chibiabos

A big monkey ... on my back.

I have obliterated the last bit of my student loan. I will never pay UoP's ransom on my transcript, so I will never be able to do anything with the credits I earned academically and paid for heavily out of pocket and with this behemoth student loan ... I was just a few courses away from having completed my bachelor's in business, but eff it.

DO NOT EVER SEEK TO ENROLL AT UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX. They've had conviction after conviction for fraud.

Its been officially announced that in October, we will switch from our current 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, 2 off (Mon/Tue/Thu/Fri) schedule to four consecutive days. Given the graveyard shift, the current schedule has left weekend socializing rather awkward given the shift starting Friday nights runs 'til 5 a.m. Saturdays, and then there's the whole need to sleep thing, and I wake up too few hours before friends go to bed especially given its a couple hours' drive each way to my friends' homes.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/306293.html

... must sadly disappear from my plate. As most of my friends know that I visit in real life, I've abstained entirely from beef for over a decade now ... that wasn't hard to give up, but I do love dairy, especially cheese and ice cream, as well as bacon, ham and sausage from the pork group.

I have dental surgery scheduled for the 29th and am going for sedation because I still have nightmares about my last couple of extractions. The dentist wanted me to get a physical first to ensure I would be okay medically for sedation, so today I went in (after a couple false starts due to insurance paperwork snafus). The doc who did the physical noted my skin rashes, but thinks it might not be psoriasis, but possibly some allergy or disease to pork and beef (and beef byproducts including dairy), so he wants me to cut out all pork, beef and dairy for three months to see if my skin clears up. Beef is easy, as I've been boycotting beef already for over a decade ... pork not so much, as I love making myself homemade Egg McMuffins with ham and hot dogs. Dairy will be the hardest ..... no cheese or ice cream!?

My blood pressure is a bit high but not terrible. I know I can knock it down if I discipline myself a bit more on sodium ...... and really I should harp down on my cholesterol, too. I have other issues I want to have looked at, but I'm financially strapped between the dental surgery which will be several thousand dollars and my car needs radiator service, as its been overheating even after getting the thermostat replaced a couple of weeks ago. I had to close out my savings account today to have money on hand to handle both ... the dental I can get a payment plan for, but probably not the auto service.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/306015.html

Tooth aches suck in a bad way, mmmkay?

Last Friday morning, after getting home from work (I work graveyard shift and get home around 6:00-6:30 a.m.) I started developing a minor but frustrating tooth ache that grew in intensity. By 9 a.m. or so when I typically go to bed, I found I could not sleep. I lay awake in increasing agony until 1 p.m. or so at which point I gave up and was forced to acknowledge I needed an emergency visit to the dentist.

My tooth was badly infected and swelling was setting in so badly that the dentist couldn't do the full examination she needed to, so she prescribed Vicodin for pain relief and so I could sleep in the short term, and Augmentin to knock down the swelling and the pain in the long term. I scheduled to come in this morning for a more thorough checkup with the swelling knocked down, which gives the rundown for everything needed ...

Cost for dental surgery not much more pleasant than the pain, sharp and terrible as tooth ache pain is. :/ I just got the bad news, for the work I need, it will cost $4500. My remaining savings after having recently bought a car won't fully cover this, so its going to get split in half, half this year and half next (after my dental coverage limit refreshes and I have had time to regain savings). I am not in dire financial straits, this isn't a 'please gimme 'mergency monies' but it is going to completely wipe out everything I have saved up thus far and will gobble up a huge chunk of my future income for awhile. :/

Rainfurrest is definitely out for me this year, I just can't take the time off work and even if I could, I wouldn't be able to spend hardly anything at all. And trying to find a new place to live is also out. I am going to go with a payment plan with the dentist even for just the first half, so I can maintain a basic emergency fund in case my new car goes out (I actually need to get a new battery and a few new tires for it) or something else blows up, but its rather shocking this pile of money I have managed to accumulate over the past year is utterly gone. :/

Current Mood: sick
Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/305714.html

Yeah, I know, not news to anyone. I have made zero hardware changes, but today Winbloze 7 threw up an alarm that I have made "too many hardware changes" and made me re-activate >_<

Way at annoy a paying customer, Microsoft. Your message that this inconvenience "prevents privacy" is bubkis ... I don't think crackers have any difficulty bypassing Windows activation, this annoyance merely inconveniences paying customers.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/305572.html

I'm finally looking at getting a phone again. I don't like phones, don't use them much, I like the idea in general that if I have to get one, I can get a pay-as-you-go without having to pay for a lot of minutes I won't use, and especially one that doesn't offer a phone for less than $200. I am a dinosaur ... I need a full-sized QWERTY keyboard with some tactile feedback resemblance to a mechanical click.

