Let’s go through a checklist of what it takes to make a Twilight movie:

Acting?  Nope.
Plot?  Nope.
Anything surprising at all?  Nope.
Wasting lots of time with montages as if that makes a movie?  Check.
Lots of staring into the distance?  Check.
Vocalizing the obvious?  Check.
Taking a 2×4 to your head to make sure you have a low enough IQ to enjoy Twilight?  Check.

The moral to the story is, if you drool on yourself, you will enjoy the movie.  Otherwise….have some dignity and watch Battlefield Earth instead.

The only way I may watch another one would be if it was like this:

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I then stood up to leave, and Lynn took the check from her desk, and despite me asking her for it, since she wasn’t going to do anything with it anyways, she refused and I reached over and took it from her hand, since after all it was my property and she refused to give it to me.  She then very dramatically claimed I assaulted her, and claimed to call the police.  I laughed considering the preposterous nature of the claim of assault, and left to continue on errands with my family.

While driving, I called the national call center for Capital One and filed a formal complaint with Brittany.  She informed me of the process and that someone would be in touch.

About fifteen minutes later, I received a call on my cell phone from the Flower Mound Police Department asking me to return to either the bank or the police department.  I told them I would be at the police department in about ten minutes.

I showed up and sat down in a conference room with a pair of officers who explained to me the situation.  Lynn is claiming assault, but since it obviously wasn’t assault, it has been moved down to a Class C misdemeanor of “Offensive Touch”, which is dubious since there were no witnesses or any physical evidence.  I filled out a voluntary statement explaining what had happened. The officer  said the bank wanted to “Trespass” me, which basically means they tell me not to come back or they will call the cops.  The officer said he wasn’t going to do it, and asked for my word that I wouldn’t go back.  I, of course, gave it since at this point I can’t take my business from Capital One fast enough.

During this time, my wife had been in the car with my girls and on the phone with Capital One trying to figure out how to continue to conduct business until we can change banks.  Sandy (she introduced herself as the branch manager), told my wife I was not to come back to the bank, and that all our accounts are now frozen (garnished).  Sandy gave no reason for this drastic (and illegal) action.  My wife told Sandy that she needed to buy groceries that night for our infant and toddler daughters, and in response, Sandy said, “You can’t.  Your accounts are all on hold, until you come in and close them.”

One of the accounts garnished was my business account, and LLC which isn’t even mine since it is its own entity not linked to my social security number at all.

My wife eventually got the number for Mr. Randy Hall, the District Manager, whom we tried to call several times but he doesn’t answer his phone and his voicemail isn’t set up, so we were unable to leave him a message.

We received a voice mail on Tuesday from Leslie at the call center saying “there is a chain of command and you will need to speak with the Branch Manager”.  We also found out that day that there really isn’t a branch manager just an interim setup of various people filling in as required.

Since all our accounts were frozen, we went and opened four new accounts at another local bank.  My wife had asked Capital One’s call center for some help in understanding what was going on, but they said we had to speak to the branch manager at the Flower Mound branch.  We couldn’t even go to another branch to get this fixed, and by fixed, I mean, get our money that had been illegal garnished.  We then got our attorney involved to figure out how to get the accounts closed.  He called the Flower Mound PD and they said to just go to the Flower Mound branch, and let them call the police.  As long as we were there conducting business, they can’t ask us to leave since we have effected consent to be on private property.

I didn’t really like that answer, so our attorney called the Flower Mound branch and asked what we could do.  James said my wife could come up there and close the accounts, even though the business account, by contract and law, couldn’t be closed by anyone other than myself.  But since Capital One employees had already broken a few laws, why stop now?  We decided to go to the Lewisville Branch and close the accounts.

Olivia helped us there and was very helpful, friendly, and professional, exactly what we were used to and have come to expect from Capital One over the years.

