I already agreed to go, I started thinking of costumes. A bunch of anime characters pop up into my mind. First of course it was Kenshin, but his costume felt hard to come by. I then thought everyone says I look like Tenchi Muyo with my tail:
However, Tenchi’s costume is just a regular high school student. I thought maybe I can get a traditional Japanese high school uniform (the black ones actually looks pretty awesome), but there wasn’t really enough time to have one shipped and I had no idea where to pick one up locally.
So I started expanding my options beyond anime. I looked up a few costume shops around me to see if there were anything I liked. While I was in the first costume store, I saw a black jacket and thought it be pretty easy to dress up as Neo from The Matrix. All I would really need is a leather trench coat and some shades, though shades would make it difficult to navigate in a dark Halloween party. Anyway, after I dropped by a few other costume shops and didn’t really see anything I wanted, I went to Ross. Unfortunately, they said trench coats were seasonal things and if it’s not in the coats section, then they probably wouldn’t have it. The same thing happened at Target.
During sushi dinner that night with Stanman, Desperajo, and Carolynn, I brought up the fact that I was looking for a trench coat for my costume. Desperajo mentioned that he saw a really nice trench coat at Goodwill and I decided I would try checking there. Given it was Goodwill, it’ll probably not cost too much either. So the conversation of what you would dress up as for Halloween went around and Stanman said he’d dress up as Hiro from Heroes. I asked if he meant future Hiro, but Stanman declined and said he’d just be regular Hiro, the present day version. We all said that wasn’t really a costume as he just dresses normally with fuzzy hair. He goes, that’s fine with him. Carolynn then chimed in that I would look more like Hiro than Stanman, and Stanman argues that both he and I look pretty much the same, and I have to agree. We often get confused which Wii Miis is who.
Anyway, that gave me another idea: Future Hiro. I searched online to see if I can find a good picture of it and found this:
I thought awesome! Looks like I’ll need a black coat, a black fleece with zipper, black dress shirt, black pants, black shoes, a sword, and a black strap to hold the sword’s sheath. If you haven’t realized, black is one of my favorite colors, though some will argue that black is not a color at all, and is the absence of color, and to those I would just ignore.
Anyway, I started searching my wardrobe and it looks like I have the dress shirt and pants. I know I have a pair of black dress shoes, so that was taken care of also. I dug around all my laptop bags and found a few black straps that look like they’ll work. Looks like I’ll need to invest in a black coat, black fleece, and a sword for this endeavor.
I drop by Ross again and found a few black coats and fleeces and tried them on. I ended up purchasing one of each. However, when I got home and tried all 3 layers of clothing on (coat + fleece + dress shirt), it got unbearably hot, so I decided I didn’t really need the fleece and ended up returning it to Ross.
I also dropped by a party store and picked up a toy sword. I was thinking of bringing my real katana, but the thought of accidents turned me away. After I got home, I cut out some holes and attached the black strap to it. When I discussed my costume with Xyon, he insisted that I would need the symbol on my sword. So I ended up picking up a metallic gold marker from Office Depot and that worked out extremely well:
Here’s the total cost of my costume:
Black Coat: $50
Toy Sword: $6
Gold Marker: $3
And here’s the final outcome of the costume:
Anyway, just as I was about to leave for the party, I realized that I couldn’t find my black dress shoes. Tons of scenarios came into my mind. Did I take it back to LA during my last visit and forgot to bring it back? Did my mom hide them somewhere else? Has it always been in storage? I decided to give my mom a call and two rings in while I was searching the storage, I found it! I recalled the last time I wore these was during the CSD Christmas Party almost 2 years ago. I recall even buying a belt and tie for that event, which I haven’t worn once since. Anyway, it turns out that it was indeed still in storage (there’s still tons of boxes I have yet to open since my move).
So I drove to Microsoft because Xyon and I were carpooling from there. Turns out a few others were doing the same. We met up with Veneta, Thet, and Aurash. We got to Jan Lyk’s place around 9 and people started slowly coming in.
How the party went? I’ll let the pictures tell the story:
For the full album, check out: Jan Lyk’s Halloween Party 2007
One really funny incident that happened during the party was people were guessing what time it was. I looked at my clock on my cell phone and saw 1:47am. I thought, wasn’t it 1:30am almost an hour ago? Then it hit me, Daylight Savings Time. So while people were guessing 2:30, 2:42, etc, I couldn’t help but laugh. When I told them it was only 1:47, they wouldn’t believe me until I mentioned DST, then it hit them. Aurash continues to argue that his clock is synched with the atomic clocks and his clock shows 2:47am. Jeremy backs me up and says his phone has synched and updated with DST.
