Chase ATMs

I'm sick, so I stayed home from work today. Since I rarely get sick, I wasn't really stocked up on sickie supplies like cough drops and vaporizers, so I needed to make a drugstore run. The bank is right across the street from the drugstore, and I had a check to deposit, so I stopped to save myself a trip later.

First some history, and then I'll finish today's story. I've had a Washington Mutual account since I was 14 or 15, and I've always been happy with their service—until they became the largest bank failure in U.S. history, that is. Late last year JP Morgan Chase purchased Washington Mutual Bank (with some facilitation from the government), and so after more than 10 years, I suddenly—and involuntarily—had a new bank.

Not long after the switch, I went to a branch to make an ATM deposit, and I discovered a problem: there was no "deposit" button on the ATM anymore. I could withdraw money, but deposits were apparently no longer accepted.

I went inside to talk to a teller, and after waiting in line for a few minutes, I explained my situation. The teller had no idea what was going on, but helped me with my deposit. I was annoyed that what should have taken 45 seconds took over 10 minutes, and decided that I didn't like this new Chase thing very much.

(As a side note, I've never understood why I can't just hand my deposit to a teller, perhaps after swiping my debit card, and leave. Why in the world do I have to wait for them? One time I even asked the teller if I could just pretend that she was an ATM and walk away, but she wasn't allowed to make the deposit if I left.)

The next time I needed to deposit money, I again asked the teller why the deposit button was gone. He said that while the bank branches had been switched immediately to Chase, the accounts would not be switched until October 2009, and ATM deposits would not be available until then. Great. A whole year of waiting around in line to deposit checks.

Since I hate waiting in line, I made as few deposits as possible until October. In mid-October I had collected a few checks, and decided to try my luck again. Doh! It turns out that I was one day too early, and I still had to wait in line.

That brings us to my drugstore trip today. I figured that deposits should work by now, so I made another attempt. Thankfully, there was a deposit button today. Even better, they had a new no-envelope ATM that directly accepted my check! No envelope, no deposit slip. I didn't even have to enter the amount on the screen. I just stuck the check in a slot, the machine read the amount, I pushed "finish transaction", and I walked away. The receipt even had an image of the check printed on it.

I'm not sure what to think of Chase now. I was really irked that I had to deposit checks with a teller for a year (and I'm still irked about Chase's higher fees), but I really like that I don't have to futz around with envelopes or deposit slips anymore. Now if only they had the ability to deposit a check by snapping a photo with my iPhone like USAA....

exacerbate vs. exasperate

I've heard something similar to this a few times recently:

His lack of skill really exasperated the problem.

Going into debt can exasperate your financial situation.

To quote a favorite movie: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." Compare:

• exasperate: to excite the anger of : enrage; to cause irritation or annoyance to
• exacerbate: to make more violent, bitter, or severe

So, in simple English, exacerbate = to make worse, and exasperate = to make angry. I always chuckle when I hear sentences like the ones above, because I conjure up a mental image of a problem becoming furious, or a financial situation throwing a temper tantrum in frustration.

Next time you're about to use an exa- word, take a second to make sure that it's the right one. You just might avoid making your friendly neighborhood word nerd become exasperated by not exacerbating his frustration with society's increasingly loose lexical license.

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Note for word nerds: exacerbate and acerbic (=sour or bitter) both stem from the same Latin root word: acerbus (=harsh, bitter), which in turn stems from the Latin acer (=sharp), which is also the root word for the English acid.

Concerted effort

"I've been slacking off at exercising recently, but I decided to make a concerted effort to be more active."

"I'm making a concerted effort to be nicer to my roommate."

"I'm behind in my classes, but I'm making a concerted effort to catch up."

Concerted effort is a popular phrase to misuse these days. Concerted means "involving the joint activity of two or more", so the idea of a single person making a concerted effort doesn't really make sense.

Compare:

• concerted: coordinated, combined, joint (opposite of separate, uncoordinated)
• concentrated: intense (opposite of mild, moderate)

The next time you're about to say concerted, think about whether concentrated might be a better choice.

(Although it's widely regarded as incorrect today, my guess is that in 20 or 30 years this use will become accepted, much like "I could care less" is becoming today.)

The Man: 1, Mike: 0 (but maybe you can help)

(for how to help, skip to the end)

My friend Michael had a recent vendetta against The Man (Southwest Airlines, in this case). They bumped him from a flight and gave him a $350 travel voucher in return. He wrote down the number and threw away the paper, happily dreaming of trips to exotic locations.

There was just one small problem: he only wrote down one number—the voucher number. Turns out that you also need the security code, or your voucher number is useless. He contacted Southwest, and they said they couldn't help him. Rather than give up, though, he vowed to try all 9999 possible security codes at Southwest's web site until he found the right one. He estimated that after 25 days he'd have a 50% chance of finding the right one.

I saw Mike's blog entry about his fight, and as one who detests The Man as much as the next guy, I took pity on him. No, I didn't start spending my free time entering numbers at southwest.com; instead, I wrote a computer program to enter them for me.

The robot

After a bit of work, I had created a robot that would go through the booking process on Southwest's web site all the way to the point where you enter the voucher number. Over the course of a few hours (while I slept last night), it tried all 9999 four-digit security codes.

Unfortunately, I discovered when I woke up this morning that none of the security codes had worked. None of them. (On the bright side, at least Mike didn't have to spend 50 days entering numbers manually, only to discover that none had worked.)

What went wrong?

There are a few possible reasons why it didn't work:

1. Mike wrote down the wrong voucher number.
2. The security code format isn't a 4-digit number.
3. There's a bug in my program.

Reason #1 is a lost cause. If that's the real explanation, there's no hope.

Reason #2 seems possible, but Southwest's booking site, as well as pages found by Googling, lead me to believe that it is, in fact, a four-digit numeric code. (Anybody know for sure?)

How to help

So that leaves Reason #3: I messed up. However, you can help me debug my program. I need two things:

1. If you're a programmer, you can take a look at my program and let me know if you find any bugs.
2. If you have a Southwest voucher number and security code, you could let me test my program with them. (I promise I won't steal your flight...)
   

If you're a Python programmer, feel free to take a look at voucherbuster.py. (Warning: really ugly quick-and-dirty code. Also, you'll need mechanize to run it.)

Because I don't have a working voucher number/security code combination, I can't be 100% sure that my program will recognize a correct combination. I'm pretty confident that it works, but I can't be sure unless I test it with a real voucher number/security code pair. If you too want to get back at The Man, and you're willing to let me try your voucher number (not to buy a ticket, just to validate my program), drop me a line. Thanks!