Us

Us

Thursday, June 25, 2009

1 Down, Many More To Come

Well, just as we were flying out to celebrate Kyle and Jess's wedding, Chad and I were celebrating our own. On Thursday June 18th, we were up early to head to the airport, but took a moment to eat our cake first. We have been toting it around with us since we got married. It went from Pocatello to Rexburg for the wedding, to Provo, to Orem, to Rexburg (30 College Ave. to 23 College Ave.). So, by golly, we were going to eat it! (I have a video I have to have Chad put up later)





Anyways, we ate our cake and headed off to Salt Lake. Here we are on the parking shuttle, beginning our trip. But the trip is a post for another time.



Anyways. Can you believe it's been a year since we got married?! Crazy, huh!? It was fun to go to another wedding to remember our own.

happy anniversary Chad!

They say the first year is the hardest, and if that's the case, I'm really looking forward to the rest of our lives being a cakewalk!

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Throwback to A.P. Biology

Last night I had to go to the library to print what I had assumed would be 10-20 pages of some crap (pardon my attitude, but it's justified - read on) one of my teachers posted online - papers which were required to finish the homework last night.

So I go to the library to print the pages because it prints faster and I feel like I'm not wasting my own ink if I print it at the library even though I still have to pay 4 cents a page.

Upon getting to the library a bit after 9:00pm, we find that none of the school's computers have the required update of Adobe Reader and I can't even open the file. In order to download the update, a password is required. So we called over "the red vest" (library tech worker) who was supposed to have the password. Apparently he had a password but not a username, and the computer was asking for both. He tried that for about an hour. We were ready to give up and go home, but our red vest was not. We were trying on a Mac so we went over to a Windows computer and tried it there. After taking 10 minutes to log on (no lie), Chad found the update and was able to download it. That took another 15-20 minutes. Once it downloaded it, we had to restart the computer. It took another 10 minutes to start up again. Meanwhile the red vest is getting more and more annoyed at how slow the computers are and tells us that he is going to bring this up in his meeting tomorrow, because this is just ridiculous. Tell me about it! Anyways, so we finally get back on and open the file we originally needed to open. It opens! We call it a miracle and move on. I select the pages I want and click "Print". The printer doesn't show up in the "select printer location" box. In fact, no printers show up in the box. It has to convert everything into PDF so we can print it. The red vest saves the PDFs on his jump drive and attempts to find us a faster computer. By now it is 11:15. Remember that we got to the library at no later than 9:30. The library closes at 11:30. The red vest has been trying to help us get these 10 pages printed for about 2 hours now. He finds a (relatively) faster computer and sends the pages to the printer. It takes a few minutes to process everything and we realize that it's sending EVERYTHING to the printer.

Now, when I say EVERYTHING, I mean it. The latest thing on campus is to "cut back" on textbook costs by scanning an entire textbook into the computer as PDFs, formatting them as read-only pages, uploading them onto the internet, requiring the students to go online and download the electronic copy of the text.

Now - this could be a good idea! Heck, this could even be a GREAT idea! But in order to grade us, this particular teacher is requiring that we then go on our computers, download the entire file, convert it all back into PDFs, print it, hole punch it, and put it in a notebook so that he has something to grade. He obviously can't put a grade on us saying "Yes, we downloaded it to our computers." So we are required to provide a hard copy.

I present to you my hard copy of the text.



"EVERYTHING" was over 300 pages. And it cost me over $16.00. And I'll have to buy a ridiculous notebook to put it in. Followed by the process of hole punching every page. Chad suggested that I buy a three hole punch and sit in this this guy's class now until the end of the semester (when the "binder" is due) and hole punch each page.

This is RIDICULOUS. On the syllabus it says to print it double-sided. Oh, cuz that makes it better. Besides the fact that the library doesn't have a printer that can print double-sided without printing all of the odd-numbered pages (which you couldn't even do because it's split up into different topics, and then into different sub topics, and they all have their own sets of page numbers) and then put the paper back in the printer and print the even-numbered pages.

