Some of you know that Norm Ornstein is a senior mentor and friend. He just tweeted out that his dog Henry escaped at 18th and Church in the Dupont Circle in Kalorama area of DC. SO KEEP EYES OUT FOR HIM!!!!!
If you are in the Dupont Circle in Kalorama area, our dog Henry escaped at 18th and Church. Please let me know if you see him pic.twitter.com/wyQ20XKcqc
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) April 20, 2022
Update!!!
We have not found Henry yet, He was in a van on his way to being boarded for a couple of days when he jumped out at 18th and Church sts. Sighted by a work crew at Connecticut and Q over 30 minutes ago, no sightings since. Please keep a lookout!
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) April 20, 2022
If you see this good boy, you know what to do!!!!
Thanks in advance.
Open thread!
zhena gogolia
Aww, I hope they find him soon.
sab
Please keep us posted!
Elizabelle
Henry, go home. Â And stay out of traffic, dog.
sab
I hope this ends well. My husband found a stray dog wandering a very busy street and in the process we met a very cool local judge (dog’s owner) that we never would have met otherwise. And got to hear her swear at her teenage kids (eta : who let the dog out).
wetzel
Schnauzers like to roam. A determined Schnauzer will escape any fence.
I’ve been friends with two dogs I knew were geniuses. One was our Schnauzer, Bessie, who we had when our kids were little, and the other is our lab border collie mix, Blue, who is seven. The Schnauzer only wanted to watch over the children. Her genius came to the fore when one time one of our toddlers went over the fence, and years later when the younger brother went through the front door. How she was able to communicated directly and nonverbally to me about the situation will always be a wonder.
With the other one it’s all about learning together while you’re playing. A border collie lab mix loves to train to do acrobatic things. It’s a totally different kind of dog genius. Playing with the ball is a kind of artistic experience. It’s how we communicate.
Schnauzers will look right at you and you know they are a person.
I hope they find their good boy soon. He’ll be able to stay safe from cars. He won’t be able to keep from getting caught by Animal Control. When Bessie would get free and go on a walk-about, she’d turn up with a neighbor or at animal control within a few days. I had to splice chain-link into the bottom of the fence and sink that into a cement trough the whole perimeter lol.
Sloane Ranger
I hope some good person finds him soon. Does he have his human’s contact info on him?
Adam L Silverman
Here’s the latest update from Norm, which I’ve also put up top in the post:
ET the Librarian
I live in DC not in that area but put sent it to the local Popville twitter for more eyes.
TinRoofRusted
My daughter lives in the area though closer to the zoo. Â She is at work but said when she gets off she will go for a walk and look for the naughty boy.
raven
Yesterday little “Birdie” escaped and a neighbor posted that she had her on her porch, since I knew the owners, I jumped in the truck a headed over. Just as I got there I saw here owner, Isabelle, walking toward the house so I stooped and told her where the pup was. I returned home and posted “Saved by the Belle”!!!
Fair Economist
GM recently switched its credit card (which I have) from Capital One to Goldman Sachs. You’d think the vampire squid company that’s trying to take over the world would at least be competent; but no; it’s been absolutely amateur hour.
First, when they started the switch they canceled all repeat transactions, including automatic payments, and essentially *everybody* with the card had to create a new account online. But, their software was defective and couldn’t actually process new accounts. Testing, what’s that? So everybody was calling in to try to figure out what was going on and the calling center was *swamped* with multihour wait times (ask me how I know!)
Oh, and did I mention their hold music is Eine Kleine Nachtmusik? Which would be fine except that it restarts every 30 seconds, and that’s an aural version of Chinese water torture after 5 minutes, never mind an hour and a half. Again, ask me how I know!
When I finally got through, I was trying to figure out how to connect to their site. Note, they didn’t tell me that there was no point in connecting because the system didn’t work; so I spent about a half hour online trying different solutions the agent proposed. Eventually I figured out *on my own* that the default Mac proxy settings caused Goldman Sachs’ computer to decide I was out of the US (which they won’t allow onto their site) and I had to disable them. Note, there must have been tens of thousands of callers with the same problem as me and they still hadn’t figured it out.
I don’t know what the tens or hundreds of thousands of GM card holders who don’t live in the US are supposed to do. Again, great planning on Goldman Sachs’ part!
So I finally got onto the site, set up my account – and discovered that their software had bugs and I couldn’t actually do it (like the millions of others who had already tried). Which the representative I still had online knew, but hadn’t told me.
Next week I got an email that the system had been fixed, logged on, and set up my account. OK, fine, and my payments went through on schedule.
Today I logged back on to check my transactions. Except I can’t get my 2-factor code on my phone. So I log on with email verification – and my phone # is off by one digit. Verification, what’s that? So I try to change the number – and NOW it insists on verifying and the verification HAS TO BE THE OLD PHONE NUMBER WHICH IS WRONG. No option for email verification – even though other functions allow it. Arggghh!
So I state my problem to the chatbot. The chatbot spews two pages of boilerplate unrelated to my problem so I ask for a representative. She comes on line but the replies are V E R Y S L O W. 5 minutes for each reply. After half an hour of back and forth she says it can’t be fixed online and I have to call customer service. COULDN’T THE CHATBOT HAVE TOLD ME THAT! Or at least the rep on the first answer?
