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		<title>I&apos;m going to try to finalize the rental tomorrow. &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2017/01-January/18.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>I&apos;m going to try to finalize the rental tomorrow.</h1>
			<p>Day 00683: Wednesday, 2017 January 18</p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/01/18.jpg" alt="The floor plan of my new home" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
<section id="advertisements">
	<h2>Unsponsored advertisements</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;m not sure if it&apos;s because I argued in favor of keeping <abbr title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure">HTTPS</abbr> support on the <a href="https://peppercarrot.com/en/static3/webcomics">Pepper&amp;Carrot</a> website (I mistakingly thought that <a href="https://davidrevoy.com/">David Revoy</a> was considering removing it) or if it&apos;s because I mentioned that I prefer free culture over popular culture, but I&apos;ve been invited to check out an upcoming graphic novel/Web comic about a hacker space.
		<a href="https://glider.ink./">Glider Ink</a>, which is licensed under <abbr title="Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike">CC BY-SA</abbr> (of an unspecified version), seems to have an awesome variety of <a href="https://glider.ink/characters/">characters</a> that don&apos;t quite fit together, just like in the real world.
		Getting to read that will be something to look forward to.
		The first book is planned to be about <a href="https://wiki.glider.ink./doku.php?id=project:themes:feminism">feminism</a>, which the author says will generate a lot of &quot;butthurt&quot;.
		It should be a good read though, for those of us that aren&apos;t stuck in backwards ways.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I had a bit of an argument about <a href="/en/opinion/XML.xhtml"><abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr></a> today, so I decided to write up my opinion of the language.
		Most of the time, when people complain about <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>, they either value malformed markup (the <abbr title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</abbr> crowd) or they are using <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> incorrectly and for the wrong job (the <abbr title="JavaScript Object Notation">JSON</abbr> crowd).
		They may even not be using <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> themselves, but looking at the results left by someone else that&apos;s using it wrong and for the wrong job.
		This isn&apos;t a flaw in <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>, it&apos;s just people using hand saws to try to pound in nails; they&apos;re using the wrong tool for the job.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed that someone had to be rushed to the hospital, though I don&apos;t remember why.
		There at the hospital, the doctors did horrid things to help, such as pump ketchup into the patient by putting the bottle against the patient&apos;s chest and repeatedly jamming a golf tee through the ketchup bottle and into the patient&apos;s chest.
		The tee acted as a pump, pushing more and more ketchup into the wound made by the golf tee.
		I forget what other treatments were being administered by other doctors at the same time, but none of them seemed medically valid.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		The university sent me a letter saying that I&apos;d been chosen!
		At first, I thought that they were talking about the New York trip, which would be an incredible feat of luck on my part.
		However, I&apos;ve actually been chosen for the ambassador program.
		Due to the nature of that program, there&apos;s no real limit to the number of ambassadors in action, so the applications most likely simply go through a screening process and aren&apos;t in competition with one another.
		As an ambassador, they may contact me sometimes with specific requests, but mostly, by job is just to spread the word about the school wherever appropriate.
		Specifically, I&apos;m to share a link to <a href="http://www.uopeople.edu/">University of the People</a>&apos;s website as well as a link to <a href="https://www.ted.com./talks/shai_reshef_a_tuition_free_college_degree">video of a talk given by the president and founder of the school</a>.
		I watched the video first to make sure that it was something that I could actually and honestly endorse, then added it to my links page, which can be accessed from the navigation menu at the top of this page.
		I&apos;ve also added the link to my coursework to the navigation menu at the top of every page to draw more attention to the fact that I&apos;m studying at the university.
	</p>
	<p>
		The video is actually pretty inspiring.
		A lot more thought went into the founding of the school than you&apos;d realize offhand.
		The goal of the school is to break down the barriers to higher education.
		It used to be that higher education was accessible to the masses, but as of late, it&apos;s become a privilege of the few instead of a right of the many.
		University of the People is trying to reverse that.
		One of the things that the school&apos;s trying to do to make education more accessible is to drastically cut the cost of attendance, using the power of the Internet to do so.
		Bricks and mortar cost money.
		When you build a physical school, you have to pass those costs on the the students.
		Additionally, buildings have upkeep costs.
		University of the People has none of these costs.
		Physical buildings also have a limit to how many people can use them at a given time.
		If a classroom fills up, no more students can attend.
		At other schools, some student are passing their entrance exams, but being denied entry due to lack of space.
		On the Internet though, no such limitations exist.
		Back to the financial front, University of the People uses distributable, virtual textbooks so to avoid making students pay for textbooks, again, saving students money.
		Additionally, it&apos;s implied that the university staff are volunteers.
