Why do I do these things?

This is yet another episode in the "online banking saga."

The lady from Chase Bank called again on Friday to urge me to pay all my bills online blah blah blah. I gave her the whole nine yards of my difficulties, complaints, and experience—that the online banking experience is slow, unreliable, and generally a pain. She promised to stop bothering me.

I felt bad. And I felt curious. So against my better judgment, I did all the stuff to pay my Discover bill online. Sent them over $200. That was Friday. As of Monday, the money had come out of my bank account. Tuesday evening, though, it still hasn't gone into the Discover account. It's stuck somewhere in cyberspace.

So I guess tomorrow I'll call the lady back and ask her to track things down. They do guarantee that it will work, after all.

I think Wallace and Gromit have lost this round. Maybe I needed one more attempt to convince me that the paper check is still king.

One lingering question concerns timing. When I post grades online, the students can see them instantly. The second I click "OK" they can find out how they did. Except for a few poor programs, most e-mail moves within a minute or so too (then there's the one that takes an hour or more). So why on earth should wire transfers of money take a week? If I had mailed the payment to Carol Stream, Illinois (Discover's billing office) on Friday, the check would have been there Monday or Tuesday, and the payment would have posted 24 to 48 hours faster than electronic transfer.

Assuming this one works.