The SoapBoxers

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POCATELLO (FNN)  An Idaho man recently broke a long standing record for turkey consumption.  Local welder Gerald Cooper ate turkey three times a day for 366 straight days – an incredible 1098 consecutive meals.  More incredibly, all of the turkey was prepared for Thanksgiving 2008!  FNN sent reporter Scoop Chevelle to Pocatello to get the scoop.

SCOOP:  Wow, Gerald.  Color me impressed.  What inspired you to do this?

COOP:  Well, Scoop, it really started by accident.  Wal-Mart had this great deal on turkeys, so I bought a bunch.  I planned a huge party for turkey day last year.  Hundreds of my closest friends and 600 pounds of turkey.  Unfortunately, I was a bit drunk when I sent the invitations.  In hindsight, the mailbox I put them into may have been a storm drain.  The end result is that nobody showed up.

SCOOP:  So you were left with 600 pounds of turkey and decided to eat all of it yourself?

COOP:  Yeah, that’s pretty much it.  Hey, I have a couple of big deep freezes, so I just tossed the leftovers into the iceboxes.  Really, it wasn’t bad for the first few months.  Obviously, Idaho has the best potatoes in the world – yeah, I see you Ireland.  Bring it ON!  The cranberries did get a bit gamey after the first week, though.

SCOOP:  How have you kept from getting sick of turkey every day?

COOP:  For the first six months, I just had plain old turkey sandwiches.  Then I began to mix it up a bit.  Turkey chili, turkey stroganoff, turkey energy shakes, turkey whiskey, turkey waffles, turkey tacos, turkey thermidor.

SCOOP:  Have you ever come close to missing a meal?

COOP:  Yes – May 18th was extremely close.  I was a bit hung over, and it was 11:30 by the time I realized that I hadn’t had my breakfast yet.  I snuck it in just under the wire.  Hey, as long as you’re done before noon, it counts as breakfast.

SCOOP:  How much turkey is left?

COOP:  Happily, none.  I had a handful of friends over last night, and we polished off the last 20 pounds.

SCOOP:  So, are you looking forward to Thanksgiving 2010?

COOP:  I think I’m having ham next year.

I probably made my first purchase via the internet in about 1994. I’m sure the purchase for a few dollars worth of baseball cards. In the fifteen years since then, I have bought a multitude of things on the internet. Some things just seems to be best purchased over the internet – I’ve given some examples below.

Filters – Our furnace has a SpaceGard (now AprilAire) air cleaner. Most of the time, this is OK. When it comes time to change the filter, this can be a royal pain. The good thing is that these filters only need to be replaced every sixth months – much less frequently than a normal furnace filter.

The bad news is that changing the filter is a somewhat complicated process. Due to the setup of the utility closet, it is necessary to first remove bi-fold doors from the track in order to access the filter. Note: this design decision was NOT my brilliant idea. Then the actual filter unfolds like an accordion. Little plastic “combs” are supposed to keep the filter’s pleats properly space. Except that the combs no longer snap firmly into the filter assembly.

These filters are hard to find in retail stores. I finally thought to look on the internet. Not only were they cheaper, but they were available in a little box unit that just slides right into the assembly – no combs needed! I still need to take the doors off the tracks and put them back on, but no more messing around with the combs. That’s a win.

I’ve also found good deals on humidifier filters online. They’re the same item you see in the retail stores, but lower priced and delivered right to your door. Sweet.

Computer accessories – If you need to buy a computer cable or flash memory (such as the memory card for your camera), think twice before buying them in a retail store. You’ll pay a lot less buying them online – often a small fraction of the cost. Often, you’re buying the exact same product. And when it comes to cables, don’t let a salesperson bully you into thinking only a certain brand of cable will work. Unless you have a funky device that requires a special adapter, any brand of cable will work just fine. A gigabit Ethernet cable is going to provide the exact same top speed, regardless of brand, and a USB 2 cable is going to comply to version 2 of the USB standards (hence the moniker USB 2) regardless of manufacturer.  Standards are just that – standards.

Books and CD – I have been known to go absolutely crazy on Half.com. I once bought a dozen William X. Kienzle paperbacks for $20, shipped! Not only is that a better price than retail used book stores but Kienzle is a hard author to find, so I save a lot of effort tracking them down over the internet. I also buy CDs on Half.com, particularly when I become a fan of an artist who already has several items out.

If you have the patience to wait a month or so, you’ll see hot new hard covers books for just a few bucks on Half.

