Betterness by Kawika Holbrook

Microsoft Gets Ready for Moblogs

"Turn an ordinary blog into a moblog by including pictures from your Pocket PC or Smartphone. Check back here in December to learn how to create yours."

Credit Is Due

Most credit card solicitations I receive include a zero percent introductory rate on balance transfers. I've transfered balances among four credit cards this year to avoid any interest payments on my fiancee's engagement ring. The offers keep coming, but I started wondering if the older cards I abandoned but don't close hurt my credit rating and score. Most experts say don't close unused accounts, which apparently improves your debt-to-limit ratio. Open too many cards too quickly and it looks suspicious, however. Wanting the facts, I bought a report that included data collected by Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax as well as my FICO scores produced from software developed by Fair Isaac Corporation. The reports, akin to a financial resume, were inaccurate and the scores, numerical representations of my credit worthiness, were relatively high but marred by errors. All three agencies don't include my last two employers. All three believe I have different accounts open that are closed. The fact that all three report, "You have never missed a payment, and no negative public records are listed on your credit report," is cold comfort as I'm not getting all the credit due me for my years of clean credit living. BankRate has solid, unbiased information on the basics of credit scores, along with pervasive myths and sobering stats (such as 80% of reports have errors). Until recently, many Americans didn't even know a FICO score existed because it was a closely guarded secret in the lending industry. Of course, the industry fought to keep the numbers away from consumers. Now I must fight the industry to fix the number. We'll see how it goes. If I lose, my credit is still reported to be good enough to buy a home, only the percentage difference in my rate could cost me -- over 20 years -- $35,000 or more.

Supreme Court Dispatches

Dahlia Lithwick's Supreme Court Dispatches in Slate tickle me, and not just because her article titles use pitch-perfect puns such as Thong of the South or double entendres such as The Supreme Court Tries Sodomy. I'm enthralled because she dissects cases with clarity, insight, and humor. From the article Crackseat Driver:

Joseph Pringle made several mistakes on Aug. 7, 1999. One was being the passenger in a car with a driver who consented to a police search. Another was hiding the big wad of $763 in cash in the glove box of that car—where the license and registration lived. Another was hiding the five baggies of crack cocaine in the back seat, cleverly jammed behind the armrest. Another was later confessing at the police station that yes, the drugs were his and that he was hoping to trade them for sex at a party (I always find that "Nice dress" or "Great party, huh?" works OK, too).

At his suppression hearing, Pringle argued that even though he'd confessed to everything, the cops should not have been allowed to arrest him in the first place because under the Fourth Amendment they did not have sufficiently particularized suspicion that the drugs were his.

How can you not read the rest?

Stemwinder

The definition of "stemwinder" -- a stem-winding watch or a rousing oration, especially a political one -- isn't as interesting to me as the sound of the word itself. Stemwinder has slipped into my head and slithers about, interrupting my thoughts without purpose. The last word to do that was slipjack, which isn't even a word. I honestly have little control over my brain.

Underwhelming Myself

I had five hours to get things done today. "Things" were to include returning a cell phone headset at Fry's, running for an hour, booking a hotel for our trip, sending pictures to some friends, and so on. Now I have two-and-a-half hours to get things done. In the interim, I read about Microsoft's plans for its next operating system in All about Longhorn, Novell's purchase of Linux distributer SuSE and it's impact on IBM and Microsoft in All shook up in Linux land, the Supreme Court's review of collective punishment in Crackseat Driver, the diplomatic challenges marrying modern Constitutional law with strict, traditional sharia in Afghan Constitution debuts, and a Window's publication's five-star praise of Panther in Apple OS X 10.3 review by PC Magazine. This paragraph has taken more than ten minutes to write, given the slow nature of embedding multiple links and my inability to cease editing the design of my otherwise neglected website, Betterness. I overwhelm myself daily with needless tasks and worries. I'm telling myself now: Type what I want to write when I think the thought.