		This isn&apos;t their day job, it&apos;s an act of charity, which again, cuts costs.
		The peer grading model is also for cutting costs, as it reduces the amount of time that university professors require to grade assignments.
		The discussion assignments are supposedly the core of studies at University of the People.
		They&apos;re supposed to open our eyes to other cultures and attitudes by getting us to interact with out fellow students, many of which are from other countries around the world.
		As for the lack of audio and video lectures, I thought that that was just a simple choice by the university that happened to play in my favor accessibility-wise.
		However, a lot of thought went into it.
		They probably didn&apos;t think of my use case, people that don&apos;t use proprietary software or otherwise don&apos;t have Adobe Flash installed, but it was still a decision made to promote accessibility.
		The goal in that decision was to avoid requiring a high-speed Internet connection.
		Audio and video obviously require more data transfer than plain text.
		Lastly, the university provides scholarships for those that can&apos;t afford even the $100-<abbr title="United States Dollars">USD</abbr>-per-course tuition.
		Their mission is that no student be left behind for financial reasons.
		Of course, a student could be too poor to afford an Internet connection, but the university isn&apos;t magical.
		Some costs must always be involved.
		Probably what surprised me the most though, was this quote from the founder:
		<q cite="https://www.ted.com./talks/shai_reshef_a_tuition_free_college_degree">With five thousand students in 2016, this model is financially sustainable.</q>
		The university is keeping costs down by dealing in bulk!
		I&apos;ve wondered how tuition at the school can be as inexpensive as it is, and the main two things that I hadn&apos;t accounted for are a volunteer-based staff and bulk prices.
		University of the People is amazing!
		The school isn&apos;t trying to keep all of this to themselves, either.
		The founder is actively encouraging replication of this university model, which has been proven to work.
		And finally, University of the People, despite its low barrier to entry, is an accredited university, at least here in the United States.
		A degree earned here will actually hold weight with employers.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="apartment">
	<h2>Apartment hunting</h2>
	<p>
		I wrote to the property managers this morning, as they still hadn&apos;t contacted me to let me know that the apartment is ready to be viewed.
		I wanted to be sure that nothing had come up, and that everything was still on schedule.
		As it turns out, while both the person at the main office and the on-site manager had told me that they&apos;d let me know when the place was ready to be looked at, neither did.
		It&apos;s been ready to look at since yesterday! I asked if I needed to schedule a time to go over to see the place or if I could just walk over and see it, and the representative at the main office told me to telephone the <a href="tel:+15417477708">on-site manager</a>.
		Ugh.
		I hate using telephones.
		Begrudgingly, I complied, and tried to telephone the on-site manager three times, but to no avail.
		I&apos;m running out of time though, and today is my last day off before my hold on the apartment expires, so I walked over to try to schedule a walk-through in person.
		At first, the on-site manager didn&apos;t want to show me the apartment because someone has money down on it, but when I explained that that person was me, they said that they&apos;d show it to me now.
		The place is bigger than I expected, with several rooms.
		Every room has built-in lighting aside form the living room and the study alcove, so I won&apos;t need to bring in lamps.
		Those rooms will simply be used for storing my mother&apos;s boxes.
		the refrigerator in the unit also has a small, built-in freezer, for longer-term storage.
		The place also has a closet (not that there&apos;s a reason why it wouldn&apos;t).
		I think that I might actually unpack and settle in.
		When I was planning to move with my mother, I was planning to start living out of boxes, not unpacking any more.
		It&apos;d be easier next time that we move again, as almost everything would already be boxed.
		I think though ...
		I think that I&apos;ll actually be able to get comfortable here in my new home.
	</p>
	<p>
		On the way from the on-site office to the unit, we walked by the mail carrier that was bringing mail to the residents.
		The mail carrier didn&apos;t recognize the name on one piece of mail, and verified that that person didn&apos;t live there with the on-site manager.
		Once it was established that the name didn&apos;t match the address, <strong>*the mail didn&apos;t get left in the mailbox of that apartment unit*</strong>!
		The mail carrier mentioned the name not being written inside the mailbox, so if I write my name in the mail box, perhaps I&apos;ll be able to have mail delivered under both my real name and my legal name, instead of just my legal name.
		Otherwise though, my mail might not make it to me.
	</p>
	<p>
		I wanted to finalize the apartment rental today, so I could start moving my stuff over while I have the day off, but I think that it&apos;d be safer to let my mother know first.
		I don&apos;t need my mother claiming that I did something behind their back even though I&apos;ve been strait with them this whole time.
		They&apos;ve done that kind of thing before.
		If I back out of the rental though, I lose my deposit, so there isn&apos;t any actual question of whether I&apos;m going to rent the apartment or not.
		This is happening.
	</p>
</section>
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