Anyhoo, I was checking out tracphone. I don't like SMS, but there have been a few minor cases when a web service I use insists on sending an SMS confirmation of some garbage, but tracphone's FAQ listed specific rates for specific phones that didn't cover every phone they offered (and, worse, the "Rates" they listed were very unclear as to what sort of unit they were describing -- just "0.3 to send, 0.3 to receive" for certain phones, different 'rates' for other phones, did not say whether that meand $0.30, or 0.3 minutes from the phone plan per message, etc.)

And then I saw a 'live chat' and so I gave it a try. This was the 'conversation,' a full copy + paste:

===
Connect with Live Chat
Chat History
Sarah has entered the session.
Howard: In the FAQ, under Features and "How much does the text messaging feature cost?", the LG 236C phone (which is one of the phones offered) isn't listed. Is the "Rate" the same for 236C the other LG phones listed, and does the "rate" describe minutes from the phone plan minutes, or dollars extra (so 0.3 = 30 cents per text?)?
Sarah: Hello, Howard. Thank you for visiting TracFone Wireless.
Howard: Hello
Sarah: One moment please...
Howard: Okay, thank you in advance for researching my question.
Sarah: You are welcome.
Sarah: Please allow me a moment as I some information here in my end.
Sarah: I would like to inform you that the cost of one text on the phone is one minutes per unit.
Sarah: Are you still there? If I do not get a response from you within one minute, I will end this chat session.
Howard: I am still here
Sarah: Okay.
Howard: So the cost rate of "0.3" would be from the phone plan minutes? And does the LG 236 get the 0.3 rate per text sent or received as the other LG phones, even though it isn't listed on the FAQ?
Sarah: One moment please...
Sarah: The rate per text on the phone 0.3 works only for the phone that are provided on the FAQ's.
Howard: The Tracphone store lists an LG 236C as a phone I can buy, but it isn't listed with a rate in the FAQ. What is the rate for sending or receiving texts with the LG 236C?
Sarah: The rate of one text message on the LG phone you provided is one minute per text.
Sarah: Are you still there? If I do not get a response from you within one minute, I will end this chat session.
Howard: I am still here.
Sarah: Alright.
Sarah: If you have any further questions or concerns, please contact one of our customer care representatives at 1-800-867-7183. For your convenience, our representatives are available Monday-Sunday from 8:00 AM to 11:45 PM EST. Thank you for chatting with TracFone Wireless.
Sarah has exited the session.
===

Unfortunately the copy + paste doesn't show the timestamps. Her 'Sarah: Are you still there? If I do not get a response from you within one minute, I will end this chat session.' seemed to be an automatic stamp, a bit rude considering they were sent after she asked me to wait, or I was waiting for her response to one of my questions ... and before I could ask for further clarification, she suddenly pasted that last blurb and immediately exited the chat.

Grrr. GRRRR. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

I will probably still go with tracphone, but I see customer service among wireless carriers has not improved one bit. Its really sad to see it includes basic questions from a prospective customers. :/ I don't like sales people, but curt ones whom expect me to wait on them much longer than they'll wait on my questions when I have them I like even less.

Current Mood: frustrated
Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/305206.html

Had an incidet at around 1 a.m. this morning when I bumped a stepladder into an overhead conveyor, ripping out a high pressure hoseline. The resulting noise deafened me partially for about 30 minutes.

No work tonight, as its a Wednesday, and I'm thankful. When my hearing returned, it triggered a painful headache I still have some 20 hours after the fact.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/305069.html

I turn 38 today, and discovered another patch of gray hair starting on my left side near my ear.

For those that aren't aware, I'm more active on furaffinity than dreamwidth/livejournal these days: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/chibiabos/

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/304731.html

I found a job with Amazon that has, thankfully for my financial situation, not had any shortage of work. My previous temp job had several week with no work, and quite a few with only 2, 1 or even just half a day of work all week ... but not Amazon. The past several week have been in excess of 50 hours, and this week will probably wind up with almost 60. Going from virtually no work to this is certainly warisome.

I now have some money, but no real time to enjoy it. I'm worried and still uncertain if I'll be able to attend an annual gathering of friends this New Year's, which will also tragically mark the first anniversary of a deadly crash some of those friends had trying to make it to last year's gathering.

