The Best Time of My Life....

'Tis the witching hour at the moment. I rarely stay up late enough to properly enjoy the witching hour, but it's a time of night I always find soothing for some reason. Streets are quiet and deserted. Shadows abound, however, and there's always something in the shadows. Mice, cats.... something....

I first remember learning the term witching hour while reading The BFG (Big Friendly Giant, for those of you not in the know) by Roald Dahl in the fifth grade, perhaps my favorite book in my entire elementary school career.

The witching hour is now upon me, as I continue tweaking a few ribbon colors on Atlas Quest. I had the television on, and at this late hour, all the channels tend to play commercials. Hour long, paid advertisements. It's shocking to me that anyone would actually watch such long commercials, though I have watched parts on occasion to laugh at the ludicrous claims they make. Using their "proven" techniques, I could become rich in real estate, the stock market, or by starting my own business. With their patented veggie cutter, I'll be a five-star chef in mere minutes. They can cure baldness, help you look like a supermodel, and give me six-pack abs in just three minutes per day.

It's really kind of funny to me, and I'm astounded that anyone would ever believe such hyped up claims. Do these people not realize it's just a commercial with hyped up claims?

I was pleasantly surprised to learn tonight, the special ad was a collection of music from the 70s and 80s. I remember adjectives such as "timeless" and "amazing" being thrown around with abandoned. The thing is, I generally like music from the 70s and 80s, and of course, they played clips from all sorts of them. I was actually enjoying the commercial!

My one complaint, though, was that they kept talking too much and not playing enough music. Alas, I guess we can't have everything. *shrug*

Which brings me to.... what is the best time of your life? Because one of their so-called testimonials. I know it's fake. Competely and totally faked. You know how I know this? Because the woman said the music brings her back to the best time of her life.... in high school! Raise of hands here--anyone think that high school was really the best time of their life?

I can't say I had a bad high school career. It was probably typical for the most part. I went to school, and.... heck, I don't even remember what I did for fun back then. Probably played Tetris too much.

High school has too many constraints to be considered the best time of one's life. Curfews, lack of money, lack of transportation..... For a month or two, I deliberately avoided one particular person in fear they might try to beat me up if they ever got me alone. (I will confess, however, that I brought this situation on myself when I deliberately whacked him in the shin while playing field hockey in PE--a fate he justly deserved. But I was careful to avoid him outside of class after that!)

All-in-all, though, high school was probably the worst time of my life. Isn't that kind of normal, though? To doubt what you'll do in the future, worry about college, peer pressures. To be stuck without money or transportation. Bleh.

No, it wasn't until college when I started to have a heck of a lot more fun. That was when I first started traveling. I rafted rivers, rock climbed up steep cliffs, backpacked up tall mountains, and saw a number of very cute naked girls relaxing in hot springs. Let me tell you--that never happened in high school! (Not my high school, at least!)

I can't really say that college was the best time of my life, though. I was still learning who I was. Turns out, I didn't really get into rock climbing. Hanging on the side of a cliff all afternoon got kind of boring after the initial thrill wore off. Backpacking suited my speed more, however, allowing me to cover more ground and see more places. Rafting and canoeing were also wonderfully fun, but I was too cheap to actually buy my own gear so was always dependent on others for those particular adventures. I don't get to hot springs much anymore, but I did do a bit of solo skinny dipping while thru-hiking the Florida Trail. =)

No, the best time of my life started when I was laid off from my job at Intel. I had saved tens of thousands of dollars and suddenly found myself with enormous quantities of time. All my life I'd either had school, work, or both. For the first time in my life, I found myself with neither--AND with money to spend. That was when I started the best time of my life, traveling through Central America and thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail being highlights.

Of course, most people probably don't get that particular luxury, so I could image that for a lot of people, college could be the best time of their life. High school, though? I just don't believe that. Even when I worked at Intel, I still considered that time better than my time in high school.

