All posts by Remi Coin

Brainfood

Help Me Understand: The Government Shutdown

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The government’s shut down (well, sort of). From politicians to pundits, everyone’s squawking, but no one is doing a particularly good job explaining what the heck actually happened. I hear “continuing resolution” and “debt ceiling” being thrown around, and apparently they’re not the same thing? I took American Gov and I paid attention, but this thing is just a mess.

Photo by Elise Walsh

Photo by Elise Walsh

In my attempt to be a decent citizen, I figured educating myself was the least I could do.

The Plan

GOP conservatives never liked Obamacare, so they held a meeting shortly after Obama was elected for a second term to see what they could do about it. Led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, he and other high-profile conservative leaders signed a coalition letter declaring their intent to defund Obamacare before it was “too late.”

This plan finally came into effect on Friday, September 20th, when the House, led by Speaker John Boehner, voted for a “continuing resolution” (more on this in a minute) that included a provision to eliminate all financing for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare’s legal name). A couple days later while the bill moved through the Senate, we got to hear Republican Senator Ted Cruz talk for 21 hours and 19 minutes about how Obamacare “takes our freedom away,” with some side anecdotes about White Castle burgers and Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. Then, a week after the House vote, the Senate having “considered” the bill, threw it back to the House with the defunding provision removed.

They went back and forth a couple more times, the House tacking on a defunding measure, the Senate sending it back without the defunding measure, and then it was October 1st, and the government shut down.

So what’s a continuing resolution and why is it important?

A Continuing Resolution

While it’s the President’s job to submit a budget proposal by the first Monday in February, it’s up to Congress to actually agree upon said budget and then spend the money. Theoretically, each year both houses must pass a dozen appropriations bills by October 1st that the President agrees to sign.

But this is Congress we’re talking about and it’s hard to agree on things, so a continuing resolution basically allows the government to keep funding its departments, agencies, and programs for a limited time in the amount that was already agreed upon from the previous budget. This way, representatives can work out their differences and pass a “real” spending bill. It’s kind of like two-step verification: Congress has to vote on the budget and agree to spend $620 million dollars on the Department of Defense, but then in order for the DoD employee’s (AKA most of the military) to actually get paid, Congress needs to specifically “appropriate” the funds. And just to give you some perspective: Congress hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 2001. We’ve had almost 50 CRs since then.

There are those hoping that the House will pass a “clean” CR—which essentially means a continuing resolution without an added policy change (like the provision defunding Obamacare)—but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

So, then what the heck is the debt ceiling and why does it feel like the same thing? Well, it turns out that it’s just one big coincidence and some really bad luck that our current budget expires on October 1st and we will hit the debt ceiling on October 17th.

The Debt Ceiling

The debt ceiling (or the debt limit) is basically a cap on the amount of money issued by the Treasury. First used in 1917, the idea was that a limit would help keep the President accountable for the money he spent (which in practice may not be true.) Raising the debt ceiling simply allows the government to borrow money from itself to pay for the things it’s already bought.

The key thing to remember is that the government has already spent the money. It’s like having a $200 credit card bill and only $187 in your bank account. The government gets to borrow the extra $13 dollars from itself by “raising” the debt ceiling. If we default (AKA we don’t raise it), it means we’re not paying our bills.

But this should not be confused with the budget deficit: the budget deficit subtracts the cost of running a country from the revenues it brings in each year. In 2013, the government spent $3.803 trillion, but only made $2.902 trillion leaving us a deficit of $901 billion. Our nation’s debt takes into account the previous deficits, which currently amounts to about $16.7 trillion.

To Sum Up

The GOP wanted to take a stand against Obamacare and, according to New York Magazine, they were originally going to do this with the debt ceiling, but switched gears after Ted Cruz’s stunt and went from threatening a default to shutting down the government instead. The government is shut down (which costs money) because the House and the Senate could not pass a continuing resolution and this display of “non-bipartisanship” has, thanks to bad timing, put us on the precipice of defaulting as well.

And that, my friends, is politics.

Extra Credit: While January 1st used to be the beginning of each fiscal year, in 1842 for reasons unknown, they changed it to July 1st, a date that was again moved in 1974 to our current due date of October 1st.

