My saga with WaMu

Here is a complaint letter I tried to write to Washington Mutual. I got a CD with them because of their great interest rate here, 4.4% on a 6 month CD. That's the best I've seen in a while. The staff there was very friendly. Anyway, they have on line banking and here begins my story. I tried to set up an online banking account. I called in twice before, but it turns out I was trying to create the account too soon after it was opened. So I waited a week. Then I tried again. Here's the email I was going to send them:

I am writing to let you know of some problems I had signing up with online banking. I am using Mozilla 1.7.2 on windows XP.

The first issue was that I could not associate my CD with my user name. I only have a CD with WaMu, so I do not have a pin number. I clicked on the link that said "Access your account with other information." I filled in my other information, then it gave me an error saying my account number had to be 10 or 11 digits long. My account number is 15 digits long. This meant I had to call customer support. The customer service representative was very helpful, but I was annoyed that I had to 1) change my user name since she created a new account for me and 2) call in in the first place.

The second problem I had was after I was mailed my new user name and password, I had to agree to various user agreements. On the second agreement (I believe it was the online bill pay one), I accepted it and I got a "file not found on server" for page https://login.personal.wamu.com/enrollUpdate/enrollUpdate%5CEnrollAgreementSubmit.asp. I was able to get around that by changing the url in the browser to https://login.personal.wamu.com/enrollUpdate/EnrollAgreementSubmit.asp, but I suspect this isn't how you want the agreement accepted.

My account works fine now.

I understand that providing an error free web application is difficult, but as a new customer hitting two such errors makes me have second thoughts about the reliability of WaMu. I hope you can address these concerns so that other customers will have a better initial experience than I have had.

Thank you for your time.

Now I did not send them this letter. Why you may ask? Because they only have an email form to submit email. (Can you see where this is going?) I tried to submit it and got an error saying they couldn't submit my email and to call customer support. So I did. And the nice man on the other end typed it up for me and sent it. He also told me if I got rid of a few of the zeros in my account number that it would be the correct length. Now I had tried that, I just hadn't gotten rid of enough of the zeros. But it still remains that there was no way for me to know that about the account number.

Anyway it is all over now and my banking works, so I'm happy.

Recipe: Chocolate Mint York Peppermint Patties

This recipe is based on this one over at recipezaar. I changed it because I didn't have enough peppermint and I loved how they came out.

Chocolate Mint York Peppermint Patties
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
6 c powdered sugar
1/2 to 1 Tbsp peppermint extract (to taste)
1 1/2 Tbsp cocoa (or more to taste)
1 tsp vanilla
24 oz chocolate chips
4 T shortening

1. Mix milk, peppermint, cocoa, and vanilla together. If you have a stand up mixer, use it.
   
2. Mix in sugar until it forms a stiff, (mostly) non-sticky dough. (If you are not using a mixer, mix in what sugar you can, then kneed in the rest.)
   
3. Roll dough into mint sized balls (about 1 inch) and place on waxed paper. (These are sweet and rich, so bite sized is better.)
   
4. Let dry for 2 hours on each side (total of 4 hours). If you live in a dry climate like Utah, let dry 1 hour on each side.
   
5. Melt chocolate chips and shortening in microwave according to bag instructions. Or melt for 1 minute on high, stir, and melt in 30 second increments until the chips are melted. Use 1 Tbsp shortening to 6 oz chips. (I melted half a bag at a time. This let me use it up before the chips hardened.)
   
6. Put the balls in the chocolate and roll around until coated then remove with a fork. Set on wax paper to harden
7. Enjoy
   

We're all related

I was reading this article on Slate. Basically it was talking about how in the controversial Davinci Code, people are literal descendants of Jesus. If this were true (who knows), then pretty much anyone alive today would be related to him. The idea presented is that as you go back in time, there are fewer people, so after a few 1000 years everyone has the same set of ancestors from that time no matter where they live.