Here’s some helpful advise: Don’t try to bite or bend those glowy sticks beyond their capacity. I ended up with a mouth full of glowing orange liquid which tasted really really bad.
After the party, a bunch of us went to Denny’s and just chatted for quite a bit.
Elliptical User Warnings
Since Ungsunghero had requested this, it has been bumped up in priority.
I had mentioned I got my elliptical a few weeks back and I’ve been using it pretty much everyday. I spend about 30 minutes on it while usually watching an episode of Heroes or 2 episodes of anime. I started at resistance = 5, but have bumped it up 6. I’m pretty sure 7 would be fine too, but I’ll stay at 6 for now.
What I found amazing is that even though with 30 minutes of exercising on the elliptical, I don’t feel that tired afterwards at all and I burn more calories than when I was on the exercise bike. With 30 minutes on my exercise bike, I get extremely tired by the end and only burn about 400 calories. With the elliptical, I burn about 690 calories and can probably go on for another 15 minutes or so.
One interesting number on the elliptical is that it also measures carbs, and my number usually ends up around 100. According to the user’s manual, the number represents the number of grams of carbs I have burned. I wonder if that’s just some calculation based on the calories I’ve burned.
Anyway, the elliptical took some while to get used to as it felt unnatural and initially, I often lifted my feet off the step or started sliding on the step.
I typically do my exercise barefooted, but the steps on this elliptical has these poky pyramids which I’m guessing is to provide friction so you don’t slip on the steps. That made sense so during my first workout, I wore slippers. Very bad idea. Back in elementary school, did you ever get an Indian burn? Well, my feet basically ended up in a similar state, but worse. Since I was wearing slippers, my feet basically kept on rubbing it, chafing it constantly for 30 minutes. Of course when i was exercising, I didn’t realize that. But afterwards, it hurt pretty bad to walk.
Having a few pair of new shoes, I decided to use one specifically for the elliptical. That has worked out well ever since and my chafed feet have returned to normal.
Another thing about ellipticals are the moving handles. Even if you let go of the bars, they continue to move as long as your feet is moving. So if you drop your remote, don’t try to pick it up with moving handle bars or you may end up with a bump on the head like me.
Bank of America Incompetence
So I’ve been a customer of Bank of America since middle of High School. They were basically my first checking account and I’ve had it ever since. Lots of people like to bash Bank of America, saying that they’re customer service sucks, their fees are outrageous, they treat customers like crap, etc. You can read more of these stories on Consumerist.
I on the other hand have always semi-defended Bank of America since I’ve never really had problems with them. Then again, I haven’t really had to deal with customer service for any major issues. Bank of America was just convenient for me, especially in college. They basically had an ATM everywhere that I needed one and they were also one of the first to introduce free bill pay, which made life quite simple. Of course back in the day, you needed to have a minimum balance or monthly direct deposit to avoid service fees, but the PayPal trick of me depositing $1 each month worked wonders.
As I mentioned a few months ago, I had lost my Bank of America check card. I thought things were going to be fine, but almost 4 months later, a total of 9 different phone calls, 7 different requests to have the check card mailed to me, and I’m still without my check card.
The first few times, i was told I would receive my card within 2 weeks. Having not received my card in 2 weeks, I called back and basically repeated this process 5x, each time having the customer service rep cancel the card they “claimed” to have mailed out and issuing me a new one. They’ve always confirmed with me my address and I said that’s correct, I’ve been receiving spam from you guys with no problem, so I don’t think the address is problematic.
By my 6th request, I insisted that they send it to me with tracking and they told me they could use FedEx and it should arrive in 2-3 days. 3 days later, still no FedEx. I give them a call back and asked for the tracking number and the service rep tells me the card was sent out via regular mail. I wanted to scream, but I knew it wasn’t her fault. So I asked her to make a new request for FedEx. She said she could do that but by the time the FedEx package gets to me, the card shipped via regular mail would’ve arrived to me already. I mentioned that I don’t really see a card shipped via regular mail ever reaching me seeing how the last 5x, it never did arrive. She said okay, and made a new order to have my check card sent to me via FedEx.
I called back 2 days later and requested for the tracking number. Once again, the customer service rep says that card was shipped out via regular mail and there was no tracking number. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle them. I basically asked why this was the case and my past 2 requests were both specifically requested for FedEx and both suddenly changed to regular mail. She says the previous service rep probably didn’t request for FedEx and I responded by saying that couldn’t be the case. At this point, my tone has reached to very annoyed and almost murderous. She felt that and asked if I wanted to speak with the supervisor. I said that would be good.
