Duplication

My Visa has been cloned!

This is easy to do.

A lot of people think that access to their credit information is so secure. And they are so wrong.

I must say, first of all, that Visa did do a really good job of catching the thing immediately. There were several charges that had been attempted that I was informed of but all of them, including the very first one were denied and the card was frozen. I don't know how they figured it out on the very first one but they got it right away.

Credit card fraud is nothing like it used to be where someone would steal your card and try to use it right away as many times as possible before you noticed and canceled it and then in some cases they might even be able to apprehend the person right there on the spot as they tried to use it (that was a rare case but at least the idea was that the person had to use it in person somewhere and do it quickly).

It's not even like in the days where they would clone your number and try to get away with using it attached to a dummy card until the number was cancelled (although they still do that).

Nowadays almost all debit and credit activity is outsourced to processing companies.

So you swipe your card in a store and 90% of the time your credit information is not retained in the store at all but goes to a processing company and the store can't even access it.

That's right, all of your payment information goes to a third party processor that you don't know and that doesn't know you. That company gets the money from your bank and then sends it to the merchant you purchased from.

Some of these companies are in Canada but usually they are in the US or overseas.

So this gives you the illusion of security that no one in the store has access to your credit or debit information as well as your card itself (unless of course they have a photographic memory... when those people decide they're going to scam you there's nothing you can do).

However this is nothing more than an illusion of security because what actually happens is that all of your information is passed to an anonymous stranger, likely in the US. You have never met them and never will and they have never met you and never will. You are just a credit card number and a credit limit to them. Do you think they're going to feel bad about stealing your number?

So basically all of your info is in hands of a bunch of strangers in some far away office and you don't know who they are, where they are, and chances are you'll never even know the name of their organization.

It's basically a call centre. You know, the kind of place that opens in one state for a few months and then lays everyone off and moves to another state a few months later when the neighboring state lowers its tax rate. These are people with McJobs, who would be just as happy or unhappy working at any other low-paying job. They aren't friendly models in suits sitting at a desk and smiling the way Visa employees are portrayed on TV. Your transacations aren't handled by professional bank employees. They aren't even handled by a bank.

What's more if you contest a charge from a store here's what happens:

-You see your bill for $159 has been double-charged to your account.

-You go to your bank and they tell you they can't do anything, tell it to the store you made the purchase at.

-You go to the store and explain it to them and they apologize and say they'll get it fixed. And they mean it.

-They pass it to their head office because there's nothing the store can do about it. They have no record of your payment information because it's all with the subcontractor. For your security.

-The head office calls up the credit-card-processing subcontractor and the subcontractor says "It wasn't us. Our records are clear. It was you."

-The head office says "Our records our clear. It wasn't us. It was you."

-The subcontractor says "Nope. You'd better tell the customer to contact their bank."

-The head office tells the store to call the customer and tell them to call their bank.

-The people at the store roll their eyes and tell the head office you already called your bank before you came in to complain.

-The head office says "Nothing we can do. They have to follow it up with their bank. That's what the subcontractor said."

-The store has to tell you to call your bank, even though they know you already did and it won't get you anywhere. You get mad at the cashier because you have no one else to complain to. But it's not the cashier's fault nor is it in the cashier's control.

-You ask that the store give you a refund at the store level and the store refuses. They can't hand out $159, especially after they've been specifically told to tell you to call your bank. If they gave you the money they'd get fired. Afterall, all the paperwork says the store and the head office didn't do anything wrong. For all head office knows the cashier is making up this story as an excuse to take $159 and keep it but pretend they gave it to you.

-You never get your $159 back.

-The subcontractor has your $159 and there's nothing you can do about it. You don't even know the name of their company. Or most likely some employee at the subcontractor office has your $159 and made the paper trail disappear.

-You will never get your money back.

So you see that outsourcing is really just a way of spreading responsibility around so that no one can really be blamed for anything because there's no direct evidence that any one orgainzation or person was responsible for anything that goes wrong. This is true anywhere that outsourcing happens, especially in business and government.

