LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW

We got about an inch of snow over the course of yesterday. Unlike our recent ice storm, this didn’t effect our electricity, phone or internet. My wife is sick and stayed home from school. I’m off on Thursdays. My daughter is watching a videotaped episode of Kim Possible. We’ve “no particular place to go.” So let it snow!

On another note, I listened to the MP3 file of Darryl Sloan’s new book, Chion. The book is about a devilish snow fall. It kind of creeped me out when I took the dog for a walk this morning. Check out the MP3 on his site. Better yet, buy the book.

Until next time, God Bless.

THE LAST FOUR OF YOUR SSN

 

I’ve talked to some pretty paranoid people through my job, but one just a couple of weeks ago really takes the cake.  When we verify a card member, we usually verify their mother’s maiden name or password.  When we can’t do that, either because we don’t have it on file or the moron gave us a password that they can’t remember, then we go to the last four digits of their Social Security Number.  I had a gentleman who called in who did not have his mother’s maiden name or a password listed.  When I asked him for the last four of his SSN, his response floored me.

 

“I don’t give that out by phone.”

 

According to the World Factbook at www.cia.gov, the population of the United States, as of July of 2006, was 298,444,215.  That means, given the fact that the SSN is nine digits long, each person can have a unique number.  Of the 999,999,999 different combinations that are possible, the sheer number of people who have the same last four numbers would make it highly improbable that I could steal some individual person’s SSN just by having the last numbers.  If a person is that paranoid about identity theft, then maybe he shouldn’t have a credit card at all.  I mean, after all, he did have to send in an application through the mail that had the entire number on it, leaving a chance for someone between Point A and Point B to intercept it.  Or he might have called in the application and the person on the other end might have written it down for personal use.  Or he might have done it online (hackers).  And forget getting a job.  We have to give the whole number to our employers, too.

 

If you call a place that asks you to verify the last four digits of your SSN, just give it to them.  There’s nothing that they or anyone else can do with those four numbers.

 

Until next time, God Bless

GOD’S PROVISION

 

A major ice storm passed through Springfield this past weekend.  Though the roads didn’t get all that bad, the ice accumulated on the trees and power lines.  The former were severely damaged.  In front of our townhouses, there is a tree that was literally torn apart by the weight of the ice.

 

The power lines’ ice buildup caused over sixty thousand people to lose their electricity.  We lost ours on Saturday and went to nearby Ozark to stay with our dear friends, Brooke and Mike Burlison.  With the trauma of so many people being out of power and, thus, heat, many churches in the area scrambled to be what God has asked for us to be-beacons of light and hope.  They opened their doors to people with nowhere else to go.  They gave them warm places to wait out the power outages, along with warm meals and companionship.  This help crossed denominational lines.  Baptist, Assembly of God, Methodist and Lutheran, just to name a few, became examples of Christ through this disaster.

 

My wife and I returned to our home on Sunday to discover that the electricity was back on.  We didn’t have a phone or (gasp!) internet service, but we had heat and the ability to cook.  And we praise God for that.  We thank Him for Brooke and Mike, who didn’t lose their power at all through this mess.  We thank Him for helping us to keep power through the last waive of the storm that hit on Sunday evening.  We thank Him for the warmth that His church provided for those in need.

 

MY EXPERIENCE WITH SCHOOL

 

Also due to the ice storm, the electricity to our church is still out.  This has canceled the daycare for the remainder of this week.  I’ve noticed that my daughter seems to miss preschool.  This is a feeling that I hope she keeps throughout her childhood and teenage years.  I sure didn’t.

 

I can look back and see several points in my childhood that really made me hate school, but I attribute most of them to two particular elementary teachers.  I remember “Mrs. N,” my first grade teacher.  The woman never smiled.  She seemed to have none of the talent for dealing with children that her position required.  There was no sense of humor-or patience-at all.  Our daily writing assignments were to copy down a board-full of sentences that she put up.  Of course, I could do this now in five minutes, but it was an abominable task to a six-year-old.  The funny thing was that the other first-grade-teacher only had her class write ONE SENTENCE!!!  And-wouldn’t you know?-the majority of the children who grew up to be in our graduating class’s Top Ten were in her class.