I've seen something similar to this in my family's own genealogy. From lines that go back far enough, they're all related. (Of course, my sample is skewed because there are very few lineages that go back very far because there are so few records. )

And, of course, we're all related through Adam and Noah :)

South

Last week, I read on Matt Astle's blog about the Endurance, a ship that was destroyed in the Antartic. Ernest Shackleton was in charge of an expedition, a daring attempt to cross the South Pole. Unfortunately, the ship was destroyed in the ice. The 26 people were faced with the daunting task of getting home. They first camped on the ice, then managed to sail in life rafts to uninhabited Elephant Island. Then Shackleton and five others got in the life raft and sailed an additional 600 miles across open ocean to South Georgia Island, a whaling station. When they made it to South Georgia, they landed on the uninhabited side of the island. Shackleton and two others crossed the unexplored, glacier covered interior of the island to get help. All 26 people survived.

It is that last part, that all survived, that really gets me. So many polar expeditions ended in death. For the men to have all survived and actually been in fairly good spirits through out is a testament to human determination and the hand of providence.

I read South written by Shackleton since it available for free on Project Gutenberg. I later checked out Endurance, by Caroline Alexander from the library. I loved Alexander's book because of the pictures taken by Hurley during the expedition and subsequent adventure. I also liked the bigger picture she was able to present since she was able to draw from many different sources.

One thing South brings out that Alexander doesn't is what happened to the other ship in the expedition. The idea behind the expedition was to cross the South Pole, to do that, they needed someone to cache provisions for them since it was impossible for them to carry all they needed themselves. The second ship, the Ross, broke loose from its anchor and stranded a large number of people. It took months for help to come. The party from that ship wasn't so lucky, losing three members, including the captain, before rescue.

Not too Taxing

As of this morning, my taxes are done (and there was great rejoicing.) My husband was nice enough to do them for us. He's saving up to buy a bigger telescope, so I told him that if he would do the taxes, he could have 25% of the return for his personal spending money. It was amazing how fast the taxes were done and ready to go :)

Slipping up

My basement couch needed some help. It was given to us for free several years ago from a neighbor, who got it from her parents. It was her mother's first nice couch. Anyway, it is a comfortable couch, great for napping. My kids loved to play with all 6 cushions that went with it. However, it was starting to show its age. The cushion covers were ripped. First, I thought I'd make slip covers for it. Didn't end up working out, I hate cutting things to size and I have great difficulty telling if something is straight. I didn't like the look of commercial slip covers and they were so expensive. I considered a new couch, but my husband didn't see the point.

But at last I was saved, Wal-mart had Hometrends Microsuede sofa slipcovers on clearance ($50). So I got a brown one (only kind they had). I like it so far. It has a one cover for the cushions and one for the rest of the sofa. It looks pretty good and even sort-of resembles suede. Even better, it doesn't look like I threw a sheet over the couch. Hurray!

Pride and Prejudice

Last Tuesday I went out and rented the new Pride and Prejudice. I didn't get the chance to see it in theaters, so I was waiting for it to come out on DVD. First question: Why didn't they release it for Valentines / Singles Awareness Day? Of course, no guy would buy that movie for his significant other because then he'd have to watch it :) So after my children went to bed, I watched it. I liked it OK. I'd definitely watch it again and if it was given to me as a gift I'd keep it, but I don't think I'd buy it myself. Of course, my view is tainted by the A&E version.

I liked Darcy in this one. At first I thought he was unattractive, but by the end of the movie he had grown on me. I liked Lizzie. Just the right amount of spunk. I thought Jane looked weird and didn't seem as nice as she was supposed to be.

I thought the father looked a little odd. The dad from the A&E version was much better. I did like how they made the father kinder than he was in the book.

I really didn't like Mr. Bingly. What a twit, and what an insane hair style. I also didn't find Wickham particularly attractive.

I also didn't like some of the liberties they took with the story, especially the ending after they were married. I might have liked it more were I watching it with a group of friends. Also, the letters were greatly abridged, but I can't fault them much with that because it is hard to deal with letters in a movie.

Issues with movies in general:
1) Jane is supposed to be the prettiest of the sisters. Why is the actor they choose to play Jane always less attractive than Lizzie? (Answer: Lizzie is the protagonist, but still...)

As long as I'm on the topic, I do have to recommend These Three Remain by Pamela Aidan. It covers from when Lizzie goes to visit Mrs. Collins until the end of the book from Mr. Darcy's perspective. It is the third book in a trilogy, but I have no desire to read the other two books since this one covers my favorite part of Pride and Prejudice. (Note: I had to order it online since none of the bookstores around me carried it.)

