Sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Aren’t computers the worst?

As we have become more and more reliant on them, and as they have sort of wormed their way into all sorts of important business functions, they have become infallible gods, whose word is law.

Maybe it’s because I write computer programs every day, so I know how prone they are to error (at least the ones I write! :-P). But then again, doesn’t everybody have experience with crappy computer programs (I mean, come on, the vast majority of us use Windows, right?)

The other day I got a letter from a collection agency. This is not something I see every day, and it caused me quite a bit of panic. It turns out the charge was only $10, but I was still imagining legal action and destroyed credit.

The thing I couldn’t figure out was, how did I not pay this bill? It was from the doctor’s office, and we’ve obviously paid many bills before and after. How could they not get ahold of us in their “repeated attempts”, when every other bill is fine. My wife WORKS there, and they couldn’t get ahold of us?

Something seemed fishy.  For all I know, this company is scamming me for $10! That made more sense to me than there was one bill that they couldn’t get ahold of me for, while we are meanwhile paying all these other bills.

So the first thing I did was call the hospital. I spoke to 2 different billing divisions, and they both agreed I had no balance. Ah ha! Gotcha! So I called the collection agency back. (several times in fact, since their “computer system was down” and they would “call me back later” which they never did) Finally, they verified that it was one of the two billing departments I had spoken to previously.

Me: “But I already spoke to them, and they said I didn’t owe anything.”
Lady: “Well, if that’s the case, then they can email us and we will close the account.”

::sigh:: Very well.

I called the number she gave me and spoke to the same department I spoke to before.

Billing person: “Yes, you do have an outstanding balance, but it’s not with us, it’s with the other billing department.”
Me: “I just got off the phone with the collection agency, and they said it was you. They gave me this number.”
Billing person: “Well I just got off the phone with them and they said it’s the other department.”

Oookay, so I called the original billing office back:

Billing person: “Yes, you do have an outstanding $40 balance”
Me: “…but the collection agency is saying I only owe $10.”
Billing person: “Well, they should be telling you you owe $40.”

Okay, so now my head is starting to spin. First I didn’t owe anything, now suddenly I do. First I owed $10, now I owe $40. And why doesn’t anybody know who I’m supposed to owe money to??

But, of course, nobody knows nothing. It’s just in the computer that way, there’s nothing we can do about it.

Eventually we figured out that my guarantor (billing) address was incorrect (because I asked them to check, not because they suggested it). At some point the patient address had been changed, but the guarantor address had not been updated in the computer. Since Sara is the guarantor for herself and the kids and her guarantor address is correct, all of the other bills had been sent to the right location.

Now here’s the thing. If we can’t question the almighty computer because it is all-knowing and all-wise, then how come it wasn’t smart enough to get ahold of me. Supposedly, they’re trying and trying, doing anything they can to get ahold of me. And yet they never tried the other address they have for me? They never used the phone number? They never looked at the address for my spouse or children? Hit me up for the money when I called to pay a different bill? They never WALKED DOWN THE HALL to where my wife was working? Nope, collection agency.

VERY WELL. We have the root problem identified and fixed, so let me just pay up and be done with it.

Well, the hospital told me to pay the collection agency, but the collection agency couldn’t find any record of the other $30 the hospital said I owed. So then I had to pay $10 to the collection agency and $30 to the hospital.

I wanted confirmations of all of these payments, especially from the hospital, so I didn’t somehow end up double paying when the collection agency finally turned up the bill for the other $30 that they couldn’t find. But when I get the confirmation email from the hospital, MY BILLING ADDRESS IS WRONG.

Back on the phone with them and the lady says, “Ha ha, I can see the address is in there, but she didn’t actually switch it over yet. Maybe she was going to do that later, but I can just do it now.”

I find absolutely nothing funny about this.

If it takes 2 seconds to do, and she could do it while I was on the phone, why didn’t the first lady just do it, instead of saving it for later? And why in the world would I have any faith that it is going to work the second time?

And by the way, the original (wrong) billing address had a typo in the street name to begin with, so even the wrong address was wrong.

So none of this is my fault, of course (nor is it apparently the fault of anybody I spoke to on the phone), but I have to be the one to do all the work to resolve it. Everybody just shrugs and says, “Sorry sir, computer mistake. Nothing we can do about it.” All’s well that ends well, I suppose, and they assured me that this won’t affect my credit. But isn’t it up to the person who wants my money to shoulder some of this burden? Or the collection agency? Or somebody besides me? ANYBODY besides me??

Our Beautiful Book

/ Shane / Leave a comment

As some of you saw on Facebook, we recently made the most amazing souvenir of our family trip to Paris: a beautiful book.

You can see a preview of the entire book here.

We had found this website Blurb.com that is a self-publishing website (it allows you to make your own books) that a couple of people we know use to automatically make books out of their blog.

I thought this would be simple, since I already have a pretty specific breakdown of our Paris trip here on my blog. All I would have to do is suck this text in, add a bunch of images, and ship it off to the printer. So easy, in fact, that I figured I’d just do it on the sly and give it to Sara for mother’s day.

