A very good friend
It's important to know things I love:
food
cooking
having fun
Things I do not love:
competition
things I have no control over
Cooking in a hurry.
Please note, if you need me to give a speech in front of 250 Marines --- I'm golden. Want me to teach a class on chemical warfare defense to 300 bored Guardsmen? I ROCK!
Want me to be in an amateur chef competition in front of a piddly amount of people?
Um, not so good.
That said, our best friends asked if I'd compete because there was a cancellation, and I said yes. I'm an idiot. :)
We showed up and found out that there would be no actual "cooking" involved. aka: no heat. We were supposed to make salads.
Now, those of you who have seen me around for a while might know that salad is not on the top of my list as far as foods go. Yes, I make panzanella occasionally, but that's about it. In general, a salad without bacon is not worth making. But I digress...
So, we get up there, they announce "here's your ingredients and GO".
I just stand there.
What I want to make is some grilled pineapple with a touch of mint, on some crusty bread. Nothing more. Nothing less. That's what I was hungry for at that moment and that's how I cook.
What I end up making is the pinapple and stuff with some green crap stuff leaf lettuce with some sort of funky pickled ginger vinaigrette and toasted croutons. Mostly because what I wanted looked so pathetic on the plate, so I felt compelled to pretend like the word "salad" was somehow involved.
Not pretty. Obviously, I didn't win - our friend did, and not because he brought a cocktail shaker of martinis for himself and judge. Although that didn't hurt. But he's a great chef and it showed.
Now, on to violation.
When we were at this food event downtown, Husband went to get more cash. He came back looking at me like "What have you done?". Apparently, the atm wouldn't give him cash. I told him he must have forgotten his pin, because there should be somewhere around 2,000 in there. So we come home, check our account and there should be 2,000. EXCEPT for the 1395 jewelry purchase in New York and the 2 charges for who-knows-what in Kentucky. These charges being from the day before when we were over visiting YoungSon.
Luckily, the bank recognized that this is not normal for us (we rarely use that account) and they put a hold on his card. That explains it not working, but now the not-so-fun part... finding out who did it and getting it all taken care of.
Note to criminal shit-heads: do not steal the identity of a computer forensics detective. This is a baaaaaad idea. Wouldn't want to be you!
That's about all for me. We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around the firepit. I actually cooked dinner over it and Husband played guitar. A very, very relaxing evening. Hope yours went well.
And do tell... have YOU ever been violated, and how did it turn out?
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14 comments:
Sorry about the cook-off. I too cook according to my mood (that grilled pineapple sounds yummy!) so I don't think I could handle a cook-off with so many limitations. Cooking is a stress reliever for me, and that sounds like anything but!
As for being violated, so far I haven't had any identity theft problems (yet) but I know that young kids have been targets lately, so I'm trying to keep a warry eye out. I DO feel violated when someone takes my parking spot in a busy parking lot and I had my indicator on. Not really the same, but I still feel violated. ;)
My mom was. Now her social security number is flagged, which is a pain in the ass for her but keeps the bandits away.
Actually, I just realized you might be a good one to give some input on this... last week my mom sent me a U.S. savings bond in the mail and unfortunately the envelope arrived opened (slit open on purpose, not mangled in a machine). The bond was still in there, along with some coupons for canning jars (gotta love my mom!), but anyone could have taken note of my SS# that's printed on the bond. I'm hoping that it was simply misdelivered and someone opened it by mistake (I've done that before myself), but aside from running something like freecreditreport.com, what do you suggest I do? How would I know if someone stole it?
I *heart* grilled pineapple!
Yeah...bad day for the bad guys! There was a case here a couple years ago involving a number of female LEOs...they'd all gone out together and as they were leaving a man approached them claiming to be an off duty local cop and offered a ride home to one of them whom he said he knew shouldn't be driving. They were all, oh, really, asshole? Pretty much sat on him until a unit showed up. Not exactly the vulnerable chickies he mistook them for.
The only time my ATM card was compromised it was used to rack up less than $20 in phone sex charges. Thankfully, this was when my kids were all very young so I never had to wonder if it was one of my boys getting curious. LOL. The bank took care of it and they were able to trace it back to the callers phone. Gotta love those geniuses.
I am the victim of identity theft. Not once. But twice. Bastards.
Time #1:
Someone stole the main computer hub system that housed ALL the employee social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses...ya know. The important stuff. Then they went to Las Vegas and attempted to open up a gazillion credit cards and apply for a gazillion bank loans. Thank god I caught it in time, filed a police report, and put a 7 year credit fraud alert on my credit history.
Time #2:
Two years later, someone hacks into my bank account and attempts to withdraw thousands of dollars. Funny thing? I didn't have the amount they were trying to get out. So the bank froze my card and called me. I closed the account and moved my money to another bank. And I froze my credit so now nobody can view my credit nor can they attempt to open up accounts in my name.
Bastards. I HATE having to deal with identity theft crap. It sucks.
Yes we have been violated! A check was stolen from the butchers where we had a steer processed. The person that stole the check bought a computer and some other things on the internet. We went to the police in our town. They said that the crime happend out of state and we should go to the other state to their police. We went to the other states police(it's just a few miles from out house) they told us that we would have to report it in our state. Nothing was ever done. The bank did give us our money back though.
My CC info was stolen at a Kmart by a cashier and used to buy porn online. Ture story - even though it sounds like what you'd tell your mom if she saw "xxxgirls" on your CC statement.
Unfortunately for them, hubby is also a fraud/narc detective.
I did a happy dance when they got caught. You know, because I'm all buddhist and stuff about forgiveness.
NOT.
I am focusing on the fire pit and cooking and guitar....am resting with my eyes closed ,sitting right there.
Yesterday morning around 9:00 I ordered, off the internet, at noon I got a call from Wells Fargo asking if I recognized a charge from a grocery store in Mexico City, Mexico. That was so fast acting person, and Wells Fargo was right on the ball.
My credit card is removed from the system and I am still in shock. Hopefully they will be found and caught.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
My ex took my chequebook when he was arrested & he could forge my signature, so I had to change it. This could now cause problems as my passport signature & bank signature do not match!
(word verification ~ issed)
I don't know how much a computer forensics expert can dig out, but in our case the banks/cards/SocSec could not reveal the violator's ID due to privacy issues! How stupid is that! I supposed they were afraid we'd drive down to Mexico (one case) or to Illinois (another case) and manhandle the person. Fortunately for us the $$ amounts were small and we spotted the problem within 24 hours. The other time we had ID stolen was when we had a collection agency write to us at our residence on the west coast and advise us we had umpteen unpaid parking tickets in Iowa. That scammer somehow latched onto one of our SS#s and even had a personalized license place with our name on it. But still the state/SS could not reveal HIS ID!
You know what makes me sad? That it's so COMMON. My gosh... what kind of system is this?
Sheesh. Anyway... thanks all for sharing your pain. I think we were very lucky for the bank caught it immediately and everything was reimbursed today when it posted to our account.
Now Mr. Computer-guy will be 8,000 times more paranoid. Get this: secure wireless, each computer secure, entire networked secured, laptops and desktops cannot be booted without passwords. I feel like I'm in a gulag!
Peace out.
PS. Toiling Ant... forgot to tell you that I asked him but haven't seen much of him. He still gets to do regular detective stuff and there was a juvenile sex crime they're working on. I will get something for you, K?
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