Out of market sports merchandise – I live 800 miles away from the Denver home of my beloved Colorado Rockies. That means that I can’t just pop into a retail store to pick up a Rockies shirt of jacket. Buying through the official Rockies store can be pricey. This is where eBay comes in handy. Last year, I bought a Starter brand winter coat, in great condition, for a total cost (price + shipping) of about $30. The coat appears to be nearly new. How much does the coat cost new? $100.

In 2008, the Rockies gave away replica National League trophies to celebrate their run to the 2007 World Series.  I couldn’t be in attendance on the date of the giveaway, of course – but I did end up with a trophy.  A friend from Purple Row sold me one for a very fair price.

Yep, I’m too lazy to write a a full article today – so I’ll reveal bits and pieces about myself instead.

• My name – Nope, sorry, this isn’t the grand revelation.  I will remain under my curtain of anonymity.  But I’ll tease you with this – my last name, while being neither particularly common nor particularly uncommon, is contained within the title of an award-winning film and was also the last name of a main character on a popular sitcom.
• My left foot – My left foot has six toenails.  It has the standard number of toes (that would be FIVE, if you’re not sure) but one of the toes (the toe next to the big toe) has “Mickey Mouse ears” at the top, with each “ear” having a separate toe nail.  Nope, I do not plan to have surgery to “fix” the problem.  It has never been much of a problem, to be honest.
• My favorite food – My favorite food is chili, but I’m very particular.  This can be a bit problematic, since there are hundreds of different ways to prepare chili.
• Weird stuff I eat – One of my favorite treats is braunschweiger.  This is a liver based product that can be sliced into pieces.  I personally prefer to eat it between crackers.  Oddly, I don’t like any other form of liver.
• I’m not xenophobic – But I do dislike ethnic food.  Essentially any and all ethnic food.  As a general rule, the more expensive the ethnic food, the less likely I will like it.  Taco Bell and cheap frozen egg rolls are fine – but any ethnic restaurant that is above the level of fast food is likely to disagree with my palate in a violent manager.
• Don’t be so shellfish! – I am allergic to iodine, and hence to shellfish (such as shrimp).
• I can’t swim – Really, I can’t swim at all.  I lack the capacity to float, which greatly hindered my ability to learn how to swim.  On the bright side, there was one occasion where I actually thought I was going to drown during swimming lessons (because the lifeguard was a bit slow to respond to my customary sinking after jumping from the board) and I did actually manage to swim to the side during my moment of panic.   Alas, I have never managed to recapture that skill.  (Yes, yes, I was supposed to jump from the board into the deep end of the pool – that was the point of that part of the swimming lesson.)
• Typing – I have perhaps the ugliest typing method you have ever seen.  I type with the tips of my fingers (instead of the pads) and my method is far removed from “home row”.  My left hand stays basically in one place, while my right wanders across a wide swath of the keyboards, hitting keys as necessary.  Of course, after a couple of decades using this method, I do actually maintain a pretty decent speed.
• Animals – I grew up on a farm and am not a big fan of domesticated animals.  I am a fan of wild animals, though.  My favorite wild animal is the tiger.  Every year, I buy a tiger calendar for my desk at work.
• All of a sudden – This is one of my greatest pet peeves.  I absolutely hate when people say “all of a sudden” or “all of the sudden” in place of “suddenly.”  Considering what the term is trying to convey, using four words instead of one seems a bit ironic.
• If I could meet any person, living or dead … – I’d pick the living one.  The dead ones start to smell after a while 🙂

Yes.  I most certainly did alienate a reader.  I’ll refer to the reader as Reader X.

Reader X has been one of my my loyal readers.  Reader X and I had established a dialogue over email, and I had enjoyed the conversations we had shared.  However, my recent story The Cell Window struck a rather sour chord with Reader X.  Reader X considered the story to be “smut” and took me to task for making the female characters clueless rather than strong.

Those of you who have read the story can likely figure out why the female characters were “clueless”.  This wasn’t a character flaw on their part, but simply an effect of the plot.  Anyone in their situation would been clueless.  As for the characters not being stronger – if they had been stronger, this would have critically wounded the setup to the story’s ending.  The ending of the story was one of the first pieces of the story that I wrote, so I really wanted to use it.

Was the story smut?  I personally don’t think so – nor do a handful of female readers I queried.  While the content was a bit disturbing, they didn’t feel that it was any more disturbing than the typical episode of Law & Order.  Certainly there was content that was sexual in nature.  It would have been difficult to write a story with a similar plot without including some content of this type.

