Here we go again…another fine journey into the uknown.

I guess it’s probably OK now to talk about the fact that I’m moving along to another job. Again. Before I say that, though, I have to be silly and sentimental…

As I was leaving nFusion for the last time and driving back home, the levity of the situation hit me. I’ve been at nFusion for a year and five months…not exactly a really long time or anything…but it’s strange because it feels like I’m leaving my family here in Texas. That sounds a little bit cheeseball and stupid when I just leave it like that…

We came down to Texas, and it was the people at nFusion that suddenly became the people that I would spend every day with for the next year and five months. We knew absolutely no one coming down here except the guy who located our (rat infested) apartment for us and a friend of a friend who I went and grabbed dinner with with the night before I started working. I haven’t seen her since then.

Needless to say, spending a lot of time with people at work…and sometimes outside of work…you tend to get to know them pretty well.

Don’t get me wrong; I had friends I made at work at previous jobs too. But it was an easier entry because I usually knew someone there to begin with, and I had lots of friends outside of work. But here, nFusion-ites were the only people that we knew. And the amazing thing was that it took almost zero time for me/us to become pretty good friends with some. That made things so much easier…and that’s why it was so hard to decide to leave. When the only thing you’ve known from the start is suddenly not there everyday, it tends to be a little jarring.

I’ve said this several times to other people, but when it comes to work, there is a part of the overall ‘compensation package’ that isn’t talked about. That would be the ‘Quality of Co-workers’ part. I guess it’s implied when you have a successful company and people that appear to be happy. But I think it’s something that is often overlooked as a ‘benefit’ when you go to work. Think about it; you spend most of your life working. Therefore, it seems obvious that you’d want to surround yourself with great people. It makes your time at work much more pleasant.

I’ll miss that benefit of nFusion…

That’s not to say that the new place I’ve chosen to go won’t have that. I’m sure it will. It’s just hard to think about not seeing my nFusion people on a daily basis.

So where am I going? Well, as one part of me is a little sad, the other part is very excited to be a part of something huge happening here. On Monday, March 3rd, I’ll be starting with a new agency in Austin called Schematic. This is the agency that was selected by the WPP Group to handle all of Dell’s interactive work, and I’m going to begin working with the Project Management group. It’s going to be a huge challenge in being a part of building something this big from the ground up. There’s going to be a lot of, ‘We’ll figure it out as we go,’ happening. Afterall, what can you expect when a giant company like Dell decides to consolidate all of the work from 600-800 people/agencies from around the world into one place?!

Fortunately, there are a lot of smart people in the room, so the process won’t be as painful as one might think. But it’s still going to be very interesting to see how it pans out and actually have a hand in shaping that path.

Wish me luck…I think I’m going to need it…

Bill Cunningham…yet ANOTHER reason why I’m so glad I no longer live in Cincinnati, OH. What a complete and utter waste of human flesh.

If you haven’t heard, here’s the long and the short. John McCain was in Cinci yesterday for a rally. Before he came on stage, Bill Cunningham was up there getting people ‘fired up’. And, in typical far-right wing fashion, getting people fired up means being as denigrating, vile and unbelieveably stupid as you can possibly be towards whomever or whatever issue or person you are against. And in this case, Bill Cunningham’s target was Barack Obama.

Here are a few of the things Mr. Cunningham said:

“The time will come when the liberal-leaning media will “peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama”

“At some point, the media will quit taking sides in this thing and maybe start covering Barack Hussein Obama…”

“I have nothing but respect for my Muslim brothers and sisters. The ones who oppose that particular name, they’re the ones with the problem, not me. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

You can read more specifically about it here. You can also read a transcript of Cunningham’s reaction with two of my favorite right wingers ever, Hannity and Colmes, here.

Bill Cunningham is an embarrassment to the people of the city of Cincinnati. It’s even more embarrassing when things like that are blared all over the media. It makes the city look even worse than it already does. Half of the things coming out of his mouth are outright lies. It’s disgusting to hear him call Obama ‘Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama’. Mohammed isn’t even in his name…so what other reason other than to incite racism and hatred would he have for saying that?

From Media Matters:

“Cunningham also falsely claimed that Obama “was raised in madrassas in Indonesia” and accused Obama’s church, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, of being “black separatist” and “black racist.” And when a caller said, “[I]n my opinion, not the opinion of this show, in my opinion, Obama is a sleeper cell because his parents are Muslim,” Cunningham responded, “Only one [parent].” While Cunningham did not respond to the caller’s “sleeper cell” charge, earlier in the broadcast, he had asserted that “it would be a shock” “if Barack Mohammed Hussein Obama can be elected the president of this country in these difficult terrorist times.” Later, Cunningham said: “I wonder if Barack Hussein Obama understands the danger inflicted upon the world by Muslim male extremists.”

You can read that entire very interesting article here, further illustrating how much of an idiot Bill Cunningham is.

Thankfully, John McCain has much more integrity than that. Immediately after, he issued an apology.

“Whatever suggestion that was made that was any way disparaging to the integrity, character, honesty of either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton was wrong,” he said, “I condemn it, and if I have any responsibility, I will take the responsibility, and I apologize for it.”

That’s what I’m talking about. Seriously…way to take responsibility. I thought that was pretty cool and in line with what McCain preaches, which is making sure that he and his campaign folks maintain a respectful discourse with everyone during this time.

First, I have to take a moment to say that, sometimes, I really appreciate people. If I’ve learned anything in life, it is that it pays to be nice, gracious and patient when dealing with things like this because you never know who you really might be dealing with.

