It's March and time for this year's credit card fraud

It appears our Visa (my number specifically, we have a joint acct with different numbers) has been compromised again. I can’t remember if it has been one or two years since last time. It seems like this is just part of the process now, at least if you use a c-card online with as many different merchants as we do. I’m not entirely sure, but there were a few charges for $25ish from a character called GOOGLE*Ivan on my account, and I didn’t recognize them so I asked USAA to cancel the number and issue a new one. The last time this happened there were a few smaller charges and then a charge for several hundred dollars appeared. I didn’t let it get that far this time. I will say that the process is pretty fast and you can immediately block the card if you’re worried about fraud. I’m not sure how many times we’ve had sketchy c-card activity now.

Our first experience was with BOA when someone tried to take all of our bonus points, which at that time were worth a couple grand. We got it fixed and then it happened again about a year later. I’m still thinking that had to be an inside job. We gave up on BOA after that and have been using USAA for everything since, although I do have a few other c-cards that I got purely for concert tickets. Those are coming in handy now while I have to wait for the new card. We’ve had a few other fraudulent transactions since then and we’ve always been able to cancel the cards and have the fraudulent charges refused. Luckily, there are so many c-card combinations that I don’t think we’re at the risk of running out of numbers anytime soon.

I’ve been feeling dissatisfied with my guitar playing recently (we call that Sunday), having been watching a few gear videos and just hearing other players’ ability to improvise chord changes and solos with such melodicism and fluidity. I allow myself to get into ruts, practicing riffs in support of wanting to eventually play a cover of something, but this isn’t really getting me anywhere as a player. Ironically, I was watching a Drumeo video that posed the question “Are you an intermediate drummer"?”, which I thought I must be at the beginning of the video, but by the end, I realized their metric for advanced is so high that I’m more aptly described as a beginner considering how many techniques they mentioned, many of which I’m not capable of performing. It’s much the same on the guitar. I have studied a lot of the fundamental vocabulary on guitar, including several courses at Berklee, but I’ve let those muscles atrophy and haven’t taken things any further.

I tend to get focused on simple techniques like speed (alternate picking, etc.) and I really should be focusing more on my ability to play in multiple keys, over chord changes, etc. I’ve decided to sort of reassess my practice regimen and I’m going to dip into the considerable volume of lesson material I already own. I’m starting with “The Path to Fretboard Mastery” which will help reinforce my knowledge and take it further. I can find all the notes on the fretboard, but I tend to use reference points and jump, as opposed to being able to quickly name a note in any position. This is just one of those fundamental skills you must have locked down. It ties into knowing some of the more common modular chord shapes, which I have somewhat retained from my Berklee class.

Knowing movable chord shapes, at least for triads and seventh chords can really open up the entire length of the fretboard and has definitely helped with compositions. I’ll go through this course and see where that leads me next. I know I have a few chord courses, including the Ted Green stuff that I’ve never fully studied.

Lastly, here in the US and around the world, the Coronavirus epidemic (pandemic forthcoming?) has been another reminder of the incompetence and negligence of this administration and many around the world. Trump is still trying to play for political points and his on air comments continue to baffle all within earshot. There’s the cruise ship that was quarantined and apparently he wanted to know if they kept it quarantined and didn’t allow the passengers to disembark if it would count against the disease totals. It’s a good question, we wouldn’t want to damage the re-election campaign for a few thousand lives. It’s not helping that the media is hyping everything as they always do, it’s all good for ad revenue, regardless if factual or helpful. We’re somewhat lucky in that we can handle sequestering ourselves at home for longer than most people since I don’t work full time and we have a bit of a reserve to tide us over if things shut down.

So far I haven’t heard anything at work about them closing or restricting the clinic hours/services, but I feel like it’s almost inevitable at this point. Luckily for me, I’m not ostensibly treating “sick” people. If my patients are ill, it’s a coincidence and not tied to the context of their visits most of the time. It’s also fortunate that I typically only see one patient per day so my relative exposure is probably not as bad as just running into Wal-Mart to grab a few things. I just hope all the dire projections are just that, projections that won’t play out as severe as some are suggesting. Some of these estimates would very quickly completely overwhelm our healthcare system.