I downloaded the software from Blurb and put it all together. I took quite a bit more work than I was expecting, but I thought it would be well worth it. However, I was a little too nervous to actually order it without Sara seeing it, so I decided to show it to her before submitting it.

Boy am I glad that I did.

My original version was very text heavy, with only a few small pictures on each page. When all was said and done, we had put countless more hours in, and ended up around version 4 or so. The big difference from version to version was a much bigger focus on the pictures. I think my first version was around 40 pages, and I think we ended around 70 pages or so. I had originally used only the best of the best pictures, but I think we ended up using almost every picture we took. This makes for a much nicer memento obviously. And perhaps we were a little obsessive, going through it over and over, switching pictures, tweaking layouts, etc., but it was sooo worth it.

It turned out perfectly. It is absolutely gorgeous! It is without a doubt the best souvenir one could ever have from a trip like that.

Of course, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right, so we sprang for all the extras: premium paper, printed on cover, etc. So it ended up being about $100, minus about $20 from a coupon code we found. So that is pretty pricey, but the book we got in return is absolutely priceless. Each day of our trip is a chapter, full of anecdotes, descriptions and beautiful, full-page pictures.

So, in summary, feel free to use Blurb for all your book making needs (their BookSmart software is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it, although I should caution that their software has it’s own little…quirks now and again). If you want something to turn out nice, be prepared to put some time in.

And if you come to my house, I’m definitely going to be shoving this book in your face!

Quote Monday forgets about the kids

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sara: “How can you not love a baby in a loin cloth?” – For the record, not our baby

Sara: “I’m kind of glad Oliver pooped in the bath.” – No explanation needed on that one, I think

Me: “Evie wanted the ‘Mommy Special’ for lunch.”
Sara: “With the raisins?”
Me: “And jam, right?”
Sara: “I think  that’s called the ‘Daddy’s-a-Sucker Special’.”

Me: “In high school I think was quiet, but not shy.”
Sara: “Pfffffft!”

That Horrible Invasive Species, the Camel

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Don’t you hate it when you get pests in your yard that you just can’t get rid of. So do the people of Australia. Especially when the pests are feral camels.

Apparently, camels were brought to Australia back in the day because of their obviously usefulness in crossing the outback. However, SUVs are even MORE useful for crossing the outback, so all the camels were set free. Now there are more than a million of them running loose, destroying the Australian eco-system.

But it’s not just the eco-system they’re busting up: thirsty camels will go after any source of water they can find, up to and including busting “pipes and air conditioning units off of walls, and smash[ing] up toilet systems”. Beware the camels!

Link via Sara, who had me at “feral camels”.

The boy just wants to go to sleep

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I feel like every time I write a post about Oliver, it is a compare and contrast with Evie. I guess that’s just how it goes for the second child (Rachael or Anna, care to comment?). But lately we have transitioned to Oliver falling asleep on his own, and it was night and day different than it was with Evie.

Currently, Oliver is sleeping in the travel crib in our room, as Sara is not quite ready to lose her overnight cuddle buddy to Evie. He is absolutely a joy at that time of the day. After he comes out of the bath and gets greased, he signs night-night to everyone and gives kisses, followed by blowing kisses. I take him into our bedroom and read him a few books, which he anticipates with such joy that he usually giggles uncontrollably. After we read a few books, I put him into his crib. He settles his lion in the crook of his arm and I cover him with his blanket. He also usually points furiously to his lion, because I used to always ask him where his lion was, so he got into the habit. Then we usually play a little peekaboo over the side of the crib, and I turn off the light.

For a while I would sing to him until he fell asleep, but he just kept going to bed easier and easier, until it got to the point that I would just lay there in the dark quietly (and possibly *ahem* fall asleep for a bit) until he fell asleep. Finally I kept saying to Sara, “I think I could just leave, and he wouldn’t mind. I think he would just go to sleep.”

So I started doing exactly that: after I get him settled with his lion and his blanket, I turn out the light, say goodnight and leave. For the first week or so, I was sure he was going to howl at some point, but he never really did. He just lays quietly until he goes to sleep.

Compare that to the completely depressed and defeated post I wrote a few years ago on the same topic, except regarding Evie. And the interesting thing is that Oliver is almost exactly the same age as Evie was when we moved her out, so even that is about the same. In some weird way, I feel like this sort of justifies all the trouble we went through with Evie’s sleep: all the trouble we went through WASN’T because we are awful parents! Kids are just different, and “conventional wisdom” doesn’t always work the same for every baby. That girl just doesn’t sleep! She still doesn’t, to this day.

Now it’s not completely resolved as of yet. He still wakes up occasionally in the night (at least once, usually when we come to bed, and sometimes that’s it), and our ultimate plan is to put him in his crib in Evie’s room. So we’re not there yet. But there’s not really any reason to think these things would be that difficult, based on what’s gone so far.

In addition to personality differences between the two of them, there’s probably an aspect of this that’s on us. It could be that we’re a lot more laid back about the whole thing, or maybe just too busy to spend much time worrying about it. But it’s a chicken and an egg kind of problem, because maybe the reason we’re so laid back about it now, is because he’s so laid back about it.

I really can’t tell you how relieved I am about how the whole thing is going down (before I jinxed it by writing this, of course).