Category: General Updates

Commentary on people, places, things, the news, current events, etc.

Officially a Full Time Student Again For The First Time in Almost 12 Years (And more snow pictures)

Bradley Farless5 Comments

A picture of Townsend Hall at CCNY.

A picture of Townsend Hall at CCNY, prior to all the snowstorms New York City has suffered through over the last month.

Everything went off without a hitch today, other than a lack of sleep due to anxiety.  I woke up at 5 AM and couldn’t fall back asleep, after going to bed at 1 AM.  I’m starting to feel that now, now that the excitement of the day is winding down.

Getting up to CCNY was surprisingly fast this morning.  I had expected there to be delays, due to leftover snow from the snowstorm.  Instead, I got there more quickly than usual, even though I walked two blocks to the nearest subway station to get a MetroCard.  The commute was only an hour, compared to the hour and 15 to 20 minutes it had been taking me before.  I imagine that was partly because I was traveling during the morning rush hour, so there were more trains and buses running.  I’ll allot more time when I head up there for class, just to make sure I have the commute time right.

In my last post I said that the only thing I really had to worry about was busting my ass on the hill going up to the school, and maybe I jinxed myself.  I didn’t completely fall, but I looked like a flailing idiot more than once, scrambling to catch my balance.  Someone I know told me once that Dr. Marten’s are great shoes for jobs where you have to do a lot of standing, but they really don’t have any traction in the snow.  She was completely right.  I need to get some proper snow boots, but it’s probably too late in the season to worry about it now.  I’ll just keep that in mind for next year.  I really need to take a photo of that hill too.

I wound up getting to the school at about 8:20 AM.  I went over to the Veteran’s Affairs office first, to let them know I was there and to ask where I should be going.  Unfortunately, I beat the VA counselors to work, and I stood around in the courtyard for a while scoping out the snow.  It was knee deep in places.

The area these photos are taken in is called the “squad”, or so I was told by a girl that worked in the Gateway Advisory office, which I visited a short while later.  I asked her why, but she didn’t know.  I’m guessing it’s a combination of ‘square’ and ‘quad’ that someone thought was cute, and it just sort of stuck.

After talking to the VA counselor, I got sent over to the Gateway Advisory office.  I showed up there at 10 minutes to 9 and then stood around waiting for that office to open.  When it finally did open, at 9, I found out the advisors didn’t come in and start advising until 9:30.  Not a problem!  I had my Kindle with me.  I’m reading an interesting historical fiction book by GA Henty called The Cat of Bubastes (link to free download on Amazon).  It’s a story about ancient Egypt that’s turning out better than I’d expected.

By about 10 we had discussed the courses still available and I chose the ones that most suit my major and didn’t duplicate something I’ve already taken at another college.  I’ll be taking Introduction to Anthropology, American Government and Politics, Introduction to the Visual Arts of the World, and World Humanities 1, a course about literature from the Greeks up to the 1500s.

What took up so much of my time was getting the financial part of things taken care of:  standing in line to get my bill, then walking back to the VA office for the VA deferral form, then back to the admissions office to stand in line to get the VA form verified, and then standing in line to get the zero balance verified so I could get my student ID is what took up most of my time, not because the walk was long, but because the lines were long.  I was surprised by how many people were there trying to pay their bills.  I had a low priority for registering for classes, and was only allowed to register on the last available day, because I’m taking classes as a non-matriculated student this semester.  I figured most people would’ve finished this all up by now.

Getting my student ID was an interesting experience, and oddly, my first thought was, ‘I wonder if I can use this to get discounts on stuff?’  While I was there, I saw one guy that looked like he was in his 50s getting a student ID, but most of the people there looked too young to even be in college.  Still, it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only ‘older’ person going back to school to get more education.

Anyhow, I’ve got a pretty good schedule.  Except for a 9:30 class on Fridays, all of my classes start in the afternoon.  That means I can still sleep in!  I’m looking forward to kicking things off next week!

Friends Don’t Ask Friends To Do MLM

Bradley Farless14 Comments

mlm_robbersI’ve always thought that people, in general, were too smart to get involved in MLM schemes, especially given how much information is available about the deceptive nature of the practice.  If you’ve heard of MLM, you’ve heard that it’s a scam, and you should be too smart to fall for it.  It’s not that hard to spot an MLM scheme.  Most of them involve buy-ins.  What kind of job requires you to pay your employer?  I mean, seriously?  How do you get pulled into something like that?  Maybe it’s the fault of the economy, that people are getting desperate and trying to find any way they can to make money, but ever since I got back to the US, I’ve been constantly bothered by people I know here about joining MLM schemes.

