Trivia

The Carol of the Birds (the Catalan carol, not the strange new one), for cello, just playing with MusicTeX.

*              *              *    

I dropped my laptop, a Thinkpad T40, and the power connector broke. It still worked if I wiggled the cable very carefully, but the plug-in power supply would not stay connected. The coaxial connector (yellow jack) on the laptop was very loose, and I suspected that I had destroyed it; I imagined it broken free from a printed circuit board, with the mangled contacts touching the lands when I had things twisted just right.

I decided to try to fix it. This requires that the laptop be disassembled almost completely: even the screen must come off. IBM provides an excellent service manual, though. I discovered that the connector is not mounted to any printed circuit board; it is a completely separate plastic assembly, held in place by a single screw. It connects to the motherboard through four crimped wires and a header, and looks like it would be easy to replace. It wasn't broken, though; the screw was just loose. I tightened the screw, and reassembled my laptop.

The plug (i.e., the piece on the wire for the plug-in adapter) turned out to be the problem, which surprised me. It looked fine, but the contact inside the barrel no longer worked. I replaced this with a standard 2.5 mm connector, like Digikey CP3-1001-ND, and it seems to work fine.

*              *              *    

From a Russian-French phrasebook, implausibly found in Vienna:

[top to bottom: `You are wrong', `You are mistaken', `I regret a lot', `I am very embarrassed', `I regret very much that it happened like this', `I feel sympathy for you', `I beg of you, please forgive me', `Forgive me for interrupting you (for disturbing your business)', `I am sorry that I bothered you', `Please don't get angry', `Please don't be offended', `It is not my fault']

*              *              *    

I saw an apartment very close to the Longfellow Bridge. This one rented for 895 USD/month, including all utilities. At the time, I did not know that was suspicious. I met them at an office on a street with fancy shops; they wanted me to show them a pay stub and photo ID, before they would talk, but once I did they seemed friendly enough.

This was a one-room studio, no wider than seven feet on its shortest dimension, at that dimension's widest point. (The floorplan describes a trapezoid, with no two sides the same length.) It was long, though.

The bathroom was dirty tile, and a lamp cord was taped across it. The rest of the apartment was dirty carpet. The kitchenette comprised a dorm fridge and a single-burner hot plate. Two plastic bottles of vodka sat on top of the fridge, one almost empty, the other full. (It struck me as sad, if the tenant was an alcoholic, that he would not even bother to keep those in the freezer. Or wouldn't they fit?) In addition to the bed there was a table, on which a book of sudoku was open.

I inquired about the tenant; was he a suicide? The agent nodded, as if he had explained this very often. It was drowning, though, and not inside the apartment. That didn't seem nearly as bad.

They said that I could leave them a deposit of a single month's rent, and bring the rest within five days. I said that I had forgotten my chequebook, but that I would certainly be in touch.

(The first, second, third, and fifth paragraphs are true.)

*              *              *    

Copper foil with a thickness of one ounce per square foot has a sheet resistance of about 0.5 mΩ/square. Copper foil with a thickness of half an ounce per square foot has a sheet resistance of about 1 mΩ/square. This is easy to remember.

*              *              *    

It's hard to use the E*TRADE bank to make large third-party payments; their anti-fraud is unfortunately thorough.

If you want to get a third-party cashier's cheque (i.e., bank draft), then they need a notarized request letter, which they will process within five to seven business days. A similar restriction applies to third-party wires.

It's not possible to buy US Postal Service money orders with your debit card. By default, the point-of-sale limit is $10k/day. This applies almost everywhere, except at the post office, where the limit is twenty dollars and cannot be changed.

The local branches cannot help. Best case, they might be able to give you directions to the closest notary. The telephone representatives aren't very familiar with any of this, and often contradicted each other. The information given above is from whichever of them seemed most trustworthy.

A wire to yourself from the bank account is also cumbersome. A wire to yourself from the brokerage may be initiated on their web site or by telephone. The latter is the simplest way out, but requires a local bank to receive the funds.

*              *              *    

I live in the United States, where it's not possible to survive without a credit card.

VISA-branded debit cards are good, but a partial solution; they are not necessarily accepted by hotels or rental car agencies. Foreign credit cards are not always accepted; Cingular/AT&T, for example, needs a US card to pay for airtime. The foreign cards also incur an exchange rate penalty. A US dollar-denominated foreign card should avoid this, and it does, except when the merchant somehow puts the transaction through in CAD anyways; in that case I incur the exchange rate penalty twice.

I had maintained a chequing and savings account with the Citizens Bank (in New England; there's several unrelated Citizens Banks). At the time, the accounts had been open for eighteen months, with total deposits around forty thousand dollars. They declined me, because I didn't have a credit history. I called to complain; the agent said that I should call back later, and speak to a different department. I spoke to that department.

They didn't ask if I had any other relationship with the bank, but I told them anyways; they didn't seem to believe me. I asked if they could check my Canadian credit history, and they said they could not. At the end, they confirmed that they would not issue me a credit card. Two weeks later, it came in the mail; a `platinum' card with a limit of a thousand dollars, but no annual fee.

I also tried this with the E*TRADE bank. At that point I did have a credit history, and was therefore instead rejected for an unacceptably low credit score; no longevity. I called the number on the `credit card' page on their web site, and was redirected several times. They ultimately gave me the first number that I had called, and suggested that I try that. I somehow broke the loop; the experience going forward was similar to with the Citizens Bank, but slightly worse.

Whatever description of me appeared on the agent's computer, it apparently did not command respect. They emphasized that they were unable to look at my net worth, Canadian credit history, or employment status. The agent suggested that I might be better served by the Bank of America. I'm not sure if that was meant as an insult or as a useful suggestion; from the tone, I would suspect the former.

So I gave up. With one card, the problem should resolve within a year or so.

I'm not sure what the best way is around this. A friend (also Canadian) never bothered with the banks; he obtained a subprime credit card, of the type with an application fee slightly less than the credit limit. After a couple of years of that, his credit score increased to the point that he could rejoin the mainstream. He reports that the hold music for their call centre is replaced by ads for bankruptcy lawyers.

As a policy note, it now should be clear why the cheque-cashing stores will prosper. Their customer would rather pay five percent and keep his dignity.

September 2007, Cambridge