I am tired and noticeably cranky. Amazon has the typical trope of 'here are the rules, never break them, unless you are in a rush and then you'll get demerits for not breaking them' that drives me nuts and contributes a great deal to my chronic unemployment as I just can't reconcile it.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/304605.html

After unexpectedly and essentially losing my job I started in April over a month ago due to work slowdown, I had to have $400 in car repairs. On wrapping up an excursion I was dropping a friend off before heading home to today, my transmission has gone out and I had to have a tow. It may prove infeasible to repair the car, but I also cannot afford to replace it given my recent income loss + previous car repair bill. :/ I need to take a look at my options, but given my financial status, my options are very limited. I'm supposed to start a new job in November, but that will be difficult without a car.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/304379.html

Pretty darned close, anyway. Had a nice restbit from what had been a very bad week for me this past week by attending Rainfurrence with my good friend Beowulf. We had an interesting time, but I think we'll have a better time next year if I plan things out a bit better and learn the convention center layout a bit better. Also would be nice if the convention building elevators get an upgrade ... could not really handle six furs, one of the two went out entirely. Yes, there were stairs and while Beowulf could handle them, it was slow going.

I got home late last night just as the storm was getting serious. I had to seriously slow down driving across the Narrows Bridge after dropping Beowulf off, got pelted by limbs along the freeway and as much as to stay in control of my own car, I had to slow down to let an idiot speeding in a pickup with a boat in tow to pass, his trailer lifted and was thrown to the side several times. Being over open water, the Narrows Bridge often gets the worst of the area winds.

And if that weren't enough, this morning at around a quarter to 8 a.m., a tornado -- YES, AN ACTUAL WEATHER SERVICE-VERIFIED TORNADO -- struck in the area where my father works about ten miles from our house. He is okay, but he still does not know whether his truck survived in the parking lot. Another warehouse not far away has had a roof collapse from the tornado, at least one car was picked up and dropped by the tornado and several 30-ton railcars were pushed over onto their side by the tornadic winds.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/304039.html

Finally has a reference picture: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11273141/

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/303801.html

Its probably as fruitless to discuss as abortion, gun control or other issues because we're all fixed, but I think most of my friends have learned to deal with my passion and not let my often uncommon perspectives, argued with my passion, infringe relationships. That being said, if you don't like political discussions, in particular with the recent jury finding in the George Zimmerman trial, you may want to ( ignore this entry by not clicking this cut-link. )

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/303550.html

My policy with Progressive ended yesterday (April 30, 2013). I pre-pay 6 months at a time so I don't have to worry about it, but a number of factors delayed my continuing insurance:

Progressive upped my "legal bare minimum" policy cost from around $300 every 6 months to almost $400 ... they 'excuse' this my claiming my worsening credit score somehow magically makes me a "riskier" driver. Male bovine faeces! I have not had a ticket since 2008 (and prior to that around 2005), have never had an accident, have driven likely more than 1 million miles since I started driving (or a million and a half kilometers for you fancy folk with your fancy metric system). This system of punishing people for bad credit scores with higher fees on things that have nothing to do with taking loans is obscene. It's time to call it what it is: REGRESSIVE. That is, it is designed to make poor people whom have trouble keeping a job pay more.

I am effing sick and tired of my medical and student loan debt (which, between the two, is -the only debt- I have ever had any trouble with -- I took some payday loans when my paychecks were delayed several years back, but I paid all of those back within one week; I have never had a real credit card, never had a car loan, never had a mortgage) lessening my employability -- even for medial labor jobs, employers factor in your credit history for no good reason I can think of. I find it a tragic irony that attempting to pursue a degree incurred heavy debt for me and, due to shenanigans by my school (Scamversity of Phoenix), I was unable to complete the degree so I have the stifling debt of a student loan, no piece of paper granting me access to better-paying jobs, they locked my academic record I paid for (out of pocket + incurring debt) and academically earned due to our dispute, but I am still stuck with the student loan I have no means of paying and cannot be discharged through bankrupcy nor will it ever be written off as most debts are after 10 years or so.

Anyhow, irony of all that -- especially the label I apply to this charge-more-to-poor-folk, 'Regressive' -- is that the insurance company I just dumped calls itself Progressive. Progressive is regressive. Bah! I'm now back with eSurance, whom I was with quite a few years ago. I honestly don't give a rat's arse whom my insurer is, I only get insurance because it is a legal requirement to drive ... its taxation without representation; not one penny of my insurance premiums goes to fill potholes, fund public schools or pay a solder -- nope, the primary destination of my insurance premiums are the CEO's pay and stockholder dividends. Payers have no say, no representation with how their premiums are spent.

