07:57 – I finished the first lab session in the forgery group yesterday, on detecting alterations in documents, and started the lab session on analysis of inks by chromatography. I’ll finish that today and start on the final lab session in that group, on analysis of papers. Then it’ll be on to forensic biology.
I predicted recently that the Financial Crisis item would re-appear on the Hot Topics menu bar of The Telegraph, and a week or so ago it did. Things in euroland have been lurching from worse to horrible over the last couple of months. Merkozy is no more, with French voters electing Hollande to replace Sarkozy. Greece is in complete chaos after last week’s elections, unable to form a government. The new Greek bonds are now trading at 20%+ yields. Spain and Italy are again paying disastrously high yields on their bonds, and Spain is teetering on the edge of seeking a bailout. The German government refuses to make any further concessions, and is now saying openly that it’s time for Greece to leave the euro. I said a year ago that Europe could do nothing to prevent the collapse of the euro, and that any stopgap measures they implemented could only delay the collapse for a short time at huge expense. And that’s exactly what’s happened and what’s still happening. Two years ago, even one year ago, the EU authorities could have minimized the damage simply by admitting that the euro was a fatally-flawed idea and allowing the eurozone to break up naturally. Now they’ve dug themselves in so deep that the collapse, when it comes, is going to be catastrophic. And there’s no longer anything anyone can do to prevent that catastrophe. Expect to see yet another Greek default, probably in the next couple of months, that’ll set the row of dominoes falling one after the other. Things are going to get even uglier.
re MagicJack and their business practices: OK, I’ve just encountered a doozie, one which knocked down my previous regard for the company. They sent me email regarding the automatic renewal of one account and billing to my credit card, with option to cancel. Except that they sent the email at 04:00 EDT and gave one hour to cancel before the transaction went through. Pretty scummy.
Joke’s on them, though: that card was cancelled a month ago.
Check your credit card statement. I recently had a similar situation with Amex. Our card was used for fraudulent charges late last year. Amex called me on Christmas Day to tell me they thought there was a problem. I confirmed that we hadn’t made several of the charges, so they canceled the card on the spot.
I later ordered something from Amazon.com, which still had the original card number. The charge was approved even though that card had been canceled. When I called AmEx, they confirmed that they continued to honor canceled cards through the original expiration date if the charge was placed by someone with whom we had an existing business relationship. They do that because people forget to inform everyone who has their card number on file, and that can cause real hassles if a charge is refused.
Thanks for the tip, though I actually do want the MJ renewal. I was just annoyed by the way they went about it.
Consumer Reports just did a review on phone services. Ooma was rated tops of all services. Vonage was also highly rated. MJ was rated excellent for value but poor on reliability and call quality. I may switch over to Vonage when I have time to deal with it.
Replacement of lost or stolen cards is quick and simple enough. If they’re reported lost or stolen then they’re truly shut off (unlike cards that are simply cancelled or closed). So, if you purchase a lot online or over the phone and you start to get concerned about your credit card number being out there, just call and report your card “lost” every few months.
A couple of years ago I had several recurring charges on my card that I wanted to eliminate and rather than go through the hassle of researching where and how to cut them all off, I simple called the card issuer and told them I lost it it. Problem solved.
Or you can call and get a one-time use number from some outfits. Discover does this. Use it once and the number can never be used again.
I found out my aunt had a life insurance policy with her retirement from the phone company. I was concerned that the beneficiary would be her husband, who died in 1993. The money would then go to her estate and the state of TN would have a claim because of the Medicaid that was paid to the nursing home. The amount of money involved would require going through probate.
But it turns out she has no beneficiary. And the rules of the policy require the money to paid out to people in the order of spouse (dead), children (none), parents (dead), siblings (1 left), or the estate. So in this case her sister (my mother) gets all the money and I get nothing. Quite a reward for seeing to her care for 10+ years.
My mother is greedy and sucks to money like opposing magnetic poles. She also blows money without any real concern of the future. She is currently living in HUD housing with utility assistance. Although she refuses to say so in spite of her rent being only $100.00 a month for a two bedroom apartment and only $14.00 a month for ALL utilities. According to her she is paying her way and is not receiving welfare.
