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Bank of America finds itself the target of a new lawsuit filed by a woman in Pittsburgh who alleges that the bank not only improperly seized her home and damaged her other property, but also kept her parrot hostage even after they admitted making a mistake.

According to the lawsuit, after mistakenly believing that the property was in default, BoA instructed Snyder Property Services to "enter, seize, padlock, 'winterize' and take possession" of the plaintiff's home. This included turning off the water, cutting power lines, filling her drains with antifreeze... and confiscating her parrot.

As the plaintiff had been paying her mortgage on time, she was shocked to arrive home one day to a house with new locks, damaged furniture and carpets, scattered belongings and a missing parrot.

At first, says the lawsuit, Bank of America acknowledged the seizure and told the plaintiff that they knew of the parrot's whereabouts. But when she continued to call, she says BoA reps told her to stop calling, hung up on her and said they were "tired of hearing from her."

After about a week of banging her head against the wall (metaphorically), BoA relented and confessed that they had "made a mistake." They told her where the bird was being held and she made the 3-hour round trip drive to get the bird back.

The suit alleges that BoA was "knowingly deceptive and lacks a policy to check the validity of its foreclosures or stop wrongful ones from happening." A Bank of America spokeswoman declined to comment.

BoA did make an offer to repair some of the damage caused during the seizure, but only after she retained a lawyer.

Woman says Bank of America wrongly repossessed home [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

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Continue reading Samsung Super AMOLED explained in pretty moving pictures (video)

Samsung Super AMOLED explained in pretty moving pictures (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

[Jake Howe] brought his 1984 Mac up-to-date by cramming new guts inside of the classic case. The goal from the start was to run OS X Snow Leopard on the machine without altering the externals. He heated and formed acrylic around the original CRT screen to make a bezel for the replacement LCD screen. The floppy drive slot was used to hide an SD card slot and USB port. The original serial port openings were even outfitted with their own USB ports. In the end he did a brilliant job of hiding the Hackintosh mini-ITX board and components inside this iconic enclosure.

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“Our first objective was to introduce automated unit testing. They had all sorts of horribly interconnected code, and the tests would help reduce the fix-here/break-there problems. However, after many, many tutorial sessions with developers, and quite a few long meetings spent trying to convince them of the benefits, no tests emerged. The developers stubbornly held that testers should test code, not them.”

Ian continued, “Adding some teeth to our policies, we set-up a continuous integration server that emailed everyone reports of unit test code coverage. This way, managers could take responsibility for getting their teams to write unit tests. That seemed to do the trick: the number of unit tests and code coverage started to steadily climb on all projects.”

“I finally felt that all my efforts were worthwhile,” he added, “the overall health of the team’s code would now increase immeasurably. Less bugs, less time manual testing, and all that good stuff. And then I started to look at the unit test code.”

public class StaticDataRequestTest {

    @Test
    public void startClientReqest() {

        try {
            new StaticDataRequest().onData(null);
            assertEquals(
                " processing client static data request  ",
                true, 
                true);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            assertEquals(
                " processing client static data request  ",
                true, 
                true);
        }
    }
}

Ian added, “I guess we got what we asked for.”

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over at the Huffington Post, retired teacher Ernest Nitzberg blogged about the experience that made him sever his 44-year banking relationship with Chase. He writes that Chase accuses him of using a debit card that he was never issued to buy $6200 worth of merchandise that he was unlikely to want or need. Makes perfect sense to us, too.

I contacted Chase the day after I received my statement. I pointed out that I had not received a debit card and that it was completely out of character and history for a 78-year-old single man recently out of open heart surgery with no children or grandchildren of Toys R Us age and not in need of a Shalom dress or any of the items that Juicy Couture makes to buy that much crap in one day. I was assured that everything would be put right. After forms were completed and sent to Chase's fraud unit and a report made to the police, I waited to have my faith in Chase's fidelity to our long relationship restored. I trusted Chase to do the right thing by me.

A police investigation showed a woman in a hoodie with a scarf over her face at the ATM using my never-received debit card...immediately, I called Chase's claims department. They kindly informed me that I would not get my money back because, according to their algorithms, I fit the profile of a credit card cheat. Mind you, I am, once again, a 78-year-old retired New York City public school teacher with no criminal record; but according to Chase, I was the most likely suspect. When asked about the woman with the hoodie and the scarf, Chase suggested that she probably was my accomplice.

After weeks of trying to plead my case while professing my innocence and fidelity to Chase, I was rudely told by the people at Chase's Claims Department in Texas that the case was closed and that I should not bother to call them any more.

Were he a Consumerist reader writing to us for help, we would point Ernest toward the potentially helpful representative at Chase's executive customer service department whose contact information we posted yesterday.

The $6200 Insult: How Chase Manhattan Convinced Me to Finally Move My Money [Huffington Post]

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading Microsoft shows off single game running on Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox

Microsoft shows off single game running on Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gallery: Courier user interface

Continue reading Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': exclusive pictures and details (update: video!)

Microsoft's Courier 'digital journal': exclusive pictures and details (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I had always assumed that McDonalds' hamburger hegemony of the United States, if not the world, was complete. I was wrong. Clearly, I need to leave the Northeast more. The above map shows the dominant burger chains in different parts of the United States. The black dots represent the density of McDonald's, and other colors represent...everyone else.

A Disturbance In The Force [Weather Sealed] (via Fast Company)

Continue reading Artificial photosynthesis could power your house, even if it's not green (video)

Artificial photosynthesis could power your house, even if it's not green (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'who is the best among us'.

'shot at dream'

'frozen harmless'.

'please sing it to me' and 'secret in my mind'.

'composition on a mission'.

Update: Now includes chorus. You won't be disappointed.

Melodius and the Soulforge: Act 1 Cover Art. The album is scheduled to be released 1/5/2010.

Shape people, first attempt to title and number my drawings where I add a person into a random-ish shape.

Scroll Illustration

Melodius Act 1, choir scene interior. "The song by the princess".

Melodius act 1, choir scene exterior. "The guest choir appearance of the princess". Consider whitby abbey-type for modern stype, scale compare.

Melodius act 1, caravan scene

Song cover art for my new song 'The Black Door' on the Melodius and the Soulforge soundtrack.

This black ink drawing depicts an abstracted dense forest with smoke or clouds, and a highly rendered waterfall.

A test drawing for my new uploading facility, including some character sketches for versions of Melodius.

This fractal is a test of some other new custom programs I am running.