After the tragedy at Sandy Hook, we are once again faced will a call to ban guns. To those who want to ban guns I say sure why not? While we’re at it, lets look at other things that kill. Current statistics show that on average, 34 people per day are killed by guns. However, 140 are killed in motor vehicle accidents. This means you are 4 times more likely to be killed by a motor vehicle than a gun. So obviously we must ban motor vehicles. Even worse, 1640 people die from heart disease every day. We must ban all know causes of heart disease. (Before anyone starts posting comments about what an asinine statement that was, I was being over dramatic for a reason. Please read on)

Our Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. It doesn’t say anything about not setting up a safe and regulated way to ensure the public’s safety as much as possible. Below I want to lay out my proposal that should go along way to appeasing as many people as possible.

• Require all and I mean ALL firearms to be registered in a national database. No grandfathering in previously owned weapons. If you own a gun it needs to be registered. For all you hardcore gun owners that are starting to scream of government interference, go out to your car and look at your vehicle registration. Why are you OK with registering that every year, but not your guns? Also, just like with registering you car, you pay a registration fee for each gun you own. Something on the order of $20 per handgun and $50 for all others. Based on current legal gun ownership statistics, that’s $10 billion + per year. That kind of money could help make our schools safer.
• Require all gun owners to pass a certification course. The course needs to cover not just how to shoot, but safe handling and storage of firearms. Require re-certification every 5 years.
• Require a background check on all individuals that the gun owner is the primary care provider for. If you’re taking care of your elderly father, he undergoes the same background check as the gun owner. If you have kids living at home, they get background checked as well. If they have mental health issues, sorry but nothing more dangerous than a paintball gun for you.
• All gun owners who posses ‘assault style’ rifles such as the AR-15 would be required to submit it to random unannounced inspections by the ATF. This is to prevent modifying the weapon into a fully automatic one. This also should put a serious damper on those idiots at gun shows who get around the law by selling the kits to modify these types of guns.
• Require gun owners to report missing firearms immediately. If you show a pattern of losing weapons, revocation of your certification. If you show a pattern of losing weapons and one of them is used in the commission of a crime, criminal charges for you as well.

A recent story in the Tampa Bay Times reports that in Florida, sales of guns are up since the tragedy ( Gun Sales Increase Since Shooting ). This is partly due to people feeling helpless and wanting to ‘even the playing field, protect their kids’ and people worrying about potential bans and getting their weapons now while they still can. Even if these weapons are banned, like most bans it will be a forward ban, meaning existing owners will be able to keep their guns. Which still means there will be a lot of weapons out there already.

By doing this at a federal level, it means that when someone possesses a gun illegally, it’s not just state charges, but federal charges.  And, not just the person with the gun, but possibly the individual who actually purchased the weapon which would be easy to find out with a national registry.

Would my plan have prevented the shooting in Sandy Hook? Possibly. Since Mrs. Lanza was the primary care provider for her son and the news keeps reporting he may have been diagnosed with a mental illness, if he was then those guns would not have been there under my plan. Even if he wasn’t, by requiring her to take a certification course, she would have known of the proper care and safety precautions required for keeping those weapons.

I’m sure I’m going to offend people on both sides of this debate, but the reality is this issue will only be dealt with if we reach a compromise. Both Pro gun and Pro ban sides need to give a little, or we’ll just end up waiting for the next tragedy to occur.

With the holiday season upon us, and more and more people living the digital life, I wanted to take a few moments to remind everyone to be careful

When you’re away from your home and want to connect to the abundance of free wifi, please make sure you know who’s wifi you’re connecting to. With more and more devices capable of creating wireless hot-spots, you could very easily find yourself connected to someone’s smartphone / computer. While most times this may not be an issue, be aware that every piece of data you send / receive could potentially be seen / recorded by the owner of that hotspot. Not only that, but they could easily re-direct you to fake websites designed to steal your personal information. If you need to use wifi away from home, do so in a location that is known to offer wifi, and check with the locations staff to verify the network name. For example, McDonald’s and Starbucks are both known for offering free wifi. Ask the clerks what the name of the wireless connection is, and what you need to do to get connected. Don’t just assume because your having lunch somewhere and you see the location’s name listed in your available wireless connections that it is being offered by that business.