Does the inclusion of sexual content mean that a book is rubbish and should be tossed aside?  I certainly hope not.  If this was the case, we would lose fine books like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and John Grisham’s A Time To Kill.  (Don’t remember the sexual content in those books?  Grab a copy and re-read it!)  We would also be forced to cast aside the works of modern masters such as Lawrence Block and John Sandford.  Certainly, this would be a crime against literature.

Although I write fiction on a wide range of topics and using a variety of tones, I strive to become a writer of crime fiction.  It has been suggested that I am stronger with my humor writing than with crime.  This is almost certainly true – my humor pieces flow off the keyboard nearly as fast as I can write, whereas the crime stories take considerably more thought.  Nonetheless, crime fiction is what I enjoy, and it is where I would like to make my mark as a writer.

As an aspiring crime writer, I will often find myself writing passages that make a segment of my readership uncomfortable.  While I would hope all of my writing would appeal to everyone, I know that this will not be the case.  Certainly, on occasion, I will upset someone with my writing.  While I do not go out of my way to offend, I also do not go out of my way to ensure that my work doesn’t have offensive rough edges.  A key component of crime fiction is that it does have rough edges.  To refine my stories so that they were too smooth to possible offend anyone would be to subvert the genre.

And that is something I will not do.

Back On April 15, we launched a Stock Market contest (click link to see insights from the participants) in which a team of Goliaths (personal finance bloggers) were matched up against a team of Davids (people who were not personal finance bloggers). At the end of August, the Dow stood at 9496.281 and had gained average 11.34 points during the course of the contest, making the Davids the favorites.

We skipped the update at the end of September.  In the two months since the  last update, the market pushed back above 10,000 before retreating to finish the end of October at 9712.73.

At the end of the day on April 14th (the 104th day of the year), the Dow was at 7920.18.

At the end of the day on October 31 (the 304th day of the year), the Dow was at 9712.73

This is a gain of 1792.55, or 8.96 points per day. If we assume that the market will contain to gain at exactly the same rate throughout the rest of the year (yes, a ridiculous assumption), the Dow will be at 10258.74 at the end of the year (+ 2338.56 from April 14).

How do our contestants stack up?

Team	Player	Player’s Guess	Difference from projection
N/A	Projected year end Dow	10258.74	0
David	Peter Rabbit @ The Soap Boxers	9500	758.74
No team	Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers	8999	1259.74
David	Phil Ossifer @ The Soap Boxers	8500	1758.74
Goliath	Trevor @ Financial Nut	8500	1758.74
David	Black Hole	8492.48	1766.26
Goliath	Heidi @ Banker Girl	8400	1858.74
Goliath	Lazy @ Lazy Man and Money	8232	2026.74

I also invited visitors to play along at home. Let’s see how they are doing.

Player	Player’s Guess	Difference from projection
Karchy	9777	481.74
Hilary	9500	758.74
Jeff	7800	2458.74

Team David remains firmly in the lead at this point.  The rate of growth has slowed a bit, but the market is still trending upward.  With two months remaning in the year, Team Goliath still had a shot, but we would need to see a significant downturn in the market in order to give them the win.

As much of the United States rolls back off Daylight Saving Time, I am once again reminded of the absurdity of time zones.  Not just of DST, but of the entire concept of each area of the world being in a different time zone.  I wonder much productivity is lost each year as a result of people misunderstanding the time of meetings.  I’m a baseball fan who lives in the Central time zone, follows a team in the Mountain time zone, and reads about them on web sites that list game times in Eastern time.  When I am looking at my printed Rockies schedule, I need to add an hour to figure out the correct game time.  When I am looking at the schedule on ESPN.com, I need to subtract an hour.  On more than one occasion, I have gotten the game time wrong.

I am not the first person to suggest this idea, nor will I be the last.  However, I will shout it from the parapet of this magazine – stop the insanity.  Move to one single time zone.  It would be 06:00 everywhere in the world at the same time.  In some places, 06:00 would be breakfast time.  In other areas, it would be lunch time.  On the other side of the world. it would be bedtime.

There  would no , longer be confusion about time.  When someone schedules a meeting for 06:00, all of the attendees would know exactly what time the organizer intends.  There would be no more setting clocks forward in the spring and back in the fall.

