One year later I had long since contacted all debt holders and no one unknown had shown up to ask for money, so I felt it was okay to close the account so the bank could have a clean end to the fiscal year.

As part of my efforts to establish my credit worth, and hopefully buy my home of 20+ years, I have been working with a lady at a credit recovery place to assure I’ve not missed any unknown debt of my own lurking out there from trips to the emergency clinic and such. Today I called her and talked to her and she asked if I knew _________. That gave me a moment of pause, after some discussion about things she could not discuss but could only say “I can’t say anything” she referred me to another number and to talk to a specific someone in that law firm.

Okay, I immediately call the law firm and state what I am calling about and give the coded number that the other lady had given me. The lady at the law firm is totally confused for why it is even an issue since the debt is over 14 years old, well past statute of limitations, and was marked as being canceled and closed because the person in question is deceased. She marked it “canceled and closed” again, zeroed it out and said not to worry, that she would make sure it was all cleared up and I no longer need to concern myself with the issue.

I thanked her profusely and she emailed the other lady, who I called back to let know what the law firm had said. I was again assured that it was all taken care of and cleared up and not to worry about it anymore.

End result, after multiple calls this morning, is that the debt was canceled out and closed 14 years ago and should not have been showing up as a debt anywhere. I have to wonder just how many more false active debts there are floating about out there in people’s credit files mucking up the system.

But what actually happened and why?

Throughout Wednesday, January 18th, there was a coordinated effort on the Internet to display, in an exceptionally visual manner, what the Internet could look like if bills such as SOPA and PIPA were to be passed in Congress. At the heart of the Internet strike was freedom of the Internet. One of the most notable effects of the strike was the complete blackout staged by Wikipedia. Other sites, such as Google, simply placed a blackout bar across their name and allowed users to continue to make use of the site’s services.

So why the huge protest? SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are trying to do good things, the problem is that they are trying to do good by doing a lot of possible harm.

SOPA is more formally known as “H.R.3261 — Stop Online Piracy Act”. You can find it on THOMAS, or check H.R. 3261 – Stop Online Privacy Act which is where I located it as of the time I am writing this, or the THOMAS entry for SOPA at the thomas.loc.gov website.

The first thing you see under the heading of the bill is the mission statement of the bill:

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by
combating  the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”

The first thing I have to think is – what other purposes?

The Stop Online Piracy Act, hereafter referred to as SOPA, was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Mr. Smith of Texas for himself, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. Berman, Mr. Griffin of Arkansas, Mr. Gallegly, Mr. Deutch, Mr. Chabot, Mr. Ross of Florida, Mrs. Blackburn, Mrs. Bono Mack, Mr. Terry and Mr. Schiff.

What concerns manyof those who oppose the bill is the manner in which SOPA seeks to stop online piracy. It is a long bill, so I will pinpoint areas I have seen that others have discussed, however, I encourage you to please read the bill for yourself.

I will be referring to the H.R. 3261 – Stop Online Privacy Act link in the following points:

Page 10.1 —-

Sec. 102 Action by Attorney General to protect U.S. customers
and prevent U.S. support of foreign infringing sites.

Sounds okay, right? I mean, we want our government to protect us, right? And they do have a few pages there that discuss how they find the owner of sites and order them to stop doing what they do not like. Then we get down to page 13, lines 21-25, and page 14, lines 1-10:

(i) IN GENERAL. — A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

Move on down to page 15, lines 11-20, and we have…

B) INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES.—A provider of an Internet search engine shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct hypertext link.

Now it is possible that your favorite picture site will be compliant and remove all images that infringe on any copyrights, but if they don’t then the entire site is likely to be blocked by search engines so you can’t find them via a search engine anymore. And, even if you do have them bookmarked or the URL memorized so do not see why them no longer showing up on a search engine is a bad thing, page 15 line 21 kicks off another reason why you should be worried about SOPA.

That is where they specify that if you pay to use the legal parts of a website that has illegal content on it, that your payment network can still block you from making subscription payments to that service.  Ending your ability to subscribe to it from within the United States.

What is of concern to manyis that by providing any sort of service where persons can communicate (think about your favorite forum or social networking site), or post content for others to download (think about your favorite file or document or image sharing site), the site owner can be held liable if their site is used for illegal purposes. Not the entire site, if just a portion of it is used for illegal purposes.

It is good to have someone make sure that your site is are not being abused or used for pirating, but as SOPA stands now, I would have to completely close my sites to comments (including my forums) so I could read EVERY comment before it was posted or I would face a $2,000,000 fine and prison time. For multiple cases a $5,000,000 fine. (And note that the same bill has $5,000,000 as the fine levied for someone that intentionally causes harm or death to someone or who shares military or government secrets – WHY is murder and treason comparable in fine to sharing two songs online????? Shouldn’t murder and treason be a bit more serious than an artist losing the sale of a .99 cent song???)

If I just leave my sites (as I have been known to do – a LOT), and someone posts links to where a movie can be downloaded (which BOTs do, a LOT), then under the SOPA bill I am held liable and fined multiple millions of dollars, plus whatever the entertainment industry decides to fine me for their lost income.

I’m in the US, and as far as I know all of my sites are too, but if a site is not in the US, and the site owner is not in the US to be dealt with personally by the laws of the US, then the Attorney General can order search engines to block your ability to see the site. (Section 102(c)(2)(B) as indicated in excerpt above – (Page 15, Lines 11-20)) That means the Attorney General decides to black out sections of the online world to US citizens. For their own good of course.

The scary part is, we, the people of the United States, would be giving our government the right to decided what sites need blocked from us. How easily could that power be abused?