Nowadays when you hear about these giant debit and credit frauds, they often have taken place at these subcontractors' offices. Someone who works there, or a team of people who work there, get together and steal thousands of them.

Then they wait.

They use them themselves online, or use their jobs to process them in a way that no one will see them.

Or they go on the internet and sell them or exchange them with others and then those people try to use your credit card information.

This can take months.

So your credit card has been compromised for weeks many times before the first signs of fraud appear and you wonder how it happened but the truth is you'll never know because you can't tell when it happened or even if it was recently or a long time ago, you can't tell which companies had access to your credit card information, you can't tell the names of the employees who worked for those companies and if the police or the bank know they usually won't tell you either.

So just imagine it. Every time you've used your credit card in 2010, all your information has gone through the hands of all kinds of strangers and it's sitting in databases around the world. The only people who don't have any knowledge of where it's been since you made those purchases are you and the person you handed you card to when you bought them.

Those chip cards are great at preventing a lot of types of fraud but they can't protect you from giant computer systems processing your numbers (especially if they're outside the county) tended to by low-wage employees of anonymous subcontractors. That's where your main danger lies.

And this is not limited to purchases on the internet. This is true of many mainstream stores you might enter and make a purchase at.

So the rules are:

1. Pay cash.

2. Don't have all your money in one place. Have your spending money for this week (or this week and next week or however you plan your finances) in one account and move everything else out of that account into another account where you do not use a bank card to purchase anything in stores or to take out money from ATM's that do not belong to your bank.

3. Do not have credit cards with big credit limits. Have a few cards with smaller limits on them.

4. Eye your debit and credit statements like a hawk and always keep your receipts! It only takes one time to regret not keeping them.

5. Every time you swipe your card think of the long line up of people who are going to have access to your information and ask yourself "if something happens to my info from this purchase will I be able to handle it or will I be screwed?" If the answer is "you'll be screwed", repeat steps 1-4.

Another piece of advice: if you buy things online do so with a credit card that has your lowest limit. Do not use more than one card ever on the internet. Have an internet card (you can use your internet card for other things but if you have two credit cards, make one of them your internet card and lower the limit). The card I use on the internet was the one that got cloned. The very first time my purchase got turned down on iTunes I knew exactly what had happened and I thought to myself "my card's been cloned by one of those credit card companies that processes sales on the internet. Considering how much porn I subscribe to it was only a matter of time." And the good thing is that card has a very low limit. Even if everything had gone terrible wrong, they couldn't have stolen that much.

But don't assume there are good places and bad places to use your card. It's a risk every time.

Protect your PIN.

If you really want you can put "Please ask for photo ID" on the back of your credit card instead of a signature.

But your main source of debit and credit fraud is just through the normal use of your card in the usual way at a store.

Thanks to Visa for catching the problem right away!

Happy shopping and watch out for what you do with your cards!

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Photo:
Visa by DeclanTM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Tune It Out

I'm so tired of hearing about Lost.

Yes, I've tried watching it.

And I've tried other JJ Abrams stuff and been frustrated and that doesn't help.

I watched the first two seasons on DVD and didn't make it to the end of the second.

The reason is that JJ Abrams has this horrible pattern of starting something out with a bang and getting you so interested and making it seem like it's gonna be full of all these amazing ideas and then suddenly it just stops and turns to stupidity out of the blue.

I used to be such a hardcore fan of Alias and then he just totally lost it. After all those years of all the medieval inventor and the mother's secret plan and all that crap and the season after season of saying "It's not a bomb. You're gonna be so surprised when you find out what it is" it turns out to be a fucking bomb. That's a spoiler haha. Too late. The end of Alias is "it's a bomb".

Anyway it was stupid.

And Lost was the same way... so interesting at first... and there's a bear on the island and a monster and scientists and a button and what does it all mean? Then you get into season two and you realize it means nothing and they're just blowing smoke. And that's JJ Abrams. Just keep making it weirder and weirder until you have no idea what you're doing anymore and come up with some cheap thing to explain it all away and ruin the whole thing.

