Catch Up with Tim

Figured I would update the site with a little bit about what has been going on with my life:

Recently joined Gold's Gym again. Have been "pushing iron" 5 times already. Plan to make it to the gym at least 3 times a week. Also have been taking advantage of the treadmill in the computer room at home. Have done 20 min on it each day for the last two weeks. Also have been walking 45 min or so at least once a week with a co-worker after work.

It has been great for me to get active again.

I have an appointment with a new doctor for April 2 for a check up. Every time I have donated blood over the last couple of years, the free cholesterol testing that they do has come back in the low 200's... way to high. I am hoping the exercise will make a difference, but any case, it is something that I should be paying attention to.

Taking Friday off from work, finally will be getting a quote on getting the floors done in my house.

Also finished up getting the house refinanced last week. My interest rate dropped by over 2% as well as moved from from a 30 year to a 15 year loan.

Interesting thing is that I got a phone call (msg on my answer machine) the day my refinanced closed (finalized, or whatever the word is that it is done) from somebody named Mark Keeler from South Allentown PA. Stated that he believe I was a victim of ID theft, proceeding to give state information about me such as full name, address, phone number, and birthdate and asked me to call him. Very offical sounding message.

Something seemed a little odd about the call considering I had just reviewed my credit report at least twice within the last month and had seen no odd activity. I called the San Jose Police department and discussed the call with them. The officer took the information and called the Allentown Police Department for me (there is no such town as South Allentown)... as well as they have no officers by the name of Mark Keeler.

I also did a quick search via a reverse phone lookup where you can give the site the number and it will come back with an address if listed. The number he gave to call back was different from the number that appeared via caller id. I check both of them and they came back as registered via Verizon. I am assuming that means they are cell phone numbers.

The other interesting / odd part of the story. I asked the San Jose officer what I should do next, and she stated that if they call back to tell them to stop bothering me. It seems like they don't go after individuals like this on a pro-active basis. I am assuming my refinancing closing appeared in some public database, scary to think how many people would make the phone call and give the person their SSN (assuming that is what he was trying to fish for).

Similiarly Samantha and I did have a situation where somebody was using her credit card number in Las Vegas. Sam did some legwork, calling the store where a purchase was made. The store owner knew immediately who the person was, because the person made a payment via our card for a bounced check... and he still had the check with the person's name and address on it.

The check was drawn against Wells Fargo, the same bank that we used. We asked if we could press charges (the person also had rented a car using the car for a week, the rental company claimed that she couldn't have rented the car without the physical card... which wasn't true. I believe somebody got fired because of that mistake), we were told by the Las Vegas police that since we were not the victims, we couldn't. Wells Fargo was very good at crediting our account back. The frustrating part is that I don't believe Wells Fargo pressed charges. With minimal effort (a phone call), Sam had tracked down the person and had her name, address, and back account number...

I would imagine it would be just as simple to track down this "Mark Keeler" guy as well... but nobody seems to want to be that proactive even though you read about how ID theft is such a big problem.

It pays to be careful. I do plan to check my credit report again in a week just to make sure nothing odd is taking place. The company that I used to get my credit report is Equifax.