However, even with the supervisor, this got nowhere. She mentioned maybe the previous reps might’ve forgotten a field or the fact that the fires in California were causing delays. I said that doesn’t explain any of the requests I made back in August and September. She agreed, but said there wasn’t anything she could do. Their check card creation process was outsourced to someone else and the only thing she can do is submit a new request for me. She recommended that I wait till next Friday and I should receive my card by then. I replied that I can do that, but what if I don’t receive the check card? I call back and then what? What can they do then. She said only a new request can be made, there was nothing else that can be done. I asked her if she can specifically note on my account to use FedEx to ship the card and she said that wasn’t possible due to privacy reasons. The card creation “factory” was not able to see notes on my account besides the form that gets submitted to them.
For those that know me, you know it’s quite hard to annoy me or piss me off, but I was so pissed at this point, Ruchi (my co-worker that sits across from me) can hear me arguing with Bank of America even with my doors closed. For the next 10 minutes, it was basically me saying I can wait, but what can they do if I still don’t receive my card and her replying the only thing she can do is request a new card for me. After going nowhere, I thanked her for her time and hung up.
Today, I looked up the Executive Customer Service phone number for Bank of America (posted on Consumerist) and decided to give them a call. This service rep was very sympathetic to my situation and was shocked at how long this problem has gone on. She looked up my account and said that she’ll have to contact the center in California to inquire about this and asked if I would prefer to have her call me back or put me on hold. I said putting me on hold would be fine, but she requested my phone number just in case we got disconnected.
About 7 or 8 minutes later, she says this is taking awhile and asked if I wanted to still hold or she can call me back. I said I had no problem holding and she comments that I must be multi-tasking. We both laughed and she went back to talking with the CA center. Another 10 minutes or so pass and she comes back and she tells me that she spoke with the manager at the check card manufacturer and apparently all my previous requests were rejected due to the fact there was “\” (back slash) in my account info, hence no tracking number was ever provided. I wanted to ask why the process didn’t allow that to be noted so I wouldn’t have needed to go through all this trouble, but she’s been very nice so far, so I didn’t inquire further. She said my card will be overnighted to me, but since it was Friday afternoon already, the card will most likely be stamped on Monday and mailed to me on Tuesday. I thanked her for her time and once again she apologized for all the inconvenience.
What is silly is that the customer service was unable to contact directly with the outsourced check card manufacturer and that I had to go all the way up to Executive Customer Service to have this problem resolve only to find out that no card was ever sent to me due to some silly account info problem.
Hopefully I’ll be getting my card by next week. It’s been rather inconvenient not to have access to BofA’s ATMs, which meant I had to deposit all my rebate checks in the mean time in Wamu’s (Washington Mutual) ATMs, which were less convenient for me since I didn’t really pass by one on my way to work nor on my way home.
What happened to my Random Crap?
Ever wondered what happened to all my random crap? I guess I can’t really assume what you see on my site isn’t random “crap” to begin with, but I’ve just run low on time to post everything I find interesting these days. Therefore I’ve decided to stop posting random links and stuff. If I find something really amusing and interesting, I’d still post it, and it’ll probably get its own entry.
But I figured a way to still show you random crap, with me doing minimal work.
There are 2 main sources where I get most of my random crap: Digg and RSS feeds. The most obvious thing is to share with you what I’ve dugg: Digg / krunk4ever / History / Diggs.
As with RSS feeds, bloglines has this blog/clipping feature which is pretty neat. It allows me to clip and save off particular entries: Krunk4Ever – Powered By Bloglines
I’ve added these links to the sidebar, so if you ever miss my random crap, you know you can find something interesting in one of these links.
Pony Express Awesomeness
So this weekend, I sold 3 Canon PC 170 Personal Copiers for about $50 a piece. Pretty good deal considering I only paid tax for them which came out to be ~$6-7 a piece. Anyway, I typically use USPS to ship most things, usually Media Mail or Parcel Post depending on what I’m shipping using the USPS PayPal Trick. Other times, I ship USPS Priority Mail when customers pay for expedited shipping.
However, for shipping things over 4lbs, I typically go with UPS, FedEx, or DHL, depending on whichever one is convenient. UPS usually wins since I can just drop them off at Office Depot, however they also usually end up being the most expensive, but for $1-2 more, the convenience matters more to me.
However, that changed when I needed to ship a 26lb photocopier… UPS was going to charge $33 or something ridiculous like that while DHL was charging $24. However, I didn’t know where I could exactly ship via DHL and if I recall correctly, DHL is backed by OfficeMax and there’s really no OfficeMax close to me. Is the ~$10 difference actually enough to convince me to drive further?
