Back to school angst

I'm back in class again, so I've been a little busy lately.

One way you can save money on your books is to search online for the best prices. Two weeks before classes started (8/14), I did that and found ecampus.com. I got great prices and a promise of shipment of my books by the start date of school (8/28), but it did not happen.

Here's why I won't use www.ecampus.com again.

1. Bad customer service.

2. No phone number.

3. No prompt e-mail contact.
Three days IS too long to wait for an order status e-mail. This is the internet, remember. Things in many cases happen instantaneously.

4. Useless tracking numbers.
Sure, it's nice to get them, but when the product has not shipped in more than three days, it would make more sense to have an update e-mail on the status, so I can track it when it really ships.

5. Stupid promotions.
Yes, free shipping is nice, but making promises you can deliver on is worth the weight of my heavy, heavy books in gold.

To sum it up, order your texts far in advance and have a backup plan in case your stellar vendor can't deliver.

I'm going back to www.half.com and www.amazon.com. They are at least reliable.

Truth and fiction in the blogosphere

While I was surfing around today blissfully soaking up the filtered sunlight from the back office as my vacation quickly disappears, I wondered how many people really believe what they read on the internet.

This article (again, via happycatholic) made me wonder about this. So what is true on the 'net these days anyway. Here's my own little list:

Chez-isms (or Things I know are really true in my own life and little blog):

1. I am really back at school full-time in my mid-thirties. Sure beats a midlife crisis!

2. Life is not a spectator sport, but it never hurts to learn by watching first before you make a fool out of yourself.

3. I will always be a technogeek. It just has something to do with those experimental genes I inherited.

4. People will always come up to you and ask questions in stores if you look like you know what you are doing.

5. It never hurts to have friends at the bank or at your local police department.

6. As an addedum to 5, be sure to bring cookies or candy BEFORE you need help.

7. Saying "please" and "thank you" wherever you are can really result in a better experience.

8. Ask questions. Some people will be flattered that you care about their job/situation/story and others will be extremely annoyed.

9. Never wear dry cleanable clothing around small children.

10. Take time to smell the roses, talk to an old friend, and eat chocolate.

Snort, snort...

It's been a fun morning, especially when you're in St. Louis and wake up with a horrendous sinus headache. I really want to return my sinuses for a refund, however, no one wants to take them and replace the bad ones.

After I got Bubba off to preschool and got my coffee, I meandered over to Maplewood to see some of the St. Boniface folks in their usual confab on Friday after Mass. Since I was feeling pretty rested up yesterday, I baked some zucchini bread and brought a loaf over. There were a few takers, but most of the folks wanted lots of sugar and icing, and the zucchini bread could not deliver. It's always a fun bunch...where else can I find a good argument about Canon 121 in the US, the merits of OxyClean, the Mayo diet and the Three Stooges all in one place over coffee?

I ended the party by helping some of the IC folks with their computer issues. I leave IT, but it follows me everywhere. I hate leaving people in a lurch, and they need me more than anyone since they have an IT staff of zero and the budget to match.

As granny used to say, "It's for the church." and that's why I do it. (Even though granny mentioned this when playing bingo at church. ;->)

The snort, snort comes as a reference to a cool blog I found today courtesy of blogger.com. It's called Rhinocrisy and reminded me of reading Ionesco's Rhinoceros in high school French class.

More recipes and reveries on tap...stay tuned.

Two down and one to go...

Two exams are complete and I have one more tomorrow. So far, so good. Today's was a bear, but I can't worry about it now because I passed!

Outside of that, I met the former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis in the Hickory East SLU garage today after his conference at the Med School. Dr. Danforth lost his car and I found out that his Volvo is a different color than mine, though, so we had a good chuckle about that. ;->

Happily, it was not far from mine and he was quickly on his way. I went home, trimmed the bushes in front of my house and then packaged up the top of the neighbor's walnut tree which fell into our yard July 19. My classmate Mark was good enough to bring his ax and saw over to help me and between the two of us, we made lots of sticks from that monsterous tree top pretty quick. It was a good thing since it was so hot!

More fun tomorrow. Adios until later.

Back again

It's been a heck of a ride lately. The semester for me is finally drawing to a close. I look forward to developing some new material for this blog and my other ones in the two weeks I'm out of school.

In the meantime, I found a cool article on washingtonpost.com which details an innovative education program about poverty at Washington & Lee University in Virginia.

Poverty 101