I haven't been listing my books in a while, mostly cause I'm too lazy. But this month I found myself a bit short of cash and decided to list some, well one for now. Turned out I forgot to transfer money from my computer fund to cover computer expenses.

I listed it at a few dollars higher than the lowest seller for the same condition and thought it was fine. Then some idiots came by and drastically undercut price by as much as $15. I'm laughing at them now with my extra money. Of course people are not going to think about buying books for next semester during christmas. Sorry to all the consumers out there, but I tend to think from the perspective of a business owner.

Speaking of Christmas, I finished shopping for gifts today. What? They won't sell the stuff I wanted until today and I don't like to buy substitute gifts. Spent a total of around $290, including gift for myself .

Year end wrap up:

Assets increased by 49% since I first joined.

IRA is fully funded for 2006 and 2007.

Expenses this year is at an all time high of $9,500.

Took the last final this morning and messed up badly so now my grades go like this: A, A-, A, B+.

Could have gotten a better grade had I actually studied for the last exam, but I got fed up with all the stress, lack of sleep and constant studying, not to mention the copious amount of coffee I have been consuming lately, and decided to go read porn instead. Umm...yeah, two days reserved for studying turned into half an hour of reviewing before I realized it.

Of course I'm kicking myself now, cause had I managed 5.5% more on the final, the equivalent of 2.75 correct answers, the A- would have been guaranteed. Then again I sort of resigned myself to a B+ in this class before I even took the final because his exams were extremely tricky and I would need to ace it to get the grade I wanted. Oh well, must remember to do better during the semester next time, and no more bringing the laptop along when studying.

And three more to go. I'm feeling pretty good about it, but nervous at the same time. Last time I thought I aced the exam in this class, I ended up with 88%. Got all the major questions correct, but I missed out on the multiple choices because I thought the test was too easy and didn't read it carefully enough. Those were tricky.

Had hoped to get all A or A-, but at this rate, I might end up with one to two B+. Note to self, put in more effort during the semester so I don't have to work so hard for the final.

And it's not their computer system.

The overdraft, which has no reason to exist in the first place, went through earlier today despite the fact that I requested that they canceled it. But that's not all, the overdraft originated from someone else checking account. In other words, someone is tapping into my credit card via overdraft protection.

I called back and demanded to know why this happened and they told me that for some reason, another person checking account was linked to mine, date and time unknown. After conferring with the banker and verifying that the checking account wasn't mine, the rep told me they'll have to wait and see if they can get money back from that person. I was seriously pissed off. Here I am trying my best to protect my identity as well as my finance only to have the financial institution I'm dealing with screwed me over like this.

After I rant and rave, they finally told me that since it wasn't my fault, they'll put the money back even if they couldn't get it from the other person, as well as unlink that account. Guess what, when they tried to remove that account, they couldn't do it since the accounts information do not match, which was also why my request for the overdraft cancellation the night before didn't work. So I'm told it'll take 1 to 2 days to resolve this.

I tried to get them to restrict my card from linking to any account for overdraft protection and they bluntly told me they couldn't do it. Their reason: only accounts with matching information can be linked. Duh! They why the hell did some stranger account got linked to mine? Btw, this means that any person who has the authority to link accounts can link just about any account to your credit card too.

Either they have really incompetence employees or something fishy is going on. I lean toward the latter considered that a few months ago, one of the wells fargo bank teller forged a withdrawal slip and stole money from my mom account. We had to jump through hoops with their fraud department to get our money back.

Once this is solved, I'm closing all my accounts with them. Sure it'll be a pain to change checking account with my various online accounts, especially the U.S. Treasury, but it'll be worth it.

Update:
The transactions have been reversed, finally.

I logged in to check my balance today and noticed that the available credit on my credit card dropped significantly. There had been no new charges.

I called up customer service and they told me that the new credit reflected the overdraft request set to occur tonight. WTF? My checking account is positive and the only thing pending on it is the deposit from my job.

So I was transfered back and forth between the credit card and the bank, and one had no information while the other insisted that they had an overdraft protection request. After the overdraft protection was completely removed, I asked if the checking account linked to it was mine or did it get linked to someone else and they told me it was mine. Don't know what the heck they're doing but this is seriously lowering my confidence in them.

Something like this happened a while ago to. The available credit just mysteriously dropped, but since the amount was small and there was no charge, I didn't question it. A few weeks later, the amount was raised back up. I thought that was that, over and done with, and now this happened. Grrr!

The good new, I got a raise. Yay. An extra $40 a month sure helps in this time of declining interest rate.

My ISP bills very strangely.

Dates of invoice:

May 14
June 14
July 17
August 19
September 20
October 23
December 01

Since I signed up with them, rate has fallen by $5 and when I called, they told me nothing can be done because I was locked in the previous rate. Furthermore, my current rate was supposed to be for the first 6 months only with a $10/month increase for the last 6 months. So far, I'm getting half a month free and the rate hasn't gone up at all.

I recently went to have my eyes examined, this is where the stupid spending last month occurred, and got both glasses as well as contacts.

All my previous insurance plans have covered the cost of glasses so I didn't think much about it. Blithely, I scheduled an eye exam for both glasses and contact thinking that it won't cost me anything. Boys was I wrong, the current plan covered nothing. I was ushered straight from the exam room to the optical service center to get my glasses only to find out when I finished choosing that I'll have to pay to whole darn thing. The contact fitting is out of pocket expense too. The whole thing cost me a total of $356, actually it would have cost more but I delayed ordering the contact lenses until after the follow up examination. Btw, Kaiser optical center is ridiculously overpriced.

An expensive experience, but I've learned my lesson, I'm not going back there to order anything ever again. Which brings me to my current problem, where or how to order contacts and which brand? I took a peek at walmart and they have a ton of choices. I remember reading on some blog a while ago of sites for custom order contact at reasonable price and such but I can't find it anymore.

Edit:

Looks like I don't have as much choice as I thought. For my diameter, 13.8, the only monthly contact lense available is Focus Night & Day. Darn it, I wanted the $20 per box price instead of $43. At least it's still better than the $278 for 1 year supply at Kaiser. Lol, I forgot that 6 lenses is only for 3 months.

Here's a picture of my laptop



I added 1GB of RAM, which was easier to do than for a desktop, and got rid of the memory leak know as McAffee as well as junk programs so it's very fast now. Of course it's slow compare to a duo core, but quite a deal for $100. I installed some basic programs and they used up half of the 80GB hard drive. Yikes! Definitely can't store much on it. I upgraded my sister's laptop too and bought a bunch of accessories for both of us so I ended up gifting her back the half price portion she gifted me.

Btw, if anyone is interested in getting a basic laptop. I would recommend a duo core. Even though most programs are not written for processes splitting, a duo core with lower GHz is still much better since each core can run a different program.

Here's the junk I acquired too. Bleh!



They should have just decreased the price by the $70 that the printer is retailing for instead of including it in the package. I don't need a new scanner/printer/whatever combo since I already have devices with the same functions. The resell price is so low since the market is saturated with it that it'll probably cost me $ to get rid of it. The worst part, it's taking up precious space in my room.

Now I only need to get gifts for my parents and I'm done for Xmas.