Unchain My Prius

Ethel and I went to Yosemite last weekend. I've always been fond of Yosemite, I think because the name sounds sort of like a Jewish Retreat would - "Yo Semite" - get it?

We spent a lot of time hiking this trip, ranging from easy strolls around the village to a "killer" hike to Columbia Rock on the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. This sort of trail is how the park got its name in the first place - "Yosemite" is the Indian word for "some of them are killers."

The weather was gorgeous for the entire weekend, right up until when we were about to head out, then somehow, we got dumped on and had 4-6 inches of new snow. Great for skiing, not so great for driving in the mountains - they were rated "R2" - if we were going to drive, we needed chains.

And we had them!! Woohoo!! For three years I've driven around with a set of cable chains in the back of the Prius waiting for a chance to use them (or dreading having to use them, your choice).

We opened up the bag with the chains and started going through the instructions - they were pretty useless really, I think they went something like this:

1. Install chains
2. Drive carefully
3. Remove chains when safe to do so

Missing were all sorts of useful pieces of info. Thankfully, the bellman at the hotel parking lot we were "chaining up in" had installed chains in his previous career and he gave us all sorts of helpful hints that I thought were worth sharing, things like:

1. Connect the connector that's behind/inside the tire first (it's really hard to see, but it should be at the top), you'll never it it any other way;
   
2. Connect the bottom connector on the outside tire second;
3. Connect the top connector last;
4. After the three connectors are done, use the rubber band with the yellow things for tensioning things - attach the top and bottom first, then 2:30 and 8:30, then 4:30 and 10:30 - try it, you'll see what I mean

And it was that easy. The first tire took 15 minutes of struggling to accomplish nothing, and about 3 minutes to complete after the tips; the second tire took a little longer (my hands were numbing up; another tip - wear some sort of gloves that offer some degree of freedom; mine didn't).

To remove the chains, follow the steps in reverse order - remove the tensioners, then the two connectors on the outside first (top first, then the bottom connector) - this assumes you orient the tires the same way, of course, and then the back one - once again you won't be able to see it, but it's there, just to piss you off.

And choose a dry spot to stop the car, no matter how hard you try, you end up kneeling in front of the tire, and it's just no fun doing it in a puddle :)

My TARP Contribution

I was looking at my bank account online the other day and I noticed that one of my accounts was MISSING. Yes, missing, as in not there. It was a CD that was supposed to have matured the other day, so I wasn't too surprised to not see it, but I was a little concerned about where the bank had stashed my money - it wasn't in any other accounts. So I did what I do best - I called customer support. Mistake..

The guy who answered the phone was trying to be helpful, but failing:

Me: My account seems to have disappeared - it was there yesterday, it's gone today
Him: I only see your checking and savings acccount, what account is missing
Me: A CD - lots of money. Enough to pay for the Vegas boondoggle your execs are planning
Him: Do you know the account number?
Me: Yes, in fact, it's in my statement from last month, before you made it go away
Him: I don't see it, I'll have to research it. Are you sure you have the number right? Where did you open it?
Me: Yes, I'm sure, I just read it from the PDF of my statement, unless you guys screwed that up?
...

And so it continued. Lots of time on hold, etc. Eventually he came back and said the branch was looking into it and they would get back to me.

And so they did - about an hour later a guy from the branch called to explain to me that when they rolled the CD over to my savings account THEY (the local branch) had entered the information in correctly, but during the course of "hard-processing" (something like that - it sounded like "manual data entry" to me) someone had transposed a couple of digits.

Me: Holy Crap! So my money is in someone else's account?
Branch Guy: No, the account number entered was invalid, so the money was in limbo

This is wrong on so many levels.. Ok, first, what the hell is someone doing reentering (incorrectly, I might add) the account information? Wasn't this all handled electronically? Apparently not. Someone actually PRINTED the transfer request out and then gave it to someone else to type in?

And what's this limbo account crap? The money was transfered to an invalid account and your software didn't think that was wrong and didn't prevent it? Does that sound stupid? Does this sound like the right way to do business? Right, as you said, someone would have picked up in it eventually - it seems like AS THE ERROR IS HAPPENING would have been the time for that to take place, not "when I happened to notice it."

They promised I'd get my money back tomorrow, anyone want to bet whether they come through or not?