Guys, I’m not doing it.  MLM is a waste of money.  I have better things to do with my time, like use my full ride scholarship and living allowance from the VA to get my master’s degree, without having to work at the same time, and then getting a real job to make real money; honest money that wasn’t made by screwing over my friends and past or present colleagues.

The situation is doubly disappointing to me because, for these people to assume that I’d join their MLM scheme, well, it means they think I’m gullible, or stupid, or both.  One person even tried to hang something over my head to make me feel emotionally obligated to participate in their MLM.  That’s disrespectful to start with, and is a good way to make me want to completely break off contact with a person.  These people fell for the sucker punch, and they either want to drag me, and other people down with them, perhaps to make up their losses, or they never really gave a damn about me anyway and want to screw me over to get rich.

Well, I’m not stupid.  Perhaps there is money to be made in MLM, but I’m not the kind of guy to go around ruining all of my relationships with people by tricking them, or trying to trick them, into jumping into some MLM scheme.  I find it very annoying that anyone would even approach me with this nonsense in the first place, and absolutely rude that, once told that I’m not interested, they would persist in spamming me with messages about it, sometimes attempting to lead into a conversation about it under other pretenses, like needing help, or wanting to meet to celebrate Veteran’s Day.

In a way, I feel bad for these people, because they’re caught, but I’m not going to let myself get pulled in with them.  If they can’t take a hint, then the next step will be to completely cut them off, blocking phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and yes, even unfriending them on Facebook.

MLM and me.  It’s not happening.

Would You Leave A Kid on the Side of the Road?

Bradley FarlessLeave a comment

If I were in Singapore, or the Philippines, the answer would most definitely be no, but the US and other Western countries are gripped by paranoia and fear.  Every man is a potential molester, deviant or criminal.  Every woman, on the other hand, is safe.  Or at least that’s the common belief, despite the fact that there are documented cases of female murderers and molesters.

Earlier today, I was checking Facebook and a relative had posted a link to a Wall Street Journal Article called “Eek!  A Male!  Treating all men as potential predators doesn’t make our kids safer.”  It’s a good article, and one part of it in particular caught my attention.

In England in 2006, BBC News reported the story of a bricklayer who spotted a toddler at the side of the road. As he later testified at a hearing, he didn’t stop to help for fear he’d be accused of trying to abduct her. You know: A man driving around with a little girl in his car? She ended up at a pond and drowned.

At first I was shocked by the guy’s behavior, but after I thought about it a bit, I realized that I don’t really blame him.  From the time kids are old enough to talk and understand what they’re being told, they’re told to be wary of strangers, and especially so of strange men.  The idea that every man is a prospective child molester is embedded in the national consciousness.  We grow up with it the same way we grow up knowing that cereal is a breakfast food.  Not that it’s a good thing, but that’s just how it is.

If this guy had been found with the girl in his car, it could have gone badly for him even though he hadn’t done anything. They might have suspected him of being involved in the girl’s disappearance somehow, or at the least have questioned him and landed his name in a police database somewhere. Or, the girl could have decided that she wanted to tell a fun story, partially prompted by the questions the police would invariably ask her, not realizing the consequences, but having heard it on television and having decided it would be exciting.  Maybe the guy would have been arrested and tried for something he never even did, all because he stopped to lend a helping hand to a lost kid.  Maybe he even would have found himself being jailed over it.

Ridiculous?  Well, is it really?  How many times do you hear in the news that someone was found to have been innocent of a crime they were convicted of decades ago, and that they’d spent most of their life rotting in prison as an innocent man?  Juries aren’t selected based on who’s the smartest.  The prosecutor and defender fight to keep people on the jury that are biased in their favor.

So, it all comes down to a question of self preservation.  What’s more important?  That random kid, or your well being, and if you’re a family man, the well being of your family?  If you wind up smeared and/or in jail over accusations of something like child molestation or abduction, it’ll have a lot of repercussions not just on yourself, but on your family as well.

Even if none of that happened, what if the kid twisted his or her ankle, or cut his or her finger while in your care?  Everyone’s looking to make a quick buck these days with a lawsuit.  If a woman can win a lawsuit for spilling hot coffee on herself and getting burned, and a criminal can win a lawsuit for hurting himself on a knife in the house he broke into, do you really think parents who let their kid wander on the side of a road might not sue you for a twisted ankle or other accidental injury?

