First, some background: I missed a few checks from Delta Dental of Missouri and a mortgage company in last few years. I was able to remediate the issues later. First I located the unclaimed checks (years later), then I called Delta Dental and they issues new checks to me. In the case of unclaimed check from mortgage company, I notice the letter of “unclaimed property” from Cenlar – Central Loan and Administration Reporting recently, and filed claim online. Mainly they were asking: do you want the money or not, it not we are going to turn over the money to the goverment “unclaimed property” account. This time I immediately filled out the form, took a picture and emailed the form to the given email address. A few weeks later, the new check arrived (probably the original check was in year 2021 🙂
Again tips: don’t throw away the mails from Delta Dental and Cenlar, especially their checks 🙂
Then yesterday, the bottom fell out. I realized that I made the dumb mistakes managing my mails again. Last night I opened a mail from the school district: I was almost a month late opening it. It was for my daughter’s NJHS invitations. I need to do better – I improved a bit recently but there’s still room for improvement.
I made the dumb mistakes managing my mails again. Last night I opened a mail from the school district: I was almost a month late opening it. It was for my daughter’s NJHS invitations. I need to do better – I improved a bit recently but there’s still room for improvement.
I forgot to open the mail from school district promptly, similar to my earlier mistakes on Delta Dental and Mortgage escrow account check mails
I was trying to sell things on eBay recently to address both my cluttering and hoarding issue, trying to declutter and make life simpler, and hopefully enjoyable. At the same time I really need to start from the very basics, e.g., address the mail issue first, and make sure my working desk is clean, and so on.
A related topic is dress for success (this is for everyone, man, woman, LGBTQ+, everyone really: this used to more important if we talk about work in an office environment. Personal hygiene, your posture, your body language and grasp of English and so on. But we still need to pay attention if we go to Zoom, turn on video, make sure we are professional. There is extreme example, such as the one below.
Reading Time: 5minutesA tweet I saw yesterday 02-20-2024 regarding the $COF $DFS merger
Writing from my experience on credit card both from consumer (outside) and business (inside) perspective: meaning encourage more usage of the card via loyalty and rewards, make sure the card is on the top of the deck etc. I also understand Americans are addicted to the credit card to a large extent. Full disclosure: between 2015 and 2019 yours truly worked for the Mastercard loyalty and rewards department on Biz Ops (production support, Site Reliability Engineering, and product support), and Application Development (software engineering).
Note I call them merger instead of outright acquisition, because it’s essentially a 60/40 all stock transaction. Meaning the Capital One shareholders will get 60% of the combined company, the Discover shareholder will get 40%. While it’s not 50% to 50%, I think it’s close enough for merger.
CNBC (Hugh Son) – Here’s why Capital One is buying Discover in the biggest proposed merger of 2024
The deal, if approved, enables Capital One to leapfrog JPMorgan as the biggest credit card company by loans, and solidifies its position as the third largest by purchase volume. — Personally I am not ready to give up my CSP card for the Capital One Venture card.
‘Holy Grail’ But it’s Discover’s payments network — the “rails” that shuffle digital dollars between consumers and merchants, collecting tolls along the way — that Fairbank repeatedly praised Tuesday when analysts queried him on the strategic merits of the deal. There are only four major card networks: giants Visa and Mastercard , then American Express and finally the smallest of the group, Discover. (I agree 100%. Credit card network is just like a financial highway. Not toll free. Most everyone has to pay. 信用卡网络就像一个收费的金融高速公路。)
NBCNews – Capital One-Discover merger could put a bigger squeeze on credit card users, experts warn – Many of the largest credit card issuers already charge steeper rates than smaller ones.
The average credit card interest rate in the U.S. is 24.61%, according to LendingTree, the highest since the credit marketplace began tracking monthly rates in 2019. I felt for those cardholders who pay 24.61% or more 🙁 I don’t think even Warren Buffett can easily earn this kind of return in his investments (even with a smaller sum).
USAToday – Discover’s merger with Capital One may mean luxe lounges, better service, plus more perks
The acquisition would give Capital One access to Discover’s high-credit-quality customers and its network of payment processing services, an area dominated by Visa and Mastercard. (Both are not very accurate in my opinion. I will explain them below.)
The deal will create the largest U.S. card issuer with around $250 billion in card balances and a market share of 22%, according to TD Cowen. (This may be true)
FAQs on credit card
What is credit card network?How does it work?
I just saw Stripe has a good text explanation. A picture is worth a thousand words sometimes. For that in ByteByteGo (my friend Alex Xu) I trust. See below. Discover is similar to Visa, Mastercard and American Express when we talk about credit card network (card swiping in the old days, now it’s tapping or digital wallet pay).
