I just came in to my office from watching my son drive away with his girlfriend for a 4th of July holiday weekend in San Felipe, Mexico. They are leaving tomorrow morning in the AM and will be returning sometime Monday night July 7.
Tomorrow is going to suck rocks. I HATE celebrating the 4th without my son.
I miss you already, son. :=(
As part of Project POLGVB, we had some people come over today and clean the carpets, floors and other stuff around the house. That all turned out really well. The wife also took it upon herself to get some white paint and touch areas around the frames of doors and other areas of the house that needed freshening up.
This is all leading up to having an appraiser come by the house and give it the once-over in order to determine its current value and see how it compares to the other houses in the neighborhood that are either for sale or that have sold recently.
I wish I could look forward 3 months in the future and see where we are with this project. Stress is ramping up around the parts. *sigh*.
This is CRAZY.
Let's see if I can keep this straight.
I have a credit card from a company called "Direct Merchants".
Now, Direct Merchants is a *brand* from a company called HSBC Card Services which stands for Hong Kong and Shanghi Banking Corporation and which was established in 1865 to facilitate commerce between China and Europe.
However, the website you connect to to make on-line payments is called "Account Central" and nowehre on the website does it tell you that you are there to make a payment for Direct Merchant or for HSBC Card Services.
SO: AccountCentral is the website to make payments for a Direct Merchants credit card that is in fact a brand of the parent company called HSBC Card Services. It's all horribly confusing and makes me rue the day I ever decided to do business with these people in the first place.
I am feverishly attempting to clear out the tangles in my credit profiles and will not rest until it's done. This is going to consume the rest of 2008 and probably 2009 for me but it will be very much worth the effort.
I feel good for having started this journey to financial freedom. It's all good from when you have a goal and a plan of attack in place.
20 years ago today, on a sunny Friday morning, my wife and I drove over to the South Bay Municipal Court House in Torrance, Ca and stood in front of a judge and got married.
So very much has happened in the intervening years that it's a little overwhelming to think about, really.
This evening we drove over to McCormick's & Schmick's in El Segundo for dinner. we arrived at 1800 on the dot and a pleasant enough time. The food was really good and the service was OK also.
After dinner we drove over to Verizon in Hawthorne to see about getting a headset for my wife to use with her cell phone, as today is the day where the new law starts stating that you MUST NOT use a cell phone while driving a car unless you are using a hands-free device of some kind.
As part of Project POLGVB, I just spent the last 2 hours on the phone with Southwest Credit Systems and with AT&T Wireless trying to get a mis-reported item removed from my credit report.
Southwest Credit Systems SUCKS
As expected (they are a debt-collection agency, after all), Southwest Credit Systems were utterly incompetent and of no help whatsoever, hanging up on me TWICE in the span of 10 minutes. Eventually, I was able to find a place on their website to "make a payment" and when I looked up my account, it stated that I had balance of $0.00 and that the account was CLOSED.
AT&T Wireless Rocks
I soon found myself on the phone with the AT&T Wireless Receivables department and they could not have been more professional.
I spoke with a very nice gentleman by the name of David who took all of my information and made a bunch of annotations to my account, stating to me that he was in the process of initiating the correction process with Southwest Credit Systems. He then stated to me that I should see the change by July 3, 2008 or that I would hear from them in regards to the status of the account if the correction had not been made by then.
Now I wait and see WHEN and IF this has been actually REMOVED from my credit report.
I just now came into my office and I had an email from 2nd Life, telling me that they were about to bill me $22.75 for the quarterly renewal fee for my *premium* 2nd Life account.
An account I have used maybe 2 or 3 times since I signed up for it in April of 2006, mind you.
I immediately went to the 2nd Life website, searched around until I found a customer service FAQ that had the answer on how to cancel your account. When I started the process to cancel the account, I was told that I could just DOWNGRADE to a BASIC account that was FREE, and that this account would allow me to still access 2nd Life and look around and stuff.
So that's what I did. I now have a free, basic account that allows me to login and look around and I can later re-establish my premium, paid account if I decide I want to really get back in to 2nd Life.
This is all part of my merciless hacking of all unnecessary debt that I have signed up for over the years and get billed for monthly on different credit card accounts. As I get renewal notices, I am going to cut them all away until all I am being billed for are true essential services.
Yay Me! And thanks, Dave Ramsey. You rock.
Tonight was a night I really thought might never get here. This long journey started back in September of 2003 and has led through some rough patches.
But! He did it. The Teenager has GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL!!!
Tonight his mom, girlfriend, another good friend, his aunt and I drove over to Gardena High to watch the ceremony where the teenager and his classmates went through the traditional Graduation ceremony with all of the pomp and circumstance befitting such a monumental life event.
The ceremony was loud, boisterous, crowded and yet ultimately, very fun. I shot a bunch of pictures and got some video also. After the graduation ceremony we drove home and had my mom stop by for some pizza, cake and shooting of even more pictures.
Wow, what a relief. No more stressing out about uncompleted homework assignments and all the other trials and tribulations associated with guiding a kid and then a teenager through their school years.
We did it A.J. Actually, YOU DID IT.
I am more proud of you than you can ever imagine. Rock on, A.J!
So my 4 GB of RAM from Crucial arrived today and I set about to install in in "Zeus" my 24" iMac. Here are the steps I took to complete the RAM upgrade:
Tools Needed:
That's it!
The trick to this process is in step 10, where pulling on the tab just UNSEATS the RAM module but DOES NOT slide the RAM module out. One pull of the tab is all it takes. After that, you need to grab the RAM module as best you can and just slide it out.
I have seen multiple YouTube tutorial videos where the people in the video seem to struggle getting the RAM module to come out, thinking that further pulling on the tab is the secret to getting the RAM module out of the RAM slot.
The tab(s) seems like it is attached to the RAM module, but it is not. It's just an integrated mechanism that allows you to UNSEAT THE RAM so you can then slide it out manually.
I hope this helps others to perform RAM upgrades on their iMacs. Please feel free to leave a comment on this tutorial with any omissions or notes that may simplify this even more.
Enjoy!
Not much to report save a visit to mom's house where I did a few things for her around the house and helped her with a couple of computer-related issues she was having.
Work is as work will be. On the personal front, there are the nascent whispered rumors that an opportunity the wife has been waiting for at least 10 years is starting to materialize. I will say no further here other than to officially refer to the news as:
Project POLGVB
1533:
So far it has been a quiet and somewhat relaxing Father's Day 2008. I woke up in the morning to watch Meet The Press expecting a tribute to Tim Russert and that's just what it was. I then set my Tivo to record it and got up to do other stuff.
Cleaning the Garage
So, without really thinking too much about it, I just got dressed and walked out to the garage and started taking stuff out to the backyard to create piles for the wife and mother-in law to go through. Once they have sorted what is trash and what will be donated to the Salvation Army and to the Good Will, it will just be a matter of hauling the stuff away.
After the garage cleanup, I went to CVS to get some stuff I needed and came back home to take a shower and have a little breakfast. While eating breakfast, I watched "The Jackal" with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. Excellent flick.
A.J. and his girlfriend are in Riverside this afternoon and are supposed to be coming by later this afternoon to go out to dinner. We will see what develops and I will be back here to update this post if indeed the dinner materializes.
UPDATE 2230:
Just got back from the Cinemas Delux on the Bridge in Westchester near LAX. I went to see "You Don't Mess with the Zohan" with my son and his girlfriend and we had a great time. The reserved seating IMAX thaters with in-seat dining was great and we enjoyed the movie.
All in all, it turned out to be a pretty nice Father's Day 2008.
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