Banks to lose $12B a year from new regulations

Some regulations were approved against greedy banking malpractices. By simply "playing (more) fair" they give up $12 BILLION they were essentially stealing from their customers.

One such practice was looking at your credit report and seeing another bank lowered your credit limit OR you were one day late on another credit card ( lowering your "credit score" as much as 50 points!). They call it a general default even when they know late payment and especially lowered credit limit are NOT default. Not even incrementally, changing the rate from 7.99% to 28.99%.

The sad thing is they will keep stealing this money from you until early 2010 when the new regulations go into effect, giving them plenty of time to find new ways to steal from you.

They get 3-6% of every purchase even if you pay off the amount in full each month.

Another theft they will not be able to do anymore is double-cycle billing where the average daily balance is magically bloated to get them more interest and compound interest, ..., ... , and then interest an extra month after you pay it off.

~Channing Humphries (originally posted on my MySpace blog December 21, 2008)

Who You Know

It really is a lot about who you know. There are other things like what you bring to the table or your ticket to the party.

I just got an invite from an acting coach I didn't get to work with long enough before moving back to Alabama. He coached Josh Holloway of TV's "Lost" (maybe still coaches). The final season of "Lost" starts mid-season on ABC.

You never know where you might be invited or who might be there. Holloway will be at the event on Tuesday that I was invited to. He will be doing a Q&A session. I wish I could just jump on a plane and go to the event.

There's also an event at NYFA in CA on Sunday that I got an invite to. It's a screening of "Punchline" from 1988 that starred Tom Hanks and Sally Field. The director of the film, David Seltzer will be having a Q&A session. I could go to that Sunday and the other Tuesday.

I guess there's another reason they say "Location, Location, Location." If I were there I could just go.

I didn't make the most of going to the screenings and Q&A sessions when I was out there. I miss them.

Make the most of opportunities that come your way. Be on an even keel as well. You never know when that butterfly flaps its wings and the perfect storm of better opportunities line up.

They don't come all at once, just one step at a time, moment to moment.

Channing H.

We Are All One

We don't realize it and try to ignore it but anything you do to someone else, you're doing to everyone including yourself.

We see news stories and have a detached sympathy. Some people have a dissociative, emotionless apathy to it. We get desensitized to all the bad that's OUT THERE that it doesn't affect us.

We tune it out like it's just a TV show or movie.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who is a Harvard professor was arrested for "breaking in" to his own home.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/harvard.html

I thought it was bad. I don't know the whole circumstance. Maybe he should have called police before trying to get in his own home like people get help when locked out of their cars.

I imagine he didn't think it was a police issue, and that officers were better serving the public elsewhere.

I saw an interview on CBS Early Show with Elizabeth Gates, his daughter. When I realized that I knew her from when I lived in California and we took an acting class together (5 nights a week for 4 weeks), I got chills.

It was so much more personal when I actually knew the daughter of the arrested professor.

It should not have to be someone we know directly affected by things before we really care.

We should be able to put ourselves in other people's "shoes" without having to pretend it is a friend or relative in pain.

We are all connected and simply treating others as we would want to be treated, how far away is that to be in majority?

Channing H.

If it's cheaper, why isn't it being used?

There's a commercial telling how train transportation gets over 400 miles per gallon of fuel. The train can carry a large number of ConNex boxes, untold tons of goods.

The commercial doesn't say what type of fuel, the cost of that fuel, the difference in environment impact. But wouldn't it be cheaper to have tons of goods moving together for long distances and trucks only move to local warehouses, distributors, etc.?

Would actually working together get goods moved cheaper than all of these giant companies with billions in profit (and corporate jets) save money that MIGHT be passed along to the consumer and lessen dependence on foreign oil?

I say "might" because while COSTS are always passed along to consumers, savings aren't as quick to be shared.

(More on that line of thought in the next post)

Channing H.

Flex Fuel Vehicles, Where's the Ethanol

My dad has a Flex Fuel pickup truck. It's a 2001 Mazda. For all intents and purposes it's a Ford before Ford bought Mazda.

The truck will burn gasoline or ethanol. The problem is there wasn't anywhere to buy ethanol. Even now, the closest station is about 60 miles away.

Here's a link to find alternative fuel stations close to you:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/

The cheapest source of ethanol would presumably be processed from corn. Supply and demand would seem to make it cheaper if much more were produced. If many people used ethanol to fuel their cars gas demand would go down and could cause its price to drop. That would be good but could curtail efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

So mass production of corn into ethanol would likely make for cheaper ethanol which would be replacing the use of gasoline.

So 8 years later, why are we still not seeing ethanol on every corner along with gas as long as gas would still be in demand?

Is there not enough profit to be made from corn? Is it not insanely cheaper to grow and process corn than to drill, pump and refine oil?

Interestingly enough, corn is SO cheap that it is processed into a substitute for sugar. The US government subsidizes a large amount of corn farming (which means tax dollars pay for it). Over-processed High Fructose Corn Syrup seems to be perfectly fine for consumption, even processed with a genetically modified enzyme and a fungus that gets reused until it stops giving results to get maximum profit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fructose_corn_syrup.

So it sounds like the only reason we are still dependent on foreign oil is that we want to be.

