October 19, 2005
Banks - You gotta love them - Not
My bank keeps putting 'secret' fees on my checking account. Very hard to find anyone that actually KNOWS why those fees are there! Here is an excerpt from their online chat service.
--------
Welcome to an online chat session at Bank of America. Please hold while we connect you to the next available Bank of America Account Specialist. Your chat may be monitored and recorded for quality purposes. You are number 1 in a queue of 1. Thank you for your patience.
You are now chatting with Carlos . Welcome to Bank of America. How can I help you complete your online checking or savings application today?
You: I need to see the COMPLETE rates and fees if possible for the regular account type.
Carlos : Good morning. In order to better assist you could I ask you a few questions geared towards your savings goals?
You: Including charges associated with using quicken
You: no i only want to see the rates and fees.
Carlos : I sincerely apologize; however, at this time via our Live Chat, we specialize only in opening new checking and savings accounts online.
Carlos :
Carlos : In order to better assist you with your inquiry, please contact our Customer Service specialists at 1.800.432.1000 we are available from 7AM to 10PM
Carlos : Or pleaser visit one of our banking centers for all of the available options.
Carlos : Please click this link to view the savings accounts offered online.
Carlos : Would you like to open a one of these accounts online today?
You: i can't open a new checking without seeing the rates and fees. how can i open a new checking if i don't know all of your hidden charges?
You: your web site does not have the complete listing of all the different fees associated with an account. can you point me to that.
Carlos : Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to determine the best account for you with none or little maintenance fees?
You: I would like you to show me the rates and fees ONLY for the regular account type and no other choices.
------------
I gave up at this point! Yikes.
--------
Welcome to an online chat session at Bank of America. Please hold while we connect you to the next available Bank of America Account Specialist. Your chat may be monitored and recorded for quality purposes. You are number 1 in a queue of 1. Thank you for your patience.
You are now chatting with Carlos . Welcome to Bank of America. How can I help you complete your online checking or savings application today?
You: I need to see the COMPLETE rates and fees if possible for the regular account type.
Carlos : Good morning. In order to better assist you could I ask you a few questions geared towards your savings goals?
You: Including charges associated with using quicken
You: no i only want to see the rates and fees.
Carlos : I sincerely apologize; however, at this time via our Live Chat, we specialize only in opening new checking and savings accounts online.
Carlos :
Carlos : In order to better assist you with your inquiry, please contact our Customer Service specialists at 1.800.432.1000 we are available from 7AM to 10PM
Carlos : Or pleaser visit one of our banking centers for all of the available options.
Carlos : Please click this link to view the savings accounts offered online.
Carlos : Would you like to open a one of these accounts online today?
You: i can't open a new checking without seeing the rates and fees. how can i open a new checking if i don't know all of your hidden charges?
You: your web site does not have the complete listing of all the different fees associated with an account. can you point me to that.
Carlos : Do you mind if I ask you a few questions to determine the best account for you with none or little maintenance fees?
You: I would like you to show me the rates and fees ONLY for the regular account type and no other choices.
------------
I gave up at this point! Yikes.
October 16, 2005
Playing Itunes Music on your Home Theater System
Link : http://www.apple.com/airportexpress
Streaming Media
Recently I've purchased a Mac iBook G4. Love it. The machine really rocks. For several months I noticed itunes but didn't do anything with it. I don't have an ipod or an MP3 player. No real need.
However, my wife and I did decide to make a CD or two and we bought a couple of songs from itunes and used the itunes app to burn the CD.
On a lark though, I ripped all of our CD's. I did make a mistake and ripped them as WAV. After my disk filled up after 5 CD's, I went back and actually READ what the different formats actually were. Fortunately, itunes has a really good conversion concept so I didn't have to re-rip.
I selected AAC, which is Apple's compression/decompression algorithms for music encoding. (the music is stored in an compressed format on your disk drive and I chose the apple format).
I went ahead and ripped the rest of our CD's, which was between 100-200 CD's. Wow. What a job. That took about 2 weekends of just servicing the disk drive.
Now that we had all the CD's ripped. What could we do? Not much really. We did start listening to music in the evenings before bedtime which was something we didn't do much of. That was nice. Apple speakers not too bad, but still very tiny and tiNNy speakers.