Then I remember that as a Microsoft employee, I actually have a discount with DHL. Punching in my info, the shipping fee dropped from $24 to $17, making it even more tempting. I decided to check out DHL’s drop off locator tool and found out that there was a Pony Express next to work. I recall seeing a Pony Express before, but could not remember from where. However, Google Maps and Live Maps both pointed to the intersection of 24th and 148th and given there were malls on each corner there, I had no idea which one they were in.
I gave them a call Monday morning asking which complex they were located in and they said they were across from Safeway in the Arby’s complex. I personally don’t think that the map marker should’ve been at the intersection of 24th and 148th and now I remember seeing that store in that complex.
Anyway, I drop by afterwards and was not sure how what it’ll be like. Office Depot doesn’t like me that much when I just drop in to drop off packages as they’re not really getting a cut on the delivery fee. I had 3 26lb packages so I had to take them in 1 by 1. When I first walked in, the clerk at the desk asked me if it was a drop off. I said yes and mentioned I had 2 more. He instructs me to just put it on the table and he’ll open the door for me. I thought that was really nice.
What really surprised me next was that he actually came out to my car and helped me carry one of the 26lb packages. That was so nice!!!
Looks like DHL will be getting more of my business now. 🙂
Yaris – Free XBLA Game
I apologize for not posting much recently. My blog topics have been accumulating. Here’s just a few of my draft titles: 5 Free iTunes Songs Followup, Fighting Dance Moves, Credit Card Update, Elliptical User Warnings, Dwarfs Count, Cute Cat Comic, Lucky Star, and File Server (yes, it’s still in queue to blog about). Here’s one that’s in my email box that I found.
I’m shocked that one of my most popular posts is 4 Free Xbox Live Arcade Games, generating about 200 unique views this past month.
A few weeks ago, while I was looking at the MSFT stock headlines (speaking of which, did you see the recent surge?!?!? We not only broke $30, but now we’re at $35!), I saw this: Want a Free Xbox Game?
If you’re still smarting after shelling out $60 for a copy of Halo 3 last month, relief is on the way. Xbox owners connected to the Xbox Live Marketplace are getting a free treat this week with a game called Yaris.
OK, maybe it’s more product placement than video game. The New York Times reports that Toyota bankrolled the game to promote its Yaris car line. There’s little for Toyota to lose here. Racing car games are popular. Electronic Arts has a killer franchise in Need for Speed. Activision recently bought the developer behind the Project Gotham Racing series, which has sold 4.5 million copies.
The Xbox marketplace provides developers with inventory-free distribution, so it’s not as if Toyota is going to have to eat a ton of returns. As long as players don’t walk into a Toyota showroom and wonder why the real Yaris can’t shoot missiles or claw away at other drivers with electronic tentacles, Toyota will accomplish its goal of reaching out to young drivers.
For more information on the Yaris game, check out Yaris (Xbox 360) and Toyota Yaris: Xbox LIVE Arcade Game.
I downloaded this game last week, but haven’t really had a chance to play it yet. Still trying to get through Halo 3. Given that I play about an hour or 2 a week, I’m not progressing that fast. Stanman and them were over this weekend to play multiplayer Halo 3 and they made fun of me for not having unlocked any of the costumes.
But here’s another free xbox live arcade game for you! Enjoy!
Spanakopita
When transferring the elliptical images over to my computer, I noticed a few images that I hadn’t talked about yet:
I also got these from Costco and they’re super yummy. They’re called spanakopita and the description states: spinach and feta phyllo triangles. According to Wikipedia:
Spanakopita is a Greek spinach pie with a filling of spinach, feta cheese (usually), green onions, egg, and seasoning (often including dill). The filling is wrapped in layers of phyllo pastry with butter and/or olive oil, either in a large pan from which individual servings are cut, or rolled into individual triangular servings (see burek). Once baked, it is golden in color.
In Greece, it is mostly eaten as a snack, an alternative to tyropita.
In restaurants it can be served with tzatziki sauce and a Greek salad. It has become a popular item in Greek restaurants worldwide, and is served as either a light meal or an appetizer.
After it leaves the oven, the outside is crispy and the insides are soft. The only unfortunate thing is that each dish comes with 12 triangles and I can’t possibly finish all of them in 1 sitting, and after you leave it out for some time, the crispiness disappears. It’s also on sale this month (from the coupon booklet).
Meet the Robinsons – Review
So I watched Meet the Robinsons and this animation was unexpectedly really good, something I had doubt Disney would’ve been able to put out. The CG was pretty good, but the storyline was what made it top-notch.
You can read my Review of Meet the Robinsons on my HD-Trailers.net Blog.