So after many months of waiting and many returned letters, I finally got through the consulate today and was told that my FBR (Foreign Birth Registry) request for Irish Citizenship has gone through! Now I must patiently wait 8-10 months for a letter that tells me what she told me on the phone. Hurray!
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Somalia Wikipedia Vandalised New Currency
Tags: somali pirates, somalia currency, somalia dubloon, somalia pirates, wikipedia somalia, wikipedia vandalised
Today my mother was going through the safe-deposit box and she found my grandmother’s Irish passport. Issued in 1949.

My grandmother, Mary Margaret Creed.
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Front of my grandmother's passport, issued 1949.
You may know her from my stories of the English gymnast who dies on average once a month. She’s very adament about having a blog post about her. So I’ve dedicated this post to her, because I know she’s going to love it so much that she buys me a plane ticket to Manchester. Which would be fantastic.
I’ll take this opportunity to show off my covester account. It let’s you track other people’s trades online and mirror their strategy. I followed TIM Pennystocks for a while and didn’t do nearly as well as he had promised. When I returned back to my core strategy I bought GE at around 5ish a share
. Anyway here’s my covester button:
So Today I went to update my Facebook status to celebrate Saint Joseph’s day, and to the side I saw a photo of a chicken. I thought to myself, wow, that photo looks familiar. Holy hell I took that photo! Well it turns out facebook makes the world a much smaller place. I had posted the below photo onto the Oviedo, FL Wikipedia article. From there being Creative Commons it was picked up for a Facebook group celebrating Oviedo chickens. Anyway, I’m glad that my photo went to a good cause and I’m going to go ahead and post it here for the world to enjoy the irony of it.

Lack of Self Preservation Instinct
Tags: irony, oviedo chickens, oviedo fl, photography
Hanging out with Brett from CS!
Tags: fort myers, red sox, spring training
I think Lou Dobbs has gone too far, it’s not the 80s! Referring to the nation of China and it’s 1.3 billion as ‘the reds’ may be a bit dated. I barely caught this photo as it was transitioning to the next frame, which was of course a giant Chinese flag draped over Lou Dobb’s face.
Tags: lou dobbs, reds in space, ridiculous
I signed up with Bank of America, because they provided me a monthly maintenance fee waiver. They said as long as I opened a Personal Account at the same time I opened a Business Account I would never have to pay a monthly maintenance fee. It was an online promotion, it worked for about six months, then one day I started getting maintenance fees. When I called I was told they couldn’t touch accounts made online, when I email them they don’t know what the hell is going on. That was five emails, two phone calls and 40$ ago. Despite repeated attempts, Bank of America does not seem interested at all in helping me. Not a single person has even offered a reason why I suddenly was billed a maintenance fee with no notice, or has anyone offered to refund me my 40$.
Email 1, and attached baffling response that does not answer my question?
Message text: Description: Monthly Maintenance Fee
Posting Date: 01/30/2009
Amount: $17.00
Type: Debit
Account Number: Business Economy Chk-****
I signed up under a promotion whereas if I opened a Business Account
with a Personal Account I would not be charged any fees. I called the
customer service number and they told me only Online customer service
can help me because I opened the account online.
| Subj:Â Re: Business Economy Chk – **** Question about a Fee (******) |
| Dear Paul Rausch,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 2/23/09 regarding a promotion fee. We We understand that you have not received your promotional incentive. To Unfortunately, the promotional incentive may not be applicable if the We value you as a customer and appreciate your business. If we may be of Sincerely, Claire Hudder |
Email 2: Same Answer, Anyone?
I do not have the promotion code, I have in fact not ever been charge a maintenance fee as I signed up for the account six months ago and have no had a problem until now.
| Subj:Â Re: Business Economy Chk – **** Question about a Fee (****) |
||||||
| Dear Paul Rausch,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 2/23/09 regarding the monthly Unfortunately, having a personal account no longer waives the monthly The new Business Fundamentals Package is our low-cost solution that The Primary Account is a Business Economy Checking account that will Business Economy Checking customers can avoid paying the Monthly http://www.bankofamerica.com/small_business/business_checking/ Please note the account must be in good standing at the time of the If you would like for us to enroll you in the Business Check Card Fee We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We value you as Sincerely, Jana Wilson Email 3: Now I’ve been told to write a written complaint instead of fixing my problem: I signed up with Bank of America, because I was told that I would not
|
Email 6: Now we’re getting somewhere!
Next question, what happened to my maintenance fee waiver?
| Subj:Â Re: Business Economy Chk – **** Question about a Fee (****) |
| Dear Paul Rausch,
Thank you for your inquiry dated 3/2/09 regarding the waiver. We will be The Business Economy Checking account has certain balance requirement to We will no longer automatically waive the monthly maintenance fee on You can still avoid the monthly maintenance fee by meeting one of the http://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/checksave/index.cfm?template=manag e_acct_srvcs&context=docs For information on how to avoid or lessen fees, go to We value you as a customer and appreciate your business. If we may be of Sincerely, Lisa Henn Next question, what happened to my maintenance fee waiver? |
Tags: bait and switch, bank of america, poor customer service, promotion free account
My stickers from Gmail have arrived! Gmail was giving them away for free for a few weeks over here. Now I just have to figure out where to put them.

Gmail Stickers!