Anyhoo ... rant over. My savings had finally ran out ... this job has been a last minute lifesaver. Even if they can me tomorrow, I am at least good now to drive legally another 6 months (I again prepaid 6 months in advance, so I'm set through November). This was the absolute most pressing priority, as without a legal right to drive, I'm pretty much screwed ... can't go to work, can't look for work, can't really visit friends. That's not to say my next priorities aren't also important: new prescription glasses and new shoes. The work I am doing, changing price labels for JC Penney, is very difficult with my out of date prescription; they demand precision straightness and alignment with work tables that are below my waist, and my current glasses (which are a prescription I got probably in 2008 or so). Further down the line, I would like to finally invest in some kind of GPS navigation device, a new computer and several monitors and, eventually, purchase another RV (one in better condition) to eventually move out on my own again.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/303118.html

I'll put up with quite a bit, as I'm desperate for work, but they are giving us temps a lot of $#!t. For some effed up reason, whomever is in charge of scheduling whom works when never communicates this information, and we temps are never told. I've heard temps getting yelled at for not showing up for their scheduled shift, when they were never told to ... and at the same time, others told to show up for a shift do so only to discover they aren't scheduled, won't get paid and have wasted gas money ... this happened to me today. I was told Friday by the client company, JC Penney, that there would be no work Monday but I would be needed Tuesday (TODAY) at 6 a.m. I checked my e-mail this morning, had no updates, showed up today at 6 a.m. and not only had the shift been moved back to 8 a.m., but I wasn't even on the list. I burned $7 in gas for the round trip to JC Penney. :/

My folks of course insist there's some magical labor law requiring 2 hour "show up compensation" and while that is standard at a lot of places -- even for temps, as I got when I temped at Nintendo's North Bend facility several years back -- it actually isn't a requirement; I checked the government's Labor & Industries website and its one of their Question & Answers ... "A business is not required to pay workers if they report for their shift but are told they are not needed that day. Only actual hours worked must be paid."

Nonetheless, I am peeved. I am -$7 for the day. :/

In other news, I am even more tired and groggy all the time, even though I've really upped my caffeine intake to include morning coffee and a Diet Mt. Dew at each break when I work ... and its worsened my absent-mindedness. :/ I broke off our newspaper delivery box when I was backing into my parking spot a couple weeks ago, and I left my cell phone in my pocket when my mother did laundry to predictable results ... yup, dead cell phone. :/ I am trying the dry-it-out-in-rice trick, hopefully it can be recovered from that but for the next couple of days at least (and longer if it proves unrecoverable) I have no cell phone. :/ Not that I use it much, but it is the # I give out when filling out job applications. :/ The temp agency, though, prefers to use e-mail and they even said, a couple weeks ago, that e-mail would be their primary means of contacting us temps to inform them of shift changes (not, as I said, that they are providing us with accurate or timely info via e-mail either :/).

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/303010.html

Was on track to overtime this week, which would be the first week I'd get even full time hours as Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were hard-crammed 9-hour days. Today, though, we were sent home after 4 and we were told we won't be back until Tuesday as next week is light.

I don't mind, really, will give me a nice 3-day weekend to breathe. Unfortunately, I've dumped most of my cash into a new bank account so I can buy insurance, and I only have enough to carry me through fuel for commuting to work next week, else I might see about visiting some friends up north.

Speaking of finances ... for my friends who are curious ... after I get my paycheck for last week, which I should receive Monday, I should have enough funds to buy another 6 months of insurance (else I would no longer be able to legally drive after the end of this month). After that, I need to get new glasses and shoes ... but after that I think I can finally relax a bit and pay my own way going out with friends once in awhile for restaurants, movies, etc. I am budgetting out my money. I don't know when or if I'll be able to move out on my own ... but that's become a higher priority than I thought, as it is proving difficult to sleep soundly living with my folks and 11-year old niece. I do hope to go the RV route again, as I can't fathom doing the random roommate thing again ... if I manage to keep my current job, unfortunately I'll still be stuck in the southeaster corner of the Puget Sound region while most of my friends are 80+ miles north of here. :/

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/302789.html

oi

Working after not working for so many years hurts, especially my feet, and I'm not sleeping well. I think I've had maybe 10 hours of sleep total since I started working Tuesday.

Current Mood: sore
Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/302514.html

Started today. Its only temp, but it is full time, and may go perm. Nothing glorious, $10/hour grunt warehouse work.

Crossposts: http://chibiabos.livejournal.com/302091.html

I may have a full time job starting Monday. Just awaiting background check to be completed, a possible snafu there being a credit check, but they did not check the part of my application I completed indicating the job requires a credit check as part of the background check.

In other news, gmail is refusing to load in Chrome. :/ I get the following error:

This webpage is not available
The webpage at https://mail.google.com/mail/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Error 15 (net::ERR_SOCKET_NOT_CONNECTED): Unknown error.

google.com loads fine, and I can load gmail in firefox, but not in google's own browser for some reason. :/