So I’m still at Web 2.0 Expo — tired of hearing that yet? My panel went very well yesterday. As for the Expo, I have a lot of short, Twitter-like bursts of impressions. The impressions are about as exciting as Twitter, as well. Fleeting, sometimes interesting, mostly just … impressions.

As weeks are wont to do, this week has not gone the way I expected it. Especially today!

I was geeking my way through a morning session (on a laptop and only half-listening to the actually-quite-entertaining guy going on about “Failure of the Web”,) and ha ha, get this, I get a message from Bank of America telling me that there’s been some unusual activity on my checking account! Yes, smack in the middle of a conference very abuzz about the best methods of mining/gathering/logging/exploiting user data, some asshole gets ahold of my personal numerals and goes on a spending spree! She/she/it cut a swath though stores and restaurants in Las Vegas, and .. a Wal-Mart in Maryland?

And there’s nothing I can do, apart from (the total inconvenience of) closing down my debit card (mid-vacation) and waiting for all the charges to clear before I can get reimbursed for the bogus ones. Hooray!

Here’s where the unlikely endorsements come in. Boy, am I glad I withheld the shit out of my paycheck, my sad paycheck, so that I got a tax refund this year. And boy, am I glad I filed my taxes on time, so that my refunds hit my checking account before Mr/s. Las Vegas (and Maryland?) Big Spender started big spending. Otherwise, I would’ve been a-boing-boing bouncing my legitimate expenditures, and I’d bet you B of A would’ve been loath to reimburse those. Not to mention being in this spendy spendy city without a farthing to my name.

So, our lessons for today:

• Appreciate irony
• Pay the government
• File your taxes on time
• Marvel at how blase you and the rest of the world has become about identity fraud
• Drink a large beer at lunch