If you’re like me, you have multiple credit / debit cards and tend to use them for almost everything you do. For the most part this is a great convenience provided you take the time to minimize your risks. Almost all banks and credit card companies now offer email or text notification of activity on your card. You should sign up for this as soon as you get the card. If you refer back to my earlier post this year where Best Buy drained one of my debt cards, you’ll see how this is normally a very good thing to have. Also, if you’re more of an online shopper like me you’ll want to see if your bank or credit card company offers one use numbers. These can also be known as Virtual Account Numbers. These allow you to make purchases either online or phone based purchases without giving out your actual card number. Some are as simple as just providing you with an alternate 1 use number, others allow you to setup an alternate number with a specific maximum amount and expiration date.

Lastly, just a reminder to do regular maintenance on your computer. Make sure you’re running the latest version of Java and Flash,  as well as make sure you keep windows up to date.

Check your Java Version

 Check Your Flash Version

There is a free program called Cosmos from the company I work for that will help make sure you computer is running as well as it can. Here’s a write up about it from Cnet.com:  Cosmos

As you can see by the look of the site, it’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Cancer in any form is a horrible thing to have to go through. What makes Breast Cancer worse is the psychological scarring it does even after someone survives the physical portion.

I have been lucky to have never contracted any form of cancer (knock on wood), so most of what I know is anecdotal from friends and family who have as well as what I have learned from survivors and websites on the internet.

For example, From the American Cancer Society’s website I found out that women have a 1 in 8 chance of developing breast cancer. Most people work with more than 8 women, have more than 8 female friends. It’s nearly impossible to not know someone who has been affected by this.

I don’t want to rant and rave too much, my goal here is 2 things.

1. All the women who read this please have yourself checked. If you’re not considered in the more at risk category (40 and over) you should still be doing a self check every couple of months.

2. Below is a list of links from sites that you should check out.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month webpage:  http://www.nbcam.org/

Pink for October:  http://pinkforoctober.org/

American Cancer Society:  http://www.cancer.org

Men Against Brest Cancer:  http://www.menagainstbreastcancer.org/

Susan G. Komen for the Cure:  http://ww5.komen.org/

These aren’t the only sites out there. They all have links to other sites as well. Please do what you can, either donate money, time or both. Also, If you have a Facebook and/or Twitter account, please help spread the word by changing your theme for the month of October.

I’ve never given any stock to the whole ‘Friday the 13th is an unlucky day’ nonsense, mostly because I’m Irish, and naturally lucky.  But after my encounter with a manager on duty at the Best Buy in Altamonte Springs, I may have to re-think this.

I went there looking for an adapter to connect a set of pc headphones to an xbox360. Although they didn’t have what I was looking for, I did grab a 7port usb hub and a usb cable for my phone. I took these items up to the cashier, he rings them up and now we’re waiting for his register to approve my bank card purchase. One of the great thinks about my card is that as soon as any authorization, payment or deposit is made to it, I get an instant email right on my phone. There have even been times I’ve received the email before the register has started to print the receipt. While standing there, I get the email saying Best Buy has posted a purchase for $63.58. In the store, the cashier is still staring at his screen, then it displays a message indicating there was an error, and he needs to call for approval. I say,”Wait a minute, I’ve already received the email saying you’ve charged me for this.” He just gives me a sort of blank look, picks up the phone and calls for the approval. As he’s typing in the approval number, I get another email saying Best Buy has posted another charge for $63.58 against my account. I tell him they’ve now charged me twice, to which he sends me over to their customer service desk. No I understand he’s a cashier, and not high up in the food chain there, but my thinking is if he’s been made aware that what my bank says doesn’t match what his register says, that would have been a good time to get a manager, before trying to call it in.

I end up waiting a little over 5 minutes for one of the girls behind the counter to even acknowledge me, then she just starts pulling my purchases out of the bag without even asking what the problem was. Once I start to explain that they’ve charged me twice, she look over my shoulder and gets John Benedict the Manager on Duty to come over. I proceed to explain to him what just happened, and he says our POS only shows 1 charge. I say I understand this, but their system did in fact charge my bank card twice. His reply is I would need to call their corporate office about it. No offer to look into, no nothing. SO now I’m a bit annoyed, and say fine, take your stuff back. John goes over to the register and proceeds to do a void for the $63.58 amount. After he finishes, I tell him that good customer service would have been to at least made an attempt to double check, not just blow me off.

As I’m walking out the door, my phone beeps. I look down and it says “A purchase has been made for $63.58 at Best Buy Altamonte.” I turn around and walk back up to him and tell him they’ve now charged my card 3 times. As I’m saying this, a 4th charge appears. He tries to give me the call corporate line, I end up explaining to him he needs to call the customer service number in the back of the card, they will explain how to remove the unapproved authorizations.” He reluctantly picks up their phone and starts to call. Meanwhile, charges 5, 6 and 7 show up on my bank card. He goes through the menu until it gets to where I need to enter my phone pin, and hands me the phone. I enter my pin, and choose the option to list to current authorizations. It starts with, “Your current balance is $54.96″ which is crazy, because before I bought anything at the store, my balance was $627.18. Best Buy was now holding $572.22 of my money.

