A Slow Day for News?

Here’s a screen grab of this morning’s Daily Briefing from USATODAY.com. Yes, all four of those “Polls: Obama, Romney in tight race” headlines link to the same article. Guess they wanted to make sure I didn’t miss it.

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Curiosities

Here we have a few oddities that have caught my eye in the past few weeks.

First up, I was stopped in traffic the other day when I noticed the bumper of the car ahead of me:

 

Not sure how visible it is in the photo (shot through my filthy windshield), but if you look closely you will note that, yes, those are staples holding the car’s bumper together. Rusting staples, alas, but still a notch or two above the old standby, duct tape.

Regular readers of these posts will know that I will occasionally subject myself to an online survey, usually to amass points that I can spend on junk I don’t need. Also they can be kind of fun and, once in a great while, even interesting. Here’s a screenshot from a survey I took a little while back:

Not sure what to make of it. A bit of whimsy on the part of the survey designers? Or did the survey designers think the question was such that people would benefit from visual aids?


The other day I took a survey about vodka—something I seldom drink, so the survey went pretty quickly. It turned out to be one of those aforementioned rarities, a survey that is in fact interesting and from which I learned a few things:

1. People who drink vodka must not like the taste of vodka, since there seems to be an enormous number of flavored vodkas; 

2. People who wrote the survey either don’t know or care about past participles or, like a great many people, are afraid of the word “drunk”: A careful editor would have changed the category titles to “I have drunk it ...” Unless they have drank too much.

 From the same survey:

I have spent some little time trying to figure out what the survey designers thought was the difference between the two indicated questions. Granted, some editors would frown on the use of “I’d” as a contraction of “I would” (it’s not wrong, but I’ve worked with editors who eschew it since “I’d” also stands in for “I had”)...but somehow I doubt that there was a heated editorial meeting in which half of the staff argued for “I would” and half argued for “I’d” and in the end they decided to split the difference and use both, just so they could move on to the next item on the agenda

Which obviously was not the drank/drunk discussion.

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Pope, Maybe; Proofreader, Not So Much

This from the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet: Afternoon Edition for April 4, 2012:

At least, I can’t find “infalliable” in any of my dictionaries.

This assumes there actually are proofreaders on the scene, of course. Increasingly, based on my reading both online and in print, I think The Powers That Be have decided that proofreaders—the good ones, at least—are an unnecessary luxury.

They aren’t. Trust me on this one.

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Too Early? Too Late? - A Hodgepodge

Here we are at that time of year when, more than any other time, I witness in my work a strange phenomenon.

Well, strange to me, at least. Maybe there’s some sense to it that I’ve yet to divine.

The strangeness is this: I will receive various items for publication in the various sources for which I’m responsible in which the author would inform the reader that such-and-such event will take place on, say, January 6. And for good, albeit strange, measure, he or she will almost invariably tack on “2012.”

Who knows how many 2012s I have lopped off the past four to six weeks? Who knows how many more I will lop off in the next four to six weeks—for the strangeness will continue at least that long.

Not counting those folks who simply cannot write a date without putting the year on it, no matter how far into the year we’ve already come.

I’ve tried to figure out how and why a person might develop such a habit, and I confess to being stumped. Certainly if I am in December 2011 writing about an event that will occur on January 6, I can rely on my reader to understand that I mean the January 6 that will be popping up in a few weeks here, not the January 6 that happened almost a year ago, nor the January 6 that will be happening a little more than a year hence.

Can’t I?

Even keeping in mind what H.L. Mencken had to say about the intelligence of the American public, I am confident that all of the 2012s I blithely fling into the virtual wastebasket will cause no undue distress.

Watch this space in case I turn out to be wrong. I’ll report if someone shows up for any of the events in question a year late. And I’ll certainly report if anyone shows up for something a year early.

Believe me, I’d love for that to happen.

¶ ¶ ¶

On the subject of numbers and people’s odd quirks regarding them:

My late father could never, it seems, write a number without expressing it in both words and numerals. He would never have written, “Grandma went to the store three times last week”; he would instead have written “Grandma went to the store three (3) times last week.”