A week later or so, we had company over and so I made a nice play list of up-tempo music and we played it from the laptop. Not so cool. My wife says that it is too tinny.
So now I decide that I ought to be able to plug in the Mac to the home stereo and that was pretty easy - Radioshack mini-jack to RCA adapter cables. But that isn't very cool because I have to have my Mac near the home theater system to play music and I have to string cables.
So, my next mission is to try to find something so I don't have to string cables. I searched HIGH and LOW and so far the best next thing is the Apple Airport Express. It basically plugs into the wall and then you plug the minijack to RCA adapter cable into it. Then from ANY computer running itunes you can play the music you select on any stereo hooked to the airport express. very cool. you can name them AND you can have multiple units in the house.
I DID leave out an important detail... you have to have a wireless network in your house, which I do. The airport express is super easy to setup, even better on a Mac, but I think its pretty easy on Windows.
Now, we want to put speakers in our bedroom. But I DO NOT want a stereo system. What I want is something like airport express + audio amplifier that I can throw into the attic. And it has to be small, like a small novel.
So far I have not found anything like this. I have found close calls by Netstreams and by Barix but not anything too close. I have found a very good simple amp (RCA in, speaker posts out) by Sonic Impact.
Also, I've noticed that I get 'skips' or 'drop-outs'. Oddly enough, this occurs more with the 802.11G (54 kbps) network than with my older 802.11B (11 kbps [ kilobits per second] ) network. I don't quite figure that out. My new router does allow me to put priority on the music data so I'll do that.
All for now.
Recently I've purchased a Mac iBook G4. Love it. The machine really rocks. For several months I noticed itunes but didn't do anything with it. I don't have an ipod or an MP3 player. No real need.
However, my wife and I did decide to make a CD or two and we bought a couple of songs from itunes and used the itunes app to burn the CD.
On a lark though, I ripped all of our CD's. I did make a mistake and ripped them as WAV. After my disk filled up after 5 CD's, I went back and actually READ what the different formats actually were. Fortunately, itunes has a really good conversion concept so I didn't have to re-rip.
I selected AAC, which is Apple's compression/decompression algorithms for music encoding. (the music is stored in an compressed format on your disk drive and I chose the apple format).
I went ahead and ripped the rest of our CD's, which was between 100-200 CD's. Wow. What a job. That took about 2 weekends of just servicing the disk drive.
Now that we had all the CD's ripped. What could we do? Not much really. We did start listening to music in the evenings before bedtime which was something we didn't do much of. That was nice. Apple speakers not too bad, but still very tiny and tiNNy speakers.
A week later or so, we had company over and so I made a nice play list of up-tempo music and we played it from the laptop. Not so cool. My wife says that it is too tinny.
So now I decide that I ought to be able to plug in the Mac to the home stereo and that was pretty easy - Radioshack mini-jack to RCA adapter cables. But that isn't very cool because I have to have my Mac near the home theater system to play music and I have to string cables.
So, my next mission is to try to find something so I don't have to string cables. I searched HIGH and LOW and so far the best next thing is the Apple Airport Express. It basically plugs into the wall and then you plug the minijack to RCA adapter cable into it. Then from ANY computer running itunes you can play the music you select on any stereo hooked to the airport express. very cool. you can name them AND you can have multiple units in the house.
I DID leave out an important detail... you have to have a wireless network in your house, which I do. The airport express is super easy to setup, even better on a Mac, but I think its pretty easy on Windows.
Now, we want to put speakers in our bedroom. But I DO NOT want a stereo system. What I want is something like airport express + audio amplifier that I can throw into the attic. And it has to be small, like a small novel.
So far I have not found anything like this. I have found close calls by Netstreams and by Barix but not anything too close. I have found a very good simple amp (RCA in, speaker posts out) by Sonic Impact.
Also, I've noticed that I get 'skips' or 'drop-outs'. Oddly enough, this occurs more with the 802.11G (54 kbps) network than with my older 802.11B (11 kbps [ kilobits per second] ) network. I don't quite figure that out. My new router does allow me to put priority on the music data so I'll do that.
All for now.