And, beyond that, what if it were all a trick to get someone to stop and get out of their vehicle?  Something like a kid on the side of the road, looking helpless and in distress, would be particularly good bait to get women into a vulnerable, isolated situation.

My relative asked me if I could live with myself knowing that a kid had died because I didn’t stop to pick him or her up off the side of the road, and the answer is yes, I could.  It wouldn’t be a very pleasant thought, but given how stupid and paranoid most people in the US are, and all of the things that could go wrong, I wouldn’t want to risk it.  Like I said, if I were in Singapore or the Philippines, I wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing.  Not as much anyway, and it certainly wouldn’t worry me enough to stop me from helping some lost kid.  Here in the US?  I don’t really know.  I certainly wouldn’t stop.  I wouldn’t let the kid in my car.  The safest way would be to call the police from a payphone and then leave.  Depending on the situation, I might stop a distance away and call it in on my mobile.

What would you do?  Would you pick up a random kid off the street?  Would you simply call it in and keep going?  Would you call it in and hang around and wait for the police to show?

A Very Clever Snail Mail Marketing Trick

Bradley Farless1 Comment

A few days ago I was looking through the mail and I saw an envelope that was addressed to me.  I scanned the return address and I thought to myself, ‘Who do I know in Connecticut?’  I couldn’t think of anyone off the top of my head, but the envelope was shaped like a greeting card so I went ahead and opened it.  I thought that perhaps it was a relative I’d forgotten about, that had sent a late Christmas or New Year’s greeting card.

Junk mail disguised as a greeting card.

I was actually a little shocked by what I found inside:

Junk mail that was hidden inside an envelope that looked like a greeting card.

I went back and looked at the envelope again, more closely this time, and I realized that what I mistook for a woman’s well-written handwriting was in fact a font, and the words were actually printed.  In fact, they didn’t even spell my name right.

I suppose I should have caught all that right away, but I didn’t expect physical spam mail to catch up with me this fast.  I’ve gotten really used to seeing spam online, and I can avoid it with ease, but I suppose I’m out of practice with real junk mail.  I’ll have to pay more attention from now on.  Not that opening physical junk mail could infect me with a virus, unless someone decides to start mailing weaponized anthrax again.  It’s just the principle of the thing.

As for what was in the envelope, I couldn’t say, other than it’s about jewelry.  I don’t like being tricked into looking at advertising so I tore it up and threw it away.

NYC Sanitation Department, Killing Babies Is The Wrong Way To Protest Budget Cuts

Bradley Farless3 Comments

The news this morning made me look at the video I posted previously in a whole new light.

Was this done intentionally, as part of the plan to botch the cleanup as a protest?

A lot of people were saying that the cleanup after this recent blizzard was botched.  It was slow, ineffective, and lots of people suffered for it, and now we know why:

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens)…

Read more at: NYPost

Their labor issues are more important than what?  The lives and safety of New Yorkers?  I read quite a few stories where people were seriously injured, or where deaths occurred because emergency services couldn’t reach people in need.  One that stands out in my mind was a woman who gave birth in the lobby of a building.  Her baby died before EMS could reach her.

Her baby died to protest budget cuts.  Good job, sanitation department.  You’re real fucking heroes today.  Someone should be made liable to criminal charges for the deaths caused by the unplowed roads, since they’re direct results of a plan to botch the cleanup.

Trash piling up after the December 26th blizzard in New York City.

Want to hear another problem this is causing?  Well, since the sanitation department was intentionally slow with cleaning up the snow, they took longer to get back around to their main purpose: picking up the trash.  Now, I don’t imagine we’re going to see any outbreaks of diseases just because the trash wasn’t picked up for a day, but the trash is really piling up, and it’s everywhere.  Additionally, with the sanitation workers still dicking around with the snow, or what’s left of it now, the regular cleanup of streets and the city trash cans on the corners is behind as well.  It’s disgusting.  Most of 14th street looks like one big garbage can.

Trash piling up on 14th street after the December 26th blizzard in New York City.

This whole problem seems indicative of a massive lack of common sense to me.  Whoever planned to have this cleanup botched should at the least lose their job.  Seriously.  And whoever took part should receive demotions and pay cuts, exactly what they were protesting against.  I’m all for protesting, but not when it endangers peoples’ lives.

You Might Have To Update Your Feed Subscription For This Blog. Here’s Why.

