Cancel Credit Protector Fee

I didn't ask for it, in fact I explicitly told them not to do it, but the credit card company put a $0.89 fee for every $100 spent on my account. That's ok. They made it real easy to cancel. It only required 30 steps.

1. Call the 866 number associated with the Fee posting.
2. Listen to computer menu.
3. Press 1 or "oprima dos".
4. Press 8.
5. Press 3.
6. Enter account number
7. Hold
8. Tell nice man from India my personal info and that I don't want to pay the fee.
9. Hold
10. Nice man from India tells me he'll transfer me to someone who can help.
11. Hold
12. Talk to a woman, who addresses me as Richard Harmon.
13. Explain to the woman that I am not Richard Harmon.
14. Give the woman my personal and account info and tell her I want to cancel the fee.
    
15. Hold
16. Talk to a different man from India.
17. Hold
18. Talk to another guy. Tell him I want to cancel the fee.
19. Hold
20. Talk to another woman. She says she'll transfer me to the Credit Protector people. (Yay!)
21. Hold
22. Talk to the Credit Protector woman. Tell her I want to cancel.
23. Listen to Credit Protector woman's spiel about why I don't really want to cancel.
24. Tell her that I do, in fact, still want to cancel.
25. Listen to Credit Protector woman's spiel about a cheaper option.
26. Tell her that I do, in fact, still want to cancel.
27. Listen to Credit Protector woman's spiel about how they'll send me a $20 dollar Visa checkcard as an incentive for continuing to use their service.
28. Tell her that I do, in fact, still want to cancel!
29. Listen as Credit Protector woman finally agrees to remove the fee. (Yay!)
30. Tell Credit Protector woman to enjoy her day of immoral fees and bribes, say bye-bye, and hang up.

What's a Sport?

Semantics is a funny thing. Over time the meanings of words evolve. For example, there once was a man named Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605. He failed, got caught, and was sentenced to death. Note that to this day he is considered the only man to enter the legislature with honest intentions. As an insult, the word "guy" started being used to describe shady men such as criminals and thugs. Then it became a more general word to describe any man, and today it is even used to describe women as in, "What are you guys doing?".

Take the word "awesome". "Awesome" is a word that has become diluted. It's intent is to describe incredible wonders such as the Grand Canyon and God's almightiness. But now someone hands you a nifty ball-point pen and you say, "Wow! This is awesome!" The word has become diluted.

Just like the word "awesome" the meaning of "sport" has also become diluted. Football is a sport. Yahtzee is not. This is obvious, but why? And what about billiards? What we need is a working definition to help us determine which activities are sports and which are not...

My definition of a sport:
Sport: noun, any wholly, bodily-kinetic, competitive event where participants interact with each other, or alter the game state, dynamically in real-time, for the purpose of gaining advantage with opposing end goals of winning the contest.


I've broken my definition into three easy to apply criteria.....In order to be considered a "sport" all three of the following criteria must be met:

1. Competitive: Is the event a competition with opposing end goals of winning the contest?
2. Physically Dynamic: Is the event wholly, bodily-kinetic? Meaning; do the competitors move and use their whole bodies as part of the contest?
   
3. Real-time: Do the competitors have to interact and with each other in real-time, or are they changing the game state for their opponent in real-time in order to get an advantage?

Now before I make some people's feelings hurt, and before I'm accused of causing mischief. I'd like to make it absolutely clear that I am not trying to belittle any activity that my definition excludes from sporthood. Ok?

So using the criteria...

Is Basketball a sport? Yes.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: Yes
3. Real-time: Yes

Obviously Basketball, Football, Baseball, Soccer, Lacrosse, Hockey, Volleyball, Rugby, Boxing, Fencing, etc. are sports. If you're not sure, apply the criteria. So, Let's take a look at those contests that are up for debate...

Poker? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: No
3. Real-time: You could argue it, but no.
   
   

Ping-pong? Yes.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: Yes
3. Real-time: Yes

Ping-pong, or more properly - Table Tennis, at the elite level is immeasurably more intense than the casual game you played in the basement with your mom, dad or cousin Timmy. Just YouTube the elite players such as Ma Lin or Wang Hao. You'll notice incredible agility, footwork and power combined with intense competitive emotion.

