08:38 – Another blast of cold weather has arrived in Winston-Salem. Our high today is to be around 50F (10C), but then for the next several days highs are to be around freezing. Lows are to be mid-teens to low-20’s F (-10 to -5C), falling to the single digits F (~ -14C) later in the week.
I’m doing laundry this morning, as well as repacking our vehicle emergency kits. Barbara is to return to work Monday, and the forecast for Monday and Tuesday includes frozen precipitation. We live in the lee of the mountains, so as usual no one will know for sure what type or how much until it actually arrives. We could get nothing at all, or we could get a winter storm severe enough to shut things down. Barbara will drive the Trooper, but even so I don’t want her risking a fall walking from the parking deck to her office and back if it’s icy.
Looks like you folks in the Northeast are going to get a good chance to check your level of preparedness:
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-new-storm-threatens-blizzard-conditions-in-new-england-2015-2
This one for Barbara-
http://www.gocomics.com/drabble/2015/02/14/
“Looks like you folks in the Northeast…”
The folks on the coast. We won’t get much of anything up this way. Just more single digit days and subzero nights here. The snowpack already on the ground will stay there with incremental additions well into April and into May in the woods and hills. People who croak up here now don’t get buried right away, incidentally. They’re put in storage until the ground thaws, LOL.
Mrs. OFD is back from Minnesota, not much change in the weather, haha.
Ahhhh. The Wife made breakfast this morning:
Bacon and eggs
Kielbasa with peppers, onions and garlic
Biscuits and country gravy
Hashbrowns
Tortillas
Life is Good.
Yo, MrAtoz, dat’s a dam good breakfast right there!
Tell MrsAtoz I likes my bacon crisp, my eggs either sunny-side-up or scrambled and three or four of them, and the rest is good, though I also like grits, thanks to my sentences served in the great Lone Star State long ago.
Mrs. OFD and I had a rare lunch out today at the Shanty-On-The-Shore, lakeside Burlington, VT. She had scallops and shrimp in a Mornay sauce, and I had broiled haddock in said Mornay sauce, both with yellow rice on the side and warm rolls and cole slaw. She had a nice local ale and I just had my boring old ginger ale, as we watched the local denizens below take their mutts out onto the ice beyond the docks to poop and pee.
A snow whiteout on the interstate on my way down there this morning, with patches of black ice and dumbass outta-staters skidding all over and into the median, etc., with police cars and fire trucks. They’ll even SEE the disabled motor vehicles off the road and will that cause them to slow down, even a little? Nope. Connecticut drivers are the worst up here; and sure as hell, having seen one pass me like I was standing still; I saw it later down in the median about to get towed. Les Quebecois take a close second place for speeding and reckless, followed distantly, I must say, by Massholes.
And of course we have our own cretins; one such cut across two lanes in front of me to exit into a store parking lot, on black ice and through a foot of slush. Nice move, bozo!
Luckily I have calmed down considerably and my new VA-sponsored “mindfulness” tricks and anger-reduction stuff keep me from blowing rounds out the window at these sons of bitches.
Finished the second season of “Peaky Blinders” last night on Netflix and I sure hope they continue.
Had a weird situation today. Got a couple of major items fixed on my 2005 Expedition with 151 K miles so I can drive it for another year or two or three. The bill was $1,877. I wrote the service man at the Ford house a check which he ran through his little machine. The machine did not accept my check but it did not deny my check. Instead, it said call my bank. I’ve got $8,000 in this checking account!
So I try to figure out who to call at Wells Fargo. Do not have a clue. Call a 1-800 number that comes up on my phone. That gets me to the currency purchase desk and they are only open Mon-Fri 8 to 5. Young man says do I have a debit card? My reply, “No way, you have infinite liability on those things”. He gives me a vacant stare. I get torqued and whip out my plastic. That went through without a hitch.
Are checks becoming untrustworthy?
Am I becoming an angry old geezer?
“FDIC Admits Wrongdoing in “Operation Choke Point” (UPDATED)”
http://www.gunsandammo.com/politics/fdic-admits-wrongdoing-operation-choke-point/
I’m betting that Obola will not sign the new law nor will he enforce it.
“Are checks becoming untrustworthy?”
Yes. You could be charged with “uttering.”
“Am I becoming an angry old geezer?”
Yes. Welcome to the club, homes.
“I’m betting that Obola will not sign the new law nor will he enforce it.”
You seem to be laboring mightily under the delusion that we still live in a nation of laws. I have the sad duty of informing you otherwise, sir.
We are informed up here, however, that our temp tomorrow night will hit 13 below, and with the winds expected, 35-40 below for the chill factuh. I will be hauling in more firewood accordingly.
Lynn your check didn’t go through to prevent fraud. The WF 24 hour service line could have probably cleared it once they knew it was you writing the check. Kind of like credit cards being denied when it doesn’t fit your usual patterns. Call and they release it after they confirm it’s legit. (Yes checks at merchants are passe. I hate being behind old people writing checks, especially the ones that don’t even start until they are totaled up).
