Regularity WILL Out, I Swear It

It will. Trust me. My schedule screws up all to hell and back when I'm at home. But being at the university again will surely make things better.

So. Troubles and tribulations today with trying to put danged money into my Declining Balance account, a sort of thing where I pay into it and I can use my student ID to purchase meals around campus. I originally wanted to put $1,500 in it, so I went to the website and I selected everything and I hit "Accept."

Only, I did it wrong. As it happened, I hit "Use Financial Aid" instead of "Use Credit Card." (In retrospect, I should have wondered why they didn't ask me for, y'know, the number. Seems like somewhat useful information.) So the end result was that it was going to be deferred. For a few weeks. I had one dollar left in my account, and even I can't stretch that. That's like, seven-eights of one box of noodles, and no money even to buy cheese for them. Or four thousand packets of ramen. But I hate that stuff.

So I give the Gator1 people a ringy-ding-ding. (That is to say, I called them. Not whatever else you may have assumed.) They transferred me over to Financial Services, who after a weighty and long conversation, decided that the thing to do would be to transfer me over to Gator1. They clearly had the answers, they asserted. So I hung up with the Financial people and called back Gator1. The girl who answered the phone had not the slighest glimmer of recollection that we had spoken four minutes previously. I once again explained my problem.

"Oh," she said. "I'd better transfer you to Financial Services. They'll be able to help."

"No, wait, I -" It was too late. The ignominy of the 'holding' music was upon me. I had to wait until the people at Financial Services ceased their other no-doubt essential duties (what were they DOING?!? Building a scale replica of the Empire State Building out of LEGO blocks??) When I got connected to them, I had to re-explain my situation and wait to get re-re-connected to Gator1, and presumably after that fend off any attempts to send me hurtling back into the Financial Services void.

I finally got connected to Gerald, a helpful young man who seemed actually able to solve my problem. That is, it seemed so, until we got disconnected halfway through our conversation and repeated calls back bore no fruit. "Bugger this," I said. "I have to eat somehow." So I called my parents and asked them to advance me $200 so I could eat until my scholarship money came in, resolving to just wait for the scholarship to come in and not have to go through the hassle of cancelling my order.

So, of course, when I tried to do this, just as I was in the middle of inputting my credit-card information for the $200, I get a call back from Gerald. So I quit the process and walked through his process. He said that he would put a cancellation order on the previous transaction, and it would clear up "in a day or two." Very well. He did this, and then I went back to the website, to re-order the $1,500 on a credit card, secure in the knowledge that the previous transaction was blasted forever from the information superhighway.

Only, this didn't work. I should have guessed, I supposed. Turns out, I left the credit-card information input screen in the improper manner, which caused the system to panic and lock me out from any future transactions until someone gave the go-ahead. So I called Gerald back. This, as it happened, was somewhat beyond his control, as it took place in a separate bank of computers than the ones he usually dealt with. "I'll see what I can do," he said. "Give it five minutes. If it still doesn't work, call me back."

I should have realized, right then and there. It was 4:57. When I called back at 5:02 promptly, my problem still not having resolved, there was no response. Bugger everything, I swore. But the fact was that I still needed to eat, and that one dollar was not looking very useful to me.

Oh, but the story gets more interesting. I put the $1,500 in two separate orders...$1,450 into the actual Declining Balance account and $50 into my Gator1 Vending Machine account. That is strictly necessary for things like laundry and bottles of water on hot days. One would think that with the order cancelled, the whole order would be cancelled, right? Wrong. I looked at my balances, and found the $50 from the original, deferred-until-scholarship-comes-in transaction safe in my Gator1 Vending account, but the $1,450 was a no-show.

Eventually, the system did let me back in, and I placed the whole thing - $1,450 on the Declining Balance and $50 on the Vending - on the credit card. Within ten minutes, as promised, the changes materialized. But I was troubled: I was now $100 up on the Vending account, and I still completely fail to realize how one part of the transaction could have gone through while the other part, I don't know, exploded in the harbor or something. It just doesn't make any sense. I'll have to sort this out with the Financial Services people tomorrow, or maybe the Gator1 people. All I know is that if I find Gerald, I'm whomping him on the head with an axe handle.

More later tonight.

So, this is later tonight. And I got out of my first class, Writing for Mass Communication. We started by writing a simple 1 1/2 page paper on what our favorite television show or movie was. I had it dashed off in fifteen minutes, though it took me nearly as long to proof it, especially since the teacher had disabled spell-check on our computers. Oddly, this wasn't much of a problem...I can usually catch spelling errors quite well. These blog entries aren't spell-checked. The difficulty came when she had a look at our papers and proclaimed "You're not going to be writing like this any more." Essentially, our unique writing styles were to hit the toilet and we were to learn to churn out the soulless prose that makes up effective newspaper articles. I figure this will have one of two effects on me:

1. I'll become so disillusioned with writing in general that I'll stop entirely, and change my major, or
2. I'll hate this restricted style of writing, and throw myself into my other work more than ever, so as to rage against the establishment trying to clamp down on me.

Here's hoping for the second, you know?

The Luke-Approved YouTube Link of the Day list has been a bit light lately. I'm slowly but surely burning through all of the good YouTube links that I know. So this one's going to be a bit different...It's not YouTube, but it's a video file nonetheless. http://www.dailymotion.com/raocow/video/x3z5es_vip-3-nothing-i-say-will-do-this-vi_videogames It's an odd hack of Super Mario World, but the commentary is really the best part. It's so random, it's awesome. Go on and watch it.

And I swear I'll fill in the two blank posts soon.

REPLIES.

Michelle: Roller coasters? Jawesome. Oh, wait, no, not jawesome in the least. I can't deal with roller coasters and you know it. Disney sounds great, but when are the two of us ever going to get a chance? If we can somehow miraculously find a time, Dan's parents own a time-share in Orlando that we can rent from them for cheaper than a standard hotel room. If they'll allow it.

Steve: Honest, I didn't drink a drop. And I'll bring down DDR myself, I have the game and the system, and the pads. Though I forgot to bring my Guitar Hero up, that annoys me. I won't be around for spring break...We might try it over Magic WorkStation one of these days, it'll take less time than it would to proxy everything. Besides, my deck is already built. See you.