First of all, the series drags enough on DVD... I can't imagine waiting to watch it week to week just to see if anything actually happens because often it doesn't.

Secondly, I know that none of these amazing mysteries are going to lead to anything.

Thirdly, the show just keeps spinning a more and more comlicated mystery without ever giving you anything as you go along. Like you're supposed to just keep getting more and more fascinated without anything along the way to answer some of your questions or derive a sense that something is happening in the show.

Last year at work I asked Hot Guy, who was a huge Lost fan if he had ever found out what the button was for (if you've seen the show you know what I'm talking about). At this point the question of the purpose of the button and whether it was even real was a two-year-old question. And he said he didn't and he was so curious about it. And it's like, don't be curious about it... realize that they have no idea where they're going with that so they have to string you along to make you not realize they have no idea what they're doing.

I used to tell people who loved Lost for six months and then gave up on it because it was so frustrating to watch Battlestar Galactica instead. The reason is Galactica has similar mysteries: who is Tricia Helfer?, what is Starbuck?, what happens in the opera house?, is there such thing as Earth?, what year will it be if they find Earth?, what's so important about Hera?, what is all the religious obsession for? and the thing is although some of those mysteries get you hooked and keep you fascinated from the first episode to the last as they develop, you do find out little bits of things about them and some mysteries are solved outright, giving you a sense of satisfaction, only to open you up to new and bigger and more fascinating mysteries once you get them figured out.

In short: it delivers those series-long mind-bending questions that you talk about at bars with your friends but it also gives you fascinating riddles that you do get solve as it continues and it never leaves you with a sense that "this may all be leading to nothing because I don't think they know what they're talking about anymore."

Anyway for its last season, Galactica had a DaVinci Code-inspired version of The Last Supper that promised if you studied it you could crack the code and know the answers to what was going to happen in season four, going into the end of the series (check it out). And now Lost has decided for their last season they're going to have a Lost version of The Last Supper that if you study it you're supposed to be able to figure out all the mysteries (check it out).

Lame.

Why can't this show just hurry up and be over?

So Irritating

I hate every Subway commercial there is.

Even though I ate there today I doubt if there is one Subway commercial you can name that I don't hate.

Addcition

OK.

So I got addicted to that show Sex Rehab. You know, it's one of those Dr Drew ones.

It had a porn star I liked in it (Penny Flame) and I was pretty curious to hear what she was talking about and then she said she was gonna quit porn, which is sad in a way if you're a fan of hers but at least this way you could feel happy for her and know why she quit the porn in the first place.

Anyway.

I got really wrapped up in the whole drama of Kari Ann Peniche, the Miss Teen USA who lost her title because she posed in Playboy and that other girl Kendra. I don't really get who she is, but whatever. It was some juicy drama.

That Kari Ann is a bitch and she got kicked out because she was also a drug addict and you can't be withdrawing from drugs while you're in the Sex Rehab program and also she was a bitch. Did I already say that?

So I never watched any of those Dr Drew things before that because they always had "celebrities" I had never heard of. The kind that are on the cover of gossip magazines and you have no idea who they are but you hear teenaged girls talking about them and you just want to block it out because it all sounds so stupid.

So I got so hooked on it I would even watch the rerun of the episode I watched the day before if it came on.

Then I thought I needed a rehab program to get over the show.

And then they made me think that I was addicted to porn and I really think that's Penny Flame's fault so I should follow her recovery process. And then they made me think I was a love addict! It's like watching Oprah and she makes you think everything she is talking about is about you and you're like "Oh no! My kids are probably drug addicts because I didn't feed them enough vegetables and now they're going to have to go to an alternative boarding school and sell meth!"

That reminds me that Dr Oz told me I'm addicted to sugar.

Anyway what was I talking about?...

So anyway now Celebrity Rehab 3 is out and Kari Ann is supposed to be coming back for drug rehab this time. I still don't buy her as a celebrity but whatever.

