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I really enjoy this Saturday Night Live clip.  It’s a classic.

I wrote a check for $1,200, but Bank of America took $12,000!  I was rather over-drawn.

The online check image looks very clear and readable and the words clearly say “twelve hundred” in my engineer all-capital writing.

I was notified to this by the online application Mint. It sent me an email saying I had a “low balance” on this account  Thanks, Mint!

UPDATE: Turns out the submitting bank requested the wrong amount.  Everything looks back to normal and they said they can re-submit it correctly.  Makes me wonder how it got through the cracks, though.

I waited at the AT&T store today.  I arrived, signed in and waited.  I couldn’t even play with the new iPhone because they didn’t charge it last night.  So, I waited.  For an hour.  Just to buy a wireless data card with a sim card, which I could have activated myself online, but which they will not sell to you unless you talk to one of the five salesman who saw 8 people in an hour.

The highlight of the day came when the customer service woman left her personal phone on one of the kiosks off to the side of the store.  Someone called it and her ringtone was a very very loud Sir Mixalot “Baby Got Back”.  The entire store watched as she slinked over to the phone and shut it off.

Funny experience, but not worth wasting an hour of my life. AT&T: Please set up a cash register for those of us who just want to get the hardware and leave. I counted four lost sales while I waited.  People would come in, wait for 15 minutes browsing around, then leave to go buy a phone somewhere else.

I upgraded my Comcast receiver last week to an HD receiver and the process has been so-so.

First, my OnDemand wouldn’t work. It would tell me “this channel is not activated” and ask me to activate it by pressing OK. Just for fun, I’d check in a couple times a day and press OK to see if it would ever activate.

10 days later, it works!

Next, I noticed that Fox Sports HD is showing “off-air” and shows a test pattern. Fox Sports [non-HD] is fine, though. This is important to me because Royals’ Opening Day is Monday and it’s on Fox Sports HD!

So, I thought I’d try the Comcast Chat. Here are the particular issues I had with it:

• You have to enter all your information just to chat with someone. Name, address, phone, email address
• They don’t accept the plus sign in email addresses
• The support person asked for my account number, which I don’t happen to know. They she said she could look it up if I gave her my address, which I’d already typed in to start the conversation!
• I put in a “problem topic” (at the beginning with my address) and she asked “What can I help you with?” and I just responded by copying and pasting the large topic at the top of the page.
• After she didn’t help me (”it must be a network issue”) we ended our conversation. A button popped up asking me if my problem had been fixed. I clicked No. It locked up my browser.

Comcast: Please let me know if you would like me to help write some helpdesk and chat software that helps instead of getting in the way. I’m sure we can work out a deal.

Since I’ve been working from home a lot more lately, I signed up with Skype so I could make calls from my laptop. I did the Skype Pro plan for 3 bucks a month for unlimited outgoing calling.

For the past two months, I’ve used it every week for a conference call through ReadyConference. Last week, it stopped working. Skype dials the number, it rings, and ReadyConference drops the call. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with the way Skype handles the call.  Perhaps ReadyConference requires caller id, which Skype doesn’t do unless you pay for an incoming number.

So, curse you, ReadyConference!