John speaks to a customer service rep at my bank, who explains that he needs to fax over a statement on company letterhead authorizing the release of the incorrect charges. She further goes on to give him all of the authorization codes. So now, this ‘Manager On Duty’ who was so dismissive is fully aware I’m not trying to scam them, this is in fact a serious issue. Surprisingly at no time does he have one of the staff call their IT dept to have them check to make sure this isn’t something that’s going on with other customers or at other stores. Nor does he even address me about the situation. I understand that the lawyers tell everyone never say sorry to avoid any sort of admission of guilt, but if he had looked at me and said,”I have no idea how this could have happened, but I will do everything I possibly can to fix it”, I would have been in an entirely different mood. As a programmer I’m aware that software can sometimes have bugs. I wouldn’t have been overjoyed about my money being gone, but I would have appreciated the attempt at trying to make me feel better. Instead, he hands me the phone so the customer service rep can talk to me. She was very polite and explained it could take up to 48 hours after they receive the fax to return the money. Meanwhile, Best Buy took the least $54.96 from my account and now I’m broke.

While I was on the phone with her, John steps away. He disappears for more than 10 minutes, only to return, pick up the phone and start calling someone else. On a quick side note, while I was waiting for him to return, 3 of the employees standing right next to me start discussing another customer who apparently had called several times the day before about a computer they were fixing, and what a pain he was. One of them said to just take a message and they might call him back. Obviously poor customer service at that store isn’t limited to one individual.

Now John’s back and waiting on the phone for someone. Remember, He’s fully aware they’ve emptied my bank account. He’s also aware it’s going on an hours since we started this. Does he offer me a seat? Does he say “Since we’ve taken all your money, Can I buy you a soda”? Nope, he tells me it’s going to be a few minutes on hold, and then just stands there like a rock. Eventually he gets to someone named Melissa, and after he talks with her I get the feeling I’m about to be even more unhappy. He hangs up with her and tells me there’s nothing they can do, the money will be returned eventually. I try to get him to go to the next level, but apparently we’ve reached the end of their desire to do anything. He doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that 1, their software might not only be stealing from me and 2, he already knows what he needs to do to clear this up as he’s spoken to the bank.

So I decided to step  away before I did something that would have required more than $500 bail. After leaving the store, I post the following tweet:

I was a bit surprised when I received a reply to this pretty quickly:

I reply with the follwing 2 tweets:

These of course after I check out who this person is actually supposed to be. Now, I’m feeling a glimmer of hope that maybe someone there might actually understand that taking care of the customer comes first. NOPE, I wait and wait, then send this tweet:

Now, I get a reply, but I’m sure you can understand how I’m not holding my breath for anything to actually get done:

Saturday April 13th

I just got off the phone with my bank. I understand they are limited in what they can do, so I had them list my card as lost/stolen. This way, once I add funds to my account I won’t have to worry about Best Buy still trying to get money from it.

I’ve emailed twitter@bestbuy.com with most of the above information, and added the following:

Your store currently has 10 holds on my bank card totaling $627.18 of which, I only approved $63.58. Your Manager John Benedict, is fully aware this is an issue with your computer system, is aware of the steps he needs to take to fix this, but is apparently unwilling to do anything. After speaking with my bank they tell me it could take up to 30 days for the money to be returned to me if Best Buy does not fax over a letter releasing these bogus authorizations.  I can absolutely assure you if it takes 30 days to get my money back, we will be going to court. 

My main anger stems not from the money being taken without my approval (although this is very concerning to me), but the way your manager treated me. When first brought to his attention a bit of skepticism on his part would be warranted due to the possibility this could have been a scam. HOWEVER, once he spoke to my bank, he should have been not only more empathetic, but more willing to help. Having worked in the hospitality industry I can assure you that if a manager had treated one of our hotel guests with the indifference I was shown, they would have been relieved of their position immediately.

Lastly, I’m not one to deal with issues like this quietly. Even in all this I see a positive in that John has provided an excellent demonstration of how a persons attitude can cost a business customers. I’m including this in the email so you are aware that all correspondence including the twitter exchange yesterday will be posted in my blog.

Thomas McGrath

Now the ball is in their court.

 Update Saturday Apr 13th.