Billiards? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: Not really
3. Real-Time: No
   
   

Golf? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: Just barely.
3. Real-time: No way

Dare I even approach this sacred cow? Before your golfer fury gets you into trouble with Bob Barker, imagine an exciting football play...with a hard hit. Now imagine a close game in the Final Four...60 seconds on the clock, down by 2, full court press. Is golf really the same kind of activity? It is not. Golf is a game of skill. It fails the real-time test. You're playing against the course - not your opponent. There is no competitive interaction. No defense. Each competitor just plays as well as he/she can and whoever does it in the least strokes wins. You don't even have to see your opponent to lose to him. Not a sport. A game of skill.

Wii Sports Boxing? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: No...but frighteningly close
3. Real-time: Yes

Footwork is not part of Wii boxing. I'm sure many people play it from their couch. It just isn't quite"wholly, bodily-kinetic". It's close though. This is somewhat alarming because standard video games clearly are not sports; yet this almost made the cut. But it came close. I suppose a full virtual reality game could be considered a sport by my definition. Nintendo isn't there yet, so until then, we'll continue to go outside to play.

Auto Racing? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: Not quite
3. Real-time: Yes

Here comes some more pain...but should it be painful? I'm not denying the skill or the intrigue. I'm just defining "sport". This one truly was close, but racing, although physically demanding, cannot be considered physically dynamic. You can't justify that it is a "wholly, bodily-kinetic, competitive event". The driver moves his arms, feet, and head, but not his or her (didn't forget Danica) whole body. Compare Auto Racing's whole body involvement to three hours of two-player Wii Sports Boxing... Wii Boxing requires no footwork. Auto Racing requires no getting off your bum.

Olympic Track Events, Swimming, etc? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic:Yes
3. Real-time: I'm a little torn, but I'll say 'no'.

They are trying to get to the finish before their opponent in real-time but unlike hockey, the event could be run one competitor at a time. You couldn't have one hockey team play their game on Tuesday and their opponent play on Wednesday. The real-time aspect of these racing events is immaterial and the outcome is not dependent on real-time alterations of the game state. At least in auto racing the racers interact with each other. However, it would be funny if someone grabbed Michael Phelps' ankle in Beijing. That's probably the only way to beat him.

Competitive Eating? No.

1. Competitive: Yes
2. Physically Dynamic: No
3. Real-time: No
   
   

We are the tenants of the English language. The line has to be drawn...or else Yahtzee becomes a sport.

A Quick Jaunt

What should have been a quick jaunt to the grocery and pharmacy somehow turned into a series of unfortunate events where Jude Law could narrate and you’d laugh, cry, shake your head, and say things like, “Gracious me! What hullabaloo!”
Here’s how it went down…and if at some point during the tale you notice a point where I messed up and should have handled the situation differently, make a note and let me know.

I needed to go to the grocery store and the pharmacy, which are both in the same part of town and only five minutes from my home. I hopped in my sporty, fuel efficient, ’95 Civic and headed toward the target zone. As I approached Main St., I saw the first in a series of signs directing people toward Sugarcreek, Ohio’s annual “Fabulous Fifties Fling”. This was a problem. The downtown area would be thronging with tourists, antique cars, carneys, and Golden Buckeye Card-holders. The streets would be blocked off in unpredictable patterns, which meant detouring, and parking would not be at all pleasant. I at once considered aborting the mission; however, my 22 month old milk-aholic would have been distressed without her dairy fix, and the pharmacy was closed on Sundays so this was the only chance until Monday evening. So I made the decision to proceed…

It became evident that I would not be able to park very near the pharmacy, which meant that I had to go there first; otherwise the milk would curdle due to the thermonuclear heat. After circumnavigating the blocked off portions of town, I found an area by some railroad tracks where I could park about a quarter mile from the pharmacy. Truly the best I could do. Oh, and I was wearing flip-flops; an additional nuisance because the first portion of my little hike was over double tracks, through dirty gravel, snakes, and thorny weeds. I strolled through the aptly named “Fabulous Fifties Fling” and make it to the pharmacy (my first objective).

I tell the nice lady at the desk that I need a refill. Nice lady says, “Ok, but I’m not sure how long it will take because our computers aren’t working right.”
I ask nice lady, “Could you give me an estimate – just a ballpark guess?”
Nice lady says, “No.”
“No?”
“No.”