So back to customer service – which still has the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik aural water torture. Months, and they still haven’t fixed it. Fortunately they’re no longer totally swamped and it’s only a 10 minutes wait. So I explain the problem, and the rep puts me on hold for a bit. Da da Da da Daaaa, da Da da Da da DAAA da DUM! (click, repeat)
I may never be able to listen to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for pleasure again.
She comes back to tell me I have to speak to a DIFFERENT representative. Who, fortunately, is just verifying the change and now it’s done.
This would be unacceptable for a local bank, never mind which is *hypothetically* one of the world’s leading investment banks. The 2008 clusterfuck seems much less surprising now. Let’s also say I lack confidence in Goldman Sachs’ fraud detection abilities, which Capital One did very well, and which comes up about every other year with my account.
Bah.
WaterGirl
@Fair Economist: Maybe it’s time to switch to a different credit card?
wetzel
@Fair Economist: You get that time off in purgatory. You’ll get to leave the big rock behind and play fusball and schmooze in the hut with the other penitents for a little while. It’s great. They play Eine Kleine Nachtmusic.
Villago Delenda Est
If I see Henry in Tracktown, USA, I think it’s necessary for Norm to loan Henry to the Jet Propulsion Lab for studies. If Henry’s energy can be harnessed, we’ll be in the clear for renewable energy until controlled fusion arrives.
Villago Delenda Est
@sab: This sounds immensely entertaining!
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist: Â I would cancel that card so fast. Â Only thing that will get their attention.
You can always go back later, if having a GM card is really important to you. Â Although, I realize you might have a lot of bonus points attached to the card. Â Which they are counting on.
Your experience is deplorable.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
Bad customer service seems to be par for the course with modern management theory. They see customer service as a bunch of costs without associated benefits, so their goal is to reduce that cost as much as possible. They don’t seem to recognize the connection between good customer service and customer retention.
With many businesses, there’s also a sad tendency to provide different customer service depending on who the customer is. If you’re just a credit card holder, they’ll do the absolute minimum for you. But if you had a multi-million dollar account with them, they’d be much friendlier.
Alison Rose ???
@Villago Delenda Est: Okay, at first I didn’t notice the reply name and I was like, this seems like an inappropriate comment.
sab
@Villago Delenda Est: Not really. He was a nice dog, except it turns out he doesn’t like cats and we have have five, so chaos ensued in our house. He was nice to our dog. He actually had an i.d. tag, so we called his home. Nobody there, so we googled the owner and found out she was a judge. Husband called her and got her clerk. She called back and husband got the expletive deleted comment about her kids. About an hour and a half she came over and got the dog.
dnfree
@WaterGirl: My husband has the same GM credit card and has encountered problems as well with Goldman-Sachs. It’s a credit card that specifically offers points toward buying a GM vehicle. It’s possible to have $1000 or more saved up in your rewards, and that’s not transferable to another card. In the past we have saved $1000 or more when buying a new car.
Kristine
Saw the tweet.
Hope Henry is found soon.
hilts
Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann are the Lennon and McCartney of think tank scholars and their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks is their Sgt Pepper.
Here’s hoping that Norm and his dog are quickly re-united.
The Moar You Know
I heard an interview with Ornstein about 15 years ago on the radio, back when I used to listen to radio, and he adopts senior dogs with only a little bit of time to live.  That’s a tough thing to do emotionally, and it’s God’s own work, so bless him for that. Hope he gets his current doggie back soon.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Back in 1992 Al Franken hosted Comedy Central’s coverage of the Republican national convention (a precursor to the daily show). He had numerous great co hosts, including Roy Blount Jr., Calvin Trillin, Lawrence O’ Donnell, and Norm Ornstein. To say the least, they were hilarious.  At one point they acted out Marilyn Quayle’s cheap, pulp, barely literal, romance novel set during Cuba revolution.  They built this jungle stage with everyone playing one of the ridiculous characters, with Ornstein wearing khaki rags, as a guerilla on the run, who’s desperately tries to recruit his rich love interest and he played to the hilt (eg Gene Wilder in The Producers).
It was a delight watching an academic rise to the occasion, in an untried profession.
Ivan X
@Fair Economist: I think the problem is GS is relatively new to credit cards and don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Apple Card was their first and it’s been a modest success, but I’m sure they had Cupertino breathing down their necks at every moment ensuring that the user experience was up to the level their customers expect and pay for. Less likely with GM.
There is no particular reason to stay loyal to one credit card, especially when there are so many welcome bonuses to be claimed on other ones. And your daily spending patterns are likely to yield greater rewards with the right card (or combo of cards). I can’t imagine that GM’s card is anything that noteworthy in terms of earnings or rewards.
J R in WV
@dnfree:
But, but — it has to be a GM product, right? The corp that killed Saab? Cancel that card ASAP !!
wetzel
At least with credit cards it is not as bad as with an exchange health insurance company.
There the problem is not that customer service is a low priority. It is anti-service. Positive wrecking. They will tell you not to fax the form, but to mail it, and two weeks later, there is a failure of the US Mail. They do not have it. Can you fax it? Oh but that wasn’t necessary. You need to mail that form. So you call and the phone system is purpose built by game theory geniuses from Sloan business school to give you hope and then destroy it over and over again so that you will just let it all go by the wayside.
sab
Ornstein posted on his twitter account that Henry came home on his own at 4 a.m.
SWMBO
@sab: ​
Yay! Yay! Yay!
https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1517138722856206337?s=20&t=htmVq81T5rE1dSQAteJKNA