Earnest Money

Chase Bank

After a week of trying to get my cell phone number registered on Chase's online banking site I called their online customer support phone number. None of the options in the multi-level option menu applied so I just chose one at random.

I was then prompted to enter my debit card number and PIN on an unsecured phone line. DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) decoders are readily available and anyone with any sense of tone could figure out what I was typing. Nice security!

I finally reached someone in the online banking department who asked me a list of questions, which I was told all came from public databases. Not sure how this provides any security.

Which of the following residential addresses are you associated with?

Which of the following companies have you been associated with?

What is Mark's month of birth?

And so on.

Eventually I was given a PIN to enable online banking. I entered the PIN and walked my way through the setup and hungup.

When I tried to enter a wire transfer there was no option to do so. I tried to enter setup again and received the message that I needed to enter an authorization code. I clicked "Already have an authorization code?" and was informed that none had been issued.

I called support again and explained my situation and was given an authorization code without any verification that I am who I claimed to be.

Then I had to setup a payee, which required YAFP (Yet Another F**king PIN). As I hadn't hung up I received that PIN. It rejected the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) code that I entered even though it was valid. The woman on the phone told me to append 'X' until it was ten characters long even though that information was not on the web page. WTF?

The asked for the Billing Account, which in fact is the source of funds account in addition to the account to be debited for the transaction with no option to choose my money market account as the source of funds.

Eventually I got a scheduled wire request to go through. Now let's see how long it takes. I've been asked to make the payments in amounts of less than $10k a day so they don't get held up.

Burglar

In the middle of this process my landlord, Bernd knocked on the door and advised me that last night at two o'clock in the morning some kids had stacked up milk crates and hopped a fence to gain access to this property but were heard by another tenant and scurried off.

Air Gun

Last night I ordered an 1,100 foot per second .177 caliber spring air rifle which is supposed to be very accurate. Hopefully it won't be held up at customs too long, you can buy the things over the counter at the pharmacy here, not a high quality one like this, but similar power.

I doubt I'll have many rats to shoot at the new house. There is are some big snakes, a boa constrictor and a big indigo. The are only good for a couple of rats a week apiece so they could readily keep up with a small population.

Floating House

Yesterday I met with Skip, the builder of the floating house and we spent an hour at Casa Verde laying out the floor plans. It was far more productive than exchanging emails. Then I had a three dimensional walk through on the house. Right now it looks like a giant box with two decks on each end but once we nail down the floor plan we'll work on the external aesthetics.