all right well like i told you before and you're talking about credit cards um-hum we put ours up i mean i had a delightful evening one night cutting a bunch of those suckers up um i wish i had well you should try it well i it was done for me after a while i had a uh i had a business going and this was back in the eighties i don't know if you remember the gold and silver prices and all that but uh i had a coin shop and everything was going great while gold and silver was up and it started falling yeah so i started paying expenses and stuff on my credit cards and things got worse and worse and finally boom you lost your business oh God what a nightmare yep yeah yeah it was i ended up going into bankruptcy you know it was one of those things uh oh it'll get better next week you know things will pick up and so there i was in old bankruptcy court well you weren't charging gold and silver were you you can't do that can you oh yeah yeah oh you can oh yeah yeah i was buying from other dealers and uh you know they take payment any way they can get it oh that's a nightmare yeah course on on stuff that i was on merchandise that i was buying on cards it was i was getting the money back because i was selling it i wasn't buying you know just to hold onto it um but it was things like you know rent and phone bills and advertising and all that other good stuff that ate them all up um so well i remember before i got married you know when you graduate from college they'll send you all those credit card applications you know of course you fill them all out because you're honored right and uh um-hum um-hum sure i had stuff for like Sanger Harris and you know it got up like to couple of hundred dollars and i thought well that's okay cause all they wanted was ten dollars a month right i wasn't thinking a thing about it um-hum yes that's the way they suck you in yeah i was just stupid and every time they had a sale there i was because you know got get such good bargains um-hum um-hum and i don't know well just today in the mail i got uh i got got my guaranteed acceptance by uh American Express oh yeah we've been getting those yeah i went back to school and got my Master's and they started sending those things to me again yeah as soon as your a graduate student they get your name yeah they did and uh course i guess i guess i've been purged from their records i used to have an American Express uh back when i had my business i got one uh-huh and they they goofed up bad on my first on my very first bill because i was using the American Express strictly for the travel expenses yeah and the bill would come in and i'd pay it and the very first bill i paid it and then i got this nasty letter from them saying you're overdue pay so i i said well it just crossed in the mail so i didn't do anything about it Two weeks later i get another letter even nastier and said we're going to turn this over to our attorneys if you don't pay and i looked at that and i said uh-huh so by this time my checks had come back from the bank so i made a copy of the check that they had cashed hum attached it to their letter and sent them a nasty letter with the card cut in little bitty pieces saying thanks but no thanks and now they weren't check in yeah they were i tell you they don't talk about they're charging that enormous fee every year now what is it now it's up to fifty five on the gold card it's eighty five for the Optima oh i'm sorry fifty fifty what do you mean fifty five you mean fifty five dollars yeah for the green card and it but then what's the interest well now that's the card see and interest is like eighteen or something oh yeah yeah it's um well of course on the green card you have to pay it when the bill comes in so there isn't any but on the Optima card it's um let's see right now it's running at about it's not too bad it's actually it's about sixteen and a half percent which is pretty good as far as credit cards go yeah well credit cards well they're dangerous you know my parents don't hardly use them hum-um mine don't either mine don't either they have um my mom has a uh has a MasterCard and a Visa card and that's it i've got all my gas cards because i don't want to carry money around i'll do that yeah yeah now i i do use gas cards now Impact is kind of bad too though yeah yeah yeah you know especially if you get forget to record those little suckers oh yeah exactly uh plastic is just too easy i mean that's the that's the whole problem with it um have uh-huh well and you're tempted if you've got cash a little bit of cash and you don't have enough for the purchase right yeah of course you got to charge it and keep your cash sure naturally that's i got in all kinds of trouble doing that what what are you saying oh uh my husband says i might buy it but i i don't really usually consider that an option well maybe that's how we got in trouble having having having been out of the credit game for some years now i've i've gotten used to either paying in cash or not getting it and uh yeah but it's hard isn't it well it is but i i i'm kind of uh grateful for the experience because it's taught me a lot of restraint uh well it makes you feel good when you whip out the cash instead of your plastic yeah exactly i i um i just went out and got a new VCR yesterday with cash with cash and it it's do you work with TI no no i wish i did no yeah you could have got a discount couldn't you yeah i could use a discount i have to wait for the things to go on sale but there's always a sell yeah especially on electronic goods yeah especially now what is that thing i saw Circuit Circuit world or something oh Circuit City Circuit City have you been in that yeah they they're not their prices aren't that terrific they they used to be but they've gotten they've got to pay for all that national advertising now oh it's national um-hum i think i've seen two around Dallas yeah they're they're all over the country now they uh they they used to be good i remember when they first opened up they did have good bargains well what else i don't know if you have a place there called uh or you probably have something similar we call it Service Merchandise yeah in Garland you you got Service Merchandise yeah it used to be Service Merchandise was the place to go uh-huh and uh Circuit City came along and that was the place to go to get your TVs and washer and dryers and refrigerators and all that and then after the years went by they just sort of kept creeping up on price and actually Service Merchandise is cheaper than them now so so so much for Circuit City sure okay what else can we talk about who do you work for i don't i'm a graduate student i'm a professional student we were talking about that just today it is it's it's great we could be just lifelong students it is great i love it where are you going to school NC State what's that uh North Carolina State so you're on Spring Break not yet ours don't ours doesn't start until uh next week so where are you where am i yeah what do you mean where oh in Raleigh oh okay yeah good ole the burgeoning metropolis of Raleigh yeah what what a dead place yeah is it i've got a nice little business at home and i sit around and tinker with that most of the time so what are you getting your degree in um uh human factors and what do you do with it not a thing well what is it uh its it's it's really looking at systems and design systems and seeing how people interact with them huh so it's sociology it's well it's more psychology and engineering uh my my master's is in industrial engineering so you're working on your doctorate yeah oh lord yeah PhD in human factors oh that'll that'll sound wonderful won't it well get you a little name plaque oh yeah IBM uh i mean uh a lot of people use human factors folks but IBM is what i'm looking at right now aren't aren't they laying off several thousand people they might be but not at not at the human factors level well i heard it on the news today i could swear it was IBM there there um no as a matter of fact the IBM right here or in Carey which is a little suburb of Raleigh just just hired one more human factors person doggone it if they'd just waited a little bit longer it could have been me hum how much longer do you have um i'm i'm i'm going into thesis or going into the uh dissertation this summer and get that done this summer uh i'm going to start this summer i probably won't finish it until the end of the year but uh i'm i'm trying to get a uh ooh a uh intern position with IBM right now so that i can find an area to do my dissertation in it's hard finding an area to do a dissertation in this field because you but why there been so much work done already yeah that's that and and it's it's limited application in some respects um consider in the area that we're in here there's a lot of places that use human factors people most