When the bakery closed during Covid, one reason was Bank of America’s delays in handling of our emergency loan (PPP) request. That’s a different story for another time, but the bottom line is that I moved from Bank of America to a credit union (for both business and personal banking). Recently, the credit union attempted to update their online banking. It’s a disaster and customers have been without access to transfers, bill pay, balances, etc for over 2 weeks....
In 1990, while a freshman at UF (Go Gators!), I applied for and received my first credit card. The card, from Citibank, was a “college special” with a whopping credit limit of $600.00 and fees/penalties as high as the Federal Government would allow. This said, there was no yearly fee and I knew at the ripe age of 18 that if I paid my balance on time, my cost was 0.00. Granted, I didn’t have much money (like generally a bank account of 200.00 or so) and got the card in case I needed food and didn’t have the cash. ...
Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me. Al Capone
You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just the way you are. — Fred Rogers Been in a Mr. Rogers mood lately… reading some of his quotes, watching old videos, and watching Won’t You Be My Neighbor? with Yeni… There’s all types of people in this world; none of them perfect. Mr....
I’ve spent my adult life building a reputation of honesty— you may not like what I say… but you can trust the source. I also generally work and associate with people whom I can trust (which just kind of makes sense). In open source VoIP, we tend to be an honest group of people. As with open source itself, we work in a more transparent nature than others may be used to....
Mostly due to the recent news regarding Cambridge Analytica and people’s private information, many people have responded to a #DeleteFacebook trend —including the co-founder of WhatsApp. Don’t forget: WhatsApp was sold to Facebook a few years ago for over 15 billion (pause for a second… this is billion, not million here) and now someone who benefitted greatly from that deal also suggests deleting facebook. Clearly I’m biased. Almost 5 years ago, I followed my friend Michael White‘s example and deleted my facebook account. Of course, this movement has more to do with personal information than oversharing of said personal information. ...
Ugh… please tell me you’re sick of the two party system. My wish for the New Year would be for people to open their eyes and look outside a two-party system that has sucked the marrow from our country’s life. I haven’t even started, and I already have digressed. Anyway… today, the buzz around town is the Democratic response to the Republican (apparent) repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I’ve not been a supporter of the ACA, and when I wrote about this back in 2010, I never imagined the costs would be even worse than I had projected. ...
Yesterday, millions of Americans voted to elect Donald Trump president of the United States of America. The close vote results, as has been the case for the last few elections, in a very divided country. I’ve made no secret of my support of a “third party” candidate and proudly voted for Gary Johnson this election. As I woke this morning, I found myself greeted with countless messages on how I “cost Hillary the election,” “threw [my] vote away,” “didn’t give a shit,” and so on. Let me be very clear… There is no scenario where Fred votes for Hillary Clinton. There was also not a scenario where I would vote for Donald Trump. I instead voted for someone who most closely backs my political beliefs. There’s no reason to get into a “who’s worse” debate between Clinton and Trump. They were both HORRIBLE candidates. ...
Let me preface with a reminder—I’m neither Democrat nor Republican. I proudly have No Party Affiliation. With that out of the way… There is Evil in this World I’ve worn many hats throughout my life, and without hesitation I tell you Evil exists, it’s real, and most of the time in this world, you will be the only person capable of defending yourself. When you have a mass shooting, like the shooting in Orlando, people are very quick to assign immediate blame. People want to blame radical Islamics, gun control, Obama, Bush, or what have you. ...
Shaving—that time honored tradition of holding an extremely sharp instrument to your head when you’re still half asleep. I started loosing my hair at a young age and by 30, I declared my hairstyle to be “bald is beautiful.” As such, I’ve bought a few razors overs the years and I can get into a shaving discussion with the best of gents. When people ask me if I’ve used the Dollar Shave Club and seem surprised when explain that it’s (1) too expensive and (2) I wasn’t happy with the razors. ...