So, then, what is standing in the way of this plan?  The human addiction to specific numbers dictating their lives.  People want to wake at 6, have lunch at noon, dinner at 5, and go to bed at 10.  They are resistant to having this balance upset, even those these are mere numbers.

In decades past, the differing time zones had very little impact on people’s lives.  Before the advent of the telephone, it was very rare to have any time-sensitive interactions with people in different time zones.  Even in the latter half of the twentieth century, most people only had to know what time it was in a few different time zones.

Today, however, we live in a global economy.  The readers of The Soap Boxers come from many different countries.  Not just the United States and Canada, but also Australia, New Zealand, India, England, Israel, Egypt, Malaysia and Singapore – and that’s just a sampling of readers from the past few days.  I read blogs written by bloggers in Australia, New Zealand, and China.  It would be nice if we could refer to times without forcing everyone to scramble to their favorite world time clock to figure out exactly what time is being referred to.

The comments section of this article will serve as a petition to move to a single time zone, tentatively referred to as “Kosmo Time”.  If you are in agreement with this plan, sign up below!  If I can get a majority of the world’s population to sign up, I will print off the petition (duplex, of course) and deliver it to someone who thinks they have the power to enact such a change.

My latest story, The Cell Window, took six weeks to finish. Key Relationships (the main story from The Fiction of Kosmo Volume 1 – roughly the same length as The Cell Window) took about ten days to complete, so I assumed I was setting aside plenty of time when I began writing a full month in advance of my projected publication date. I never dreamed that I would miss the date by two weeks.  (one of the nice things about being the Editor-in-Chief is that nobody breathes down my neck when I miss a deadline)

So, what happened? I try to avoid uses excuses too often, but I’m making this an “all excuses” edition of The Soap Boxers, just for kicks.

• I have been fighting off a few different illnesses. In August, I contracted the stomach flu twice. For the month of October, I have been dealing with a sinus infection that just won’t go away. I’m on the second treatment of antibiotics – hopefully this will do the trick. Needless to say, a sick Kosmo is a Kosmo who doesn’t feel like writing.  None of this stuff was particularly severe, but still enough to hamper creativity a bit.
• In the last month, my two year old daughter had decided that she doesn’t want to go to be at eight o’clock; preferring eight thirty or nine o’clock instead. This effectively cuts my writing time in half, as I often use the 8-10 PM block to write.
• I really, really wanted to read Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and get a review up quickly.  Alas, that hasn’t happened quite yet, although I am about 70% of the way through the book.
• My Rockies made the playoffs!  There was important October baseball to watch.  My Rockies have made the playoffs three times in seventeen years – so Rockies playoff games will push a lot of things to the back burner.
• Issues related to the blog took up some time. Some other writers were also dealing with illnesses and were unable to meet timelines, meaning that I had to write more in order to fill in the gaps. Obviously, I’m not faulting them for this – it was completely beyond their control. There was a sudden unilateral parting of the ways with another writer that caused a gap. I wrote several articles to fill this gap, while also taking the time to line up some new writers to fill this spot.
• Finally, I backed myself into a bit of a corner. Typically, when I write, I rough out a plot, suggesting several larger scenes. I use these as benchmarks during the writing process. I know that on the way from point A to point Z, I’ll hit D, J, T, and X. Along the way, there will be a lot of “connector” material. I can’t simply skip from high point to high point – there must be a natural flow to the story. I skip around a lot during the writing process. I’ll write point J and then perhaps write the connector material between points X and Z. In the case of The Cell Window, I wrote too many of the main scenes first.  Effectively, I ate all of the dessert first and left myself with a plate of veggies.  This made the second half of the work much harder.  Lesson learned – leave some good parts for later!

So, what does the future hold, as far as fiction?

• First, I have a rough idea of the story for next quarter.  I’m not waiting until I have a mere month before the deadline this time around!  The working title is If the Walls Could Talk.  I doubt that will be the final title, as I’m not a big fan of it.  Anyway, the story will features stories-within-a-story, as the owner of a B&B reminisces about some of the past guests and their experiences.  The B&B featured in the book will be Buckingham Place.  If this sounds familiar (other than the reference to Buckingham PALACE), it’s because Hayley and Mike in Key Relationships stayed at this B&B.
• Also, I am finally beginning work on my novel.  Its working title will be Casting Stones.  I AM a big fan of that title, so there is a strong chance the book will retain the title. Casting Stones will be a murder mystery that follow a detective named Brooke as she attempts to catch a serial killer.  I don’t want to share many more details at this point, because most of the details that I have figured out would be huge spoilers and give away a ton of the plot.  Considering the other irons that are currently in the fire, I would be very surprised if I finish Casting Stones in less than two years.  I do NOT plan to make this available on the web – I actually intend to find a publisher.  Obviously, that’s a long shot, but it’s what I’m aiming for.