Bradley Farless2 Comments

I happened to look at my Adsense and I realized that it was still accumulating money, but in Singapore Dollars. That’s not going to work out too well for me since I’m no longer in Singapore, so I decided to change the address and country. Unfortunately, due to laws in Singapore and some other Asian countries, it’s not possible to change the country. Here’s the email reply I got from Google when I tried to request a country change on my Adsense account:

Hello,

We have received your request to update the country of your AdSense
account.

For tax and security reasons, we are unable to change the country or
territory field of an existing payment address. Therefore, if you would
like to change your country/territory field, you’ll need to close your
current AdSense account and then submit a new application with your
updated mailing address.

Prior to closing your account, please be aware that the account settings
and reports associated with your original account cannot be transferred to
your new account. This means that you’ll need to update your webpages with
the ad code generated by your new account and duplicate any existing
channel settings.

Additionally, you must also be able to receive a Personal Identification
Number (PIN) via standard mail at the new address that you submit.
To close your existing AdSense account, please visit our Help Center at
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=request_cancellation
. Once you receive confirmation on your closed account, please submit a
new application at http://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1 , making
sure to use an email address other than the one associated with your
closed account.

We’ll review your application and provide you with a response within 2-7
days.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

And here’s an excerpt of the Google FAQ page that covers this subject:

However, there are two situations in which you won’t be able to change your country directly within your account:

  • The reporting currency in your account isn’t available as a reporting currency in your new country. View a list of countries and their reporting currencies.
  • You’re located in or changing your country to one of the following:
    China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, or Singapore

Due to system and legal constraints, we are unable to change your country if you’re located in or need to change to an address in one of these countries.

In either of these cases, we’ll work with you to close your existing account and open a new account using your desired address. Please contact us to begin this process.

Thanks guys.  That’s all very helpful, but doesn’t change the fact that it turns something that should be simple into a complicated mess.

As you can see, I have no choice but to create a new Adsense account, using a US address, which is what I should have done to start with.  Of course, I had no idea when I started using Adsense how long I’d be in Singapore.  This whole thing with bouncing from country to country is a  real pain.  My Google Apps account is listed as being a Singapore account as well, and I can’t find any way to change that either, even though I’ll likely never see Singapore again.

Part of updating my Adsense is updating Adsense for feeds.  Since I had to create a new Adsense account under a new Google account, I also have to create a new Feed in Feedburner so I can have the Google Adsense show up in there under the right account.  That means I’ll have to cancel the old feed and start the new one up.

So, long story short, when you read this post in your RSS feed reader, please click through.  The following post will have the updated feed address included in the body.

Thanks for your patience while I get my digital life aligned with my physical location.

Going Back To School After Almost 12 Years

Bradley Farless4 Comments

Townsend Harris Hall, City College of New York campus.

My educational record is a little crazy, I suppose.  I took classes part time from both Park University and UMUC while I was in the Army.  Between those classes, the CLEP tests I took, and the college credit value of my military training, I have about 50 or 51 credit hours.  I also have a 3.7 GPA.

I recently heard about the Post 9/11 GI Bill, which is a VA benefit that will allow me to go to school full time, have the tuition and books paid for, and even receive a living allowance (BAH (ignore the warning, the site is legit) at the rate of E-5 with dependents).  I realized that’s a pretty good deal, getting paid to go to school, and I wanted to jump on it as soon as possible.  It’s time to finish my degree!

So, what to do?  Well, I applied for CUNY to start with.  I figure I’ll start out with them and then perhaps at some point in the future I’ll move to another school.  I don’t know.  I suppose it depends on how I like the place.  CUNY is the City University of New York, and is a university that encompasses a large number of colleges scattered around the greater New York City area.

CUNY is also a public college.  It’s not a private school.  I didn’t think I’d have any bumps in the road getting admitted.  So far, though, it’s been nothing but a pain in the ass.  First off, I applied for admission past the deadline.  I wasn’t even back in the US when the deadline passed, actually.  So, my initial application for Hunter College was rejected.  Hunter was already filled and closed to new registrations.  So, I chose CCNY, City College of New York, from the list of schools in the CUNY system that still had openings.  I went to the school and did a direct admission.

This is where things got complicated.  I understood that the other school was full, but when I yet again received a rejection letter from CCNY, stating this time that it was based on my “academic record”, I was more than a little agitated.  Besides the fact that I was running out of time for enrolling, my academic record was more than good enough.  I thought about it, but I just couldn’t figure out what the problem could be.  The only thing I could guess at was that it had something to do with my CLEP tests.  That couldn’t be right though, because CCNY accepted up to 90 credit hours for transfer students.

