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  • Emigrant Direct

    Currently, I use ING for my savings account.  Their interest rates are at 3.8%, but I’ve always been tempted to sign up with Emigrant Direct, since their rates are always higher (currently 4%).  A month ago, I decided to take the plunge and sign up.

    To begin with, their signup is a lot more complicated with ING.  Good or bad, it just takes a lot longer to actually start making money.  Anyways, you can open an account with no initial deposit.  Being that you can’t demo the system before you sign up, I figured this would be a good way to make sure I actually liked what they do, and that I wasn’t jumping into something I didn’t want to be in. 

    After signing up, you have to attach it to an account so you can get money in and out, and they can authorize the account.  Not a problem.  Since I was going to transfer money out of my ING account to begin with, I put in the account and routing details for it.  I then waited 3 or 4 days until two deposits were done, and then I signed back in to Emigrant to authorize the account.  Unfortunately, that’s not the last step.  Turns out to be able to sign into the account online, you need to wait for your first billing statement to arrive.

    So, I wait.

    On the 22nd or so, I finally get a statement from them, so I proceed to sign in.  I get a strange error message while signing in, but figure it’s just a glitch since it refreshed on its own, and was gone.  So, after I finally get signed in, I get a “General Error” when I attempt to view my account.  They have a message center, so I fire off an email to figure out what’s going on.  The reply follows.

    Dear Customer,
    Thank you for your Inquiry.
    According to our records, your American Dream savings Account has been closed effective 12/15/2005 due to an initial deposit of “0.00”. After 10 business days of the account at a “0.00” balance, the account will be closed.
    However, In order to reopen the account please mail in a check to the following address.
    Mail in a check made out to EmigrantDirect for at least one dollar with your EmigrantDirect account number

    Please mail the check to the following address:
    EmigrantDirect
    ATTN: Communication Department
    13 Croton Avenue
    Ossining, New York 10562
    Thank you for banking with EmigrantDirect
    -Shahara H.

    Let’s point out what’s wrong with this email, shall we?

    1. My name is not “Customer.”  Is your system so archaic that you can’t retrieve my name from my login ID?
    2. How was I supposed to fund the account when it took > 10 days to receive my mailed bank statement?
    3. Why does your sign up process inform you that you don’t have to fund the account, when you, in actuality, do?

    Ok, so those last two weren’t actually part of the email, but it’s implied based on what was offered to me during signup.  And don’t you worry faithful readers, I emailed back Shahara and let her know how assinine this policy is.

    I haven’t yet sent off an check to them, because after looking over the interface, it leaves a lot to be desired.  I can’t even add additional accounts to automatically fund an account.  Or at least, I can’t do that from any of the menu’s I currently have available.  Maybe someone who has a functioning account can instill a little bit more confidence, but as it stands, I think I may not do anything with Emigrant. 

  • Back on the Road to MCSE

    I’m sure everyone remembers my praise of Microsoft Certification Tests from last time I talked about them, but now I come with new found knowledge and an external pressure (having to get it done fully certified in one year).  For those of you that don’t know, I’m now an MCP (yes Nick and Jason, I can do the dance/handshake now).  Actually, I’m closer to being an MCSA than MCP, but who’s counting. 

    Now, this may come as a surprise to those that I have worked with before, as I don’t hold the tests in very high regards.  This is mostly due to the people were MCSE Certified, and the messes they left me to clean up.  Plus there was the horrible taste in my mouth after I took my first test under a year ago.  Not to give myself excuses, but looking back, that first test wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be.  Yes, I don’t doubt that I should’ve passed, but just reading the book without taking any sort of practice test probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.  Granted, I did pretty much the exact same thing this time, with minimal (read about 30 mins before each test) review for both the Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.  Honestly, I don’t think it has anything to do with the amount of review time I put towards it, and instead how much I’ve actually used the product. 

    Now after I’ve completed both of those tests, looking back, I realize it is a fairly decent test.  It shows if you really know the material, I guess.  I think the last time I took it, I was just so nervous, and when I started seeing the complex questions I paniced more than anything.  This time around, I knew that I knew the material, so it was much easier, and quite painless.  However, at the end of the test it was still hard to push the completed button. 

    I’m just hoping the other tests I have go just as easily.  I know, though, that I’m going to have to spend more time on each of them instead of just flying off the cuff, as I don’t know as much intricacies with AD, networking, etc.  Actually, I tried with the Networking I test, and amazingly didn’t do that bad.  Unfortunately, much like the first time I took the Windows 2003 test, though, I failed, but by such a small amount that I’m sure if I would’ve taken it the next day I would’ve passed.  Oh well, such is life.

