54 thoughts on “February 11, 2015: Daddy-Daughter Night”

    1. The National posted the lineup on their FB feed this morning. I'm very intrigued, but will unlikely be able to attend. I'm thinking about hitting up DSM the prior weekend for rugby.

        1. Agree. Sturgil, Low, Charles Bradley, Sufjan (I guess) would be interesting but not enough to pull me in. Polica plays enough around here I could see them if I wanted.

    3. Wow. That's a heck of a lineup.

      edit: The timing could be better for me, personally. Linds would probably murder me if I left her alone with a one month old to go take in an indie rock festival.

      1. But she'd probably murder you after the festival, so at least you'd actually be able to see it.

  2. My wife found a fraudulent charge on our credit card last night (from last night). This is the fourth time in the last 2-3 years that we will have to get new cards. Oy.

    2. I once met some folks who had a number of fraudulent charges on their card. They called the company, got new cards, and had the charges reversed. Then a week or so later a bunch of packages arrived (high quality wines, and a couple similar items). The thief had apparently clicked "ship to card address." The credit card company didn't care, so they got to keep consume the items.

      1. Hah.

        the Mrs remarked about how responsive and efficient the card fraud dept folks were. We got an email late last night/early this morning alerting us to a possibly fraudulent charge, and she was able to talk to an actual human being very quickly this morning.

        Of course, if Visa would move a bit faster to replace magnetic strip cards with chipped cards and further implement security protocols (two-factor authentication, anyone?), maybe they wouldn't need to spend so much on staffing their customer service in the fraud dept.

        1. Whenever I'm in Canada I get weird looks since I do not have a chip. They've had chip & pin up there for several years, and it makes me rather envious. It's not supposed to be here until like 2016 or 2017? Ugh.

            1. I had similar problems in England. I went and got a chipped card to use for business travel so I don't run into that problem again.

        2. maybe they wouldn't need to spend so much on staffing their customer service in the fraud dept.

          I'm sure they already did the cost analysis.

        3. Help me out, what's the advantage of the chipped cards and the two-factor authentication? I'm apparently naive in this particular department.

          1. So instead of faux magnetic strip readers to hack your credit card when you swipe, now someone can use a passive RFID reader and hack it from 3' away while it's in your pocket.

            1. I thought there was no RFID in EMV. So, instead of about 16 digits that aren't that hard to guess and really easy to steal, it's 16 digits plus physical proof the card was used. There are RFID terminals but that's a separate concern.

          2. two-factor authentication is a separate issue entirely, of course. It would involve, for example, a text message whenever your card was used for a purchase. I would think that this would not be that hard to set up (and could be restricted to online purchases, for example).

    3. The state of private sector data security in this country is absolutely pathetic. The public sector is probably just as bad or worse, but I don't have much insight into that segment so I can't opine with confidence. I say this as a B2B insider who has tried to market and sell data security products in the real world. In the likely event that they experience more and bigger security breaches, corporate America is much more concerned about protecting its brands and profits than protecting your data or privacy. Until the economics of data security changes, i.e. the cost of a breach becomes so punitively high that nobody is willing to risk one - things are not likely to change. The best course, I suppose, is to invest in some identity theft protection service, which passes the cost of data security onto customers instead of investors, which I'm guessing is where corporations are going to try to herd all of us eventually.

      1. "What is your mother's maiden name?" -- yeah, that's really secure.

        When several security questions are made available to choose from. I always pick an obscure one, and my answer is a wrong one.

        1. ooo, good idea. I usually try to pick the one that would be almost impossible to find, like a random personal preference. "What street did you grow up on" is another ridiculous one. I can google my name and find that

        2. Sometimes, they give you the option to create your own question. I generally just put in "No" as the question, and make an ultra-complicated answer.

        3. I pick a random question and fill it in with random alphanumeric text. Hooray for a password manager to keep track of all that.

