Corporate Credit Card Stupidity

I work for a large aerospace company. To preserve anonymity, I’ll just refer to it as The Boring Company, or Boring for short. Last week I got some training approved, the first time in 7 years. Corporate policy requires that all travel expenses be put on a corporate credit card. This card is in the employee’s name, and they are responsible for it. They are required to use it for company expenses, and are forbidden from using it for personal reasons. This shifts the financial responsibility to the employee. Now I’ll be the first to admit that for training you asked for, it’s a small price to pay. But that also includes any travel your boss forces on you.
     As a side note, my previous employer had an awesome travel policy. First, they took care of airfare (fully refundable tickets you could change at any time), car rental, and lodging. For other expenses, you got a per diem. Sometimes people at Boring use the term per diem to mean a maximum daily amount you can spend on meals; you don’t need receipts, but people who have spent the max have gotten yelled at for “acting like they’re on vacation.” * That ain’t no per diem. A true per diem is a daily amount you receive before your trip, in the form of a giant envelope full of cash. If you don’t spend it, you keep it! For a 10-day trip to Alaska in 1997, I was given $400. I had heard of guys using that to buy PB&J and a loaf of Wonder Bread, and pocketing the remaining $390. Seems kinda cheap to me, but a nice option if you’re a friggin’ hermit.
     Anyway, I signed up for the training class using the credit card, and right before class they told me the card was denied. Now, the training company was trying to save money by running credit cards themselves, instead of paying a fee to have automatic authorization by the company that ran the registration website. Since they waited so long to run the card, they let me take the training and work out payment later.
     I call up the credit card company (GE), and the automated message tells me the card is active, and I have a zero balance and a high limit. Ok, I must’ve typed in the info wrong. Nope, still doesn’t work. After 20 minutes going through phone menus and holding, a customer service rep asks, “Did you know that Boring changed their credit card provider a year ago? The account is suspended.” Then why didn’t their automated message tell me that??? They seem to be acting like a jilted lover, not wanting to throw away the love letters and photos, on the off chance their ex comes to his senses and take them back. They haven’t told their parents yet, I guess.
     Since my card wasn’t active during the switch, (remember, my employer does not like to keep me well trained), I never got a new one. So I’m still waiting for a new card, and the training company is still waiting for their money. I guess I should count my blessings: my friend had to charge something on his personal card, and Boring took 10 months to reimburse him.

* That may be just my group; I’ve talked with guys in other groups who ate filet mignon at Chart House every night on travel. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it.

Monday’s Boycott: Backfired?

So last Monday, there was supposed to be a huge walkout/boycott. If you supported immigration, you didn’t go to work, and you didn’t buy anything. Most people understood the point of the boycott was to show the positive economic impact immigrants have. Newscasters warned you’d see major disruptions to your daily routine. Well, I’m in Orange County, which has many immigrants, legal and illegal, and I noticed no changes. For my friends who live in LA County and work in Orange, or vice versa, they did notice one drastic change they generally described thusly:

OMG did you see the traffic today? It was awesome! My commute was so short!!!

When they started to think about what it would be like without immigrants, it was a bit more positive than before. And one of my friends is an immigrant (legal, of course). He just hates his commute.

Now, there may be some confusion about the root cause. By the end of the week, people started observing a few other things:

  • Gas prices are crazy high
  • The train station parking lots, which are the size of small cities, are completely filled by 7:30am.
  • Traffic continued to be light during the remainder of the week. Friday morning traffic was almost nonexistent, and I felt like I was traveling by rocket-sled (I commuted to LA last week).

    I’ve no doubt that the boycott lowered traffic significantly, but it was probably boosted by the high gas prices rekindling commuters’ romance with public transportation.

    Like most things, when it comes to immigration, I’m a very practical guy. I am sure that a population of low wage workers benefits us as a nation. It means that American companies can lower costs to compete with foreign companies, and American consumers can buy things cheaper. Here’s my take on the issues:

  • Illegals are only taking the worst jobs. And I don’t even mean McDonalds, because they have a payroll department that requires your tax payer ID (SSN, usually) and takes taxes out of your paycheck. No tax payer ID, no job. They also can’t get any jobs that require a driver’s license.
  • Illegals are not elligible for welfare. It has been noted that they can be a drain on our healthcare system, because doctors are required to treat them. True, but going to a hospital increases their chances of being discovered as an illegal and deported. I also know several citizens who can’t pay their hospital bills, and some declared bankruptcy, eliminating the liability (at a cost, I know). My point is that welfare is an oft-abused system paid for by taxpayers. If people can support themselves without it, by working for a living, I’ll cut them a break.
  • Illegals are highly motivated to obey the law. If they break it, they’re deported, and possibly jailed first.
  • Illegals don’t pay taxes. This is the only major downside. However, I do not believe their tax burden would be all that high, considering their low wages.
  • I know that somewhere there is a formula, perhaps some min/max calculus problem, that determines the range of low-wage illegals that benefit us. Having over a certain number will be a burden, but so will having less than a certain number. It probably needs to take into account population density, unemployment, inflation, the trade deficit, and a few other factors. But I have yet to see any scientific analysis of this problem, and I’d really like to.

    Dani California… Sweet

    Catchy tune, great video, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are showing their long term relevance like few bands seem to be able to do these days . I enjoyed this song so much when I first heard it that I went to iTunes to purchase a copy, but sadly, my account info was garbled from a recent hard drive crash, so I didn’t buy it. I am oddly glad of this though, as it seems that this great song is destined to be overplayed on EVERY station I listen to, to the point where I will likely hate it before the full album is released May 9th. Hopefully the rest of the double album will live up to this single, yet somehow not get turned into jingles and get the Phil Collins era radio saturation that can ruin even the best album.

    Nice try, but YUCK!

    I love a good gyro, and I love Arby’s fast food, but damn, their new gyro is just not good. I am sure that there were some skinny people in California that used words like fabulous or delightful to describe it in taste testing, but they were wrong. It is none of these. Now, the cheese filled potato things with bacon chunks were GREAT, but I would probably enjoy cheese filled cat turds with that much bacon mixed in. Can’t understand how a place that gets so much on there menu so right could drop the ball on a gyro!

    It’s obvious. Episode 1: “Narnia for Dummies”

    Living in a world that constantly occupies and stimulates our minds
    with color, sound, action, motion, etc. it occurs to me that many of
    the truly obvious things in life are not being captured, stored in
    our organic, transitory brains (What *does* happen after the brain
    decomposes?? Where do the stored memories and abilities go?? I’ll
    address that in a future thread). There are so many obvious truths that
    have been learned, discovered, realized by CT members that is seems a
    shame to let them go to waste into the thoughtless void of oblivion.

    Which is why I am starting this series of ‘obvious’ articles. Given
    my preferences, I’ll start with obvious movie facts. Mind you, these
    are not opinions; these are facts which have been backed by the combined
    might of the human mind and endeavour. If you haven’t heard of them yet,
    then you are the perfect subject for the ‘…for Dummies’ series.

    Since these articles may be full of spoilers, I will give fair warning of the
    spoilers to come. Let’s start with the very popular “Chronicles of Narnia:
    The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” If you have not seen it yet, it is now
    available on DVD. Purchase the 2-disc set and avoid the movie-only set. You
    will be very pleased.

    [spoilers follow]
    Continue reading It’s obvious. Episode 1: “Narnia for Dummies”

    Gamefly = Superfly

    The marketing people at Gamefly probably are trying to figure out how to send me a check for that one, but anonymity is far too important for an ass like me to give up contact info on a public forum. Instead, I would ask that they donate the money to a young aspiring nurse, cuz the world needs more nurses. I suggest going to a local strip club, cuz I met a bunch of ladies there who were going to college to be nurses, naughty, sparkly nurses.

    If you own an XBOX 360, with the exception of Call of Duty 2 and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I haven’t found a single other came that required more than a few days of my time to be finished with them. In the 3 weeks I had Oblivion with Gamefly I saved an assload of cash (though I am sure I will buy a used copy some day to play it again). For all the other games I got on Gamefly, there was not a single one that had any replay value in my opinion. Most of them I would have actually been quite mad about if I had purchased them at full price. Before Gamefly I researched purchases quite a bit, and was much more cautious with the games I tried, so on the plus side I guess, I tried some games that I would not have considered otherwise, and, of course, they sucked.

    This is leads me to what really what makes Gamefly rock. See, most reviewers are soulless whores of the gaming industry. Then only decent reviews I have read in quite a while were at Penny-Arcade, while reading their comics. Seriously, their comics are one of the only sources of decent game reviews I have found, which is kind of like watching the daily show for news. For some reason, the idiots at all the major game sites figure you won?t remember the steaming pile of crap that they gave an 8.5 out of 10 to when you are reading their next ?review?.