    Four more in 9 months.  It sounds like a long time, but going home and studying is not what I call a fun time.  Hopefully I can mash out a bunch within a week to keep me from spreading it out too much.

  • Merry Christmas!

    Merry Christmas to everyone!

  • Daily Humor

    I saw this over at BoingBoing, and couldn’t resist sending it to everyone one I knew.  However, I realized, there’s some of you I may have missed, so I introduce you to the Coyote Hat.

  • ESX Networking

    This is just a quick update with something that I finally fixed two nights ago.  If you happen to run VMWare ESX, *DO NOT* share a NIC between the console and Virtual Machines (VMs).  This was how I had been running my system because I only had one NIC at the time.  However, I had purchased a new dual port Intel gigabit NIC about a month ago, but I just hadn’t had the time to actually update the system to utilize it.  Well, two nights ago, I set the original NIC to only the console session, and then put ports on the dual port NIC on a virtual switch used by all the virtual machines.  Therefore, I theoretically get 200 Mbps to the virtual machines. 

    Holy crap, talk about an improvement.  Transfers between the VMs and my NAS used to be dog slow, but now they are where they should be.  I just need to get a gigabit switch with jumbo frames to use everything to fullest extent.

  • Snowfall

    Last night was our first, what I’d call, large, snowfalll of the season.  It looks as if we got around 6” or more.  What made it funny was that it started before close of business, and by the time 5PM rolled around, there was probably a couple of inches or so.  I’m just glad that I didn’t have to drive anywhere last night.  I leasurely walked to the Blue Line, and then walked from my stop to my apt.  It probably took me about 5 minutes longer than normal, just because of having to walk in the snow.  However, as I walked over 90/94, traffic was stopped.  The freeway then remained a parking lot until after midnight.  It took Erin 45 minutes to go about 10 miles last night after class.  Good thing I sat at home and played CoD2 and PGR3 all night with Binford.  :cheese:

    In fact, last night was the first time we tried out Live.  Unfortunately you can’t have two players signed into one Xbox360 and play, but we did have a lot of fun trading off the controller.  Overall quite fun, we both sucked, but enjoyable none-the-less.

    Oh yeah, and one more thing.  Be sure to check out my updated Live stats with my Gamercard over there on the right.  We didn’t know that we could both have an account on one box, so we had been using Binford’s, hence why I have about nothing.

  • Turkey Day

    I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving yesterday. I know I did; ate way too much, that’s for sure. Erin and I made the trek up to Detroit to enjoy the holiday weekend with my parents. All in all quite good, well, except for the snow, but that’s to be expected since we are up in MI.

    Last night we went to the sold out Pistons vs Wizards game at the Palace of Auburn Hills. My Dad got free tickets from work, so the four of us (Brother, Dad, Erin, and myself) headed out. My Dad thought that the tickets were for the same section as the fight that happened last season, but the row was AA (section 115), so we figured we’d be 27 rows up from the floor. Turns out that the first seven rows are AA -GG because they aren’t permanent seats. We ended up being right behind the Piston’s bench. It was crazy. And the game went to two overtimes, granted the Pistons ended up losing. We definitely got our money’s worth though, oh wait…

  • Xbox 360 Part 2

    As I’m sure everyone knows, the Xbox 360 was released on Tuesday. And you can read all about Erin and my adventure on Aaron’s site. Unfortunately, we came up empty handed. However, even if we would’ve gotten one, I think we would’ve resold it. Especially since they were going for more than double their cost.

    The good about all this though, is that we will still be getting one, just probably not anytime soon. I’ve gone back to the company I had the preorder with, since it’s about the only place I fell I’ll be able to get it from anytime soon. In fact, the distributor that supplies Avindigo apparently says they should have some on Monday. Who knows if those have already been allocated though. I guess we’ll just have to wait like everybody else. I can’t wait to get it and play on the new plasma though.

  • Seattle

    All last week I was in Seattle, WA for a new hire orientation. A little late, but there were others that had started before I had. It was actually a good time. The weather was beautiful, and the people were a lot of fun. In fact, of the 35 or so of us, there were only eight of us from the US. The vast majority of the people were from the Paris office, but there were also people there from Singapore, Melbourne, Norway, and the Netherlands. Overall the classes were ok. They were management oriented, so much of what we covered seemed like common sense, but just put into words. Alas, it was good to do something different for a week, and the Grand Hyatt we stayed at was very nice.

  • Updates Soon

    I’ve been really busy lately, and just haven’t found the time to update.  However, just as a teaser, I’ve got two entries in the books.  One about Seattle, the other about the Xbox360 adventure last night.  Anyways, hopefully they’ll be something up later tonight, and if not, over the long weekend.