Apparently I’m not the only victim of this. I visited the Best Buy facebook page and discovered another person who was charged 3 times for 1 item. When she addressed this with them, they told her they were working on it. SO, THEY KNOW THIS IS HAPPENING AND NO WARNING TO THE CUSTOMER?

And, I just checked my email and they’ve sent me a survey? You haven’t solved my problem, but you want to know how you’re doing?

Update Monday Apr 16th.

I received a reply by email:

Hello,

 Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I’m dearly sorry for the length of time, inconveniences, and treatment that you received while in-store. Please understand that this is not customary behavior and I know I would also be raising these concerns to seek further guidance if it happened to me as well. With that said, in order to look more into this issue for you, can you provide me with the following?

 Phone number(s) associated with the purchase

Customer Service Pin Number(s): 15-17 numbers on the purchase receipt(s), ending in the purchase date(s)

Any other information that you’d like to include

 Once I receive these details, I’ll begin researching this situation and let you know any feedback I receive as soon as possible.

 Thank you for your continued patience,

 Justin|Community Connector

Corporate Campus

Twitter@Bestbuy.com

I did reply back with the requested information, but also pointed out that Justin should read their Facebook page, as well as the fact that I’m very surprised that since I had reported this issue early Friday morning, people were still running into it on Saturday.

2nd update Apr 16th, 2012

I received a response, but I’M NOT HAPPY:

Hi Thomas,

 Ugh, I’m so sorry! L Unfortunately, I see only one purchase and any others would be authorization holds, which should automatically drop off within 7-10 business days. I know that this isn’t the answer that you want to hear, however, you may certainly work with your bank for further assistance on inquiring what date you might see those funds. Again, I’m very sorry for any inconvenience.

 Best regards,

I decided to re-do my personal website.

It’s been laying around in sort of a half-done / testing state for way too long, so I decided to buckle down and do something with it. (It was either that or just get rid of it, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.)

It’s currently using WordPress as a base, and will most likely continue to for the foreseeable future. It will also contain random photos from my new photography hobby as well as bits of code, stray thoughts and basically any thing I feel the need to boot out of my head.

All opinions, postings and musing on this site are mine and mine alone. any and all comments posted by readers are their responsibility, but be forewarned: I respect other people’s right to voice their opinion, even if it is at odds with my own views. Having said that, if you post spam, porn or anything rude, not only will I delete it, but I will use my skills to make your internet life a living hell. That is all.

I’ve been pretty silent on the whole ‘occupy’ movement, but I can’t take it anymore.

I applaud all those who have a desire to make this a better place to live, and make some sort of attempt to improve things. However, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Standing outside of a business and demanding changes only works in movies. And, some of the plans you have are laughable at best. An example: on the occupy together website, the schedule for events from Nov. 17th for Occupy Wall St include 3:00 Occupy the Subways. ?!? How many of the 1% have you sat next to on a subway car? All you’re doing there is creating grief for the 99% you say you’re trying to help.

There was National Bank Transfer Day, which sounded good on paper, but the reality is that all it did was make those who changed from a ‘mega’ bank to a small bank or credit union feel like they contributed to something. Unfortunately, this had no impact on the big banks. The sad fact is the big banks look at you and your money the same way you look at that spare change jar. It’s great to have, but the reality is the amount in it isn’t going to change your life.

Why didn’t Bank of America care about the bank move day? Because they know the 58 million retail and small business customers they have will absorb any fees they tack on due to consumers moving their money. And how do these business customers deal with new fees? They raise their prices. So, you’re still paying the bank fees, you’re just paying a middle man.

If you truly want to try to wake up the big banks, start boycotting businesses that bank with them. Find out what bank your chain grocery store uses. If they bank at a mega-bank, contact their corporate office and let them know you’ll be shopping elsewhere until they change whom they bank with. According to CNN, since Sept 29th approx 650,000 people have joined credit unions. Imagine if all of these people went to Wal-mart and said we won’t be shopping here until you stop banking with the big banks. Even if you start smaller, ask the local mom and pop store where you get your gas what their bank is. Get them to change. Same goes for restaurants and anywhere you spend money. Don’t be a dick about it, but politely let them know that they’re helping perpetuate the problem, and ask them to help be part of the solution.

As for the park dwellers, go home, grab a shower (or 2) and stop making a mess. I am not a fan of the cops pepper spraying or beating the occupiers, but if they’re told to disperse from an area they should comply. If you think you’re being moved illegally, go to court to get and get an  injunction. But before you do that, how about cleaning up after yourselves, stop vandalizing things, and do more than sitting around griping about how bad things are.

An interesting bit of information, in the time it took you to read this post, the big banks made more in credit card transaction fees than you’ll make for the entire year.