Waiting around

Monday, June 12, 2006

A sweet graduation and fraud

Well if this isn't long overdue, I don't know what is.

I could do a recap of my last week and couple days, but there were really only 2 larger things that sort of happened. First off, on Friday night, I drove up to DC to my aunt's house so that I could go to my cousins graduation. He graduated from high school (Bullis School) which is in Potomac, MD. It was weird because they actually wore robes -- for McDonogh we had to wear a light blue shirt and white pants. Ah well. One of the students speakers was insanely smart... She had actually relocated from New Orleans post Katrina, and has done cancer research at Tulane and LSU and is going off to Harvard in the fall. In her speech she was using words that I am sure I did not know the meaning of in high school (and let's be honest, she probably used some words I don't know today).

And then the keynote speaker spoke. This guy was pretty amazing as he talked about his own battle with cancer, and his message told the students to find their passion, and when they do, to run with it. He said there are times when you find your passion, or your passion finds you. He said that in his case one of his passions found him which was cancer, and he has decided that he wants to make a difference in the world by doing something about it. He has created foundation to support his cause in trying to rid the world of cancer.

Oh by the way, the speaker has also won the Tour de France 7 times.

Lance Armstrong is a phenomenal man and it is amazing how he truly follows through with everything he says. He says to find your passion; he found 2: Biking and Cancer relief. Both of the effects are really evident - he has won one of the hardest biking races in the world, not once, but 7 times. That takes some dedication (that's not an understatment...). In his pursuit of a cure for cancer, he has also made an impact and if you want to see how, just walk down the street and see how many people are wearing the yellow livestrong bracelets (there are 60 million people out there who are wearing them). Lance also goes to the president asking for billions of dollars to be dedicated to the cancer research. In creating the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Lance has created a powerhouse in the fight against cancer. He offers resources for those who have cancer, along with what you can do to help.

I felt like I was in the presence of greatness as he is an inspiration to me.

I said there were 2 things. And since I am a man of my word, here is the second thing. I was checking my account balance on my bank account from home at around 1:30AM on Saturday night (why this hour? I don't know really...) and in looking there, I found a charge that I didn't remember making. The vendor was some name with "cardquery.com" in part of the name. So I go to cardquery.com and start looking checking into their website and I found out that they are some sort of clearing house for smaller online companies to use so that consumers can use their credit cards. They say that you can find out what was bought with your card if you give them your first 6 and last 6 digits of your credit cards. As I figured I would be cancelling this card as soon as I could, I decided what harm could this do. So I find out that apparently I bought something called Cryptainer PE and the better part was that I could actually see and print a receipt for this purchase because this company stores them for you. In checking out the receipt, I find out that my name, my home address (not the one I am living at now - which is the address my bank has on file), my credit card number, and the other person's email address (presumably the one who stole my numbers) were on this receipt. The email address was an AOL address, so since we also have AOL, I hopped on there and looked for the Terms of Service, and then notified AOL of the possible credit card fraud and this person using an illegal credit card with an AOL email attached. I asked if there were any actions they could take against this person since they were doing illegal activities with the AOL screenname. I recieved a response saying that this should not be done over email, and that I need to contact the fraud department. That will happen at some point today.

I called my home bank Sunday morning at 9AM (when they opened) and got my credit card cancelled, but I am still a little concerned because there is one more charge that still needs to go through - currently there is one charge on my online statement that says "Withdraw - Details not available yet" with a charge of $1 which is usually just a placeholder for an online purchase. It's also weird because the date on the purchase is 6/12/06 and I found this on Saturday (the 10th).

I'll keep you all posted on what happens with this. I plan on taking this through as far as I can.

still waiting,
-wait

1 Comments:

  • We had gowns for our high school graduation, and this is a high school in a podunk little town with a graduating class of less than 200. Our school colors were red and white, so we had these horribly bright red gowns and white collars, and we all looked like devils or something.

    My undergrad university had us wear plain black robes for graduation, which was kind of a shock after being all bright and red in high school. My school's colors were purple and gold and it would have been nice to have colorful robes. And now I'm at Chapel Hill for the summer and I've seen pictures of their graduations and they wear light blue robes. Light blue is my favorite color, and I'm just a little bit jealous.

    But at our med school graduation we will have nice formal robes. I'm looking forward to that graduation. :D

    By Blogger MustangSally, at 5:23 PM  

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