How credit card works, from Alex Xu/ByteByteGo
How does credit card companies make money?
In simple words, they collect network usage fees from the user of the credit card, initially from the merchant (via the merchant bank). For example, a consumer paid $100 at grocery store using a Chase Visa credit card. Typically the grocery store will eventually get about $97 from the merchant bank. Visa (the credit card network) will receive about 20 to 30 cents. The Chase bank will receive about $2.00 and the rest may go to the people (companies) who setup the payment terminal, merchant bank and so on. One may wonder why Chase bank (the credit card) issuer gets $2.00 which seems like a lot: note that money is not risk free. For example, if the consumer (the Chase credit card customer) didn’t pay her/his credit card bill, in theory Chase will take the loss. But banks usually are not that nice: they will pursue collection, hike interest rate etc. If someone is living on credit cards, basically he/she will be the “slaves” of the bank. 这里是一个具体的例子，下面是引用。
Visa accounted for just over half of the purchase volume on general purpose credit cards in 2022: Visa credit: 52%, $2.84 trillion. Mastercard credit: 24%, $1.32 trillion. American Express credit: 20%, $1.08 trillion. Discover credit: 4%, $211 billion.
Credit card issuers are the banks, or credit unions. Note American Express and Discover Financial are also credit card issuers, in addition to providing their respective credit card network.
Trivia Questionor bonus question: do you know the history of Discover Financial?
They actually started as a credit card division of the now defunct Sears corp., at one time the powerful department store that is based in Chicago (have you ever heard the Sears tower).
Will regulators approve the deal?
This is mostly a US only deal. Both companies mainly operate in the US. Not a lot of International exposure. I think the regulators will likely approve it, because together they are still not the most dominant credit card issuer or network. Here is a Bloomberg report on the deal (YouTube).
A word on digital wallet
I noticed digital wallet such as Paypal can automatically update the expiration date of the card on the file. This is a neat feature.
中文简译
Translate those two companies into Chinese. They don’t have heavy presence in China, Discover was there, in my vague memory.
Capital One Financial Corp. – 美国第一资本投资国际集团: 美国第一资本投资国际集团（Capital One Financial Corp.，下“Capital One公司”）是一家以投融资及基金管理为基础,集国际贸易、项目开发、投资银行业务为一体的多元化国际企业集团，总部位于美国特拉华州。
Discover Financial Service – 发现金融服务公司: 发现卡（Discover Card）是一种在美国广泛使用的信用卡。1985年到2007年，由美国金融寡头摩根士丹利等金融机构控股，零售商公司Sears推广发行。(Wikipedia)
Amtrak is enticing me with a new credit card offer
Reading Time: 2minutesAn email from CCRC, which my daughters play tennis (tennis clinics), unfortunately I am too OLD 🙂
Or in bubble territory. Personally I think so. I think this is a bit like the AI right now.
I think compared to tennis, pickleball is more social (for social interactions, chatting), but less sports. Once a friend joked pickleball is not a sports – which my 13 year old disagrees, note she is in the “inclusive” generation (or “woke”, LOL, if I may).
Looking back
A few years ago, 5 or 6 years ago, I only saw people playing pickleball at the J Creve Coeur indoor Gym on Saturday morning. Now we can see people playing pickleball everywhere; from outdoor parks (des peres park for one), to many community centers (Olivette, Overland).
Recently I heard a few of my friends playing including my boss who is a pro, btw; also heard tennis playing population is in decline, while the pickleball is picking up the steam. He actually took a few of us to CCRC new pickleball court and showed us the basics of pickleball, stay in the “kitchen” and all. Also the John brothers.
I saw a bunch of videos on YT after watching the original YouTube video. See below. There are similar quality complaints videos on other builders too. I guess because $DHI is the national biggest builder (in terms of revenue or number of homes being built): it’s not too surprising they have the most complaints (just looking statistically).
Reading Time: 3minutes1006 N Warson, original built in 1894, probably one of the 1st houses in Olivette, not sure if Warson road existed then
Gentrification:
The process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. Oxford Dictionary via google
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has been used to describe a wide array of phenomena, usually in a pejorative connotation.Wikipedia
I don’t know how you think, personally as I lived in the area (Creve Coeur, Olivette) for almost 20 years or so (since April 2005), I saw quite a bit development in the city of Olivette recently, both commercial and residential, and government as well (the city hall, police/fire station, and the new community center, Five Oaks on Warson). That pushes up the home prices in the area too (see Zillow), which has both plus and minus. Keep in mind Olivette also has one of the fastest population growth from 2010 to 2020 in the St. Louis county, per the census.
