Chinese Vegetable and... Banks AGAIN?

As some of you might have witnessed, I have been growing some (unidentified) chinese vegetable over the last few months on my window sill. A few of them have grown to a harvestable size while I was gone, so my mum cooked it for me. Not bad, for about 3 months of agonizing over their stunted growth!

Desjardins called me today to give me another reason to bitch at them and about them, again. In a nutshell, the caisse changed their accounts last month, resulting in their unsuspecting clients having to pay fees for each transaction unless the client indicates otherwise. So I ended up paying for a bunch of transactions because their letter to me did not mention this.

I ranted to Big Pu last night about this, and both of us wanted to know if there were a way to protest their stupid new account structures. Protest? Because they're not a bank but a cooperative, which should mean we are supposed to have a say on this. I admit that I am a bad co-op member because I did not stay well-informed. The people who decided on making stupid user fees are even worse. But whoever voted these dumbasses in who created this shit should be punched in the kidneys.

Social Anxiety, and Banks... Again.

Being cooped up indoors 24/7 for much too long, I also realize when I have to conquer the urges of hiding away from the world and reaching outside when I need to. So at least when I have an issue, like not being paid for work done, I can overcome stupid fears, like that of using the telephone, and try to figure out who messed up. Fortunately, I didn't have to get upset at people to fix the problem over the line, and things are resolved.

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I have an aversion to the telephone because the fact that I cannot see a person's reaction when I speak to them already comprimises a part of my brain telling me if I am being unwelcome or not. It comes from my deep-rooted insecurity, and the memories and fears of rejection that has plagued me throughout my inexplicable childhood. Thus, I would rather conduct transactions and communicate face-to-face as much as possible, comforted by the physical presence of a person.

However, the bank (or cooperative) is another issue. One time several years ago when I started studying at McGill, the caisse populaire didn't allow me to pay my tuition bill at the teller without charging me extra for some stupid reason, and the fact that the teller was cold and unhelpful didn't improve my thoroughly negative impression of banks.

I have never, ever liked banks. I would rather hide my money in a pillowcase in a box in a concrete vault at the bottom of the ocean on another planet in another galaxy. Unfortunately, on this planet, normal everyday monetary transactions require a person with some profession or other to have an account at a financial institution. Thus, I have one, at the Caisse Populaire Desjardins. And I avoid it as much as possible. (Though I avoid the RBC even moreso.)

But their internet banking gives me relief. Internet banking is a godsend, and should have come much, much sooner. I can pay my bills online. And I can OC-ly check my account every ten seconds to make sure they are paid.

Except if I am using Firefox, apparently. My second call of the day involved whining at the tech guy, and being told that the error page I kept getting sent to was due to me using an internet browser that was not "Internet Explorer or Netscape" ...!

Netscape...!? Didn't that die out when people were still trying to avoid the Y2K catastrophe that crippled hospitals, government institutions, financial institu-oh wait. That might explain it. (The fact that the monetary investment by everyone into the Y2K bug hadn't caused such a ruckus meant that they were reluctant to let Netscape die in the horrific Firefox wake.)

But wait - paradoxically, the Netscape investment didn't include creating internet banking back then. Otherwise, I'd have been saved the embarrassment of walking up to the teller and being told in none too many words that I was an idiot. What the hell are they using my money for? *rage rage rage*

FREE E-BOOKS - Rock on!

Project Gutenberg collects books that are out of copyright and free for the public and makes these books available for download bliss. Of course, it takes a lot of effort and crazy reading to get something like this put together, so they rely on volunteers to digitize, proofread, format, and put together these thousands and thousands of books. This volunteer project is called Digitized Proofreaders.

So while I'm waiting for... uh, just waiting... well, I'm proofreading pages that have been spat out by a scanner and OCR program. Today is the 5th day since I joined, and I'm up to the 60th page. I am currently most involved in a textbook on algebra for high school, and it's probably the most annoying proofreading project there (other than the smudgefest-sideways-tables-scanned-with-a-flashlight books and the ancient-languages-with-weird-markings-and-charaters texts). I've hit upon the pages no one is eager to proofread because they're pages of nothing but fractions, and the OCR garbles every single character from these scans.

But on the plus side, I'm rank #2259, tied with only 20 people. YES!

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 Some People Screw Up at the Bank and Elsewhere

I went to the CIBC today to drop off donations, but somehow the tellers don't know what the printed page of online donations looks like. Maybe it's the English that threw them off. They made me register *again* for some reason, but now it's out of my hands. For now.

If I reach $300 by the end of October, I'll get a puffy one-shoulder bag. Let's keep raising the funds! :)

After the bank, I went around the corner to the Running Room (Coin des Coureurs, in QC) and picked up my participant's kit. I only discovered the t-shirt they gave me was dirty on the collar, like someone had dropped cola on it. :(

Just waiting for the rain to stop... *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm runner #1448. AWWIGHT!