Lynn your check didn’t go through to prevent fraud.
I figured as much. I just like using checks for large amounts. At least that is a large amount for me.
The big problem was that I had no idea how to reach the “WF 24 hour service line”. No number appeared on the device and no number popped up on my droid.
I hate being behind old people writing checks
Me too. Including yours truly, I seem to get confused easily nowadays while writing checks. In fact, the vast majority of people I see are now using plastic (real and EBT) and then cash. I rarely see people using checks.
I have a relative working for Pulse with a billion and half transactions per day. I cannot even fathom that howling maelstrom.
“Bank Hackers Steal Millions via Malware”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/bank-hackers-steal-millions-via-malware.html
Why are banks on the internet?
We hit 80 F today here in the Land of Sugar. The air conditioners are spinning like mad. We are suppose to be only 74 F tomorrow. And then a precipitous drop to 67 F on Monday. And 51 F on Tuesday.
I got my heater fixed on my Expy, just in time! Actually, I am driving to Norman, OK next week with a potential snow storm on the way. I really would like to have heat in my truck if needful.
“…I hate being behind old people writing checks, especially the ones that don’t even start until they are totaled up).”
In my experience, it ain’t always old peeps; and it really sucks at the supermarket when they do that. Akin to women fumbling around in their Chinese puzzle-box purses for whatever card and the ones who suddenly whip out a hundred coupons for the cashier to meticulously tote up, one by one.
“… I really would like to have heat in my truck if needful.”
We turn on the heat in our vehicles here if it gets below freezing, maybe. And no one we know uses A-C.
We turn on the heat in our vehicles here if it gets below freezing, maybe. And no one we know uses A-C.
Come on down here to the deep South and I will introduce you to A-C. Houston was built on a swamp and the heat and humidity rein true to form 8 to 10 months out of the year. Especially now with Summer coming on.
The machine did not accept my check but it did not deny my check. Instead, it said call my bank.
The check was not denied by the bank but by the check processing service used by the dealer. Somewhere in the fraud detection system what you were doing was considered abnormal activity. Perhaps you had not written such a large check on that account, perhaps the moon was not aligned properly with Venus, who knows as the parameters used are kept very secret. It also possible that the check processing service, which probably uses the EBT system to clear transactions, got a code from your bank that was not understood.
Checks are very risky. I can send you a check for $1.00, you deposit the check, and once I have the image of that check I can own your checking account. It would be trivial to print checks with all your account information, some fraudulent information the name area, and wipe your checking into the negative. You then have to prove you did not do the check. And if you deposited my $1.00 check by signing with your signature, your signature would be appearing on the fraudulent check. That makes any fraud claims even tougher.
EBT cards do not offer much protection as your account is also at risk. Best bet is to use a credit card which reduces your fraud risk to nothing in most cases. Then just pay the credit card by transferring funds from your checking account. I may do 30 to 40 credit card transactions a month and 10 to 15 transfers a month to cover the credit card charges.
I have a relative working for Pulse with a billion and half transactions per day. I cannot even fathom that howling maelstrom.
I wrote the code used by the bank holding company where I worked that owned 23 banks that was used to interface our network into the Pulse network. That code was subsequently sold to three other bank holding companies. I was fairly well versed in Pulse and it’s operations.
The code I wrote would send a handshake transaction once every 15 seconds to the Pulse network. My system was one of the few that would do that regular handshake. Our system operators would get a message if Pulse did not respond in 5 seconds. It was interesting that many times we would know that Pulse was down before Pulse knew they were down.
Since we got $0.50 for each foreign (not on-us) transaction attempted at our machines my code would also store all these denied transactions. When the Pulse network came back up all these transactions were sent to Pulse with the denied code. Thus the owner bank got charged $0.75 and Pulse paid us $0.50. We did have to throttle the transactions and only send a few every minute as the first few times we just blasted all of them. This had the nasty result of generally crashing the Pulse system thus we had to change to the throttling.
The code worked really well in controlling multiple ATM’s, tracking transactions, timing for responses, verifying network operation, store and forward, transaction logging, handling on-us and non-us, transactions that originated from Pulse and timing the Pulse response.
There was also code to detect fraud. The largest portion was looking for transactions from the same card used at different ATM’s within a short time frame. The further the geographical separation (basically ATM location information) required longer times. We limited on-us cards to $300 a day, non-us transactions we did not limit unless the code detected fraud which we would send a denied attempted transaction to Pulse. Yes, we still got our $0.50 for attempted fraud transactions.
Some fairly complicated code and I am sure the fraud detection code has gotten much better than my feeble attempts.
Back 30 years ago the Pulse network was fairly sophisticated for the time and I am sure it is much more so now. My code is long gone and more intelligent code is in it’s place at those banks that still exist.
OFD wrote:
“Tell MrsAtoz I likes my bacon crisp…”
I’ll bet you like Coors and have a commie flag in your garage too.
