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  65. <header>
  66. <h1>All caught up</h1>
  67. <p>Day 00661: Tuesday, 2016 December 27</p>
  68. </header>
  69. <img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2016/12/27.jpg" alt="Holly leaves with lighter edges and holly berries" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
  70. <h2 id="general">General news</h2>
  71. <p>
  72. Nelnet wrote to me today, telling my that my payment was overdue.
  73. What? I though that I&apos;d sent them my payment earlier in the month! Logging into my account, I saw that I in fact already had instructed Nelnet to take the payment out of my savings account.
  74. Unfortunately, Nelnet doesn&apos;t take credit/debit cards.
  75. I tried to contact a representative via live chat, but the chat page was bugged up.
  76. I could see what the representative was saying, but there was no text area for me to type in to send messages back.
  77. I ended up emailing them instead:
  78. </p>
  79. <blockquote>
  80. <p>
  81. I received a notice from Nelnet today telling me that my payment is past due.
  82. However, I told Nelnet to take the money from my account on the twenty-third.
  83. For some reason, Nelnet is still processing this, but that&apos;s not my fault and there&apos;s nothing that I can do about it.
  84. </p>
  85. <p>
  86. I tried using your live chat option to get this resolved, but the live chat page gives me this error:
  87. </p>
  88. <p>
  89. User connection callback caused an exception: TypeError: this.ckeditor is null
  90. </p>
  91. </blockquote>
  92. <p>
  93. Nelnet wrote back a bit later, saying that my account already reflects the fact that my payment was made.
  94. If that&apos;s the case, why am I receiving a letter saying that my payment is overdue!? I suppose that I&apos;ll ignore this for the time being and hope that it goes away.
  95. If it doesn&apos;t, I now have record that I contacted Nelnet about the issue and that they said that there isn&apos;t an issue.
  96. </p>
  97. <p>
  98. I finally had the time to walk to the credit union and deposit my paycheck, as well as pay my mobile bill in the shop next door.
  99. The representatives at T-Mobile seemed confused about my bill for some reason.
  100. Perhaps it&apos;s because prepaid customers on plans that require automatic payments don&apos;t usually try to skip the automatic payments by paying in person ahead of time.
  101. I&apos;d turn off automatic payments if I could, but this plan doesn&apos;t allow that.
  102. </p>
  103. <p>
  104. My mother and I took a load to the storage unit.
  105. It&apos;s amazing how much less fits in the car than used to fit in the van.
  106. It feels like we hardly took anything over.
  107. </p>
  108. <p>
  109. My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
  110. </p>
  111. <h2 id="dreams">Dream journal</h2>
  112. <p>
  113. I had a strange dream in which some pigs and a queen where teaching me how to create illusionary copies of myself, but the dream faded from memory too quickly to recall any more.
  114. </p>
  115. <h2 id="university">University life</h2>
  116. <p>
  117. I finished reading the assigned chapter.
  118. It seems that I only had a little over a page left to read.
  119. If I&apos;d realized that, maybe I would have buckled down and read it yesterday, despite my headache.
  120. After completing the reading, I completed the ungraded quiz.
  121. </p>
  122. <p>
  123. The only assignment left for the week is the discussion assignment, so I headed back to the discussion board to complete that.
  124. However, only three of us had even posted yet! Until one more student had posted, none of us were able to complete the assignment because we each need to respond to three other students! How are we supposed to finish this? Luckily, by the time that I checked later in the day, two more people had posted, so I was able to complete all three of the posts that I needed to make instead of just the first two:
  125. </p>
  126. <blockquote>
  127. <p>
  128. Yeah, I think that you&apos;re right about workers often getting overlooked.
  129. This happens not only in regards to change, but in other situations as well.
  130. As we&apos;ve seen with the SAS Institute in <a href="https://y.st./en/coursework/BUS1101/Behavior_management_at_the_SAS_Institute.xhtml">Unit Two</a>, some companies seem to put a lot of effort into making sure that employees are well-cared for, but this sadly isn&apos;t a common practice.
