One of my classmates for this online physics class from CSU sent out an email to all other online students that she thought the midterm exam was unfair because it focused on equations. “Especially Joules” she commented. 16 questions on the test. She brought in five pages of notes. The email from the professor said that there would be 16 questions, that they would be based on the homework, and a calculator would be useful. The homework was mostly equations. I was under the impression that physics is mostly equations. I don’t know where she got the idea that she needed notes on history ore the examples given in the book.
I have a feeling that if service providers of any service hired better programmers, their automated systems wouldn’t screw up as much and they wouldn’t have to hire customer service reps to repair the problems caused by the automated systems dropping the ball.
A script checked off a few things on our healthcare and decided to reject all the claims for Jonas because he had a different insurance for his first visit to the pediatrician. A phone call corrected the issue without any hassle.
An online request form automatically approved us for a budget payment plan of $100 for our electric bill. I called their customer service today to inquire why my bill was more than that, and, according to the CSR, it shouldn’t even have allowed me to sign up due to us using NOPEC.
Maybe a throng of CSRs is cheaper than a skilled programmer on retainer.
I want to know who it is as United that decided to review the claims for Jonas and reject them on some fictitious claim that he has “another primary insurance.”
Six months of checkups all suddenly we’re billed for. We dropped James’s insurance in March and started using mine. My insurance is United. So was James’s. Jonas’s first checkup was on James’s insurance. Everything after that has been on mine. A few weeks after I started it, I didn’t yet have a card. I had to call to get the member/group numbers to give to the doctor’s office. At that time, they asked me which insurance on his SSN was supposed to be the primary. I explained that the old insurance was no longer in use and asked them to remove any mention of the old insurance covering him. I made it quite clear that only the Honeywell UHC was in use. The other one was cancelled, not paid for, non-existent.
Now someone seems to think it’s still there, still active, even though no one is paying the premiums and no one is making claims to it. What the hell, United Healthcare? W. T. H.
Last Saturday, my son woke up around eight at night with some goobers in his eyes. Turns out he had pinkeye. Got some eye drops for him and it cleared up. I warned my coworker who had come over that day with her daughter to watch out for it in case her kid got it.
Last Monday, I went to the doctor because my back was killing me. For my lower back, he cracked it and all was good. For my upper back, he wanted me to start taking my muscle relaxants again. I stopped taking them due to breastfeeding, so now I just get to live with the pain and hope Tylenol will work.
Last Tuesday, I woke up feeling as if I’d swallowed barbed wire. I called off work and slept in. Eventually this great glob of blood and mucus came out of my nose, ( gross) straight from my sinuses. It came out while I was breathing normally, no coughing or blowing. I felt better for a while.
Last Wednesday, I went to work feeling one hundred percent better than I had on Monday. I had to leave early, though, because my son had a fever.
Last Thursday, the guy who sits next to me at work called off. I started having coughing fits. My husband stayed home with our son since he couldn’t go to day care.
Last Friday, I was having coughing fits pretty regularly. I felt fine, except for the coughing.
Yesterday, I couldn’t sleep through the night due to the coughing. I waited until my husband got up and slept fitfully during the morning.
Today, I’m up again for the same reasons, except now I have pinkeye.
Citibank refunded the charge on 5/19 (it didn’t show on the online statement until 5/21). Even though this was resolved, I still received a new message from Valve’s support. They asked me for a screenshot of the fee. I obliged and gave also a screenshot of the Citi CSR stating which charges were considered foreign transactions.
Here’s the conversation through Steam’s support:
8 « Message by Thomas on Tue, 19th May 2009 5:11 pm »
Hello Amanda,
We are still working on this issue and have been talking to the bank, can you please confirm the dollar amount of the foreign transaction fee that they are charging?
Update on the foreign transaction fee issue. After waiting a few days for a response to my previous call, I decided it would be better to call them. After explaining the situation to “Hugo,” I was transfered to a supervisor (“Mr. Thomas”). I explained the situation to him, and he stated that the foreign transaction fees are automatic and they do not watch for them. Since it is so common for US businesses to process through Canada (and warn their customers of possible fees) they don’t bother with alerting customers of foreign purchases. He waived the $1.92 and thanked me for being a customer. I’ll be checking my account online at the end of the business day to verify that it’s been taken off.
If Valve had at all stated that they process payments outside of the US (in plain text would have been nice, but they didn’t even have it in legalese), I would have made the purchase in a different manner. Read the rest of this entry »
I, like many others out there, avidly review my credit card statements. I view the card’s activity online before statements to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized purchases on there. I don’t think I’ve actually found any in the eight years I’ve had this card. When statements come around, I like to know exactly what finance charges are applied. This month, for the first time, I saw “FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE.” Having never made a foreign transaction on this card, I immediately questioned it through their secure messaging system.
