Tag Archives: blues

business, complaints, first world problems, music, YouTube

We solved one problem; now we have another…

Yesterday was relatively uneventful, compared to Monday, July 10th. Relatively, I say… which means that we did have a couple of issues come up. But, at least I didn’t feel like drinking at 2 PM like I did a week ago.

Bill got home a little bit early last night and finally changed out the battery in my car. So now, if I want to, I can drive it somewhere. But it needs to be serviced, first, as it’s been awhile since it last saw a mechanic. The Mini might also need new tires, because it’s been sitting in a garage for a long time and there might be some dry rot that makes the tires unsafe. The car will now start, though, which is the first step in driving it somewhere. So that’s one problem solved. Now, I’ve got another one that needs to be fixed.

Here’s what happened. It’s an issue that recurs seemingly every quarter or so. On the 15th of every month, my premium savings account at PenFed gets dividends. They offer good rates on that account, so it’s usually kind of exciting to see what the amount of the dividend is. I have deposited a tidy sized nest egg there, and every month, I add more to it.

Well… like most financial institutions these days, PenFed requires everyone to use two factor authentication. I hate it, because it’s inconvenient and annoying, especially since PenFed won’t allow me to get the access codes by email. I have to either get a text message or a voicemail on my phone. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for some reason, PenFed doesn’t seem to want to send texts or do robocalls to international phone numbers.

Yesterday, when I tried to log into my account via the Web site, I couldn’t get the access code. When I went to my account on PenFed, I could see that the country code for my (correct) phone number was set to 01, which is the country code for the United States. I live in Germany, so the code must be set to 49 in order for the call or text to go through. When I tried to update the country code myself, PenFed wouldn’t allow it because, the computer said, it “didn’t match the information in their records”.

This has happened before. I suspect that when PenFed’s computer system does its updates, things like country codes for international phone numbers get caught up in a glitch. I end up having to call them late in the afternoon, when I’d much rather be chilling on my patio drinking beer or eating dinner. Moreover, I have repeatedly had this issue corrected before, yet PenFed’s system still repeatedly claims my country code should be set to the U.S. code of 01, instead of the German code of 49. I’ve been in Germany for nine years so far!

I hate calling them. I also hate calling USAA, which is (sadly) my other bank. Most of my hatred of calling them comes from detesting being kept on hold and listening to their godawful hold music from hell, and dealing with people who are incompetent. I would much rather do this stuff over email or even chat. At least if I’m chatting, I can listen to my own fucking music.

This is about how I feel about calling…

So I sent PenFed an email yesterday. Hours later, I got a response asking me for my phone number. I sent it, and then got another response, probably from another person, that I had to call them to authenticate the number. SIGH…

I called PenFed and after waiting several minutes in the phone queue, got some slow talking guy who, I quickly discovered, wasn’t a very good listener, nor did he have critical thinking skills. I explained to the guy that I needed to “update” my phone number. I suppose that was the wrong word to use. What I meant to say is that they needed to update the country code, which is part of the number that must be included if one is calling from another country.

It soon became clear that the man I was talking to didn’t have much experience calling other countries. He didn’t seem to understand what a country code is. Then he told me that I’d need to send them a copy of a bill to prove that the number I was updating was correct. SIGH…

I said, “No…. you have the right phone number. I just need the country code updated.”

He reiterated that I needed to send them a bill, which I don’t even have, because Bill handles that automatically. So I asked him if there was someone more senior I could speak to. He said they were all busy, but he’d have someone call me back. I laughed at that and said, “But if someone calls me, they will have to have the correct COUNTRY CODE, right?” So I gave him my number– the same one in my records– and reiterated the right country code, which if they would just update it in my account, would negate the need for ANYONE to have to call me to solve this problem!