{I paused to tactfully formulate my response so as not to sound like I have a surly attitude, which I do at this point.}
I ask, “Do you think it will take more or less than three hours?”
“Oh. It won’t take that long!”
“Ok…Do you think it will take more or less than 15 minutes.”
“It will definitely take longer than 15 minutes.”
“I see. So do you think it will take more or less than two hours?”
At this point she catches on to my ploys and tells me it probably would take an hour. As I exited, I puzzled over why she didn’t tell me that to begin with.

I then had a few things to consider. Should I just go ahead and get the groceries and take my chances with warm milk? How much could I trust the nice lady’s estimation? I didn’t really feel like participating in the “Fabulous Fifties Fling”. Note that back in the fifties it was just called the ‘Fabulous Fling’. I decided to flip-flop back over the snakes and railroad tracks. I got in my car and meandered over to IGA.

I took my time at the grocery store because I had an hour to kill. The only hitch I ran into was that the Velveeta shredded cheese my wife had asked for was sold out. Life goes on. I kicked around the idea of homemade General Tso’s Chicken, but decided it may be too hard to pull off without a deep fryer and Chinese immigrant to help prepare it. I checked out, adding forty cents to my Discover cash-back bonus, got in my car and headed back toward the railroad tracks.
After my third romp through the cacti, pythons, and pistons, I found my prescription ready and waiting (it only took an hour). I paid for the drugs and for a final time made the trek back to the tracks.

As I retraced my circumnavigation of the downtown area, I wondered why a town with a large Amish community makes a fuss over old cars. There's horse-drawn buggies all over the place. If you want antiquity…why settle for 20th century? Then, around the time John Mayer had repeated, “Say what you need to say” for the zillionth time in that overplayed radio hit, the car directly in front of me rear ended the car directly in front of it, ergo trapping me between them and the traffic behind me.

Sometime later I managed a U-turn, a wider detour, and no more unfortunate events. My quick jaunt had come to a merciful end.

It floats around. It's gotta land somewhere. I was in the path of the tornado.
-Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

Beware of Fruit Cocktail

With chicken you watch out for bones. With watermelon you watch out for seeds. With soup you watch out for hot. But fruit cocktail is the most dangerous. The reason is that the enemy does NOT meet you in the open. We know chicken has bones so we're careful and we learn to avoid them. You anticipate watermelon seeds in each bite so you know you can't chomp and gulp (unless you want watermelons growing in your tummy). And the steaming bowl of soup might as well have a flashing sign above it saying, "Caution: Contents are hot and will hurt you if you put them in your mouth!" But the fruit cocktail is sneaky. There are no warnings, and experience really doesn't help.

Looks good, doesn't it? Don't be fooled by appearances. A dangerous foe lies beneath the festive surface.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's the surprise pieces of wood fragments that tend to gravitate toward the pears or peaches. You spoon some fruit juiciness into your mouth, chew, swallow, and all is well, but that all changes on spoonful #7. Your molars come to a violent halt and you have to decide whether to finger through the fruity slime in your mouth or just swallow a small hunk of wood and risk esophageal splinters.

Now do you know what I'm talking about? If you don't, you've been chowing on rich people fruit cocktail or something. This is something that has always bothered me. The wood chips are probably cores that slipped by the expungers and decided to crash the party. I'd say 50% of the time you could spot one before putting it in your mouth but this would require delicate examination of each piece of fruit. The other 50% are undetectable until your bicuspids suddenly become sawmills. Although they tend to hide in the peaches and pears, they occasionally stick to grapes and cherries. (Pineapples are safe.)

Lately I've been avoiding fruit cocktail. It's just not worth it.

How to Fix the U.S. Economy in One Day

It's really a simple thing, but we unfortunately do not have the leadership thanks to a government crippled by partisan deadlock.

Here's how I could fix our economy if I was given absolute control of the government for one day:

1. Fix Health Care Costs:

• Federal mandate that lawyers who lose malpractice lawsuits must pay the amount they were suing for. This will dramatically reduce frivolous lawsuits. Insurance coverage that doctors pay to cover this risk accounts for 25% of our medical bills. Because lawsuits would become less frequent and for less money, we could expect this percentage to (at least) be cut in half.
• Create a greater supply of qualified doctors by reducing earnings taxes on medical schools that accept more students into medical school via lower standards on entrance exams. Aspiring medical students need a satisfactorily high score on the MCAT or other entrance exam. Many times, a person who would make a fantastic doctor is turned away because they struggle in physics and chemistry, which really have little to do with acknowledging you have strep and prescribing amoxicillin. They still would be held to the medical school's existing standards for licensure, so there is little risk of this policy encouraging additional incompetent physicians. In fact, it may create a trend of doctors with better people skills, which arguably is equal with the science component of the job (surgeons excluded). The resulting greater supply of doctors will create a competitive environment which will drive prices down and ensure quality of service. Competition is a great thing for the consumer.
  