Recently, I have noticed a lot of advertisements for coins on TV and in magazines.  Casual observers should be able to determine that many of these coins will never have any substantial value.  If you really think those Derek Jeter coins (the most hits ever by a Yankee!) are going to fund your retirement plan, you’ve got a few screws loose.  If you’re a Jeter fan and think the coin is pretty, then by all means buy it – but realize that it is a trinket, not an investment.  Items that are marketed as “collector’s items” rarely become items that collectors truly desire.

The deeper problem, though, are the companies that market gold coins by implying that these coins were produced by the US mint.  I saw one with the clever wording “U.S. government issued gold coins”.  Was the coin originally issued by the US mint?  Definitely.  Does the coin contain some small amount of gold?  Most likely.  Was the coin issued by the mint in the golden variety?  No.  The gold was added later, by a private company.  These companies love to use names that blur the line and try to imply that they are affiliated with the government in some way.

Some of the ads claim to sell the coins to you “at cost”.  I’m astounded that a private company would be so generous – they’re not even making a profit!  Or maybe they’re playing a shell game to make the statement true and false at the same time.  Let’s say that I own two companies: Widget Maker and Widget Seller.  Widget Maker incurs $5 in costs and sells widgets to Widget Seller for $50.  Widget Seller then sells the Widgets to you for $50.  Incredibly, the company has sold the widget to you “at cost”.  At the same time, I laugh all the way to the bank.

I laughed at one line in an ad – call today and you will speak with a senior specialist.  This seems a bit odd.  Why wouldn’t you have the junior specialists work with the new clients, and have the highly paid senior specialists work with the customers who want to spend a lot of money with you?  Oh, because you’re using the term to make  as a way to inflate the egos of possible customers – they have the opportunity to work with a senior specialist.

An ad on TV over the weekend really caught my attention.  The ad starts out describing 1877 $50 gold coins that contain 2.5 ounces of gold (worth a pretty penny, with gold going for about a thousand bucks an ounce).  The company is happy to sell you a 24 carat gold clad non-monetary copy for just … not $50, but $20!  What a great deal.  Except that “gold clad” isn’t the same thing as gold, and non-monetary means that it is not legal tender. The 1877 date might make the coin look interesting – but it has no correlation to the actual date the coin was “minted” (most likely 2009).  The Jeter coin might actually be worth more money ten years from now.

My general rule is this – if a company is selling specific “investments” through TV ads or full page print ads, it’s probably not a great investment.  If you want to make some investments, spend some time learning about the markets and/or work with a trusted broker.  If you want to invest in gold, fine – but invest in real gold, not this crap.

This blog has been live for over a year. In the last 6+ months, I have shared many fiction stories with you – roughly thirty thousand words!  At this point, no reader has been charged even a penny for anything that had been published on the site.  This will continue to be the case, with one small exception. Now, for the first time, I am making my fiction writing services available for hire. Here are the details:

• I will produce a custom written story, specifically for you. This will not be an ad-lib sort of thing, where I replace a few words and spit out a variant of a base story. These will be completely new stories, built from the ground up.
• When I hand the story over to you, I also give you the copyright. I promise not to publish the story in any form. You have the rights to use the story in any way you wish – including submitting it for paid publication. I do ask that you do list me as the author, and that you refrain from making material changes to the work (changing names to protect anonymity is fine).
• The stories will be a minimum of 400 words long. They could be slightly more, depending on my stream of consciousness during the writing process (most likely, I won’t finish a thought at exactly 400 words). There is no additional charge for stories that end up being slightly longer – this would just be a bonus for you.
• If you desire a bit of a longer story, let me know and we can work out some sort of arrangement. I’ll probably draw the line at about two thousand words – unless you make me an offer I can’t refuse.

So, what sort of story will I write?

