UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Lots of stuff happened this past weekend, but I have a few other things I want to talk about first.

I’ll try to keep this entry as short as possible.

Quick-hitters:

- On Friday night, my meteorologist of choice—in other words, the the weatherperson I happened to be watching at the time—said that warm weather was “coming.”

She didn’t mention that Saturday was going to be 10-20 degrees hotter than Friday.

(It’s not as if I didn’t appreciate the warmer weather.  I just like my temperature changes to be gradual, not immediate.)

- Happy (way overdue, I know) Chinese New Year!

- One more issue I have with my DIY iPod mini project:  it seems to be leaking juice at an abnormally high rate.  I had the iPod locked and sitting in my pocket all day on Saturday, and when I got home that night, the battery meter appeared to decrease by 2-3 “ticks.”  Hopefully, I was just imagining things, or the problem goes away after a few recharging cycles.

- While cleaning up my desk on Friday night—that was seriously long overdue—I heard a loud *POP* (think glass shattering) followed by a sizzling sound coming from the kitchen.  I ran there, thinking I had left the stove on, but I found nothing out of the ordinary.  Strange, I thought to myself, as I walked back into my office.

About an hour later, I went back into the kitchen to grab a drink, and I happened to glance at a set of AAA batteries that were sitting on my kitchen counter.  For reasons unknown to me, I decided to inspect the batteries, and when I picked them up, I noticed a tiny brown puddle where the batteries used to be.

Apparently, one or more of the batteries popped and leaked acid, while sitting on my kitchen counter.

I’ve seen batteries leak acid before, but usually this occurs inside a device, and I’ve never had quality (Duracell, in this case) batteries leak acid before.

- Yet another update regarding my ZoneAlarm rebate fiasco:  a check for $40 from Fry’s Corporate Office showed up in my mailbox on Saturday!  Thanks Fry’s!

I’ll be especially happy if the $25 for my American Telecom Systems phone shows up in the next couple of weeks.

- So awhile back, I mentioned that my credit score took a murderous fall, and it was partly due to Citibank no longer reporting the credit limit on two of my cards, totaling over $15,000 in “lost” credit:

According to my credit report, Citibank only is reporting the limit on one of my cards, and the limit on that card [(a Diamond Preferred Rewards card)] is a paltry $1,000.  So, I have devised a plan:  I’m going to re-allocate most of my total Citibank credit limit on to this one card, and hope that Citibank reports the new limit to the three bureaus.

One thing I forgot to mention about that incident was the fact that, months prior, I had shoved most of the credit limit from the card that now has a $1,000 limit on to the PremierPass card.  I don’t recall exactly why I did this; I might have taken out a balance transfer.  Anyway, my lazy ass decided that now was the time to call Citibank and request a reallocation of credit.  Unfortunately for me, the rep I spoke to could not help me out.

The rep explained that even though my PremierPass card has a $16,000 limit on it, the line of credit is what’s called a “revolving” line of credit aka a “no pre-set spending limit.”   She then explained that the Diamond Preferred Rewards card had a fixed line of credit, and since the two lines of credit were different, I could not reallocate any part of my credit from one card to the other.

Fan-freaking-tastic!

After the thorough explanation, the rep then tried to sell me a personal loan (it might have been called a personal line of credit; I honestly don’t remember) at a fixed rate of 9.9%.  I quickly refused, and the rep continued to push the loan on me.  I explained that I had no need for a personal loan, and the rep all but insisted that I was passing up on the opportunity of a lifetime.

(It’s not as if I was going to tell the rep “If I needed a loan, I’d take out a 0% balance transfer, not a 10% personal loan!”  Maybe I should have said that…)

This wasn’t the first time Citibank tried to sell me this personal loan; I miss the days where they would just try to sell me their Credit Protector service.

- On the heels of the latest Citibank saga, I think it’s about time for me to update “The List:”

1) Bank of F’n America (still in a class by itself)

2) AllRebates/Ohana Companies (and yet I still insist on doing business with them; at least I now know that I have backing from Fry’s)

3) Citibank (thank you, Citibank)

4) Time Warner

5) (tie) Parago/USPS/Buy.com

Yes, CompUSA has been removed from the list, due to their closing.

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