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My credit union called this morning: “Did you just make a purchase from OnlyFans?” Nope. Thus ends my longest recent streak of not having my debit card compromised. The security department said it looks like I’ve been the victim of a “BIN stuffing” attack where a criminal tries random combinations of card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV numbers until they get lucky. One day I may have a debit card that reaches the expiration date printed on it. Not this time, though.

I got the first “your credit card was declined” email from one of my monthly bills a few minutes later. This will be an irksome week.

Keeva wants pets.

The BASIC programming language turns 60 | Ars Technica

Like so many others, I got my start typing in program listings for games, utilities, art projects, and all kinds of other things I found in magazines. Inevitably there’d be some small thing I wished a program would do differently, so I’d tweak and alter it — usually breaking things horrendously along the way — until I made it do what I wanted. That was an addictive rush of magical power.

While BASIC wasn’t a great language, I’ve never seen a programming environment more approachable an alluring than turning on a Commodore 64 and instantly seeing the word “READY.” and a blinking cursor waiting for me to give it instructions.

What sadist invented this captcha?

I spent 1 hour and 25 minutes on a call with Goldman Sachs about their mistakes on my Apple Card statement. It’s not resolved but I think we’re finally making progress.

I’m a stickler about reconciling my monthly account statements. My dad taught me how to balance a checkbook when I was a kid and I’m diligent about that. This was the first time I’ve ever been unable to make sense of a statement. The process normally looks like this:

1. Start with last month’s balance.
2. Subtract any money you paid toward that balance.
3. Add any new transactions.
4. Add any fees and interest.
5. Compare the result to what the bank says your new closing balance is, and if it’s not an exact match, go back to the beginning until you find the missing piece.

Last month’s Apple Card statement worked like that. So did the month before that. And the month before that, all the way back 5 years. This month they threw a twist:

1. Start with last month’s balance, $1000.00¹.
2. Subtract the $500.00 payment I made.
3. Add $100.00 in new transactions.
4. Add $50 in fees and interest.
5. My arithmetic came out to a new balance of $650. Goldman Sachs computed my new balance as $425.

However I juggled the numbers, I couldn’t reproduce their result. I gave up and contacted the support chat. That was useless. The conversation went like this:

Me: There’s a problem with my statement.
Them: Your balance is $425! Is there anything else I can help you with? disconnect
Me: reconnecting There’s a problem with my statement.
Them: Oh no! It looks like that’s $425. Have a nice day! disconnect

I asked them to escalate, which resulted in someone sending me an email like:

Here’s how we resolved your case: Start with $1000.00. Now, the moon weighs more than a duck, so carry the 5 and you get $893. Add the length of the Titanic and subtract purple. That’s $425. Share and enjoy!

Today I called them and repeated “talk to a human” into the phone tree until it connected me to a person. This time I got to explain my situation to a sentient being, who went off to repeat my calculations before uttering those magic tech support words: “huh, that’s strange.” It sure is! The agent was able to reproduce my math and couldn’t figure out how to compute Goldman Sachs’s balance. I can’t exaggerate the relief I felt. I’m not alone. It’s not my imagination or inability to add a few numbers together.

Although we haven’t fixed the problem, a thinking person wrote up my problem and opened an official inquiry for me. I’m optimistic.

And don’t waste your time on Apple Card’s online chat. Nothing good comes from it.

Today’s first software update for the Rabbit r1 adds missing keys to its on-screen keyboard, and now I can type in our Wi-Fi password. That’s a nice fix!

Next up: Make it trust its own GPS instead of IP geolocation so that it doesn’t think we’re 50 miles away from here. That wreaks havoc on its weather reports.

On the subject of Drug Scheduling:

Schedule IV

Schedule IV drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with a low potential for abuse and low risk of dependence. Some examples of Schedule IV drugs are: Xanax, Soma, Darvon, Darvocet, Valium, Ativan, Talwin, Ambien, Tramadol

So the devil’s lettuce is currently Schedule I with "a high potential for abuse”, but Xanax and Valium are not. Got it. That tells you what you need to know about the DEA’s evaluation processes.

US will reclassify marijuana in historic shift: AP sources | AP News:

Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public-comment period the agency would publish the final rule.

That’s fantastic news! It’s ludicrous that weed was ever Schedule I, i.e. “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”, when alcohol isn’t. I can’t think of a single criterion by which marijuana is worse for users or for society than America’s current favorite drug of choice.

My Rabbit R1 just arrived. I haven’t played with it enough yet to have an opinion on the software’s usability. The hardware itself is nice, though. Photos can’t accurately convey how very orange! the thing is. It just about glows in the dark.

I wish OmniFocus would replace the way its Forecast view selects items to display with a user-selectable perspective. Then I could make my own choices about what to include, and OmniFocus would display those items in its handy integrated view alongside calendar events.

I can’t make those choices today. For example, the Forecast view doesn’t allow me to include actions that have a defer date in the past. That is, once an action is past its “start date” and available to be worked on, it no longer shows up on Forecast’s Today tab, or even in the Past tab. This is all the configuration available to decide what the Forecast view should show:

That’s one place I think Things is better than OmniFocus: If I have an action like “pay the rent (after the 20th of the month)”, the Things Today view will still show that action as something I could and should be doing on the 22nd of the month.

Purists might argue that I’m using OmniFocus wrong. I shouldn’t be leaning on the Forecast view at all, but should be regularly checking my tags and projects to see what I should be doing. That workflow isn’t the right fit for me. I know. I’ve tried it many times. What does work is a nice Today view that shows all my available scheduled actions in one place, along with actions I’ve tagged with “Today” during a review. I have a personal items perspective like that which ends up looking much like Things if I squint at it the right way:

Notice that the Forecast configuration looks an awful lot like a pared-down version of a regular perspective. If I had a magic wand to wave, I’d remove the “Items” checkboxes from the “In Forecast, include” and “Today includes” sections and replace them with the name of the perspective that would select all the items I wanted to show on the Forecast. Ta-da, done. Then I could customize the Forecast to make it perfect for my own needs. Others could make their own perspective, or use a default that OmniGroup could include to emulate the current behavior. Alternatively, a perspective could gain a “Display as Forecast” checkbox where I could have multiple Forecasts, each with its own filtered view of items. Tell me a separate “Personal Forecast” and “Work Forecast” view doesn’t sound nice. Imagine that you could associate each one with the appropriate focus filter so that they show up automatically when you’re doing personal or work things on your computer. The heart flutters!

Please consider this, Omni Group. OmniFocus is powerfully customizable in so many ways! I’d be delighted if this one last set-in-stone limitation were removed.