• Stories that provide a caricature of a day in your life.  My story Tina is an example of this.  These stories will paint an extremely exaggerated picture of your life.  I will strive to splash the story with a generous amount of humor.
• Alternately, I could write a story that places you in a dream job (baseball player?).  This might be a good gift idea for a kid who has dreams of growing up to be an athlete, entertainer, doctor, or lawyer.
• I can also make you the bad guy/girl in a crime story.
• Fake news stories.
• I’ll also try my hand at children’s stories.  Read Ferdinand the Turtle for an idea of how these might turn out.  Perhaps you would like me to write a story about your kid and their favorite stuffed animal.  (Note: I can only do this is the animal is generic or if they are in the public domain.  Writing a story about Nemo, for example, would be a copyright violation).
• I’m open to suggestions.  Shoot me an idea.  I don’t do poetry, horror, romance, or porn.  I will not include any sort of illustrations, even for the children’s stories.  Honestly, I am one of the worst artists in the history of the world, so you wouldn’t want my illustrations, anyway.

OK, so what will this cost?

• For the first person who responds,  the price will be FREE!
• For at least the next ten people, the price will be $5.99.  Bear in mind that I’ll probably spend about an hour on a story – reading the email to get the details, formulating a plot, and doing the actual writing.  I’ll make a maximum of 1.5 cents/word at this rate.  Compare this to the price you pay for a greeting card, which contains a handful of words that weren’t even tailored specifically for you.
• Beyond the first ten, I’m not sure what the price will be.  I can guarantee that the price won’t go down from the $5.99 price point.  If I can’t make any sales at $5.99 or above, I’ll just scrap the idea.  I honestly have no idea whether this idea will be a complete dud, or if it will generate a solid amount of business.  We’ll give it a whirl.
• I will require payment up front.  I don’t want to take the time to write a story, and then end up waiting for a payment.  I will accept PayPal.
• Unfortunately, I can’t do rewrites of stories.  If I spend an hour rewriting a story that originally took an hour to write, my hourly rate has been slashed in half.  Read some of the stories in Fiction Friday to get an idea of the sort of stories I write.  While I’ll make every effort to produce a high quality story for you, there’s a good chance that it won’t match up exactly to what you were expecting, simply because of the limited interaction I have had with you.  I guess if you’re REALLY unhappy, we can sit down and talk about it.

So, what next?

• If you’re interested, shoot me an email at Kosmo at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com. In the email specify the type of story you want, as well as details that might be relevant (such as names and physical characteristics of characters).  Note that I won’t make an effort to cram every single feature into a story, but I can highlight the hair color, eyes, etc of some characters.
• If the story is a caricature of your life, provide information about your job, hobbies, interest, pet peeves, etc.
• If you need the story by a particular date, let me know.  Bear in mind that I have a full time job, family, and other obligations, so if you need something “tomorrow”, I’ll probably have to decline the request.
• I do ask for an additional favor as part of the payment for the story – please let three people know about The Soap Boxers.  Think of a few people who might like the site, and send them a link.  (Note: this does NOT mean to spam all 200 people in your contact list).
• If you like your story, please consider writing a review that I can use in the marketing of my service.

What articles did you miss this weekend?

• On Friday, Kosmo’s real-estate theme short story, Realty Bites, and Johnny Goodman’s football picks.
• On Saturday, an article about Apple and Microsoft.
• On Sunday, Tyson discussed Canadian Current Events and Kosmo wrote what he hopes is the last episode of the HSBC saga.

As mentioned earlier, we recently canceled our HSBC card after yet another problem.

Yesterday, we received a letter in the mail discussing these problems.  One passage in particular jumped out at me.  Note: the errors in grammar, usage, and punctuation are those of the original writer.

“… With regard to the fraud alert placed on your account, our records indicate your account had a temporary block placed on April 18, 2009 due to the velocity of transactions made in one day, the time between transactions and the potential for fraud with one of these transactions.  You may have frequented these merchants before, however; systemically the account is reviewed for the above situations.  Please note, HSBC does not receive the name of merchants identified in these transactions …”

If HSBC claims to not receive the names of merchants identified in these transactions, then how exactly did they have this information at their fingertips (the transactions that were successfully processed as well as those that had been declined) when my wife called on her cell phone on the way home from the mall – a short time after the last attempted use of the card?

It would seem that the name and location of merchants would fairly useful when analyzing purchase patterns for potential fraud.  If my card is used in China one moment and Australia the next, I would hope that this would be flagged as suspicious activity.  If my card is used at the same merchants I have frequented for several years, I would hope that this is not flagged as suspicious activity.

Unless I receive further communications from HSBC, I consider this issue to be closed.  It was an interesting ride – equal parts bizarre, annoying, and unpleasant – but it’s over.