a snapshot of my new life

[cptjanewaypi110]

la la la... I'm rather bored at the moment. Mike flew up to Seattle yesterday afternoon, and he's not coming back until Sunday or Monday. the good news is, when he does return, it will be in a U-Haul filled with useful things like furniture!! (and not so useful things like oodles of boxes that we won't have anyplace to store, but nevermind that

Comments

[avenger337]

I really hoped you haven't switched banks yet -- I was with wells fargo for two years at Mudd, and frankly, it was miserable. I'd recommend going with Washington Mutual if you can -- they are really quite good, in my experience.

[cptjanewaypi110]

yeah well you have miserableness with most things. :P

no, I'm mostly kidding... so there's a bit more backstory. for one, Mike and his family use Wells Fargo and have been quite happy with them for years. in his terms, they're the bank that has been "least stupid" to his parents. for two, they don't care which state you open the account in (I don't know if WaMu is the same way or not). so when I mentioned all my BoA problems to Dad, he remembered that Lynne's son Travis has a half-brother Marcus who works for Wells Fargo in the LA area. so he called him directly, and he is basically going to be my personal banker, which is LOADS better than sitting on hold for ages with any other bank. Mike also praises Wells Fargo's online banking, and Marcus has agreed to waive all fees associated with opening my account (though a credit card will have a $20ish annual fee). and they have the most ATMs of any bank in CA, for what that's worth. can I ask what problems you had with them?

[avenger337]

I didn't have any specific problems, per se, but the people were extremely rude and unhelpful every time I went in. I felt like they were trying to scam me out of my money constantly; honestly, it was more a general feeling than any one specific thing. But the people who I saw in the bank (like the customers) were usually pretty seedy, and the bank itself was pretty seedy, too.

And paying $20 a year for a credit card is ridiculous. You should look into that, because all the banks I've talked to have a "basic" credit card that has no fees associated with it.

You also shouldn't have to pay any fees to open an account; some have minimum balances, but given that the bank is getting all of your money on a semi-permanent loan *anyway*, them trying to get more money out of you again feels slimy to me.

[savfan104]

Oh dear, Fortran.

[cptjanewaypi110]

yeah, well, astronomers are special like that. and a lot of old school astronomy code still used today was written in FORTRAN...so it makes sense that we should learn how to poke at it intelligently I suppose.

[savfan104]

Yeah, there's some of that in other areas too. If I'd've decided to work with Duane on his million-atom quantum-mechanics simulation, that would've been Fortran. The Numerical Fluid Dynamics prof does everything in Fortran too, though C is fine too for that class.

As it is, I'll likely be working with mostly C or C++, which honestly isn't any better and is quite likely worse, for numerics purposes at least. It's just more convenient because it's more similar to everything else modern and is used outside of old numerics code...

<< Amy

[anonymous]

My recommendation for a Friday/weekend activity:
job?
AND HEY, I'm serious about going down there this winter!