Subject: FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE
Date/Time: 05/13/09 07:22:15 PM
You wrote:
I would like more detail on the following as I do not recall making any foreign purchases:
05/12/2009 FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE CHARGE $1.92 Transaction Type: 3 Post Date: 05/12/2009 Reference Number: 00000000 Charge To: Standard Purch
Just when I was getting in the art groove again, photoshop craps out on me and I have to wait for it to reinstall again. There’s not even a guarantee it’ll even work right. Time to acquire other image manipulation tools. Capital SIGH.
En, better known as Stinky, more recently known as Cancer Cat, did not make it. Her lymphoma was in complete remission: she did not have any sign of cancer in her when we brought her into the vet last week. After her last chemo treatment, she was the best she’d been in a while. Then she stopped eating. She was limp, and didn’t have any balance when jumping off things. She got some IV therapy for dehydration and a bunch more tests. They said she had an infection, but they didn’t know where. They suggested some expensive exploratory surgery, but even then that would guarantee recovery. There wasn’t hope anymore.
I shouldn’t have looked in her eyes as they injected her. The sedatives made her eyes go wide and she stared blankly ahead until it was over. I can’t get it out of my head yet. I shouldn’t have watched.
Like most of my work from near a decade ago, I’m embarrassed of “Chicago Schroe” now. And like most of my recent posts, I’m still going to share it with the Internet.
The art was simple, but inconsistent. The plot was based around my interests and acquaintances. It was terrible. When I got around to attempting a consistent art style, my hard drive failed. All data was lost, including the original flash files. I didn’t care, I just gave up.
Characters for some failed RPG given up on by some irc network starring the opers as npcs or something. The only thing I really remember about it was I was a sniper chick. Oh, and the reason I quit the project was because everyone designing it had a raging hard-on for Square and refused to make the game battle system not be based on a Final Fantasy game or Chronotrigger. And they wanted materia and summons. And they were going to summon characters from Square games.
Edit: Added more sketches related to this. All from late 2000, early 2001.
Early 2002, done for a Color Theory assignment. We had to recreate an image using marker and dots and stuff. I once found this being hotlinked to as an example of “Magritte’s early work.” It’s actually pretty terrible and lacks any artistic skill.
Because I’m lazy and don’t like to connect to more than one irc server, I’ve moved the SDO irc idlefest to efnet. irc.efnet.info / #SDO. There’s no nickserv or chanserv or anything, I need to get a bot on there.
I had a dream last night that they made yet another X-Files movie. Having not seen the previous movies, nor ever really watching the show once it developed a continuous plot (I much prefered monster-of-the-day type stuff from that show), this dream was rather odd.
It started with Mulder and Scully as a married couple seated at dinner. Scully was serving various foods with a one-ounce ice cream scoop to Mulder by placing them on a music stand while he read the newspaper. Suddenly, there’s a rumble. They panic and the camera immediately goes to the window to show a T-Rex is walking by. There’s another rumble and another until the T-Rex has gone away. “What terrible visuals,” I dream-think as I notice the choppy, unrealistic movement of the T-Rex, “The writers must want this to be a dream sequence.” No one wakes up, though, and the weirdness continues.
Alright kids, I made these. A year ago. They are vector traces of the shoulder patches on the TF2 classes.
I’ve had people ask for the AI file of these. You can have one when you put the effort into making them.
I’ve had people ask for the larger versions I posted TF2chan a while back. Those are here for the time being.
I’ve seen people claim that the Scout and Spy patches are “beta” or other assumptions even though it says in the original post’s description that I MADE THEM UP. There exist, created by Valve, the REAL Spy and Scout patches. I do not have tracings of those nor do I have any interest in tracing them on request. Spy one can be found on the Spy t-shirt Valve sells. Scout one can be seen on the Scout update page.
I MADE THIS SET. There may be people who have traced their own. There may be other people out there who are using this set without crediting me. They are not stealing my ideas, they are just cheapening my effort. I am not so attached to these things that I’ll deny anyone use of them, but that goes for THESE ONLY. My other tf2 stuff should not be used by other people without asking or crediting me, ESPECIALLY the non-traced stuff.
At the first anime convention I ever attended (and it should have been my last, really) I bought a new sketch book and this was page one. (Made it into a crappy wallpaper, too.) This image is over seven years old. It makes me feel old. It makes me remember friends I had that were less than stellar and only slightly fun to talk to…sort of how it’s fun to hang out with a room full of toddlers with duplo bricks and washable markers until one of them shits their pants. It was at the anime convention that I realized that the majority of anime fans are underage idiots that shop at Hot Topic or creepy adult males there to see scantly-clad underage girls. Skilled cosplay is impressive at conventions, and there was some really impressive cosplay, but it was rare. The majority of the people “in character” wore half-assed t-shirt conversions or just too-many-zippers store-bought crap. This was before hot topic started carrying naruto shit, too. Also there was this guy running the art auction at the end that would get mad any time someone pronounced manga as anything other than “mahn gah” (yes, that is how it should be pronounced, but we are not in Japan and the term has long been Americanized UNKNOT YOUR PANTIES PLEASE).
