Check your bank account online often for fraud.

No one can check our credit (thereby establishing new credit) because we pay to have it locked down at the three credit bureaus. However, apparently it doesn't keep someone from duplicating my Debit Card and using it.

We were checking the bank statement yesterday and saw that $450 was spent at Harbor Freight and Autozone in Miami yesterday. We weren't in Miami yesterday.

I did some research and the rules are different for credit cards and debit cards. Credit cards are easier to get fraudulent charges removed. I thought that if you had a fraudulent charge on your debit card, you had no hope getting the charges reversed. I found out that wasn't the case, but timing is important in reporting the fraud to your financial institution. If you wait more than two days after getting your statement, you will not be a happy camper. I was at my credit union today... one day after the charges were made, and I will get my funds restored to my account... whew!

I check my bank account daily... online.

I did not know that the rules were different but I do check my account daily and I have email alerts anytime my cards are used. The three times that my debit card information was stolen it was found either by me or by BofA before it even hit my account, so all funds were restored. Good thing, too. The last time it happened someone bought thousands of dollars in fuel (I guess let their friends fuel up or boats?) and thousands at Walmart in Florida.

Sideline... E, your thieves weren't too smart. If I stole a card and was going to buy tools with it, it sure as hell wouldn't be at The Embassy of China, aka Harbor Freight!

I guess the thieves decided to save me some money by buying cheap crap.

I never buy their electrical stuff... the Chicago Electric branded stuff... pure junk, but I do buy some stuff from there.  Mostly small things.

One thing I did buy from there has seen a LOT of use is my trailer.  I bought a folding utility trailer from them and got a buddy to weld a long tongue to it.  It doesn't fold anymore.  After dragging it around the Southeast for four or five years, I took it apart, sanded off the rust, Osphoed it and repainted it, put a 2,200 lb axle under it with new buddy bearings, rims and fat tires that look almost like golf cart tires.  (Originally, it had very skinny tires.). That trailer has 20,000 miles on it, f'sure.  Five thousand miles this year alone.  It'll carry twice the stuff that my F-150 can carry.  I have easily carried 18' two by tens on it too.

One thing I am anal about is applying copious amounts of grease on my trailer's wheel bearings. I may be slinging grease while tooling down the highway, but I am not gonna have my bearings run dry.

Quote:One thing I am anal about is applying copious amounts of grease on my trailer's wheel bearings. I may be slinging grease while tooling down the highway, but I am not gonna have my bearings run dry.



So you're the guy that put me in the emergency room 3 weeks ago.....

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

Quote:One thing I am anal about is applying copious amounts of grease on my trailer's wheel bearings. I may be slinging grease while tooling down the highway, but I am not gonna have my bearings run dry.



So you're the guy that put me in the emergency room 3 weeks ago.....

And the guy that ruined the paint job on my Tacoma. But T definitely wins with the ER. Hope you're okay, buddy. I was just thinking about you last night.

I bought a sailboat in Massachusetts a year or two ago.  I brought my grease gun with me.  When I was putting grease into the wheel bearings on the trailer, the former owner (an engineer, no less) looked at me incredulously... as if to say WTF are you doing?  I thought to myself "Oh boy, this is going to be a long drive back."

I made it to Virginia before the bearings fell apart.  We were filling up about midnight at a gas station and my wife said "Eric, you need to look at this."  

Both wheels were starting to sling grease and one had completely slung all the bearings (both sets on one wheel) out of the hub, and the wheel had all kinds of play in it, but the wheel wasn't hot.  If I hadn't greased the bearings, I am sure it would have caught fire and stranded us along the interstate long before then.  Thankfully, the residual grease allowed that wobbly wheel to keep rolling.

Lady luck shined on us the next day as there was a trailer shop a quarter of a mile down the road and it had an axle that a customer had ordered but never picked up.  Some idiot had spot-welded the inside set of wheel bearings to the axle on my trailer and they could not be removed and replaced, but the trailer place had the parts we needed.

I wondered why that big rig blew his horn at us about a half-hour before we discovered the problem.  We probably slung grease all over his windshield.

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Teo, I hope you're okay.  We miss your posts.

I am doing pretty good but my dominant shoulder got the rotator cuff badly damaged in the wreck...I had surgery and now have 7 pins in my shoulder and 6 or so months of therapy and healing....

my buddy sent me this picture of a glob of grease on my tire while I was getting patched up in the ER....

I need rotator cuff surgery, I suspect. If my arm gets just a certain elevation or whatever, something gets compressed, maybe a pinched nerve. Yowie! The pain might make me drop my margarita. That would be alcohol abuse.

The grease wasn't mine, man.   I swear!

I don't waste that much grease.

Hey if you ride on two wheels you take a gamble every time....I lost.....

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

I am doing pretty good but my dominant shoulder got the rotator cuff badly damaged in the wreck...I had surgery and now have 7 pins in my shoulder and 6 or so months of therapy and healing....

my buddy sent me this picture of a glob of grease on my tire while I was getting patched up in the ER....

Man, I am really sorry that happened. I hope you're okay. I can empathize with what you're going through. Shoulder surgery sucks and PT is very painful. I just had an open Bankart procedure with only one anchor to reattach my labrum but also shortening all the muscles around my shoulder to tighten the joint and it is incredibly and unexpectedly painful. I have a very high tolerance for pain, so the level of pain surprised me.

I am thankful you were wearing a brain bucket (I'm assuming you were) and that you weren't injured worse than you were. Oh speaking of brain buckets, I almost forgot that have some motorcycle/Alaska humor to add to the Alaska thread... I'll go do that

Really T, I'm glad you're okay. Love you, buddy.

Thank you riceme....if I had not been wearing a full helmet my brains would have been spread out in the hot sun for the vultures...the helmet saved me....sorry for your shoulder problems....if I remember you have very nice shoulders...lol.....yes I got a nerve block and it kept the pain to nothing for 3 days....recommend the nerve bloc....the only scary thing is one lung will drop to about 25 percent efficiency...

Yes, I also had the general anesthesia/nerve block cocktail for surgery, and an ON-Q ball to continuously deliver a local anesthetic medication to block the pain directly into my shoulder. I think I had that for a week? Geez, hard to remember now.

My pain was certainly not to nothing. I passed out from the pain at PT the day after surgery, then was sobbing on the floor at PT because of the pain 3-days after. My doctor determined that oxycodone has no effect on me and switched me to Percocet. That helped some.

SUPER glad you were wearing your helmet! Now you get to buy a new one!\

Who was your surgeon?

Dr.O'Grady of the Andrews sports center.....I got pictures of his work on my shoulder...he's good....

Oh good, I'm glad you went to Andrews.