 

When my parents and I moved to Campbell in January of 1984, where we lived until returning to Van Buren in 1989, I was placed in the classroom of “Mrs. H.”  The thing that I didn’t like about her was that she, too, had no sense of humor.  Her punishment style was horrible.  In Van Buren, corporal punishment was carried out by the principal in his office so that the other students didn’t hear it.  Mrs. H took the student out into the hall, right outside of the door, and paddled them there.  I can still remember jumping in my chair every time I heard the BAM!

 

And the homework?  Everyday, I would get home from school and work on my assignments until bedtime (sometimes later), taking only a break for supper.  Now, I’ve heard that sociologists suggest that more than an hour’s homework per night is counterproductive.  I would agree with them and I truly wish that they would have figured this out twenty-two years ago.

 

The next year, Mrs. H moved up to being a fourth grade teacher and (wouldn’t you know?) I got her again.  I remember actually asking my mother to talk to the principal about switching classes.  She never did, though.  She didn’t think that they’d let me.  This was the year that a boy who had ADHD (we didn’t know what that was then) was punished for acting out.  The teacher instructed us to pretend that he didn’t exist.  Of course, we plunged into our parts in this with gusto.  By the time the day was over, I remember feeling horrible about the way that we had treated him.  The poor boy, having been robbed of all human companionship for the afternoon, had been reduced to a blubbering mess.  His eyes were red and swollen from constant crying.  His nose was running and he could barely talk.  Today, a teacher who instituted such cruel punishment would be fired on the spot.

 

I had other teachers that I really liked.  I remember my fifth grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Felker, who told jokes regularly and gave us a grade on a history project that we could completely make up on our own.  I remember our sixth grade science teacher, who had the courage to tell us that he did not believe in evolution.  I remember my high school science teacher, Mr. Freeman, who made science fun.  I remember Mr. Hager, my high school Speech and Debate teacher, who argued intelligently with me about why my (at the time) liberal beliefs were wrong.  Unfortunately, having bad teachers so early in life can really destroy the school experience.

CAN YOU SAY, “DUH?”

 

I had an interesting call this week from a customer who had a relatively high interest rate on his credit card. He asked if it could be lowered and I told him truthfully that it could not. Of course, he wanted to know why and I checked and discovered that he had been late seven times in the last twelve months. His response, when I told him this, was, “So?”

 

Do the bank and yourselves a favor if you get a credit card. Take the time to actually read your cardmember agreement. If this person had done so, he might have taken better care to make timely payments, as it only takes one late payment to raise your interest rate. But seven in a year? Or, as the manager-who the cardmember ended up asking for-pointed out to me, nineteen times over the course of five years (literally a third of the life of the account)? That makes you a credit risk that no bank would want. I was actually surprised that his account hadn’t been closed by now.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PUMPKIN SEED!!!

 Today is my daughter, Kaitlyn Hosanna Davis’s, birthday.  Three years ago today, she was born a month premature at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Peters, MO.  Through all of the tribulations that we have seen over the past three years, my healthy daughter, with her contagious smile and spirited personality, is always a reminder of God’s love for us.

Hello world!

MY FIRST POST

I decided to go ahead and delete the generic first post that WordPress had put up and goi ahead and put something up myself. I don’t have much here right now, although I intend to port over the posts from my former blog at blogspot soon.

Until next time,

God Bless

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FRUSTRATION WITH BLOGGER

For those of you who have attempted to post comments to my blog and may have wondered why they were never posted, the answer is that Blogger loses them. Every time I’ve tried to approve a comment, I get a response that they cannot find it. I’ve sent two e-mails to the support desk to try to fix the problem, the last message to them having been sent nearly two weeks ago. So far, I’ve gotten only a generic response that did nothing to fix the problem. I’m currently searching for another site to host my blog.

God Bless.

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HANDLE TIME

One of the regular readers of my blog recently told me that she enjoyed my entries about my place of employment. Given that, I decided to post an entry this week regarding one of my hot buttons . . . my handle time.