In his case, I suspect he either developed the habit as a young man climbing the corporate ladder at what was Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, then USWest, then Qwest, now CenturyLink. (Yes, you see a trend there: each name is even less descriptive of the business than the previous name was. CenturyLink is particular is a dumb name, and I’m a little glad Dad didn’t live to see its advent. In fact, CenturyLink sounds like something I would use if I wanted to show up for an event a year too early.) I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that, in his early days there, he and his cohorts were taught that This Is The Way It’s Done, and he never deviated from that path, strange though it seems to me.

Dad also would never use an exclamation point when three (3) could be used. I’m not kidding!!! If he felt inclined toward exclamation, which he often would in his pr/marketing days, he invariably tripled the order. He never used two (2); he never used four (4); he sure as hell never used one (1). It was always and inevitably three (3)!!!

Which may go a ways toward explaining my habit of eschewing them in my own work!!!

¶ ¶ ¶

Back to the subject of dumb names:

This week I received from the Board of Pensions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (in which I still have a few dollars, since they limit the amount one may remove in a calendar year...which reminds me, I have only a few days in which to remove this year’s allotment. So enjoy being restricted from accessing my own money) that it will henceforth no longer be known as the Board of Pensions but rather by the new and exciting name...Portico Benefit Services.

Portico.

I looked it up, and it has no definition other than the usual one, viz., a covered entrance. A porch.

Yet somehow, according to the letter, whoever comes up with such things believes that “a new name will help people better understand what we do as this church’s provider of health, retirement, disability and survivor benefits and related services.”

Well, it’s possible that “a new name” might do all those things. But “Portico” ain’t it. “Portico” says nothing, at least nothing related to benefits. Unless it has to do with the benefits division of an architectural firm.

It’s curious to me, too, that the new name hops on board what I perceive to be a trend of sorts, namely, obscuring the relationship of a given entity to its religious organization, in this case the ELCA. Nothing in “Portico Benefit Services” points to it being at all connected with any religious body, and certainly not the body it is in fact connected with.

I imagine someone decided that “ELCA Board of Pensions” was a limiting name. Maybe so. To be sure, it handles more than pensions per se. Well, then, how about “ELCA Board of Pensions and Benefits”? Or “ELCA Benefit Services”? Either of those—or any of a dozen other possibilities—would be more descriptive of the entity’s function and purpose than “Portico.”

It seems that there’s some desire to dissociate the agency from its church. I can’t think why, unless there’s a belief that down the road it will serve more than just its church body. Something along the lines of my credit union recently merging with another credit union and adopting a new, unmemorable name (indeed, I would have to go look it up) that seems intentionally designed to separate it from its telephone-industry history.

The ELCA did the same thing some years ago with its now-defunct radio ministry, Lutheran Vespers. Someone decided that, after who knows how many decades, “vespers” had become inaccurate since most radio stations ran it in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday mornings rather than at the close of the day. Okay-fine. They cranked up the task forces, committees, focus groups, and God knows what all else and came up with an exciting new name: Grace Matters. Which, as I said at the time, sounded like an ’80s sitcom starring someone named Grace, if Amazing Grace was already being used.

Again, there seemed a concerted effort to dissociate it from its own history. I never understood why. And keep in mind, I had no dog in the fight, nor have I one now in the Portico fight.

But money, yes. So I need Portico to avoid the fate of Grace Matters for at least another year. 

To avoid confusion, that would be December 20, 2012!!!

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Paging Mrs. Malaprop!

As is so often the case, the comments on various articles and news items are at least as entertaining as the articles themselves. Here’s a new (to me) malapropism that I came upon in a comments section just this morning:

“Here is the crust of the problem...”

The author has some other problems, too, besides his crust—the apparent lack of a ? key on his keyboard, an inability to unravel the subtle nuances between your and you’re, and so on—but none is as unique or interesting as the crust of his problem.

This looks like a job for Malaprop Man!

One wonders if the crux of the problem in such cases might not be hearing related. I read once that Norm Crosby, “King of the Malaprop,” came to his hilarious wordplay by virtue of an undiagnosed hearing problem that caused him, in childhood, to understand words almost correctly—drinking decapitated coffee, requesting a cold one from the beertender, and so on.

