Magic Spot Flowing

The final item in the Comcast saga is that I overpaid them by $5.42 and they issued me a check for it, which of course they directed to my old address so it took a while to arrive. But at least dealing with them is over for now. Thank you, neighbor with open wireless.

Yesterday I took the check to the bank, along with another one, to deposit them. Usually I make deposits in my credit union account, but these were low-denomination checks so I decided to deposit them through Bank of America. This is the first time I’ve used one of their new ATMs that can scan your checks, determine their amount, and issue you a receipt with the check image on it. It’s pretty cool. You don’t need a deposit slip or envelope and you don’t even have to enter the amount if the check can be OCRed properly. One of my checks was, but the Comcast one wasn’t. It showed an image (zoomable!) anyway so I was easily able to enter the amount based on the image, even though the check was no longer in my hand. The receipt printed both checks with small but recognizable images (this is optional if you don’t want it, but I thought it was cool).

Big businesses can be annoying to work with, and Bank of America demonstrated this recently when I wanted to change my address. They offer the ability to do that online — sensibly enough, since you can do pretty much everything else with your account online — so after I moved, I did. However, for some reason that I still don’t understand, they refused to complete the online address change, claiming that I had changed my address too recently. That’s utter nonsense, since I lived in the same place for three years and only updated my address once to correct the spelling (yes, I spelled my own address wrong — the street name has two variants that are both common and I chose the wrong one).

It took quite a bit of back-and-forth to correct this, including a visit to the branch where they informed me that since it’s a California account, they can’t change it on the Oregon computer system (WTF? Really?) and it only ended when I described my address change history (or rather, lack thereof) in detail and threatened to move on if they continued to be clueless. Finally I got someone responding to my emails that seemed to realize there was no actual problem, so she changed it for me.

But they do have cool tech.

I’ve had a lot of moments lately where I’m just absurdly happy to be in Portland…the grinning-in-the-street, singing-randomly sort of happy. And I think about blogging about whatever just happened and then something else awesome happens and I forget.

Awesome things:
I climbed Mt. Tabor on my bike (yesterday). There was nothing particularly impressive about my execution, but I did it. Sources suggest that this means I climbed about 600 ft, which is about the same as I used to do from home to Woodside. I think I’m a bit out of shape.

Actually, I know I’m a bit out of shape, because while biking to the Tin Shed on Alberta (where I sat out on a patio, ate tasty squash ravioli, and listened to a sax trio while talking to interesting Internet people) I was passed by people riding upright city bikes with front baskets and people towing trailers. People in Portland are for serious with their commuter riding.

I went on several Portland ByCycle rides, the first one to sweets (frozen yogurt, ice cream and other tastiness), the second to the waterfront, and the third to “quirky parks”. These rides are awesome. They start after work and end before dark, are hosted by incredibly friendly and knowledgeable city staff, and explore Portland’s bicycle infrastructure and nifty places.

Everyone in Portland is So Nice. The way I’ve described the difference between this and other places is that in my experience, people are generally polite everywhere I’ve been, but in Portland, they don’t just do it, they mean it. People ask how you are and talk to you in the street. And being around so many nice people has the effect of creating more niceness in me, which feels great.

I went to a classical music concert (recital?) in a pub. Classical Revolution PDX. Classical music + relaxed atmosphere = win.

Tonight I went to Drinking Liberally, for three reasons: it was convenient (the Lucky Lab NW is two blocks from work), I was interested in the experience, and the invited guest was Michelle Poyourow of the BTA. I’ve been quietly waffling about what to do about continuing my advocacy work now that I’ve left SVBC to its own devices (I haven’t technically left it, since my membership will remain active until February of next year, but I’ve certainly become at best an inactive member). There are many organizations and many projects in Portland, and they don’t all get along, but I was quite won over by Michelle’s realistic yet optimistic take on things, so I’m planning on seeing if I can offer them my time, interest, and experience in the bikes-on-transit arena.

The overall experience was fun too — I suspect that I’m not really engaged enough in national political stuff to keep up with the usual DL attendees, but I definitely found them congenial and interesting.

And then there are the small awesomenesses: walking out of my office and looking up to see sunsplashed hills and fluffy white clouds; sunset captures and crisp afternoon views from the bridges; and boysenberries from Food Front and basil from the farmer’s market.

And last but not least, sitting in my bay window at night and watching the stars in the sky and lights in the houses.

My Sunday in Seattle was slightly less ad-hoc than Saturday. I spent the day with my best friend from graduate school and her husband and brother- and sister-in-law. Our first stop was Cafe Flora, which is I think better than the Yelp reviews suggest (for those of you who automatically go Yelp any restaurant someone mentions). It probably doesn’t exceed Greens, but it’s nearly on par — perhaps better for some items — and much cheaper. The apple-cinnamon rolls were fantastic, their rosemary lemonade and cranberry ginger drinks were yummy, and the sides of potatoes with the brunch dishes were absolutely perfect. There were a few oddities — the beignets were dry, and the “Bloody Flora” had a few too many pickled vegetables for nearly anyone’s taste. My tomatoes included the core, which seemed careless to me.

Afterward we went to REI (the flagship store — huge!) and then on to Discovery Park, which was fantastic. I neglected to bring my camera on our walk/hike, and missed a wonderfully rainy view out over the Sound (we missed the rain, but it was raining out there and it came it not long after we got back) and some beautiful purple flowers with water droplets from the earlier rain. Upon further research I find that they’re sweet pea flowers! Very nice. We also saw an owl and a chipmunk. What a great park. Now that I’ve seen Seattle’s park I’m doubly motivated to explore the one practically on my doorstep (Forest Park).

