Askingforthirds

Since I got into a car accident in February that totaled my Maxima and my sister’s in Israel, my family has been generous enough to give me my sister’s old car.

While talking about this incredibly generous act should probably be where I concentrate my attention, I’m going to instead detail the grief it’s put me through.

While my sister was last in the country (around May), she filled out the car’s title so that it could be in my name (and could then be taken over by my insurance policy).

I went to the DMV with this filled out expecting that I’d be able to drop the title off and in a few weeks they’d send me a new title… BUT, after about an hour of waiting the DMV counterperson said that where the owner’s name should have been was scratched out and replaced with my sister’s full name, but there hadn’t been any initials beside the change to indicate it was an ‘accepted change’. (My sister did this because she had written her first and last name, but was supposed to put her first, middle, and last name). Since this change wasn’t initialed, it wasn’t suitable for processing. We’d need to get a notarized statement by my sister that said she had made this change.

This is quite difficult since she’s, y’know, living overseas. I don’t know how difficult it is to get a notarized statement in Israel, but I expect it’s difficult (plus the statement would have to be shipped to the U.S. since a notarization loses its value if faxed)

Have no fear, though, my father (the lawyer) says… We’ll get the notary who was present when my sister filled out the title to send a statement that said: “I witnessed the person scratch their name out and put in their full name”.

I took the title and this statement on Tuesday to the DMV in the hope that I had enough documentation to get my title processed.

Not quite.

In fact, the counterperson said: “The notary’s witness statement” didn’t qualify to counter my sister’s scratching out. In addition, the counterperson said that the state of the “date” field (that was filled out by the notary) wasn’t as clear as it would need to be.

So, if you’re keeping score at home: We still need a notarized statement by my sister and now we need a statement from the notary that said that the date is what it should be (and that statement needs to be notarized by another notary since you can’t “self-notarize”).

Oh, and by the way that took another hour standing in line to find out I’m now even further behind.

The hope is now that the wheels of bureaucracy will turn a little easier at the DMV near my parents.

If not, we may just have to wait until my sister is back in town (probably another 6 months).

I went to Harris-Teeter today and they FINALLY have Peter Pan Peanut Butter in stock.
They changed the packaging slightly (by making the jar larger), but it tastes the same.

Now I can go back to dipping my Hershey’s chocolate into my peanut butter of choice.

BTW- I tried Jif and I think choosy moms are idiots.

Y’know what’s a weird juxtaposition?

Walking around my neighborhood in shorts and short-sleeves while seeing Christmas lights.

On Thursday evening, my wife was getting ready to go to work for her 7PM to 7AM shift.

I was doing the dishes (which I had told her I would do a few days earlier).

In a bit of a rush and still groggy from waking up at 5:30pm, my wife turned on the stove top to boil some water for her French Press.

So, we are chatting while I’m doing the dishes and all of a sudden:

KA-BOOM!

Glass is strewn everywhere!

It turned out that she had turned on the wrong stove top, and instead of getting warm water, she warmed up a very large glass casserole dish.

(For those of you who aren’t physics experts, glass does not like to be non-uniformly heated… If you’re going to put a glass dish in any hot environment, make sure that it has something in it that will spread the heat… Water is a pretty good substance.)

After assessing that neither of us were hurt (Phew!), I told Erin that there wasn’t much she cleaning she could do before she needed to get to work, I was set to spend the next couple hours working to clean up all the shards of glass that had exploded in the kitchen (some of it even made it to the foyer and living room).

I got most of the job done that night. I put all the glass I could find into a bag. (Which reminded me of this SNL skit) and I woke up the next morning and 409′ed the counter space.

Now all that’s left is to replace the lenoleum floor that burned after the hot glass exploded onto it!

My wife has been a victim of cyber identity theft!

When she received some imaging software in the mail a few days ago, I thought she had mistakenly purchased it when she asked Shutterfly to print and send her some pictures.

When she called the bank to ask when she purchased this imaging software, though, the bank informed her that they had been denying a number of purchases on her credit card… The most egregious was a failed attempt to purchase a $1000 computer.

The bank gave Erin the IP address for the denied purchase. She then relayed this information to me and it resolved to some computer in Vietnam. (We were lucky the bank could tell that was outside of Erin’s normal purchasing pattern.)

FYI: Just because the offending computer resolved to Vietnam does not mean that the identity thief is in Vietnam. All that means is that the computer cracker was able to take over a machine in Vietnam (either legitimately or by exploiting a vulnerability in the machine).

I think that the cracker obtained Erin’s credit card information by having Erin (unwittingly) install some kind of key-capture software that then relayed the information to the cracker.

My answer to this sad state of affairs is to install Linux on her machine and see if she likes it. If Linux is good enough, then she will be spared from the overwhelming majority of the malware that targets Windows.

I applied for a passport in order to go on my honeymoon to Venice, Italy on September 1st for $100.

In theory, the passport should have arrived October 13th.

When it did not arrive by November 5th, I called up the passport office to find out if they could reissue the passport.

They said they would call me back, which I had assumed was some kind of method of insuring that I was who I said I was and that I really did need my passport reissued. I told them that I am leaving November 21st, and the person that I spoke to did not seem worried that I would receive it by then.

When I didn’t get a call in two business days, I called them again. This time, though, their story changed and in order to get a passport, I would need to have it expedited (which cost an extra $75) if I wanted the re-issue to arrive before the 6 weeks that a re-issue would require.

So, even though I never received the non-expedited passport, I was being charged for both the non-expedited and the expedited passport.

My check written to the Department of State should have been written to the Department of Shakedowns.