So I got a wonderful surprise a little after lunch today. Wells Fargo's Fraud Prevention Center, or whatever they're called, left a voice mail for me to call them as soon as possible. Great. Just what I need. I normally watch my accounts like a hawk since I use my check card everywhere. I really probably shouldn't, but it's a habit that will take a bit of effort on my part to actually overcome..
OK, well I call them back and the kind lady on the phone starts asking her questions. After a few minutes of going over my payments and finding nothing out of the ordinary, I get put on hold for a few minutes. When she comes back she says something along the lines of: "one of the previous vendors in your payment history has had a security breach and your number was reported as one of those that was stolen, and your purchase at [some web vendor I actually bought from] triggered our investigation". Just. fucking. awesome.
So naturally I would love to find out who's to ultimately blame, and thus never buy from them again (that whole capitalistic voting with my wallet thing), but all she would say was that the number was reported stolen by Visa, and has now been deactivated. Oh and the new card will be out in 7-10 business days. Good thing I didn't try to use it for my lunch today..
I guess on the positive side, I'm actually kind of impressed with Wells Fargo and how they've handled the entire situation, even though they won't tell me the offending vendor (if they even know it) It is nice to know that had it actually been used fraudulently they would have been on top of the ball.
This guy has been serving tasty beveridges since prohibition was repealed! Here's to you, to me and one and all. The world's oldest bartender's 'bout to serve his very last call
Last Friday Me, Micaila & Ryan a friend of Micaila's from Denver went whitewater rafting down the Royal Gorge stretch of the Arkansas River in near Canyon City, Colorado. It was Micaila's first time, and the first time for me in over 10 years. We went with American Adventure Expeditions Our guide, Bhoj (pronounced like boat, but replacing the t with a shh sound), was from Nepal. A little broken English aside, he was funny, encouraging, and an all together good guide.
I'd been rafting quite a bit when I was younger, mainly through various summer scouting trips. All of my previous trips had been down the same river, just upstream a bit down the Brown's Canyon run. I was a little concerned about the size of the rapids in the Gorge as depending on water levels they range from IV-V. All my previous experience topped out at III-IV. Luckily the water level was a meager 1200CFM or so, causing the Gorge to max out at IV. According to the lady we bought our pictures from, we apparently had one close call near the beginning of the trip where she thought we were sure to flip. Bhoj however betrayed no sense of alarm, or change of facial expression according to our pictures, and we made it through the rapid without any problems. Apparently AAE has nicknamed Bhoj "Little Buddha" since he's so calm and relaxed in just these types of situations, I would have to agree.
Anyways, I had a blast and would love to do it again next year if we can find the time for it.
The rest of our trip to Denver consisted of going to the Mile High Music Festival. This is the second year we've gone. It would be pretty hard to live up to last years lineup of Flogging Molly, Tom Petty & Dave Matthews, this year I was definitely excited to be seeing Tool, Incubus, Matisyahu, & 3OH!3 along with a myriad of other great acts.
The Tool set was going to be the second time I'd seen them, and I was hoping that it would be a better experience than the last time they were at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. Sadly, I was disappointed yet again. It was the exact same set of songs as at MAC, meaning short and lacking a bunch of the songs I really wanted to hear. The volume was too low, low enough that we were able to have conversations without shouting and we were standing 30-40 yards away from the speakers. The lasers & video appeared to be the same from the last show I'd seen. The one difference was Maynard at one point stripped down to a speedo??! and did the rest of the set that way?? I dunno, Tool is one of my favorite bands, but they became a favorite through their older songs that they seem hesitant to play live, which makes me a sad panda ( ' _ ' ) At this point I'm done giving them chances to redeem themselves, fool me once... yada yada.
The rest of the acts however did not disappoint, they all lived up to and in some cases exceeded my expectations. One standout that I really took note of was John Butler, whom I had never heard of until Ryan said we should try to check him out. It was mostly just the guy and his guitar, but through creative playing and looping he was able to make a full sound as if 3-4 others were playing with him. At one point he was joined by a friend on the drums but for the most part it was just him. Finding musicians like Butler are why I love going to these huge music festivals.
A slightly humorous side note is apparently I need to stay in better contact with my friends here in Omaha as I found out last night that my good friend Sasha was down at Mile High as well with some of her other friends. We never ran in to each other while down there but it would have been cool to be in a group bigger than 3 people.
Wow this got long. But yeah, there is the account of our 2nd trip to Denver for Mile High Music Festival. Does it become tradition at 2 or 3 years in a row? I'm not quite sure. I'm willing to work on making it one, who's with me?!
I got an email from Netflix today about how they are raising their Blue-ray Prices from $1 extra to $4 extra per month. Netflix just doesn't get it... In these economic times, how smart is it to increase your prices? I would say Netflix dropped the ball on this one...
This has caused me to re-asses my Netflix usage and in turn I've changed my plan from the 3-at-a-time Unlimited to 1-at-a-time Unlimited. I've found that I rarely watch more than one Netflix movie in a night. I also only watch them once or twice a week, which gives ample time for the next movie to arrive. It doesn't make sense to be paying 20.99 a month when 10.99 will fulfill my needs.
So even though last week the groundhog (or tiger!) predicted 6 more weeks of winter, you wouldn't know it if you stepped outside this weekend. The weather was just awesome. I got to make another trip to the zoo, we got to air out the house a little bit, and today it's been raining off & on though I don't care since the rain will do a great job of washing all the salt off the streets.
If this is what the next 6 weeks are supposed to be like, I say bring it on!
So watching the super bowl on this was sweet. Halo was just as funtastically awesome as you would imagine. I'm pretty sure I'll be buying something like it in the near future...
Khuntami, a 400-pound Siberian tiger at the Henry Doorly Zoo, predicted this morning that the Midlands will have six more weeks of winter.
Khuntami predicted this morning that the Midlands will have six more weeks of winter. Dr. Lee Simmons, the zoo's director, said that the forecast is appropriate since Khuntami is a winter tiger.
The tiger made his prediction based on appetite. Zoo workers had set out two containers of meat for him -- one green to represent spring and one white to represent winter.