And yes, my friends, I found pages of PowerPoint slides. No lie. An entire page that cost me $.04 had about 6 words on it.

I'm pretty sure I would rather pay $30 to have an actual textbook sitting in front of me rather than this crap.

There is no Table of Contents. I think it's a whole bunch of handouts that the teacher has accumulated over his career and has decided that we need, rather than researching it and purchasing a textbook. At least I can sell back a textbook if I want to.


We got to the library at a little after 9:00. About two and a half hours, one red vest, $16(+), and 300 pages later, we left, just as the P.A. told us "Attention: It is now 11:30 and the library is closed." Not happy.

P.S.




This is as close as we ever got to seeing the circus in Rexburg.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Circus McGurkus

So - about a month ago posters showed up around town heralding the arrival of the circus in Rexburg! There were free kids tickets all over the place, but no prices listed on any of the posters.
But we counted down the days and --- Tonight was the night!

We withdrew 20 bucks from the ATM and headed off to the fairgrounds. Visions of elephants and trapeze artists danced through our heads. We got there an hour before the show was supposed to start. We were probably within the first twenty people in line. We were so ready!! We were gonna get good seats and we were gonna see the scary clowns up close and personal! Our hearts beat in anticipation - we could see cotton candy vendors and costumed ladies inside from the show that was just finishing. (They did one earlier today.)

THE CIRCUS!!!!

This is too good to be true!!!




Yes, yes my friends, it was.
The tickets were $16 a piece. Luckily we only had $20 or I might've been tempted to stay to satisfy my inner child.
But I was a big girl, and we left. I didn't even cry.

We went to WalMart instead and bought stuff off their clearance rack which has appeared since they started major remodeling.
Then Chad treated me to a Sno Cone - they have a shack on Main Street that makes really good Sno Cones for relatively cheap. It sure wasn't the circus, but it was good.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Laundromat 1- Post Office 0

As long as the family blogs are on the subject of complaining about customer service, I felt I better contribute.

Today we went to the Post Office to pick up our mail, as we had to get a P.O. Box when we moved. I was expecting some music I had ordered for my senior recital next semester. Usually Eble Music (who I order from) sends the music with a piece of cardboard so that it isn't bent - one of the several things I like about them. My music always comes looking like I went to the store and bought it myself. Well, the Post Office was about to change all that. We got to our little 3x5 box, and seeing that some of the keys for the package boxes were missing, was excited to see if we had one. I opened our box to find my carefully packaged music folded in half and shoved in the box. I was not happy. Really Post Office? Because you obviously had to put some effort into folding that in half so you could fit it into our postcard-sized box. It's like 60 pages of music (or more!), plus a piece of cardboard. Grr. Thanks a lot Post Office.

However, on Thursday we did our laundry at the Magic Suds Laundromat. It's open 24 hours and it's away from everything, so it's usually pretty empty. It's our most recent laundromat find, and we like it. It has tv and wireless internet, and as I said, there's usually nobody in there. Every time we go though, we find some young guy (usually sketchy looking) using it as his own internet cafe - not actually doing any laundry. Cuz I know that'd be the first place I'd go to hang out and surf Facebook. Anywho. We got all our laundry done and put it in the dryer. It had been in for a couple of cycles already, but needed more time. We put in another quarter, closed the door, and pushed the button. To which it displayed some error message about the door being open or the lint trap needing to be emptied - neither of which was the case. So we kept opening and closing the door and pushing the button only to keep getting the error message, and wouldn't give us our money back. So there's a note on the door to the office that says "If you lose any money, please leave a note with your name and address on it and we will be happy to refund it." I was annoyed, so I left a very pleasant note (it really was pleasant! I'm not just being sarcastic) with my name and address and slipped it through the mail slot on the door. Today we got back our note with $1.75 taped to it. We only lost a quarter!
Thank you laundromat! I think we'll be back.