  131. </p>
  132. <p>
  133. In the case of your subprime credit card company, I see how the bonus cuts were stressful.
  134. What would you suggest as an alternative for the company to use to get back their losses and keep their doors open?
  135. </p>
  136. </blockquote>
  137. <blockquote>
  138. <p>
  139. Cash is <strong>*much*</strong> better than cards.
  140. Cards allow the banks to track all of your purchases, as well as provides your identity to merchants.
  141. It&apos;s a hindrance to privacy and it&apos;s a bit creepy.
  142. That said, without a card, you&apos;re not able to make online purchases.
  143. For that reason, I use a card online but I <strong>*always*</strong> use cash when dealing with merchants in-person.
  144. </p>
  145. <p>
  146. I also agree though that any employee that wants cash instead of a card can take their card to the <abbr title="automated teller machine">ATM</abbr> to withdraw the cash.
  147. In my country, paying employees via a card does happen in some companies, but it&apos;s more common to issue a check as payment instead.
  148. These checks can&apos;t be directly spent, and have to be either deposited in a financial account (a bank account or a credit union account, for example) or cashed in for money before being spent.
  149. I deposit my checks in a credit union account, then withdraw the cash that I think that I&apos;ll need for the next while.
  150. </p>
  151. </blockquote>
  152. <blockquote>
  153. <p>
  154. If I could cash in my unused days off, I don&apos;t think I&apos;d hardly ever take a day off! The yearly bonus based on the number of years that an employee has been with the company also seems like a pretty sweet deal.
  155. </p>
  156. <p>
  157. I find it pretty strange though that allowing employees to play music at work kept some of them from quitting.
  158. I mean, having your own music playing is nice, but it hardly seems like a reason to stay.
  159. Oh well, though.
  160. That was probably the least expensive benefit that the company provided, so it saved them money!
  161. </p>
  162. </blockquote>
  163. <p>
  164. As I was writing up the first of my posts today, I realized that perhaps I should have talked about the SAS Institute in my <a href="/en/coursework/BUS1101/Microsoft_and_corporate_social_responsibility.xhtml">essay for last week</a>.
  165. Oh well, it&apos;s too late for that now, and isn&apos;t a big deal anyway.
  166. </p>
  167. <p>
  168. The number of students posting on the discussion boards has been dwindling for several weeks, and the number of students posting by the Sunday deadline has been almost none lately.
  169. I kind of wonder if the difficulty of this course has nothing to do with the fact that I&apos;m not a business student and that I don&apos;t belong here.
  170. Perhaps it&apos;s just a monster of a course and students are giving up and dropping the class right and left.
  171. I can&apos;t do that myself though.
  172. I <strong>*mustn&apos;t*</strong> do that myself.
  173. To drop the class would be to have wasted my time and my professor&apos;s time.
  174. With students disappearing like this, it might be critical that I remain to post in the discussion board too to ensure that other students have someone to respond to.
  175. Besides, I only have two more weeks plus the final exam.
  176. That means a likely four more writing assignments, nine more essays to grade, two more discussion assignments, and one large test that will be scheduled during a time when no other work (besides the grading of three essays) is due.
  177. If I can stay on top of things, it won&apos;t be that hard.
  178. That is, aside from the test.
  179. I&apos;m totally going to fail the test.
  180. Hopefully my high marks in the non-test portions of the course will counterbalance the tests enough to net me a decent grade for the course.
  181. </p>
  182. <p>
  183. With my discussion posts for the week completed, I&apos;m now officially all caught up on my coursework! Well, I suppose &quot;officially&quot; is the wrong word, as I was never <strong>*officially*</strong> behind.
  184. I was able to stay ahead of the official deadlines because the learning journal assignments are strangely due one day later than the date that would make the most sense, the day that concludes the school week and begins the new one.
  185. Tomorrow, I should proofread my <a href="/en/coursework/BUS1101/Three_types_of_organizational_structures.xhtml">essay</a> again before submitting it, but other than that, I have nothing left to do in school until 21:05, when the new coursework is made available.
  186. </p>
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  192. My address is in the source comments near the top of this document.
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