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		<header>
			<h1>Another study day lost</h1>
			<p>Day 00552: Friday, 2016 September 09</p>
		</header>
<p>
	Current countdowns:
</p>
<ul>
	<li>20 unfinished weblog entries in <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/">July</a></li>
	<li>10 days until mobile voice/<abbr title="Short Message Service">SMS</abbr> service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>40 days until mobile data service with my current carrier ends</li>
	<li>37 days until my old domain registrar can no longer counter my charge dispute</li>
</ul>
<p>
	I woke up this morning and I knew what my paper topic for <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span> needs to be: free software business models! The assignment requirements state that I must choose a topic that relates to my area of study or professional field.
	Software business models of any type should fit this requirement, but this topic also allows me to do two other things.
	First and foremost, this gives me an excuse and a chance to research free software business models.
	In all honesty, I&apos;d love to get into software development, but I refuse to lock down my source code and take away the freedom of others.
	If this research goes well, it might give me some ideas as to how to make a free software business model work for me.
	Second, this topic will result in a paper that&apos;s actually worth having.
	I&apos;m going to save any papers that I write for school and keep them here on my website, so having at least some of those papers express ideas that I actually want to convey will be nice.
	My other paper for the week is a bit political, which could play to my advantage as well.
	This second paper assignment is to write about an incident in which the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund messed up, then explain why I do or do not think that the organization in question can consistently provide assistance in an objective, unbiased and responsible manner.
	There&apos;s more to that paper of course, but it all boils down to if these organizations should be kept and how they should be reformed if they are.
	It&apos;s not exactly the direction that I&apos;d normally head in my written work, but I might be able to convince people to see things my way.
	I can try to improve the world, even if only slightly.
</p>
<p>
	I tried the proprietary Wi-Fi hotspot configuration interface application on my two other locked-down devices.
	It worked on one, but not the other.
	Much to my surprise, the one that worked wasn&apos;t the one that I expected to work.
	One of the devices lacks a hotspot configuration option in the main interface, so I figured that this application should work.
	It didn&apos;t.
	The other device has a built-in hotspot option available and visible, but it&apos;s locked down.
	The device checks with the original carrier, and if you&apos;re one their most expensive or least expensive plan (or ostensibly if you&apos;re using another carrier), the device won&apos;t activate the hotspot.
	I assumed that the hotspot configuration application would fail, as the hotspot feature would still refuse to activate based on my plan.
	However, it seems that it isn&apos;t the hotspot feature itself that&apos;s locked down, it&apos;s only the interface needed to turn it on! The application works as well as it did on the device that I configured with it yesterday.
</p>
<p>
	Speaking of the mobile that I set up as a hotspot yesterday, it&apos;s started malfunctioning on me.
	Though it still showed that cell service was available, it wouldn&apos;t actually transmit any data over it.
	Neither machines connected to the hotspot nor the applications on the device itself could get any messages through.
	I thought that my carrier had cut the connection due to finding out that I was tethering against their policies, but the <abbr title="subscriber identity module">SIM</abbr> card still worked on the other device that I got turned into a hotspot this morning.
	Having this other device take over the hotspot duties gave me time to debug later when my mother was away and unable to use the connection anyway.
	My guess is that some application that I disabled was necessary for cell communication.
	I didn&apos;t have time to test and see exactly which application was necessary, but I performed a factory reset (re-enabling all disabled applications), then disabled every application that both the device would allow me to disable and that had an actual application name (and not just a package name).
	SO far, the device seems to be functional again, though when I get a chance, I should maybe try disabling some of the nameless applications and see which ones aren&apos;t needed.
</p>
<p>
	My mother is complaining about how slow the Internet connection is over my mobile.
	I know that it&apos;s bad, but it&apos;s better than they&apos;d have without my help, right? I&apos;m doing the best that I can.
	What more do they want me to do? We don&apos;t have the money for a real Internet connection, not to mention that they&apos;re not the one paying for this connection.
	I can only do what is in my power to do.
</p>
<p>
	Trying to see if my new T-Mobile plan that I&apos;ll activate in forty days will include enough high-speed Internet access, I tried to check on the amount of data transfer that we&apos;ve used this month.
	Unfortunately, that option no longer seems to be available in the Cricket Web interface.
	I did, however, see that Cricket has a new plan available for ten dollars less than my current plan.