          1. Is this secure? I never wanted to record them anywhere. This would be a good idea if trustworthy.

            1. There's a stigma against writing down passwords that is undeserved. What's the threat model for writing them down and putting them in a safe? Someone would have to break into the safe to steal whatever so they can steal your money. Versus using an actually correct answer for your mother's maiden name means someone randomly on the internet can get a dump of accounts and do machine brute-forcing of maiden names.

              Writing down passwords and other important information and keeping in a secure location is perfectly okay. Note if this is the only location of them, then you're at risk of losing them due to fire or similar. This is where a password manager can shine. Being digital, it's easy to copy it to multiple locations (every computer you personally use, USB drive, backups). It's also encrypted, ensuring anyone that gets the file (unlikely, but don't count on it) is prevented from accessing it if you use a strong passphrase.

                2. Yes. xkcd has a good, short bit about that. All of my passphrases that matter are written down. I haven't forgotten the newest one yet, but I have temporarily forgotten all previous ones. One of those passphrases was for a laptop with an encrypted drive so I couldn't use it for about 30 minutes until I stopped forgetting[1].

                  [1] Yes it was written down. It was not with me however.

                  1. I send that one to our IT department every time I'm forced to change my password. The state of California, not surprisingly, is in the mock-able camp. I've had to construct passwords for certain state apps that involve a capital letter, lower case letter, number AND symbol (but no spaces). Oy.

                    I should be clear that our IT folks get it. These are mandates that come from On High (an organization that recently began styling itself as "CalTech." LMAO.

      2. The best course, I suppose, is to invest in some identity theft protection service, which passes the cost of data security onto customers instead of investors, which I'm guessing is where corporations are going to try to herd all of us eventually.

        Yes. No doubt the banks would be happy to sell us an additional service to rectify a problem that they've pretty much refused to fix themselves. "Hey, your financial data is not secure with us! Wanna pay us more for an enhanced security promise that doesn't come with any warranty?"

        1. Wells Fargo has owned all of my mortgages I've had (never originally, but they then bought them). I've been bending over for them for so long I might accidentally agree to something like that.

          1. I was so pleased to have my mortgage not purchased by Wells Fargo. I have trouble recalling why, but something like this, I'm sure.

          2. My first mortgage ever was with Countrywide. When I moved, I stayed with them. Before I knew it, I was no longer getting Countrywide statements, but Bank of America. I tried doing the bi-weekly thing where you pay half your monthly payment in every two weeks, because I've been told that helps pay it off sooner. Well, BoA decided to take that money that I put in, hold it until the money was due, and then charge my $4 a transaction to do it. Rip-off. I refinanced 3 years ago just to get away from them.

            1. our current mortgage is with BoA. We pay monthly, but add on extra principle payment each month. Never had a problem with them*. Your situation was...not good.

              *With the ginormous exception of getting the loan approved in the first place. We were doing a simple re-fi and not even taking any equity out. Huge pain in the ass despite our having stellar credit and yadda yadda.

                1. Once got a bank mailer that stated "We appreciate your interest."
                  Never did find out whether that was some kind of banker joke or not.

    1. I love the chuckster, but he can be an idiot.

      You can bet that the most successful franchises in the NBA, such as the Spurs, expend considerable effort to have their players prepared. That means scouting and analyzing film and analytics.

      Having better players matters, duh. But preparation matters at the margin, and in the NBA, it's almost always about the margin because every team has a lot of talent, and every team has one, two, or three guys who can go off on any given night.

  6. I don't know if Payne is going to be good or not, but I don't understand the hand-wringing over trading a mid-first round pick for a mid-first round pick.

  7. I've got a presale code for Craig Finn/Jason Isbell if anyone is interested. I mean, it isn't going any where near the Twin Cities but I really just wanted to let everyone know I am going to see Craig Finn & Jason Isbell in May.

    1. Rubio missed a couple in the last minute too, but he lead a furious 4th quarter comeback (I think it was down 14 at one point). I was flipping between the Wolves and The Americans so didnt catch everything.

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