Stupid fake testimonials..... Was it really so hard to get some legitimate testimonials?

Tired of business as usual?

There was just a commercial on television for Dino Rossi, the Republican running for governor in the fine state of Washington. And in it, he says that he'll bring "change" to the government.

Does anyone really believe this? I can't count the number of times I've heard politicians promise to bring change, and it's probably the lamest empty promise a candidate can say. First, they don't say what kind of changes they're promising. Secondly, they aren't dictators so the changes they can implement are limited.

And while I'm at it, I hate those commercials when politicians say they're for education, for health care, for small business, for [fill in the blank]. Really? Is that the best they can do to distinguish themselves from their opponents? And does anyone really believe that such opponents would actually be against such things?

It would be so wonderful if politicians actually explained what they would try to change, and perhaps why they feel such changes are important. I just want to vote against them whenever I see their commercials that are full of empty promises.

But the part that annoys me the most--I have to assume that there actually are a large number of people who DO believe all these empty promises. After all, why would they spend millions of dollars on them if they didn't work?

In this case, I'm complaining about Rossi's ads, but Christine Gregiore, the incumbent governor hasn't done any better.

Her ads tend to focus on how well Washington state is doing, despite all the troubles in the rest of the country, seeming to imply that she's single-handedly for everything that has gone right in the last four years. Yeah, sure. And there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell....

I'd rather know what sorts of changes she'd like to focus her efforts on if she were to be reelected. Now that's the type of information one can make a quality decision with.

I Hate Oil

Anyone that reads this blog knows I don't worry too much about oil prices--that's not the part I hate. My hate is directed to the obsession people have about it. I have the 11:00 news on right now, and they reported that gas prices went down one cent per gallon overnight in the Seattle area.

Really? Is that news? I have a hard time believing that there's a large number of people who were breathlessly waiting to find out how much gas prices dropped over the course of a single night. Even when oil isn't news, it still makes the news. Enough is enough.

I vote that the news media should not be allowed to report the change in oil prices more than once per week. Perhaps Monday at high noon, because everyone hates Monday already, so reporting the gas prices shouldn't make the day any worse. =)

In other news..... I've been losing a boatload of money in the stock market lately, but I can't help but be thrilled at how low some of those stock prices have gone. Buy! Buy! Buy! I can't remember a time when I've felt that stocks as a whole have been trading at such desirable levels, and I'm sending my government rebate check to my IRA! Woo-who! Now I just need to decide.... which stock to buy? So many choices.... So little money to buy with. *sigh*

It doesn't get any worse than this!

I was reading an article today, and it contained the following quote: "This nation's economy is inextricably linked to the viability of its air transportation system. If the airlines continue to spiral downward, so will the economy."

Does anyone really believe that? Airlines alone have the power to bring down the economy? I don't think so. Oh, yes, jobs will be lost, consumers will have to pay more for tickets and get less in return, and much of the economy is tied to airplanes, but if a few of the largest airlines went belly-up, it's not the end of the world. Other airlines will step in to fill in the gaps, and the industry will get back on its feet again.

Some of the air traffic will move to more cost-efficient means of transportation--trains, boats, or trucks. Passengers will be more likely to drive to their destinations, or perhaps go by bus or train.

The death of an airline or two may cause some hardships, but it's hardly going to topple the economy. Now the housing problems and credit crunch..... Those are serious issues that can severely hurt the economy.

Raise the Gas Tax!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm a big proponent of increasing the tax on gas, which probably puts me in a very small minority, but hear me out. I just heard a political commercial on the radio slamming the gas tax, but as with most political commercials, it plays on people's fears and ignorance of basic economics. I so very much wish our schools would better educate our youth on how economics really works.

First, consider this: taxpayers are paying to subsidize alternative forms of energy. You're paying to buy other people's bio-fuels. You're paying so others can use solar energy, or wind energy, and all sorts of ideas. Do you know why? It's because that's the only way they can compete against "cheap oil."