DIY

Let Me Fix You: The Pink Chest

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When you live with someone who has a trunk obsession, you might one day find an ugly, ugly, ugly hot pink cedar chest sitting in your living room. Now, because you have taste (and they do too thankfully), the only way this atrocity can stay is if you take it back to its original wooden self. Bring. It. On.

Before I get started though, let me warn you that this is not so much a DIY instructional as it is story time: the trials and tribulations of someone who’s just gonna do stuff and hope for the best.

The paint job was straight up shit. Bad paint jobs mean one of two things: either the previous owner was a crap painter or they were trying to cover something up. You never know what you’re going to find, but with the beautiful, untouched cedar wood visible inside, there was a very good chance that treasure lay beneath.

The Stripping

First I wiped the chest down with Murphy’s Oil Orange Multi-Use Wood Cleaner Spray (think Windex for wood). The goal wasn’t to clean it, just to get the crusty chunks of dirt off. I decided to start with the back of the trunk, figuring this is where I’d do the least damage if things went awry. In lieu of the regular, noxious smelling paint stripper I’d used years ago, I decided to try Citristrip because it claimed to be low on fumes yet high on results (since my work space was doubling as my living room).

The basic idea behind all paint strippers is that you apply a coat on top of the paint, wait, and then scrape the paint off. I poured out the Citristrip (which has the consistency of melted Gak) smeared it around, poured some more and smeared again. The directions suggested using a paintbrush, but I opted to finger paint with a pair of rubber gloves. And then I waited the requisite 30 minutes for it to do it’s mojo (and another 10 because, well, I forgot to check on it).

With Citristrip, you don’t see the paint bubble up like you do with the oh-so-fun smelling stuff, but the paint will discolor enough to let you know it’s working. You can keep it stripping for up to 24 hours, though I never left it on more than two. But the thicker it is and longer you leave it, the easier the paint scrapes.

I used a 3” putty knife to scrape. I tried to follow the grain, scraping in one direction for the longest possible pass so that most of the paint ended up on my putty knife. Then I wiped it off on a paper towel, threw it into a plastic bag, and got ready for the next long swipe. Most of the paint scraped off like buttah. For the paint stuck in cracks and gouges, I used Ikea’s curved paring knife. Beware: aggressive scraping leads to wood shavings. If (and when) I saw strips of wood peeling off, I stopped and moved on.

pinkchest_648x431

Because I was only working on a modest sized towel, and I like my furniture and my shiny hardwood floor, I had to be very careful about dripping and spraying. This meant I could only strip one side at a time instead of doing the whole thing at once.

The Scrubbing

Even after you scrape off most of the paint, there’s still a goopy, residue left on the wood that just smears if you try to wipe it up with a paper towel. In my head this gunk was full of stripping chemicals that were going to hurt the cedar if they stayed caked on. So I washed each side individually after I stripped it and then I threw it in the bathtub (where it fit perfectly) to scrub it some more.

Originally I was using the Orange Cleaner spray with grade #00 steel wool (steel wool comes in several grades). But by the time I’d stripped 3 sides, I only had a 1/4 of the orange spray bottle left, so I moved on to the more economical Murphy’s Original Oil Soap. The steel wool not only picks up the gunk left by the paint stripper, but it also acts as a gentle sander. Unfortunately, the #00 was just a bit too fine which meant it would get matted with all the crud much more quickly. I almost went through the whole 12 pack, hence switching to the coarser grade #1 steel wool which was much better at lifting up stubborn paint.

The advantage of doing this in a bathtub (or if you’re lucky enough to be outside near a hose) is that there’s a constant supply of water and boy oh boy did that liquid blacken. The water that came off was nasty (a putrid diarrhea color) and it sprayed everywhere. Good news was that it smelled nice. It was probably in the bathtub for hour until the water finally ran beige.

The Sanding (or My Big Mistake)

I left the trunk to dry overnight and when I woke up in the morning it looked awful. I have scrubbed this thing to an ashy death, killing all the potential I spent hours scraping and scrubbing into existence… not really, but it felt like it. Having already read things like this, I was aware that this was another step in the process but it wasn’t any less horrifying.

My naivety led to me to think that all the ashy discoloration would simply go away with some oil and that sanding was only for the rough patches. The wear and tear was cool, why sand that away? So I gave it a mild sanding with some 320 grit sandpaper (yes, sandpaper has grades too) and then I moved on to oiling. In retrospect, this was my big mistake, but more on that later. The only thing I actually sanded was the trim because it had this funky peach fuzz going on along with a faint greenish hue left by the original olive colored paint.

