Obfuscation is Easy

I'd love to say that this was me, before I became all sanctified and holy-looking, but... um, this is me now. My Junk Drawer of Quality Items is truly awesome, and quite full.

I'm mildly peeved to have missed four months of Basic Instructions since Scott changed his Feed URL without telling me. Luckily, it's the Internet, so I've not actually missed anything.

Iceland's last wish: to have its ashes scattered all over Europe" -- market analyst

"The other day I was playing The Who on the stereo, and my wife rushed in thinking she was missing CSI"

Some of these are really quite clever.

I dangled my feet from a waist-high wall at the light rail station in front of a nightclub accurately and pragmatically dubbed Drink. The line out the door fluctuated from five people to halfway down the block depending on how quickly the bouncer checked IDs. Music pumped out the doors and open windows, making my waiting for a train akin to actually patronizing the place, but cheaper, with better air, and more room to move.

Around the queue to get in, people darted here and there to various destinations. To the east was Sneaky Pete’s and Dreamgirls, two clubs each as classy as their names imply. And to the west: First Avenue at large with all it has to offer: Clubs as painfully similar to each other as the boys and girls bandying between them.

A train arrived in the direction I wasn’t going. It stopped between me and Drink. Five girls in their late twenties and gauche wigs stepped out onto the platform.  They swarmed like bees, all communicating at once to each other and only moving in a single direction as if by chance.

As the train waited for its predrunkened cargo to disembark, it offered a surprising quietude on the platform, blocking all the chatter and bass from Drink and Sneaky Pete’s. As it rolled away, the stereo turned back up.

Drink’s bouncer was letting three prettyish girls into the club without having to wait. A man was walking down the line of guys and not-as-pretty girls, grinding with any female that made eye contact with him and giving high fives to the dudes.

Through this melee of “fun,” a young woman passed by and made a right onto First.

Two things set her apart from all the other partying pedestrians...

I could read Abraham Piper's writing all day - except when he leaves us on a cliffhanger like today! There's lots more to this story - read it here.

Terrible violence and bad singing.

This sounds great.

One thing it might mean to “entertain angels unawares.”

There are benevolent spirits secretly enjoying The Office with you or laughing when you think you’re alone and flex in the mirror.

(That's Hebrews 13:2 if you were wondering)

I got a refund from the NatWest after a dodgy debit appeared on the credit card my wife uses. The bank’s dispute resolution mechanism turned out to be unserviceable, but we got the money back promptly when we sued them in the small claims court. The story is, I believe, an instructive one for people interested in bank security or payment systems regulation.

I have put online the documents which tell the story. A debit of £126.51 appeared last June from “Ian Travel Services” about which there are many complaints online. My wife phoned the bank and didn’t get anywhere. So I wrote to them asking to reverse the transaction or provide evidence that it was made with our mandate.

...

The following month they wrote back saying that “we are governed by MasterCard International, who are the governing body for credit card transactions” and had to abide by their rules, under which our complaint was now out of time. This is nonsense on stilts; my contract is with the bank, who may not debit my account without my mandate, and if the bank enters into a contract with MasterCard that prevents it from discharging its obligations to me then that’s the bank’s problem, not mine. The bank suggested i get legal advice, or go to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, Local Trading Standards or the Financial Ombudsman Service. Now I documented the failings of the Ombudsman in an earlier post, so I decided to go straight to the heart of the matter and sue the bank in the small claims court.

The bank settled at once.

Wow. Read the whole article. It makes you wonder how many other disputes should be settled this way. Ross mentions that the bailiffs enforce a lot of judgements about Easyjet refunds too.
Half the battle is knowing your entitlements in law.

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2b)

Except a strong jawline and a brass ring above his hair. No - wait, Isaiah didn't add that bit, did he?