Now if we increased the tax on oil, prices would go up, and we'd no longer have to subsidize alternative energy sources. Sure, you might have to pay a bit more on oil, but at least you could stop paying subsidizes for other people's benefit.

But you know, I'm not really convinced it would drive prices up all that much. Oil is a commodity, and the issues of supply and demand are very much alive. If you suddenly add a dollar per gallon tax, it'll likely hurt in the short term, but in the long term, there's still a bunch of oil that oil companies want to sell--that they need to sell--so how do they do that? By lowering the prices they sell the oil for in the first place until--all else being equal--prices fall back down to where they would have gone without the tax.

There's been talk about taxing oil company's "windfall profits," but isn't that just a backward way of letting the oil companies collect the tax for the federal government anyhow? Instead of just saying, "Hey, let's let the feds tax us one buck per gallon," we'd rather say, "Hey, let's have the oil companies charge us an extra buck per gallon, then make the oil companies give the money to the feds."

Cut out the middle man--just tax the consumer directly instead of these indirect taxes that frankly stink of anti-capitalism. You start taking money from oil companies, legally acquired, just because it's the popular thing to do, they may not be inclined to open up more oil fields or pump the fields they have very hard, then where will that leave you?

Though honestly, I don't think it's the oil companies necessarily that are responsible for the surprising surge in oil prices recently. A lot of the recent rise, I believe, is part of a commodities bubble. Everyone's running around saying "this time, it's different." Yeah, I heard that during the dot com boom and the real estate boom as well. There's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.... Now there are some very good reasons why commodity prices have been rising, and in the long run, I do believe prices are going to rise and continue to rise, but the recent spike in oil prices I do not think is sustainable. I think a lot of speculators are driving up prices, and a lot of them will end up losing a lot of money when prices go down again.

And the folks who I think are making the most profit from high oil prices are the people who actually own the physical commodities at their source--not the oil companies that just drill the oil, not the companies that refine the oil, and not the retailers who sell you the oil. It's the folks who own the land the oil comes from, such as our good buddies in the Middle East.

Frankly, I'd rather a have a one dollar tax by our federal government than sending the buck to the mid-east and who knows what happens with it then. If oil prices are going to be artificially high, I'd prefer the money going to the feds than to oil companies or mid-east terrorists, but that's just me. *shrug*

If I were a benevolent dictator, I'd start increasing gas taxes immediately. I probably wouldn't bump it up to a dollar per gallon overnight--that would cause unnecessary pain, but a one-cent increase every month for 100 months would get the same results in a more gradual, easier-to-deal with manner. High gas prices would help increase research into more efficient vehicles and alternative fuels without having to subsidize them, reduce our reliance on foreign oil, take money out of the hands of oil companies and mid-east dictators, and perhaps help to better fund roads, education, health care, and more.

If you love America, you should support a gas tax! =)

I'd even go so far as require minimum gas prices such as $3/gallon, that will increase over time. No matter how low the price of oil goes, require people to pay at least a certain amount for gas to insure those alternative sources of fuel and improved fuel-efficient cars continue being researched and developed. For a lot of companies researching how to make fuel-efficient vehicles or developing alternative sources of energy, they could get hosed if prices fall too much or too quickly, and minimum price supports can help insure they'll still be in business for years to come.

And.... late breaking news.... French fries are NOT, I repeat, are NOT made in France. *shaking head* Trust no one.

Stupid Tech Stuff

I haven't ranted or raved on this blog so far this year, and I'll tell you why--most of the year, I've been too far removed from the Internet to spent the scarce time I had complaining about it. =)

I pondered a lot of stupid things in this world on my hike. When I first heard about Microsoft bidding for Yahoo, and Yahoo's shares actually rising above the price Microsoft offered, I thought Yahoo shareholders were absolutely stupid. If I owned Yahoo shares, I'd have sold in a heartbeat. Oh, sure, maybe they could extract a couple extra bucks per share out of Microsoft, but it was a risky bet with limited upside and a long way for that stock to fall if the merger didn't happen. IDIOTS! I'm not really convinced Yahoo was worth as much as they offered, but maybe. I'm generally leery about big mergers since more often than not, they don't tend to work out well.