As a rep, I am kept to an absolute maximum average of three minutes per call to get a “met” on my scorecard. However, I start losing money from my incentive if my average is above 159 seconds. Now, you may think that this isn’t enough time to handle your situation. Try telling that to the other hundred or so people who are waiting for you to get off of the line. I can fix 99% of problems in under two minutes, if the card member with whom I am speaking will allow it. To help, I’ve come up with a list of things that a caller can do to help me to get them off the line faster:

1. BE PREPARED-When you call, be sure that you have your account number, the primary card holder’s mother’s maiden name or password, a writing utensil and, for good form, the security code from the signature panel on the back of the card (usually needed for address changes, adding card users and for balance transfers). I always lose precious time when some idiot, after I ask him for his account number, says, “I knew you were gonna ask for that.” I usually want to strangle him while demanding, “WHY DIDN’T YOU HAVE IT READY, THEN?!”

2. DON’T VERIFY INFO IF WE DON’T ASK-We will verify your mother’s maiden name or password, your Social Security Number, your date of birth or recent transactions. We only need you to verify your address if we have to send you something. And we never need your shoe size. Don’t add something as a joke. Taking up valuable time is not funny.

3. IF WE TELL YOU THAT WE’RE WAIVING A FEE, THEN SHUT UP ABOUT IT-I hate it when someone calls in and requests a fee waiver and I tell them that I can waive it, then they say, “Thanks. I don’t know why it got there late. I mailed it the day before it was due” (for this one, see below). Just thank me and be on your way.

4. DON’T ASSUME THAT WE GET THE MAIL THE NEXT DAY OR THAT THE PAYMENT ONLY HAS TO BE POSTMARKED BY THE DUE DATE-I know that it’s going to be a long call when someone calls up to say, “Why’d I get a late fee? I mailed it before the due date.” It has to be in our center before or on the due date. Your postmark means nothing.

5. DON’T SPELL YOUR NAME IF NOT ASKED-“This is Joe Smith. J-O-E S-M-I-T-H.” We have the spelling of your name. We don’t need for you to give it to us.

6. IF YOU KNOW THAT YOUR NAME ISN’T ON THE ACCOUNT, THEN DON’T BOTHER CALLING-We can’t help you with ANYTHING-other than making a payment or reporting the card member’s demise. PERIOD.

7. DON’T ASK THE SAME QUESTIONS OVER AND OVER-“So, you’re going to waive the late fee?” “Yes, sir.” “And I’ll see it on the next statement?” “Yes, sir.” “And it’ll be waived?” “Yes, sir.” “And it’s going to be on the next statement?” “Yes, sir!” Dig the peanut butter out of your ears, people!

8. IF WE SAY THAT WE CAN’T WAIVE A FEE, JUST GO AHEAD AND ASK FOR A MANAGER-They’ll probably say no, as well. But, they have more time to listen to you gripe.

9. IF WE SAY NO TO AN APR DECREASE, THEN YOU’RE NOT GETTING ONE . . . PERIOD-No one with whom you can speak has the authority to change this. Chewing out the rep won’t make a difference. Neither will speaking with a supervisor.

10. LEARN TO READ YOUR STATEMENT-Okay, this isn’t difficult. If you pay your statement balance every month, then it is from the day that the statement prints, not from the day that we receive your payment. If your statement prints on the 2nd, then you make other purchases before we receive your statement payment on the 16th, then you try to calculate it from the day that we received the payment, then of course it’s going to seem off! You’re ignoring fourteen days worth of charges!

11. IF WE ASK IF THERE IS ANYTHING ELSE THAT WE CAN HELP YOU WITH, DON’T TELL US NO, THEN CHANGE YOUR MIND-Once we log out of your account, we have to log back in, which costs precious time. Also, it looks bad on us if we had to log back into your account, as if we hadn’t done our jobs properly by servicing all of your needs at one time, even though it was, well, your fault.

