Archive for October, 2009

I was reading the paper this morning and came across an article about people who were taking statins and became infected with seasonal flu and had to be hospitalized where twice as likely to survive than those who weren’t on them.  The article gave a shoutout to Lipitor and Zocor.  The CDC and Prevention were behind this study.  I could very well believe that coming from the government regulated CDC, but Prevention?  Hmmm, Merck and Pfizer in their back pocket?

Oh wait, it gets better.  Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University doctor said, “There are relatively few downsides to trying statins, which are cheap, relatively safe and already among the most widely used medicines in the world.”

Trying statins?  Cheap?  Safe?  Widely use?  I just about shit my fucking pants when I read that.  Let me tell you something about Lipitor. 

Trying statins?  Like it’s fucking weed or something.  “Here, smoke this….”  You go first, you moron.  What a fucking ignorant statement.

It is not cheap.  A three month supply was costing me $191 AFTER my insurance paid.  Cut your pills in half.  Take them every other day.  Get your bloodwork done and see what falls out of the tree.  That’s what I did.

The side effects where horrible and it took me a couple of years to realize it was the Lipitor.  I complained to my cardiologist that it was making me tired.  He said there was nothing in it to make me tired.  I said I didn’t feel like this before I was taking it.  I asked how long I have to be on it.  He said for the rest of your life.  BULL FUCKING SHIT TO BOTH!!!!

Go get yourself some red yeast rice. Do the research. It’s got the same damn active ingredient that lovastatin has. But because it’s the same shit, make sure you continue with your blood work to make sure it’s not fucking up your liver.

I couldn’t stay awake on Lipitor.  I’d get up at 6:30 for work and I’d be back in bed by 11:00, literally drained of all physical and mental energy.  Luckily I worked at home.  I’d have to sleep for 2-3 hours.  Then at night, I’d fall asleep without a problem because I was so exhausted, but then wake up at 1:00 a.m. and wouldn’t fall asleep again until 4:30 a.m.

Like I said, I started cutting my pills in half and then taking it every other day.  Soon I realized that on the nights I took the pill, I had insomnia.  A big fucking lightbulb moment that was, let me tell you. 

After I stopped taking it my cholesterol was fine and still is years later.  Once my pipes were cleaned up there was no reason to stay on it.  I stopped eating deep fried shrimp 3-4 times a week and the problem magically went away on its own.  I didn’t even tell my doctor about it.  I just kept going for the blood work every 6 months.  As long as it was fine, I just kept stuffing those Rx’s in my purse. 

And about the “most widely used medicine” bullshit.  I think that should be most widely misused medicine.  Hey, patients are fucking fat and lively unhealthy lifestyles, but it’s pure drug abused by the doctors who Rx this shit like it was candy and then telling you it’s for the rest of your life.  Big pharma has them, too.  All of them – fuckers.  Get the shovel.

Do you ever go along in life minding your own damn business and then some boogeyman jumps out of the bushes and totally pisses on your parade?  Drum roll, puleez…the latest monthly batch of Windows updates for October 2009 - 15 of the fuckers.

Several problems have arisen and short of uninstalling them, which I am THIS close to doing, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix them.

1)  Boot-up:  Gone are the days when I turn on my computer and it goes straight to my desktop.  My own personal bootup routine is a well oiled machine.  I get out of bed, hit the head, turn on my computer, start the coffee, and when I get back into my office my computer is all booted up and ready to rock.  That’s no longer the case after the latest batch of updates.  Instead of logging me in (No password is set on my account.  Yea, I know, I’m an easy target.) and going to straight to my desktop, it goes to the user account selection screen and displays the admin and my user icons.  I have to click my icon to get to my shit.  I have no fucking clue how to make it go away.

2)  Video driver:  Ok, this wasn’t part of the original 15 updates.  This one came a few days later.  I noticed there was an update for my video driver NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE.  I thought WTF, I’d engage it because I haven’t had one in a long time.  BZZZT!!!  Wrong choice, bozo.  After the update I noticed a miraculous difference in resolution.  The edges on everything were smoother.  But now whenever I boot up, I get a little balloon message in the system tray that says the optimal screen resolution is 1680 x 1050 and “click here to change it”, or some shit like that.  However, it’s already at that resolution…sort of.  The display settings says it’s at that resolution, but visually I don’t have that same smooth look I got right after it installed.  It’s like something went AWOL.  What the fuck, Chuck?  Every damn morning I get that damn message balloon.

3)  Printing:  I have 5 printers.  I know, I’m a whore.  Suddenly I can’t access two of them.  My network sees that they are shared and ready, but I can’t print to them.  Shit gets stuck in the queue and I have to delete the jobs because they never come out.  It really pisses me off because two of my other printers this past week decided to go tits up on toner.  Empty, empty, empty.  There’s no printing anything when a cartridge is empty.  I also have a new wireless/wired Brother MFC-490CW.  Sweet little all-in-one machine.  I tested it when I set it up a couple of months ago.  Worked great when printing wirelessly from my laptop AND worked great when printing wired from my PC.  So I switched the setting on the printer to go from wireless to wired and nothing.  My PC sees it’s ready, it even teases me by showing me the fucking toner levels in the bitch, but again, shit gets stuck in the print queue and never comes out.  However, it still works wirelessly from my laptop.  That tells me my PC is fucked up.