But why Yahoo deluded themselves into holding out for a better offer? Why would Microsoft bid against itself? It's not like other companies were tripping over themselves to spend more than $40 billion bucks for the company. And even if the merger never happened, I thought it was still a brilliant opportunity to throw the folks running Yahoo into chaos. Shareholder revolts, possibility leading to the company's top executives being shown to the door. Spending their efforts fighting off shareholders and Microsoft rather than developing a better business. Perhaps make Yahoo employees feel a bit insecure in their jobs and jump ship.

No matter what, I felt Microsoft would probably come out ahead. And I spent hours wondering what was happening with that proposal, since most of the time I didn't have access to up-to-date information. It was a fascinating story to me (not to mention that I do own shares in Microsoft, so there is some of my own money on the line as well!)

Those poor idiots that actually bought shares above the price Microsoft was asking--IDIOTS! If I weren't hiking, I'd probably have been inclined to short the stock. The best Yahoo could hope for was a merger, and even then anyone buying at those prices was going to come out a loser.

And what about all those people at Bear Stearns who put all their retirement savings into their company stock? Did they learn NOTHING from Enron? It's bad enough to lose your job, which will happen to a great deal of folks at Bear Stearns if it hasn't already, but to lose your entire retirement savings as well? When I worked at Intel, I did have the option to put my 401(k) into an Intel stock fund, but I wouldn't touch that one with a ten foot pole. Actually, I might have put some of my savings into it if I thought the stock was undervalued, but I felt it was trading at wildly insane prices and was a terrible investment, but I know a lot of co-workers who had a great deal of money invested in Intel. In fact, if you'd like to see how Intel's stock did since that time, check out this link. It shows a ten-year history of the stock. I worked at Intel from September 1999 until December of 2001. That large anomaly you see in 2000? Yeah, I was there for that, and listened to many of my co-workers talk about plunging their 401(k) into
Intel stock.

Now I'm not an expert on stock market analysis, but here's the thing--you don't have to be to know that those stock prices were utterly INSANE. I hoped the insanity would last long enough for some of my stock options to vest and still be in the money, but that turned out not to be the case. On the plus side, however, I never had to figure out how to account for stock options on my taxes. =) (On another note, I did lose plenty of money in the stock market during the dot-com bust, but Intel has lost 2/3rds of its value in the last eight years. My losses, however, didn't come anywhere near that level, and are up significantly since hitting hit bottom.)

Bear Stearns doesn't really have to do with tech, but the employees who put their life savings into that stock and the whole Yahoo refusing to be bought--I spent many an hour on the trail amazed at such stupidity. It's not rocket science. If you have a 401(k), don't be stupid. Don't invest it in your company's stock, because when your company hits hard times, you'll likely end up unemployed or with a severe pay cut AND have your savings wiped out all in one shot. And--I don't know who was stupid enough to pay more for Yahoo shares than Microsoft was offering, but that brings stupidity to a whole new level. So little chance of making money, such an enormous chance of losing a boat load. *shaking head*

Okay.... on to today. What absurdities do I see today? Well, I passed a newspaper rack this afternoon, and on the front page in big type was the pressing news of the day: The iPhone--cheaper and faster!

Really? Is that really newsworthy? Electronics always become cheaper and faster. That's not interesting or revolutionary. I'm rather disappointed in Apple that that's their main bragging rights for the new iPhone--cheaper and faster. Hey, guess what? If you wait for another year, I'll bet it's even cheaper and faster than this year's model. Yawn. Wake me up when there's something new to report.

