Iphone 5 - STOLEN!

The Setting

On Friday, I had an early breakfast meeting in Port Huron. It was snowing, 90 miles away, and I saw >5 cars in the ditch. On the drive home, I desperately needed to drop the kids off at the pool.

By the time I got back to work, I was in bad shape. I rushed in to the bathroom, did my business, pulled out my phone to play "words with friends," and left the bathroom - and my phone. About 20 minutes later, I realized I didn't have my phone. I called it, but it went straight to voicemail. Strange. I remembered the last time I had my phone was on the pot, so I hurried back to retrieve it. Gone.

Panicked, I came back to my desk, looked everywhere, called it again, logged in to icloud/find iphone, and it was not on the radar. Gone. Someone had taken it, and immediately removed the SIM card making it anonymous. Crushed.

Fortunately, I kept my old Iphone 4 and was able to activate it so at least I have a phone. But it sucks compared to the 5. Slower, slower, slower. Plus the home button sticks, which is incredibly frustrating.

Finally, I have a plan. I am going to bring my dad on to my plan, buy a new 5 under his phone number, then trade the 5 for the 4 so he is better off, I get the 5 and only need to pay $127 (special walmart price). Obviously, this is much better than paying $700 for a new phone or sticking with the old 4.

Lesson Learned: don't play words with friends in the shitter.

2012 Holiday Shopping - by special request

Last night wifey and I went to the mall to finish our Christmas shopping. Not a lot to get, but we had a sitter so we took the opportunity to close out our list. It was busy, but not too bad. By the end, I was starting to fall out a bit, but only because I had to wait in the Pandora store while wifey picked out a couple charms for one of her gifts. This prompted me to post on facebook something to that affect, and hence the special request for this post. However, there is really nothing to detail.

I suppose the one thing that kept me going was that we were going out to dinner after shopping which kept my spirits up.

Detroit Department of State - the Passport Saga Continues

After the post office crushed my dreams of an easy passport experience for my minor child, I decided to go straight to the source - The Dept of State. Mind you, this meant a drive to the hood, extra time off work, and an entire day off school for the boy.

I scheduled an appointment. Upon arrival, the place was a zoo - must've been a ton of people obtaining citizenship or something because they all looked like foreigners. There was a ton of security - multiple officers, along with the metal detectors just like the airport (but I could keep my shoes on). Because I had the appointment, they allowed me to skip all the lines and go straight to the front of the line. It was And once I had my ticket, I was next! It was a true VIP experience  Compared to my expectations, this was like a dream. The agent called us and when I told the story about the post office she laughed and said "you could have applied with the expired drivers license - it doesn't matter." This normally would have filled my soul full of rage, but not this time for some reason. I was just happy we were at the end of our journey. She actually sent us over to another agent to take our application. He also confirmed the expired license didn't matter. WTF. I handed over the paperwork, wrote the check, and he said I would have the passport in a 5 days. Imagine that!

In conclusion, I have a renewed attitude towards the dept of state, and an even lower attitude towards the post office. This promise may not be realistic, but I VOW TO NEVER ENTER A POST OFFICE AGAIN.

2009 Yukon Hybrid

This week we traded in the 2010 Acadia for a 2009 Yukon Hybrid. You may wonder why we decided to trade-in for an older vehicle...Here's why:

On the interior, the Acadia is great. It has everything; loaded. Even a usb plug for the iPhone and an auto trunk button. But the engine sucks. It is a heavy car with a V-6; not enough power. And I believe because it is a six banger, it also gets bad milage. In fact, the sticker said 16 city and 24 highway, but even going downhill on the highway it gets about 21. On average, we get about 16 with mixed driving.

We started looking at the Yukon hybrid because it gets 20 city/20 hwy and it is a bigger vehicle with a larger engine and more power. When I figured out the KBB of the Acadia, I was shocked - it was much higher than I expected. With the high residual value of the Acadia, it seems like we could make a deal work.

I found a couple Yukons with low milage but they were sold before I had the chance to make an offer. We ended up going with a 2009 model with 55k miles. More than I would have preferred, but still less than we had on the former (60k). The trade in value was just over 23k, and the price for the Yukon was 30k. Plus, as a self employed individual, my CPA figured I would save 6,500 in taxes by buying the 6,000 lb vehicle. That made it just about a wash, save for sales tax on the new purchase. So for taxes of $1,800, we traded up to a better vehicle in my opinion, and will get better mileage, and will keep wifey happy for another 3 years until she gets sick of it.

Financially, this should be a good deal. If she drives this for another 3 years, it only adds 1,800 to my cost of the acadia 3 years ago. Therefore it would be like driving the acadia for 6 years, adding on just a little more purchase price. Not a bad deal. The tax deduction is what makes the deal work.

I think the hybrid is very cool. When you are parked the gas engine turns off. That goes for a red light too. When you are starting out and driving slow like in a parking lot, the gas engine remains off and you are running totally on the battery. When you start out accelerating, the batter will take you up to about 10 mph until the gas kicks in. Unless you floor it right out of the gate, then the gas kicks in right away. These above features allow for 20 in the city when a normal yukon gets 13 in the city. That is a significant difference. On the highway, both get the full gas and the hybrid get 20. The hybrid does nothing for high speeds.

The yukon does not have the auto trunk button, or the USB for the iphone. It also has several scratches on the body, but no big deal. They are minor. The Acadia had the same.