I did call her and tell of her bonanza. Now I have to do the paperwork, but I think I will take my time. I see no reason to rush.
The insurance company no longer issues a check. They instead put the money in a checking account and send a checkbook. Minimum amount for each check is $250.00 written on the account and there are no fees associated with the account. Seems strange to me.
Part of it may be that your mom is old. I’ve noticed a tendency for old people to not realize that prices have changed, or to be shocked by the change in prices. I’m sure there was a time when $100 would have been market based rent, and you could pay all your utility bills for $14 per month.
I’ve noticed that whenever I eat out with my mother at someplace where tipping is expected that I need to supplement the tip when she isn’t looking.
The insurance company no longer issues a check. They instead put the money in a checking account and send a checkbook.
I wonder who keeps the interest earned by said account. The insurance company or the beneficiary? That would be a quite a decent money maker for insurance companies to keep that money in house, lend it out, and pay/earn interest, and essentially function like a bank. In addition to premiums they can add what were traditionally banking streams of revenue to their books. Hmmm…
I wonder who keeps the interest earned by said account. The insurance company or the beneficiary?
The beneficiary. The money is deposited in the account and the insurance company no longer has any connection with the account. The account does pay interest and it is paid directly into the account. The amount is tiny, but most accounts are these days. It is like most checking accounts, the bank pays 0.10% but charges 12.5% to lend the money making the spread about 12.4 points. So I guess you could say the bank gets the real interest. And for all I know the bank may be a subsidiary of the insurance company, like USAA which does insurance and banking.
Part of it may be that your mom is old.
I don’t think so. I think is her ego that will not her accept the fact that she is really on welfare. When she was growing up welfare was a black mark on a person rather than a lifestyle of many today. To accept welfare meant you were the poorest of the poor, trash that was looked down upon. My mother would never accept such a labeling.
But she is 80+ and perhaps it really is because she is getting old. She is showing signs of dimentia like her sister (my aunt), her brother and her father exhitibited. It is appearing about the same age as the others which is not surprising.
And I do indeed remember electric bills of $12.00 a month and people complaining then.
My mom constantly bitched about the $150 mortgage she paid every month, and how as a kid she would be given $5 to go to the store to get a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, a lb of bacon and some milk. Can’t do that nowadays. Too many fucking security cameras!
I cannot emigrate to Australia to work anymore since I am over 49:
http://www.chron.com/default/article/No-job-Down-Under-if-you-re-over-49-3550236.php
Bummer. Not sure if the wife would have approved of this or not.
Mmmm, bacon:
http://xkcd.com/1054/
“Mmmm, bacon…”
I’ve worked for my wife since I retired from the Army in ’99 (she in ’96). It’s always hilarious when we are at some soiree where she is keynoting. They always ask “Sir, your wife is wonderful, what do you do for a living?” Me: “Dude, you’re paying my wife $15K to keynote for 45 minutes, I don’t do anything.”
I’ll recommend ooma to Bob, again. Great service.
My son and S.O. are having significant problems with Lubuntu 12.04. As you know, I upgrade hard drives regularly when bigger ones become available for the laptop (my only computer since 2001), and I had a couple 500gb drives available when they were here earlier in the week, so I suggested upgrading the OS to 64-bit while changing from their puny, under 100gb drives.
Son has a Thinkpad with Core2 Duo and his S.O. has a Compaq AMD64—both 64-bit capable. With 10.04 32-bit Lubuntu, my son was able to keep 350 or more tabs open in Chromium without a hitch. In fact, he never shut the computer down; just put it in hibernate, thus never had to close/open applications or Chromium windows. Now, when he opens about 15 windows in Chromium, without warning, it crashes.
Looks like new releases may not actually be forward advances.
Lotsa great tips today, thanx, boyz.
Wow, happy mothers day, Ray. That sucks. I’d guess that it is a mix of advancing age/dementia (we certainly saw a shit-load of the latter in my family; guys croak at 70-80 but the wimmen last for many, many years past that, only not so much in the upstairs apartment, if you catch my drift), and being old enough to remember when shit cost a helluva lot less. Damn, I’m old enuff myself to remember that. So you get the double blast of senility and confusion/rage at the high prices.
