patk

Offers are up for the sunflower_auction to help Ukraine.

My offer to make art is here.

I've offered in these fandoms: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, Murderbot, Sinners, The Old Guard, due South, and Hawaii five-O.

To see all the Offers (only 10 so not too difficult) scroll down the sunflower_auction entries past several sticky posts to reach them.

Further to the annoying scamming attempt that caused the bank to cancel my card and snail mail me a new one... from Aussie. (grrrrr) (yes, this is tl;dr but parts are mildly amusing plus you might learn something useful.)

I started to get annoyed "update payment details!" notifications from various apps. I figured I could live for 2-3 weeks without Netflix, Prime, Apple+, AMC, etc, (actually, doubtful) but then my main Apple account also got cross with my defunct card and I was scared I might lose all my iCloud storage. There are masses of images in there that it would be a bit tragic to lose. Unsure what else (all past emails? My stored Notes? My life is organised around those notes!) Plus the phone might stop working, I guess (my only phone).

Initial bank lady had said they would continue to fund Apple pay, but clearly that was bullshit. So I called them, and the bank guy cogitated a bit, then said if I installed the bank's payment app (called somethingmoney) I'd be able to call up my NEW credit card details and use those for all the online stuff that was expiring. Hallelujah!

So I tried to install their money app but despite it being TOTALLY FREE my phone kept saying my credit card was defunct. Did you know Apple won't let you install TOTALLY FREE apps if you don't have a payment system set up? Well, you can't. Fucking billionaires. All the bank dude could suggest was that I bring the phone into the bank next day so they could see for themselves what the problem was. This was completely that thing where something doesn't work and you assume the person doing it is an incompetent idiot and impatiently say "let me have a go".

So I was pissed off. It was clear to me that this was goddamn Apple bullshit, not something I was doing and that taking my phone to the bank would NOT solve it. Bank dude had regretfully informed me that the money app was for mobiles only, and all my mobile devices were Apple.

It was now about 4:45. Then I had a lightbulb moment - I needed a non-Apple device! So I decided to go to the Warehouse (a big box store, the cheapest one in Auckland). Yes! Out I go to my car, which won't start! Dash is covered by lit-up icons including the battery one. Woe - I called the AA, who amazingly arrived inside 30 minutes. Very nice AA man (AA men have replaced my dear departed dad in my life) got in and the car started immediately. Oh the embarrassment! He kindly explained that if you don't push the clutch pedal in really hard you get all the lights and it won't start. Showed me the green light I needed to make go away to be sure I was doing that.

Grateful and chagrined, and having proved all those bastards right who say "just let me have a go", I drove to the local Warehouse (open late every day of course the better to take our money) and got the cheapest Samsung smartphone they had.

At home, I dicked about trying to charge it but most of my fixtures only have the old usb sockets. Luckily it still had 45% charge (gradually dropping as I fumbled about). Baffled by how it worked, I had to DuckDuckGo a few key issues like "how to turn on Samsung" and "where is Samsung settings" (there was an online manual that failed to cover those minor points). Eventually I had it on even though it kept turning its screen off every 30 seconds. I found the google store and downloaded the money app. And it worked! Once I'd logged into my account I was able to see "card details" with my new card number etc. The CVV was called something else but it was the usual 3-number code.

Victory! I had card details and was able to update Apple, which sorted out the other apps.

But... then today I tried to update my Amazon, Paypal, and Uber eats payment details, and it rejected the CVV no. WTF? Now, as above, I'd had problems with the damn new phone switching the screen off every 30 sec, which meant it was hard to stay logged into the money app to copy my card details into all the other billionaire apps. So I'd cleverly taken a photo of the details, which solved it. Turned out that wasn't so clever for numerous reasons, one being that I failed to go back to the money app to recheck the new card's details. When I eventually did, hours later, they'd changed the damn CVV code! That's when I noticed the small print saying it wasn't a CVV code but was a "dynamic security code" that changed every 12 hours.

So now I'm sorted. It's been 9 working days since they supposedly mailed me the new card and of course no sign of it yet - could easily be another 9 days, if not more. And all I have to do is look up my new dynamic security code every day and update several payment systems. Plus I have a shiny new Samsung phone and very little idea how it works. Haven't dared inserting the SIM card yet - unclear if it takes the mini, micro or ultra-miniscule size, or whatever. That's a hoop to jump through on another day. At least I managed to locate a usb adaptor so I can charge it now.

Ah, the modern world, so restful.