Accepted
Rejected
Disclaimer: For the most part I’ve never had any problems with Bank of America and find most of their basic services to be more than adequate.
Yesterday I received the replacement for my American Express as there was a potential that my personal information had been stolen and Bank of America (the bank through which I got the card) decided it needed to be replaced. All well and good, and that meant that I needed to call in to get my new card activated.
When I call the number I receive a greeting that says something about how activating my card will only take a couple minutes during which I’ll have the “opportunity” to take advantage of “exclusive” offers for “our valued Bank of America” customers. Sigh. Anyways, I proceed through the process which I swear used to always be completely automated, but at the end I’m transferred to a customer service representative who collects the important personal identification information and then proceeds to “initiate the process of activating my card.”
Then comes, you guessed it, the sales pitch. “Can I interest you in our ‘credit-protection-ultra-plus-super-protection’ plan. For only $0.95 a month per $100 of balance on your card we will pay your balance for a few months in the event that you lose your job or encounter some medical emergencies.” I thanked him for the offer but stated that I wasn’t interested. Mostly because I don’t carry a balance on my card and I wouldn’t ever need them to “cover my payment” whatever that means. But then it got better. He responds “Well based on your credit card usage this is a great value for you and I’d like to go ahead and get this setup on your account. There’s no charge for 30 days.”
Now usually I don’t take financial advice from customer service representatives… but this one comes with a 30-day trial… NO
I could not believe this. First, I have to call in to get my new card activated and instead of it being automated like nearly EVERY OTHER PROCESS I’ve done over the phone I have to talk to this idiot. Second, the correct answer to my initial rejection of the offer was:
“Thank you, is there anything else that I can do for you sir?”
Not:
“Oh, well you are clearly too stupid to realize that you need this so let me go ahead and set it up for you anyways.”
No, Mr. BoA Representative, I am too smart to fall for all the silly “credit protection” programs that only cost $12.99 a month and provide NOTHING. Even if they have a (laughable) 30 day free period. Unfortunately I was too aghast at the insulting tone of the customer representative to respond with anything other than a firm “No Thank You” which finally made him shut up.
How pathetic is this. Bank of America resorting to the use of people’s fears that they might lose their job or encounter medical problems to shill some crappy $10-a-month “protection” program.
Shame on you.
Sunday I met with the small group leaders at Buckhead Church for the last time. Typically we have these lunch meetings once a month throughout the course of the semester. The objective is to get together to discuss everything that is going on in our groups, and share methods and ideas with each other. Last Sunday was the last meeting of this semester and, for me, the last one I will attend.
As this is the last week of class, and next week is finals week, it’s inevitable that there are going to be a lot of these “lasts”.
It’s difficult for me to write about this because I really don’t know how to feel. There’s definitely excitement, but there’s also a great deal of fear and uncertainty. Imagine looking around at everything you can see or experience and being afraid to like it because it will be a 7-hour airplane ride away in a couple months. Not that Seattle is a bad place, quite the opposite in fact. The quick glimpses that I’ve gotten through my visits there and by listening to Mark’s podcasts are promising. It’s just that I’ve done this whole move-across-the-county thing before when I came to Georgia from Colorado, so now I’m burdened with the knowledge of what that move will do.
I’ve had a really good time here. That’s what is clearly apparent in the “lasts”. If I hadn’t had a good time, then there wouldn’t be any “lasts” worth experiencing. As I reflect back on the time I’ve spent here I’m amazed at all the great things I have to remember. But as I began writing about them I realized that if I put them all in one post it would be close to a mile long. So instead, I’m going to parcel them out over the course of a few days/weeks starting with this one:
Small Group
I started my small group experience at Theta Xi before I was even a brother. Charlie Wright, who would eventually become my big brother, invited me to join a group my sophomore year at Tech. As I was really struggling for Christian guy community at the time; I joined. Eventually my involvement in the group led to my pledging at Theta Xi, but that’s another story. The next couple years I led groups of various size and effectiveness through the house. When I entered graduate school, however, things really took off. I decided that I wanted to join a group (not lead) through Buckhead Church to branch out beyond the fraternity. I didn’t want to lead, because I didn’t feel that I had the proper experience or knowledge to adequately lead. Apparently God thought differently. He brought a group of young guys to me, and for the next two years they asked me to lead them as we all “did life” together.
The last two years have been some of the most exciting years of my life in small group. I’m so amazed at the growth and maturity that each of the members of our group has experienced, myself included. It’s hard to remember all the things that we have done together outside of the regular meetings; going to Kenya, mini-golfing, feeding the homeless, and generally just hanging out. When we first all met I think there was a significant doubt that we would even work together, but now I can safely say that if I get married I know a couple guys who will be standing with me at the altar.
Not to beat a dead horse but this got me pretty excited:
So I’m pretty much all set to walk across the stage in a couple weeks.
In other news, I spent last weekend in Seattle looking for a place to live with my sister. We’re mostly looking in north Ballard/Wallingford. The housing market being what it is it looks like we might be able to swing a townhome, which is really awesome. This means that there is potential for me to have a garage, my own washer/dryer, and a porch. More on this as the story develops.
So after a marathon effort over the weekend and early into Monday morning, I have finally finished my thesis!
The following policies governing work are going into immediate effect:
I can confidently say that the completion of my thesis represents the most effort that I have ever put into a single task that I can ever remember. While the data collection effort and experimentation started two years ago, the bulk of the written work was carried out this semester. I started creating bits and pieces at the start of this semester, but it wasn’t until spring break that writing began in earnest. I spent the vast majority of that week (3/16-3/20) tied to my computer hammering out section after section. I constructed the initial draft the following week and got it into the hands of my advisor for initial comments. While he was looking at it I continued work, adding sections and additional analysis, up through Thursday (3/26) when I sent out the “final” draft for comments to my advisor and to the proof-reading committee I had drafted conscripted asked nicely to help out.
What amazed me through the latter part of the effort was the shear size of the work. When I had combined all the individual sections into one the document was nearly 200 pages long and contained close to 35,000 words. This made some things interesting. For example, the process of going through the document with spellcheck could take several minutes to complete.
I didn’t get comments back from my advisor until Saturday night, and only for the first two-thirds of the paper. Combined with the changes I was getting from my proof-reading committee at times it felt like I was completely re-writing entire pages of the document. Work continued through Sunday, something I usually try to avoid, and after a late-afternoon meeting I had the final comments in hand to respond to. Those corrections, and the miscellaneous clean-up tasks to get the document formatted for submission (no small task given the size of the document) kept me up until 4 AM Monday morning (4/6). The next morning, after gathering signatures and submitting the approval form and the thesis itself, I was done.
The arrival at “done” is, frankly, rather abrupt. It’s as if I’ve gone from working at 100 miles per hour to 8. This will take a while to sink in, the idea that I can go home after class or working in the lab, or even *gasp* take an entire day off to do nothing. Actually, after months of nagging concern that I need to be working on some aspect of the thesis I seem to have developed a bit of a habit. It will take a while for me to be able to look at a calendar and not try to figure out how many more days I have to work until my thesis is due.
I still do have things to do, but nothing even close to the magnitude of what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks. I hope to get the rest of my outstanding class work done this week actually, and the Cobb County report can easily be handled during normal working hours.
Anyways, it’s done. I keep saying that to myself, it just sounds so… wonderful. Once it gets posted to oscar I’m going to Taco Mac for drinks. But now, I’m just ready to start feeling human again.