The Finish (But Not Really)

Now for what felt like the daunting part: choosing a finish. There were way too many choices, but I surmised the standards were oil, varnish, shellac and laquer. My biggest concern was ease-of-use in a small space, but I also wanted a natural shine, not a plasticy one, so I went with oil.

Typical oil finishes are Danish Oil, Teak Oil, Tung Oil and Linseed Oil. I didn’t want to stain the cedar wood, I just wanted to, ya know, “moisten” it. Linseed was crossed off simply because none of the pretty, DIY blog posts I’d read used it, Danish oils usually have some stain and other chemicals in them, and Teak tends to darken the wood, so the last man standing was: Tung Oil.

Turns out most stores don’t sell the real stuff (the one I found at Home Depot was a Tung “finish” that had more chemicals than oil in it) so I ended up buying Hope’s 100% Tung Oil from Amazon.

I snapped the rubber gloves back on, poured the honey-like oil on a rag (the size of a wash cloth courtesy of an old towel) and rubbed it in. The smell wasn’t amazing (burnt chestnuts?) but tolerable. I did two coats and let it dry.

For the sallow colored trim, I discovered that Minwax made stain pens with which I could essentially Sharpie my furniture. I picked the Red Mahogany color and even though it didn’t stain perfectly even, probably because I’d oiled it first, it gave the illusion of natural wear over the years.

Finally, I waxed the chest with Feed-N-Wax (because other people said to) and hoped that I was done.

The Real Finish

Unfortunately, even after the wax had dried, there were still noticeable parts of the lid that looked ashy/greenish/blah. Annoyed but determined, I found some 60 grit sandpaper in the toolbox and started sanding my little heart out. Not only did the sanding clear up the discolorations, it actually brought out more the wood grain than I expected.

I’m halfway done with sanding and kicking myself that I didn’t do this earlier. What can I say, I’m an idiot perfectionist. The current plan is to try out a power sander and then oil it back up sans annoying imperfections. I might hold off on the waxing though, it dries matte and I’m not sure I like it. I know I’ve sanded away the shine, but I’m making the prettiest goram chest I can, even if I have to backtrack.I started this project having no idea what I was doing, but at the end of the day it’s all trial and error whether you have a manual or not. Just accept that you might screw it all up… or you might not. I’m still figuring it out.

Extra Credit: Apparently, to avoid spontaneous combustion, this is how you dispose of oil soaked rags:

Brainfood

St. Patrick’s Day: Where you come from?

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St. Patrick’s Day—just another excuse for decent folk to get shitfaced and deface the world with obscene amounts of green. But that saint part isn’t in the title for show: Saint Patrick was a real dude who roamed around Ireland in the 5th century spreading Christianity to the pagan Druids. So how did a chaste saint influence a now not-so-chaste day of celebration? Join me for a little historical adventure.

Saint Patrick was like most saints: pious and devout. Born Maewyn Succat in Roman Britain, he was captured by Irish bandits at the age of 16, and sold to a druid in Ireland. For the next six years, he lived as a slave before a mysterious voice told him to escape. It said, “Very soon you will return to your native country. Look, your ship is ready.” Patrick diligently followed this voice, walking a measly 200 miles across the Irish countryside to catch a (pirate) ship back to Britain.

He then headed over to France for formal priesthood training and eventually left as a bishop, with instructions from the Pope to return to Ireland and convert the Irish peoples to Christianity. He spent the rest of his life wandering Ireland, converting everyone he could, and while it’s not clear what year he died—460 or 493 A.D.—historians all agree on the day he died… March 17th.

Fun Fact: He was also the first person ever to publicly condemn slavery.

How did we get from saintly Patrick to intoxicated Shamrock Day?

It wasn’t until 1000 years after his death that Luke Wadding (just some scholar) would champion the church to put an official feast day on the liturgical calendar. Even then, March 17th continued to be a minor holiday in Ireland until the 1970s.