Actually, I'm most disappointed because the picture of the new iPhone--it looks just like the old iPhone as far as my untrained eye can see. I can't tell the difference. When I first saw a commercial for the iPhone, I was impressed. I had no interest in buying one, but I knew a really cool gadget when I saw it. It was slick, exciting, and new. I expected the "new" iPhone to be just as slick, exciting, and new. Nope, this was more of an evolutionary change than a revolutionary one. I'm so used to Apple being revolutionary, I'm kind of disappointed they only settled for evolutionary this year. I have little doubt the new phones will be huge sellers--and why not, at $200, you can get one for less than half the price they were introduced at a year ago--but I just don't see the wow factor this time around. Cheaper and faster is not front page news.

Striking Writers

You know, I have very little sympathy for the writers who are on strike. Oh, I know, they want to be paid for their work that ends up on the Internet, and I think it's smart of them to see that the Internet will likely play a huge roll in the entertainment industry in the future and to carve out their niche now rather than later. I even think they deserve to be paid for the work they do.

What disturbs me, however, is the strike. And I hate the fact that the negotiations have become so public. Neither side wants to budge on their position, and I'd bet a big reason for that is because if they do, they'll be seen as "weak" or the "loser" in this epic battle the news media has created. And everyone in the industry pays the price. I don't mind of writers themselves want to strike, but it's caused others to lose their jobs as well who have nothing to do with the strike. Cameramen, actors, set designers, and those thousands of folks that create what writers imagine are out of jobs. Did the writers ever consider them? I don't think so. Are the writers banding together to figure out a way to help all these displaced people? No, they're more interested in themselves. Selfish, little people they are. If it hurts the rest of the industry, it's not their problem.

And that's the part that bothers me. I read that the Ellen DeGeneres show went back on after shutting down for one day, and she took a lot of flak for that for "not supporting the writers." Good for her! She's supporting her employees, and she should be applauded for that.

If I had my way, I'd just fire all the writers and replace them all. If they don't like their jobs or their compensation, they can find something else they do want. No matter how this all turns out, there's going to be a lot of hurt feelings and grudges. What happens when the writers come back to the Tonight Show and all the cameramen had been fired or are at risk of losing their home because they haven't been able to pay the mortgage? You think they'll be working together as efficiently as they were before?

Nothing, and I mean nothing good will come from this strike. It was a stupid thing to start, and I'd like to see the writers go back to work even if it's under the agreement that all new work will get paid with whatever agreement they can come up with later. Perhaps when the stakes aren't so high or public, the two sides can quietly come up with an agreement they both like. If it's the Internet that's the big sticking point, perhaps the writers can refuse to work on any material destined for the Internet but keep working on everything else.

I might support the writers more if they weren't so happy to inflict pain on so many innocent victims, but they've long lost my sympathy.

Bill Gates is Stupid

Seriously, he says the dumbest things sometimes.

To catch you up, I attended the annual shareholder meeting for Microsoft last Tuesday. I'd never been to Microsoft's annual shareholder fest--not nearly the event that the Berkshire Hathaway meeting is, but it was held right here in downtown Seattle and walking distance from where I am. Why not? It might be interesting? =)

It had it's interesting moments, but I'll skip ahead to why Bill Gates is stupid. During the Q&A period, one shareholder asked about the stock price, and why several of the top management--including Bill Gates--sold stock mere days before the stock started going down. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $37 million, I think he said.

Frankly, the fact that Bill Gates sold about one-tenth of one percent of his Microsoft fortune is rather a non-event to me, and it was wisely pointed out that they all still had the vast majority of their fortunes tied up in Microsoft stock. Their interests were still very aligned with the average shareholder. It was a stupid waste of a question, I though, but Bill Gates said one thing that really bothered me. He said he agreed that they wanted a high share price.

