Dave Kurt's Blog: July 2009

Friday, July 31, 2009

PayPal Screwed Me with my Concert Ticket Purchase

I've always thought that P. T. Barnum's "A sucker is born every minute" applied to everyone else. I see myself as pretty savvy to most of the scams on the internet. I've never fallen for the whole "Guy in Ethiopia will send me his $50M inheritance if I give him my bank account information."

Back in April, I found six tickets for Jimmy Buffett on Craig's List and bought them. I e-mailed back and forth with the guy and he seemed credible. He was going to deliver the tickets to me electronicly that he'd received from ticketmaster once he received the funds. I went on PayPal and validted the guy's status and he was a certified PayPaluser for years and there was no notice of any fraud claims against him. I searched PayPal's site and it was plastered all their site and FAQs that they cover you in the event that your transaction goes sour.

Based on that, and my long history of using PayPal, I figured I was covered, so I wasn't overly worried about getting scammed. I sent him $420 via PayPaland he sent me the tickets and all was well. After buying tickets from a scalper at kid rock, I started thinking through the "What if" this guy wasn't honest and in fact sold these tickets to 10 people at the same time (I know: too little, too late). After doing some digging, I found out that these were in fact a scam that this guy had, selling these tickets to multiple people overseas. He went by the name Stephen Hill (PayPal ID scrap1414@hotmail.com and sold tickets via sticket@ymail.com) from overseas.

I called PayPal and they explained to me that in the fine print, they only cover the sale for the first 45 days. The customer service rep explained that I should read the fine print in their end user agreement where they're covered for just about everything and don't actually have to pay for much in terms of fraud. They admitted to me that they're coverage advertisement doesn't point to the fine print of buying tickets prior to the 45 day window. They shared that even though Stephen Hill is selling these tickets to multiple people, they cannot be the court and that they actually allow this kind of fraud to take place in their system. If a significant number of compalints come up, they may do something about it, but otherwise they do nothing. I was on the phone for an hour as they explained that I had no recourse whatsoever and admitted that they do a poor job of explaining the loopholes that crooks use with PayPal.

Hopefully people learn from my pain. Don't buy electronic tickets for concerts from a 3rd party and don't use PayPal for those purchases. Apparently I'm not alone in my angst. I found a blog devoted to stories of PayPal screwing PayPalSucks.com

Kurt Family Dirty Mustache Competition Results

We had our 2nd annual Kurt Family dirty mustache competition on vacation this year. Last year's mustache's pail in comparison to this year's results. Jon, Dan and I were the only real competitors. Kevin claimed he had to shave due to a wedding (A Carson City wedding, which no one shaves at). My Dad started growing a mustache that week. You can see the results three weeks later at the bottom of the post. Jon's wife referred to jon's stache this year as a "Pedo Stache"
Last Year vs. This year:

My entry this year went through a few permutations. I stole the original idea from John Winters and was then told that it was a gotee, not a stache. After a couple of small adjustments, I was announced the winner. From there I took it through a few versions, each looking nastier than the last. My final version ended up looking way too french, the point that I wanted to punch myself when I looked in the mirror.

I finally shaved it, and you can see how happy my wife is, and imagine how happy jon's wife is.

Nick's sister Lisa has repeatedly made reference to my gayness based on my cool pipe that I smoke, have an amazing orange shirt and the ability to grow phenomenal mustaches. Her tribute to me is below:

My Mustache Makes it fun to play at the YMCA

Here's my Dad's final mustache after three weeks:

Kid Rock Concert at Comerica Park

Cathie and I woke up a couple of weeks ago and decided we'd go see Kid Rock at Comerica Park. He's on the list of people I've really wanted to see for a long time. I've crossed Bob Seger, Roger Waters and Kid Rock off the list. Only group left right now are the Foo Fighters on my list, but I'm sure there will be more...

We ended up getting great seats from a ticket scalper. More than half the seats (entire field) were general admission, which we DIDN'T want, so we got the beats seats there were, 8 rows up from the field.

We sat around a good group of people, people watching for the first couple of hours waiting for the show to start and watching Alice in Chains playing. I was surprised how many songs I knew of theirs. This guy was by far our favorite:

Kid Rock started the with "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. When it got to "Just a city boy - born and raised in South Detroit" - he came out singing:

It was a truly amazing show. He played a bunch of cover songs through the show, going all over from the different styles: Rolling Stones 'Tumbling Dice', Sly and the Family Stones 'Everyday People', Dukes of Hazard Theme Song, Drift Away by Dobie Gray (with a montage of pictures of his musical heroes that have died over the years), Jackson 5's 'ABC', Cat Scratch Fever and then finished with Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.

Cathie and I had such a blast together. Part of it was that it was just her and I spending time together, partly that we had such low expectations. There were so many funny things going on around us through the show and people watching that we still laugh about. I love the fact that I'm married to a woman who would go at the last minute to a Kid Rock show and stay on her feet the entire time.

Maddie and Julie at Spring Hill

Cathie picked Maddie up today at Spring Hill camp. She had an amazing
week. Here are her two counselors and her friend Julie that went with her.

Velocity Video

I know it's been almost a month with no pictures from camp. I'm just way behind on my blog postings, so I'll show the video we'd put together. We used a slightly edited version of the song 'Don't Stop Believing', which as been huge in Detroit as a Red Wings theme, and theme to the plight of our state overall. Our pastor, Joe prefaced the video in church explaining the meaning of the song to the kids and to this video.

Baby Bird Rescue

The girls found two birds that had fallen out of their nest in the tree. Cathie helped them look this up online what to do to get them back to their mother. They took a basket, hung it in the tree and amazingly enough, the Momma bird came back and took them back to her nest. Either that, or a cat got them...

The Odd Madelines (aka Mini Me)

Maddie and Maddie were going through some old baby stuff that Cathie was going to sell at a garage sale. They came across this baby carrier backpack and figured they'd give it a try. I was impressed that Maddie Kohne could actually carry my Madeline around in it. Don't you love Maddie's new glasses?

The Maddie's in a baby Carrier by fusionmonkey

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Maddie having fun at Spring Hill Camp

Her cabin group at Spring Hill.

Maddie showing no fear on "The Blob"

The trade-off's of treating ADHD

Interesting article by Penelope on the trade-off's of treating ADHD by Penelope Trunk. entitled, Will Taking Drugs Help Your Career? Maybe you need Adderall?

The article talks about the focus that can be achieved using ADHD drugs, but the down-side in terms of the creative impact:
“Cognitive psychologists have found that there is a trade-off between attentional focus and creativity,” says Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. “There is evidence that individuals who are better able to focus on one thing and filter out distractions tend to be less creative.”

I've seen this in my own life as I've started taking med's for ADHD. The upside is that I can get a lot done in a very focused amount of time.