The really interesting part is who else is on the show.

OK, so they have Heidi Fleiss and Dennis Rodman. And I'm so curious about Dennis Rodman! I want to see how crazy he can get in a small building with a bunch of crazy people.

And you find out Heidi Fleiss lives in the desert with nothing around her house for miles except more desert and her collection of twenty parrots. Doesn't that just suck you in?

The other thing is they have MacKenzie Phillips... you know the one who's been on Oprah lately talking about her dad having sex with her for like years and getting her started on drugs and everything. So she said all that stuff because it was in Celebrity Rehab and she wanted to get out ahead of it and announce it before people saw the show so she went on Oprah and all that stuff.

It always comes back to Oprah.

OK so interesting.

I still don't really know who Joey Kovar is. He's one of those people no one's ever heard of. I don't want to ruin the end of Celebrity Rehab but I'm pretty sure it'll turn out that he's addicted to drugs because he's gay and can't admit it.

Also they have Mindy McCready. All I know about her is I have a CD of hers in one of my cases and it's not mine. I think I put my Spice Girls CD in someone's car, took out their Mindy McCready CD and put it in my case. I asked around and no one will admit to this. I think because they want to keep my Spice Girls CD. Anyhoo, she's some kind of country singer or something and she's in it.

I'm so addicted! I can't wait a week between episodes. And Kari Ann hasn't even been in it yet!

Tales of the Unexplained

Yesterday I was bored at work, re-arranging containers that have to be re-arranged every week but I don't like how anyone else does them so I did it myself.

I was thinking about all the people from Saturday Night Live and how some of them went on to bigger things and some didn't, usually depending on their ability to diversify their resumes and be seen as more than just one type of actor... you know, like Tina Fey or Jane Curtin or Chevy Chase or something.

Then I was thinking about Jan Hooks... you know the one who used to Play Sinead O'Connor? I can't find any of those clips but here's a good one (check it out).

Anyway I was thinking that she was on Designing Women and then what happened to her after that? I loved her and I'd like to see her make a big comeback somewhere.

And then today I was watching the new 30 Rock episode on demand because I missed it on Thursday and who was the guest star but Jan Hooks?

I was so excited! And she was so funny!

And also it proves I'm a psychic!

I know, I know... you don't think it's psychic to predict on Friday something that happened on Thursday even though I didn't find out about it until Saturday.

But I know I can see the future, so there.

What I Learned This Week

1. The Black Death devastated the population of the Byzantine Empire centuries before Britain. An invading Persian army picked it up from them and brought the plague back to Persia as well.

2. The system of measuring time in quantities of sixty (sixty seconds, minutes, etc) was first used in Mesopotamia.

3. Legend has it that Archimedes had an ancient "death ray" that used a system of mirrors to turn the light of the sun onto invading ships and set them on fire.

4. There is circumstantial evidence that shows the Pied Piper of Hamelin may be loosely based on a true story. But what happened to the children in the end is a source of contention.

5. 92% of the world's diamonds are carved in India. So even if your jewelry is not made from "blood diamonds" (also known as "conflict-free" diamonds) chances are it was most likely carved by a child in India in a sweat shop.

6. Rosie the Riveter was created for an advertising campaign aimed at employees of Westinghouse factories and was only intended to be used internally for a few weeks.

7. The famous line "let them eat cake" refers to an old French law that if bakeries ran out of bread they were required to sell more luxurious breads at the price of plain bread. So if there was no more bread, the theory goes the bakeries should have been selling the poor brioche or other products at the price of basic bread according to the law. The quote is falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette. It was supposedly said by Maria Theresa, the wife of Louis XIV. But even that is a rumor.

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Photo:
IMG_4873 by bionicteaching is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Dictionary

My week can only be described in two words: "sleepy" and "hungry".

New Project

I'm going to start a new band called The Masturbatory Implements.

Our first song is going to be a cover of Good Vibrations.

Exhaustion

I was supposed to do all kinds of stuff today but I just couldn't.