Oh really? And why is that? They announced a share buyback plan recently that would buy several billion dollars of Microsoft stock. Now why would I want them to buy stock at a high price? That's just stupid. As a shareholder, I'd rather the stock price be LOW so they can buy back MORE stock for the same price. As someone who'd be perfectly happy to buy more stock, I'd like the price to be LOW so I can acquire shares cheaply. The only people--and I mean the ONLY people--who benefit from a high share price are those who are looking to get out. Those who want to sell their stock? And why the hell should we care what they want? If I were management of Microsoft, I'd rather make people who are in for it for the long run happy.

Look at what happened the last time Microsoft had a "high" share price. Back during the go-go Internet days. Rocking in the year 2000, Microsoft's stock traded at nearly $60/share. Today? It's at $34.09 at this moment. Those folks who sold at the end of 1999 or the beginning of 2000 obviously did very well for themselves, but pity the fool that actually was buying into the company at the time. I remember back then thinking people were completely NUTS for buying the stock at such unrealistic prices, and I even remember Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, being quoted as saying the stock was too high. Then why the hell were you all buying billions--BILLIONS!--of dollars worth of the stock with shareholder money? Money not well spent, as it turns out, and is rather surprising for people who supposedly have most of their net worth in the company.

I so wanted to say something. I could have, too. I was seething. I wanted to them NO! Don't listen to people who are looking to SELL OUT! Consider the people who who rather BUY IN! Consider the people who are already bought in and want the most bang for their buck with the stock buybacks. I could have said something too. There were several people around the room with microphones, taking questions from shareholders. One of them stood a mere three feet away from me, and absolutely nobody was there to ask questions. I could have jumped up and told Bill what I thought about his statement about wanting the stock price high. NO! Don't do it!

But frankly, I didn't have the guts to call out the richest man in America as an idiot. Well, not in THAT public of a forum, at least.

A couple of days later, I read an article in the local paper that covered the shareholder meeting, and they mentioned all of the questions and answers covered during that Q&A period, including that question about the stock sales and share price, and including Bill Gates's comment about wanting the stock price high.

It so easily could have ended up mentioning me in the article. I'm not sure if I'm relieved it didn't, or upset that nobody else spoke up against such stupidity either.

Truthfully, I don't think Bill Gates really is that stupid. I suspect he meant that he wants to work on building products and selling products so the company deserves a fair value that continues to grow as high as possible, but that's not what he said. And for some people--I like to think it's the exceptionally smart people such as myself *wink*--we'd rather have the stock price to down. I could buy more stock cheaper, AND get even more through that stock buyback plan.

I do wish somebody said it, though, even if it wasn't me. Maybe next year.....

I Just Saved a Ton of Money on My Car Insurance!

As many of you may know, I'm planning to thru-hike from Key West, Florida, to Springer Mountain, Georgia. I expect to start January 1st and end April 16th.

I've been trying to get my affairs in order. Sounds like I'm about to die, huh? One thing I wanted to do--get rid of my car. I can't drive it on the trail, and I rarely ever drove it when I'm not on the trail. Half the time I did drive it, it was because I hadn't used it in two weeks and I didn't want to run the battery down completely! It had to go!

And off it went. I drove it down to Eugene, gave it to fellow letterboxer Spiral Seeker, and we had a grand little impromptu gathering where we laughed, swapped stamp images, and I carved a quick and dirty event stamps. Signed over the title of my car, and jumped a train at 5:30 this morning back to Seattle.

So I called about adjusting my car insurance--most notably, the fact that I did not have a car anymore. I figured that might save me some money, eh? =) Turns out, I couldn't just drop the car from my policy since policies are tied to the car, but there was another form of insurance--don't remember what the woman on the phone called it anymore--licensing something something whatever. But it would insure that I would be covered if I drove someone else's car. Cool! I'll take it!

Believe it or not, that actually cost $2 more than my existing car insurance! Now that's just stupid.... Anyhow, turns out I wasn't eligible for it because there's still a car registered at the address. Nevermind that Amanda has a stick and I don't know how to drive a stick, so there's no way I'll ever be driving her car. My "home away from home" in Oregon also has a car at that address. And of course, my mom in California has a car, so that address wouldn't work either. In a nutshell, you can only get this special kind of insurance if there are no cars at your address, and alas, all addresses I'm associated with have a car associated with them, so it turns out that wasn't even an option.