I waited for over an hour for the phone call, which never came. So I sent another email, explaining again the issue, and asking why I can’t simply get the access codes via email. My husband is also a member of PenFed, and he’s able to get emailed codes instead of texts. Someone named Jessica wrote back and we had an email exchange. She explained that when she called, she got a busy signal. I ended up having to explain to her how to make an international phone call from the USA, not that she ever did call me. She wrote that updated everything in my account… but now, when I try to log in, I get the following message…

I tried to send this screenshot to Jessica, but PenFed’s system blocked it. I was instructed to upload the screenshot from their “secure portal”. But, in order to do that, I have to log in… and well, as you can see, I can’t do that. I CAN, however, get on the site using their app, which doesn’t require two factor authentication for access. Go figure.

After awhile, Jessica quit responding to me, anyway. Just before I went to sleep, I got a message from someone named Alec, who suggested the issue is on my end somehow. I guess I’ll call back this afternoon and try to stay calm, as I convince someone to get someone from the IT department to fix this issue… yet again.

I have ranted before about both PenFed and USAA. The truth is, I’d really like to ditch both banks, even though I’ve been a customer of both for about 30 years or so. I’ve noticed a steep decline in their services over the past few years. But, when you live in Europe on SOFA status, it can be difficult to arrange a European bank without potentially causing problems locally with the government. We aren’t regular residents here, and we don’t want to appear like we’re becoming regular residents, because that can affect our ability to stay here legally, which could affect Bill’s job. Getting a local bank account can arouse suspicions.

Besides, we do plan to go back to the States eventually. Yes, we dream about staying in Europe forever, but I don’t know how feasible that plan is. So, at this point, we do plan to come back someday… and since we plan to come back, it’s good to have an American bank. A lot of them would rather not deal with overseas customers, though. USAA and PenFed are institutions that historically deal with military and government employees. They used to be pretty good with handling the issues that arise from here. That’s not so true anymore.

I sure wish PenFed would, at least, build a better Web site that functions properly. I have been hating on USAA a bit lately, but at least their Web site works properly. And they have a chat function that actually works with live human beings, instead of just an AI system that just sends me to articles that aren’t at all useful to the situations I usually find myself in when I need help. Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes USAA’s chat function sucks, too. But I have, on occasion, gotten it to work well enough to solve my issue without having to call them.

Oh well. At least the Mini will start. Maybe it’s time we took a joy ride with the top down… the car’s, not mine. Fortunately, I don’t need to access the money I have sitting in PenFed right now. Thank God for small favors.

One positive thing I did yesterday was record another song. Quite fittingly, it’s a blues number. I learned it in about an hour. I don’t think it’s half bad, even though the camera doesn’t love me. 😉

Now you can see why Bill loves me… 😉 (someone actually said something akin to that to Bill when he heard me sing… lovely, huh?)

Happy update… I called PenFed again just now and got someone much more competent on the line. She got the block off my account and my phone number entered again. AND… she also helped me set up another money market account at a very nice rate. So bravo to the very helpful lady at PenFed this morning! With any luck, I’ll be seeing the new product in my account very soon.

Standard
music, songs, technology, videos, YouTube

It really sucks when technical difficulties abound…

This morning, I wasn’t feeling that great and didn’t feel particularly motivated to write. After I watched a couple of videos on YouTube, I finally decided I’d start today off with music. Today’s music video was a long time coming… God willing, it will premiere. Maybe some people will even enjoy it.

The blues song I recorded today is called “Women Be Wise”. It was written by Sippie Wallace and John Beach and made famous by Bonnie Raitt. I’ve been wanting to do it forever. I actually love the duet version Bonnie did with Sippie years ago, but a backing track to that version isn’t available yet. I’m a lot more familiar with the live version of the song, though, so that meant I had to learn the studio version.

Then, I was hoping to record it with my usual equipment, and on my old computer. I would love to keep the old computer going for awhile, until I’m more used to the new one and have all my old stuff moved over to it. Unfortunately, my old computer has become a huge pain in the ass to use, even just for playing music. I kept getting disk overload/too slow errors, even though I dumped a lot of data from the machine and deleted some resource hogs that were slowing it down.