How to Get a Passport

The Department of State and the US Post Office have teamed up to give the public a wonderful Passport Acquisition Process. My thesis of this blog post is to highlight the inefficiencies of the process, aswell as the incompetence of both agencies. First, you should know both are government agencies, of course. Next, understand the Post Office is running ridiculous deficits. And you already know the Dept of State is part of the US Government's 1.3 Trillion annual deficit. Why do I bring this up? Because both are run so poorly on so many levels it only makes sense they are severely mis-managed from a fiscal level as well.

My Story:

I am taking my son to Mexico in mid Feb 2013. I had a passport which was originally issued in 1999, so it is now expired. My five year old minor son has never had a passport. In addition, my wife and both kids will be traveling on a Disney cruise in April 2013. My wife's passport is not yet expired, but it  is registered under her maiden name. My second son has never had a passport.

My first step was to determine who needs passports. Do we need one to travel to Mexico via air? Yes. Does a minor need a passport if traveling via air to Mexico? Yes. Do you need a passport if cruising to the Bahamas and leaving from a domestic port? No. So wifey and second kid are all set - drivers license and original birth certificate get them on the boat. But my first boy and I need passports to fly to Mexico. Travel.state.gov is the official website where all of this above info can be found, but good luck trying to navigate that site. I gave up and called Disney cruise to get the cruise info and called the Dept of State 1-800 number to verify, and to determine we do need passports for the Mexico trip.

After that confusion was navigated, I had to determine how to get my passport updated and my minor son's first passport. I started at travel.state.gov, but quickly gave up and called them again to determine exactly what needed to be done, again. You may think I am anal, but we're dealing with government agencies and we have a strict time deadline we need to beat. And where does the post office come in to this story? Keep reading.

The agent ended up telling me info that could not be found on their website - I MUST renew my passport by mail. I was planning on doing his and mine together at the same time, but this cannot be done. WHY? It doesn't make much sense to me that a renewal must be done through the mail while a first time MINOR applicant MUST apply in person. Furthermore, both parents listed on the birth certificate must be present at the time of application, along with copies of both drivers licenses (front and back).You also need a photo sent with my app and a photo to bring to the post office for the minor.

So I ended up applying through the mail. I went to a local photo place listed in google maps as a passport place. I filled out the paperwork, and planned on fedexing it all to the dept of state to get the process moving. However, there was no overnight address on the paperwork. So I called the dept of state again, and the agent told me indeed there was no overnight address and I must send via USPS. WHY? And the post office drop box in my building picks up at 11am, the one down the street picks up at 3pm, and the box at the post office picks up at 5pm. I ended up dropping it at 5:30 after making a special trip to the post office, hoping the deadline was 5:30 or 6:00, so I wasted a day there. NOTE: the fedex box picks up at 7pm. The fee for mailing in a big envolope all the paperwork along with my old passport, check, etc, was about $2.00. My fedex agreement calls for a fee of $6.50 and picks up later and delivers probably ten times faster. At this point, my application is in, but after much frustration.

Next on to the minor. I already covered the fact that the state website does not give you all the details about both parents are required to be at the location at the time of the application delivery. Imagine if I ddin't call and wasted yet antoher trip taking him by myself? Earlier this week,  I did a little research on the usps.com webiste and figured out there is one post office in the city which takes passport applications on saturday, but it is by appointment only. So what would a normal person do? Call for an appointment. But because we are dealing with the gov't, nobody answers the phone. It rings and rings and rings, and then sometimes rings busy. I called on wed/th/fri, at least a dozen times, and never reached anyone. WTF? Today is saturday, and I figured we better just go down there and see what happens. I took the boy to CVS to try and get the photo taken. The first one we stopped at said their equipment was down. The next one we went to, there was an old lady scanning a garbage bag full of photos into the system, and the worker said she can take the pic, but can't print it out because she needs to use the same computer as the bag lady, and she can't kick off the bag lady. Seeing how many picks grandma was scanning in, and seeing how slow, we left. Google maps took us to another CVS which simply didn't exist. On to CVS #4 - it worked! We were in and out in 10 minutes or so.

The post office closes at 1pm, so now we're rushing home to pick up mom and head on to the post office which is open for passports on saturday. We arrived at 12:30 and waited in line.....Once we were next in line, the boy decides he needs to pee, and is holding himself. I ask the PO worker if they have a public restroom. You guessed it - NO. We leave line and run across the street to the library and use the bathroom. We run back to the PO, and get back in line. Now we're next again, and a new guy steps up in line, probably 7th in line. A PO worker asks the line if they are there for "some other service" and he responds "I just need an envelope, do I need to wait in this long line?" She responds - YES. The guy looks at me, I laugh, and he is not amused. Finally, we are called up. I ask about a passport app for my minor son, and she says I need an appointment and there are no more available today. heartbroken, but expected, I explain how I've been trying for an apt for days but nobody answers the phone there. She is not surprised to hear this, like it is a common complaint. She offers to schedule me for next week, and I take a spot for Monday. I felt like lecturing her about how this type of inept service is why the PO is losing 5 Billion a year at the cost of the taxpayers. I was actually surprised to learn it is 5B per quarter! How can that be? It is a monopoly!!!!!!

Now wifey and I need to both take off time from work on Monday, take my kid out of school, and make another run at it. If I knew this process would be so ridiculous, I may not have booked the mexico trip in the first place. Will I have any more unbelievable experiences with the PO in the future? YES, but I vow to use Fedex and UPS anytime I have the chance.

A couple more points: it takes 6 weeks to receive your passport after you submit your application. The fee is $110. I am convinced if I were in charge of this department, I could at least half the turnaround time and eliminate half of the workers in that department as well. There must be a plethora of inefficiencies to have that kind of time to wait with the levels of fees paid. Let's start here when evaluating our nation's deficit, Mr Obama.