Channing H.

Twitter Fodder

The new age of narcissism continues to grow. As regular people get more and more followers through odd, spammy, or normal means, it seams to go to their head. Suddenly it validates that x thousand people must really want to follow me playing a game of 'who can tweet the most times in one hour' or other ridiculous drivel.

There's been a blog article naming types of tweeps (twitter peeps, or twitter people). It's odd how these get generated and propagated by those falling into the "negative" categories. The above vanity, RT every reply to everyone because everyone must want them, RT everything that pops up in your stream (following thousands of people).

The ranking analytics, are you kidding me? Now they have SO much more bloated egos. Not only that, some claim to be all about sharing and caring and instruct everyone on propper use of #FollowFriday so that it COUNTS. That's hardly all about caring or sharing. That's about getting themselves in the top of analytic lists to validate that they are ELITE.

Maybe it works a bit for building self-esteem and getting a lot of ELITE and celebs to RT and advertise for them. One of the negative tweep types is people who only seem to care while self-promotion is their true agenda.

So all SPAM is not created equally. We also have people posting, mostly automated, every single song they add to a "dj" playlist. Again assuming if someone follows them that they must want 12 posts in a row with song links.

One nice thing about twitter is that you can Unfollow people with inconsiderate tweeting habits. The Golden Rule (found in many disparate religions) of treating others as you would want to be treated totally escapes some.

OK I have a little OCD tendency and contests bring out the worst in me and I'll tweet constant nonsense. I tend to do that in the middle of the night when hardly anyone is online. Then they might not ever see those tweets. I considered opening a separate account for those type things but technically I think that violates the TOS, though so many people do it that aren't SPAMmers in the traditional sense that it is almost commonplace.

I may have lost people doing those. I will have to ignore and/or limit from now on thinking of my followers. Those doing contests encouraging SPAM are likely violating TOS.

We need tools to filter out repeated autotweets. It's just absurd. Some might have a reason if spaced out enough time. Some tweeps have multiple FollowFriday instruction tweets that go out several times every Friday, repeatedly. Right now our only option seems to be Unfollow.

All or nothing. No middle ground. It's like a bull-headed partisan divide.

I'll sign off with my name in case someone tries to auto-steal my post. Channing H.

Is "Career" a Myth?

My father's father was a farmer. My father grew up on farm but his father did other jobs to provide for the family.

My dad went into the Army for a year and the Air Force for four years. He studied electronics in the Air Force and earned an Associates degree.

It was a different era, but he started a temporary job that turned into contract extension and full time employment. It can still work that way, but it was in a day when companies rewarded people for a life of service. Pension was not just a government term.

I grew up expecting to go to college. I scored a high school level on an achievement test in sixth grade so that didn't seem to be out of reach. Around the same time we got a computer that connected to the TV and I knew what I was going to be when I grew up.

Sure it wavered some with wondering if something else would have more meaning or purpose. But it always came back to computers. Naive think that anyone can do programming, depends on what level, and they don't realize how number systems and theory are a huge part of it.

I got some college credit for computer science and math for high school classes and went to college for a double major in those subjects. Math minor was required so I used my electives in upper level math classes to meet major requirements for both.

I rushed through with the original plan of graduating in three years. It was a bit much and grades suffered so I slowed down and added two terms, still graduating early.

I had friends who co-oped undergrad and I considered it but stuck with my goal. The economy was slow and everyone wanted experience so after a year I started grad school. By the end of the first year I took a co-op position which would pay less than the bachelors degree should but allow me to get experience and possibly a place to work full time.

Each graduation and before we were lectured on how the average person will have 10 jobs to make up their career. So anyone like my dad who stayed with a large computer company for 30+ years means that some people must have 15 or more jobs to average out.

Anyway I wasn't too worried about it then, which is unlike me in general and how I was raised. Besides I guess I figured if my dad could have an Associates degree and work for the same company so long with some changes along the way that surely with a graduate degree I could manage to have at least few job changes.

Enter life I suppose. Some hereditary issues and some environment issues all came into the perfect storm of a health problem. Long story short the "career" ended quite a bit early.

I took an opportunity to help charity and be on the set of a TV show. I was addicted right away, did various volunteer jobs and oddly enough my first paid job on set was in north Alabama.

I moved to California and chased a dream though not fully enough. I guess I wanted an excuse for if/when it ended that it was because I didn't give it my all. Easier said than done but that's the only way to do anything.

I know I did a lot of just what I needed to to get through the subjects or classes I didn't like, but it's totally different in career. Of course you can give it too much and cause problems in personal life, like letting relationships suffer and over-stress yourself. The art is in striking a balance.

I haven't learned quite how the balance is achieved, and maybe never will.

Only a few got to see me perform and stir emotion which is what I had hoped to do on a much larger scale. Health and finance got in the way of just trying to be seen on a small scale.

I needed the unraveling and winding down of so many things and have met some people online who have been encouraging, that I likely would not have met otherwise.

I keep thinking of what I could do related to the old career on my own and run into hurdles that seem to point me into a more creative direction.

Working in Hollywood almost every job was a day at a time, so I've technically had well over 100 jobs. So I don't need to worry about changing jobs. I've balanced out my dads single career job in the quoted average.