“Somewhere in the fraud detection system what you were doing was considered abnormal activity. Perhaps you had not written such a large check on that account, perhaps the moon was not aligned properly with Venus, who knows as the parameters used are kept very secret.”
I think we should just charge him with “uttering.”
“I’ll bet you like Coors and have a commie flag in your garage too.”
Oh, that’s right, you English and colonials like your bacon right off the pig, no cooking involved; I saw a vid a while back of Ozzie cooking his own breakfast and it was grotesque, even allowing for him. He waved the bacon over the skillet and it was done, I guess, but then cooked the eggs to a well-done crisp. Yuck!
Coors is about 99% “Rocky Mountain Spring Wottuh” and thus, back in the day, OFD could have drunk a tanker truck full of it and not caught a buzz. Only flags we fly here are the original Betsy Ross model and the Green Mountain Boys flag. I might break down and fly the regular Murkan one on Memorial Day and Independence Day, though.
I like my bacon “flexible” and my eggs poached (but scrambled is okay).
Why are banks on the internet?
To make it easy for customers. The thing I don’t understand is why the banks in the US don’t go to 2 factor authorization for login. You can get cheap keyring authenticators for a couple of bucks each. There are similar systems for sending a text to a cellphone with the code, or to generate the code on the phone. The online games we play use them, why not my bank.
My guess is that the fraud is cheaper than the cost of doing the authentication.
“The thing I don’t understand is why the banks in the US don’t go to 2 factor authorization for login.”
Huh? You mean they not only don’t even offer it? Here, you have no choice – it’s required. You can usually choose between an SMS to your phone or a printed list of one-time codes, but no bank will let you login without two-factor authentication. But then, this is the US banking system, where anyone who has the numbers off the bottom of your check can empty your bank account.
If someone steals your money, how hard it is to get it back from the bank?
I’ll bet you like Coors and have a commie flag in your garage too.
http://www.myths.com/pub/lyrics/Charlie-Daniels-Band_.html#S1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVL1Zs6WTw
Here’s a web site that lists banks that offer two factor authentication. I use USAA for all my insurance and already have setup 2-factor (I don’t bank with them). Wells Fargo is my main bank and I’ve already talked to them about offering 2-factor. More and more of my non-bank online sites offer it, like Apple. What’s wrong with US banks?
I understand why the banks have web servers. I do not understand why their internal systems are on the internet. Just about anything on the nets is dangerous, very dangerous. After all, this is the year of the hack:
http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/regulatory-compliance/pci/the-year-of-the-hack/
Banks and our energy utilities apparently have a lot of, if not all, of their chit on the net, and banks just got a failing grade for being wide open here and either inadequate or crappy security on their servers. One might assume that the people running these organizations KNOW this vulnerability yet have done little or nothing about it. Why, one wonders? Cui bono, one wonders? Is it just cost-cutting? Ignorance? WTF???
Lyn wrote:
“I’ll bet you like Coors and have a commie flag in your garage too.
http://www.myths.com/pub/lyrics/Charlie-Daniels-Band_.html#S1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVL1Zs6WTw”
Yeah, I know. I’ve loved that song since I first heard it in 1973. Good fit for OFD… 🙂
Banks and our energy utilities apparently have a lot of, if not all, of their chit on the net
Yes, and the refineries and utilities are removing it as fast as they can. My customers are being notified that they will not have internet access inside the plants due to Stuxnet. The refineries are even talking about putting up cell phone blockers. The security issues are just too great.
I hope it ain’t a day late and a dollar short, ’cause dat hoss done already left da bahn, son. StuxNet has some nifty new variants out in the wild, beyond Murkan and Israeli state control, I’ve read.
But getting off the net should be good, assuming the physical access end of things is squared away.
“I’ve loved that song since I first heard it in 1973. Good fit for OFD… ”
I bet I haven’t heard that song SINCE 1973 and had forgotten all about it. It’s a typical novelty tune of the era, like all the ones about CB radios and truckers. I always liked his other song about Saigon; I should burn a CD with that one and some others, like Creedence’s “Fortunate Son,” and Steve Earle’s “Coppherhead Road”….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk
Heh. One of the places Barbara and I are considering relocating to is Jefferson/West Jefferson, NC, which is 20 miles or so east of Copperhead Road.
Arrrghhh! I missed that typo of mine; this Winblows machine is slowing down (gee, only the max ofr 16GB RAM)) and vids are stuttering with static-y sounds at random. A reboot once a week used to fix this, now it’s every other day.
How fah along are U guys on the relocation path now?
Barbara is willing, which was 90% of the issue. We’re going to start driving around looking at places in the next couple of months. If we find somewhere suitable, we’ll probably pay cash for it and move gradually, selling the house once we’re fully moved.
Outstanding, Dr. Bob!
Maybe in the second prospective volume on prepping, a journal-like account of the process for others to study who are facing the same scenario.
Better to wait a longer than a shorter time. Make sure there’s no chance whatsoever of a late winter storm. Why, if you start driving too early, you might get a blast of polar air and see the temperatures drop below 50!