History of Olivette (old PDF file from Olivette website, copied something I liked here, “diversity”, page 10):
In the late ’60s and early ’70s a fair housing commission called the “Freedom of Residence Program” helped stabilize the community. Core values such as good education for children, high housing standards and safeneighborhoods brought different ethnic and social groups together around a common cause. It is partly due to this program that Olivette today enjoys a diverse yet cohesive population.
The PDF file above talked about this building, note I took picture from the back road (opposite of the main road Olive Blvd). It’s still the tallest office building in Olivette as of Feb 2024. I’ve beeing to the building once or twice (Gateway Tour Travel Agency)
Jacob Peistrup is a realtor in St.Louis, I just noticed his YouTube Channel and the above video is about Olivette
Noticed Jacob has a nice and comprehensive video introduction on YT the St. Louis city, St. Louis county, St. Charles county and Jefferson county, mostly from residential real estimate point of view. The video is 43 minutes long: in the order of St. Louis city, county, St. Charles county and Jefferson county.
PS: gentrification is a new word I learned over last few years… it has both good and bad. For example, in Frontenac they used to have a trailer park, it was developed into new homes in recent years. I read an article on the topic, and I hope the families (people) especially the kids got impacted are doing fine.
The 208-unit apartment complex now known as Irvington Place, located off of Alice Pl. between Hilltop Dr. and N. Price Road and the new Aldi grocery store and the multi-tenant Lot 3 of Olive Crossing should begin initial construction work this spring.
I don’t know about you, but I was fairly enthusiastic about sports when I was in the middle school and part of the high school. At one time I thought I should join the Chinese youth soccer team (under 16), which looking back I don’t think that’s possible.
A few months ago I also talked about Tennis 网球. Recently (to be precise on Jan 7 Sunday evening) my old daughter injured her ankle during a tennis clinics session. I only saw her injured after the fact, as I didn’t see her fall on the spot, which is a few minutes towards the end of clinics. So we got the ankle wraps and tapes etc. from the Walgreens. But she still jumps on one leg – because she could not use any force on her injured ankle. The second day was Monday (school day), obviously we cannot go to school under this condition. And because “wait and see”, as well as “my wife’s reluctance go to urgent care” that day, I went ahead and bought Crutches from Walgreens (I posted it on CL recently).
Urgent care and specialists
The following Tuesday we still went to the Total Access Urgent care (TAUC) next to Walgreens at Creve Coeur (cost: $175.00 not too bad). Then it’s following up. I chose and went to the Shriner’s Hospital for that: 2 trips, the cost to us is only $102.13, plus they have magicians on site sometimes. This seems very reasonable. This is much cheaper than the X-ray service fee (more than $400) from BJC for scoliosis (false positive, but nonetheless the checkup/x-ray and followup with specialist (not too bad there).
(Update 03-18-2024) It seems the Shriner’s Hospital changed their billing in the month of February. Since last time I paid them inside MyChart, I received 2 more bills and I paid them online (a new bill pay website, not from MyChart). The total is about $250. Btw, BJC sent one more bill from the doctor who reads the X-ray, it’s not a lot – but overall cost seems high to me.
(Update 03-26-2023) Okay, I think now I understand most bills now. There were 5 bills or 5 payments from my side. Two bills for the X ray which although it says the doctor’s name in the insurance company website’s benefit explanation section. Two bills for the nurse practitioner who looked at S. And one therapist who came for the 2nd visit. The total out of pocket for Shriner’s hospital is about $450 for us.
4 Bills from the Shriner’s hospital, I think I turned off the paper bill in MyChart and one of the paper bill didn’t come
Btw, I am selling a few gentenly used items on eBay to recover some of the costs.
Our old daughter back to court after 3 weeks break, at CCRC.
几个礼拜前她的脚踝扭了：现在已恢复。我几个礼拜之前说了买网球鞋的事：大家如打网球，可以参考一下。A side note is our 13 year old got to hang out with her friend in the mall on Saturday. I recall when I was her age: I like to hang out at the bookstore by myself, and also I saved some changes and bought snacks such as 金团 一种糯米做的甜点。美国中西部没有金团，类似的甜点有mochi 应该是从日本来的。Anyway I am quite happy she is back to her normal routine, and also enjoys some “chill time” with her friend.
