Remember When Banks Weren't Entirely Evil?

My family hasn't had much luck with "local" (read: not international Wall Street-headquartered) banks in recent time. I've started to expect banks, even "home town" banks, to try to dick over their customers.

The first sign this month was when my parents paid to have our home's value assessed in a bid to have their names removed from the mortgage held by Citizen's and Northern. My parents had cosigned many many years ago when my wife and I were first starting out in home ownership; we both had jobs, and we've never missed a payment. In fact, we were paid ahead, paying extra on our mortgage payments up until I moved to NYC and we knocked back payments to the minimum in a bid to have a little extra cushion in the transition from paying for a house to paying for a house plus the ridiculous cost of living in the city.

The bank sent the assessor and she walked the house and left. The assessment came in. And we collectively gasped as the house's value had fallen nearly $30K.

Why?

The reasons cited to me were things like "animal smell" (which makes some sense, given there is a cat box that despite being emptied before the arrival of the assessor I know the animals are immediately drawn to use it as if out of spite), dirty walls (the hallways were never painted. If or when we sold the house, we'd most likely paint them; that's kind of a derp, as far as I'm concerned, and it certainly doesn't cost thousands of dollars to paint the areas not currently painted) and the carpeting is worn (we've not replaced it in a decade; while it certainly could use a good steam cleaning, we also swore we're note replacing it until the child has turned 18 and moved from the house.)

We had previous assessments performed, like when we refinanced and when the house was built; the home had gone up in value, then with this assessment plummeted by an amount none of us expected, despite having things like a coal stove installed which should, in theory, have raised the value of the home (we have a chimney now!)

When my parents, who paid for the assessment, went to talk to the bank about the findings because they seem more than a little fucked up, the bank promptly gave them the runaround. They're still getting stonewalled, having been told by a couple of their representatives that a supervisor will get back to them. It's been a couple of weeks now and they're still giving my parents the runaround.

My irritation with banks bubbled today because I decided to finally convert some rolled coin to dollars. I didn't think this was much of a chore; There is a bank, Astoria Bank, just a couple blocks from my apartment. I figured that converting rolled coin is something any bank can perform, given that they aren't losing anything in the transaction. They're literally taking rolls of coins and giving me the same amount back as paper currency; they don't need to take a risk that my check will bounce or some other ripoff attempt from a dishonest customer. At most I could shortchange them some coins (or, I suppose, a cylinder of metal stuck into a coin roll.)

I should probably note that, to the best of my knowledge, I did not shortchange them.

Anyway I pack up all the rolled coinage in a little case, and that case is now surprisingly heavy. I'm quite glad the bank is just a couple blocks away. I get there, walk in, wait in the queue a few minutes and finally step up to the teller. "Can you convert rolled coin to bills?"

"Do you have an account with us?"

"No..."

"Sorry, can't help you. Next!"

He did offer to have me open a checking account, at which point I could convert rolled coin. Yay. I would have to fill in paperwork for an account I wouldn't have any intention of using just so I could convert the coins to another form of currency. I was tempted to do that just so I could turn around and close the account; but I figured there was a minimum deposit requirement or some other way of preventing me from doing exactly what I was tempted to do. I couldn't be the first person to want to do that.

At this point I left the bank and checked the time; I had a little less than an hour to get to the bank I actually had an account with in order to convert the coinage, which at that point was making my fingertips tingle from the lack of circulation in my hand.

I hiked the three blocks to a subway, waited for the non-rush-hour train schedule for a subway car to arrive, and ride a couple stops to the area with the bank with whom I have an account. I hobble up the stairways leading to the non-subterranean world and up to the bank.

I go in, stand in line, and reach the teller. "Can you convert rolled coin to bills?," I said, pulling up my little case and popping it open.

"Do you have an account with us?"

I bit back the urge to reply with sarcasm, but I was also irritated that the bank was asking me this question in the first place. "Yes," I said, probably with a note of exasperation. I was surprisingly tired from the walk and carrying 3 digits' worth of metal encased in paper rolls.