	The catch is that this plan doesn&apos;t qualify for the automatic payments discount, so it&apos;d only save me five dollars each moth.
	That puts that plan at the same price as the T-Mobile plan that I&apos;m switching to, but with only a fifth of the high-speed data transfer per month.
	Obviously, I&apos;m still switching service providers.
	As an experiment though, seeing as my high-speed data transfer for the month has already been exhausted for the month, I tried downgrading my plan.
	Instead of applying the change to next month, they applied it right away, resulting in an &quot;overpayment&quot; on my part.
	They prorated this month&apos;s service, and credited me $3.67 <abbr title="United States Dollars">USD</abbr> to my account.
	Seeing as I&apos;m not continuing service with them, they now technically own me this money, though they&apos;re not going to hand it over.
	Considering the fact that we&apos;ve already used up all of the high-speed data transfer of the higher plan though, I was going to let it slide.
	After all, downgrading th eplan had changed nothing for us, or so I thought.
</p>
<p>
	After a bit, I realized the foolishness of my plan-switching.
	Next month, due to a strange configuration on Cricket&apos;s part, I&apos;m going to get a full month of extra data transfer, assuming that they haven&apos;t fixed their system in the last year and a half.
	As I&apos;m not getting that money back, I might as well make tha last payed month of service use the original plan, as that would allow us to have an extra gigabyte and a half of high-speed data transfer during the gratis month of service.
	Cricket hadn&apos;t updated my high-speed data connection usage bar on the Web interface, so it looked like they were still keeping track of the two and a half gigabytes of high-speed data transfer that we&apos;d used, but when I went back to set the plan back to how I&apos;d had it before, I saw that they&apos;d completely reset my data connection usage bar.
	Not only were they crediting my account, they were giving me more high-speed data transfer allowance!
</p>
<p>
	Apparently, my mother&apos;s interview yesterday in Harrisburg was a sham.
	They already knew who they were going to hire before they even held interviews.
	Unfortunately, due to red tape regulations, they&apos;re required to hold interviews before finalizing their decision, so like several other schools have done, they wasted the time of interviewees that were never candidates, getting their hopes up for nothing.
	Now my mother is ticked off and is lashing out at Vanessa, Cyrus, and I.
</p>
<p>
	Our mother is now blaming Vanessa for their lack of a job.
	They say that if Vanessa had spoken up and admitted that they&apos;d wanted to stay in Coos Bay, out mother wouldn&apos;t have quit their job and they&apos;d still be employed.
	We wouldn&apos;t be living in the house that we&apos;re trying to sell, so we could get that cleaned up properly, and we&apos;d have it on the market to sell by now.
	However, it was never Vanessa that said anything about wanting to leave Coos Bay.
	Our mother quit their job because it was our mother that was miserable.
	It took them seven years to find a stable job, but they threw that away because working in that school was an awful experience.
	Somehow, they thought that this time, it&apos;d take less time to find a teaching job this time and that they&apos;d be able to find their new job over the summer.
	Vanessa didn&apos;t speak up, true, but that only means that Vanessa didn&apos;t stand in the way of their decision to quit.
	Vanessa didn&apos;t want our mother to be stuck in a miserable job.
	To be clear, I I don&apos;t blame our mother for quiting their job, but in the end, it was their decision, not Vanessa&apos;s.
	To blame Vanessa is to demand that Vanessa be able to see the future.
</p>
<p>
	Our mother also freaked out at Cyrus, and I, complaining that our bedroom was cluttered.
	Of course it&apos;s cluttered.
	We&apos;re storing sorted items here (mostly boxes, but also a large pile of blankets) that we don&apos;t have space elsewhere in the house.
	Are they our items? No! Is there anywhere better to put them? No! Cyrus and I spent a good portion of the day moving these items out of the bedroom, but it was quite counterproductive.
	We&apos;ve had to mix these items with items in a couple of other stacks in the house, undoing the fruits of our sorting efforts.
	This is just idiotic.
</p>
<p>
	While I was moving things out of the bedroom, I also did a bit of sorting of my own stuff.
	I&apos;ve gotten rid of more items that I didn&apos;t want to part with in hopes of both becoming more mobile and giving our mother less reason to be on our case.
	For the record, this is the third iteration of my reduction of stuff, and I don&apos;t have much more that I can give up.
</p>
<p>
	I threw out the packaging and "terms and conditions" booklets for my mobiles, but kept the instruction manuals for now.