Also nice you got the short end of the stick after being the primary caregiver, etc. I will be waiting to see how that pans out with my family, as my next younger brother and his wife and kids have been in that exact role for even longer now; and my very youngest brother and his wife and kids were doing the same for her parents until they just recently checked out, within months of each other, and the last two or three years for the mother-in-law were heavy on the dementia. Meanwhile my second-youngest brother has been taking care of our sister for many years now, and for the last ten, her kid as well.
I got all I can handle up here with wassername and two grown children, one with kids of his own. Since the three most common causes of death in my family are senility, cancer and gunshot, I plan to go out in a blaze of glory.
Also nice you got the short end of the stick after being the primary caregiver
It was a gamble. When we moved her here she had the house worth $200K and some significant savings. The Dr. said she would not last a year. I stood to inherit quite a bit if that was the case. But after 6 years in assisted living paying her own way she ran out of money. I lost the gamble. Since she was out of money she had to go on Medicaid and that required a nursing home. Four years at $150.00 a day so the math. Her share was about $1500 a month from her retirement and SS the rest picked up by the state.
I was significantly concerned that the life insurance would go her estate which would require probate because of the amount. The courts would take their fees and the rest would go to the state of TN. With the beneficiary designation the money cannot go through probate which is a good thing. All she had was about $22.00 in a checking account and going through probate would have taken every bit of that.
Either way, the amount going to her sister, or to the courts and the state, I was not going to get anything. It is probably better that it goes to her sister than the state. Lest someone get their panties in a wad over that remember she paid her way for 6 years. Medicaid has 5 year look back so I am guessing they think 5 years is OK.
My mother got an inheritance when her parents died, somewhere around $50K I think. She blew that in a six months. I fully expect the $10K from the life insurance to be gone within two weeks.
You also have to remember that this was the aunt that abused me and her along with her husband basically wanted really really cheap labor on their ranch. My mother really did not want her sons because we got in her way and cramped her style. I am not real thrilled with any of my family.
I know, Ray, and remember you telling the story; that really sucks rocks. I can only imagine the misery and frustration and anger. My wife and I have wondered many times over the years why some people even bother to have kids.
My own mother is no day at the beach, either. She and her sisters were spoiled rotten by their father and he treated his sons like shit. So they all grew up expecting everything handed to them and to be taken care of, forever, by somebody. And for the past few years she’s had Pick’s Disease, which is a nice little variant of Alzheimer’s, the early onset of which killed my dad by 71, the year Mrs. OFD and I got married.
But at least us kids were wanted, and in fact, they wanted more, and were gonna keep having them, I guess, until two miscarriages. And there are five of us, all fairly healthy, no one in jail or prison, and four of us with kids of our own.
Families can really, really suck, or they can be great; I think most have their ups and downs and we all mainly just try to get through the day and survive, at least those of us who gotta work for a living and maybe live pay check to pay check while being bled white by taxes and fees and insurance premiums.
But this is all good intel, I reckon, because many of us here will be facing similar stuff at some point, either ourselves or on behalf of other family members. Mine and wassername’s are starting to drop off…
The biggest and most important piece of advice I can offer in this entire process is to have power of attorney. Register the POA in the state and county your parents live and the state and county where you live. Make sure this POA says you can do everything. Then get POA with the IRS as the IRS will NOT accept a regular POA.
Secondly is to have a beneficiary designation on each life insurance policy or other financial instrument such as CDs. Make yourself joint on all checking and savings accounts. By doing so none of that will go through probate.
Thirdly don’t be afraid to make decisions that may be unpopular. Don’t destroy your life by trying to take care of an ailing relative. Leave that care to experienced individuals. For those that chose to take care of a relative that is indeed OK and to be admired. But don’t feel it is a requirement because of pressure from other members of the family. If they don’t want to take care of a relative, don’t feel you have to do so also. Also your decision may really piss off the family member you are placing in assisted living or a nursing home. Don’t let it get to you. Sometimes you have to things for them that they will not like. Just keep their best interests in mind and make rational decisions.