Usually I excercise on Tuesdays but I got half way through my program and I just couldn't handle it so I skipped a bunch of the middle.

After that it was laying on the couch.

I don't know what happened. I felt fine when I woke up.

Anyway, I spent some time watching my new Spooks DVD's, including the death of Adam Carter. Even though there's a new hot guy replacing him it's still sad. Although I didn't feel strongly enough about it to make a YouTube fan video dedicated to how sad it was when he died like this video I found:




Later in the day I got some gifts from Keith from Indonesia, which were lovely. This included a CD called downtempo i relax (don't) let's do it. It sounds like the music in Final Fantasy when you enter a magical castle or something like that. In a good way.

Then Allison and James came by for their first visit since returning from Victoria. Although they didn't have the Wyoming keychain I asked them to pick up on their drive back. I really, really want it!

I really didn't actually do anything today but that's kind of how I was feeling.

That Was Quite A Day

Everyone wants to know what the next big thing is.

People devote their whole careers to knowing what the thing is people can't wait to buy.

Conference rooms around the world sit around asking themselves the question what do people want?

What people want is to leave things to the last minute. In fact people absolutely love leaving things to the last minute.

Find a way to sell that and you'll make a fortune.

You'd also have a solid understanding of my day today.

So today is the last day of the Home Renovation Tax Credit. And my store sells home renovations.

It has been all over the news the past few days that people are going nuts on these last-minute purchases of renovations (as seen here) and as such I asked all our clients this week with outstanding quotes to not come in on the weekend because of the predictable influx of people wandering in off the street wanting to invoice projects at the last minute that they haven't thought through and have no idea that they take half an hour or more with a designer before they can be purchased, thereby creating the necessary bill dated with today's date.

"If you have your quote ready, order before the weekend because it's gonna be nuts in here on Saturday and Sunday."

What could be simpler?

By the time the first person came in this afternoon and said "I know you said not to come in today but..." I knew we were in trouble.

It was so ridiculously busy that I have no idea what happened in the store today. None at all.

People kept coming up to me and asking me how our sales were looking and I had to keep saying "I have no idea" all day long.

Fifteen minutes after the store closed a member of the staff asked me if we had achieved our sales for the day and I had to admit that even then I still didn't know.

The number of people that came in with old quotes just to have their quotes updated but not purchase them blew my mind. Have these people not picked up a newspaper or turned on the TV this weekend? If you knew you weren't going to buy during the tax credit period why would you come into a packed store on the last day of the tax period, wait forever to update your quote, take up the time of the person updating your quote when there's all kinds of people waiting and then leave with your new quote again without making a purchase when you could come in the next day, not have to wait and be in and out in no time?

And then the people just waltzing in as though the whole thing was no big deal, waving at demo installations and saying "I'd like something like this".

"Well how big is your space?"

"Something like 8x6."

"Something like 8x6? Did you measure it or is that just a guess?"

"Well it's a little bigger than this. What's this, 8x4? So I think it has to be 8x6."

"This is 5 feet. Also we need to know the actual size of the space, otherwise it won't fit right."

"OK. Well if it's 8x6 can I take this?"

"Well do you mean an 8x6 room? With four walls? Because this only does one wall so I guess if you can tell me which parts of this thing interest you the most we can expand on it."

"I just like how it looks."

OK. That's very helpful.

At one point I heard one of the supervisors mention that she wanted to kill one of the cashiers.

And for a good portion of the day I saw the Chinese guy who doesn't speak a lot of English just walking around and doing his job while holding a bag of ice on his forehead. But I couldn't get away long enough to find out why.

When he would go past me I would say "What happened to you?"

And he would just say "Is OK. OK. OK..." and keep walking.

Later he did a kind of pantomime that I think was trying to dramatize some piece of merchandise falling from the top shelf and hitting him in the eye. His mime made it look like it must have hurt.

I actually still don't know what happened to him.

And the kids.

Oh shit.

