Finding Freedom

So here I am, trying to be a reasonable person and pay down my credit card bills, and the credit card companies (I’m looking at you Chase and Providian), after I make large-ish payments to them, decide that they are going to cut my credit lines.  While this makes good sense from a business standpoint for them (as I have obviously not had the best spending track record in the past), I can’t help but think that their cutting my credit lines is going to hurt my credit score, as my ratio of balance to credit limit is going to be higher.

When I noticed that Chase did this, I gave them a call right away, and they re-instated my credit line.  However, when Providian did this to me the other day, I called and they said that I needed to wait for a statement in the mail that would explain why it had happened.

I’m still pretty dead set about paying off the balances of all of my cards, but it’s discouraging to see that even though I’m doing my damndest to lower my balances and, therefore, to improve my credit score, it seems like the companies are doing their damndest to see that my credit score goes in the toilet.  Has anyone experienced anything like this with credit card companies?  Do I have any recourse?

My phone plan recently expired, and, with one of the biggest draws that cell phone companies have to keep you in their clutches is slashing prices on phones if you sign up again, I purchased a new phone at a reduced price in addition to renewing my plan.  Although prices for other plans were comparable, I opted to remain with Cingular because my family is all on Cingular, and those free mobile to mobile minutes really add up.

I started looking at my options for a phone, and I eventually decided on a mid-priced phone with seventy bucks in rebates.  Of that seventy in rebates, twenty of those dollars came as an instant online rebate, but to receive the other fifty, I had to send in my receipt, proof of purchase, and rebate form to a specified address.  I thought that that seemed reasonable, and so I went ahead and purchased the phone.

However, as I was looking at the rebate form later, I read that the other fifty dollars would not come as a check; instead, Cingular had partnered with Visa, and they were going to send me a fifty dollar Visa gift card. 

Now, I suspect that some of you will argue that fifty bucks is fifty bucks, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to disagree.  By giving me a gift card, unless I can rock some kind of cash advance on that puppy, they are effectively not giving me my fifty back.  While I could have just taken that money and stuck it into savings before, now I’ll be forced to spend it in the near future, as gift cards are notorious for having expiration dates.

In short, I’m not really happy about how things turned out.  Do rebates tend to work out this way?

Over at the Dilbert Blog today, Scott Adams posted about how he finds that he gets the most work done, and the little ways that he gets distracted.

“Another 10 percent of my work day is allocated to thwarting my cat’s anti-productivity crusade. She hates it when I do work, under the universal cat theory that any time spent not petting her is time wasted. As soon as I pick up a drawing implement she systematically goes around my office chewing and scratching one item after another until she finds something that will make me stop work and pet her.”

This got me to thinking about how I find that I get the most work done. At my job, if I’m listening to my ipod I find that I can get a lot of the easy tasks done rather quickly. However, as the tasks become more difficult, I find that I need to either turn the volume way down or else turn off the glorified mp3 player entirely.

With most of my job being relatively easy, I find that having the headphones is a great way to drown out the various office noises that might otherwise distract me from producitivity.

How about you, gentle readers? How do you find that you work the best? Do you like it noisy, or would you prefer it to be as quiet and serene as a Catholic church?

Each morning, part of my trek to work includes an elevator ride. This morning, as I stepped into the carriage, I realized that the CEO of our company was standing there. He seems like a pretty nice guy, and, as if to maintain his easy-going image, the man was not wearing a tie.

For one of the first times in my life, I was star-struck; well, I was at least CEO-struck. It immediately occurred to me that I should say something. However, I could neither think of anything important enough that I would talk to him about nor anything that he would expect from me.

As the elevator got to my floor, I briskly walked off, having said nothing to the most powerful man at my company.

It occurs to me now that a simple, “Good morning!” would have been appropriate, but, for whatever reason, my mind couldn’t formulate that expression this morning.

However, even if I could have come up with something, should I have said anything at all? If I should have said anything other than the above, what should that have been?

I just don’t know.