Sometimes, I know, it’s just a matter of misunderstanding a given expression or colloquialism. I knew a fellow in college who was wont to “get down to brass tactics”...and in the years since I’ve known probably half a dozen others who have shared his desire.

Not really a malapropism but still funny is the wildly off-base expression employed by a parish priest of my acquaintance several decades ago. Obviously he had come upon the expression “fly in the ointment,” but misunderstood “fly” to be the verb form. Thus it was that his homilies occasionally would refer to this or that action of Jesus that “flew in the ointment” of the religious leaders of the day. Makes me wonder if he knew what “ointment” is.

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Yes, This Sounds Familiar

This comes from Clients from Hell. I have had similar conversations with people.

Me: “How can I help you today, ma’am?”

Client: “Is e-mail internet”?

Me: “I beg your pardon?”

Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”

Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”

Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”

Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”

Client: “Open what?”

Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”

Client: “My…my…?”

Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”

Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”

Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”

Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”

Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”

Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”

Me: “No, ma’am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”

Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”

Me: “We…okay, ma’am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”

Client: “My what?”

Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now - it’s most likely near your computer?”

Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.

Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”

Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”

Me: “An error message?”

Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”

Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Move it for me.”

Client: “Move it?”

Me: “Yes. Move it.”

Client: “My e-mail!”

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Maybe Sex Sells After All!

I mentioned in passing nearly a month ago (“Catching My Eye,” March 26, that USA Today’s Tech Briefing had been touting for several weeks already the article “Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts a big dent in industry”—and I expressed my wish that I had been keeping track from the beginning so I could report on exactly how many months now they’ve been plumping this patently salacious headline.

However, I can report that USA Today has yet to give up on it: Here’s a screenshot of this morning’s Tech Briefing e-mail, with the porn headline still enjoying its place of honor. I assume it’s there after all this time because it continues to generate clicks, so maybe it is indeed true that sex sells.

Let’s not fool ourselves: I’m not particularly prudish, as anyone who’s read one or more of my detective novels can attest. My issue here is with the blatantly prurient intent attached to running this same link day after day, week after week, for well over a month now. Enough, already!

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Even in the 21st Century!

Shocking, just shocking!

I was in a local supermarket last evening when I espied this sign in an area being remodeled:

I would have hoped that by this point in the 21st century we might be beyond such blatant discrimination, but apparently not!

No, I did not venture over to the north side of the building. The thought of those poor Chinese people crammed into one corner of the place was too sad for me to bear. 

To make the discrimination even more odious, the supermarket seems to have done away with its Chinese deli, which used to be located where the sign now is! Odd.

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Random Unhelpfulness

The other day I was reminded of a sign that used to be on a door at a past place of employment:

OPEN CAREFULLY, AS IF YOU WERE ON OTHER SIDE!

What idiotic advice. If I were on the other side, I wouldn’t need to open the door! 

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When I was a kid, you used to see little cards and tokens and whatnot that Catholics were encouraged to carry on them in case they were involved in a serious accident. My dad used to have one that sounded like the set=up for a bad joke:

I AM A CATHOLIC. PLEASE CALL ME A PRIEST.

Okay, you're a priest!

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Filling out some forms, I came to this question:

NUMBER TO CALL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Well, 911, of course!

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Catching My Eye

A few recent things from the inbox that caught my eye. Click on the pictures for larger views.

It’s not just me: Thanksgiving does come earlier every year.

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Is “No-Charge Shipping” different than “Free Shipping”? If so, how? If not, why not call it “Free Shipping”?

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Sure, I’ve heard of ham steak. But ham from Omaha Steaks? That’s just wrong.

 

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It’s good to have choices. Even when one of them kind of freaks me out.

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USA Today’s Tech Briefing has been running this item for weeks now. Wish I had been keeping track from the beginning. The word “prurient” comes to mind.

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Should Have Consulted a Nerd

This from today's Salon.com e-mail:

One doesn't need to be much of a science fiction nerd to know that the character in question is Mister Spock, not Doctor Spock. I haven't heard him misidentified in that fashion since, probably, the early 1970s. Is it possible that my father has been reincarnated and is working at Salon.com?