There was a couple with two daughters who had to be four and five. And one of the staff who isn't technically qualified to do these renovation sales but can muddle through them ended up having to help them out because it was so busy and I'm trying to do my sale while watching over her shoulder to make sure she's got everything alright and the whole time her peoples' two daughters are sitting on the floor screaming at each other in that ear-shattering sonic-boom way only little girls can scream.

We couldn't see them from where we were but we could see things flying around. There aren't very many things in that part of the store that are light enough for a child to pick up or play with and so I think based on where they were located and what I saw speeding through the air that they had to be hitting each other with metal rods.

While they did that and everyone in the store pretended not to be wincing from the sound, the mother kept asking the girl to design faster so she could get the kids out of the store.

So at least she knew.

Following that I had another two parents and two kids also about four and five, who were much quieter. The parents sat on my right and the kids sat on my left and I mostly had my back to the kids.

Every so often over my shoulder I heard the girl say "more staples".

I worked in a toy store for three years. I should have known this was my cue to intervene.

I definitely should have turned to see what they were doing when I heard her say "No more staples."

I thought whatever trouble they were making was passed when the boy asked "Mommy, how much does masking tape cost?" and she took both kids over to the dollar store.

Anyway after half an hour or so I went to staple their parents' quote and found that the stapler was empty and that all of the staples that had been in it were expended... stapled and bent but not stapled into anything... and lying all over the left side of the desk like a pile of squished flies.

When the mom came back from the dollar store with the kids and their masking tape I looked at the boy, raised my eyebrow, pointed at the pile of wasted staples and said "Did you want to take those with you?"

I think I'd make a good father.


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Photo:
Century 21 by Chor Ip is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

What I Learned This Week

1. A first class ticket on the Titanic would have cost anywhere from $40 000 to $80 000 in modern currency.

2. Typhoid Mary was a highly sought-after Irish cook who was popular with the wealthy in New York City.

3. The fist expedition to explore the Australian outback was done by amateurs. It ended in most of their deaths and much of the actual exploration ended up being done by the search parties that followed them to try and rescue them or recover their bodies.

4. The island that Haiti and The Dominican Republic are on is called Hispaniola.

5. The political cartoonist that established the elephant and the donkey as the symbols of the American political parties also created the character of Uncle Sam.


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Photo:
IMG_4873 by bionicteaching is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Ouch

This morning while running for the bus I slipped on black ice and went flying.

As I was in a hurry I didn't have my gloves on yet and I slid and gashed my hand open like crazy.

This was really awkward because the bus was at the end of the street but coming toward me so I know the driver witnessed this and then watched as I picked myself up and continued running in his direction.

Fortunately in my bag I had red gloves, in the form of my Vancouver Olympic mittens, which are red, so when I put them on to cover the gaping hole in my hand the blood didn't stain them.

I currently have a hole in my hand about the size of a dime.

On The Grid Much?

I don't know what world people think we live in sometimes.

OK, when you go to a store to return something, you're often asked to fill out a form with your name, phone number, sometimes your address and your signature.

This is for security. It's to be able to check up on the company's employees... if they think somebody is stealing they may go through returns that they have processed and see if they actually went to legitimate people.

Sometimes companies take your information and send you harassing advertisements or sell it to other who do.

But it's the law in Canada that if someone asks you for your information and you ask them what it's for they have to tell you and it has to be the truth.

So if you come in to my store and want to return something and you get asked to fill out the form you can say "What will this information be used for?" and the cashier will tell you it's for security only.

You don't have to, as so many people love to do, say "I'm not filling this out. I don't have to tell you anything" so that I have to come over and tell you that it's for security only, not that you asked, and that if you don't fill out the form the store is not authorized to give you a return and then you try to tell me something about what you call "retail law" and I look at you and give you a condescending frown and a raised eyebrow like you give to a 4-year-old that says "why don't you call a lawyer and say you want to file a suit under 'retail law' and see if they let you finish the sentence before hanging up on you or laughing?"

Anyway...