• A federal mandate will prohibit providers from charging people with insurance more money for the same treatment. With the lower costs everyone should be able to afford insurance anyway.

2. Fix Energy/Fuel Costs:

• Oil and gasoline are obsolete as a fuel source. The internal combustion engine is archaic and inefficient. Tesla Motors sells a fully electric car that has a 220 mile range on a single charge, goes 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds, and only takes 4 hours to do a full recharge. This currently would cost $0.02 per mile to operate. Offer tax breaks to manufacturers that produce affordable electric cars, and increase taxes on those who do not. Sales will drive the rest.
• Obliterate all barriers to using nuclear power in the United States. It's less expensive, safe and produces no pollution; except for the waste which is buried in New Mexico (and honestly, who cares about that?). The stuff you see coming out the stacks is water steam from cooling - not smoke. France is almost entirely nuclear, and hasn't had any trouble. If they can do it, we sure can. There are nuclear power plants all over the world and only Chernobyl has ever had a real meltdown. Black lung from coal is a real threat, but people don't seem to care about real threats, do they?
• Because the above two points would eliminate most of the greenhouse gas emissions, the federal and state funds used to regulate air pollution would be invested in researching battery technology. If we could improve battery capacities and degradation we'd have better electric cars and could use solar power and wind turbines more, and they are even more efficient than nuclear power.

By using these strategies, I estimate health care costs and insurance premiums to be reduced by at least 50%, vehicle operating costs would be reduced by at least 70%, and home energy costs would be reduced by at least 15%. The compounding effect of all these savings would give people enough extra cash that they'll be considering the cost of fuel for their personal helicopter.

Too bad none of this is going to happen within the next 20 years.

Freely you have received, freely give.

The helpless little child made its way toward the United Nation food camp located 1 kilometer away. The photographer stopped only long enough to take this picture.

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. James 2:14-17

When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Mark 10:14

He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; Psalm 113:7

We need to do more than just look at the picture.

If giving to your church will save the life of a child like this, give to your church.
Otherwise, this service is very easy to use: Action Against Hunger.

Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. Luke 12:33

Pirates vs. Ninjas: Part 2

Mission:
Which faction will do the best job mowing the grass: Pirates or Ninjas? The job will be judged on quality and speed. The clock starts at sunrise.

How the Pirates Mow the Grass:

Sunrise: No activity
10:00am: A dozen pirates convene in the front lawn, argue for five minutes and then scatter accross the neighborhood. Five minutes later they return with a dozen nearby residents. Each of these neighbors has their own lawn mower and a few minor cuts and bruises. Due to threats of bodily harm, the neighbors begin to furiously mow the grass. The pirates drive them to mow as fast as they can. They miss a spot or two but another pirate/mower team spots it and cleans it up. The cat-o-nine-tails is employed when mistakes occur, and few make a second mistake. The positioning of the mowers across the lawn isn't perfectly dispersed but it's close. The pace is frantic.
10:16am: Every blade of grass has been cut. The lawn is done.


How the Ninjas Mow the Grass:

Sunrise: No activity
10:00am: No activity
12:00pm: No activity
6:00pm: No activity
Nightfall...
At this point it was agreed upon that the Ninjas had elected not to participate in this competition, and we eventually went to bed.
...
However...despite never hearing a lawnmower, or even hearing the neighbor's dog bark, we found the lawn to be cut and groomed the next morning.


Analysis:
The pirates were clearly very fast. Their lines were not real straight and there were some places where the grass was uneven due to differing blade heights, but it didn't look horrible.

To properly analyze the Ninja's work, a botanical forensics specialist was brought in, and he estimated that the grass was systematically cut between 8:00am and 7:30pm. The disturbing thing is that we were alert and expecting to see the Ninjas begin their work. We simply overlooked the fact that the lawn was gradually being completed throughout the day. The Ninjas methods are a complete mystery. They did a very good job and deserve style points, but speed was a part of this contest, and the Ninjas took at least 9 hours and 14 minutes longer to get the job done. The higher level of quality was not enough to make up for the disparity in speed. Pirates win!