Tell me nobody has been allowed to tell you no in your entire life without telling me nobody has been allowed to tell you no in your entire life. Also nobody tell Steve Bannon about this guy or he might end up president.
I liked how he doesn’t see race or sexual orientation “very often.” Even Stephen Miller knows not to say that shit.
Had some fraud on a credit/debit card. Called the bank, got charges removed. It happens. One of the charges is/was from REI. Last night after 8PM PST I got a call from a person at REI corporate asking me to call him back - left a message saying that he does believe it was fraud, but wants to talk to me. That’s weird right? The number he called from and left as a callback number checks out as a real REI number.
Seems kind of weird. But if that happened to me and I was 100 percent sure it was a legit REI phone number, I would probably call back. Mostly to satisfy my curiosity. (Plus I like REI and have been a member for over 30 years.)
You’ve done business with them before, right? I think it seems weird but it wouldn’t surprise me if they have an internal policy to follow up with CC fraud victims to attempt a service recovery of sorts, because despite it not really being logical to blame them for the fraud, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if industry data shows that CLV takes a hit after a fraud event like that.
Yeah, I’d call back, too, to see what was up. Like, maybe the fraudster was super weird and the tale of his fraud would be good, or maybe REI guy thinks LFS can actually help catch the guy.
If he has an Indian accent do not go get Amazon gift cards at the wal mart.
Where would everyone choose to live, assuming you could work remotely? The climate in my state is getting pretty messed up (most notably by wildfire smoke), and we’re pretty seriously exploring alternative options for the long-term.
Among the possibilities: Vermont, Portugal, Costa Rica, Eastern Canada.
If we didn’t have a 9 year old daughter my wife and I would be traveling around the country with a trailer and chasing the 75 degree line.
Otherwise it depends a lot on what you spend your recreational time on? Do you need to be near a big city? Outdoors stuff your thing? Winter sports?
Portugal has some beautiful places and some very nice weather, some great ocean views and some great city views too and the plus is that you have the rest of Europe to pick from if you don’t take to it, unlike our British ex-pats. 
Portugals selling point for me the decriminalisation of drugs there.
Probably Hawaii if staying in the US. Internationally I don’t really know, haven’t seen that many places.
Portugal >>>>>>>> Anywhere in N America ainec
Thanks, everyone. To give more info, our priorities would be something along the lines of:
- Able to buy a 1+ acre property with some homesteading opportunity, but not wildly far from town. Our current 15-minute town commute is perfect.
- Geographical area that will be reasonably-resilient to climate change.
- Strong schools.
- Limited presence of right-wing extremism.
- Logistically feasible re: residency, etc. (obviously).
- Geographical diversity and biodiversity also a huge plus. My ideal would be reasonable access to both oceans and mountains.
My folks bought an old farm house in Portugal once and did it up. The only downside was that being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a somewhat rural community the conversations tended to revolve around people’s pigs.
You’ll have the westerlies blowing cooling air from the Atlantic to mitigate climate change.
Schools are very good - their eldest son came back to the UK two years ahead in Maths.
This is kind of what it was. The person using my card placed an order online through REI using my name, my card, but a different address and email. Their system recognized that some of the info matched my account and “updated” my account with the fraudulent address and email. So they wanted to make sure that my address and email hadn’t actually changed so they could change the info back.
Number 4 is going to be hard to overcome if you want land.
Western WA, the Olympia area would suit you, if you can hang with the rain. Ocean and mountains nearby, good schools, land available, even in town. I think it’s mostly resilient to climate change, except for fires, but those tend to be some distance from Olympia.
Yeah, we like Washington a lot. I’m a little more worried about fires on the West (vs East) coast, but maybe Olympia is well-positioned. I’ll give it a look.
Also thanks @Jalfrezi re: Portugal. It’s reasonably high on our list, and (I believe) logistically possible. 90+% vaccination rate also suggests that it’s not overrun by morons. We’re going to try and visit in the next couple of years and get a feel for things.