As you know, ‘Evil Andrew’ went ahead and opened up a checking account with USAA in my name. In order to do that, you have to be in the military, so apparently I am a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force…

But that’s besides the point…

I’ve been in contact with a guy named Damon who is a Fraud Investigator there. After chatting several times, it turns out that Damon is a really cool guy, and seems very interested in helping me out. I mean, sure…it’s in his best interest to do so, seeing that his employer got fraudified (note to self: copyright this word), but really, he has probably gone above and beyond what he normally should be doing. He has given me quite a bit of information and really done a great job of keeping in contact.

For example, in continuing his own investigation, he found out that ‘Evil Andrew’ opened up yet another credit card, this one a Chase business credit card, and has racked up a whopping $23,155.79 on it. I wouldn’t have known this by looking at my credit report because all of these things are not showing up there. Which brings me to a little digression and word of warning to you all…

The way I understand it, you have two different credit reports attached to your name; your personal credit and your business credit. When you go to check your personal credit report, you never see any of the other stuff and (I think) vice versa. In other words, this could have kept going on for quite some time and I would have never known about it until a bunch of debt collectors came knocking at my door. And I would most likely have a very hard time in the future doing anything entreprenuerial that required credit. This is apparently how these guys fly under the radar.

Anyway…back to my original point, which was being nice and gracious to people pays off. So Damon warned me about this card. Then we started talking, and I learn that Damon was in the FBI for 13 years. He then lets me know that the agent who is currently on the case in Nevada is a friend of his, and that he should be able to get information as it comes in pretty quickly. And most importantly, he said his friend feels pretty confident that they’re going to catch this guy.

Now…I could’ve been mad or short or pissy with this guy or any number of the other people I’ve dealt with. In my own humble opinion, I think I probably have every right to be, seeing that everyone was initially expecting me to account for what now amounts to well iver $45K in losses. I’ve also been dealing with more phone calls than you could imagine. I think my cell bill is going to go through the roof. Everytime I’ve had to remind myself that these are people are just doing their jobs…and if I’m just cool and patient and show some appreciation, they’ll be more inclined to believe what I’m telling them. And so far, that policy has paid off. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating, but it has netted me quicker responses and extra information.

Another example was this guy John at the UPS Store in Nevada. Because I treated him with respect and didn’t flip the ‘ef out when he told me that there was nothing he could do about letting me know more information on ‘Evil Andrew’, he ended up being extremely cooperative with an administrative lead rather than an investigator at the Austin Police Department. They told me you’d normally have to get a subpoena to get the information he had on record. He ended up just faxing it over without any questions. Out of all of the people involved in this, John just happened to have the most valuable information, that being a copy of the driver’s license with ‘Evil Andrew’s’ picture on it and a copy of a school ID.

So…in summary…just be nice. Except when the person is ‘Evil Andrew’, and then you can just cap him for me.

Okay…so…it’s probably no big secret that I lean left of center. It’s also probably no secret that I think Barack Obama is the man. However, I think if he does happen to lose the Democratic nomination, I’m going to have a personal crisis on my hands.

I think Hillary Clinton is kind of lame. I hate to say it, but she sounds like every other politician I’ve heard speak…meaning that she sounds as if she is being fed lines through a little earpiece.

Case in point - last night she took a low-blow swipe at Mr. Obama when she said the following:

“If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words…Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”

OK, Hill…check it, yo:

Hillary, 2008 line:

“You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”

Bill, 1992 line:

 ”The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”

You suuuuuuuuuck…

.:the plot thickens:.

the ‘wtf, mate’ factor has increased exponentially since my first post.

part of me is pretty fascinated with this in the sense of the process. there are a lot of moving pieces to this whole thing, and so i think the project manager in me is interested in making sure that everything lines up right and the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. for example, the credit collector…who now seems to be on my side/my friend…has to know what USAA bank is doing because ‘evil andrew’ went ahead and opened up a checking account in my name and was trying to pay american express with bad checks from it. ‘evil andrew’ also has a mailbox at a UPS store in las vegas, so in order to get information from the manager there, i had to call a detective at the austin police department who will then pass along everything she finds out to the FBI because, since this is across state lines and involves so much money, it has now become a federal case.

the other part of me is really annoyed that my life has been disturbed in such a way. it’s one thing to have your car broken into or even just a credit card stolen and used…but it’s a whole different ballgame when someone manages to get ahold of your social security number (and i have no idea how this guy did that). it’s bizarre to think that your entire life and everything you are in the system that is the united states of america is based on one 9-digit number.

the good news is that i’m extremely, extremely close to finding out who this guy is. a guy named john at the UPS store in las vegas, NV. has ALL kinds of stuff from ‘evil andrew’, including a copy of his driver’s license…which was an oregon driver’s license and has my name on it. john faxed all of that information over to the austin police department today.

i don’t know why, but i really want to see who this person is. i don’t feel like this is really happening to me, and maybe if i see who is doing this it’ll become more real. it’s something you see and hear about all the time, but…as the cliche goes…you never expect it to happen to you. and when it does, it’s so hard to reconcile in your own head. it becomes even more unreal when you hear someone tells you that they can’t give you information on something that is in your name because you can’t provide them with the correct identifying information. for example, i called up dell financial services because ‘evil andrew’ apparently went ahead and opened up an account with them in december of ‘07. i wanted to make sure that the account could not be accessed, but because i couldn’t tell the guy ‘my mother’s maiden name’ and my ‘correct address’, there wasn’t anything he could do. i had to beg him to put a block on the account so that it couldn’t be accessed. if i wouldn’t have begged him to do this, the account would still be open and at risk…even after i had warned him the account was fraudulent. i still don’t think he believed that it was really me…

so the crazines continues. at least i know now that the case is going to be handled by the FBI. for some reason that makes me think that stuff is gonna’ get done…