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Yes, By All Means, Be Specific!

A screenshot from a survey I took awhile back. Still trying to figure out how I could not have been specific, given the instructions.

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How Mysterious the Internet Is

Okay, so I’m reading this article from this morning's USA Today...

...and somehow, based on that, USA Today or the great and powerful internet or, I don’t know, God himself concludes that I might be interested in these other articles as well:

But of course. One logically would conclude that anyone who’s interested in a topic such as, say, the nature of the God of All Creation, the Ground of All Being, the Omniscient Omnipotent Alpha and Omega will likewise be interest in “Celebrity Birthdays” or “Surprising Origins of Everyday Phrases.”

I mean, what else?

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One Product, One Vendor, Two Puzzling Ads

One of the disadvantages of having as many e-mail addresses as I have is that you tend to get a lot of duplicate mail, especially advertising.

But that can sometimes make for an interesting experience.

Witness ye this ad from Smith Micro Software, which arrived in one of my inboxes this past Friday, August 20:

Yes, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for just $49.99, ten dollars off the "regular" price of $59.99. In fact, I had contemplated purchasing that very product.

Now I'm not so sure.

Direct your attention, if you will, to this ad, which came to another of my multiple accounts this very afternoon:

Yes, if I respond to this offer, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for a mere twenty dollars more than in the other ad: $69.99...which Smith Micro still would have me believe is, yep, ten dollars off the "regular" price, which they now say is $79.99.

I have a couple-three mailboxes that I haven't checked today. If one or more of them contains a Smith Micro ad for Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, is it your guess that the "regular" price will be higher than the two "regular" prices indicated in these ads, or lower?

Doesn't exactly make a fellow want to whip out his credit card, does it?

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What to Do, What to Do...

Is it just me, or does it seem like these messages might be spam?

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Not to Be Confused with Medication Mistakes You WANT to Make

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I Write Like...

Well, this was eye-opening.

In a roundabout fashion (from Twitter to the LA Times and then to the site in question) I came upon the website I Write Like, which invites one to enter a few paragraphs of writing, which then are analyzed and from which a proclamation is made.

I pasted in the first three paragraphs of my sixth novel, Drive-By, and was rewarded with this:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Interesting, since I've read very little of King's work. I don't dislike him, I've just never gotten into him much. I picked up The Shining ages ago when it was all the rage, and never finished it. It just didn't grab me.

Hope that doesn't mean I'm not interested in my own work...

Just for kicks, I copied four paragraphs from the beginning of a later chapter in Drive-By (chapter 31, if you must know), ran them through I Write Like, and got this bit of information:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Also very intriguing, since I have read less of Brown's stuff than I have of King's! Evidently I write like writers I've never really read, which should defuse any potential plagiarism suits.

Just for kicks (as if the exercise had any other point) I grabbed another selection from the midpoint of the same book (chapter 22) and ran it through the grinder. Dan Brown again.

I might have to start reading this guy.

Maybe I can figure out why his stuff sells in the bazillions while mine sells in the thousands.

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Climbing to Nowhere?

Has anybody reading this (either one of you) had any experience with Climber.com? If so, does it seem as pointless to you as it does me?

Disclosure: Some months back I signed up for the limited, free version of Climber.com. Maybe the stuff you have to pay for is more useful, or pertinent. But my observation to date, from the regular Job Alert Newsletters it sends me, is that it's pretty off-point.

For instance, the Job Alert Newsletter for July 1 lists among the "Freshest Jobs on the Net" (!) "targeted" for me based on the information that I provided when I filled out my profile, "Managing Editor Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (16 New)." Wow--sixteen new Managing Editor positions right here in South Dakota. Who knew? Well, I was a magazine managing editor in a past life, so obviously the category is spot on.

So I click through to the "fresh" listings. There's a bunch of them, all right...but only one is actually in South Dakota. And on the other end of the state at that, but it's nothing to complain about since the newsletter promised positions in this state, not my town. But the other listings...here's one in Houston. Here's one in Minneapolis. Here's a "self-funded" job in Des Moines. Here's one in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Oh, and there's only seven listed, not sixteen.