I decided to go up to the school to figure out what the problem was.  When I got there, I described the issue to the girl at the counter and she went and brought out the person that had sent me the rejection email to better explain what the problem was.  Turns out, it has nothing to do with my academics, per se, so much as the lack of evidence for my math ability.

Eleven years ago, I knew for sure that I was going to join the military and I knew for sure that I was just going to go ahead and do twenty years and retire from it.  I knew I should take the SAT and ACT, so I did, but I didn’t put any effort into them, so the results were crap.  I didn’t really care back then.  Now, something I did eleven years ago has come back around to bite me in the ass.

Since I haven’t taken any college level math courses, my SAT and ACT scores were crap, and I went to high school out of state, meaning they can’t check the regional math score, I was up shit creek in regards to admission as a matriculated CCNY student, 3.7 GPA or not.

The next thing was to discuss options.  There are almost always options and ways to work around things like this, and this situation was no exception.  The VA counselor knew just what to do, and less than 40 minutes later he had me out the door, still on track to start school at the end of January.

You see, I can start taking classes at CCNY as a non-matriculated student, take an online math course from another university, and then have the transcript sent to CCNY.  I could continue to take classes during the summer as a non-matriculated student, but officially enroll and declare a major in the Fall.

This was really the best solution, because it keeps me from wasting time doing a dead end job between now and Fall, it gets me started on my education, and it’ll still allow me to collect on my VA benefit payout.

Hopefully this is the last bump in the road.  I’ll be receiving an email in about two weeks, hopefully, letting me know what to do next in regards to starting classes at the end of the month.  I wish it were sooner, so I could register for classes, get text books and get a head start on studying.

A “Bah! Humbug!” Kind of Christmas

Bradley Farless8 Comments

A little tree and nativity scene on the dresser.

Ok, so maybe it’s not all that bad.  In fact, it could be a lot worse.  The fact remains, however, that I spent this Christmas apart from my wife, and that seriously put a dent in my holiday spirit.  This year just feels different.  The ‘spirit’ of the holiday seems to have gone around me without touching me.  The lights are up.  The tree is there.  The gifts are under it.  The food was good.  I had family around me.  And yet, without my wife it seems pale.  All I can do is look forward to next year, when we can do things right.  Next Christmas will be extra special.

Some of my photos came out fairly decent, so I thought I’d share a few.

Roast pork, black beans with rice and yuca.

Traditionally, my mom’s side of the family does Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, so last night we had a simple meal of roast pork, black beans with rice and yuca.  It looks simple, but trust me, it tasted great!  We also had cake and homemade oatmeal cookies.

Bacon, frying on a griddle.

Potatoes frying.

Fresh biscuits.

This morning we followed up the dinner with a really good, traditional breakfast of bacon, biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes and eggs.

Christmas isn’t completely without joy this year, but like I said, it’s just not the same.  My wife and I spent every day together for almost 2 and a half years until we had to temporarily part ways.  It really puts a damper on my holiday spirit, and instead of really enjoying this Christmas, it feels more like another step on a path to something more fulfilling, when my wife and I will be together again.  I’m looking forward to it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bradley Farless7 Comments

Pumpkin pie with whipped cream and coffee.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope your day was as enjoyable as mine!  I’m still stuffed, though I managed to not give in to the turkey coma earlier.  My eyes were really, really heavy for a while!  This is the first time I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving with family in years, so it was a nice change.  I’m going to enjoy celebrating US holidays again, that’s for sure!  The only thing that would have made it better is if a certain special someone were here with me, but business is business, and there’s always next year.

Wal Mart Pricing. Win or Fail?

Bradley Farless15 Comments

320 GB and 500 GB Seagate external portable hard drives for sale at Wal Mart.

I was looking through the electronics section at Wal Mart and noticed the prices on the 320 gb and 500 gb Seagate external hard drives are a little weird:

320 GB Seagate hard drives are 79 dollars.

500 gb external Seagate hard drives are 79 dollars.

Maybe one price is wrong, or maybe they’re really charging the same amount for both hard drives.  Who knows?  Regardless, I know I’d rather get a 500 GB hard drive if I’m going to pay the same amount for a smaller one.  The only difference I could see is that the 320 GB version had more variety in colors.