Blame America for really revving up the green themed party (some even argue that St. Patrick’s Day was actually invented by Irish-Americans). Back when there were only 13 colonies, the first St. Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York City as a nod to Irish soldiers serving in the English military and, by 1848, it had grown to be the largest parade in the world. In America, St. Patty’s Day started and continues to be not just about the religious aspect of Saint Patrick, but a celebration of Irish heritage. How does this translate into green beer, green rivers and this?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Ireland has since come around, making it a public holiday (1903), making a law that forced bars and pubs to close for the day (1905), repealing said law (1970s), and finally creating their own St. Patrick’s Day Festival (1996) that sprawls for five days.

But why all the green?

The symbolism of the green comes from an anecdote about good ol’ Saint Pat. It is said that he taught the concept of the holy Trinity with a three leafed shamrock. The green of the shamrock then became associated with Irish Catholics. Since Ireland’s population is predominantly Catholic, this spread throughout the world, inexorably linking Ireland with green. It also helps that Ireland is literally green themed (cough: rich green landscape), hence its nickname the “Emerald Isle.”

Fun Fact: St. Patrick’s Day was originally associated with the color blue (St. Patrick’s blue), the connection being Ireland’s coat of arms which are blue and gold.

Extra Credit: The green in Ireland’s flag symbolizes Catholics while the orange is associated with Protestants (William the Orange), and so when the flag was adopted in 1919 it was meant as a sign of peace between the two factions.

Wait, St. Patrick’s Day is not always on March 17th?

Mostly, but no. When St. Patrick’s Day falls during Holy Week (the final week of Lent) it gets booted to a later date because solemnities are more important than feasts. Most recently it was moved in both 1940 and 2008 for this reason, but don’t worry: it’ll stay on the 17th for another 150 years (until 2160). And this only really counts if you’re celebrating the religious aspect of the holiday rather than the cultural one.

GreenBeerHero

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Geekery

Trolling For Slang: The Origins of Internet Werdz

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From abbreviations to portmanteaus, to purposefully misspelled words, we exist in a world of beautiful and butchered words: the language of internet slang.  But where does it come from? The internet certainly didn’t invent slang, so how did the :) and lulzing come about?

To truly embrace the etymological journey of internet slang, let us delve into a brief history of Usenet. You might have run across it while trying to “questionably download” files, but back in the day (circa 1979) it was the communications network, and continues to be the oldest one still in use. Usenet was essentially a bulletin board that allowed users to post comments in newsgroups, or topically structured discussions, which they eventually started to call threads (sound familiar?) Fascinating stuff, but what’s really awesome is that they archived everything so people like me (and you, if you’re so inclined) can go frolic in the land of internet fossils.

Lol

Easily one of the most used terms in day-to-day exchanges, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) officially recognized the word in March of 2011. In pre-internet speak, lol could mean anything from “lots of luck” to “lots of love” and didn’t get its current status until the mid 1980’s when Wayne Pearson (just some dude) wrote an email to a friend about a situation where he found himself literally “laughing out loud.” Wayne wrote a letter explaining all this, but unfortunately he doesn’t have the backup logs to prove this. So, if you require an exact date, OED traces it back to a FidoNews newsletter sent on May 8th, 1989.

Lulz

Seen as a corruption of lol, it is likely that Jameth, an administrator of Encyclopedia Dramatica, was the first to coin this term back in 2004 with his participation in the Lulz News Network. But then again, Encyclopedia Dramatica traces lulz back to a conversation between Jesus and Putin, so, yeah. (Read with caution: if you are easily offended, you will be offended.)

Though it may have started out as a plural for lol, it then evolved into the 4chan meme, “I Did it for the Lulz,” which is now synonymous with the mischievous actions of internet hacker groups LulzSec and Anonymous.

Harhar

Everyone and their mother has been using “haha” to denote laughter but the more sarcastic “harhar” is a recent invention. While the phrase may have originally been “hardy har har,” it is unclear as to whether comedian Jackie Gleason was the first to use it in a Honeymooners skit, or if it was originally uttered in Kubrick’s 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much.

:-)

Emoticons (aka emotion + icon) are much older than we think. Vertical emoticons can be traced back to a 1881 printing of a satirical magazine called Puck. Though, there are some who argue that an Abe Lincoln speech, transcribed and printed in 1862, was actually the first emoticon sighting. But today’s horizontal :-) is attributed to Scott Fahlman, a Carnegie Mellon professor, who proposed using “the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)” back in 1982.

Fun Fact: The smiley turned 30 last month.