Not all that helpful, really.

But more helpful than another, somewhat enigmatic listing, "Mac Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (15 New)." No idea what a Mac Job is, but I suppose it has to do with my being a Macintosh computer owner of long standing. Could be fun. So I click through..

Your search - Mac - did not match any jobs.

Um, okay. Then what's the deal with the "Mac Jobs in SOUTH DAKOTA (15 New)" you were telling me about in the Job Alert Newsletter? Further, what's the deal with the helpful "suggestion" you offer:

Suggestions:

• - Make sure all words are spelled correctly.

• - Try different keywords.

• - Try more general keywords.

Yes, nothing brightens your day like being given suggestions to improve "your" search when in fact it was their search that didn't work.

So it is that Climber.com doesn't strike me as any sort of useful tool. If the idea is to get me to pay money to see the good stuff, then perhaps they should take a leaf from Classmates.com and NamesDatabase.com, which are forever telling me that people have searched for me and they'll tell me who those people are if I give them money. Climber.com doesn't tell me it's found my dream job and will share the info with me in return for cash; it tells me it's found a suitable (indeed, "fresh") job, then gives it the lie when I go to check on it. Some kind of strange, sick ongoing April Fool's joke, perhaps?

Back to the original query, then: Anyone had any experience with Climber.com? If so, was it a useful experience? Or am I right in my belief that I might as well pull the plug on it?

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

Some small progress has been made by my attempt to roll my money out of the pension fund of my erstwhile employer and into something more secure (he said hopefully). But nobody's making it easy. Which, I suspect, is the point.

I shared recently my futile attempt to access my ELCA Board of Pensions account online (Another Good Way to Alienate Customers!). I followed that time-waster with a call the next day to Customer Service, which also, initially, took me down a blind alley: Foolishly, since I wanted my pension account information, I chose the option for pension account information from the automated menu. This took me to the aural equivalent of the same Through the Looking-Glass experience as I had encountered online the day before, namely, the request for SSN and nonexistent PIN with no other options--certainly no opportunity to speak to a human being.

Hang up. Call again. Choose something different.

By and by I am talking to a person, and a nice one at that. He can't help me, but he switches me over immediately to the person who can. And, by golly, she does help me! I get the info I needed, and she pledges to send me a PIN--after informing me that it's possible that a PIN was never sent to me in the first place seven or eight years ago, which would make my searching for it the previous afternoon even more futile. But anyhow. The ELCA Board of Pensions should know that Brian and Corina are doing their best to rescue clients' opinion of their customer service, even as their own web interface undermines it.

Almost makes me feel bad for pulling my money out. Almost. The NPR story that spurred my decision to hit the exit reminds me that I have a choice: I can pull my money out or, potentially, have it pulled out from under me.

Also, e-mail I had from a Service Center Representative makes me less inclined to stick around. Another good way to alienate customers: Blame them for your poorly designed system. When I sent "feedback" after my loop-de-loop experience with the website on Sunday, I received back a sort-of apology but with a smarmy "if it were a system with a low security threshold it would not serve our requirements or your expectations" attached. Well, my expectation is that when your goddamn system gives me options for retrieving a forgotten PIN, your goddamn system will in fact provide the promised assistance and not send me off into a continuous loop. (There is a Forgot Your PIN? link, which presents two options, Answer Challenge Question and Mail a PIN Reminder. I tried both. And both times I received the same unhelpful message: The information you entered to log into the system does not match our records. Please Log In again now. Which is of course impossible without the PIN. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence that your pension fund doesn't recognize your Social Security Number, does it?) And my expectation is that, when your goddamn system doesn't work, you won't try to shove the blame back on me! Better your goddamn system provide no "help" links at all than links that provide no help.

Oh, he also tried to get away with some balderdash about the system telling me that my information didn't match its records because it was locking me out after too many attempts to log in. Which is not just balderdash, but Grade A Balderdash of the First Order, since the system told me it didn't know my SSN on my first attempt to access it. So just fucking apologize for wasting my time and have your people redesign the interface so that it works properly instead of blaming the customer when it doesn't work.

