coping with a hit from the falcon

Surfers have money. This is not a misrepresentation of the times, this is not 1965.

Surfers also travel from here and to there, from time to time, to do this and that. It is in our footloose nature to do thus, because only surfers know the feeling.

We are an errant breed of sportsmen, hardened to the cold winds of misfortune, resourceful and shifty. We travel the trackless roads into unmapped wastes where lives are risked and sometimes lost. This is our epigram epitaph ..

We are Children of The Search. The Golden Breed. The Bronzed Aussies. The Billabong Generation. We Rip the Curl. We are Our Kind. Racial and discriminatory, self-centered and vain, we are hostage to fashion and addicted to pleasuring ourselves. We drone on about breaking waves, babes with no clothes and foreign travel. Lots of foreign travel, and computers. And Queensland.

For all these things you need money, and for money you need banks. And banks have a a piece of software they call Falcon that not even they know about.

Falcon is the enemy of travelling surfers, specifically those who journey to the Superbank on the third Tuesday of any month in Autumn after buying an iPad on special at Robina before 12.00 midday, and even more particularly targeted by Falcon are those who do all that and then book into Jupiters on that same day – anytime between 2.00 and 3.00 pm. Deluxe suite, eighth floor, ocean views. Club sandwich on arrival.

These seemingly inconsequential and random events are called criteria, and as such they can be hidden deep within a bible of banking software code, where they lurk like an unsavoury old man at a brothel door, full of nasty surprises.

Matt Savage* (call me Ron) is a noted genY developer, he’s an IT guy and he’s all over software. Falcon has his best work, because it doesn’t, work. Which is how Ron wants it because Ron is a vengeful little bastard. You see Ron gets paid by the criteria; it’s like piecework, like if you were a grape picker you get paid for each bucket you fill. They used to be fourpence each in the day, paid every Friday and pissed away by Sunday. But that’s another story.

Ron filled this latter-day bucket.

Scenario:

July 24, 2013. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Byron Bay. 11.00 am. Front desk. Today.

A fellow waits for a wave-over from one of the busy little women who work the enquiry stations. Where they wait with just a hint of impatience for you to stroll over, because you are, after all, just another fucking deadbeat customer with bad breath and dandruff and only ten bucks in the cheque account. Not to mention the $15,000 owing on the credit card. They should hand out loser badges at the front door to people like you.

Rick is next in the queue, he gets the next wave. He walks over to the purse-lipped little woman who must have been born with shit on the liver back in 1930 she looks so backed up. Rick though is ready, his lines are rehearsed.

‘Can I help you?’ She mutters.

‘I would like to disable Falcon.’ He says.

{Note:} Falcon is a worldwide protective neural network licensed by FICO and employed by banks to protect customers from fraudulent credit card use.

Rick stands back, and the woman’s tight little smile dissolves into a grim slit. She says, ‘Pardon me?’

Rick is ready, and out it comes in a measured and confident statement.

‘I want to buy a computer at Robina, and book into a room at Jupiter’s Casino, next week, and I would prefer it if your bank resisted the unsympathetic urge to block my credit card status for doing so.’

Her eyes fade to dull, and she moves away from Rick a step or two, backwards. This is Byron Bay after all, and he has a beard, and nothing he says makes any sense. These front desk people are trained to deal with street-life.

‘I can’t do anything about that.’ she says.

‘Of course you can.’

‘No I can’t, it’s the computer program.’

Ron used to work for Apple up at their Robina store in Queensland before he took on a job coding with FICO. Apple had given him three weeks trial before the door hit him on the arse on his way out. The Apple store manager was a professional roulette player at Jupiters and Ron’s supervisor was a surfer. Kirra lad.

Issues you see, that and an IT guy. Some things you cannot govern.

* There is no genY software developer called Matt Savage, it all came to me in a dream. FICO is real and the meaning of Isaac is ‘ He who will laugh.’