Screw it! Just cancel my policy. Most cars I drove should be covered by insurance anyhow--the car is insured, regardless of who drives it--and most of the time I drive now, it'll likely be a rental car company which are always happy to provide car insurance for you. Usually I'd tell them no since I was already insured, but that probably won't happen anymore. By golly, yes, insure me! =)

But WOW! I just saved a TON of money on my car insurance! By canceling my policy, they're giving me a refund for the part of the year that I won't be using it, AND I won't have to pay HUNDREDS of dollars to renew it--it was due to be renewed December 8th. (I always paid the whole year in advance since it's usually cheaper than paying month-to-month.)

Now that I'm freed from the shackles of a car, I thought, "Hey, maybe this would be a good time to finally become a legal resident of Washington?" So I surfed over to their website to see about getting a Washington state driver's license. Turns out, I can't! I don't have the documentation to prove I'm living in this state. Ironically, one of the forms I could use to prove my Washington residency is an auto insurance policy in Washington state. Ha! Like that's going to happen now! *rolling eyes*

There's a whole list of documents that can be used to prove my residency, and would you believe it, but I don't have a single document they would accept. Not one. Zip, zilch, zero. They won't accept me as a Washington state resident.

Part of the irony lies in the fact that I'm not really an Oregon resident anymore, despite my driver's license that says I am. I can probably count on one hand the number of days I've spent in Oregon this year (well, maybe two hands are required....) At this point, I don't see myself ever going back to Oregon. I love Oregon and would love to move back there, but Amanda would have to come with me! And she's a working stiff, and it's easier for her to fly into and out of Seattle. So I'm stuck in Washington, but find myself in this odd predicament where I can't prove it.

Even more odd, I'm actually breaking the law since I'm supposed to notify the state within 30 days of establishing residency. Well, I'm trying.....! But it's going to take more than 30 days to get all the documents I need in order to prove it. They won't let me say I'm a resident, then I'm illegal because I haven't notified them. ARGH!

So it doesn't look like I'll be getting a new, shiny Washington state driver's license anytime soon. But I'm going to file taxes in Washington for this tax year, since taxes are good proof and an acceptable form of proof. Being a registered voter is too, so I thought, "Hey! I'll register to vote!"

Except technically speaking, that won't work either since I can't register to vote unless I'm a resident of Washington. ARGH! That seems like a double standard. I can't register to vote unless I'm a resident, but I can't be a resident unless I'm registered to vote.... HELLO?!

So I'm stuck with my Oregon driver's license a bit longer. One of these days, though.... One of these days, I'll have the proof I need to show that I really do live in Seattle now. =)

My Bank went Bankrupt....

Yes, you heard me right. Years ago, back in 1999, I opened an account with a bank known as NetBank. It seemed right for me. I don't need no stinkin' branches. I had my paycheck direct deposited to the account. I never had any checks that needed to be deposited. I almost never wrote checks--just the once a month rent check and that was it. (Paid all my other bills online or with credit cards, electronic transfers, yadda, yadda, yadda.)

I felt strongly that there was a market for an Internet-only bank, and even considering investing in NetBank stock. (I actually did own shares for a short time, but quickly realized I didn't know enough about banking to feel comfortable investing in it and sold almost immediately.)

Early in October, I got an e-mail saying, in a nutshell, they had gone bankrupt and all the accounts sold off to ING Direct--a company I had heard of before but never knew anything about since I never did business with them.