On Wednesday, I again called the call center and spoke to Kenneth, who was appalled at the entire situation and again gave me Randy Hall’s phone number.  Kenneth did confirm that it was in fact not working and gave me Mr. Hall’s assistant’s phone number instead.  Kenneth did confirm that in Texas it is illegal to place a hold on an account’s funds without state or federal directives and only then it is for child support or the IRS.

I have called and left a message with Randy Hall’s assistant, so we will see where this goes.   I am still pursuing the matter actively with consumer groups, regulatory entities, and governmental agencies.

The treatment was ridiculous.  Does Lynn call the cops on every single person that takes a piece of paper from her hand faster than she wanted?  Especially after being asked for it and not relinquishing it?  If so, it is amazing there are customers at the Flower Mound branch of Capital One at all.  If not, why was I singled out?  What are the consequences for Sandy and Lynn for illegally garnishing our accounts, including a company account which is hurting our business since we can’t cut checks until we have new ones printed?  I have employees to pay, and that now gets delayed due to the illegal scare tactics of Capital One Bank.

1. Yes, we think about sex a lot.  In fact, if you actually knew how much or in what detail, you would never stop blushing.   It is how we are wired.  It is like you thinking about if your ass looks fat in jeans or your hair is frizzing due to humidity, we are just more direct and simple than that.
2. If you consider the relationship like a tall building, women are up on the 100th floor, all CEO like, communicating, being rational, using logic, and trying to connect before and during sex. Men are in sub basement J working on the furnaces turning up the heat until clothes come off.
3. We worry about our body just as much as you do, we just don’t dwell on it when we are naked together, we are far more interested in your body at this point.  Take a hint from that, we would like it to be the same way.  When we are naked together, don’t worry about what I think of your body, because guess what, it looks great to me, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have tried so hard to get you to this point.  Don’t be so uptight about your thighs/breasts/stomach/hips/ass/pubic hair (or lack thereof)/smell/taste that you let a great night of sex with your willing and hungry man pass you by.  Turn off that part of your head, look into our lustful eyes, and try to see you as we do: An amazing goddess that we want to have/taste/touch every inch of and give a great night.
4. When you say “Don’t stop”, for some reason we hear “do it faster/harder/better”.  So, do us a favor and be even more direct, something like “just like that, perfect, just like that”.  Let’s face it, at this point, we don’t have enough blood left in our head to recognize our native language, much less understand complex directions like “don’t stop”.
5. Your vagina is foreign soil to us.  We didn’t get to play with a vagina 10 times a day during junior high like we did with our cocks.  So, when we are down there, give us some direction.  A little to the right?  To the left?  Somewhere in the middle? Fingers?  No?  You will like it better and we will be even more confident about doing it.
6. Don’t ever fake it.  Tell us what you need to get off.  We want you to get off, as much as you want.  By this point, we are going to get off.  It isn’t hard to make us climax, and since we actually are into you and want to come back for more, tell us what you need to make it happen.
7. Talking dirty is all sorts of hot.  You don’t have to swear or even use a recognizable language; moaning, breathing, and gasping are all good.  If you don’t believe me, call your man at work some time, and just make those types of noises into the phone.  I promise you, there is a severely horny man on the other end of the line trying to figure out how to cancel meetings and rush home to pounce you.
8. Don’t ask us for honesty when looking at clothing.  We will say anything looks great if it increases our chance of getting to peel it off you.  Besides, we are usually thinking about having a tryst right there and then in the dressing room.
9. Don’t demean us for kinky ideas.  We are like Jacques Cousteau, and want to explore all kinds of things.  We have seen a lot of porn in our life and are curious if a finger around your anus will make you scream in pleasure.  We aren’t trying to offend or anything, just curious, and are comfortable with you enough to suggest (or try) it.
10. Blowjobs are amazing. We love them.  If you are adverse to giving, let us know why and we will fix it.  Do you need directions, candles, pretty smells, us to shave or trim, what?  We will fix it, I promise you.
11. Just because we notice another woman, doesn’t mean we are even considering anything with her.  Maybe she had those shorts with something written on the ass, or some bling tried to burn our retinas, or something was off, or we know her from work, etc.  Perhaps we just noticed her because you are so much more desirable and she doesn’t know she is being outshone and out classed by you in your sweat suit instead of pretending behind designer clothes or makeup.
12. Even thought you may not feel desirable or lusty at the moment because you are eating/cooking/cleaning/running etc, you are.  You always are, no matter what.  For the record, your sweat contains pheromones that drive us nuts, so next time you aren’t feeling sexy because you just worked out, remember your body didn’t get the memo and is broadcasting the menu to us.