Galaxy Quest

I have always lived in moderate to large sized cities, so imagine my surprise when my husband told me that the Andromeda Galaxy is bigger than the moon (see here for a picture that illustrates it). Now I know that placed side-by-side, a galaxy is bigger than the moon, but I thought that all galaxies look like little blurry stars and of course the moon is the largest object in the sky. This is true, if you live in a city or suburb. In a dark sky, like in the mountains or the country, Andromeda is bigger than the moon, but it is dimmer so that city lights wash it out to a barely identifiable smear. I felt slightly cheated. Next time I go out away from the city lights, I am definitely going to look up.

Cell Phones Only

(Warning: Incoherent rambling below)

My husband was mentioning to me yesterday about how one of his coworkers had dropped their land line and was now using Vonage (an IP phone) exclusively. Some of my other friends have dropped their land line and only use their cell phones. I personally will never do this. I see the land line as insurance.

Insurance is why I got my cell phone in the first place. I wanted a phone to take with me (or to send with my husband) so that if something happened, I could call for help. But, I wouldn't trust my cell phone as my primary line. First, I have on occasion mislaid my cell phone, so I call it to find out where it is. I guess I'd be more careful or email my husband to call. Second, the battery life. My cell's batteries last about 2 days at best. I'd hate to need to make an emergency call and have to find the charger first. Finally, what about the babysitter? Do you leave your cell with him or her or what?

With VoIP, I'd worry about emergency situations and the internet service being down. My internet service is fairly good. It hasn't been down much at all in the several years we've had it, but I'd hate to have to trust it for a 911 call. The second issue is power. What if the power is out? In my (limited) experience with power outages, the power is more likely to be out than the phone (this of course assumes a phone that gets its power from the phone line).

I think 911 is the main sticking point. With a land line, 911 can tell where I am and send an ambulance even if I can't talk or had my 3 year old daughter dial it because I was unable to. The same can't be said for cell phones or VoIP.

Yes, there are ways around all the difficulties I've just mentioned. I'd just rather keep my land line (plus, I get free local calls :) ).

My greatest discoveries of 2005

Here's some of the things I discovered in 2005 that I loved:

1. Welch's fruit snacks - nice and chewy with a great flavor and real fruit (or so they claim)
2. Homemade Tomatillo sauce - this is the mild, green sauce you get at burrito places like Cafe Rio/Costa Vida. (The recipe)
3. Costa Vida - a great burrito restaurant, plus it is less than a mile from my house
4. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser - Gets all kinds of weird stuff off my wall including crayon

I'll add more as I think of them...

New Treat

Saturday at the store, I discovered Reese's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups. They are amazingly good, much better than their regular ones. I hope they keep them around for a while because my bag of them is almost gone.

Fakes on EBay

There's an article on the NYTimes here (subscription required) about how people are selling fake Weiss jewelry as authentic on eBay. The people in the article are mad because

1. they got ripped off (money eventually refunded)
2. this ruins the price of authentic jewelry
   
3. EBay won't do anything to stop it.

I guess I'm bad, but I don't see why eBay should be responsible, anymore than the classifieds in the local newspaper. (How do you know that those "purebred" puppies really are.) They can't determine if what people sell is real or not.

eBay has a lot of listings go up everyday. It is up to the buyer to beware. My personal philosophy is don't buy anything on EBay unless you are willing to have it be different from advertised. (Note: I have been perfectly happy with all my purchases from EBay, but I don't buy anything that anybody would want to fake.) If it will make you upset to find out it is a fake, don't buy on eBay, buy from a dealer where you can actually look at it and have it authenticated.
If eBay wants to address this problem, I think the simplest solution , for areas high in fraud or when the trademark holder asks, is to not allow anything to be sold as real, i.e. everything must be labeled Weiss-style. Another possibility is for the trademark holder to have some sort of authentication system, so trusted sellers could post that their items are authentic with a link to the trademark holder's website showing it to be true.

Recipe: Crockpot Sweet Pork / Carnitas

Here's my lame, um I mean easy, recipe for sweet pork similar to what you might find at Costa Vida/ Cafe Rio or any of those big burritto places. It is loosely based on this "real" recipe.