Adolescence
Our 13 year old is soon going to be 14 year old. And recently she started to pick up her own clothes, and I think some of it (the style) is likely influenced by the TikTok and YT shorts, her friends (again TT and YTS), and some stores such as Aerie (American Eagle).
In contrast, I recall I started to pick my own clothes around similar age.
Performative Society
Other related topics: how hard should parents push adolescent kids on sports, for that matter anything.
I felt we increasingly live in a performative society, thinking applicable to me (or my work) as well. This is a bigger topic and I will come back to it sometime soon, hopefully.
PS: personally I haven’t had hurt my ankle that bad, when I was a teen. I did get my ankle hurt once during a soccer game, in which my teammate accidentally kicked my left ankle (using his dominant foot, right foot), he and I was trying to kick the same soccer ball.
I am teaching a database course this semester at a local university. It seems install MySQL on Windows is not very straightforward. Something I didn’t realize as personally I am on the Mac for a while.
I looked around and summarized the following choices.
Rule of thumb: when you give the credit card information to a public cloud provider, always set a budget, and a cost alert. Because we don’t want any surprises in the bills.
Personally if I am the person who is in charge of a company’s cloud bill, for both dev (experiment) and production. I will be like Cory Quinn.
Flashing Heart – MakeCode – this is the one that’s currently on my Microbit, I will switch back and forth, also I will explain the code a bit, both the block code, and the Python code.
(Update 02-10-2024) Just went there to drop her off for the Saturday event, afterwards I went to Chick Fil A to get some food for the rest of family. I got Starbucks for the 13 year old. We were the 1st to arrive – the teacher said 7 am, and I think we arrived at 6:45 am or so. Saw lots of familiar faces.
(Original) Our 13 year old (soon to be 14) is going to participating the Science Olympiads at Lindenwood University over the weekend. This is something we didn’t expect at the beginning of the school year. For my wife, this is probably a big deal.
One fun fact, Serenity likes to say Science Olympiads in short form: it sounds like Sci-o-ly (it seems this is actual a real word, notice this organization website is here). And finally I was able to grasp it, but my wife could not. For that matter, because Serenity usually speaks very fast, my wife usually could not get what she was talking at the 1st pass. I think there is some mindset (or expectation) going on here too: for me understand 70% of a native speaker’s talking is good enough, for my wife, I assume she usually strives for 100%, which is unrealistic in many cases.
Anyway, Serenity beat our expectations on Science Olympiads this year. We hoped she would do this in last 2 school years, but she was busy in St. Louis Children’s Choir – the 7th grade was especially challenging for her as she was in the concert choir, which has more rehearsals (twice a week, lasts 2 hours each, also there is a 30 min music reading class before one rehearsal) and performances. This year we asked her to pull back from choirs, and focus a bit more on 8th grade sports as well as extracurricular activities in the school (such as Sci-o-li). She followed our advice. She did the Ecology subject for Sci-o-li. And now she is going to attending the event as a training team member. She asked if she could hang out at Lindenwood U after her event, and we said sure.
Also, our younger one recently competed in her elementary school spelling bee contest. Last year she was runner-up. So we were hoping she can move up this year. It didn’t work out, she got stuck at the word hitherto. Later she told us she actually knows the word, but she just spelt it wrong during the contest (she was probably both nervious, as well as not extremely familiar with this particular word). I was on the Zoom watching her and felt bad for her. But it’s okay. She won another contest instead: the yearbook cover drawing contest, which is somewhat unexpected for us. I think my wife was very happy to say the least 🙂
Reasons for that: economy and layoffs – we have zero control on neither; at certain point, companies and organizations started to discriminate against older workers in terms of hiring and firing (layoffs), due to their potentially higher salary, higher healthcare expense, and so on.
Surprising, at least for now, AI is the not main reason for the tech layoffs, per the YT video below.
Note we have no controls over the layoffs, especially in terms of the company’s decision. In theory we have some influence such as do our job well, but this is not guaranteed to help one avoid layoffs.
Some of the things I can think of or I am doing
Blogging (make some ads money from Google, very hard). The downside of this one is it takes lots of traffic to generate a bit ads revenue. Similar for the YouTube video creation. For me this is even harder than the eBay.
Selling on eBay (is eBay increasing becoming a flea market, btw?). One side benefit of selling on eBay is declutter, as well as reduce, reuse and recycle theme. Reducing the carbon footprint is rewarding for me.
Part-time gig (e.g., adjunct teaching at Webster U). Note this is not scalable as it’s mainly selling time for money.
Stocks: note this one is risky. But it potentially could have more rewards (again, this depends on many factors, such as the capital one has).
