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I have ~45GB of space left on my four drive RAID5. This makes me nervous. Funny though, since my first computer had a 200MB drive, oh how things change!

My array is four 250GB drives, originally having been three, but I grew it a bit more than a year ago. When I set the array up each of those drives cost more than a one terrabyte drive costs now, but it was 2005.

Upgrading my RAID is a nerve wracking sort of thing, you see, because purchasing four drives at once is a pretty huge expense, for me anyway, and that’s really the only way to do it right. It’ll also be nerve wracking in the regard to time consumption, as each of those four drives will need to be individually failed, replaced, and the array rebuilt between each drive replacement. Then the array will need to be grown! There’s also the issue of backing up should something heinous happen, which I didn’t do when I added the fourth drive. I’m not inclined to do it this next time either, simply because it’s even more added expense.

Of course, given the current spending “freeze” thanks to the need to zero out credit card balances, this sort of expenditure is going to have to wait quite a bit more time. I think I need to sort through the array and weed out things that have become deprecated and have no future utility.

Warning, the fullsize image is ~400KB.

I made the decision that having that reserve cash sitting in my checking account doing nothing for me, outside of an emergency, was worse than using it to significantly pay down debt that now has an absurd interest rate. I now half expect that decision to explode in my face, but it has the potential to save me gobs of money by slicing away a decently large chunk of balance subject to the new rate.

The next order of business, concurrent with continuing to pay down the high interest balance to zero, is to put a cushion on my other balance carrying card so that it looks better to them, if it matters, which is difficult to say anyway since as I mentioned, that didn’t seem to matter much this time.

I don’t like the credit rating game at all, especially now that maintaining perfect payment history everywhere and otherwise abiding by the terms everywhere still subjects you to what is essentially a default interest rate at the issuing banks whim.  It appears I have some work to do, apparently I’ve made mistakes without realizing it, and since not playing the silly credit score games is now costing me.

I checked all three of my credit reports using annualcreditreport.com, all three are clean as a whistle; nothing negative and my reported utilization is still at basically half. The fuckers at the issuing bank must just be getting in their jabs before they’re not allowed to anymore without showing justification, or afraid of what I’ll do since I have slightly more available credit than before. It’s disgusting how you’re screwed whether you use the credit or not.

Oh well, I’ll get this paid off as quickly as I can, don’t really have any other options at this point. I haven’t called them yet, but the final result after being on hold and talking to someone who has barely any grasp of English isn’t likely to be positive anyway. I won’t continue reward sleazy behavior with money paid via interest on additional debt and as such I’ll definitely never use the card again.

Now I just need to pray that my only other balance carrying card can also be paid down before they decide to put me at what is essentially default, too, just for the lulz. I keep a relatively large balance in relationship to my credit line on that card because the interest rate is attractive. I guess that’s the game, they lure you with low rates, and then at random double or triple it just because now that you’ve used the credit they’ve given you they’re now afraid you won’t pay it back. It’s very worrisome as apparently this particular bank has randomly pushed millions of their customers off their nice and low fixed rates (like mine) into the 20+ range, again, just for the lulz. To make matters potentially worse, because of that nice interest rate I have not maintained the sort of credit line cushion on that account, unlike all of my others, though it doesn’t appear to have helped much for the account currently giving me grief with the new 25%!

I thought I was being “responsible” with my credit!

As a “valued customer” my APR on a credit card I carry a balance on has skyrocketed from sucky 17.7% to a ludicrous 24.7%.  That’s a 39.5% increase!  That used to be what we’d consider default! Yeah, I feel really fucking valued right now. Oh, and the kick in the nuts is that even if I closed the account to reject the new terms, the new APR will go into effect anyway because the balance isn’t zero. I really love how these new “protect the consumer” regulations the government is putting into effect next year have pushed the banks to really hammer the current customers. Way to go! It looks like I’ll be pulling money out of my reserve fund to pay off as much of that balance as possible as quickly as possible. It’s so jacked up that they only give eleven days notice!

They must not like that I got another card and didn’t close the old one, back when I had that stolen account number snafu with my everyday card and they took more than a week to “expedite” me a replacement. I decided to just leave the old one open for “emergencies” and haven’t used it in the last four months. This is such bullshit, but whatever, I can expect it to happen on all of my cards now, issuing banks act like dominoes. I hate how when you presumably do everything right you’re still fucked, never late, paid more than the minimum and generally by a very significant margin, never over the limit, nowhere near “maxed out” in any fashion. Now I don’t know if I should close it immediately, even though I’ll still be screwed by the higher interest, or if I should still rapidly pay it down, but keep it open. Leaving the account open would seem to reward them for their evil ways, but the credit voodoo may punish me if I close it. It would seem my increased available credit, even though my debt did not increase, caused this to happen. I was under the impression that a low utilization of credit was a good thing, guess not. That is, of course, unless my “identity” has been “stolen” by someone, which is extremely doubtful. I apparently have to write letters to the bank and credit bureaus in order to get explanations. You’d think they’d give at least some nebulous reason in their “we think you suck and are going to make you pay for it” type notices. Funny thing, just a couple months ago they actually increased my credit line.

Argh, I’m so angry, in that trembling about ready to strike sort of way. Especially so because they’re not only jacking the rate hard, but at the same time trying to sell their moronic credit protection service to gouge me out of even more money!

I bet the assholes at the issuing bank won’t even let me close it over the phone… It’ll be just one more way they can treat me as a “valued customer.”

Perhaps the answer would be to transfer the remaining balance over to one of my other cards, even with the fee they’ll likely charge, it’ll beat paying almost 25% interest, but unfortunately the accounts that could accept the balance have “no offers available.” I must have contracted the credit equivalent of the plague somehow.

Oh, and this comes after a “notice left” by the lazy son of a bitch mailman, on a package for my niece’s birthday, in which no delivery attempt was even made. There’s no physical notice, so it might just be a stupidity on the part of the USPS as a whole, but in any event I filed an electronic “bring my shit to me you jackasses” request.

Oh, and all that bullshit distracted me from what I was doing at the time and I flooded the bathroom with aquarium water. I was in the middle of a water change on the 75 gallon and needed to fill a bucket with water for when I cleaned a filter later tonight. Silly me, trying to multitask, not expecting near the level of insanity that I encountered when I sat down.

A couple of days ago an enterprising little blue leg hermit decided to traipse across one of my frags, unfortunately the polyps have still not opened. It’s starting to be a bit of a concern actually. They simply look closed though, just as plump and with the same coloration as if momentarily agitated.

I need to actually mount my Ricordea onto something, just laying in the sand doesn’t seem to be working all that well. It occasionally gets pushed around and I wake up to see it somewhere new, usually right up against zoas. It had come lose from its little ceramic square in transit, I’ll probably try gluing it down to a bit of rock I’d chiseled at earlier today.

I also saw my first amphipods today, that was a bit freaky.