He asked for my bank card or other ID, which I slid under the bullet-proof plastic to him along with the steady feed of paper cylinders. "Next time," he said, "you should write your account number on the rolls."

Write my...mother fucker, what? You want me to write that long-ass number on each of these rolls? "Write the account on each of those?," I repeated.

"Yeah, in case there's, you know, coins missing or something. It can be tied to the account." So...M&T is officially more petty than many quick-e-marts who will fudge a few cents from a cup on the counter if it makes a transaction a little easier or faster; you know, because rounding is easier than juggling pennies. I'm an idiot customer that has banked with this organization for years, and they're basically threatening to dig into my account if I'm a quarter or two shy in the count.

If only they had the technology available to dump coins into a bin and automatically sort and roll them for themselves, all while keeping track of the value of the coins. The strange thing is I'm pretty sure they have this technology available since I'm seen some kiosk that does precisely that, only for a fee, and it gives you currency in the form of a goddamned gift card.

Perhaps banks could convince a company to create something similar, only for them, so they can get accurate counts of money for their customers. to convert coins to bills. Wouldn't that be fantastic? You'd think that organizations with millions of dollars flowing through it could afford to purchase such a technological wonder and thus remove the nasty obligatory insinuation that their customers are thieves.

Remember when banks weren't entirely evil? Or at least made some effort to hide their disdain for customers, behind a happy mask of faux concern for customer satisfaction?

I was tired and a little irritated, but I at least had my much lighter form of currency. Now we just need to find out from the other bank how they justify my home losing tens of thousands of dollars in value because of our cats not being willing to not shit.

OS X and Power Input Status From the Command Line

The other night I was getting ready to head to my apartment when a tweet from ConEd, the power company, said that several residents near my area were reporting a power outage.

While ConEd charges, in my opinion, way too much, and their website tends to leave something to be desired, they do at least have a site that charts power outages. I confirmed that yes, the address they tweeted was near my apartment. Then I swore because I was planning on recording an episode of my podcast and a power outage would be a real pain to deal with; do I travel an hour to get back to the apartment and risk the power being out, or do I wait and record at the office and end up getting back really late at night?

I then wondered; my laptop is connected to the wall for power. What if it could tell me if it was on AC power? Just being able to connect means nothing. I have a small UPS connected to the router and cable modem, and the laptop battery will keep the laptop going even if power were out. But it turns out OS X can report whether it's on battery or AC power.

From the command prompt I ran:

pmset -g batt

Now drawing from 'AC Power'
-InternalBattery-0 100%; charged; 0:00 remaining

And there it was. My apartment still had power! How handy!

Conversation by Meme

Wikipedia defines a "meme" as "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."

I've noticed a trend in people's communication habits that I called, for lack of another term, conversational memes. Terms that act as shortcuts for larger, more complex concepts, often nuanced, only used ad-nauseam until their use (and in some cases definition) become distorted and are triggered by other conversational memes.

To be fair most of these trends seem to be centered in social media sites like Twitter, where there are a contingent of people who steadfastly cling to the notion that nuanced conversations can be had in 140-character hurled chimpanzee turds. While I have no doubt that there are people who have had productive exchanges on Twitter, there are far more conversations that quickly degrade into irrational thinly-veiled attempts to establish dominance in who is more righteous than right.

While I have seen examples of this used repeatedly, a particular exchange got me thinking more about the phenomena.

I have re-read this short bit of exchange several times and I'm afraid I still can't understand the use of "mansplaining" in this example. Mansplaining is supposed to be "(of a man) explain (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing." Was Ishan being condescending? Or even talking down to her? His experiences echo my own; I have not had widespread failure stories come to my attention aside from bluetooth and wifi issues. But somehow suggesting that she may have an edge case on her hands is "mansplaining," and she knows better because she's a software engineer.