When dealing with the government have patience. If you don’t like the answer or think it is not correct, challenge the government and find a different worker. I did that on getting my aunt on Medicaid. One office worker said she did not qualify so I went to another office. Turned out I was correct as the one office did not know their own rules.
Prepay the funeral. Costs are only going up. When putting someone on Medicaid prepaying the funeral is allowed to reduce the funds. My aunt had too much in her account to qualify, but prepaying the cremation brought those funds down below the Medicaid level qualification level.
I feel lucky. I had wonderful parents, both with high IQ’s (not that that guarantees a good life). They had degrees in early childhood development before my brother and I were born, and they used what they learned. The only problem was that my parents were such really good friends, that they could talk for hours discussing stuff that was important to them. My brother and I used to call ourselves ‘orphans’, because when we went on a car trip, our parents would load us up with toys and things to occupy us in the back seat, then proceed to talk between themselves and basically ignore us until we stopped somewhere.
However, all through our lives, they were there when we needed them—even into adulthood. In fact, one of the hardest things for me to take in life, was realizing that—as they moved into their 80’s—I had to take care of them, instead of them taking care of me. It was hard to accept that they no longer had the ability to take care of me—or themselves.
I learned a lot about how to be a parent from them.
My dad being a lawyer, their estate was wrapped up in a trust, which was executed like greased lightning when each of them died. I probably cannot make things go that smoothly on my own demise, but I will do what I can.
Funny, I was just today thinking about what—if anything—I felt my parents had failed at. It was not really a big deal, but my parents did force me to take certain curricula in high school that I strongly rebelled at. For instance, French was not offered in my school as early as Spanish. I wanted to take Latin until I got to the grade where French was offered. I was forced to take Spanish (my parents, having been teachers, were close friends with the school administrators, so I did not stand a chance of having it my way). The long of it is that I have needed the Latin I did not get; and I have had no need whatever for Spanish, while I have a dozen relatives in Europe who speak only French. I have been fairly close to those relatives over the years so the French would have been useful; the Spanish is irrelevant and forgotten. A couple similar instances were involved, but the bottom line is that I was very aware at a young age, of just what I needed as educational preparation for my life—and *I* was right, not my parents. Fortunately, I did not dictate anything to my own kids, related to their pre-university educational or sports choices. Unlike me, they have no regrets about their primary and secondary education.
P&G has just announced that they are moving their cosmetics headquarters and production from their longtime location in nearby Cincinnati, to Singapore.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/10/procter-beauty-idUSL1E8GA7A920120510
They divert attention well from the real reasons in their press releases, but the fact is that the US is not a competitive place to locate business anymore. Expect more of this. Some medical equipment companies are making noises that they will relocate to Europe because of—and before—the new excise tax on their equipment sales takes effect in a couple years.
Well, that would be in keeping with what this video says.
My son just came up with a good catch. P&G is in the middle of a truly massive job-slashing program.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20120508/BIZ/305080085/P-G-steps-up-job-cutting-program
Now we know that the Mitt Romney’s of the US have already shipped just about every manufacturing job possible abroad, so there is little hope for the lesser-educated to obtain good-paying work. Now, as my son points out, the big corps are eliminating jobs for the brainy and educated. He said some of his former business school classmates have been saying this is happening for quite a number of months, but this article was the first that confirmed it for him.
What a country!
They are apparently dead set, Chuck, on killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Who do they think will make stuff, sell stuff, analyze stuff, etc., etc. so that they can continue in their positions? Or maybe they feel they have all they need now and don’t have to worry about it anymore.
OTOH, there is evidence that they’re running scared, too, in light of all the preparations and paranoia associated with mass civil unrest.
Maybe they should take a good hard look at those countries in the world where there are masses of highly educated young people with no jobs who are getting more and more pissed off. And then take a second good hard look at this country where there are masses of those people, and also masses of trained veterans and former combat participants, not to mention the billion or so firearms that our host posits (and I do not doubt his estimate very much on that score now).