Spam

Unfortunately this is not an acronym for “stupid pointless annoying messages,” but rather we find its source in a Monty Python sketch, aptly named, “Spam.” Basically an old lady tries to order a meal that doesn’t include SPAM, which is impossible because everything on the menu includes SPAM (there’s also Vikings and songs), but it’s a whole thing that boils down to excessive repetition of the word SPAM.

Spam originally had a couple meanings: crashing a person’s computer with too much data, using a computer program to aid in the mass duplication of objects, or flooding a chat window with random, repetitive nonsense. The first spamming incident can be traced back to 1978, but the first use of of the word comes from a MUD, or a multi-user-dungeon (think prehistoric WoW). Here’s some MUDers discussing its origin back in 1990.

But how does that explain the penis drugs, the one cent smartphones, and the “cute girls looking for love”? Thank Sanford “Spamford” Wallace for his ingenious malicious “advertising” strategy.

Fun Fact: SPAM (the meat kind) stands for “Spiced HAM”.

Newbie (and n00b)

The term newbie shows up in the mid-1800’s and likely comes British school yards where incoming students were called “new boy’s” to distinguish their newcomer and/or novice status. But it’s internet debut was over a century later in the talk.bizarre Usenet group and has since been immortalized in Usenet’s Jargon File (like the source for original, untainted hacker slang.)

N00b technically means the same thing except it’s kind of derogatory. Also, it’s an iteration of Leetspeak, which is a whole other universe of sub-culture slang. It’s not entirely clear why Leet was developed (superiority complexes? elitism? privacy? protection from censors?) but Leet’s alternative alphabet went mainstream sometime in the 1980’s.  We’ve now come full circle, transliterating n00b (Leetspeak) back into noob (English?).

Troll

Trolls used to exist in our collective imaginations, but now they are very real, extremely annoying and never seem to go away. The phrase “trolling for newbies” showed up in the early 90’s and was popularized by the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban (AFU).

This excerpt from a February 1990 post may not constitute the first usage of the word, but pretty much sums it up: “You are a shocking waste of natural resources – kindly re-integrate yourself into the food-chain. Just go die in your sleep you mindless flatulent troll.”

FAQ

While we don’t often think of FAQ’s as slang, “Frequently Asked Questions” weren’t common usage until the early 1980’s when Eugene Miya needed a way to limit newbie questions on NASA’s SPACE mailing list. Technically, subscribers were supposed to download an entire database of old questions and read through them before asking new ones. Instead, Eugene gathered those frequently asked questions into one document for easy, efficient downloading. This concept spread to Usenet, where it eventually took on the abbreviation FAQ, and it became netiquette to read the FAQ page before asking newbie questions.

Fun Fact: Some people think it stands for “Frequently Answered Questions.”

Extra Credit: @replies

The @ reply was used only four days into Twitter’s existence, back in March of 2006, to designate that users were “at” a place (i.e. @ work). It wasn’t until November of that year that two users, Neil Crosby and Ben Darlow, started up a conversation using the @ replies as we know them today. It took another two months for the twitterverse to sort itself out and agree to the @username (instead of @ username). Read the in-depth story over here.

Let’s be honest, I didn’t even scratch the surface with my selection of internet slang, but I had to stop somewhere :-)

Editor’s Note: Apologies for all the links, but I am a troll.

(Actual Editor’s Note: Obs, I did it for the lulz.) 

Money

FML: My Stolen Wallet

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It was like any other Saturday—I got off work, ate a snack, then flopped into bed. This particular evening, I was dozing off when my phone buzzed with a text from Chase Fraud, “Did you purchase $300 at a shoe store?” Uh, no.

Getting your wallet stolen is a bitch.

The damage: a hundred dollars cash, my driver’s license, a debit card, my birth certificate (with my social security number written on the back), a sticky note with both my checking and savings account numbers scribbled on it, and various other cards (including my car insurance/registration, my voter registration card, my AAA card, several gift cards, and an old student ID).

The Bank

My first step was to report the fraudulent charges to Chase. The cool thing about their fraud service (which might be true for other national banks) is when they text you about a possible fraudulent charge, if you say, “Yes it’s fraudulent,” they automatically call you. If your bank is not this fancy, you can find customer service numbers online or on your bank statements.