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My wife and I have several credit cards like most Americans.  We pay our bills on time, always paying above minimums.  We shop to get the good rates and favorable terms, that is until recently.

In the last ~60 days, we have received several notifications that our interest rates are increasing and/or our credit lines are decreasing.  We have good credit, never missed a payment, always pay above minimum, and yet, even on cards we do not have a balance we are seeing our rates moved from fixed single digit rates to double digit variable rates.

A couple of the cards claim that they ran our credit and that is the reason for the increase of rates and decrease of credit line.  However, our credit score is higher now than it was when we were issued the card, so that reason is completely bogus.

Closing the account is not a viable option since that hurts our credit score.

This irresponsible behavior, tightening of credit without cause is only going to further the economic crisis.  We are, without cause, being charged more for the same credit.  It is like a double inflation.  Credit costs more, the dollar is worth less, and yet, without credit and a strong dollar, the American economy will never recover.

Credit companies must be held responsible for their actions.  Consumers need more options for recourse when adverse actions are taken without notice or explanation against their accounts.  Closing the account isn’t feasible since it hurts the credit score of the consumer.

Either this behavior is stopped, or the economy will continue to falter.  When faced with higher interest rates for no reason, and lower credit terms, do you honestly think the consumers will be willing to spend any rebates or refunds?  Of course not, we will be too busy trying to pay down our increasing debt load despite no spending or reckless actions on our part.

Write your representation now!

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For those of you that have never programming professionally, this stuff may be very new to you.  However, trust me, it is extremely important.  Programming standards are not stupid, are not corners to be cut, and must be strict, otherwise they ARE pointless.

There are standards when it comes to documenting your code, and I wont get into them.  But if you are interested there are programs out there which more or less set the standard if you want to use them.  JavaDoc, PHPDoc, and for those MS folks….. .  Go check out their websites for good advice on how to format your comments in your code.

Now, for actually coding, I have my own set of standards, developed over the years, to make the code both readable, but also hopefully logical.  Most people I run into think my code is pretty readable, some languages more than others.  Let’s face it, Perl code will never, ever, be as readable or “pretty” as Python.  It just isn’t going to happen.  Sorry you old UNIX guys, but Perl just isn’t very pretty.  The OO languages are much easier on the eyes.

So, other than for documentation reasons, readability (which leads to maintainability), are there actually other reasons to program to a standard?  Only if you want to use your code in some sort of portfolio.  But those first two reasons are EXTREMELY important.  Everyone out there that has programmed professionally will know exactly what I mean.

Tabs or spaces?  Braces at the end of a line or on their own line?  Spaces between concatenation or operators?  Double quotes or single quotes?  Print to buffer or hold in variables?  Globals or object variables?  Arguments or variables?

There are a ton of questions, and I cant answer them all.  But think about why you do something, and if you cant come up with a good reason, probably time to stop doing it.

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First, there is the problem moving trademarks and copyrights.  PHPX is a trademark, PHPX is also a 501(c) non-profit dedicated to the distribution of free and quality software in order to better facilitate communication between communities of people in a virtual environment.  Sounds all official doesn’t it?  Well, sadly, it is.

I want to give over PHPX for someone that cares about it to develop it, but I am not really sure how to disentangle myself from all the legal stuff that goes along with it.  Perhaps I should just fork it and let them take over that.

What do you think?

So, with that in mind, enjoy the New Year, and check back soon!