12. IF YOUR CARD COMPANY IS THERE 24/7, THEN DON’T CALL FROM WORK-I had a horribly long call the other day. The reason was that a secretary was calling from her job to discuss her card. Every time I tried to say something, she had to put me on hold to answer the phone. The company I work for is there twenty-four hours for your convenience. Call back when you get home.

13. IF WE DIDN’T RECEIVE YOUR PAYMENT, THEN WE CANNOT HELP YOU-Keeping me on the phone to look up what check number that you sent won’t make the payment magically appear at our payment center. Hang up and call your bank to see if it has cleared. If it has not, put a stop payment on it, and then send us another payment. If it has, get the date that it cleared and call us back with that info and we’ll get you to the correct department to help you.

14. DON’T ASSUME THAT WE ARE AT FAULT FOR A FALSE CHARGE ON YOUR ACCOUT-If you canceled your AOL account and they are still billing you, don’t call us to yell at us. It’s not our fault and we can’t make them stop billing you. We can dispute each individual charge, but the same laws that allow us to do that also protect merchants from credit card issuers singling them out to not pay. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

15. IF YOU ARE A MERCHANT OR A BANK CALLING TO DO A VERIFICATION, DON’T SAVE THEM UP BEFORE YOU CALL US-I had a call from a bank this week in which the representative was calling to verify available funds on credit card checks for some of our customers who had cashed them there. She had waited until she had almost FOURTY accounts before she had bothered to call in-I assume to help her to be more productive with her time. Unfortunately, the nearly thirty-minute call was DEFINITELY not productive for me, and hurt my handle time for the rest of the day. If you work at a bank and this is something that you do, don’t save up more than five. Any more than that is, at best, discourteous.

16. DON’T TELL US YOUR LIFE STORY-I don’t care if your son beat up the honor student. I’m not a buddy with whom you can chat. I’m not a trained psychiatrist. I am a credit card representative who is there to help you with your account.

That’s all I can think of right now. If more come to me, I’ll put them up later.

Until Next Time, God Bless

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ANOTHER LIBERL JUDGE MAKES HIS VIEWS KNOWN

Last year, defense attorney Lynne Stewart was found guilty by a New York jury of aiding her former client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with his terrorist group for the purpose of letting them know that they should end a truce and begin killing innocents again.

Someone made the mistake of turning over her sentencing to one of Clinton’s appointees, one Judge John Koeltl. First of all, the fact that it took a whole year for her sentencing was, in and of itself, unacceptable. But the sentence that she received proved, yet again, just how much liberals love terrorists. Instead of the prosecution’s requested 30-year sentence, the idiot judge gave her 28 months! All this, after having applauded her “service to the nation” by defending other fringe terrorist groups like the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground.

The judge’s “Hilary Clinton for President/Osama Bin Laden for Vice President” bumper stickers arrived that afternoon.

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GEORGE CHARLES DAVIS: March 6, 1942-September 27, 2006

As you might have noted, I haven’t updated my blog in a couple of weeks. My father passed away two weeks ago yesterday and it’s been difficult for me. I was closer to my dad than most people of my generation were to their fathers. I haven’t been able to concentrate on being creative at all. I’m forcing myself to do this update now because I know that my dad wouldn’t want me to give up on the things that are important to me.

My mother and I discussed having me write something to read at the funeral, so I wrote and read the following epitaph:

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“Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day-and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” 2Timothy 4:8

As I was growing up, I remember two things about my dad. The first was his extensive ball cap collection. The other was that he actually liked to work.

The former concept was interesting. He would keep a large collection of these hats on hooks on the wall of the bedroom that he shared with my mother. He never wore the majority of them, though. They were only there for show. He usually had only one cap that he actually did wear. I can remember him getting ready to go somewhere and watching as dad flipped his bangs back and put the cap on. Then he’d give us a kiss goodbye and head out the door.

The work thing was more puzzling to me. The concept of enjoying a good day’s work confused this lazy kid. I once asked him why he worked so much and got an even more confusing answer. “I work so much, son, so you won’t have to.”