The next issue was my microphone. I have a trusty Shure SM58 that I’ve been using for at least ten years. It still works fine, but in order to record with it, I have to have a mic interface. For about three years, I had a PreSonus 68c that worked just fine. But now, no matter what I try, I can’t hear myself when I use it. My vocals are too low. After consulting lots of GarageBand articles, updating drivers, and trying all sorts of things, I determined that the problem is with the interface. So, I ordered a new interface and a new Beyerdynamic mic that got here on Saturday. The new interface was less expensive than the old one, but it works perfectly. The new mic, alas, apparently doesn’t.

Finally, this morning, after one last try with the old computer and getting two disk overload errors, I moved the new interface to my new computer… I was pleasantly surprised by the resolution in the video, even though it’s not perfectly synced. I don’t like looking at myself on video anyway, though… I’m all about the song. It took a lot of effort to get it to a passable level, even though it’s not quite perfect.

So after I got the video made, it was time to upload it to YouTube… and now, I’ve found out that my internet connection today is as slow as molasses in the Arctic circle. As I write this, I have about 37 minutes to on uploading. For some reason, our internet speeds have really sucked lately. Sometimes, I even use my cellphone for a connection, because it’s more stable.

I don’t actually know why I feel compelled to upload music videos. They aren’t particularly popular or anything. I guess I like doing them because I genuinely enjoy making music, and because my song videos mostly aren’t controversial at all. I don’t have to worry about getting much bad feedback on my cover songs… at least not necessarily because of the content. I still don’t have a lot of subscribers, so if I put up something that really sucks, chances are good that no one will see it, anyway. 😉

I do like my new mic interface. It’s a Focusrite Scarlett 212, which is pretty basic. I like it because it’s very simple to use and well designed. I paid twice as much for the PreSonus 68c, which has more mic outlets, but is less straightforward in how it can be used.

I’m expecting a new cable to arrive today. I’ll try the new Beyerdynamic mic again, to see if I can raise it from the dead. It’s disappointing that the thing arrived apparently already dead. It wasn’t a cheap mic, and it’s a real pain to have to send it back to the seller.

One other big thing I purchased over the weekend is a new mattress topper for our bed. I’ve been using feather toppers for a long time, but they tend to get flat and misshapen fairly quickly. This time, I ordered a foam topper, which I hope will be better. We really need a new mattress, but it’s hard to get the right size in Germany, unless we order through AAFES. Ordering through AAFES takes forever and offers a pretty poor selection. Then, we have to deal with getting rid of the old mattress. It’s not actually difficult to get rid of mattresses in Germany. You can just call and have them picked up. The real ass pain is in getting the thing down the stairs and out of the house. I wish I had some friends with teenaged boys who need some extra euros.

Arran is still hanging in there. I think the vet is surprised, since he has a big lymph node that has become pretty obvious. You’d think he’d be a lot more lethargic and less interested in eating. But no, he’s still dancing around, eating, sleeping, playing, taking walks, and snuggling. He’s an amazingly resilient dog, and he obviously still wants to live. Canine lymphoma sure is a strange disease. When Zane had it, it took him very quickly. But with the help of chemo, Arran is still putting up a big fight. I know sometimes, it has to do with the dog’s personality. Arran is one of the most devoted dogs I’ve ever seen. I thought some of his predecessors were dedicated, but he’s kind of put them to shame with his determination to stay with us for as long as possible. It’s astonishing, and kind of inspiring.

Well… YouTube is telling me that my video is almost done uploading. I guess it took less time than the computer estimated. Once it’s done uploading, then I have to wait for it to be processed… What fun.

Here it is… the syncing is a bit fucked up on it, but I don’t feel like redoing it now. The end result isn’t perfect, but it sure took a lot to make this video happen. I recommend not actually watching the video. As the featured photo says… “Screw this shit.”

But this song is sure fun to sing… I’ll get the technical glitches sorted out eventually.

Standard