And that is just part of what makes SOPA scary. I can’t go into full details in this post, so for a very good look at just what SOPA would mean, check out Why SOPA Is Dangerous byChris Held over at Mashable. He breaks it down into easily understandable language, but you still owe it to yourself to read the full bill and see just what it has to say for itself.

This post is VERY long, so I am going to break this discussion into a series of posts. Tomorrow I will tackle the next part of it: the Internet Strike and what happened with websites all across the Internet going dark for a day. I think if you read SOPA between now and then, you will understand why the sites felt it was necessary before I can get that post made, but come back anyway, I have some pictures of some of my favorites that I will share in tomorrow’s post. Then tomorrow or Monday I will get to why the Justice Department took down Megaupload and what you should know about Anonymous’ strike back, and why everything might have just been poorly timed events that snowballed to create the chaos it did.

The first month, payment time on the dryer approaches and I get a call to remind me to come in and make a payment. Wait… what? No. I am not the one that got the dryer, someone ELSE rented it I should not even be on that contract. What happened? I got it sorted out – until the next month, when I was called again. I keep trying to sort it out, and so does the person that has the dryer, but Rent A Center does not comprehend that I am not the person who rented the dryer.

They just called me again.

Me: Hello?

Her: This is ___ at Rent A Center, this is just a courtesy call to remind you that you need to make a payment on the dryer.

Me: …. what dryer?

Her: You rented a dryer.

Me: No, I did not, ____ rented a dryer, not me. You should call them.

Her: Oh.

Me: What number do you have there?

She rattled off my number and said it was marked as “Courtesy call.” And another number and said it was marked as “Courtesy call.” Then she read off a third one, the right number.

Me: And what is that one marked as?

Her: Call about dryer.

Me: That is the number you should call.

Why can they not comprehend the basic detail that I am NOT the person that rented the dryer, it was someone ELSE. Both me and that person have asked, on multiple occasions, for them to call the person who rented the dryer, to list that person as the number one contact about the dryer, but the local store can not do that. I’ve even talked to the manager and explained the situation to him and asked him to please fix it – but he can’t seem to correct the referrer being listed as the renter.

I don’t get my free rental time as a referrer and instead I have to face the headache of having them calling me to talk about someone else’s rental. It is really starting to annoy me and tick me off. I’m not renting anything from them again, I’ll go to the other rental place in town and give them all of my business and future referrals.  Rent A Center just can not seem to understand my only part in the dryer was to ask if they had one and then hand the phone to someone else as a referring customer. I never signed anything or even saw the store people in person when the dryer was rented, and it was not delivered to my house, so they need to stop harassing me about it unless they can not contact the person who rented it. PLEASE, can they just try the other number first for ONCE?

I considered setting it up to be my desktop, but I decided that I prefer to just set it as the home page on my browser so that whenever I open my browser it is the first thing I see. That way I can leave the desktop area on my work computer for stuff sort of like those inspirational posters you see around regular offices.

How do you organize your work to-do lists?

11-11-11

It is also a full moon, just starting to wane, the official full moon was yesterday. (11-10-11)

Seems like it should be some kind of significant event day, don’t it?

Born Mariam Louisa Rothschild on August 5, 1908 in Ashton Wold, East Northamptonshire, England, fleas were in her lineage so to speak. Rothschild’s father, Charles Rothschild, was a banker that was known for having identified over 500 new species of fleas. The home educated Rothschild showed her own interests in discovering more about the world of insects and parasites when at age four she began collecting ladybird beetles. By the age of 17 the home schooled Rothschild would chose to go to school for the first time and attended evening classes in zoology at Chelsea College of Science and Technology. Although she lacked a formal education, Rothschild received a series of honorary doctorates from eight different universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.

As an author, Rothschild wrote books about her father and her uncle as well as a book titled Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos which was a successful book on parasites. The title of Rothschild’s parasite book referred to three distinct types of parasite: external parasites (fleas), internal parasites (flukes), and others (cuckoo being a ‘brood parasite’). In addition to her books, Rothschild wrote over 300 papers on subjects that included entomology and zoology. While Rothschild is best known for her research on fleas, she worked widely in the fields of entomology and botany.

Rothschild is rumored to have once said; “I must say, I find everything interesting”. And indeed she must have, for it was Rothschild who discovered how fleas jump. She also studied, with Nobel Prize laureate and chemist Tadeus Reichstein, how butterflies make themselves toxic through their choice of food. Her research on the bright coloration of butterflies and their toxicity lead Rothschild to find that other species had evolved to mimic the warning colors.

Still, it was the lowly flea for which Rothschild was best known for. Rothschild’s flea collections, a six volume catalog of her father’s collection of 30,000 specimens, made her the authority on fleas that other experts consulted. Rothschild’s flea collection can now be viewed at the Natural History Museum in London.

While she was viewed as an expert on them, fleas were not the only thing in Rothschild’s life. Rothschild had a decently sized family, having married Captain George Lane, MC in 1943, and with him had six children; two sons and four daughters. Their marriage was dissolved in 1957.

During World War II, Rothschild worked to convince the British authorities to admit more Jews from Nazi Germany and worked to assist in cracking the Nazi’s codes. At one point during World War II, Miriam Rothschild provided shelter to nearly 50 Jewish children.

Throughout her life Miriam Rothschild would stand up for many things that she felt strongly for, including; better treatment for laboratory animals, free milk for school children and equal rights for gay people.

In talking about Mariam Rothschild, the London Times once said, “Imagine Beatrix Potter on amphetamines.” The world could use more energetically enthusiastic learners such as Dame Miriam Rothschild, ready to prove wrong those who would say that a person must hold formal education to make a significant difference in the world.

Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild
5 August 1908 – 20 January 2005