1 pork roast or pork chops , about 4 lbs. (I suppose the cut of meat matters, but I haven't had enough experience)
1 t. powdered onion
1 t. powered garlic
1 can chicken broth
1/4 c fresh cilantro chopped up
2 T soy sauce
1 can of Sprite or other lemon/lime drink

Brown roast in a frying pan. Mix garlic, onion, and cilantro. Pour part of the chicken broth into the crock pot. Put roast into pot and pour rest of chicken broth and soy sauce over it. Pour a little of the sprite over it (about 1/4 c, just give it a quick glurg). Sprinkle onion/garlic/cilantro over top and or rub it in if desired. Cook on low for about 8 hrs or until pork pulls apart easily. (Or do like me and cook on high for about 2 hrs and on low for about 4).

Phido the Fearless Phone

My 3D animated short is now live on google video. See it here. Watch Phido learn the value of kindness as he tries to return to his charger.

My new word: Gormishes

I've invented a new word: gormishes (yes, I know it is also a last name)
gormishes - noun decorative bumps or buttons
use: frobs, doodads, and gormishes

My husband says that his telescope has many frobs and doodads, but I thought it needed one more descriptive word, so I added gormishes.

Aluminum siding and porch lights

Today my husband was trying to install some new porch lights. He has just gone back to the store for our third set of lights. The first set didn't hang straight (manufacturing issue). The second set just wouldn't fit with our aluminum siding.

Here is what I learned, if you have aluminum siding, beware. The siding might affect which lights you can buy. Depending on how the electrical box is in relation to the edge of the siding, you might not be able to install fixtures with large "bases" (for lack of a better word). The edge of our siding juts out, so it pushes the bottom of the fixture forward. To have the fixture hang straight, you would have to leave a half an inch gap at the top. See how big the base of your current lights are and how they fit. (If the edge of the siding will hit the middle of the fixture, no problem)

So You Want to Buy a Telescope, a Wife's Guide

My husband recently bought his first telescope. I've decided to share what little I've learned (mostly from my husband) to help other women out there. (I suppose it could also apply to a man whose wife wants one.)

1. Do not buy him one. Let him pick his own, but set a budget.
   
2. If you choose to ignore #1, do not buy a telescope from Wal-mart or a department store. These have several problems 1) they are too small to see anything really interesting 2) the mounts are unsteady. This means that the scope will shake in the slightest breeze making it impossible to see anything. This is the quickest way to kill interest in a hobby. OK, maybe that's a good thing. But if he is seriously interested, he will probably return it. (My husband did buy the cheap scope, "just to see". Decent optics, horrible mount. Can't recommend it.) Plus, if he can use it, he'll just want a nicer scope.
   
3. The cheapest you can get a decent scope is around $250.
   
4. Encourage a smaller telescope. My husband got a fairly small one and it is still bulky. The easier it is to get out, the more he will use it. Also, make sure it will fit in the back of your car. Also, make sure he has somewhere to store it.
   
5. There are many different kinds of telescopes. The two main kinds are reflecting and refracting. Reflectors use mirrors and refractors use lenses. Reflectors are less expensive because it is cheaper to make nice mirrors than nice lenses.
6. Have him decide if he want to use it for terrestial viewing. That is, does he (or you) want to use it to look at the mountains in the distance? Telescopes made for astronomy show the image to you upside down (invert the image). Fine for stars, not so fine for scenic views.
   
7. Terminology: lenses are inside the telescope. What you look through is an eye piece.
8. Eye pieces are very expensive. If you buy a scope, your husband will probably want a Barlow lense next.
   
9. What the telescope sits on is called a mount. (It looks a tripod). There are two main kinds of mounts, altazimuth and equatorial. If your husband wants to take long exposure pictures, he will want an equatorial mount (so he can attach a motor). Otherwise, get a azimuth, it is more intuitive to a beginner or better yet, get a dobsonian mount. Sure you can't attach a motor to a dob and get pictures, but you can't attach a motor to a cheap equatorial either.
   
10. Telescope motors are expensive. The cheap telescope motor from Orion is not a good choice. The expensive one from Orion is not steady enough to work with a cheap equatorial mount.
    
11. Telescope.com and Telescopes.com are not the same thing. They both sell telescopes.
    
12. A good resource is http://www.cloudynights.com/
13. Another good resource is Sky and Telescope magazine. Their November issue usually features a buyer's guide.
    
