Day In The Life of Baz

Today was an interesting day at work. But the thing is we need to take a step back before we fully analyze it. Yesterday, like any ordinary day, I went to work and worked on stuff. If you recall I work at a Software Company as a programmer or Software Engineer as the fancy title goes. Now in a nutshell: the program is stored on a main server and when we need to work on a certain portion of it we check it out, make our modifications and check it back in. Simple enough task right? This morning we had our regular status meeting where we discussed a fix that I had made the previous day. After listening to a few point of views it was decided that we would take a different approach to the problem than the one we used originally. So I was supposed to undo my previous changes and make some new ones. I was instructed to “Roll Back” my changes. If left up to me, I would have just checked the files out made new modifications and checked them back in. But I specifically heard the words “Roll Back”. I felt a bit funny about it, but hey, orders are orders. What I was thinking is: “what happens to the changes that people had made before this?” Anyways, the system is rather sophisticated so I clicked the “Roll Back” button under the assumption that it would be smart enough to merge in the changes made by other people or at least ask me. Well it did ask me one thing: “The Roll Back function cannot be undone, do you want to continue?“. Like an idiot I clicked yes. So there goes everyones work from 5:05 PM yesterday to 2:02 PM today. Luckily, the file we were talking about (although it has frequent changes) the changes can usually be re applied in under 20 minutes. So I had to send a department wide email alerting people that they need to redo a couple things and of course, apologize for my incompetence. This is where the trouble starts. Now we all should know by now that I am a horrible speller. This is why I set up Outlook to automatically spell check before it sends an email. Now although I can’t spell, I’m usually in the ballpark of the word, so I usually just accept the first suggestion it gives. Keyword: usually. I suppose today was an unusual day. Below is the email I sent to the entire Development department (which includes the vice president of the company):

Popularity: 13%

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Introduction

Just for review, for the new readers: I’m not from around here :-). I’m from a small Caribbean country called Dominica. I moved up here for school in fall of 2003. That in it self was no small task. It basically took three years or saving and a huge ass loan from a bank back home. That loan didn’t even cover three years of school for me, but nonetheless it’s an exorbitant amount of money. I have 6 and a half years left to pay it off. If my calculations are correct, that brings me to a nice figure of US $29887.64. Let’s just round it up to and even 30 grand. While I was up here going to school and being broke it was up to my parents back home to pay the interest on the loan (those were the agreements). They’ve worked extremely hard to get me where I am (was) and I appreciate it.

Since I’ve gotten a couple paychecks since I started, I’ve been able to knock down some local debt I have up here: stuff I racked up when the last semester was over and I could no longer work on campus, moving expenses (apartment deposits, applications fees, etc), and miscellaneous work expenses (work clothes mainly). As such, I’ve been trying to find a way to express my appreciation to my parents in the form of some much needed cash to pay the principal payments on the loan, which are about $360.00 a month. The problem is finding a reliable way to send that money back home to my mom so she can pay the bank.

Option One: Deposit Straight To The Bank

This was my first option because it made the most sense. So this is what I was trying to get information about. My search didn’t last too long when I was discouraged. I was told that other people in my situation haven’t had great results with Option One. “Why not?”, I asked. Apparently, some deposits have mysteriously gone missing or the amounts sent and the amount deposited disagreed for some odd reason. This gave way to:

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It’s no secret that Gas Prices have been getting ridiculous over the past couple of days. On my way to work I pass two relatively cheap gas stations: A Race Trac, 7-Eleven and a Quick Trip. All of which were $2.19. Now that was ridiculous since just a few weeks ago I was looking at a $1.99 just turned to $2.05 and getting pissed. Can you believe that I was waiting for the price to go down? I guess I must have been delusional or something, but there were a couple of drops in prices that had me wishing. Now I missed filling up at $2.13 some time last week because, like an idiot, I’m waiting for prices to go down. So I vowed that I would definitely fill up today at $2.19 (ouch). This was important since I be making a trip out of town this weekend and if I have to pay more that $2.19 to fill up I’ll end up shooting myself in the head (although, chances are a gun would be slightly more that $2.19).

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Now I love GMail.com. I use it as my primary email manager. Every other email address I have (where the capability exists) I forward mail to Gmail and add the account so I can also send from Gmail. So I am a Gmail lover, but Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is taking things to another level. These are a few highlights of his post:

• Using Gmail as a Massive Database
• How to get real-time news updates in Gmail
• How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail
• How to Manage Your Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail
• How to blog from Gmail

Popularity: 7%

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SeasonedCredit is a new service just launched that helps individuals to increase their credit scores. They are actually a subdivision of SeasonedTrades (who have been featured on TV and the Wall Street Journal).

Two things from this site are worth mention:

• No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report.
• It is ILLEGAL for credit repair companies to collect money for services before the work is performed

So basically what they’re talking about is that we should all forget about repairing credit because it doesn’t help us, since it doesn’t increase your credit score and because most of the companies that offer these services are breaking the law. This is very interesting information, since there are literally thousands of companies out there that claim to provide these services. Accurate negative blemishes on your credit report can never be removed, because after all it is the truth. That is why we should strive to avoid them in the first place. What does happen, however, is that in time and given enough positive counters these negative hits carry less weight when it comes to determining your credit score. These positive counters is where SeasonedCredit specializes in what they do. They also guarantee an increase in your credit score within 30 days.

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