Was she right about the buggiest mess? It's certainly an opinion, but anecdotal. I've not encountered huge problems running Yosemite. My users haven't been overly vocal about general problems with Yosemite. So it seems perfectly natural to suggest that someone having many problems is experiencing an edge case. If anything, I've seen more weird shit from systems belonging to technical people because they like to screw around the with the system configuration more often than regular users. The assertion is made that this was simply inaccurate, but there's no information backing this up. (I know, people hate to be told they need to back up the assertions they make, it makes them a victim, it's victim blaming to ask them to show evidence to back up a statement...)

I went to Twitter and asked about the use of "mansplaining." I only had one response and it was from someone saying they've never had someone give him a good (or consistent?) definition. Which would fit in with my biased observation nicely...mansplaining, like so many other terms, has devolved to a word triggered by "this person appears to be male and is expressing doubt in my claims." This triggers the response of "mansplainer!"

Not only is this unhelpful but it also destroys the true use of the word. In order for something to be attributed to "mansplaining" you have to have to have an understanding of the motive behind the alleged mansplainer. Somehow this term is thrown around an awful lot when based on a 140 word brain fart.

But perhaps I'm basing this on a position of privilege. After all according to this website checking one's privilege, "roughly speaking, ["check your privilege"] is a way of telling a person who is making a political point that they should remember they are speaking from a privileged position, because they are, for example, white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied or wealthy."

Privilege as a term was once again tossed into my Twitter feed when Richard Dawkins mentioned an article discussing three professors launching a "Check Your Privilege" campaign that specifically wants white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian or male individuals to recognize they have "unearned access to social power based on membership in a dominant social group."

"If you don't have to think about it, it's a privilege." 

I'm not quite sure what this campaign aims to do. The criteria overlaps so much of the population, it's almost ridiculous to claim that you're not, in some way, privileged. At best it's a reminder that when you speak, your perspective may be colored by your life experiences and position in life. It implies a criticism of who you are...but by definition you didn't do anything to put yourself in that position. But the more I read that article, the more it sounded like someone reminding everyone that they have something better than someone else. "Buck up! Don't be sad! At least you're not like <points out someone less fortunate>!"

But like mansplaining, privilege is a word thrown around by trigger words and criteria. Basically your statements are irrelevant if you are speaking from a position that is different than the person offended. They may even accuse you holding a particular viewpoint because you're entitled.

"Entitled: to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; furnish with grounds for laying claim." Most of the meme-users seem to prefer accusing people with the Google adjective definition of "believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment." When used in memesque conversation, however, entitlement is a way of accusing someone that that person believes that have some right to do or say something. It's a small but critical difference; the word is thrown around so often that it basically means you dared to think you were allowed to do something. 

The difference is the distinction between feeling you have the right to happiness versus a right to pursue happiness. To the people flinging the word around meme-space, it makes no difference, and it makes no practical difference to them. The very use of the word is something meant to break the conversation into an ad hominem accusation or question of your motives. Your argument is not to be heard not because it lacks merits but because the source is somehow tainted.

At that point you're derailing the conversation, another phrase bandied about freely.  The definition of derailment is to take a conversation about a particular issue and instead guiding it into a separate, only tangentially related subject. If you bring up something that as a topic intersects with the subject, however, you'll still be accused of attempting to derail a conversation. In many cases of meme-use it is tossed at someone questioning anything from the offended party. Asking a question they don't like is a free license to marginalize you for derailing rather than addressing the question or point.

All these and more, in social media circles, are triggered by keywords and attributes. If these triggers (which itself is another memeword...TRIGGER WARNING!) are used, they are then replied to with another keyword, and the conversation becomes a dance from an impromptu script comprised of unhelpful meme exchanges. Avoiding the use of such memes and perhaps...perhaps...you can get an educational exchange. Otherwise, the best way to share your perspective as well as gain insight into other people's experiences is through a medium that allows you to at least attempt to explore a nuanced topic in more than 140 characters.

If you have a comment you can try mansplaining why I'm wrong in the comments, but I warn you that you are probably trying to derail the conversation with your entitled and privileged views. Although at this point it is far far simpler to stop trying to keep up with the latest reasons why everyone is horrible and just try not to be a bad person yourself, because believe me, no matter what you do, someone will be offended and find fault with you.