14. Saturn and the moon are cool through a telescope. Most everything else in the sky looks like fuzzy blobs, unless you use a long exposure camera and/or know what you are looking at.
15. Most of the pictures you saw in your science textbook were false color/long exposure photographs. (Long == several minutes up to several hours) Most things are white to you looking through the telescope. (So, white, fuzzy blobs sometimes with hints of color.)
    
16. It is cold outside, at night, in the winter when the sky is clear. Your husband won't care. You might.
17. If you are in a city, it will be hard to see nebulas and distant stars due to light pollution. But you can see more stars with a telescope than you can with your naked eye.
    
18. There is a new telescope curse. Once your husband's scope arrives it will be cloudy for the next month. (My husband managed to beat this one with his scope, but not with his motor.)
19. You can take pictures through a scope, but it takes lots and lots of patience.
    

Just Splenda-ed, Wal-Mart's Great Value Unsweetened Apple Sauce

I have a gripe with Great Value Unsweetened Apple Sauce I bought from Wal-mart. It IS sweetened, with Splenda (which in my mind is worse than sugar). Now in its defense, it does say on the label, in large letters, "Sweetened with Splenda", but I didn't read that far. I was looking for the all natural kind, and was a little ticked that unsweetened just means unsweetened with sugar. You can sweeten it with some weird chemical and it counts as unsweetened. But, my kids ate it anyway, they don't share my qualms :) I just will be more careful next time.

(OK, yes I do have a thing against artificial sweeteners. Mostly, it's because I'm a little sensitive to them. They taste weird to me.)

Heat loss through windows

Here's the really good link for figuring out how much money your windows are costing you: http://homeenergy.org/archive/hem.dis.anl.gov/eehem/95/950708.html

The story behind this:
We had a visit from a windows salseman. Now, I'd been thinking about replacing my windows with new ones since the windows had their seals broken and looked really bad. One point the man mentioned was how great these windows were at stopping heat loss. He had a demonstration involving a heat lamp and how you could feel the heat through a regular window, but not one of the really cool windows. Then he quoted us a price around $6,000 which was a lot more than I was willing to pay.

He also said that maybe the windows could knock $45 off our heating bill, cutting it in half. Now, I admit that would be nice. But I was skeptical. We already had double payned windows. So I used the info in the link above to calculate my savings if I replaced the six windows in the house that really needed it. This is just to give me an estimate if new windows would be worth it.

Here's my set up:
6 windows, 3 that are 3x4 and 3 that are 4X4 for a total of 84 square feet
we keep our house at 68 degrees F, so it is about 30 degrees F difference between outside and in
Gas costs about 1.096 per therm (as per our house bill)
I assumed my furnace had an efficency of 80%, since that is what it is supposed to have.

The results:
Assuming we have just plain double glazed windows, we are loosing $15 a month through those 6 windows.

With new and improved double glazed windows with energy coating and argon gas the energy loss would be $10.70 a month. A savings of $4.40, or about 29%.

The verdict:
Umm... $4 a month is not anywhere close to $45 dollars a month. If we had single glazed windows, the savings would be much larger. This just agrees with what I've read elsewhere, new energy efficient windows will not pay for themselves any time soon. (Hmm... it would take 125 years for these windows to pay for themselves.) You upgrade windows because you like the way new windows look, or your old windows are ugly, or you want your house to heat up less from the afternoon sun. Now one thing this doesn't take into account is that new windows might be better caulked and fit better, so there would be less heat loss around the window, so maybe there would be more savings that way.

Extracting audio files from dvds

I wanted to get the soundtrack off a DVD my sister made (i.e. she produced it, not ripped it). Any way here's a good tutorial: http://www.glump.net/content/audio_dvd_rip/guide.htm#cutting
Basically the programs used were Smart Ripper (to rip the audio from the dvd) and HeadaAC3he to convert the file to wav (you need HeadAC3he, Libmmd DLL, Azid DLL, SSRC DLL). Then I pulled it into Nero SoundWave and chopped it up appropriately. Nero Sound wave won't handle the AC3 files Smart Ripper produces directly, I tried.

(I'm putting this here in case I ever need to do this again, I won't have to google it.)