Okay, so I no longer feel bad about taking my money away from them.

Or, at least, trying to take my money elsewhere. Trying, it develops, is about the best I can hope for.

Next day I meet with my financial adviser, who has some, well, advice as to what I might do with my ELCA pension money. I decide on a course of action, and he starts me on the paperwork while he calls the Board of Pensions to get things started on their end. And we discover, after a little while, that it's not going to be as straightforward as we'd anticipated.

Big surprise.

Turns out ELCA policy says that one may withdraw no more than the greater of $10,000 or 10% of his or her account per annum. Except that there is a one-time allowance of $20,000 or 20%.

Which means that, if the market continues to perform as well or better than it currently is, it will be several years before I can get all of "my" money out!

Astonishing. And yet, somehow, not.

Of course, my adviser asked the Board of Pensions rep why this was so. And the answer: "It's policy." Afterward, I apologized for not prepping him on the fact that we would be dealing with a churchy organization, for whom "We've always done it that way" is considered a valid answer to any inquiry.

Actually, I understand the policy. National Public Radio runs a report on church organizations' pension funds being exempt from the protections of the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, or state securities laws and the next thing you know people start to wonder if they're comfortable having their retirement loot in a fund that might simply go away at the whim of those running the fund. And the next thing you know, you have perhaps thousands of people withdrawing their money, all of it, right now. And the fund collapses.

I get that. But in my instance--my position was eliminated due to an extreme budget shortfall caused by mad Christians withholding giving because some other congregation somewhere else might call a gay pastor (see previous posts on that subject here and here)--you'd think that maybe there would be an exception. To be thrown under the wheels because of a bad reaction to ELCA policy and then told that I can't even take my little pension account someplace else because of some other policy smacks more than a little of adding insult to injury.

Or rather adding more injury to injury.

The insult part was blaming me for their crappy web system.

Another Good Way to Alienate Customers!

I have now spent nearly three hours over the course of two days attempting to access my pension account from my former employment. What a colossal waste of time--some of it my fault, but much of it the fault of an astonishingly badly designed system.

My quest began last week, when I contacted my financial advisor and asked him to be thinking of what I might do with the small amount I have in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pension plan. From the moment I was informed that I was to be cast out of my nine-year position with the ELCA's South Dakota Synod, I knew that I would not keep my money in their pension fund for long. A report on National Public Radio the week before last, indicating that religious organizations are exempt from federal laws that protect workers' pensions, which can and does result in workers, as usual, getting the short end of the stick when their church-affiliated employer decides to terminate the plan, reminded me that I have a few pennies entrusted to a religious organization and that I might be better off getting them into a secular account quickly.

In preparation for my meeting with my financial guy, I had the brilliant idea of printing out my most recent account information, rather than rely on the latest quarterly report.

And the fun began.

I went online to log in to my Board of Pensions account. I haven't done this very often--maybe twice--so the first hurdle I encountered was not knowing my password. I set up the account so long ago that I didn't have it in my password database. I made a few likely guesses, to no avail. The website does of course provide a "forgot my password" link...but there's a catch: I not only needed my password, but also the e-mail address I used to set up the account!

Do you have any idea how many e-mail addresses I have?

Further, since my former employer used the e-mail system at Augustana College, and the college changed its e-mail format--and since the synod subsequently set up its own e-mail address scheme--I had no fewer than seven e-mail possibilities from the office alone! And the Board of Pension's website is not set up to deal with that possibility.

So I hit the "contact us" link, explained the issue, and waited for a reply.

I didn't have to wait long, so points for them, but the reply wasn't that helpful. It boiled down to speculating that if I hadn't accessed my account for an unspecified while (true that) the system might no longer remember me. The suggestion was to try entering as if I were a new user and set up a new account.

But in the meantime, I found a note on which I had recorded my password! No e-mail address, alas, but with the password I should be able to work out the e-mail address.

I made a list of likely addresses. Eleven of them.

The system liked the sixth one on my list. Of course, I had to re-enter my password twice with each attempt. But I'm lucky the system didn't lock me out after a couple-three shots.

