Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Mickey Mantle's Offseason Antics with Billy Martin


This is a true story Mickey Mantle told at a Yankees Benefit dinner after his retirement;

During the offseason one year Mickey Mantle invited his manager Billy Martin to Michigan to go hunting in the country. Since Mickey was from the area he told Billy to wait in the truck while he went and asked a local farmer if he could hunt on his land for the day. The farmer says "Sure Mick, but can you do me a favor in return? I've got this cow that's dying and I need to put it to rest. Could you handle that for me?" Mickey agreed and when leaving the farmhouse he decided to take this opportunity to play a prank on Billy. He approached the truck visibly upset, aggressively ripped open the door, grabbed his shotgun and headed for the barn. This prompted Billy to scramble out of the truck after Mickey with his rifle in hand shouting, "Mickey what's wrong? What's going on?" To which Mickey replied, "That old son of a bitch won't let us hunt on his land but this'll show him!" Mickey then shot the dying cow in the head with his shotgun. Then he heard BANG! BANG! Two more gun shots immeadiately after his. Startled, he turned around to discover Billy had shot two of the farmer's horses. Stunned Mickey looked at Billy Martin who said, "We'll show him Mick!"


Student Loans Blow

I just spent 30 minutes (of company time), signing up for CitiBank Student Loans online payment process as well as PNC Bank's new Virtual Wallet account, in effort to more easily make payments. I gotta say it feels both mature and terrible at the same time.

I acknowledge that it has been 4 months since graduation and I have been one of the lucky ones to find a job and start to collect an income (however small it may be), but seriously all these online automations and programs just make it seem like its too easy for a big bank to reach on into my account and take a nice chunk out for student loans. If I set the entire system to be automated I can literally make it so that as soon as a paycheck gets deposited into my bank account, enough is extracted to go directly to CitiBank for my loans. Naturally I am leaving that box unchecked for now.

I guess this is just modern technology making a normally mundane and painstaking process extremely easy and practically instant. The funny part is I honestly think it will help me repay my loans faster than my older brothers pace (4 years out & still in debt), but for some reason I just can't shake this feeling of being violated and tricked. Like PNC, with its cool orange and shiny logos are just distracting me as in the background of their highly appealing user interface there is a master Excel file pulling money from me slowly but surely. Anyway I just wanted to make my first blog post about entering the real world and expressing the uneasy feeling that comes with it. Also once the account is activated I'll be sure to post feedback on the new PNC Virtual Wallet features in case anyones interested.