At first, I got the standard pre-recorded voice (wanting either my card number or my account number for verification) but after about a minute I was directed to a real human being. The woman asked me for my address (more verification) and then to confirm which charges were fraudulent. She listed off the last five or so, but I had to log into my online account to see exactly what she was talking about. There were three fraudulent charges: $50 at a gas station, $300 at FootLocker, and $30 at a nail salon. She flagged the charges, canceled my card, and informed me that a new one was on its way.

As for reversing the charges, she told me it would only take about 12 hours for a refund to be posted to my account, but this was not entirely true. The two smaller charges were credited to my account the next morning, but the $300 charge from FootLocker was not. Now this delay isn’t necessarily the banks fault, they have to work with the stores (who may or may not be open and/or challenge the charges). So, if you’re making a claim on the weekend, don’t be surprised if the credits/debits don’t clear until Monday or Tuesday. Overall, the call took about 15 minutes and was pretty painless.

Now if you’re smarter than I am, you won’t put your actual account numbers in your wallet. If the thief had just gotten my debit card, I could have reported it stolen and just waited for a replacement in the mail. But, since we’ve established I’m kind of an idiot, I had to go to my local branch and switch over all my accounts instead.

The guy who helped me told me that my situation was not uncommon and was very helpful. He created new checking and savings accounts for me and transferred over all my money. He kept the old accounts open, but frozen, so only deposits could be made. (This is so that you can be reimbursed for the fraudulent charges.) It shouldn’t cost any money to do this and, if you have one, bring your passport (or some form of identification, i.e. your social security card or birth certificate etc.) Or better yet, call ahead and find out what identification they need.

The Police

After I got off the phone with Chase, I called the police to file an incident report. This meant, about an hour later, an officer showed up at my house to take my statement and give me an identity theft packet with lots of helpful (and scary) information. I gave him a copy of my bank statement (printed off the Internet) because I had noticed that all the purchases were made at local stores. The officer told me this would help tremendously. Now a detective had specific stores to check, along with the exact purchase amounts. But, because my work place (which is where we’d determined the theft had occurred) doesn’t have cameras, getting the thief on camera, at one of these stores, was the only way to identify him or her.

The Credit Bureaus

Next up, I checked my credit report with each of the three major credit bureaus—Equifax, Experion, and TransUnion. (Did I know there were three credit bureaus before this fiasco? I did not.) Luckily, I discovered that www.annualcreditreport.com allows you to check all three bureaus at once, which eased the pain a little. I put in my name and social security number. Then I was prompted to answer really random yet oddly specific questions that only I should know. Things like “Where did I live before 2000?” and “How much money did I make in 2010?” Don’t worry, it’s multiple choice.

You should not have to pay to get your credit report. (There could be a fee if you’ve already checked your report in the past year, but if it’s been more than 12 months, you should be fine.) Credit scores typically cost, but reports should not. Reports are mostly for record keeping purposes and so that you can see if anyone’s stolen your identity in the future. I gave the reports a once over, everything checked out so I saved a digital copy and printed another one out for good measure.

Technically you should call each credit bureau and let them know your information has been stolen. I didn’t do this because the credit bureaus can’t stop identity theft and I was 99% sure that this was a punk kid who just wanted my money, not my identity.

The DMV

Getting a new license is like getting your old one, you wait in line, fill out a piece of paper, and get your picture taken—which I still had to shell out $9 for. Replacing my voter registration card was free. Fortunately, I did not need another copy of my car registration, but if you do, just have your license plate number with you.

The Rest

Cash and gift cards are just gone, they’re never coming back.

I don’t have credit cards, but if you do, approach it like you’re dealing with the bank. Also, I can’t speak for getting new insurance documents (because I had duplicates), but I would suggest calling your provider and going from there.

The document that continues to keep me up at night is my short form birth certificate. It’s the size of a credit card, and contains my name, birthday, and the city I was born in, embossed with a government seal. This document alone could do some serious damage, but I also wrote my social security number on the back of it because I’m a genius. If someone really wanted to be malicious, they’d have everything they needed (driver’s license, birth certificate, SSN) to steal my identity. I know it seems convenient and portable to have your life in one place, but for your own sanity, don’t be like me. Bad things happen, minimize the damage.

The police still haven’t caught the thief.

StolenWalletHero

Photo by Meaghan Morrison