Part of the following addresses the fact that the office I work in on today's date really didn't have any windows. I sometimes tinker with building small electrical gadgets out of ordinary household materials or things at my desk. In my spare moments for the week I've been trying to find plans and how to build a lightning detector.
This lightning detector may be more than I can chew. There are no windows on the floor of the building I work. The first indication we get of storms is thunder. Since childhood I’ve known that you will rarely hear thunder if it is more than three or four miles away. Maybe it's one of them urban legends like how a duck's quack doesn't echo. My thinking was that since the only radio technology I understand is near the low end of the AM spectrum, I should be able to pick up lightning (at around 300MHz).
Not so fast. All the schematics I can find use transistors which I do not have the technology to build. Also, transistors require power and it seems to me that lightning is nothing more than a gigantic spark gap generator. Another curiosity is all the plans I’ve seen use a powered antenna. Why? You will not likely see me running a powered antenna near my house during an electrical storm.
[Authors note: the following concerns a heated discussion I had with a bank that canceled my debit card a month and a half before its expiry date. They wouldn't help me on the phone and when I went into the branch, the asinine manager’s focus became on whether or not I had followed their procedures. I was focused on getting my card working again. Remember, that to me bank managers are at the bottom of the food chain. It's me trusting them with my money, not the other way around. I understand how losers who borrow money might hold bankers in some kind of awe but it's foolish to think everybody is so naïve.]
That damn Washington Mutual bank. They just cannot do the simplest things over a long period of time. I recognize the technology and tactics. Like a stray dog, they are constantly probing to see where they can piss before you roll up the paper and swat them. What I do not like most is their attitude that they are the superior party in every conversation and transaction. They get this attitude because most customers in their huge line-ups owe them money, and rarely complain. In dismal bank-think, this means everyone is satisfied. Then I come along.
My debit card quit. I stomped in. You do not, without a fight, cancel or interfere with my access to my own money without clearing it with me in advance. Not you, not anyone, are you with me on this? Well, Washington Mutual only hires the simple-minded. Such dolts are always cowards who hide behind “policy”. Oh, they hate it when you inform them you don’t give a damn about their policies, or that when they screw up, you have policies also. That’s about what happened here.
They want you to wait in line, even if the problem is caused by them. Their attitude seems to be to hell with your schedule or time. Now, they have only one thing on their little minds. To establish control and cause you such a delay that you get frustrated and leave before they have to do any actual work. And did I get a winner this time.
He wants to know if I called the 800 number, I don’t think that information is any of his business. Besides, when I am being lied to, I want a live, breathing, sweating bank employee in front of me at eye-level. Where I can gauge reactions, memorize tactics, etc. Let him call the 800 number if he thinks it will do any good.
I’m good at it, you know. H has to try everything in his little bag of tricks to establish “superiority”. I cut him down several dozen times within 15 minutes, and he was getting awful scared that he may have to do some work, and he began to glimpse the consequences of setting such a precedent. What he did not know is that my time was up. Finally, in desperation, he asked for my ID. I thought of telling him to stick it where it felt good, that I was the one who should be asking him for ID. But I was curious what he would “find wrong” with my ID, although I did not appreciate the implication that I was lying about my name.
My ID was on paper, not laminated. It turns out he just could not “live with that”. He shook his (he suffered from pyramid-shaped noggin syndrome) head, and kept repeating that he was “not in a position to compromise on primary ID”. Well, in his opinion he “won”, because I left before he had to do any actual work. It turns out he could have solved the entire problem by doing what I originally asked – call the head office and find out who cancelled my card. Instead, he had to keep screwing around until he turned my complaint into a problem with my ID. He now has a clever and unforgiving enemy.
The problem was the bank has a crazy notion when they send you a letter, you both receive and act on it within ten days. I, on the other hand, cannot forget the time a bank arbitrarily cancelled my debit card when I was overseas because I did not respond to a “survey”. Their defense was that “most” of their clients didn’t live overseas six months a year. Like I care about “most” of their clients. Washington Mutual had issued me a new card without my knowledge, and cancelled the old one before they had any confirmation I had received or activated the new one. Which makes them in the wrong.
Is it true that bank accounts in Belize aren't allowed to do anything without the depositor' s permission?