Okay, so now I'm in. And here's a handy button I can click on to Access My Retirement Account. Perfect!

Yeah, well, "perfect" might be overstating it.

First I get the screen that tells me You are about to leave this site. This is almost never a good sign. The screen tells me also

To access your online retirement account you will be required to sign in at our record keeper, ACS HR Solutions.

To sign in, use the PIN you received in the mail. If you do not remember your PIN, please select Continue and use the Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box. You will receive a PIN in the mail. Please remember your sign-in information for future visits.

Already I know that this will not end well.

But I bravely depress the friendly green Continue button anyhow. And down the rabbit hole I go!

The entrance page is straightforward enough: A bunch of small type about the retirement funds, including information that only inclines me to accelerate my departure:

Neither the ELCA Board of Pensions nor its funds are subject to registration, regulation or reporting under the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 or state securities laws. Members, therefore, will not be afforded the protections of those provisions of those laws and related regulations.

Yikes! Okay what else? Ah, yes: Here's the log-in box. I need my Social Security Number, which I know, and, as promised, a PIN, which I don't. I don't dispute that at some point in the distant, foggy past the board mailed me a PIN. But I certainly don't remember it, and it seems a waste of time to go hunting for it when, I have been assured, there is a "Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box."

And there is! So I click Forgot Your PIN?. And get a screen telling me that I need to enter my SSN first, and then click on Answer Challenge Question or Mail a PIN Reminder. Okay, that makes sense. I do so. And click Answer Challenge Question. This is looking promising.

Hahahahah! Foolish human! I am rewarded with a screen that says

The information you entered to log into the system does not match our records.

Which does not inspire much confidence. I like the idea that my pension fund remembers who I am. If nothing else, their records should include my Social Security Number, no? So at this point I realize that I was right to experience misgivings as soon as I was told that I'd be shuttled off to a third-party site, and that my initial instinct--viz., This will not end well--was accurate.

And then, to add insult, the screen that tells me they don't know who I am concludes with this advice:

Please Log In again now.

Uh-huh. You know, the only reason a person would be reading this message at all is that he or she could not log in in the first place, yes? So the suggestion is not only pointless but downright cruel.

And yet...

So I click the Log In link and have another go at it. This time I enter my SSN and click the Mail a PIN Reminder button. I mean, better than nothing, right? I'll get the PIN in a couple-three days, access my account, print out current numbers for my financial guy, and make an appointment with him to see what great ideas he has about putting the money in a safer place.

Except that the Mail a PIN Reminder button takes me right back to the "does not match our records" screen.

So what we have here, folks, is a "help" feature that is 100% unhelpful. It can't help you with a forgotten PIN, it can't issue you a "challenge question," it can't mail you a reminder, it can't do a blessed thing except waste your time, for it doesn't know who you are even when you give it your SSN repeatedly.

And we also have a certain growing misgiving about the management of the ELCA pension fund, if the "record keeper" doesn't seem to have a record of me.

Which, given what I know about religious organizations' exemption from pension-fund protection laws, makes me feel a little anxious.

Naturally the board's 800 number is answered only during business hours, so I'll have to wait another day to see about getting the information I need.

Oh, and I did dig through the filing cabinet and found all the information from when I signed up with the fund nearly a decade ago. No sign of any PIN, however. So we wait.

Now you may be inclined to say, "Hey, Ace, it's not the Board of Pension's fault you couldn't remember what e-mail address you signed up with all those years ago." And you will be entirely correct. You may be further inclined to say, "It's not ACS HR Solutions's fault that you can't find your PIN." And again you will encounter no argument from me.

But it is somebody's fault that the retirement-account system is badly organized and provides no help to customers who need it. I would say that that is a responsibility shared by ELCA Board of Pensions and ACS HR Solutions. And I would say that it's worse to promise online assistance that doesn't exist than to simply tell the user that he or she must call the 800 number during business hours to receive assistance.

As a lover of irony, however, I must chuckle at the fact that I entered this little exercise in futility as part of my intention to sever my connection with the ELCA Board of Pensions, so it's not like I can threaten to take my business elsewhere as a result of their goofy online account system.