4)  Looping Windows:  Twice now since this update, I clicked on something and it got stuck and kept opening the same thing over and over.  Let me explain.  I don’t remember what the first incident was, but the last one was a YouTube video.  I was watching an embedded one on a site.  I paused it and when I clicked on it again to resume playing, I accidentally clicked twice and it went to YouTube over and opened the video over and over and over and over and over…you still with me on that?  By the time it had about 30 new instances opened, I had to manually hit the power button to turn it off.  WTF is up with that?  I checked to make sure nothing was pressing on the keyboard.  (I’ve don’t that before.)

If ANYONE out there can give me some help, post a comment.  Oh, and I have KeywordLuv enabled so be sure and post a URL so I can leak some of my lowly link juice to you.  Spammers, your shit will be deleted like always.

Wells Fucko Stagecoach

Wells Fucko is fucking me once again.  Just got a notice today that they increasing the margin on purchases to 13.35% for a grand total of 19.10% APR.  Why?  Interest rates are at their all-time low. 

Here’s the part that I really love:  “These changes are not a reflection of how you have managed your account with us or your credit score.”

Well, maybe they should be.  Last I checked my FICO was over 900.  Forget the fact that I’m prolly your best paying customer while you foreclose on and repossed everything else around you. 

How is it that Chase (they can be assholes, too so don’t let them fool you) can give me a fixed rate of 3.25% (NOT a promo rate), but you pricks want to charge me 19.10%?  You’re already ass raping me for 16.10% and you want more?  Fuck you.

Hang on folks.  Give me a few minutes here.  I’m going to give these dick heads a call right now…

I told the chick if she can match Chase I’ll stay…She’s getting a banker on the line.

She lied.  It was Lisa, a new account rep in Reno.  She said she doesn’t have the ability to lower rates on an existing account.  (Hmmm, me thinking to myself.  Every other fucking bank in the world does.)  She asked if she could go over some other products that may help me.  (Hmmm, thinking to myself again.  They want to get their claws deeper into me.)  

I flat out told her, “All I have left with Wells Fargo is a checking account and a credit card.  I’ve already closed the savings account and another checking account.  Wells Fargo simply cannot compete with the other banks and I had no choice but to close them.” 

She said if I don’t want to sign up for additional services, then she can’t help me.  I said, “Ok, I’ll listen to see what you can do.” 

Do I have upcoming large bills or a mortgage?  No and No.  (Hmmm, thinking to myself, she’s going to want me to take out a loan.)  Will I be buying a house?  No, I am unemployed.  (What I really meant to say was “Oh HELL no!”) Do I want a line of credit even though I can’t match that 3.25% rate from Chase?  No.  She say’s, “Sorry, I can’t do anything for you at this time then.” 

Me, “Ok, transfer me back to customer service again so I can close out the account.”

Now I’ve got Nicole on the line.  She said they have nothing available at this time.  So I told her to close the account.  Fuck them.  All three ladies I talked to were nice, but there was no way they were going to budge.

Have I lost anything?  Yes.  I lost my overdraft protection and I was a credit card customer for 12 years so I lost having that “credit card account opened for a long period of time” thing that creditors like to see on your history.  That hurt.

Let me tell you something about that overdraft protection.  They fuck you over on that, too.  I don’t know what their overdraft fees are, but they are expensive just like any other bank, prolly at least $30.  However, overdraft protection isn’t such a prince of a deal, itself.  I got dinged by them earlier this year because I got lazy and wasn’t watching my balance and got slapped with an “interest fee” for overdraft protection.  It was something crazy like $10!!!  Wells Fucko is not your friend.

In summary, I have never, ever, fucking ever not had a bank not willing to work with me.  I don’t like Chase, but they will bend over backwards to lower interest rates to keep me when I threaten to close accounts.  They value their customers.  Wells Fargo doesn’t.  If they want to play hardball at the expense of losing customers, then so be it.

So now all I have left with them is a checking account.  Unbeknownst to them I have a checking account at the Chase bank across the street from them.  It has $1 in it.  I opened the account right before Washington Mutual bit the dust, then Chase bought them out.  But I’m a creature of habit so I keep driving to Wells Fucko.  Maybe I should shorten the trip by a block and start using Chase.  If they fuck with me again and I will.

UPDATE – October 21, 2009:  Something occurred to me in the middle of the night.  I got an absolutely fantastic deal on a balance transfer offer a couple of weeks ago from another credit card.  Even with the transfer fee, the transaction was less than the interest fees I was paying with Wells Fucko.  So I wrote the balance transfer check and paid off the Wells Fucko card.  And now a few days later I get this interest increase??  Coincidence?  I think not.  Retaliation?  I think so.  They know when something is paid with a balance transfer check.  Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t budge on the interest rate giving me that “nothing is available at this time” bullshit.  My account’s been flag.  If it’s not punishment, then fucking prove me wrong.

Anyone in the banking industry out there reading this? Give me the inside scoop. Let’s have some whistleblowing. Tell me, do credit card/banks retaliate on their customers? Any other dirty secrets you want to share?