    The bottom line with Gamefly is that it saves a ton of cash. For $15 a month, I avoid buying $60 games. Simple math is that in 4 months I have spent what it would have cost for a single game, but I played 10 of them, which would have put me back $600. I would have played fewer games if some of them had been a bit better, but that hardly makes the service less compelling. The only ?downside? of Gamefly is that it is a bit slower than NetFlix, but then I live like 40 miles from a regional NetFlix center, so I usually have single day shipment from them (yes, I send a movie on Monday, it gets to them Tuesday, and I get my next one on Wednesday, which is pretty cool).

    In the extended entry (if it works) are some mini-reviews from some of the games I played from Gamefly (not all were for the 360, but I need to fill in between their release schedule):
    Continue reading Gamefly = Superfly

    The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

    Finally picked this up, and am just getting the hang of it. For a more detailed review by far better gamers than I (Masterchief and Zbalance) read these comments. Haven’t had much time to play, but was disappointed with the lack of online help and the pamphlet of a manual. Yes, I’m one of those geeks who reads the manual before he does something.

    Coming from WOW, I’m used to automated updates and tons of UI mods. Oblivion has many content mods built with their construction set, but very few UI mods. No nifty Lua scripting engine to make UI tweaks easy. Another interesting file type available, surprising because it’s been forever since I’ve played “adventure games”, are saved games! One useful one puts you right after the tutorial (with all possible loot) and right before you choose your final stats. I’m also used to many dedicated strategy sites, including a few professional ones. There are far fewer for Oblivion, and IGN has decided to charge a subscription for their guide. Booooo! Anyway, I found some useful links that I thought I’d post. If you have more, please let everyone know by commenting. Thanks!

    Oblivion Character Creation Tips
    Lockpicking Made Easy!
    The Alchemy FAQ

    I could really use a guide on magic. And a game that didn’t hang when you switched to window-mode.

    Edit: The game now crashes my system, apparently due to some video driver or performance issue (and I have a decent card: Radeon X800 Pro). I recommend others hold off until a general bugfix patch is released.

    New tune on Myspace

    My latest work “Thing-Kinda-Thing” is up on http://www.myspace.com/zerobalance if you’re bored.

    So,…
    I cried while writing this song.
    True story.
    It happened last Wednesday while writing the lead guitar solo. (at the end, during the song’s fade-out.)
    I’m not talking about Waa Boo Hoo bawlin’ here. But I DID shed a tear in my right eye.
    It’s the equivelant of watching your children on the playground and suddenly it hits you…”Wow, those are my beautiful kids (notes) right there on the swings. They came from ME!”
    Although it’s the first time it’s happened during one of my OWN songs, it’s not the first time it’s happened at all.

    One particular moment it occurs is during a melody from the movie The Good The Bad and The Ugly. It’s when the “Ugly” fellow first stumbles upon the graveyard.
    It’s called “Ecstacy of Gold” by film composer Ennio Morricone, if anyone wants to check it out.
    Anyway, there is something about certain rare songs, the way the notes fit JUST right, that turns me into an emotional little girl inside.

    So my question is:

    Does this happen to anyone else? With music or any other artform?
    I don’t understand the reason for the feeling.
    It’s pretty pointless…

    SXSW Videos and Podcasts

    A couple years ago I attended the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive and Film festivals, and they were a blast. Austin is a cool city, and everyone at the conference is really friendly. I don’t know if it’s because everyone is happy to be there, or they’re playing it safe in case you’re someone who can get them a job or financing.
         Well, I didn’t make it this year, but they have posted videos and podcasts of the events. Notable videos feature Craig Newmark (craigslist), Henry Rollins, Sleater Kinney, The New Pornographers (I just saw these guys open for Belle and Sebastian – good band), Harry Knowles (Ain’t it Cool News), Peter Bart (ed. in chief of Variety), and many more. The podcasts cover the moderated discussions and have more of a techie/business slant. It includes people like cybepunk author Bruce Sterling (who gives really cool “State of the World” rants), and reps from companies such as Six Apart (they make Movable Type, which runs this blog), Zimbra, Adaptive Path, Yahoo!, 37Signals, frogdesign (they design cool Apple gear), and others. If you don’t recognize those companies, they’re pioneers in stuff like AJAX, which is used in really slick web apps like Google Maps and Gmail. I still wish I could have gone, but this eases the pain a bit.

    The most famous covert organization in the world.