I wasn't terribly concerned about my bank going bankrupt--the accounts were FDIC insured, so I'd still get all my money back. =) Yeah for FDIC insurance! I'd never had money in a bank account where that mattered so much before, though. I'd never had money in a bank that went bankrupt before. (On a related note, I read somewhere that out of over 100,000 accounts, slightly over 1,000 of them had more than $100,000 balances--and accounts are only insured up to that amount. Bummer for those thousand or so folks who stashed all that money in their bank, because they aren't getting their money back.)

It's still something of a pain, though. Obviously, I needed to retrieve my money and open an account somewhere else. Internet banking really isn't my thing anymore. It worked GREAT when I could direct deposit my checks, but now that I'm running Atlas Quest, I get a heck of a lot of personal checks and money orders and I don't have any branches in the Seattle area where I can drop them off. I either hang onto the checks until I make a visit to San Luis Obispo and can deposit the checks in a credit union I have there, or I mailed them off to NetBank just outside of Atlanta after endorsing them and writing "For Deposit Only to Account #...." to make sure nobody else would get the money if it were somehow intercepted. I never really felt comfortable mailing off checks, though. The post office is pretty reliable for the most part, but I'd rather drop them off at a branch and not depend on them.

I really need to open an account with branches in the Seattle area. Ideally, they'd also have branches in San Luis Obispo since I spend a fair amount of time there, and I do a lot of traveling anyhow. Branches all over the country would be useful. It's been eight years since I opened that NetBank account, and my needs have changed during that time.

In the meantime, though, I want to get my money out of this quasi-I-don't-know-what's-happening state at NetBank. ING Direct sent a couple of e-mails with their policies, one of which is that they won't accept money orders, which is a problem for me since I sometimes get those. Can't mail in money orders, and I don't have anywhere in Seattle to cash them. I'll just have to hang onto those until I make it to San Luis for now. (BTW: I now officially prefer USPS money orders over other types of money orders, because I can cash those at the local post office! It's the one type of money order I can readily convert into cash.)

So I'm thinking about opening an account with Bank of America or Washington Mutual or something. I don't really have any preferences, except that they need branches in both Seattle and San Luis Obispo, and preferably as many other locations as possible. Those two particular banks fit the location profile I want. =)

In the meantime, I'm very impressed with a lot of the stuff I've read about ING Direct. You actually have to opt IN if you want them to share your personal information, rather than opt OUT like most businesses do. And they sent me an e-mail saying if I transfered the stuff in my NetBank account to an ING Direct account, they'll credit my account $25. Cool! =) Why not? By doing it myself, it saves them the manpower of converting all those accounts manually.

So I opened the ING Direct account a little over a week ago and have been working on getting it set up and running. I had to change by bank account details in PayPal and Google AdSense to use the new account, which is a mutli-day process. They deposit a token amount into the account, then I log in later to verify the amount that was deposited to prove that it really is my account. Then I wanted to transfer the money in my NetBank money market account into my checking account and close out that money market account. My ING Direct account is linked to the NetBank checking account, so I can only pull money from that account.

Except that the transfer money between accounts option on my NetBank account no longer seems to be working. Looks like the NetBank website is slowly being shut down. I contacted support and asked them to transfer the money and close the account, and finally got the money market account cleaned out and closed. Now I'm trying to transfer it to my ING Direct account, and I can close the NetBank checking account once and for all.

I've spent *hours* setting up this new account, though, doing a little bit of work each day setting it up. First opening the account, then transferring an initial deposit, then updating my banking details on other websites, then closing out the NetBank account, then, then.... It's a freakish amount of work to go through just to change accounts. It's no wonder I never did it before! =)

On the plus side, however, Google gave me 92 cents to prove I really owned the account, and PayPal gave me 37 cents for the same. So after all this work, I'm up $26.29. Twenty-five for opening and transferring the account myself, and $1.29 to prove that the account really is mine to other financial institutions. =)

And also on the plus side, I have a whole heck of a lot of new ATMs I can get cash from for FREE!

But I still really need to open an account with a bank that has local branches in Seattle. And if you're sending me a money order, please get it from the post office. ;o)