Today someone came in to return something and I was too busy to pay attention to what she was doing while the cashier was doing the return. So I put my password in the cashier's machine and returned to what I was doing.

I discovered that the cashier had accepted the return with just the lady's first name and her last initial and nothing else. She can get in big trouble for this and so can I.

A lot of our staff are immigrants and kind of sketchy on their English and get very nervous if people get pushy with them. People take advantage of that. That's very, very mean if you pause to think about it for a moment.

Anyway stuff like that makes us angry because the policy has nothing to do with us and yet often people choose to be rude to us about it.

The really funny part was she forgot two things that she purchased and we would have been able to phone her and tell her if she had left her full name and phone number.

The other cashier put her two forgotten items under the counter where we hold on to things for customers in case she came back for them, at which point we would normally write the person's name on it and a message about what the items were doing there but she didn't leave her full name so in an exaggerated and snarky tone I said "Put 'forgotten by (her first name and last initial)... actually forget that. Put 'forgotten by some bitch'".

Anyway when that cash was being closed I saw a credit card slip, which I instantly recognized as being this customer's.

So it seems she refused to give any of her personal information and then she immediately hands over her credit card.

How dumb can you be?

She won't give her full name and then she hands over a card with her full name printed on it to be swiped into a machine that generates a receipt with her full name printed on it just in case we didn't catch it on the card.

So this cashier and I were sitting across from each other at the desk and I said "Oh look, there's that lady's credit card slip with her full name on it." I said her full name out loud for fun.

Then I turned around, loaded up the telephone directory online, typed her name into it and got her telephone number and address.

And we laughed about how stupid the whole episode was.

For extra fun I mentioned that we should use the address, go to Google Street View and look at a picture of her house just to prove how stupid she was.

Then I had another idea. "Let's take this phone number, call her at home and tell her to come back to the store because she forgot one of her purchases and let her wonder how we got her phone number."

But that would be rude.

Sometimes the stupidity of people just floors me.

Wondering About It

Down the street from me there's an enormous house I often pass on my way to and from work.

It has a huge set of bay windows in the front, looking out of what's obviously the living room on the first floor and the master bedroom on the second floor.

The weird thing is they open the blinds of the master bedroom at night and turn on the lights, you know so you can really see with shocking detail what's inside... and the giant master bedroom is empty, I mean totally empty except for track lighting going down the middle of the room but the lights themselves hang down so low you can't see them because they go all the way to underneath the window, like they're lighting something on the floor.

It's not a grow op. It's not the right kind of lights... they're the kind you see in a store in a mall. And also there's not enough of them... it's just one strip down the centre of the room. Also I don't think grow ops leave their blinds open and the lights on at night so everyone can see what they're doing. Those places are common in this little suburb but in townhouses usually, not big, oversized houses that are essentially mini mansions.

I think they're lighting up something on the floor. It sounds silly but I like to think about what it might be.

Art?

Maybe they have a business selling flooring and they chose the largest room in the house to show all the different styles installed?

What do you think?

What A Mess

OK, so I'm actually not doing anything.

It's not like I'm too busy to blog because of all of my exciting activities.

Basically I need to move and I need to move soon.

I have this thinly veiled level of calm masking what I really want to do, which is to scream and throw things all the time.

This is no one's fault it's just that I am at the point where I really, really have to get on the move. And yet I'm not quite financially at the point of being able to do it.

I mean I can do it but it won't be simple.

I am considering taking three days off and going to Toronto again.

I know, I just said I don't have any money.

But the reason is I need to get out my head for a bit, something like before.

There is no question for me now that I can not make any decisions until I have my own space. I can't make a plan, can't meditate on what's inside me, get a sense of the direction I want to take until I have a space that's mine and quiet whenever I want it.

So priority one is to move.

But I'm so frustrated all the time I'm not doing very much to make it happen. I succumb easily to emotional forms of stress.

I think if I spend the money and go to Toronto, even though the financial scene will be worse I will be more likely to come back with the drive to actually do something about making a move finally.

I just have to see if it makes sense financially to do so.