	The boxes are protective, but they also take up a lot of space.
	I also got rid of four of my desktop machine hard drives, keeping only four.
	One of these four is broken, but I don&apos;t know which.
	I&apos;m almost certain that the other three hard drives function.
	Once we&apos;re in a more stable situation with an actual Internet connection, I should be able to test them better.
	Likewise, I&apos;ve gotten rid of all of my desktop machine <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr>.
	The <abbr title="random-access memory">RAM</abbr> could come in handy, but there&apos;s not much that I have left to part with, so it&apos;s got to go.
	Also while going through stuff, much to my horror, I found that my server is missing its Wi-Fi card.
	When I <a href="/en/weblog/2016/07-July/16">moved the Wi-Fi card from my mother&apos;s old machine to their new machine</a>, it wasn&apos;t my mother&apos;s old machine! It was <strong>*my server*</strong>!! I now don&apos;t have a Wi-Fi card for my server.
	This isn&apos;t good, and I&apos;m not sure how to get the Wi-Fi card back now that my mother&apos;s dependent on it.
	I&apos;m almost certain that I&apos;ll need it back if and when we get a home network set up at our new home.
</p>
<p>
	Our mother is enrolling Vanessa in an online high school, despite the fact that Vanessa wants to attend a brick and mortar school and see actual people in person.
	At first, I thought that our mother didn&apos;t have Vanessa&apos;s best interests at heart, but upon hearing more of the story, I understood the problem.
	It&apos;s a fact that our mother can be vindictive at times, but so can our father.
	If our father found out that we were moving after enrolling Vanessa in the local high school, our father might take our mother to court to try to get Vanessa to not have to transfer to another school mid-year.
	This could happen whether Vanessa wanted it to or not.
	The schools outside this city won&apos;t allow us to enroll Vanessa in their schools unless Vanessa has an address within their respective school districts, land lords won&apos;t allow us to rent from them unless we have income of at least three times their rental price, and my mother can&apos;t find a job with which to even get any income.
	With a local school out of the question and a not-yet-local school out of the question, an online school is the only available option.
</p>
<p>
	Finally getting a chance to work on schoolwork, I made a list of all the readings for <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span>.
	Last week, it was the <span title="Globalization">POLS 1503</span> resources that were available to the public, but this week, it&apos;s <span title="Online Education Strategies">UNIV 1001</span>&apos;s resources.
	I have not finished reading all the study resources yet, but I&apos;d better finish reading tomorrow.
	I wasn&apos;t productive yesterday due to my headache and I wasn&apos;t productive today due to my mother&apos;s freaking out.
	I&apos;ve lost two of my five days for the week and I can&apos;t afford to lose much more time.
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://books.google.com./">Google Books</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doaj.org./">Directory of Open Access Journals</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats">Comparison of e-book formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a></li>
<li><a href="https://memory.loc.gov./ammem/index.html">American Memory from the Library of Congress - Home Page</a></li>
<li><a href="https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/">Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide</a></li>
<li><a href="https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/">Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide</a></li>
<li><a href="https://scholar.google.cz/">Google Scholar</a></li>
<li><a href="https://studysites.sagepub.com/ballantine2study/read.htm">How to Read a Journal Article</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/primaries.htm">Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.bowdoin.edu/writing-guides/secondary.htm">Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.lib.ncsu.edu./tutorials/scholarly-articles/">Anatomy of a Scholarly Article: NCSU Libraries</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.plagiarism.org/ask-the-experts/faq">FAQ - Plagiarism.org - Best Practices for Ensuring Originality in Written Work</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gsi.berkeley.edu./gsi-guide-contents/academic-misconduct-intro/">Academic Misconduct: Cheating, Plagiarism, and Other Forms | GSI Teaching &amp; Resource Center</a></li>
<li><a href="http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/evaluating-resources">Home - Evaluating resources - Library Guides at UC Berkeley</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/en">Browse By Language: English - Project Gutenberg</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.uopeople.edu./wp-content/uploads/2016/01/university_catalog.pdf">2015-16 University of the People Catalog FINAL - university_catalog.pdf</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
	Having documented the obstacles of the day here, I&apos;m going to get back to studying.
	There&apos;s not enough time in the day to get much done, but I&apos;ll continue the readings to lesson how much I need to get done tomorrow.
</p>
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