Scottrade and Bank of America Wouldn't Give Me My Money! Grrrr!

I recently decided to sell some stocks in a regular Scottrade account to pay some expenses as part of the financial restructuring after my loan payback last month.  I had never cashed out stock from an online brokerage before, and I assumed that, after the stock transaction cleared, it would be like any online account - 3 business days to transfer funds electronically.  I needed the money to pay a cheque that I expected to hit my bank account on January 15th, so I thought I was in good time when I sold the stocks on January 3rd.  I was wrong, wrong, wrong.  Here is the actual timeline:

Day 1 - Monday - Stocks sold.
Day 4 - Thursday - Stocks clear.  I call Scottrade before noon to order my cheque.  They say it will be sent out that day.
Day 8 - Monday - My cheque arrives.  Scottrade has an office less than 30 miles away from me, and it took them 4 days to get me my cheque? WTF?
Day 9 - Tuesday - My cheque goes out in the mail to my bank, which has no branches in my state.
Day 16 - Tuesday - My bank acknowledges receipt of my cheque, but won't free funds until the next business day. It should not take a week to send a cheque from LA to FL; my post office is usually very good, so I am guessing that the problem is somewhere in FL.
Day 17 - Wednesday -My cheque clears at my bank and I have actual possession of my money.

Luckily for me, the cheque I thought was going to hit on Day 13 (Saturday) hit on Day 18 instead, so I wasn't overdrawn, but that was the closest to an overdraft on my checking account I have been since before I graduated high school.  Not where I like my finances to be!

Lessons I learned from this:
(1) EF money cannot all be kept in brokerage accounts in case I should need cash quickly.  I'm not sure what my ratio of brokerage accounts to savings needs to be, but the 100 to 0 ratio that I am rocking this month is obviously not a good idea.
(2) I need a new bank.  If I'm going to have all the inconvenience of an internet bank, I might as well have some of the advantages.  I bank with Bank of America because it made sense when we were moving every few years all over the country and I was traveling all over the world.  Now that our only foreseeable moves are within the United States, and our travel is strictly recreational, it's time to get a grown-up bank account.  Do you have an online bank that you would recommend?

I < 3 Netflix Suggestions

Netflix's instant play offerings are a bit sparse in the "Hollywood blockbusters made in the last 20 years" category.  However, it has a phenomenally good suggestion system.  To date, I have rated only 167 movies, yet probably 65% of the suggestions I get are  spot on.  My favorite part of Netflix, in fact, is going to my suggestion page and finding new favorite movies that I've never heard of before I clicked "play now".  Here are 5 of my favorites that I have discovered in the last six months since I got Netflix:

(1) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo  I don't live under a rock, so I had heard of the books, but frankly, I didn't think they were my thing at all.  I still haven't read them, but this movie and the sequal, The Girl Who Played With Fire were so terrific that I wanted to go see The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest while it was in theaters. Unfortunately, the nearest showing was 6 hours away, so I'll have to wait until the 25th to get it on Netflix.  They're just basic action flicks, but done with such style and panache that you forget that you are watching them in Sweedish with English subtitles.

(2) Departures Set in modern Japan, it tells the story of a cellist who discovers that he doesn't quite have what it takes musically to make it as a professional, and ends up on a career path that requires him to decide what is really important in his life.  It won the 2009 Academy Award for best foreign film; in Japanese with English subtitles.

(3) Timer In a world where almost everyone knows how much time remains before they meet their soul mate, Oona's timer remains stubbornly blank.  Although it's billed as a rom-com, it was more thoughtful than I expected, and the amorous adventures of Oona and her family kept me riveted.

(4) A Walk To Beautiful Produced by NOVA, this documentary about women seeking treatment for obstetric fistula uses no camera tricks to pull your heartstrings, but is no less moving than Born into Brothels.  Due to the nature of the medical condition the women depicted suffer from, I can't recommend this movie for children or those with weak stomachs.  It's mostly in English, with subtitles when the women speak in their local dialects.

(5) Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog I confess that, as a fan of The Guild, I had heard of this before I saw it on Netflix.  But I hadn't gotten around to seeing it when it was free (and I don't visit pirate websites), so I had pretty much forgotten about it until it popped up in my suggestions queue.  Dr. Horrible struggles to get into the evil super-villians' club and win the love of Penny, despite his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer.  It's both hilarious and thought-provoking.  Side effects can include singing the "Bad Horse Chorus" sotto voce all day.

Charmin Basic is not a good deal

 Warning: toilet paper review ahead.  But this product was so inferior that I needed to share.

Chez Goat, we have sensitive heinies.  Toilet paper is one area in which an ounce of prevention saves a pound of doctor visits, so we don't get frugal.  Mr. Goat insists on Charmin, and, a year or so after it came out, I always bought:

I found that it held together better than the regular Charmin, while maintaining the requisite softness.

I was in the grocery store the other day, and they were having a big sale on a new brand of Charmin,  Charmin Basic.

I correctly deduced that it was a cousin of Tide Basic, a slightly cheaper product designed to mimic the original somewhat and retain customers looking for a bargain.   In my case, I paid nearly $3 less than a comparably-sized 12 pack of Charmin Ultra Strong ($6 vs $9).

It sounded like a bargain, but it wasn't.  When I got home and tried it, it was still as soft as Charmin, but it was so flimsy that I had to use three times the amount that I normally do.   So I paid 1/3 less, but I am really losing money on the deal.  Next time, I'll go back to buying the regular paper.

Sold my first book at Half

Sold my first book on Half yesterday, and my second today. Both were Anita Blake novels, go figure. I find it a bit embarrassing now to admit that I ever liked the series (Q:How much multiple-partner-vampire-werewolf-other sex do you need to put in a book? A:Enough to cover the complete lack of any plot or character development) but I guess they are still popular.

So a double win for me - I get them off my bookshelf and a little cash in my pocket.

Not so sure about WALL-E anymore

OK, so they reviews of WALL-E have been wonderful, and I usually like Pixar movies anyway, so my husband and I were planning to go, once the crowds have cleared out.

Today, however, I get this movie review from Mises.org: WALL-E: Economic Ignorance and the War on Modernity For anyone who doesn't know Mises.org, they are an Austrian economics think tank. I found out about them last year while campaigning for Ron Paul, and I subscribed to their newsletter, which generally has articles with titles like The Non-Issue that Should be an Issue (federal deficit spending) and Commodity Prices and Inflation: What's the Connection? Basically, their articles give me long words that I can use with other people to describe my core beliefs. And they are not usually reviewing movies.

Apparently, according to this review (and not in any of the previews I saw), there are people in WALL-E. Corpulent, complacent people run by the man, who, in this case, is represented by a large corporation. The Mises reviewer takes issue with the idea that humans could exist for seven hundred years without any innovation whatsoever. He also takes issue with the idea that the salvation of the human race is a return to subsistence farming. But his big problem is the use of the movie as a vehicle to feed children "environmentalist, anticapitalist, and antitechnological propaganda."

If he's right, and it's that blatant, I probably am not going to enjoy it much. The farm I work on is a grass finished beef and grass fed goat operation; we're concerned about the ethical and ecological implications of our current mainstream meat operations. But I'm a Libertarian-leaning Republican who used to have a day job in the legal field, so I am pretty tired of brainless "capitalism is bad, the State must save us from ourselves before global warming destroys us all!" ideology. I don't think I want to pay my hard-earned dollars just to get angry at the screen. Maybe this is one to get from the Library after all.