I admittedly didn’t really get to know my dad until after he became ill and had to stop working. The idea of being forced to be idle seemed more of a curse to him than anything. But I learned a great deal about my father. I got to know a man who loved his family so much that he worked until his health was shattered so that we were provided for. I learned about a man who was calm when everyone else was stressed-a leader of men who was respected by those who worked under him because of his determination and willingness to sacrifice to get the job done.

I’ve often thought that my name is a curse. Mom wanted to name me Jeremy, but dad was determined that I be named Jeffrey. Apparently, dad didn’t know much about history and almost every time that I introduce myself to someone, I’m asked if my parents were Southern. I dutifully respond with a smile that my father was a “Michigan-born Yankee.”

This isn’t to say that Dad was unintelligent. Far from it. He might have only obtained an eighth grade education, but, when he was healthy, he could take a car apart and put it back together while blindfolded. His advice, despite the fact that Mom and I didn’t always listen, was sound and always the best course of action.

My dad didn’t get saved until he was in his late fifties. He was led to Christ by the same pastor who led me, Brother Phil Tanner. Dad told me of the absolute, tear-filled joy that he felt on that day. After that, God’s blessings poured out in the form of my daughter. I begged God to let my dad live to see her-a prayer that was answered. Kaitlyn was also the final piece to the puzzle of why my dad had enjoyed working. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for my little girl, just as there is nothing that Dad wouldn’t have done for my brothers or me.

On Wednesday night, after I found out that he’d passed away, I asked God why He hadn’t answered my prayers to heal my dad’s lungs. He told me as clearly as I stand before you all today, “Don’t you understand? Now, they are healed.”

As for the Bible verse that I read earlier, I can see that Dad reached the Pearly Gates on Wednesday afternoon. Waiting for him there was an angel carrying a pillow, upon which sat my dad’s Crown of Righteousness-a golden ball cap. He took it from the pillow and, with a smile flipped back his bangs back and put it on, then stepped through the gates and into eternity.
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The pastor of our church here in Springfield, Ted Cedarblom, drove two and a half hours to officiate. Our children’s pastor, Pastor Jim (I won’t insult him by trying to spell his last name) also made it a point to attend. Things like this make us feel loved at our church.

I sent a mass e-mail to all of my friends and got many responses of sympathy, though most were-understandably-unable to attend. My old friend Bobby Goodman-whom I’ve known since I was in the third grade in Campbell, MO-brought his wife.

However, I have to mention something that really hurt me. The friends who had to work . . . well, I understand them not coming. But one friend, the best man from my wedding, didn’t even respond to my e-mail. Since his lifestyle has taken him down a path with which I don’t agree, I know that we haven’t been in contact much over the past few years. In fact, he’s only seen my nearly three-year-old daughter once since she was born. But he could have at least had the decency to say something about my dad’s death. Afterall, my parents have always loved him and his brother-who, by the way, did send me his condolences-like their own children.

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THE STUPIDITY OF RACISM

I had a call at work from a woman earlier this week that just plain irritated me. She called to complain that the person that she’d gotten when she called to activate her card was in India and to let us know that she didn’t “appreciate” having to give personal information to “those people.”

Will the racism never end?

I can reasonably understand someone being upset about outsourcing jobs if they are concerned about the US job market. But assuming that, just because a person is from India (or Canada or the Philippines-two other countries where we have call centers), he or she will be more likely to steal one’s information, is just plain . . . well, racist. To set everyone’s mind at ease, everyone who works for our credit card company goes through a series of background checks. NO CRIMINALS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES WORK FOR US!!!

CALIFORNIA

Just when I was starting to like “the Governator,” he did something stupid. He signed a bill that will make it illegal in California to “discriminate” against someone due to their sexual orientation. Of course, the ACLU will be all over this one. I can just see a church declining to hire a gay preschool teacher and being sued by the “Anti-Christian League United.”

Arnold, you had almost gained my respect.

GOODBYE PASTOR CHRISTIAN

My wife and I are youth leaders at our church. Last night was the last sermon of the current youth pastor, Christian Salzillo. We are going to miss him as he heads for the South to lead a church there. May God bless him and his family in their efforts to further the Kingdom.

Until next time, God Bless.