It’s funny how some of the best things are completely unplanned. When I got to Seattle yesterday, I had a plan to go see the Space Needle, then go walk or sit in a park for a while. And that was the extent of my plan.

Before I headed for Seattle center, I noticed a shop in Pike Place Market called The Crumpet Shop. I love crumpets, and you don’t see them very often here, so I decided to stop in, and get something if it looked good. Sitting and eating my crumpet (which was regrettably not that good — sorry Crumpet Shop, but you need to step it up), I saw a poster for Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan’s production of Utopia Ltd. I could only see part of the poster because it was behind the door, but the part I could see was advertising next weekend and the weekend after. When I got up to look, I found that the hidden part listed this weekend! I didn’t decide right away to go, but it entered my mind as a possibility.

While I was waiting for the Space Needle (everyone in Seattle wants to be up there on a sunny day), I looked up Seattle G&S on my phone and called their number. They were not selling tickets until an hour and a half before the show, but the theater was nearby. When I showed up at 6 (after completing the “sit in a park” part of my plan, and finding out whether there were any vegetarian places nearby), they still had a few left. And thus my stop in the Crumpet Shop led to a fun evening.

The production was, in my no-longer-very-educated opinion, excellent. Very good orchestra, excellent singing (especially on the part of the woman playing Zara), quality acting, and fun choreography well-executed by the cast. I particularly enjoyed the glow-in-the-dark tambourines wielded by the King and the Flowers of Progress at one point. The choice of accents for each character was also, I think, carefully done. Notably, the Public Exploder sported a Scottish accent when not speaking Utopian — a clear and probably period-appropriate use of the stereotype of barbarous Scots.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen or done a G&S show, and I’d forgotten how much fun they can be. The audience was clearly an experienced one and laughed heartily at the in-jokes in the dialogue. The subject matter of Utopia, Ltd. is well-suited for adaptation to our current culture, and the adaptation was done well — very funny, but at points on-target enough to be a little painful in its humor.

I did find myself getting bored at times, though. I can’t say if I’d have this experience watching the G&S shows I particularly like with greater distance from them, but the development of the secondary (and even primary) romantic duos and the “plotting” song (“With wily brain upon the spot”) seemed weak and insipid to me, even if well-sung, and I wanted them to go quickly past it so we could get to something more fun. I don’t mean the “plot” (if you can call it that), which is always thin, but the songs themselves.

Overall, though, it was a fun and musically rewarding experience.

Other Seattle observations:
The Space Needle is fun, but it’s not as cool as the CN Tower.
At first I thought the monorail was bizarrely retro-futuristic and seriously lame, but I didn’t realize it can go over 45 mph and is 47 years old, both fairly impressive statistics. However, it is kind of lame to charge you $2 to go a mile.
There are a lot of mountains and a lot of water around here. I like it.
Bamboo Garden vegetarian Chinese restaurant is okay, but Garden Fresh is much better, despite the latter’s lack of atmosphere.
Unfortunately, sections of downtown smell like urine, to a greater extent than I’ve experienced in other downtowns. Ick.

Never pack a microwave into a moving box without cleaning it, and then fail to unpack it for more than a week. The gunk will begin to grow mold, and it will be gross.

Uggggh.

I’ve written before about my struggles with Comcast — they lose payments, they bill incorrectly, and until recently, calling their general customer service from my cell phone was an exercise in frustration because they would redirect me to New Mexico Comcast based on my area code.

When closing my account with them, I had another struggle: they told me they would send me a final bill, but they didn’t issue the bill before the due date on my previous bill or before the account was closed. When I talked to them, they seemed not to be aware that I had ever been promised such a thing, and maybe not even aware that I had called to cancel my account (even though my account should have shown that I had canceled as well as returning my modem — another poor experience, since it took 30+ minutes while everyone in the place moved at molasses-speed).

Eventually I had to sit on hold on their online chat for a while and request that they tell me the final balance. One representative claimed I should just pay the full amount due and they would refund the balance, but I’ve heard that song and dance before and I didn’t fall for it. To quote myself from March 2008, “Like hell. At this point, they don’t get my money until they prove that they’re supposed to.”

Even after he agreed, he claimed all they could give me was an estimate because they couldn’t calculate the taxes. (Really? How do you do it every month then?)

Today I got a notice in my email that my bill was ready online, so I guess they finally prepared it. I tried to log in to look at it (because the email doesn’t give the amount) and — surprise! — I can’t log in because the account number associated with my login profile has been canceled and is invalid. No, really.

Let’s hope I estimated an amount close to the correct amount when I paid them online. Otherwise I’ll have to wait for my mail to be forwarded to sort this out. (…and I only even get paper statements because they can’t be trusted to send out an email every month.)

” ‘With any luck we will be able to ftp some suitable software and get it running on the Tera.’
‘The Terror?’
‘Tera. As in Teraflops.’
‘That does me no good at all. When you say “as in” you are supposed to give me something more familiar to relate it to.’ “

I got a Portland Water Bureau Drinking Water Quality Report in my mailbox today. There’s a section where they list contaminants, including Radium, which is measured in picocuries per liter. There’s also a “Definitions” section which defines picocuries per liter, among other things. The definition is:
“Picocurie is a measurement of radioactivity. One picocurie is a trillion times smaller than one curie.”

Note to the PWB: please see the above Cryptonomicon excerpt for my reaction to this definition.