Advanta and Credit Card Woes

We've been using an Advanta MasterCard for our business for several years now. So today I get an e-mail that they're canceling all their credit card accounts - in four days. Thanks for giving me time to get a new card.

Apparently we have not been like their typical customer. We paid our bills on time consistently. This article in Consumerist says that they had a 20% default rate. Hmm ... maybe we should not pay that last bill. - Nah.

So I started shopping for a new credit card for our firm. Having been a PayPal customer for about six years, I figured they would know me well enough. Nope. See below:

Don't be misled by the "You're approved" at the top. The message says that they're denying me a credit card, but approving me for a whopping $500 credit line.

I understand that the economy is tightening and credit markets are tough, but if I can't get credit then this doesn't make a lot of sense. The only major debt we have left is on our house, and we have well over 50% equity. We have been perfect on our credit card bills and car payments for years. We also have strong revenue, and PayPal should know since that's how most people pay us.

Maybe the economy is in deeper trouble than I thought.

Dyslexic SEO with Flash

If you don't find this funny, you don't get SEO.

And if that doesn't persuade you, this is from one of their sites:

Apparently optimizing for misspellings. Or Mineloa is an fff'ing long Hawaiian island.

On the bright side, the lawyer probably ended up paying them $19.99.

Seriously, today's keyword is proofreading!

Traffic Court: New Milestones

New milestones for our traffic court website. As shown below, over 150K visits in the last 31 days, and over 130K unique visitors.

For those unfamiliar with our stats, the peaks are Mondays and the valleys are weekends.

Moreno Valley Court in California is the busiest on the site, with over 1400 pageviews in that 31-day stretch. They must write a lot of tickets out there.

I just looked back and we had about 95,000 visits in December. So the growth is pretty good.

GPS, Privacy, and the NY Court of Appeals

Great decision by the New York Court of Appeals, in the case of People v. Weaver. Police, without a warrant, placed a GPS tracking device on the underside of the defendant's car - for 65 days. They later used the GPS evidence against him in a criminal trial where he was convicted.

The Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 decision, reversed the conviction and held:
Under our State Constitution, in the absence of exigent circumstances, the installation and use of a GPS device to monitor an individual's whereabouts requires a warrant supported by probable cause.

The three dissenting judges stated:
Because no one invaded defendant's privacy here, his motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the GPS device should be denied.

In the spirit of the idea of using eminent domain to take Justice Souter's house after Kelo, I hereby offer to pay for the installation of such devices on the cars of the three dissenting judges, and of District Attorney David Soares whose office argued against this appeal. Since they think it's not an invasion of privacy, they really shouldn't mind.

By the way, great job on the appeal by my friends Matt Hug and Trey Smith. Kudos also to the 4 judges who did the right thing, and to Chief Judge Lippman for a well-written decision. Here's my favorite part:

One need only consider what the police may learn, practically effortlessly, from planting a single device. The whole of a person's progress through the world, into both public and private spatial spheres, can be charted and recorded over lengthy periods possibly limited only by the need to change the transmitting unit's batteries. Disclosed in the data retrieved from the transmitting unit, nearly instantaneously with the press of a button on the highly portable receiving unit, will be trips the indisputably private nature of which takes little imagination to conjure: trips to the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, the by-the-hour motel, the union meeting, the mosque, synagogue or church, the gay bar and on and on. What the technology yields and records with breathtaking quality and quantity, is a highly detailed profile, not simply of where we go, but by easy inference, of our associations — political, religious, amicable and amorous, to name only a few — and of the pattern of our professional and avocational pursuits.

Oh, and also credit to Justice Leslie Stein, the lone judge on the Appellate Division on the correct side, and the reason this case got to the Court of Appeals.

Me, Rudy Giuliani, and some other guy

Here's a picture for ya!

I'm kidding about the "some other guy" in the title. That's Peter King, a congressman thought to be a candidate for US Senate in 2010.

The Rudy thing is funny. I have been critical in the past of him: Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul. I've never quite figured out why he's a hero for 9/11. He showed up and made a speech or two.

If he had recognized that the buildings were unstable and ordered the firemen out, saving lives, that might make him a hero. If he had anticipated some kind of terrorist attack, had a team study likely targets, determined the WTC vulnerability and taken steps in advance to shore up the towers or plans for dealing with an attack, then that might make him a hero. But showing up and making a few speeches? That's not heroic. The firemen were the heroes, and some cops too.

I'm not the first to question his hero status. See the discussion in Wikipedia. And there's Blue Collar Politics.

And of course, he was an aggressive prosecutor. That Wikipedia page covers some of the concerns.

But the most important thing -- I actually look good in this picture. I'm not photogenic but this one came out okay. I also like how my gray striped suit contrasts with their dark suits.

The photo part of the event was funny. It was the Albany County Republican Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. We paid a lot of money and went up to a room where many people stood in line waiting for their chance to be photo'd with Giuliani and King, along with about 5 seconds of conversation.

Overall the event was great. I actually liked Rudy's speech. He had some funny lines -- the Yankees did really well while he was Mayor, and not so great since he left. He jokingly claimed credit for their success. Food was good - the Desmond always does a good job. Lots of great people at the event too. The Albany County GOP did a solid job on it - kudos to John Graziano (the Chair), Dan Farrell (he did a lot of the work), and whoever else was involved.